Radio Legend Paul Harvey Passes On

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Googling You and Me

With all the talk about social media and micro-blogging, Twitter is catching a serious amount of online buzz as being the new tool for the next level of search: “real-time, conversational search“.

It’s great to have those you follow help you scour the web for news that matters and is customized for your needs. Will it only get more important in the next stage of web search development. Absolutely yes, especially when it comes to super-serving your “audience” and for overall web brand reputation building.

That being said, findability is still the most important aspect of search and online brand building. If you can’t get found, your fabulous content ain’t going a whole lot of places.

Google remains the 800lb gorilla of search…and it has no plans of releasing its dominance.

For the Jointblog, we are #1 and #4 out of 29,000 webpage Google results.

For Media Trend Watching, the Jointblog is #2, #7 and #9 on Google out of 56 million results…need to get it back up to #1!

What about Chris Kennedy radio trend? As the editor of the Jointblog covering radio trends as an important subject, I’m very happy having the Top 8 first-page results on Google out of 60,000 results.

But just Chris Kennedy? Only #4 on the first page of Google out of 12 million results…but it is already my Twitter account…and #16 (page 2) for my LinkedIn profile. Social media does work for organic search.

Getting to the top of the first page of Google organic keyword search results still is essential in order to reach your target.

When you google yourself or your company or your targeted interested, what do you find? Have you googled yourself lately? If you’re not get the SEO results you need, what are you doing to fix the result?

Interestingly, using those social media and Twitter micro-blogging can help boost you to the top of the page.

Radio: Practice Your Stuart Smalley

As Jaye Albright writes on her Breakfast Blog, radio hasn’t had much good news lately. But Canada’s Radio Marketing Bureau has something good to report. Looks like people with active lifestyles also are active radio listeners…exactly the kind of consumers radio wants as listeners as well as for advertisers. Sharing the good news, the RMB reports:

According to the annual Foundation Research study of 1,012 Canadians, radio reaches 90% of adults 18+ every week. Lifestyle plays a big role in radio’s performance – the more active you are the more radio you listen to; working Canadians, parents and the affluent are all above average in terms of radio tuning with weekly reach of 94% or better.

“Radio plays an integral part in everyday life; it accompanies every activity, from driving and working to surfing online. No other single media can match radio for its versatility, audience characteristics and its unique ability to reach consumers anytime, anywhere.” — Chris Bandak of Foundation Research.

Radio, do a little Stuart Smalley, would ya? Get that mirror and work on the self-esteem. “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.”

More highlights of the study include:

· 81% of adults listen to radio daily, second only to TV in reach potential. The percentage listening increases to 84% or more for working adults, wealthy Canadians and women with children.

· For 83% of adults, radio use in 2008 increased or stayed the same as the previous year; that percentage is equal to the internet and higher than newspapers (79%) and TV (76%).

· Adults spend more time with radio than any other media during a typical work day. They listen to traditional radio an average of 125 minutes and online radio for 34 minutes. Radio’s total of 159 minutes is 23% more than TV and approximately double that of the Internet.

· Radio accompanies Canadians throughout their busy day. 70% of Canadians listen to radio on the drive to work, school or shopping; Radio ranks highest of all media reaching consumers prior to a shopping occasion; 36% listen to radio while surfing the internet

Apple Without Steve Jobs

This YouTube video tracks the entire universe of Apple throughout its history — with and without Steve Jobs and back again with Steve Jobs.

Taran Swan from The Media Fix just posted a blog piece on Apple and the current questions circulating around the iconic company and their ailing founder/CEO Steve Jobs, who is on a 6-month leave to focus on his health issues.

It centers around the limitations of companies that are led by charismatic leaders which overshadow the talent below the leadership. She writes:

What is Apple without Steve Jobs? This unanswered question … caused their stock to take a hit (though it has since recovered a bit)…generated critical editorials, and…now the SEC is investigating whether the Company properly handled disclosures.

This all happened because the market thinks Steve Jobs IS Apple, which means any risk to Jobs is a risk to Apple.

How did Apple get into this situation and what can they do about it?

Steve Jobs is only the most extreme example of what happens when a company builds its brand around one person and doesn’t showcase its “people depth”.

The iconic Steve Jobs was effective in giving Apple a face and a mystique. But the focus on Jobs took the spotlight off the team that makes Apple great.

Jobs health woes give Apple an honest opportunity to showcase their management depth and their strong team of “up and comers.”

Apple could take a page from GE – which has benefited for years by publicly acknowledging their succession planning. And, then making the necessary investments to back up the talk.

So, what can Apple do? Here are a few suggestions…

1) Take the succession planning exercise seriously.

2) Cultivate and promote a culture of leadership development and sustained investment in building a deep management bench.

3) Make management comfortable with competition by smoothing a path to an appropriate consolation prize for those who don’t take the brass ring.

4) Nurture your relationship with the press – use it to effectively get the new message out about its brilliant team.

This would probably make both Steve Jobs and Apple’s shareholders feel better. And, it would reassure millions of Apple fans around the world.

What do you think?

Radio Ink: Convergence Conference Day Two Video Highlights

Radio Ink: Convergence Conference Day One Video Highlights

Online Brand Reputation Management

Building and managing your brand online is not always easy. With the thousands of new tools, widgets and social media platforms, getting found online — and getting found with the right brand message — is much harder than the good ole days (nee: 2 years ago) when all you had to do was get to the top of the first page of Google keyword search results.

AdAge has a great strategic planning “AIDE” (pictured above) explaining how to create and maintain positive word-of-mouth reputation in 6 months. What do you do?

Analyze.
Identify.
Deply.
Evaluate.

Okay, now get started.

Where? How about here.

aMap: Can Radio Get Better?

