Going Social Now

Publishing is Dead, Long Live Publishing

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:26:45 +0000

I've discovered that "Something is Dead" headlines attract a lot of attention so I couldn't resist using one myself today. With Seth Godin announcing that he's going to ditch his traditional publisher (Portfolio part of Penguin), does it mean that book publishing as we know it is dead? I find this topic especially interesting as its something that I discussed at length when I spoke at the Digital Book World Conference back in January. Here's my take.

Seth Godin is among the most popular best selling marketing authors and his latest book Linchpin sold over 50,000 copies. The publisher probably played a big role in the editing and the distribution of that book. However, for future books Godin is planning to release them over the Internet in electronic book formats as well as in the form of apps, small digital files and even PDFs. What does this mean?

Seth Godin knows his readers better than his publisher does. Godin has realized that he really knows his readers. He knows what they want, he knows how to reach them and he knows quite clearly what he wants to share. He has is own marketing platform via his blog and his twitter account too. He doesn't need a publisher to play that role for him. And with the Internet he can distribute his book to his readers electronically.
Seth Godin believes in the power of his brand and is betting everything on it. At the most fundamental level, this is a brand play. You've got to believe in yourself and in your words if you want something to work, he'd say himself. And that's exactly what he's doing. He's putting his money where his mouth is. Will he sell as many books? Fewer? Will he reach new readers versus just his fans? Time will tell but it is an adventurous move without a doubt.
Seth Godin doesn't believe his publishers provide him enough value. By saying that he's going to sell his book online and directly to his readers, Godin is basically saying that his publishers aren't providing him enough value. He appreciates the need to have a strong editor (and he's going to hire one independently) but everything else is not valuable enough for him. Publishers should be worried and so too should Barnes & Noble and Borders. If other leading authors adopted this model they'd all be in trouble.
Seth Godin knows that the book format itself is worth a second look too. There's a secret about writing books that no one likes and having just been through the process, I've witnessed it first hand. You have to fill the pages. Even if your idea and what you want to convey only needs a 100 pages, you are obligated to stretch it out into 200 or 300 pages. That's how books are made. You have to conform to those guidelines. If the book is too thin, publisher's won't be able to charge enough for it. Godin recognizes that micro-book formats as well as audio files and apps are worth exploring as mechanisms to share his ideas. That way he's not limited by the structure of the book market.
Seth Godin has figured out the economics are in his favor. I'm guessing that for every book of his sold, Godin gets probably 15% in royalties. That's not bad when you're selling 50,000 books priced at $17.13. He's made $2.5 per book sold or $128,475 in total.

But imagine if he sold online only where he'd probably get something closer to 80% in royalties. He'd make a whopping $685,000. Imagine if he only sold half online versus through the book chains (the distribution channels that the publisher owns), he'd still make $342,600. Or if he sold just a quarter, that would be $171,300. I don't think it is hard for him to sell 12,500 books directly. He doesn't need a publisher to be better off.

Time will tell whether other leading authors adopt a similar model. For an author, nothing is better than being able to get closer to your reader. The question is whether this model will work and whether other authors have the personal brand, the distribution platform and most importantly the courage to try something like this. I'd argue that if book publishers followed the model I outlined in this deck, they'd be less worried about what's happening around them.

Digital Age 2.0 - Why does the Internet matter?

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:04:38 +0000

Brief interview post speaking at the Digital Age 2.0 Conference in Sao Paulo yesterday. You can probably tell I was a little jet lagged when I was interviewed.

I also talk about the types of people I'd love to hire. Are you one of them?

Hiring for Digital & Social Media Roles

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:54:52 +0000

I'm hiring for two different roles in my group at PepsiCo Beverages. If you are interested in applying, please read the job description and apply online. I'm looking to fill these positions quickly. I can promise you it will be a wild ride working with some of the most exciting brands in the world as we reinvent digital media and marketing and explore new ways of engaging with consumers online in a mass scale. My group will be driving digital strategy and executions across paid, owned and earned media so these roles will be able to do exciting things.

