MackCollier.com

by

The three blogs we’ll review at #Blogchat tonight are…

Thanks to everyone that submitted their blog to be reviewed tonight at #Blogchat.  Here’s the three blogs we’ll be reviewing, and please do check these three blogs out if you will be joining #Blogchat tonight, and please pay close attention to the feedback each blogger has given us:

1 – Christine Margiota-Geraci’s blog.  Here’s Christine’s feedback for us:  “This blog started out as merely a professional presence for me online, but it seems to be morphing into my thoughts on social media as it pertains to my work. I’d love feedback on the content itself, as well as some of the features I’ve included as a result of recently changing WordPress themes: the Links I’m learning from section and the Featured Posts section in particular. I’m very new to the blogging world but I’m learning so much from participating in #blogchat when I can. Thanks so much for the consideration!”

So please check out Christine’s blog with an eye toward her feedback above.  We’ll be reviewing Christine’s blog from 8:00pm-8:20pm Central tonight.

 

2 – Allen LaRose’s blog.  Here is Allen’s feedback for us: “I would very much appreciate any feed back on my new blog http://www.allenlarose.com. It started as simply an online place for me to express myself. I have quickly discovered blogging is addictive. I have been using social media to help drive traffic to my blog, but would any advice to help boost traffic further.”

Please review Allen’s blog before #Blogchat tonight, we’ll be reviewing it from 8:20pm-8:40pm Central time.

3 – Sporting the Small Stuff.  Here is Michele’s feedback for us: “I recently started a sports and adventure blog at http://SportingTheSmallStuff.com and I would greatly appreciate suggestions on how I can better engage the audience (I would love to interact with fitness/adventure-minded individuals). I would also appreciate suggestions for writing more effective titles (both from an engagement standpoint and an SEO standpoint).

Thank you for this opportunity!”

Please review Michele’s blog based on her feedback or any other ideas you have for how she can improve her blog.  We’ll be reviewing Michele’s blog from 8:40pm-9:00pm Central.

 

So there’s our 3 blogs we’ll be reviewing!  Thanks again to everyone that submitted their blog for review, and if your’s wasn’t picked, remember that we’ll do this again next month!

by

I have met the enemy, and he is us

This post originally appeared on BMA on February 13, 2006.  Funny how 5 years later, we are still arguing the same themes of this post.  You can read all the BMA posts here.

When I left this post last month, I did so because I thought the whole ‘A-Lister’ dust up was a temporary by-product of boredom, and that we’d all rant/laugh/ramble about the subject for a few days, realize it’s all very silly, and get back to talking about much more important things.

Alas, I was dead wrong. Instead, the ‘debate’ over the blogosphere’s version of a class system has only intensified. Now it seems some have determined that the key to blogging nirvana, which of course is 3,000 links and 10,000 visitors a day, is being held by the gatekeepers known as the ‘A-Listers’. All blogging goodness is in the hands of a select few bloggers on the mountaintop. Right idea, wrong gatekeepers. The gatekeepers aren’t A-Listers like Doc Searls and Steve Hall, they are the anonymous IPs that read your blog. They are the people that come, look around, and either decide that your blog sucks, or that it kicks ass, and then they tell ten friends.

Last week everyone was excited about Dave Sifry’s update on the state of the blogosphere. We all got excited when we heard that there is a new blog created every second of every day. But think about that for a minute….if there are that many new blogs each and every day, how many new blog READERS are there? New readers that not only have no idea who the so-called ‘A-Listers’ are, they could give a damned less. Every day. If you’re a Z-Lister, they have no idea, and again, could care less. They just care about what they read on your blog that they just found for the first time. What they read that first time could decide if there will ever be a second time. See our job isn’t to impress Steve Hall and Doc Searls the A-Listers, our job is to impress Steve Hall and Doc Searls the BLOG READERS. When we start worrying about getting the attention of a few bloggers that we perceive as being important, we risk losing the attention of our blog readers. And if we’ve lost that, we have nothing.

