Ampers & Dot

The way I see it, Web 2.0 is more about buzzwords than it is about technology.  The trend of buzzword soup is something I’ve ranted about before and I mean hell, “Web 2.0″ itself is the current reigning champion of buzzwords, so of course people will become sucked into being more interested in the words than the definitions.

So following my post from a few weeks ago about “Interactive Marketing” and how it isn’t necessarily “interactive” by definition, I was excited to read Kimberly Bock’s article on “What is Social Media?” from an SEO blog.  The most interesting thing I notice on this page is that there are in fact many, many definitions for “Social Media” and loads of them are exceptionally vague.

Impressively, Kimberly notes what an important concept that I think is often overlooked: buzzwords are a product of marketing.  (And I’ll link to her link for more great reading on Buzzwords and Marketers.)  Basically, what it comes down to is that buzzwords sell.

What many seem to have forgotten is that social technologies are a salient root for the internet (1.0 and 2.0).  My earliest experiences online were through bulletin boards, instant messaging, and IRC chat.  All of these are fundamentally social experiences.  I mean, it’s difficult to have an online chat with one person and I can’t imagine a bulletin board being too interesting with only a single member… But it’s worthwhile to point out that all of this was over 15 years ago.

In my early days online I developed (crappy) Hypercard games and traded them with other people online for (better) games.  Whoa, that’s so web 2.0!  Note: this was 1992.

So back to the point of buzzwords as sales tools: you take something that has already been successful, shine it up and repackage it with some fancy buzzword branding, and all of a sudden it’s worth millions of dollars (at least to the VC market).  By marketing something with vague buzzwords, consumers become more interested.  It’s like infomercial marketing (one of my favorite things, btw): you might not have ever heard of this thing before, but after seeing this infomercial there is NO WAY you can live without it!  (Side note: this is how I’ve ended up ordering the magic bullet, a set of miracle blades, and I’m still waiting to order my own Mighty Putty…)

Basically, I think there are some truly awesome technologies and websites coming out of the “web 2.0″ world that are valuable and worthwhile, I just think it’s really hard to find the ones that add value in the depths of buzzword soup.  So the next time you see a startup in this space, cut through the marketing and figure out what’s beneath the vague terminology.

What buzzwords bother you? I could go on for hours (or more likely, a few more posts), but am more interested in your annoyances.

After far too much build up through vague foreshadowing Tweets, I am pleased to announce that I have joined Forrester Research.  As of this week I am now a Researcher serving Interactive Marketing professionals, working to understand the present and future of the interactive marketing and social computing worlds.

To me this move is incredibly exciting because over the last year as a Social Media Consultant, not a day of work went by without a reference to Forrester.  In almost every client meeting I would bring up either Forrester’s leading edge research, the exemplary blogging of Senior Analyst Jeremiah Owyang (from whom I first learned of this position), or the industry leading book Groundswell, by Principal Analyst Josh Bernoff (and former Analyst Charlene Li).  Basically for Social Computing there truly isn’t a better place in the world to be.

Another inspiration in my move is Forrester’s new Community Manager, John Cass (read about John’s background and reasons for joining Forrester).  It’s impressive to me that Forrester brought in such an expert to oversee the corporate social media strategy as this shows a true understanding of how to properly engage in and harness social media for a large, publicly traded company.  (And I look forward to actually sitting down with him when he returns from vacation…)

Lastly, and most awesomely, I’m now in a position that instead of eagerly awaiting the next Forrester report to guide my work, I get to help create the path for others.  In my mind this is very, very cool.  In a technology influence market that is rapidly evolving, nothing appeals to me more than understanding the next steps.

In my first week so far I have met some of the nicest and smartest people, so I’m even more enthusiastic about my move than I thought possible.  AND, exciting for you, I’ve been informed of other Forrester openings, so if interested send me an email or DM me on Twitter.

Thanks to all for the kind support (even @DmitriGunn who (unsuccessfully) argued that I had “sold out”); it has been a fun and reassuring week talking to others offline that respect Forrester as much as I do.

Now it’s time to update all my online profiles- a task that requires far more time and effort than I have time and effort for…

It’s been a busy week of Boston area networking events: on Tuesday night Mashable, the social media focused uberblog, hosted its summer tour stop at the Roxy for around 400 local marketers, techies, social medialites, PR people, and more, and on Wednesday night BIMA (the Boston Interactive Media Association) held its annual Harbor Cruise, attended by just under 500 local marketers and ad vendors.

By all accounts, both events were a great time filled with very bright people, good conversation, more-than-ample “refreshments”, and an overall awesome networking experience.  What I found most surprising was the different crowds at each event.

