Conversation Engines: it doesn’t matter how much we ‘get it’… we need to ‘get it’ more.

25 08 2010

Despite astonishing network growth, our tools have not been able to keep up with social noise. As an individual, I tend to limit my output and certainly limit the chit-chat. As a business, I believe it is important to pay attention to this trend: conversation have faded away. Businesses have created FB pages and Twitter accounts left and right. They ‘totally get it’. Data keeps coming in, failures are very common and some even say the social media bubble is about to burst. Katie was challenging our thinking behind how easy it seems to simplify things through facebook pages earlier this week. So what’s going on?

- Let’s face it, less is the new more… one reason I like(d) FriendFeed over Twitter and especially over Facebook is its quality of information. The Google Wave dream is no more and Google Buzz is now a noisy chamber. Social platforms have filled up a need on one side — they’ve allowed us to aggregate pertinent information for our personal and professional lives. But they have also created, in many cases, an addiction to real time information, empowering anyone to become a producer regardless of quality or qualification. Mainstream media has slowly struggled to stay relevant. Choose your path, stay relevant. It’s even more critical for a business. Many constituent voices need to be represented and people have learned to be more selective.

- Competing for attention: Nielsen released their latest study on internet usage early August to find that 23% of internet use is spent on social networks up from 16% a year ago. We’ve embraced social media beyond its (and our) wildest expectations, but we’re barely scratching the surface when it comes to truly turning an organization to serve its constituency through new media. In 2 years, we’ve moved from “what is social media?” to “super noise”. Some have chosen the careful path of information sharing, others have massively unfollowed, conversations have faded into a sharing frenzy. Quality of information and interaction has never been so important. Louis Gray’s comments “I quickly fatigue from the insanity“ describing his (mine too) inability to cope with the amount of information revelations. Even more revealing, Louis just accepted a position with My6Sense as VP of Marketing. My6Sense is another algorithm based app focusing on generating relevant information. If the crowd can’t do it, the algorithm will. Companies ought to harness a wide variety of techniques to make those algorithms work in their own favor aka driving long tail traffic.

- Brands are struggling to become conversation partners: I continue to revisit the realization that brands want to only talk about stuff they are experts at, like they’re getting ready to broadcast. I believe the contrary. Your company doesn’t just have to only talk about stuff related to your product or services. Creating a mono-stream/logue of information across social platforms will only make people put you in a bucket for good. The shift from outbound to inbound marketing is a steep learning curve and requires dedicated attention. Empowering constituents (imagine onion layers) to discuss topics of interest with brands and amongst each other takes more than just putting information out there.

Can you relate? Do you think the bubble is ready to burst?

@YannR @Extanz



Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : PR 2.0, Uncategorized

Should Everyone Be on Facebook? #B2B #apps

23 08 2010

Fostering strong and vibrant online communities is a key goal in any social media program. Social media allows businesses to harness the power of consumer referrals in ways not seen before. This isn’t new news; industry analysts and companies have recognized this for a number of years and the number of companies using social media to expand their consumer base and brand loyalty has grown exponentially. While more and more companies are launching their own Facebook pages, few utilize them to their full potential as Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group pointed out recently in his presentation on The 8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing. Owyang’s research revealed that most brands lack a concrete and well-defined strategy and fail to fully utilize Facebook’s features to build word of mouth among their customers. Owyang also lays out the key steps for successful Facebook page marketing, including:

  1. Set community expectations
  2. Provide cohesive branding
  3. Be up to date
  4. Live authenticity
  5. Participate in dialogue
  6. Enable peer-to-peer interaction
  7. Foster advocacy
  8. Solicit calls to action

This is great advice and is part of the key strategy for any Facebook community we enable our clients to develop, but it overlooks a couple of key issues that indicate where and how you engage. Without addressing these issues, businesses may end up with a false sense of possibility of the activity they can create on Facebook. Not all brands possess the sex appeal, business model & resources that the Fortune 500 companies Owyang researched do. So how should these brands use Facebook? Here are some points I would like discuss with the social media marketing community and the Altimeter Group when answering this question:

