Zane Safrit

Notes from Interview with Andy Brudtkuhl

Here's some notes from Andy Brudtkuhl's conversation with me this morning on BlogTalk Radio. You can listen to our conversation at www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit. 

Andy created IowaFlood.com to share with the masses the stories with the still ongoing Iowa floods.

Twitter. Twitter was the most important social media technology for Andy’s platform, IowaFlood.com.

Twitter was the meeting place for members in the Des Moines Iowa area to share their stories on the Iowa floods. It was these conversations that drove Andy to create IowaFlood.com.

His first goal was to centralize the coverage by all the traditional, mainstream media. And then share it with his community members on Twitter.

Then he saw a broader, more personal, real-time coverage with his members on Twitter and their use of Flickr and YouTube and blog posts.

He expanded his vision to instead share THEIR stories with the masses, along with the coverage from traditional, mainstream media.

2 hours. That’s how much time he needed to launch the site from idea inception to buying domains to going live.

Kudos to Andy for not waiting for perfection instead choosing to get something up that worked and be open to ideas and suggestions for the site from the community members.

Resource Used:

Domain names: GoDaddy.com

Blogging Platform: WordPress.

Hosting: Mosso.com ( Shouts to them for their proactive customer service call to help optimize his site.)

Social Media Firehose: Yahoo Pipes. This pulls in to one feed the  content from various feeds with various social media resources based on key words. (Upper right corner on his site. Embed code is there to share the feed on your blog or website.)

Photo-sharing. Flickr. It’s easy to find photos about the floods in Iowa with keyword tags.

Content-sharing: wufoo.com. It’s a template you can add to your site to allow users to submit content directly to you. (Right, Andy?)

Video-sharing: YouTube. (duh)

Site Power: Community Members. Andy says: They power the site.

3 Indispensable Resources:

* Twitter

* WordPress

* Community Members.

Shouts:  Des Moines Register for their help with content and feeds.  We both agreed it’s nice to see them embrace the social media community and resources. Their Twitter Id is: dmregister.

Template for future events.  Andy’s created a template for future platforms devoted to events: conventions, concerts, art fairs, emergencies, disasters.

Andy’s Contact:

* Business: 48 Web Consulting
* Blog: Get a New Browser

Prediction: Michigan football roars bak in 2009 with some Florida-like speed and creativity.  Looking forward to it.

Andy’s Takeaway: Get on Twitter and Embrace Your Community.

Shouts to Andy: Without getting all sappy, a lot of shouts go to Andy, and his community, for building the site. It shows a lot of technical savvy. And it shows a lot of heart for his community. Kudos, Andy.

Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Talks

I find myself fascinated by Twitter and its community of users, the content found there, how it's used, not used, who uses it for what...And at the same time, I sometimes have the impression it's where the cool kids hang out. There's an unspoken (untweeted?) etiquette for posting, grammar, frequency, even a  little bit of a pecking order for who can comment on what topics.

Having said all that, I find it indispensable, really for broadening my networks, clarifying my thinking in real-time, showing me new uses of social media from people way out in front with its power and who've chosen to share their expertise with the community.

Here's a Q&A with Twitter's Biz Stone from Jennifer Leggio.

Link from Chris Brogan at, where else, Twitter.

Notes from Conversation with Jackie Huba

Here's some notes from my BlogTalk Radio show with Jackie Huba from The Swom and Church of the Customer.

• Word-of-mouth vs word-of-mouth marketing.  Word-of-mouth is a strategy; word-of-mouth marketing is a tactic. The first is a mission; the 2nd is an after-thought.

• DNA. Word of mouth is generated from the DNA of a company, when they give a reason or inspire their customers to talk about them, to volunteer to be their loyal sales force.

• Kudos to the person asking it. That's what Jackie answered when I asked her what’s so important about the Net Promoter Score from the Ultimate Question Survey. Ok, now what. You've found out the customer will/won't recommend you. Now what?

Exactly. Kudos to the person daring to ask a customer their opinion. Neither one of us are being facetious. Jackie pointed out so  many companies are scared to even talk to their customers, so let’s give kudos to the person asking it. That’s such a huge step. And once taken, you can’t really go back to ignoring the customer.

• Badge of Courage. Employees at Enterprise Rental wear their Net Promoter Score as a badge at company events. That shows how important it is. It’s measured and celebrated and heroes are made from that score. Heroes and careers.

• Customer Service is pro-active now. Using examples from Salesforce.com and their use of Yahoo Pipes (link and link) and  comcastcares at Twitter and Dell’s Ideastorm and blog response team, she points out that companies (the smart ones) are pro-actively seeking customer experience opportunities by engaging the customers where the customers live on social media.

• 4400 Tweets. Frank Aliason at Comcast began using Twitter (comcastcares ) to reach out to their customers. In less than 3 months he’s posted about 4400 tweets to Comcast customers in response to their needs for service.  That’s roughly over 1500 per month direct responses. Happy customers tend to tell 3-5 people about their experience. Now, multiply that message spread rate by the power of Twitter. And multiply it again by proactively reaching out to solve their issues before they become a dell hell-like firestorm.

• We are not an airline with great customer service. We are a great customer service organization that happens to be in the airline businessWe’re a customer service organization who just happens to fly airlines. - Colleen Barrett, CEO of Southwest Airlines. Church of the Customer Link

• Social networks’ growth comes from niche-markets, niche or specialized communities. Ning has over 250,000 communities. The most popular are very niche-oriented: firefighters, Lisa Nova (youtube), alumna, scrapbook makers.