Somehow, I assumed that there would be a large overlap in attendance.  Mashable readers are by and large, interested in social media.  Interactive marketers are interested, I hope, in marketing.  Interactive marketing and social media go hand in hand.  Right?  Well apparently “interactive marketing” is a broader term than I initially expected which made the Interactive Media cruise somewhat strange.

For starters, I was pretty surprised to not run into a single person on the BIMA cruise from the Mashable event, but further, not run into a single person that I know from the social media scene of Boston.  I mean sure, it was a big boat with almost 500 people, but I at least expected a few familiar faces.

So, while on the boat I did what any good social media junky would do at a networking event: I searched Twitter.  As it turns out, I was only person tweeting from the boat.

Even the next day, I scanned Twitter to follow up.  Just me.  And @SteveBags, who brought me to the event in the first place and watched me Tweet all night… so that doesn’t really count.  The Mashable event by comparison, had dozens of tweets an hour, including conversations from attendees and new connections that happened in real time.  That sounds pretty interactive to me.  To fully illustrate this point, check out a Twitter search comparison: BIMA, Summermash Boston (and yes, BIMA is a much easier term to hit, “summermash boston” is one of hundreds of terms I could have used…).

Not surprisingly, the discussion topics at each event supported my confusion.  The interactive media cruise played host to thousands of conversations about PPC advertising, Search Engine Marketing, and CPMs for banner ads.  Are any of those things really “Interactive”?  I argue no, but had a literal boatload of people arguing against me.  Apparently all “Interactive” means is “internet”.  This is wrong.

In my mind “interactive marketing” requires some sort of “interactivity” to deserve that name.  “Internet marketing” is one thing, but to me “interactive” is social media.

To follow up on this, yesterday I looked online to see what follow up coverage each event received.  Mashable’s party: hundreds of blog posts, flickr galleries (see embarrassing pictures here) , Facebook pages and discussions, tweets, FriendFeed discussions, YouTube videos, etc.  BIMA’s cruise: NOTHING.  Come on, Boston Interactive Media Association, where is the interactive media!?

So here’s my signoff for the day: for the boatload of interactive marketers talking about to promote brands online, you wouldn’t think that the #1 search result for “bima + cruise” would get this result…

What do you think?  Is it just a vague umbrella term, or do marketers need to reevaluate how they are going to reach customers in the quickly evolving web? (Whoa, that was a much, much deeper question than this post deserved… but oh well.)

During this week’s Internet Marketing Meetup, which I’ve plugged twice already and am starting to get embarrassed about, we had a great debate about the value of corporate blogging in relation to the time, effort, and overall risks involved (my overall argument is that the risks are just excuses for companies who aren’t ready to commit yet…).  Basically the question was about return on investment.

Although I think it’s pretty safe to say that anyone showing up to a “Best Practices for Corporate Blogging” talk was already pretty convinced of blogging’s inherent values for businesses, there are still many, many questions about the overall ROI in light of the investment to corporate blogging.

About halfway through the discussion @SteveBags, a new media marketer in Boston, asked a question about the ROI for businesses engaging through Twitter.  My initial response (which was I’ll soon argue was wrong) was that Corporate Twitter has a similar investment of time and effort to do correctly and has similar risks associated.

After thinking about this a lot, I really don’t think I was right.  Actually, I think Twitter can be done successfully, with less of a time commitment, slightly less effort, and ultimate it’s a relatively risk free campaign.  Engaging with consumers through Twitter has been incredibly successful for companies like the online shoe store Zappos (@zappos and also has an entire microsite dedicated to Twitter), and actually quite well done for not-always-popular Comcast (@comcastcares).  Jump here to read more about the success of Comcast through Twitter… it’s surprisingly impressive.

To find more companies on Twitter, check out this directory.

And what about companies that have really messed up with Twitter?  … Well, I guess there’s always DirectTV’s example, but ultimately, what’s the worst that can happen on Twitter?  You don’t like a company’s account- so you just don’t follow them.  You never see a tweet again.  Done.  Easy.  Many companies have failed at new media attempts and in turn received more negative publicity than imaginable.

Running a huge online campaign that fails can be costly on the reputation and the budget, but Twitter takes fewer resources and can have outstanding results.  Quick, but very, very important interjection: Half assing any social media campaign is going to fail.  Successfully engaging on Twitter takes time and effort- and I am by no means condoning a half attempted twitter account.  And most importantly, ANY social media actions without strategy are doomed to fail.  Strategy first, actions second.

But the way I see it, Twitter is more about communication than any other new media form right now.  It picks up the conversation where blogging leaves off.  It allows for the true two way chat that companies are looking for.  So why not try it?

If justifying the ROI is what matters at the end of the day- then why not start thinking about a corporate Twitter strategy?  I think in the end you’ll see much more R with far less I.