I’m sick of hearing about how awesomely funny the videos starring the “Old Spice guy” are, and I really don’t need to hear an update on how many bajillions of times people watch the 200-some YouTube videos. They’re very funny and clever and, apparently, effective. I get it. (If your power has been out and you have no idea what I’m talking about, BusinessWeek has a good summary of this wildly popular campaign.)

You know what I’m not sick of? Discussion of why this campaign was such a home run. I haven’t heard much along these lines, even after actually seeking it out. So here’s my attempt at filling the void.

Why did the live-response “Old Spice guy” video campaign work so damn well?

Read the rest of this article as it was originally published on the Fast Horse blog, Idea Peepshow.

In April, Facebook launched of a set of “social plug-ins” that let anyone put tools Facebook’s comment box and “Like” button on websites outside of Facebook. Just three weeks after these social plug-in tools were launched, more than 100,000 sites had installed the tools.

It was huge news in the worlds of technology and marketing. Not because it was the next big step for the social-networking giant. Not because it presented potentially huge privacy concerns for users of the service that has previously danced all over both sides of the line that separates respect for privacy from abusing users’ trust. And not because it gave geeks and marketers fun new toys to tinker with.

It was huge because it marked what was arguably the biggest stride to date toward what Charlene Li, a social media marketing analyst formerly with Forrester Research, described as a future in which online “social networks will be like air.” That is, the people and entities we’re connected to online and the things they share will surround us and be taken for granted — like air. Their presence will be the norm, not the exception. And if you think our social networks aren’t as crucial to our survival as air, ask the nearest psychology major about Maslow’s hierarchy.

Read the rest of this article as it was originally published on the Fast Horse blog, Idea Peepshow.

Have you ever noticed the relatively low quality of the comments readers leave on stories on your daily newspaper’s Web site — or on a hugely popular site like YouTube? They’re usually just this side of worthless, and, in the case of YouTube, they’re often some of the most mindless, meaningless drivel you’ve ever wasted eye power on.

In the case of news sites, Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review blames the reporters themselves and their publishers, not the commenters who often can’t seem to string together anything more coherent than four pre-written partisan talking points glued together by a few hard-working conjunctions. He makes I point I’d tend to agree with: If you, the news organization, can’t manage a comment discussion, don’t bother having one. Just shut if off.

Not only that, but when it comes to doing the work of managing that discussion, it’s not a task to be left to an “online editor” or someone who simply deletes any comment that drops an F-bomb (keep an eye on our recent vice presidents). The person best suited to manage the discussion, to keep the discussion meaningfully on track, to even learn from that discussion, is the writer of the story.

Niles is onto something here. Read his piece for a taste of what online news could be like, and imagine your favorite local reporter really being a part of the crowd — which I’ve written about when discussing Minneapolis’ own Jason DeRusha. But note that Niles isn’t being weighed down by technical minutiae:

Notice that I’ve written nothing about anonymous comments. Or whether comments should be held for review before publication. That’s not because I don’t care about those issues, or don’t have an opinion. I do. But I’ve also found that an individual publication’s stand on those issues doesn’t determine whether it manages its comment community successfully or not. I’ve seen great discussions with and without anonymous posters. As well as lousy ones. I’ve seen great conversations both with and without prior review. And lousy ones, too.

Same goes for blogs. I’ve watched many great blogs get too big too quick, and the comment discussions devolve into nothingness. It’s hard work to keep a discussion interesting when you start to get several dozen comments deep. But don’t shy away from the work. “[O]n newspaper websites, when the article goes up, that’s the end of the production process,” Niles wrote, “On community-focused websites, when the article goes up, that’s the beginning.”

Yes, rereading. Not solely for the content, which in large part is a deeper dive into many of the corporate case studies we new-media pundits are often already somewhat familiar with, but for the inspiration.