• Employee Engagement Comes First. Dell built an EmployeeStorm internal community site to enlist their employees in creating solutions and understanding the need to reach out to their customers with the Ideastorm site. Very smart. See 2nd point about corporate DNA and its role in creating word-of-mouth.

• TheSWOM. Their current project. 835 members, great conversations from the members, great solutions for generating word-of-mouth from the members. And these solutions are happening nearly every day. And it's free. And it's helpful. Get over there. Become a member.

Thanks, Jackie.

It's the relationships...

Another dustup on the blogosphere about new technologies, what's it mean, who's a blogger 1.0, 2.0, does Twitter signal the end blogging or of even writing in complete sentences with sometimes somewhat correct grammar...some claiming this is the end, the end, my friend....

I have to chuckle a bit. The fluttery, breathless, tone to the discussions, raises the concerns to an almost armaggedon-like level.

Here in our little town, the conversations have moved from KC Diner and Chuck's Grill up through the late 70's to Taylor's Off-Broadway Grill to gas station/convenience store combos and then to the coffee shops with excellent pastries. (You know a trend's peaking when it hits Fairfield.) Each is its own community with their preferences for coffees and pastries and company and conversations. Occassionally one community  member wanders over to another community. Then starts another dustup of worry and breathless titters that the former community may be coming to an end. What with the better croissants over at Revelations or the better, but infinitely slower coffee at Cafe Paradiso.

Some of the community 1.0 members worry that the town's changing...and it's all going to hell and donuts were just fine...to dunk in your Maxwell House coffee, thank you very much. But, soon they show up at 2nd Street Cafe for some machine-made capuccino and to see what free wireless is really about.

They, we, often end up telling the same stories from the same perspective, drawing the same conclusions. Some call it wisdom of the crowds or mob mentality, group think or peer pressure.

Just like on the blogosphere.

All the time the conversations just keep going. And they keep going for the same reasons conversations continue in the blogosphere. People want to talk. People like to differentiate themselves. People like to bond and find community. And the ebb and flow of all these resources and folks' passion for them  ...have enabled the conversation to be in new places as Louis Gray's post, Blogging 2.0 Causing Friction with 1.0 Bloggers points out.

And whether it's donuts and machine-made capuccino...or Friendfeed and 140-character blog posts, the only important element is that another media, medium, place, spot, resource, community...exists to continue to have the conversation and explore and create and think and argue and clarify.  And the opportunity to leave and find another pastry, real or virtual, continues to exist so we can differentiate, separate and form up again.

More Thoughts for Twitter's Business Case

From Social Media Group blog, A Business Case for Twitter explains how Twitter can be leveraged (in non-evil ways) as part of an on-going and comprehensive social media strategy.

Maybe the most concise, crisp, thoughts on Twitter's use....Maybe that's why Social Media Group is such a force helping businesses navigate the world of web 2.0.

Much Ado About Twitter

There is much ado about Twitter. And Nancy Marmolejo from Viva Visibility gives us a YouTube video  that explains it all and includes some great people to follow.

Social Networks: Rushing to grow up

2 trends caught my attention this week about social media and it's rapid rise through adolescence.

* Cross-Platform migration.  Google, Facebook and MySpace have all announced ( or will announce) in the past 3-4 days their own APIs that allow their members to pull their profiles onto 3rd-party sites with ...a click or two. - Three's company or Three's a Crowd from TechCrunch.

* Ok, time to personalize my social network. And now it's time to pursue your own unique identity. Chris Brogan points out the next phase of maturation: Social Networks: Time to Specialize.

Don’t stop at the basics. Don’t just give me another place to make a profile and add friends. It has to give me much more than that before I care. And I think I’m speaking for the user base in general at this point.

Consider what might really make the software valuable and useful. Consider ways in which your targeted users might want to interact. Specialize instead of generalize.

The social network community seems to at the point where everyone's reached out and gathered their friends together and celebrated their common interests. And that was great. And in that process we realize we also have very unique interests, talents, and possibilities open to us. And we want to explore them with people who share the same interests and goals and possibilities.   

Personally, I think the next wave of growth comes not from bringing  migrating your profile from one platform to another, along with your friends and pictures and faves and links. That's kinda Basics+, really. I think the next phase of social networks growth comes with what Chris is saying, when we push social media to provide ways in which WE might want to interact. Specialize around OUR interests instead of generalize around YOUR abilities.

Links from Twitter posts by Dave Winer and Chris Brogan.

Update, an hour later after I wrote everything above this line, here's how it'll all end. How Tech Wars End, by Dave Winer.

Things are moving fast.

Twitter good for blogs?

Piers Fawkes thinks so.

What seems to have happened is that Twitter has taken many of the personal updates (e.g.: I’m on a plane, at a conference, thinking this, falling over there) off the blogs....and left them clearer, cleaner and more useful.

Yeah. Makes sense.

Where'd I hear about this? From Steve Rubel's twitter post.

Twitter : For or Against

17 For.

10 against.

You decide.

Link from Jaffe Juice.

Twitter Tool: CrowdStatus

From SheGeeks post titled Make Twitter a Crowd with Crowd Status:

The Crowdstatus web service allows you to create "crowds" or groups of your twitter followers and put them all in one place to see their updates.

Cool. I've wondered how you could create separate groups for specific messages. Now I know.

Link shout to AMSall on his twitter update Sunday.