BMA will have been live for 5 months on the 16th. We currently have 58 links, and to the people that subscribe to the ‘A-Lister’ view of the blog world, that means we aren’t very important. On the other hand, traffic levels have never been higher than right now, we averaged 806 visitors a day last week, and at the rate traffic is increasing, we’re on pace to touch 25,000 visitors for the month. Good thing we aren’t paying attention to the people that think that a blog’s worth is defined by its number of links, but instead to the visitors that come here every day, and hopefully enjoy what they see. Because that’s the key. We have to stop this worrying about who is linking to me, and who won’t. The time we spend bitching about how ‘unfair’ it is that the haves are supposedly holding back the have-nots, is time lost that we COULD have spent producing great content on our blogs, and contributing to the community.

Stop worrying about why Scoble never reads your blog, and worry about giving the gal that’s reading your blog RIGHT NOW a reason to come back. Because your readers are the REAL A-listers. Treat them as such, or they’ll happily leave your ass to bitch about why no one comments on your blog, and your pet theory that it’s somehow gotta be Guy Kawasaki’s fault.

by

#Blogchat LIVE video plus info on my Social Media and Blog Strategy Audits

One of the ‘problems’ I am running into when I talk to event organizers and potential sponsors about doing a LIVE #Blogchat is that it’s sometimes difficult for them to understand what a LIVE version of a Twitter chat would look like.  I try telling them that a buncha smart people get in a room and talk to each other, but somehow that still doesn’t get the point across very well 😉  Thankfully, Chris and his team from Huddle Productions created a short video with footage from the LIVE #Blogchat that Dell sponsored last week prior to the start of its #DellCAP event.  This should give you a better idea of what a LIVE #Blogchat is like (Hint: Smartitude galore!):

If you are interested in learning more information about adding a live #Blogchat to your existing event, or in sponsoring one, click here.

The second area I wanted to point your attention to is an update I am making to my consulting services.  For a couple of years now, I have been offering Social Media Strategy Audits to clients.  This service has proven to be very popular so I’ve decided to begin offering Blog Strategy Audits to clients as well.  For many companies, a blog is the only social media tool they are using, so for these companies, a Blog Strategy Audit makes more sense.  Both of these audits will analyze what the company’s competition is doing, as well as assess how the client is currently using blogging/social media, and give them a blueprint and recommendations on what they should do moving forward.  And perhaps most importantly, both audits will include a section on how to measure the results of your strategy.  So I’m not only going to tell you exactly what your strategy should look like, but I’m also going to show you exactly how to measure your efforts.  This is a key area that’s often missing from most blogging/social media strategies.

Both the Social Media Strategy Audit and the Blog Strategy Audit are two-month projects.  For each, you’ll make three payments: You will be billed for the first payment when you agree to purchase the audit, and I must have this payment before I can begin work on your audit.  At the end of the first month, you will be billed for the second payment, and I must have this payment before I can deliver the finished audit.  At the end of the second month, the finished audit will be delivered, along with a bill for the third and final payment.

The price and billing schedule for each audit is:

Social Media Strategy Audit – Price is $7,500.00.  You will be billed in three equal payments of $2,500.00.

Blog Strategy Audit – Price is $5,000.00.  You will be billed in three payments of $1,600.00, $1,700.00 and $1,700.00.

Now, the big change I am making to these services is that as of now, I am adding a guarantee to both of these audits.  Note that above it states that you will be billed for three payments, and that for each audit, you will receive the finished audit, along with a bill for the final payment.  When you receive the finished audit and if you are not satisfied with the audit, then you do not have to make the third and final payment.  I *only* want you to make that third and final payment if you are thrilled with the audit.

I often ask my close friends to give me advice on my work, and to be honest, when I told them that I was thinking of adding this guarantee to these audits, most of them did not think it was a good idea.  As they correctly pointed out, if the client is under no obligation to make the final payment, then why would they?  But I am ok with that.  Because I want companies to understand that I am willing to take that risk because I believe in the quality of the work I will produce for them.

So if your company is interested in either service, please click here for more information on the Social Media Strategy Audit, and click here for more information on the Blog Strategy Audit.  And if you have any additional questions about either audit, or about Live #Blogchat, please do email me.

PS: If you want your blog to be considered for one of the three review slots for this Sunday’s #Blogchat, please leave a comment on this post!

by

Get your blog reviewed during #Blogchat – July

It’s that time again!  Once a month we review the blogs from 3 participants during #Blogchat, and we’ll be doing it again this Sunday!  The idea is that you get a ‘fresh set of eyes’ to look at your blog and give you some ideas and pointers on what you’re doing.