I happen to know many of the very smart people who contributed to and who are quoted in Julio’s book (bragging: I happen to be one of them), and I remember watching many of these case study scenarios unfold in real life — not knowing they’d be business-book material a few months later.

Some of these people I know very well. Albert Maruggi, who contributed the book’s afterword, is a dear friend and former colleague who lives about eight blocks away from me. Others, I know in that familiar but distant “we’ve met on Twitter” sense. I remember when Jennifer Leggio, who wrote the book’s forward, was asking for help on Twitter while setting up her first WordPress blog.

I remember reading the first TechCrunch post about Comcast and its use of Twitter as a customer service tool the day it was published and thinking, Man, I really dislike Comcast, but that’s awesome. Julio’s “book praise” page is a damn who’s-who of people I’ve befriended, attended conferences with, twittered at and otherwise bumped into — digitally or in the flesh. Hell, even Julio himself is a friend of mine and a person whose work I’ve followed for years.

Something about that closeness to my life, that proximity to what I live and breathe everyday, takes Julio’s book far beyond the realm of ideas. We’re now squarely in the realm of pure inspiration.

Rereading this book, though I’m only a few pages in, inspires me to try harder. To continue to try to new things. To pay more attention to my friends and the things going on around me. To keep my head up and watch for new opportunities rather than keep my head down and plow away at the same old work in the same old way.

Thanks, Julio — and thanks to everyone else who made this book happen.

TwitterHawk monitors Twitter for messages that match your criteria — say, include the word coffee and come from someone in Minneapolis — and then automatically sends a message from your account to the coffee-mentioner. It’s nice in that it’s smart enough to monitor for more than keywords: TwitterHawk let’s you focus in directing messages at Twitterers from a certain location and even set a rate of messages to send per day (to help alleviate accusations of spamming).

But here’s my problem with it: Even if we grant that the basic, automated monitor-then-respond trick is OK, then what? Let’s look at TwitterHawk’s own example: If someone, within a few miles of your new coffee shop, tweets about coffee, TwitterHawk sees that and responds for you. Great. But in TwitterHawk’s own example, the responder-bot asks a question: “@coffeementioner Have you seen our new Coffee Shop in Queens?”

What if that coffee-tweet writes back to you after seeing the TwitterHawk message? Uh oh! Now you suddenly have to be a human who uses Twitter to actually, you know, talk to people. Why not just do that in the first place, then?! Not only is this likely simply because Twitterers are chatty, but you’re asking a question! That’s great when people are actually communicating with each other, but that’s asking for trouble if you’re relying on an automated system.

Here’s another thing: Unless the person TwitterHawk is talking to for you is already following your account — that is, unless @coffeementioner is already following @newcoffeeshop — it’s pretty unlikely @coffeementioner is going to see the message from @newcoffeeshop. Outside of the realm of Web-minded marketers, bloggers and other digital-egomaniacs, it’s pretty rare for people to be monitoring Twitter for mentions of their name.

And if @coffeementioner does see the message from @newcoffeeshop, it’s likely that she’s going to be curious about this new Twitterer talking to her, and she’s going to go check out @newcoffeeshop’s profile. When she sees the last several tweets from @coffeeshop and notices how many of them are the exact same “Have you seen our new shop?” message to other Twitterers, she’s going to see little value in making a connection with @newcoffeeshop.

So here, conveniently at the bottom of this longer-than-I-intended post, is the bottom line: If the monitoring and messaging done by TwitterHawk is going to have any non-spam value, it’s going to require the user to engage and make connections and be humanly present on Twitter anyway. Why not just start that way?

Some mostly uninteresting photos here. The event was held at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters just outside of Minneapolis. Sorry I didn’t have a tripod — or the chance to get better audio.

As a rabid consumer of media, as a young PR professional and as a wide-eyed observer of the amazing changes underway in the world of communication, here are five things I’m thankful for in the broad realm of “social media.” If you’re anything like me, you might find yourself thankful for these, as well.