  1. Is Facebook marketing right for everyone? The implication from Owyang’s presentation is that because Facebook is where most people are already at and where everyone’s going, all brands should be engaging their communities on this platform. But is this true for Business-to-Business (B2B) brands? If your customer is not a single consumer that can advocate for your brand, but rather another corporation or a non-profit or a school district or a municipality, is Facebook a platform that you can reasonably expect to grow your business or should it be approached as a tool to expose your corporate culture and role in your industry as a thought leader? At Extanz, our experience indicates that Facebook must be one of a number of platforms used to reach your community in the B2B sector and resources should be spread across blogging, bloggers relations?, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.
  2. If a business doesn’t have the resources to be designing custom applications to foster advocacy and interaction, are third-party applications a tool brands will find success with? Our use of third-party apps for our clients varies dramatically according to clients. These apps typically request access to your page information and the right to use the results of your participation. While for certain demographics this is not an issue, in other markets, community members may be completely unwilling to allow the access and participate via a third-party app. Sometimes they are staunch protectors of their privacy, other times they are web-savvy enough to understand the access these apps are gaining or they are web-challenged enough to be intimidated by the technology.
  3. If the sex appeal isn’t there for your brand, either because it’s not a well-known brand or it’s B2B or it’s not an industry people generally engage around or it’s a brand with a community that demands privacy, will the community engage? Our experience says yes, but it requires a strategy that is not discussed as part of the 8 Successful Criteria produced by Altimeter. So, I’d propose we add a criterion: Be a resource for your community and activate around the community interests, not just your brand. Provide them substantive and useful content e.g. industry news, tips for their lifestyle related to your service or product, cutting edge developments or trends, local news that is important to the community etc. Do not just provide updates about your brand and company news.

Social media and Facebook marketing are unquestionably an integral component to online marketing and branding for most industries. The key is ensuring you lay out a strategy that carefully balances your business objectives with the needs of your constituent community as they can be quite different before you dive in rather than simply industry standards as your strategy.

What are your thoughts on the above issues? Does Facebook work for B2B marketing? Should third-party apps be presented in a way that insinuates they would be useful and necessary to Facebook marketing strategy for all brands? How have you engaged communities that don’t automatically want to talk about your brand?

With thanks to Igi’s TV Network and Spencer E. Holtaway for the images.

Katie


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Uncategorized

FlipBoard: Just a tipping point or a real game changer?

22 07 2010

The writing is on the wall…We’re moving closer to Social what? and we took a huge step yesterday with the release of FlipBoard, as part of the iPad store. A few years ago, given new powers, we flocked to new media. Clay Shirky called it the “largest increase in expressive capability in human history“.

Content production has soared to levels never reached before and ever since, we’ve been trying to find ways to sift through and find relevant content. This week, the iPad which almost outsold Mac sales during the last quarter, was equipped with what Scoble calls the first iPad “killer app”. FlipBoard, as an online powerful mechanism to deliver us relevant information, promises to transform our social networks experience (imagine a onion). We could throw Google search, Bing, and Twitter search out of the window as technology progressively makes our extended networks smarter and less noisy (i hope they remove the unnecessary FourSquare updates for example)… You can view the 20mn video released for more details on how it works.

Last week I really liked a post by Mahendra Palsule describing the different ways we now have to find information. It used to be media + Google. It’s now a tad more complex. Read more here about different form of information filtering: Algorithmic, Human, Crowdsourced, Shared Sources (Meta), Influence, Social Search. Even if Google has made massive progress and now the average number of keywords is 3 in a google search, algorithms alone can’t keep up. Our online networks can be tremendously powerful if we can organize them. Case in point: Facebook sucks big time in delivering me relevant social media information. Twitter is full of noise; even lists can be. FriendFeed (RIP) was still the best thing we had before Facebook swallowed it whole. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could combine these networks and use a better scanning and selection system for our social graph for all this information? FlipBoard promises that (even Marshall Kirkpatrick says he doesn’t want to work anymore but just flip away, and Flipboard got so successful yesterday that they servers couldn’t keep up). In summary, it promises social information and filtering at a whole new level.