Here are the job descriptions -

The Digital Engagement Manager will act as the strategic partner to PepsiCo America Beverages (PAB) brand teams in developing new models of digital engagement, advising on best practices and managing the planning, design and development of solutions across paid, owned and earned media that help connect the Pepsi brands to its consumers. View the complete job description.

The Social Activation Strategy & Execution Manager will be responsible for identifying real time social learnings and leading the social media activation teams assigned to each of the Pepsi Beverages brand teams. This person will need to drive our social media strategy and execution efforts working in partnership with the brand teams and the digital engagement managers. View the complete job description.

You can apply for both these jobs online. Ping me if you have any questions. These are opportunities to be at the forefront of digital marketing working for an organization that is pushing the boundaries of digital and social media in fun and exciting ways. Please share this with folks you know who may be strong candidates for these roles. We're looking for the very best!

Viral Media and the Bored at Work Network

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 01:01:14 +0000

Here's Jonah's recent presentation on viral media. Definitely worth a scan. He's the founder of Buzzfeed and is someone who shares my "impression plus" philosophy. More on that in this Adweek story, "The Science of Sharing" which quotes me explaining that the future of display advertising has to do with publishers that provide not just the best ROI on impressions but the most shares too.

Jonah's concept is simple - people are bored at work and they're the ones who share. You've got to create content for them.

What Americans do online? Are you aligned?

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:44:56 +0000

Very telling. Is your brand on top of this? It is no surprise everyone is panicking about social networking and online gaming but it is fascinating that online games have overtaken email as the second most heavily used sector accounting for 10% of all online time versus 8.3% for email.

The question is are you worried about the "Other" category and do you even know what it is? What your consumers are doing with that time and whether your competitors are reaching them there? My guess is probably not.

For a deeper analysis visit the Nielsen blog.

The 8 + 2 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:27:49 +0000

Don't miss Jeremiah's report on Facebook Success Factors (embedded below). It is a great read. He references a blog post of mine on how Facebook is suffering from the micro-site syndrome in it as well. In the report Jeremiah explains that nearly half of all brands reviewed fell short in how they're leveraging Facebook's social features.

The success factors established for brands participating in Facebook include - setting community expectations, providing cohesive branding, being up to date, living authentically, participating in the dialog, enabling peer to peer interactions, fostering dialog and soliciting calls to action.

I'd like to take the liberty of adding two behind the scenes success factors - establishing objectives and being clear about how the Facebook effort fits and works with the broader digital ecosystem of the brand. The full report is embedded below.

What the F**k is Social Media NOW?

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:54:12 +0000

Marta and her wonderful "What the F**k is Social Media?" franchise is out with a new presentation that puts social media in context of why it matters even more today. PepsiCo is featured on slide 40-41 and I'm quoted on slide 63 discussing what I suppose is some of the new risks to all of us with social media (and I'm not talking privacy). Enjoy the deck!

Harvard Business Review Blog Post: What the Detroit Public Schools Can Teach Marketers

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:23:41 +0000

Pete Carter, who's a Director of Brand Communications at P&G and I just did a joint post for the Harvard Business Review about our experiences judging the North America Grand Effies last month. Below is an excerpt and it links to the full post on the Harvard Business Review site.

Last month we served as judges on the North America Grand Effies Judging Committee. For those of you who do not know the Effies, they are considered the top awards for effective marketing communications around the world. Several rounds of judging submissions in different marketing categories result in a list of finalists for the "Grand Effie" or the award for the most effective marketing across all categories. That's what we were tasked to judge, along with nine other senior marketers representing both the creative and business sides of the industry.

The winner was a surprising choice. It wasn't a multi-million dollar television campaign for a Fortune 50 company, nor was it a digital media program or some new-age service. Instead, the Grand Effie award was given to the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) for a very simple, and cost-efficient word-of-mouth program to encourage student enrollment. Here's what they did.

Read the full story on the Harvard Business Review website and tell us what you think.

