360DigitalInfluence

Recently we contributed to a report from Jeremiah Owyang and crew over at Altimeter. They just released it last week and we would like to share it here. They drew conclusions from a variety of sources to end up with the “8 Criteria” - most of which I agree with and find useful. They then go on to “grade” a couple of dozen brands in terms of their overall “maturity” in Facebook marketing.  Here are the 8 Criteria:

• Set Community Expectations
• Provide Cohesive Branding
• Be Up To Date
• Live Authenticity
• Participate in Dialog
• Enable Peer-to-Peer Interactions
• Foster Advocacy
• Solicit a Call-to-Action

Forget my knee-jerk objection to using what sounds like such paternalistic terms (”maturity,” ” infantile,” etc…)  there is some sense here…

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This week, Ogilvy is launching a new initiative to publish Red Papers of our thought leadership. Red Papers are Ogilvy-ized white papers meet books. I mean with the emergence of the iPad and even the iPhone as reading formats, I am having a hard time understanding what is a “paper” and what constitutes a “book.”  This one is a bit long - almost 8000 words - not there is valor in length.  I wanted to share some of my experiences in a practical way and therefore I get into some nuts and bolts for planning really effective social media.

What is it about?

For the past few years, we have been helping established and emerging brands apply social media in the most impactful way possible. That means getting beyond tactical and often token gestures at applying social media-based approaches. We work with enterprise to help them not just realize marcom programs but also change they way they interact with customers and organize themselves. While every brand is different, there are common experiences. My Red Paper outlines these and offers a foundation - practical and high-minded - that brands can apply to ensure their own approach is as strategic or as impactful to the business as possible.

Get it now

The Red paper is available for download now. It sits alongside another excellet read in Dimitri Maex’s Red Paper Learning to Read the River which is all about understanding the flood of data and metrics available to us as marketing experts.

Join me and others today for a teleconference produced by Bulldog reporter. The full title is: New FTC, FDA and SEC Social Media Rules: How to Manage Web 2.0 in Regulated Industries.

We will be sharing the latest status on both FTC (can you say ‘Ann Taylor?’) and the FDA’s road towards guidelines (how many pharmas submitted comments to the FDA?) and more importantly, how we are applying best-practice guidelines in our work here at Ogilvy. Real-world application.

You can get more information and register here.

The teleconference starts at 1:00pm ET Today

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is holding it’s big brand marketer training event in Chicago - The School of WOM -  and we are taking a bunch of our team out there both to teach and learn. While there are basic sessions, we go for the advanced material and learning from the other brand marketers in the room.

As you consider where you will spend your professional development time and money this year, here are three reasons that you might want to join us:

1. If you already are engaged with social media and word of mouth marketing from either the communications or marketing POV and want to learn from other strategists and practitioners with experience - you should come. This is not all about a motivational keynote (although we have Dan Heath and Jeffrey Hayzlett (Kodak) which I am looking forward to). This is about real learnings from the trenches.

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This Friday, Piers Fawkes is having his PFSK Conference in NYC. Its not your usual social media or marketing confab. This is an event that will challenge you, inspire you and likely leaving you better at your job (for those who need that concrete ROI reason to attend). You will see so many folks including the chap who made this awesome graphic above from his personal infographic annual report - Nick Felton.

I interviewed Piers here. More importantly, you can get into the conference with a nice Ogilvy discount by clicking here.

I caught up with our own Thomas Crampton last week in Istanbul. Thomas runs our teams across Asia and one of the big events coming up this year is the Shanghai World Expo.  To help inform our work and our clients who will participate in some way or another, Thomas developed some great research on the current buzz throughout Chinese social media on the Expo. I had a chance to ask him about what he found:

Q: Can you tell us briefly what the Shanghai World Expo is and what it may mean to China, its government, business leaders and even the people there?
A: Shanghai Expo has been billed as one of the largest events of its kind in China. While people outside of China may not have heard of the event, the organizers expect a extremely large domestic audience.

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I will be speaking along with folks from a lot of great UK brands this Friday in Devon UK at Scott Gould’s most excellent Like Minds event. While it covers the world of social media, it is both more business-disciplined and broader. It certainly meets my criteria for worthwhile conferences this year. Get all info on attending here.

So come for two reasons:

1. To learn from your peers in a very intimate setting. There is actually an intensive summit the next day (Saturday) which I would encourage many to explore and attend. Orange, the Guardian, Kodak, BSkyB and my friends from 1000 Heads will all be there.

2. To meet with me and help me find 2 talented Digital Influence Strategists to hire into our UK/EU operation. I coudl really use your help as our team keeps expanding in UK. You can get the skinny on our blog and lets talk this Friday (I arrive Thursday PM) in Devon

We are a company of communicators. We embraced social media years ago as a new way to communicate for ourselves and, also, for our clients to push their business forward in new ways.We have always had a socila media policy to help our staff use social media productively.

The recent decision by Forrester to restrict their analyst/bloggers to publishing within the Forrester blog domain (vs. allowing them to publish personal blogs outside of Forrester and grow their personal brands that way), has kicked up a dust storm of opinions.  

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I have been participating in WeMedia events for years. I think the world of Andrew and Dale who started pulling this together when they were with the American Press Institute a few years back. WeMedia is an eclectic mix of leaders from new and traditional media and technology and marketing and…. That’s the point. It’s not another echo chamber event.

You should consider attending - especially as I have a neat code that gets you in at “friends of Ogilvy” pricing: WM-OGV.

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As President of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), I have been anticipating the final release of the FTC guidelines which came out this morning at 8am. Figures that I would be in Paris with our Digital Influence team and not in the US. But even here, everyone is paying attention to the issues raised by these guidelines. This is an important step and will cause many marketers to revise their approach. I wanted to take the time to summarize some key issues as we all dig in to the document.

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