Business/enterprise consequences? If you’re not in your constituents’ stream, GET IN it or GET IGNORED. Your cost of marketing will only rise as less and less people pay attention (ask print media if they are feeling it). In a world of information overload, brands are being asked to become increasingly experiential and less transactional. It starts by serving the brand’s constituency with relevant information. So get out there and start shaking hands/making friends!

@YannR @Extanz

EAVB_BBAPCSVFSB


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Technology

Blue or Red pill? Brush strokes of a Resonance Marketing Framework.

14 07 2010

Remember the blue vs red pill conversation?

I’m here to talk about the red pill. The one that would bring uncertain truth. Truth is, the internet will continue to break down the walls of the information monopoly. Social influence of all sorts will speed up this disruption of old business models. A business will need its communit{ies} to survive, and that will require a more open partnership with them. There are still less of us who believe in “InBound Marketing” than in the overused “Social Media Marketing”, hence me crying ‘wolf’ a few weeks ago. Don’t we always wonder how something becomes viral and wish we had thought of it? I do. But let’s be honest, how many Apples are around and how can anyone pump enough koolaid into a community without being ignored or worse, forgotten. Should a brand be popular or influential? Beyond cool, it’s a question of innovation, and creating a sustainable culture of innovation requires all parts of the [organization + its constituents] to stay competitive.

That’s where Resonance Marketing comes in. Resonance marketing is about widening the lead generation funnel using new & social influence. Marketing is an ‘old branded’ term about influence we are subject to… except we are now more internet-smarter than before. Social media has empowered the masses to share more and faster than any time before. From Toyota to Nestle via Pizza Hut and to many other cases, the business blue-pill won’t work anymore. Businesses, leaders, brands are having to open up to being supported if they want to thrive in the new ‘social economy’.

How do we get communit{ies} to resonate with a company’s purpose (and vice versa)?

1- Deep motivations: Marketing as spoon feeding features and benefits that will attract customers, OVER. Comprehend, discuss what’s on the mind of your constituents and turn them into aficionados, HERE. Who are you after? If you believe in resonance, you’ll need aficionados. Clearly not everyone is equal in the community game. Your core constituents are the ones you’re seeking. Scoble called them the ‘passionate‘. At the Enthusiast Group, we called them … enthusiasts. They could be customers, employees, partners, journalists, bloggers, prospects, providers. They could be silent but preferably vocal. The tools are available for free but engaging with most networks and people to discover those who matter the most is the {red pill}. If a brand is sincere and seeks to empower its constituents, it’ll open itself up to what motivates the core constituents.

2- Nods to communities: Is social media the right strategy for you? Your Twitter account and Facebook page are great for light engagement but unless you’re the cool-brand in town and your constituents have too much time on their hand, you’ll likely get quickly fatigued and the boss will ask why are we doing this. The acid test of community commitment is to get ready to bring everyone to the party from the CEO to your competitors…. geez, that’s a lot. Our job is to bring everyone to the party. Trust me, it’ll take more than a Facebook page. Even better, in the open world, everyone in your company has an opinion about your last tweet. That’s right, it’s quickly going to feel like a democracy or even anarchy. Your constituents could care less about the internal politics. They want to feel part of the journey. When trying to evaluate how to participate, 50% of the work will actually happen outside of anything you control. In most scenarios, sub-segment of communities will already exist and engaging on those already existing can quickly fill up any social media manager’s plate. They can hang out on a Linkedin group, a passionate blog, in a group of super motivated moms or simply be someone who wants to boycott you {800,000 VS 6,900}. The possibilities are endless.

3- Social organisms: Yep there are many networks and we certainly can expect more to come as each of them serves different compartments of our lives. Foursquare founded in early ’09 has now passed 2 million signed up users… would we have guessed this 12 months ago? Brightkite had been here since 2007 and only reached the same milestone in February 2010. As Paul Adams puts it, “Social networks are a mean to an end, you need to understand what the end is.” To resonate, get used to change and go where your audience may be. As mentioned earlier, it often starts with a map. If you’re big, it’ll be tedious, but you certainly will be able to discern patterns quicker.