More voices, more reach

Even as recently as, say, five or ten years ago, we had mass media, e-mail, static Web page, phone and face-to-face communication. I know there was a lot more, but nothing compared to what we have now. I have about 1,700 people in my Twitter crowd. Some are robo-spam-bot-devils, but an overwhelming majority are smart, funny, interesting, helpful, insightful people — people I’d likely never have interacted with if it weren’t for the Web as we now know it.

Look at the PR business specifically. A few years ago, PRSA and its publications, PRWeek, O’Dwyer’s and a couple of others dominated the media landscape. Now I can find more information, research, case studies, advice and examples than I can shake an RSS reader at. People like Todd Defren, Jason Falls, Jeremiah Owyang, Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson and so, so many more help me become smarter and do my job better — and have more fun.

Format silos obliterated

I used to watch TV, listen to the radio, read the newspaper, look at Web sites. Now I consume all of that media in all of those ways at the same time. I watch Jason DeRusha’s “Good Question” segments from the local CBS affiliate online, just like I watch Lost, the Daily Show and SNL clips on the Web. Listen to the radio? Yeah, but I read news reports on Minnesota Public Radio’s site at least as often, if not more, and Bob Collins does a great job with the NewsCut blog.

Did I mention the biggest daily newspaper in the state just hired the director of photography from the local NBC TV affiliate? Yeah, that happened. A former Star Tribune editor and publisher decided to start a new kind of media outlet with a non-profit model, and now we have the transmedia creature called MinnPost.com (of which I’m a paying member; yeah, I gave actually U.S. currency). And on the Web, there’s almost no such thing as a silo. Blogs and news sites and YouTube and podcasts and Facebook and Twitter and all that craziness basically mean I can get anything, any way I want it. Opportunities, for creators and consumers, are limitless. Which brings me to…

RSS

As has been documented, I’m a huge fan of RSS. People who produce content and search engines that help me find stuff give me this awesome way to have just about everything I could ever want come right to me. That’s RSS. I get your stuff without needing to visit you to get it. Wild, isn’t it? If you don’t let me read your stuff that way, I’m not going to read your stuff. That’s pretty much how I roll.

But here’s the cool part: Once I am reading your stuff, you’re top of mind, and I’m doing more than just reading passively. I’m commenting on your work. I’m linking to it. I’m talking about how smart you are and how much you contribute to the community. Remember those examples of bloggers and news outlets I mentioned above? I subscribe to their stuff. In my eyes, they all kick ass.

Twitter

I could go on for days about how cool Twitter is. People like Michael Benidt will, with good reason, occasionally throw some water on my fire, which is great. As my seemingly limitless love for Twitter and the people within is challenged or questioned, I occasionally find ways to “do Twitter better,” to get even more out of it. But the point is, Twitter’s awesomeness is so profound I can barely put it in to meaningful words. I’ve tried.

The people

No list of “cool things about social media” would be even good, let alone complete, without mentioning The People. The People create the content I consume, the content that informs me, the content that entertains me. The People consume the content I create (sometimes). The People smile and shake my hand and pat me on the back when we meet in person. The People introduce me to other smart folks.

The People are what It is all about.

I’ll tag Chris Lynn, Ken Kadet, Greg Swan and the team at Idea Peepshow. Topic: Five things about social media you’d be thankful to see change. That is, things you don’t like or could be better. That oughtta make for some good reading.

Photo courtesy of cheeseroc on Flickr

“Being on Twitter,” then, is a given. When we have four people on the team, both at our firm and at the client company, who are actively monitoring and interacting via Twitter, the challenge is how to work with a single account profile while still conforming to these amorphous norms that “govern” the Twitter community.

The CEO of Client made sure, early on, to sign up for a Twitter account with Client as the username. A good start. The @Client Twitter profile hadn’t been used much yet, though, because building their product, their Web platform, has been the focus of their energy. So we’re basically starting from a blank slate.