So if you’ve just launched your blog, and maybe you want some feedback on the visual look of it, we could help you!  Or if you want some advice on the type of content you are creating, etc, let us know!  If you want your blog to be considered for one of the THREE review slots at the next #Blogchat then leave a comment to this post giving us the URL of your blog, and exactly what you are concerned with and the areas you want feedback on.  If you want to know what everyone thinks of the information on your sidebars, let us know that.  If you want to know what you should be writing about, tell us who you are trying to connect with.  If you want feedback on your post titles, let us know.

Again, if you want to have your blog be eligible for being reviewed, please LEAVE A COMMENT to this post and please give us as much information as possible about what we should be looking at on your blog.  Please don’t just say ‘I would like to have my blog reviewed, thanks!”  Give us 2-3 things we should be giving you advice on, and please tell us WHO you are writing your blog for, and what its focus is.

That’s it!  I’ll select the 3 blogs that will be reviewed and have that post up by Saturday.  Good luck!

by

Women of Rock: Free Music is Very Costly to Some

This post originally appeared on BMA on December 20, 2005. If you would like to read all the BMA posts, click here.

“There are amazing women musicians out there. But the industry signs acts based on marketing. It’s definitely a loop. There aren’t women out there doing well, because they haven’t been signed, so (the record) industry doesn’t sign any more, figuring they won’t do well.” – Jason Mraz

The explosion of music downloads in the late 1990s cut deeply into the cash coffers of record labels. As a result, record executives decided to cut back on promoting ‘unproven’ artists, and went from focusing on talented female artists, to looking for a marketing vehicle. Out with Lilith Fair, in with Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica. So as Gen Y helps prompt a change in the country’s musical tastes, this poses a very tough question for female artists whose last name isn’t Spears or Simpson: Do they try to reinvent themselves like Jewel did, or forge forward relying on their talent to win them fans?

And this isn’t a problem reserved for undiscovered artists. Some of Jewel’s contemporaries such as Sheryl Crow and Alanis have seen their album sales slide since their Lilith days. Many of today’s labels see a woman onstage with a guitar in her hands as a ‘marketing risk’. But musicians don’t have to reinvent themselves every few years simply because tastes temporarily change.

A perfect example is Sarah McLachlan. Her music is basically the same today as it was in 1989 when she released her first album, Touch. Touch sold over 500,000 copies, while Afterglow, which is her fifth and latest album of new material, currently has over 2 million in sales.

The best way for Jewel and other female rockers in her position to re-establish a strong bond with their fans could be, you guessed it, the internet. There are so many ways to reach out directly to fans. Artists can tap fan sites, mailing lists, MySpace, anything. Blogs are another obvious way for artists to reach their fans. Such viral efforts are already being used to launch the careers of female artists such as Missy Higgins, they could easily work for established stars. These moves are authetic, and fans will respond to any musician that reaches out to them in such a personal way.

While the current music climate has put a temporary crunch on some female artists, the ultimate loser here could be the record labels themselves. As the record companies make it harder and harder for emerging and existing female artists to make a name for themselves, these musicians are looking for other outlets to promote themselves. And the risk that labels run is, once these acts find a way to circumvent the current system, will they ever return?

“The major label system is broken, but I’m not crying. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.” said Carla DiSantis, editor of the magazine ROCKRGRL.

by

#DellCap 2011 Review: The Future is Now

Michael Dell speaks with #DellCAP attendees as Michelle Brigman and Sarah Kimmel look on

This week I got to spend some time in Round Rock, Texas, working with Dell on its #DellCAP reunion project.  This is an extension of the first #DellCAP that was held last June, that I was also lucky enough to help Dell with.  As with last year’s event, Dell brought in 15 customers (including 13 from last year’s #DellCAP event) to spend the day getting feedback from them, and letting them know how the company had acted on the feedback it received from them last June.

The event itself, especially the people involved (customers as well as Dell employees), was amazing.  And I knew I wanted to do a recap post on my experience as soon as I got home and got my bearings.  But I’m torn on how to do this, because I want all of you to appreciate just how inspired I have been not only by Dell, but by their customers as well.