4- Resonance: The sum of all. It wasn’t about {the brand} to start with and {the brand} should be totally appreciative of being part of its constituents’ online matrix. We may have thought it was cool to have a ton of followers and likes/fans and fold back to the dunbar number. It’s the same for all your constituents. Let’s be clear, {the brand} is still seeking to generate leads from this entire new ecosystem, except that someone else is driving now. The way to ‘get the word out’ is through a new chain of events that will create resonance between and beyond constituents. It will be based on understanding the deep motivations of constituents, dynamics of communities (loose term) and lastly, social organisms and tools. Email gave us ‘permission marketing’, we seriously got tired of that. We now have social networks and blogs. Brands should make it about them, all the constituents, what ever the brand does – {the brand} entered their world and there is no return. Inbound will be red.

Thanks to Paul Adams for the graphics and for going back to the basics.

@YannR @Extanz


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : PR 2.0

Where is our industry going? #SocialMedia

13 07 2010

When Michael Fruchter left for Pierson Grant in mid 09′, I thought “wow…. great opportunity good for him.” When a bit later late 09′, Wayne Sutton joined Twine Interactive (and may have left since), I started to think that things where changing and thought I’d better write a blog about this. I didn’t. Now Valeria Maltoni is moving to Powered and I’m thinking “geez, we’re morphing.” But into what? Remember the golden goose who laid the golden eggs? Are they migrating? Or is our industry slowly dying as companies ‘buy up’ the golden geese for the golden eggs?

In 3 years, our own practice Extanz, has evolved tremendously based on a core principle of the Higher Purpose (Got A Higher Purpose?, Trust 2.0 … Get Used To It, Twitter did it again, it’s about the people). Our industry has come to value ROI way more than it used to. At the heart of it, a culture of control has taken over. Companies had never encountered such a powerful force from such a small part of their customer base. They were used to sending one message, making one thing. Build it and of course, the people will come. But then the people started talking amongst themselves. Started dreaming, writing, building things themselves. They unleashed their own creativity and collectivity. Suddenly, we have a conversation being demanded. The market expect conversational brands. Agencies, once the meaning makers, now seek conversational expertise. They sense the talkative ones and just like the old days, the seek to control them. If you can just get hold of the speaker……then everyone will listen right?

Or will they?

And in the meantime, what of their conversational partners. What of the nature of conversation? What of the higher purpose of social media? Are we just media now?

@YannR @Extanz


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Uncategorized

Sparkling feedback on #wbc10 blog influence rank- The sequel

13 07 2010

A few weeks ago, we did a study trying to understand and measure the influence of those going to the Wine Blogger Conference. Mindful as we are of conversation and fully cognizant of the fact that as soon as you include some people in a list, you by definition, exclude some, we not only set up criteria for measuring influence but also asked for feedback. In the course of this study (crunching, crunching) we had to make some decisions. If you are an online journal or aggregator for example, we decided that you were not playing in the same league/space as regular, independent (and sometimes solo) bloggers. Your influence is a sum of many factors and contributors, we look at a specific angle. 2 very interesting points were made in the comments regarding this distinction in the blogging community, and after mulling on it, we thought we’d like to continue the debate.

1 – Does influence have a threshold?

Bean from Wine-Beer Washington pointed out to us that he should have been included on this list, even though we had excluded him based on the number of writers on his blog (he looked like a journal). After feedback and looking at our threshold, we now feel that Bean should have been part of the list from the start (crunching, crunching). The wine-beer blog in our method of ranking for the #wbc10 would rank 21st out of the top 25 of our list. So here’s a question for everyone in the industry: Do you think there is a consolidation of bloggers toward journals or magazines? How viable is the independent blogger model? When does a blog become a journal? Thoughts?

2- The personal blog vs. the company/organizational blog.

Relatedly, something very interesting is happening in the use of personal branding to support a corporate or business strategy (c.f. Jeremiah Oywang and Forrester). When creating this study we used the official list of the registrants provided by WBC10. Rick Bakas’ blog appears under the St Supery blog. The blog didn’t make it to our list of Top 25 since he had registered his business blog and thanks to Rick’s feedback, we considered his own personal blog (even though not registered on the official list) as part of our list. Rick also advocated his own personal blog as being more influential than the list had suggested. After re-compiling our data (crunching, crunching), we are happy to report that Rick’s personal blog ranks actually 20th of the list originally created. So, another question for everyone: how do you manage your personal brand vs the business your represent?