However, as individuals, those of us on the “Twitter team” are fairly active Twitterers under our own names. That’s an asset, as we each have a fair amount of rapport and credibility built up. We’ve demonstrated, at least to some extent, that we “get it.” We’re not just swooping in to “do some PR,” “drive some traffic” and move on to the next thing.

It’s a good thing to have so many people interacting on behalf of the client, and we’ll all surely continue to do so under our own names. But for some of our work, we’ll need to operate under the obvious and official @Client profile. The challenge is to make sure the people we’re talking to know who they’re talking to. Personality and identity on Twitter, as is the case just about anywhere, are important.

So how do we plan to handle this? Well, for starters, we want to make it clear that the profile is staffed by a team — even going to far as to change the display name to “Client.com Team.” Additionally, we’ll change the brief bio section to say something to this effect:

Info about Client.com and [the subjects dear to their hearts], from @[ClientCEO], @albertmaruggi and @mjkeliher.

We’ll also make a habit out of signing our tweets with our first name or our initials, so people will know who wrote each one. For example, my tweets might look like this:

Client: Client.com is looking for usability testers. If anyone in the Twin Cities area is interested, let us know. -MJK

I stole that trick from the team that twitters for NPR’s “Bryant Park Project.” All good ideas are made to be stolen, right?

Speaking of which, we’ll round out the tactics for twittering as a team (alliteration!) by using the all important URL field of the Twitter profile to paint a full picture of the twittering team. Laura “Pistachio” Fitton was the first person I saw do this. The URL field of her Twitter profile points to a page on her site that serves one purpose: welcome people who have checked out her Twitter profile and explain a bit about who she is and what she does.

In the case of my client, we’ll have a page that explains, in very personable, conversation language (sadly, a scarcity in the worlds of PR and marketing) who we are and why we’re twittering as @Client. After all of the above, it will hardly be new information, but it is an opportunity to put a little more meat on the bone and offer more detail and color than the miniature Twitter profile section allows.

Have you done anything similar to this? What’s your approach? Any ideas to improve this method? I’m eager to hear some other insights.

“Teamwork” courtesy of DavidBole on Flickr

• Push smart people all across the Web to document their ideas for best practices in social media marketing
• Drum up some link love for Mitch Joel’s blog (and doing so in a creative, compelling way like this demonstrates a social media marketing best practice, no doubt)

Brogan’s chosen best practice is “Learn how to listen. Simple, I know. But it’s a best practice. Here are five tools I use for listening, and here’s my take on listening to Twitter.”

Mitch Joel makes the case for consistency:

Consistency. Be consistent. In everything that you do. Have a consistent username that you use in all of your channels (mine is mitchjoel). Use the same photo, so that you are recognizable in all of these channels. [...] Don’t blast out five pieces of content or join three online social networks and fade away. Choose one, stick with it and keep at it. Be more like the tortoise instead of the hare. Slow and steady wins the race.

I could go on all day with ideas to help enlighten other social media marketers, but Mitch challenges me to pick just one. Brogan took my first idea, listening — the single most important item — so I’m going to go a very different direction and step away from tactical best practices.

My best suggestion: Spend some time getting to know people in “your community,” getting to know what’s important to them, what they talk about, what gets them excited, what you can do for them — without worrying about the return on your investment.

Don’t spend all of your time working without goals, investing time and energy without thinking about some potential return. But don’t spend all of your time thinking about ROI, either. It might be hard, but it’ll be worth it.

And really, working like this — getting to know people as people, without thinking so much about your own goals, without thinking about getting an R on your I — will have a positive ROI. So maybe I can sum up my idea in a more simple statement:

Be selfless and be patient.

(And I’m also instructed to A) point to some other folks who have written well on this subject and B) tag some folks who might be prompted to share some good ideas on the topic, so… Albert Maruggi, Chris Lynn and Jason Falls — consider yourselves tagged. You’re it.)

Photo courtesy of steefnat on Flickr