So I wanted to start by telling you two stories.  The first happened during last year’s #DellCAP event, which was structured a bit differently than this one.  Last June, Dell invited a total of 30 customers to #DellCAP, and split them into 2 groups of 15 customers each.  But the catch was that the 1st group of 15 customers were all selected because they had issues and complaints about Dell’s products and services.  The 2nd group was selected because they were considered to be fans and advocates of Dell.  So Dell wanted to hear from both its fans and ‘detractors’.

Which I thought was incredibly brave, but one instance drove that point home for me.  Last year, I was hired by Dell to moderate both days of the #DellCAP event.  On the 1st day we were going to spend the day with Dell’s ‘detractors’.  As you might imagine, the idea of inviting a group of ‘upset’ customers to your world headquarters can be a bit un-nerving.  Right before the 1st day’s events were to start, I was going over my notes and the agenda for the day when one of the Dell employees that was facilitating the event hurriedly ran up to me with a last-minute clarification to the agenda.  As they quickly explained the changes to me, I caught something in their eyes that I wasn’t expecting.

I saw fear.

I looked around the room and saw looks of nervousness and anxiety on the faces of the other Dell employees.  One of them was literally wringing their hands.  That’s when it hit me that Dell really did NOT know what to expect from this event.  But that made me truly respect them for having it.  Let’s be honest, the idea of flying 15 customers that have had negative experiences with your company to your headquarters to spend the day with them would scare the hell out of most companies.  And looking around that room, it seemed that some of that fear and anxiety was on display, but the company was willing to do it anyway, because Dell knew how important it was to connect with its customers.

The second story I wanted to share with you happened at this year’s event.  Near the end of the day, Michelle Brigman asked the attendees what their advice would be for the next steps of this program.  Each person shared their ideas, but Connie Bensen told Michelle that Dell literally needed to find a way to ‘help us to help you’.  As the microphone passed around the room, several of the attendees echoed Connie’s point, that they wanted Dell to give them the tools to help them tell others about the company.  Here were Dell advocates begging Dell to empower them to speak on their behalf to other customers.

And while I wouldn’t call myself a Dell advocate strictly on the basis of loving their products, I am definitely an advocate of the people working at Dell.  I think most people know who Lionel and Richard are, and for good reason.  Both are truly corporate social media pioneers.  But Dell’s team of social media wizards is so much deeper, Michelle, Carly, Sarah, Chris B, Bill, Jason, Cory, Laura and Susan are just a few of the gems we met and have come to know.

I believe in these people, and over the past year, I have come to care for them as well.  And as a result, I believe in and care for Dell.  I want to see the company succeed just as badly as anyone else, because I want to see the people behind the company succeed.  Because I believe when a company makes a real effort to listen to, and empower its customers, that that #smartitude deserves to be rewarded.  I left #DellCAP knowing that every Dell employee that participated in #DellCAP truly listened to and truly cared for the people they connected with.

Which leaves Dell in an interesting position.  I think this year’s #DellCAP reunion showed the company that it has a very loyal group of advocates that want to see it succeed.  That, as Connie said, want Dell to ‘help us help you’.  The challenge now for Dell is to find a way to not only unite, empower and embrace their external advocates, but to also share internally what they have learned from the DellCAP program.  We discussed the issue of scaling the interactions we experienced between company and customer during DellCAP.  I mentioned that I think one way to address this is to scale the interest in expanding the program from the company side.  I’ve got a lot more thoughts on how Dell and companies in general can embrace and mobilize its evangelists, and I’ll write more about that next week.

BTW I can’t close without acknowledging the #DellCAP participants from this year.  Y’all are so amazing to take 3 days out of your lives to come to Round Rock and share your wisdom and experiences with Dell.  I was truly blown away at the sheer intelligence of the ideas and suggestions that the group proposed, and its value to Dell is huge.  Here are the #DellCAP attendees from this year: Sarah, Haley, Allen, Robyn, Connie, Claire, Dave, Ed, Erika, Paul, Shane, Shawn, Susan, Brandon and last but not least, Mr. Travis Bailey.  It was a joy to spend time with each of you, and I consider you all to be good friends.  I hope we don’t have to go another year before we see each other again!