These kinds of conversations really allow us to reflect on the state of a blogging community – how it grows, who grows it, its lifecycle if you will. Another point made in the comments on the original post was that many wine bloggers were not discussing the actual process of making wine and the industry’s evolution in this area (or not). So a final question for the community: Can anyone recommend any wine bloggers who focus on this part of the beloved grape’s journey?

We look forward to hearing from you!

@YannR @Extanz


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Uncategorized

A Baker’s Dozen of the Best Food Blogs

1 07 2010

The blogosphere has communities for just about every interest group: golf aficionados, animal lovers, wine enthusiasts….if you can name it, there’s at least a couple hundred related blogs about it.  Even understanding that there is an online place for everyone, there is one community so massive that it has garnered books, a movie and thousands of blogs.  Not only is this a large community, but it is a very active one with much updating, in-linking, collaboration and commenting.  What makes this group so large and dynamic?

Well, I have a theory.  Social media offers the opportunity for people to connect with others and to build online relationships.  Offline, people often gather, bond and connect over food (think about family Thanksgivings, work dinners and friends all pitching in for pizza).  It’s really no surprise that these two activities have found and fallen in love with each other in the food blogging community.  After all, food is a universal: everybody eats. As 17andbaking says, “it seems to me that one of the most important things about being alive is, well, food.”  Not only is food something that complete strangers can discuss with ease and understanding, cooking is a creative and productive outlet.  While good cooking requires a certain skill set, anyone can choose to engage in the activity itself with only basic understanding and minimal equipment (although, as any twenty-something newly on their own will tell you, you may not want to eat the end result!).

In the midst of innumerable blogs by great home chefs and bakers, why does one blog get hundreds of comments per post, and another go unacknowledged for what are (probably) delicious recipes?  To answer this question, I took a tour through the top twelve food blogs (based on number of in-links) and came up with a list of five criteria that these blogs all have in common. Note: I skipped over some sites that are more accurately labeled as magazines rather than blogs.

1.     Good food. This one should be a given.  Inspired, delicious food with recipes that people want to replicate in their own kitchen.

2.     Clear and abundant pictures. The photography of food blogging is stunning.  Many times the images have a Pavlovian effect upon the audience, demanding an attempt of the recipe be planned even before the entry has been read.

3.     Well-written. Although blogs are essentially online diaries, there is no place at the top for a blog author who cannot write.

4.     Life/food intersection. These top blogs not only provides a recipe, but context.  Often, it is discussed why a certain recipe (old family favorite or an attempted replication of a restaurant dish recently eaten) or a particular ingredient (strange cravings or seasonal choices) are chosen.  The way life leads us to food and food connects to the rest of our life is examined and celebrated.

5.     Personality. Each of these bloggers reveals distinct traits and offers sneak peeks into their lives, sharing heartwarming stories or wry and funny anecdotes.  These blogs come alive with the characteristics of the writer/cook and woo the audience into friendship.

From these five ingredients rises incredible food blogs with devoted followings. Don’t believe it can be that simple?  Check out our top 12 food bloggers and see for yourself!

1.     101 Cookbooks

2.     Smitten Kitchen (This site is one of my favorites.  I made her Chocolate Mousse for our Ladies’ Night dessert this week and it was sumptious!)

3.     Chocolate & Zucchini

4.     David Lebovitz

5.     Orangette

6.     Simply Recipes

7.     delicious:days

8.     Kalyns Kitchen

9.      Becks & Posh (although this site hasn’t been updated in quite awhile, the number of references still pointing back to it speaks volumes and keeps it in the top twelve)

10.  The Amateur Gourmet

11. Cream Puffs in Venice

12.  The Pioneer Woman (there is a relatively simple chocolate cake recipe from The Pioneer Woman that puts all other chocolate cakes to shame. Do you have a birthday, holiday or weekday coming up?  Make this cake.  You will be glad you did.)