Fast Company Influence Project is a Gimmick

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:35:00 +0000

Why this is so irritating to me

We're all so busy building our personal brands that I feel we're reluctant to criticize anyone who could help us extend our brands. Well, maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot here but it is time to do a bit of criticizing and I'm going to call a spade a spade. The Fast Company Influence Project gimmick is exactly that - a gimmick and a disappointing one. It seems to be a way to build a database of people and participate in link baiting more than a meaningful approach to identifying who's influential online.

Sure it looks beautiful and there's something funky about having your photograph appear in Fast Company. But it seems to be more of a whimsical marketing campaign than something a serious publication that covers innovation would do. Here's why I'm really struggling with this "project." And it begins with how it defines influence -

1. Definition of influence is too simplistic

Fast Company says, " Influence is not only about having the most friends or followers. Real influence is about being able to affect the behavior of those you interact with, to get others in your social network to act on a suggestion or recommendation."

There are some problems with this definition. It is a definition that's marginally less simplistic than counting friends and followers. Yes, influence is about affecting behavior but there's more to it than that. It is about understanding the different types of influencers (expert, positional and referent) and the types of influence including compliance, identification and internalization (see the article I wrote back in 2007 about this or read my book). Influence is also about understanding the travel path of information which this project ignores. What we have here is a popularity contest.

2. Clicking a link is not a measure of influence

What's also troubling about the "Project" is that it assumes that re-tweeting something and more directly link clicking is an accurate measure of influence. Not true. (Amusingly, you get extra credit if someone clicks on your link and signs up for the program too) .Getting people to click on a link is an accurate measure of getting people to click on a link not of actual influence which is much harder to define and track.

To assume that the most influential person online is the one that is clicked the most is inaccurate. If anything, this project promotes the misconception that basic clicks are a meaningful measure alone. It is probably the most important visible measure but definitely not the most strategic one in the influence or marketing space. Many of us in the digital marketing space have worked hard to convince companies that there's more to digital than clicks.

3. Publications like Fast Company should never endorse link baiting

What is most worrying in some respects is that "The Influence Project" appears to be endorsing link baiting because that is exactly what they are doing themselves. As Mike Arrington pointed out, watch the Fast Company July traffic numbers they'll be much higher than earlier. Why - because of this experiment. "The Influence Project" is more about increasing site traffic (which will do well I suspect) than it is about influence. As a result, it is endorsing cheapskate tricks to drive traffic to the publisher website in the guise of a fancy name.

So what should Fast Company have done instead?

1. Fast Company should have a more sophisticated measure of influence. Or at the very least, they should have acknowledged that their measure of influence is simplistic and explained why it is being used. I'd in fact recommend not framing this project as away to identify the most influential person online as that sets unnecessarily high expectations. You're also not going to find out the most influential person online through it either.

2. Fast Company could have used a separate URL and website for this project. That way they would have avoided all potential criticism around link baiting. It would have kept the whole initiative neat and clean in a way that it currently isn't. They wouldn't have gotten all the link baiting benefits but they're not supposed to be the point of the exercise.

3. They should have established guidelines with regards to the promotion of the links. I'm already getting spammed with requests to click on links and retweet them. This project promotes spamming without those guidelines and that's not a good thing. It can never be. Fast Company - you're one of the good guys. Don't go promoting or tacitly encouraging spammy behavior. We've got too much of that online already.

4. Make it meaningful beyond Fast Company. Do good. Rather than rewarding people by having their photographs appear in the print issue, better still would be to donate money or online ad space (from all those extra views) to the charities of the winners' choices. That way at least something good will come out of this. To say that this is a serious effort to understand the most influential person online is a little disingenuous as there are many other far more rigorous and scientific efforts in this realm. It also lacks meaning.

Sorry Fast Company but you've disappointed me today. It is not innovative, it is gimmicky and as an avid reader of Fast Company I'd even say that I think its off brand.