UPDATE: Chris Yates and his team from Huddle Productions were kind enough to record the LIVE #Blogchat that Dell sponsored as part of #DellCAP earlier this week.  While there, he shot this short video where Lionel explains a little about what the #DellCAP program is.

by

Sunday’s #Blogchat topic – How to Respond to Negative Comments

Tonight’s (Sunday) #Blogchat topic will be How to Respond to Negative Comments, and we’ll be joined by TWO special co-hosts!  Helping us learn how to handle negative blog comments will be Bazaarvoice’s Chief Marketing Officer, Erin Nelson plus Bazaarvoice’s Social Media Manager Ian Greenleigh!  Please click the links to follow both of them on Twitter, and click here to follow them on Bazaarvoice’s blog!

As you know when we have co-hosts, we try to have more structure to the topic, and here’s how our discussion will unfold tonight:

1 – 8:00pm Central when #Blogchat starts, discuss what’s the best response to a negative comment.  How should you handle it, what tone to use, what to address, etc.

2 – 8:20pm we’ll discuss WHO should respond to a negative comment.  Should it be the bloggers, or is there circumstances where the blogger should route the complaint to an internal SME, etc?

3 – 8:40pm we’ll close by talking about if there are any situations where a blogging company should NOT address a negative comment?  What if the commenter is a ‘troll’ and purposely attacking the company?

So that’s the structure for our #Blogchat tonight!  And to help you prep for tonight, here’s a link to a post I ran last year where I shared some information that Bazaarvoice has found on the value of negative comments and reviews.  It was one of the most popular posts here last year and has some fascinating revelations!

See everyone at 8pm, Central!

by

A Tale of Two Cities, And Their Aquariums

This post originally appeared on BMA on November 30th, 2005.  If you would like to read all the posts in the BMA series, click here.

Bernie Marcus can’t stop smiling.

The Home Depot founder is beaming as he enjoys the $250 million dollar gift he’s given the city of Atlanta, the newly opened Georgia Aquarium. And he’s not the only one to have visited the world’s largest aquarium. The aquarium was expecting 10,000 visitors for its opening day last wednesday, and officials believe they beat that number. Two million people were forecast to enjoy the attraction next year, and the aquarium may revise that number upwards as well.

The aquarium is the centerpiece of the city’s plan to reinvigorate Atlanta’s tourism efforts. “Atlanta has never been a major tourist destination,” Marcus says, “because there’s never been a major draw.” Marcus feels the Georgia Aquarium could become that ‘must-see’ destination that will turn on the tourism pipeline that city officials are hoping to develop.

Many experts are betting the addition of the world’s largest aquarium will be the magic bullet that the city has been looking for. And that has Atlanta’s city leaders very happy.

But 2 hours to the north, another city and their leaders are casting a very concerned eye to the south. While Atlanta is hoping the Georgia Aquarium will boost the city’s tourism dollars, the stakes are much higher for Chattanooga, where theTennessee Aquarium has literally reinvented the city. Once labelled as ‘America’s dirtiest city’ by former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, the aquarium began a renassiance for the city when it was opened in 1992. Since that time, over 100 shops and restaurants have sprung up surrounding the aquarium, shifting the city’s image from being dirty, to being one of the nation’s cleanest and friendliest.

And it’s that image that the Tennessee Aquarium thinks will be its best weapon against the Atlanta Aquarium. While Chattanooga can point to the clean and friendly atmosphere downtown, these are the exact qualities that many visitors say Atlanta’s downtown area lacks. And these assertions weren’t lost on Marcus, who campaigned vigorously to end ‘aggressive’ panhandling by the homeless downtown, even to the dismay of some city officials.

Of course there’s also the costs to consider. A one-day pass for a family of 4 would cost you $57.90 at the Tennessee Aquarium, and $89.50 at the Georgia Aquarium. Add parking and you approach $100 for the day.

Still, it may not matter. The city will be bringing in several high-profile events to the downtown area, such as hosting the Sugar Bowl this year, the World of Coke exhibit, and starting in 2007, the city will host the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The city is hoping that it can bring in so many popular attractions that visitors will overlook the cost and atmosphere, to experience the area.