And because more is better when it comes to delectable food blogs, I’ll throw in my personal favorite, Joy the Baker, to make our list an even baker’s dozen.  All thirteen of these blogs illustrate the five characteristics mentioned above (and some more). Who else would you add to this list/recommend?

Are there any other traits that you believe are necessary for a certain food blog to rise above the rest?

Thanks to JSmith, Anonymous and Mr T in DC for use of their images!

~Laura


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Blog, Food

Under the Influence?? The 25 Most Influential Wine Bloggers going to Walla Walla #WBC10

23 06 2010

Around Extanz, we follow the wine blogging community with enthusiasm; both as amateur connoisseurs and with an interest in how wineries themselves are utilizing blogging and social media to build their brands. These blogs are alight with chatter about the upcoming Wine Bloggers Conference in Walla Walla, Washington this weekend and we expect wineries to be paying attention to the blogging advice and social media guidance that comes out of this weekend’s many sessions and panels. Are you going to the Wine Bloggers Conference? Think you know who the most influential bloggers in attendance are? Our results may surprise you.

In Walla Walla, experts will be discussing how to increase the quality, visibility and influence of your wine blog, whether you’re someone with strong opinions on wine quality or you’re a winery looking to increase your brand awareness and customer base. There are a couple of basics for wineries to keep in mind that we imagine (or hope) you’ll hear over and over this weekend that will make your blog worth reading, a blog that people return to week after week, and a blog that other influencers take note of.

  1. Write for your audience. This may seem simple, but have you really looked at who your target audience is and considered what they would find useful, informative & entertaining?
  2. Focus outward. Simply writing about you or your business or your product does not good content make.
  3. Network and link it up. Get your blog out there, in front of the influencers and people to whom it would be interesting. This is where the use of social media can come in very handy.

So how do the conference experts that will be giving you insider knowledge to accomplish the above must-dos rank in the social media sphere? Let’s find out …

At Extanz we study influence, so we studied how the bloggers present in Walla Walla this year rank among each other in terms of influence (measured by in-links). We removed blogs that qualified as online magazines with multiple writers (Palate Press, Wine Business, Washington State Beer and Wine, and Mutineer Magazine) from the list so as to only rank independent bloggers. We also looked at their presence on Facebook and Twitter – not to gauge influence, but to get an idea of what social media tools influencers are finding useful. As we saw in the cycling community, Twitter is the social network of choice for wine bloggers as well.

Are the big names at the conference the top influencers of the wine blog community? Here are the Top 25 bloggers (of the 180 in attendance):

Blog Facebook ‘Likes’ (fans)/Friends Twitter Followers Twitter Following
1 1WineDude 1055 friends 4,139 2,893
2 Good Grape: A Wine Blog Manifesto 521 friends 2,697 2,943
3 Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine 125 members 1,533 1,386
4 Drink Nectar 2450 fans 2,673 2,665
5 Dirty South Wine 344 fans 3,841 3,455
6 Luscious Lushes 248 fans 3,200 3,405
7 Another Wine Blog 441 fans 1,615 1,538
8 Steve Heimoff | Wine Blog 1040 fans 663 160
9 Wine Peeps: A Wine Blog 2129 fans 1,989 1,698
10 Suburban Wino 323 fans 1,387 1,356
11 Cellarmistress’ Cellar Talk ? 1,929 1,598
12 Wine Tonite! 369 fans 2,667 2,298
13 Washington Wine Report 344 fans 1,373 1,219
14 Wine Biz Radio 1203 fans 6,088 2,051
15 BrixChicks ? 968 847
16 Vinotology Wine Blog 334 friends 1,711 1,543
17 PaulG’s Blog – Unfined & Unfiltered ? 468 282
18 RJ’s Wine Blog 351 friends 2,412 1,695
19 The Passionate Foodie 1071 friends 2,108 2,180
20 The Wine Whore 3409 friends 12,051 13,086
21 Notes From The Cellar 250 fans 806 245
22 Beyond the Bottle l Oregon Washington Wine Blog ? 535 376
23 Bricks of Wine 513 friends 1,792 936
24 The Wine Case ? 2,054 1,549
25 Seattle Wine Gal 4966 friends 7,302 6,622

Here are some questions for you:

  • What do you think of the results?
  • Which wine blogger(s) would you like to have been present at Walla Walla?
  • Regardless of ranking, who are you most looking forward to meeting or learning from this weekend?