Advertising on the iPad. What to expect

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:34:17 +0000

A few weeks ago I was invited to speak on a panel at The Big Money Untethered Conference along with Steve Hayden (Vice-Chairman at Ogilvy), Chris Wilkes (VP Digital at Hearst) and Randy Rothenberg (IAB President). We were tasked with discussed the role of advertising on mobile devices and most specifically the iPad. I've been thinking about that panel and those questions ever since.

Rather than projecting into the future based on simply early raw impressions, I'm using data points of current iPad advertising and usage numbers to ground some of the thinking that I'm sharing here. Please let me know your own thoughts:

Engagement like TV, Measurability of the Web. Conde Nast says the average reader spends 60 minutes with each monthly issue of its magazine's iPad apps (90,000 downloads for the Wired app beating newsstand sales for that month). In comparison, the average visitor on the Web spends just 2.1 minutes per month at Vanityfair.com and 3.8 minutes per month at GQ.com, according to comScore.

What does this tell me? That the iPad has the potential to garner the same kind of continuous engagement that you can get from TV but with the interactivity and measurability of the Internet. That's an extremely promising sign if usage minutes like this hold.

Immersive iPad ads leave old school banner ads in the dust. The New York Times application served as a great advertising medium for Chase who used it to showcase its credit card to early buyers of the device. The card is aimed at the top 15% earners and people who had bought the iPad (for $499, at least) presumably have extra cash and fit into that category. That's definitely a reasonable assumption to make. Consumers clicked on about 15% of the time that the ad popped up.

15% can you believe that? If you're familiar with banner advertising, you'll know that 15% is a huge click thru rate. At first, I thought that was a typo in fact. I don't believe that click thru rates will continue to be this high but it does bode well for advertising on the medium. It is also a sign that if the ads are targeted sharply and are immersive compelling experiences, they'll attract users for deeper engagement.

iPad Brand Advertising at Premium Prices. The USA Today said that it is charging Marriott about $50 for every thousand times, or impressions the ad appears. The CPM for the USA Today's regular website is less than $10. And in contrast, in a printed world where there is the least inventory, the average CPM for a full-page color ad runs around $103.

What does this tell us? That iPad experiences are deep, immersive experiences for which advertisers are willing to pay a premium. Now it is hard to say whether the Marriott is getting bang for its buck and arguably it is advertising at the moment to reach those early adopters, but if their advertising experiences are translating into bookings more than web ads (which they might well be), this could be a sign of more to come.

Fewer advertisers serve the publishers better. The Wall Street Journal chose to partner with just six advertisers at the time of the launch of their iPad application. They were able to find the six advertisers in a week and each one was charged $400,000 for two print ads and one digital ad in addition to the iPad placement translating into revenue of $2.4 million for them. The pitch was that this would be a deep brand advertising experience and not one about impressions.

It is early days for the iPad and it is difficult to tell the kind of engagement different applications will get. The media publishers are also in the process of building their own brand on the platform. As a result, publishers are smart to limit inventory and not over sell the opportunities to advertisers. It'll serve them better in the long run.

Custom content leads to custom advertiser interest. As shown with the recently launched Sports Illustrated iPad application, custom and more in-depth content leads to the perception that the iPad application is a differentiated product warranting the higher price point. The Sports Illustrated app costs $4.99 and includes an original documentary, multiple photo galleries, athlete interviews and uniquely interactive panoramic photos.

The moral of the story? If you want your iPad app to sell well at a higher price point, you've got to make sure that you're giving the users something special. Otherwise, they might as well just buy the cheaper Zinio version of the magazine. Something else that's important - as the Editor of Sports Illustrated recently pointed out - advertisers love the iPad apps with custom content. He explained that he was on a sales call recently in Chicago showcasing the iPad app. It turned out to be his best sales call ever. Toyota and Gatorade are already advertisers.

Subscription or Advertising. The answer is not clear. The success of the iPad as a publishing platform for newspapers and magazines alike is ironically making it harder for publications to choose the right revenue model. The Wall Street Journal is probably the furthest along where they have free online sections of the newspaper available on a free iPad app as well. Once you sign up for the paid subscription, you get the other sections of the newspaper too.