There are some great graphic visualization tools available on-line that give a whole new way to interpret comments, news, speeches and more. One great tool I found is from aMap. Using their free visualizer, you can ask any question you like, type in some logical answers with supporting comments. Then you can email your argument or position to your friends or blog readers to have them extend the argument and add in their own answers.

It’s a cool way for a social community to get in the conversation.

Here’s an example. Click on it to add in your own comments or answers:

A Different Look At Social Media and Important Changes Coming

ReadWriteWeb is a fantastic blogsite…informative and broad-reaching in its coverage of new media. Great resource worth a bookmark. Yesterday, they posted an article with a bit of a contrarian point of view on social media.

“Making Money” is perhaps the biggest challenge social media must face.

Here were some of their posted thoughts:

“Social media” was the term du jour in 2008. Consumers, companies, and marketers were all talking about it. We have social media gurus, social media startups, social media books, and social media firms. It is now common practice among corporations to hire social media strategists, assign community managers, and launch social media campaigns, all designed to tap into the power of social media.

But social media today is a pure mess: it has become a collection of countless features, tools, and applications fighting for a piece of the pie.

Facebook, a once groundbreaking online community, has become the ant colony of third-party applications. Twitter users now have a dozen or so additional applications they can use to overcome Twitter’s ever-present shortcomings. People spread themselves across a number of tools and maintain different networks on each (large portions of which they don’t even know), making it nearly impossible to decide what to share and with whom.

Users, marketers, and companies face an incredible amount of noise, too. For every new application that relies on a network, another crops up that helps users manage it. While “eyeballs” used to be the coveted metric, both ad publishers and investors now realize that having smaller well-targeted niches can lead to much better returns than marketing to one large undifferentiated mass of users.

Meaning and connection — two key anchors of all things social media — are corroding by the day as people’s ability to organize their experiences and find the relevance of their networks declines. Social media, in essence, is bumping up against its own ceiling, no longer able to serve the needs of those living within its walls; and for these reasons, social media as we know it is changing course.

With all the great excitement of social media lately, yes, they are right. It is noisy and messy, filled with an endless array of tools and gadgets.

So what needs to change? Again, some of ReadWrite Web’s top thoughts as social media continues to evolve:

1) It’s About People. We’re moving away from “users,” “customers,” and “shoppers”: social media is bringing back the human element to all digital interaction.

2) Creating Meaning and Value. Social media will no longer be about features and applications. These have become a dime a dozen. People will be looking to get tangible and relevant value out of their social experience; they’ll be looking for meaning and for order.

3) Enabling Convergence. People are at a loss when it comes to pulling their conversations together from various sources and assigning meaning to them.

4) Building a Truly Cross-Platform Experience. In the new landscape of social media, people are seeking solutions that seamlessly cut across mobile, web, and live interaction.

5) Creating Relevant Social Networks. People will create, join, and seek social networks that enable them to have meaningful and relevant experiences with each other. They will measure their return on investment (time spent, level of disclosure, etc.) in replies, comments, their ability to influence, and the value of their learning.

6) Innovating in the Advertising Space. Ad publishers and the attached ecosystem will continue to lose revenue until they realign their understanding of what appeals to people who are conversing, connecting, and expressing. The next phase of social media is a gold mine of targeted niche demographics.

7) Helping People Organize Their “Old” Social Media Ecosystem. As aggregating platforms enter the field, people will seek to bring order to the endless bits of information available to them. Video tagging, conversation archiving, taking cloud computing to the next stage, and making search more relevant are some of the new baseline requirements. These represent a significant opportunity for companies willing to undertake this massive endeavor.

Connecting with the Rest of the US and the World. With some exceptions, today’s active social media users are early adopters. In the next one to two years, the benefits of social media will cross the chasm and reach the mainstream.

9) Preparing for New Social Media Jobs. Social media’s new job descriptions will call on subject-matter experts who can plan for relevant interaction within networks and aggregating platforms and bring together products, services, and people.

10) Making Money. The next phase of social media will bring plenty of lucrative opportunities. With the rise of aggregating platforms, social networks, and new mobile and location-based features, we’re bound to see an increase in targeted and personalized ads, “freemium” packaging, revenue sharing between strategic partners, and a flow from the offline world to online social engagement (such as when real goods complement virtual ones).

While this year be the year social media and “making money” converge successfully? Or is that still years away?

Social Media Tips: A Quick List of Helpful Links

2008 was the year social media networking sites and micro-blogging tools exploded to near-mainstream usage. This year promises only more growth for social media.

In Canada, there are 8 million Facebook members…for a country with 24 million on the Internet. That’s one-third of Canada found on just one site!

Just this month, Facebook became twice as large in usage than MySpace…with a total of 150 million active users.

Twitter was no longer just a tool to track celebrities on their rhinestone-encrusted smartphones; it became THE way to pre-promote for any savvy marketer.

Whether you are just now getting into social media or you are already in the know, these current articles should be great idea generator and navigators for you:

>> 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

>> …And here’s a list of 42 quick and cool social media tips…

>> Understanding and Aligning the Value of Social media

>> Why You Should Be Looking at Twitter

>> How To Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics and Luddites

>> Social Media Rule #1: Always Give ‘Em Something To Talk About

>> A Guide to Media Tweeter Lists

>> Web 2.0 is So Over, Welcome to Web 3.0

>> Want to See Where The Media Is Going? Follow the Money

>> FlowingData — one of the better tweeting social media leaders. FlowingData.com is the website…

>> …Oh, and this guy is pretty good, too.

>> Track the top twitter elite users, get twitsnips, badges, button makers and search by region, topic and more at TwitterGrader

>> Create free customizable Twitter backgrounds

But…is Twitter killing blogs and blogging?