With the Tennessee Aquarium claiming that 25% of their current visitors come from the Atlanta area, the success of the Georgia Aquarium, and Atlanta’s ability to change its downtown image, could eventually decide the fates of both cities. For now, city leaders in both areas will have to play a very nervous game of ‘wait and see’. Rick Nall, VP Marketing, Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau: “I feel like, and I feel like many others in the community feel like- probably the (Georgia) aquarium will have some impact, we just don’t know what it is.”

by

How to Measure the Success of Your Blogging Strategy

Quick: What’s the goal of your blog?

You can probably answer that pretty quickly.  Maybe you want to build awareness, or establish thought leadership.  Or maybe you want to generate leads or sales.  Or use it as a customer service platform.

Now comes the stumper: How do you measure the success of your blogging strategy?

This is where most blogging companies trip up.  They know WHAT they want to accomplish with their blog (more awareness! more leads!), but they don’t know how to measure if their efforts are successful.

And here’s the ‘bad’ news: It’s not always easy to determine if your blogging efforts are working, but it’s worth making the effort to try to figure it out.

Let’s take a very simple example, a company that’s blogging strategy is to use the blog to build its awareness.  If you ask this company how it judges if its blog is ‘working’, it would probably say that it looks at the number of comments it is getting.

On the surface, this makes sense.  If a blog is getting a lot of comments, a lot of people must be aware of it, right?  But what happens if everyone comes to that blog, leaves a comment, and…..that’s it?  So every new post has a lot of comments, but how will more comments alone raise the awareness of the blog?  To a degree, it will.  Because as people leave more comments, they will generate more visits, and more pageviews, etc.

But while the company wants people to leave comments, they would also love if these people would also share the post with their networks.  Ah-ha….so now we have TWO ways to measure success: Number of comments, and number of times the post is shared. The sharing could be ReTweets, it could be Facebook Shares, Stumbles, etc.

Which then opens another can of worms, WHICH method of sharing is preferred?  Let’s say your company isn’t really active on Facebook or StumbleUpon, but you are on Twitter.  So for your company, you’d prefer RTs over Stumbles or Facebook Shares.

So now we have two ways to measure the success of our strategy to use our blog as an awareness-building tool:  Number of comments, and number of ReTweets.

But wait a minute…you know, it’s great when people comment on your blog, and you love it when they RT your posts.  But it almost seems like a waste to have them do that, and then leave your blog without taking something with them.  What if you offered free white-papers for download?  Those would benefit your readers, PLUS help establish your authority and thought leadership, which would prompt your readers to share the white-paper with their networks, which would boost your awareness!

So now we have THREE ways to measure the success of our strategy to use our blog to build awareness of our company:

1 – Number of comments

2 – Number of RTs

3 – Number of downloads of our white-papers

Now we’re getting somewhere!  The next step is to prioritize these actions.  If you could only have a visitor perform one of the above three actions, what would it be?  You would probably say you’d want your readers to download your white-paper, followed by RT your post, then comment on your post.

So then the most important success indicator for your blog is number of white-paper downloads, followed by number of RTs, and number of comments.  With these goals in mind, you then need to think about how you not only create content that moves readers toward performing these actions, but how you organize your blog as well.  And your calls to action!

But that’s a post for another day, as I don’t want to bog you down with too much.  The point is, when we started, the only way we knew to measure the success of our blogging strategy was to ‘get more comments’.  Now we have THREE different metrics that we can measure, and we have those metrics prioritized.  From this, we can continue to flesh out our measurement process and make it more effective.

So when the boss asks if the blog is working as an awareness-building tool for the company, which answer is better:

1 – “I think so, we get comments on almost every post!”

or….

2 – “Absolutely! Comments are up 23% over the previous quarter, RTs on Twitter are up 37%. Additionally, we had 237 downloads of our white-paper last month on the blog, a 12% conversion rate!”

I know who I would be giving a raise to! 😉  When you are trying to measure the success of your blog, give some thought to the actions that you want readers to take on your blog, then find metrics that tie back to those actions, and measure them.  That will also help you create content and an experience that encourages the type of behavior/actions that you want your readers to engage in.