The USA Today had originally decided to start charging for its iPad application after the first 90 days. However, advertiser reception was so strong that they have just decided against doing so. Instead, they are going to continue giving the application away for free and are bringing on new advertisers like Barnes and Noble, Chrysler and Capital One. CPMs continue to be in the $50 range and the app has been downloaded over 500,000 times. Conde Nast with Wired Magazine has just changed their subscription fees - now its $4.99 for first time downloaders and $3.99 for issues after that.

My hunch - advertising will trump subscription formats with the iPad in the long run. As the iPad and other similar devices get critical mass, holding onto expensive subscription plans will be a challenge. However, in the longer term when inventory increases dramatically and there's less scarcity, the downward pressure on CPMs will force the publishers to rethink subscription fees. It'll be the same story as with the web all over again.

Social Influence Marketing Trends. Presentation to Marketing Executives at Fortune 50 Company

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:00:32 +0000

On Friday I spoke at a Digital Marketing Excellence Forum organized for 500 senior marketers at a Fortune 50 company. The other speakers were Tony Hseih of Zappos fame and Steve Swasey of Netflix.

View more presentations from shivsingh.

Facebook Search. Myth or Madness?

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:19:43 +0000

The web is swirling with conjecture that Facebook is going to roll out a search product to take Google on head on. Interestingly, this follows rumors that "Google Me" was a new product launching to compete with Facebook. Some industry pundits believe that the search product launch is imminent and one that will differentiate itself by incorporating "like button" recommendations and open graph technologies into the algorithm that displays the search results. Others think that the current on domain Facebook search implementation is so shoddy that Facebook will first fix that before moving onto something grander.

Here's my take. Google has 20,000 employees of whom probably 80% are focused on search in some fashion or the other mostly as engineers. Facebook has 1,400 employees of which no more than 300-400 are engineers according to company insiders. Building and optimizing a search engine is no easy task and it is unlikely that Facebook will do this at this time. Yes, they are incorporating third party results (only pages your friends have liked) into its own search engine but I wouldn't say these efforts are significant as yet. They've got too much on their plate at the moment with the social plugins, virtual currencies, the core Facebook platform to optimize and location aware functionality to build. Not to mention the fact that running a search engine requires a huge infrastructure investment something that not even Facebook can support today. Sure, a search product could mean significant revenue very quickly but that's never been a priority for Mark Zuckerberg.

Instead, here's what I think Facebook should do. They should partner with Microsoft to extend Bing to include the influence of "liking" into the search algorithm. Remember Microsoft owns a small percentage of Facebook. The "liking" functionality is a direct endorsement and arguably would improve search results. This partnership would benefit Facebook as it'll really encourage website owners (egged on by the search engine marketing community) to implement the like button and the social graph api everywhere across their sites. Facebook will also be a player in the search game without the huge costs and could probably get a small ad revenue share too.

In other words, it would be a more effective and efficient way to compete with Google without the huge investments. It'll improve search engine results and it'll promote other Facebook products and services notably the proliferation of its social plugins. Go for it Facebook - extend your Microsoft partnership to include this.

Update: The rumors have now been confirmed that Google is going to launch a Facebook competitor sometime in the near future. Apparently, they have a very large team working on it. This isn't too surprising given how threatened Google feels. What's most interesting is that their new network really needs to combine a lot of their existing services - Search, Profiles, Buzz, Orkut, Picasso, Wave and Blogger in a seamless, consistent, immersive and friction free user experience. That's where the real challenge is and I hope they recognize that.

Image courtesy Facebooking101.com

Facebook Like Button. Launch a new business?

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:42:46 +0000

It has only been a few months and we've already seen a proliferation of uses for the Facebook "Like" button. Since the launch, I've gotten questions from clients and the press alike about the Facebook like button and whether it can meaningfully impact digital businesses. Those questions fit broadly into three implementation categories - liking pages on Facebook, liking pages on websites and liking objects on a web page. So do like buttons make a difference to a business beyond the vanity benefits of saying that you have more likes than your closest competitor?