With thanks to Chris g Collison, yashima, and Rob Winton for the images.

Salud!

SEE the follow up blog: http://extanz.com/2010/07/13/sparkling-feedback-on-wbc10-blog-influence-rank-the-sequel

Katie


Like This!


Comments : 25 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Blog

Slow food bloggers, Where art thou?

28 05 2010

Here at Extanz, we’ve cataloged thousands of food blogs and even contributed to a few ourselves. This particular sector of the blogging world is quite trendy – focusing on the hottest ingredients, techniques, restaurants etc. However, food bloggers seem to passing over an important trend (one even the First Lady is on board with) – that of eating locally & sustainably.

I’m a skier, but I’m also a foodie and an environmentalist. I cooked in high-end restaurants for years and love to experiment in my kitchen, my degree is in environmental policy, I eat organic/natural/free-range/grass-fed as much as I can (aka pay more than I can really afford). I also try to eat local – this proves slightly challenging in the winter given my location in Colorado and distaste for most root vegetables … but I do try. I’m much better at reading food blogs!

With all those food blogs out there and the growing popularity of the slow food (a movement with origins in Italy that emphasizes the importance of ‘good, clean and fair food’), local food and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) movements, you’d think there’d be quite a bit of related chatter on food blogs, right? Eating sustainably and healthy is a hot topic – Michelle Obama’s on to it, there’s books on it, been to a Whole Foods lately? It also produces far superior ingredients that should cause all us foodies to rejoice. I delved into the blogosphere to see which of these movements (if any) are trendy with the foodie bloggers. Here’s a snapshot of what I found (not quite the cornucopia I was looking for, btw):

  1. Of the thousands of blogs by influential food bloggers over the last 6 months, only 120 blogposts focus on slow food, local food or CSAs. Huh. I guess the mainstream food bloggers are still focusing on perfecting that bouillabaisse or the next big thing after cupcakes, rather than sourcing food locally and using the unique and fresh ingredients you get by doing so.
  2. While we hear about the slow food movement far more often than CSAs or local food across other mediums, the influencers in the blogosphere who are focusing on these 3 topics seem to be focusing more on the fundamentals of eating sustainably, namely CSAs and local food. A general Google search of the terms “slow food” and “Community Supported Agriculture” returns roughly the same number of results (~2.1 million). Of the entire food blogging community we’ve catalogued and are monitoring, the top 100 influencers have written about slow food 20 times in the last 6 months compared to 48 entries on CSAs and 52 conversations about local food.

So … who is talking about eating sustainably? Here are the top 3 blogs to follow for all things local, CSA-related, and slow food:

  1. Serious Eats: I ended up on this site last week while looking for a classic slice in NYC … little did I know it was the mecca for local food blogs. The three blogs below rank highest for our search terms, but peruse the entire site to satisfy your craving for slow food news.
    1. Carson Poole’s series on Meet Your Farmer and Meet Your Forager epitomizes influential bloggers focusing on local producers who feed the slow food movement.
    2. Caroline Cope of Umami Girl joins Serious Eats once a week for her Crisper Whisperer blog where she offers ideas for preparing your abundance of fruits and vegetables from your CSA or farmer’s market.
    3. Street Food Profiles travels around the country (and sometimes crosses borders) to feature local street food vendors where you can watch your food being made.
  2. SlashFood’s writers could independently support a CSA with the amount of CSA-sourced produce they’re cooking with.
  3. The Leftover Queen chronicles her efforts to use up her leftovers and healthy eating while focusing on sustainability, traditional foods, and seasonal eating.

Any ideas on why food bloggers are neglecting the sustainable eating movement when it provides them with some of the best food out there? I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, check out your farmer’s market this weekend to join the movement!

Katie

P.S. While writing this, a snapping turtle emerged from the woods for the first time this Spring which provided an appropriate photo for a slow food conversation … the slow part, not the food part.