But it all starts with rolling up your sleeves and putting some actual thought into what a successful blogging strategy is for your company.  It will take a lot of work, a ton of trial and error, but it’s worth it.

by

The Three Pillars of Modern Customer Communication

My first recollections of getting ‘online’ are in the late 1980s, and local electronic BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems).  These were basically where someone would turn their computer into a network where others could call into it with a modem, and we could chat with each other, post messages, etc.  Extremely basic functionality, ‘graphics’, etc, and again, reserved to a very small local packet of people.  The great thing about BBSes was you got to meet local people, and we’d occasionally have ‘meetups’ which of course was the forerunner to the Tweetups we have today.

As the late 80s turned into the early 90s, those BBSes started linking to one another.  I could get on one BBS, and go to a special forum and see messages from another BBS in Denver.  Then the messages we were leaving there, would be sent to the BBS in Denver.  So a very crude form of online communication and network beyond just the one BBS was developing.  Of course, CompuServe had been around since the early 80s, and then Prodigy in the early 90s, and of course AOL in the mid 90s.  These ‘online services’ marked a way for people around the country, and even around the globe, to more easily connect with each other.  The internet itself was becoming more widely used, and websites started popping up like Kudzu in the South.

Which began to mark a change in how people got their information.  No longer did you have to watch CNN to get the latest news, now you could go directly to CNN’s website and get the latest news at a time that was convenient to you.  So as such, we began to talk about news, events, and companies online.  We still didn’t have the best tools to organize and connect with each other, but still, word of mouth was no longer reserved for the offline world only.

Then around a decade or so ago, blogs started popping up among the early adopters.  By 2004 and 2005, blogs were becoming more well-known, and growing in popularity by leaps and bounds.  By 2007, Technorati was tracking over 70 million blogs.  In 2006 we got YouTube and Twitter, and a year later the ‘social media kids’ discovered a social networking site that had already been popular on college campuses for a few years called ‘Facebook’.

As social media tools gave us the ability to quickly and easily create and distribute online content, we began to hear a debate about which was more important: online ‘word of mouse’, or offline word of mouth?  The ‘social media’ camp often argues that social media is the ‘wave of the future’, and that every is headed online.  The people that favor offline word of mouth will point to studies that suggest that 90% of word of mouth still happens offline, and that it trumps social media.

To me, this debate over which is ‘better’, ‘word of mouse’ or ‘word of mouth’ misses two key points:

1 – Both online and offline conversations and experiences feed INTO each other.  Look at your own experiences: How often have you been with friends and discussed something you read online?  Or how often have you gone on a trip, and taken a ton of pictures that you shared with your friends on Facebook as soon as you got home?  The line between our offline and online experiences is blurring.  We can no longer separate the content and conversations we have online with those we have offline.  For most of us, they are feeding into each other, and as a result, both our online and offline activities are richer.

2 – Mobile is greatly accelerating the blurring between online and offline.  Remember the title of this post is the THREE pillars of modern customer communication?  Mobile is the third pillar.  Think about what’s on your smartphone, on mine right now I have an app that lets me access Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, even my WordPress blog if I want.  Add in a camera, a video player, and I have all the tools necessary to link the online content that I and others create, to the offline world that I am in right now.  Note above how I mentioned you could take pictures from a trip then upload them to Flickr when you get back home?  With the proper mobile device, you can cut out the middle man, and take pictures right there, and immediately upload them straight to Twitter or Facebook, all from your smartphone.

The line between what is our offline and our online experiences is blurring and will soon disappear.  It’s pointless to think about which one of these three is the most important, as each is feeding into the other.

Look at this picture.  In terms of this post, Online or Social Media would be the locomotive.  It pulls the load behind it, which is Offline Word of Mouth.  Sometimes the load gets enough momentum that it can even push the locomotive.  They both work together.  But the tracks are mobile.  Mobile makes it much easier for the locomotive to pull the load, and for the load to move because it has the nice smooth tracks under it, instead of a rocky and uneven terrain.

All three work together to create something bigger than the individual parts.  Your company has to understand that your customers are likely going to use all three channels to get, share, create, and distribute content.  There’s no ‘winner’ among these three, they are all on the same team.