The basic options for Liking -

Liking Brand Pages on Facebook. Liking pages on Facebook is old news. It is in fact just a variation of "fanning" pages for which there's continuos debate about the value. In fact, as my friend Joe Marchese pointed out to me just yesterday, the more pages that people like (and they are liking more everyday), the harder it will be for a brand to break into a user's newsfeed. Also, the more pages that we like, the more we'll be asked to like and comment on those wall posts and the lazier we'll get at it. Call it the law of liking diminishing returns.

Liking Pages on Websites. Liking pages on websites is more interesting as it lets your consumers push their like choices back into the Facebook newsfeed of their friends. Furthermore, you can expose your wall in a box on your website too. It is worth pointing out though that the law of liking diminishing returns applies here too. The more websites that are liked, the more notifications that will fight for attention in a person's newsfeed and the less visibility any single notification will get.

Liking Objects Around the Web. It is liking objects on a page of website that is the most exciting piece. Why? Because when you attach the like button to objects on a page, it can serve as an endorsement. The number of people that like a pair of jeans or a hotel or a music system can influence whether someone else will buy that product or not. What's more people can view all the likes for a particular product filtered by their social graphs (don't tell me how many people liked a particular music system in the world, just tell me which of my friends did). The Levi Friends Store has already implemented this (see above) and it works quite well.

More Imaginative Uses of Like Features

But there are some even more interesting uses of this Facebook button that are worth discussing.

Most popular social media links in May

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:15:09 +0000

For those who don't know SmartBrief on Social Media, it is an email newsletter which goes to over 54,000 business people who have a deep interest in social media and social influence marketing. It shares the best social media links everyday. As a member of its advisory board, I get to see the most popular stories clicked on each month. Here are the May popular links.

1. 5 words you should never use on Facebook

2. Facebook announces revamp of privacy settings

3. How to climb the LinkedIn learning curve

4. 19 ways to make a video shine

5. Research reveals the power of the re-tweet

6. 5 signs your social strategy is sinking

7. 7 ways to make Facebook work for you

8. 14 tips for live-tweeting a real-world event

9. Diesel adds Facebook feed to fitting rooms

10. Brainstorming tips for generating fresh social content

Privacy concerns on Facebook were a hot topic in May as was Facebook more broadly. What's interesting is that more readers are looking for more substantive facts about the social phenomena than ever before. As a result, the Twitter research (which I summarized here) was popular too.

Leaving Razorfish and joining PepsiCo

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:15:11 +0000

As you may have heard, I've decided to leave Razorfish and join PepsiCo. You can find some coverage of my move over at Adweek, Ad Age, MediaPost, Web Strategy and Clickz.

Razorfish is a very difficult company to leave because of the amazing people, impressive client roster and stellar leadership. It is not an exaggeration to say that I've professionally grown up with many of the people here. And with the "experiences that build businesses" mantra and as a part of Publicis now, even more great work is going to come out of the agency.

But the growth opportunity at PepsiCo was too exciting to pass up. Working for one of the most iconic companies in the world as it transforms how it engages with consumers across all platforms and channels is going be a deep learning experience. I'm also looking forward to joining the teams of talented marketers over there including Frank Cooper who was recently recognized as one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company. PepsiCo is definitely an organization on the march with its Pepsi Refresh Project, its crowd-sourcing successes like Mountain Dew Dewmocracy (they crowd-sourced not just the packaging but the actual flavors too) and recent partnerships with FourSquare and Stickybits.

As far as this blog is concerned, I will still be blogging actively albeit now from the client side. This will give me a broader view of digital marketing and I'll share as much of my learnings over here as I can. So keep visiting, re-tweeting and commenting please! Andrea Harrison is taking over my role at Razorfish. Please congratulate her on Twitter (@190east).