Like This!

Add to Google Buzz


Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Food, Uncategorized

Influence & Industry, the many axes about building a community

13 05 2010

Writing this blog on influence and taking the cycling industry as an example has been great. I was really impressed with the level of feedback from everyone which you can read on the blog or on LinkedIn. I feel that putting some clarity on the discussion which followed was important. It’s certainly applicable to other industries.

Here are a few things I’ve learned:

- Defining Influence: I was asked how I had defined influence in the context of this ranking. Influence in this day and age is crowd based (the crowd is a complex system of agents). I think no brand or agent should assume where influence is coming from or can be exercised from, except that each of us has a ‘home base’ — the blog — and using it as a base for influence is pretty fair. Bloggers who commented on this blog mostly see their influence directly tied with their readership and less a function of their relationship with other bloggers. We think that reference from other influencers is a very good benchmark. For many bloggers, blogging is an extension of their passion, more than a ‘business’ like a media outlet. Clearly most comments tended to agree that influence and topic specialty are very important. For most marketers, influence is solely what moves products into consumers hands. There is clearly a disconnect between both worlds which could be solved by the smarter brands. It’s a bit like both haven’t met each other yet… kinda.

- Communities: Like influence, ‘community’ is an overused word that means many things to many people. The cycling blogsphere is highly networked and therefore constitutes a community. Bloggers know, refer to and influence each other. Communities come in many shapes, and form wherever you can find come CUTE (Common Unit of Transferable Experience).

- The path of influence is not a straight line like marketers would like to believe. Web 2.0 has enabled the shift from Mass to Micro-influence to the disarray of the PR industry. Each of us and especially ‘creators’ of content, generate thought leadership according to our specialties. Traditional media used to be the middle man between marketers and consumers, but as we know, the internet tends to eliminate middlemen. The pipes used to be clear and choices were made for readers. It’s no longer this way and engaging the many layers of the community (consumers, industry groups, interests, influencers…) is the only way to gain mind share. Readers and consumers are now in the driving seat. Classic advertising is often too hard to measure

- Passion drives: Most bloggers are doing this for pure passion and are aware of their influence from a reader’s perspective. They are very aware of a dedicated readership and clearly most of them understand traffic and how much they move.

- Industry take: The discussions on LinkedIn were very interesting as well but here ‘influence’ was mostly understood as ‘how can it move product off the shelves’ vs. some thought leadership or experiential influence. Other thoughts were that some brands are actually pretty good at inbound marketing and community engagement. This was not taken into account in this study but very true and some clearly understand the power of ‘customer suction’ (Gregg Bagni) or what we refer as ‘Inbound Marketing’ when trying to explain brand’s social media strategy.

- Professionalism: No doubt all of them are professionals (even if some wouldn’t want that qualifier) at what they do but in general, their ‘own brand’ is unclear as they probably haven’t intended to be where they are today. Blogging is a way of life. On the Branding side, only ~35% are actually using their own URL (http://brand.com) and not a subdomain (http://brand.blogspot.com) which to me is branding 101. Increasing influence may start with thinking more like a brand less like an individual. Funny also that Blogger is definitely the platform of choice vs. WordPress. A few are clearly are seeing themselves as a new media outlet are doing it well and using a wide range of tools to become ‘micro-journals’.

- The changing media landscape: Some have jumped on Facebook but most haven’t. I agree that blogs are still more powerful than social platforms when it comes to moving traffic. For most cycling bloggers, it is both philosophical choice and mostly if they have the time to maintain another place for discussions. Some also are still confused about the difference between a ‘Personal page’ vs. a ‘Brand page’ (‘Like’) on Facebook, which makes sense since their personal brand is very close to the blog brand. Twitter on the other hand, is perfectly understood and used by most — it’s an extension of their blog.

All in all, I believe there is a great opportunity for more collaboration between the cycling industry and bloggers, as all pursue the same enjoyment for this industry. This is also an interesting blueprint for other communities we study.

What’s your take on influence? From Mass to Micro influence, where do you think we’re headed?

@YannR


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Influence, PR

« Previous Entries