The Way We Watch

19 Social Media To-Do's

If you are a new reader or an old one, thanks for stopping by.  What I do here is help readers with video, social networks, vlogging, and converse about the changing nature of marketing/PR and communications within the social web.

Let me know if what you see and read is helpful with a comment or tweet. Click @chrismingryan.

Today is a great day to:

• Start using RSS to make yourself an editor-in-chief of the social web.
• Send a Tweet.
• Be in the social networking game because Obama did it and look where he is now.
• Become an expert.
• Make a subtle change that makes something more truthful.
• Recharge your batteries with a classic film and tell someone about it.
• Interview your kids or a friend on what they reading, watching, and playing (you will learn something).
  
  

• Spice up your blog.
• Write a rant and share it in an email or post.
• Produce video - it's easier than ever before.
• Publicize others (hint: it's the secret of the social web) and help your tribe at the same time.
• Get the person who works for you a promotion by doing this.
• Make something beautiful. 
• Direct a video classified
   

• Surprise your audience.
• Develop an analogy.
• Create a Wordle and share it (they are fun).
• Introduce yourself with a joke.
• Encourage a blogger by subscribing to their blog.

photo credit: robinn.

Vimeo: The Stronger the Social Network the Better the Videos

Quick quiz.  Close your eyes and tell me what you think of when you hear the words YouTube.  Here’s my free association:  the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Sometimes really ugly. 

But, let’s say I wanted to know how the George Washington Bridge looks from a car window.  Sure enough – in jerky DV - there it is: ah, the magic of relevant search.  However, to browse YouTube clip by clip for excellent content would be kind of ridiculous.

Vimeo is an all-together different animal.  It is the go to destination for filmmakers and wannabe filmmakers searching for inspiration.  Owned by IAC (Barry Diller's conglomerate), the community is known for being supportive and celebrating the artist. It's led by a team of Community Directors (that’s their real title) like Blake Whitman. 

Vimeo boasts an ever-expanding list of members (1.3 million and growing) that includes director Michael Bay as well as creative wedding video production companies in the UK.

Strategically, Vimeo does not allow any video that actively promotes a product or service – except for self-promotion of members themselves.  And, that's why it works so well. Freed from the constraints of selling a product, filmmakers are liberated to explore anything that makes them excited. To simply do a great job and do it for the feedback is enough.

Whitman was hired from the community itself.  Still a filmmaker at heart, Whitman's mission along with his other community directors is to show, “that Vimeo is about creative video.  We’re looking to inspire members to take that next step… to go from a pro-sumer to a professional.”

(Note: Michael Bay need not apply).

Vimeo was the pioneer in allowing members to upload HD files (October 2007) so it quickly became a  home for serious filmmakers. Vimeo has never looked back.

The Vimeo difference plays itself out when filmmakers post a video.  Usually a video post includes the credits of who made the film, what camera it was shot on and any other inside information that is relevant like lenses or processing effects.   Community members will give support, ask technical questions, and give honest and open opinions of the work being shown.

In my post of 37 Viral Video Web Tips, I noted that the Vimeo staff picks are the videos to watch.  Here’s what Whitman looks for in one of his staff picks:
“If I can inspire someone through the staff picks that’s probably the best thing. The qualities I look for are something that is inspiring, something that is interesting something that is in the possibility of someone doing it themselves."  (Paging Mr. Bay. You won't be a staff pick any time soon).

Here are three of Blake’s picks that speak directly to what he’s looking for:

The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

Bellissimo from Leonardo Dalessandri on Vimeo.

Oil in Water from Shawn Knol on Vimeo.

Stop Frame As Metaphor
One staff pick video that would probably take a long time for Blake to do himself is The Long Haul.  A wickedly good stop frame animation and labor of love that Sylvain Dumais and his producing partners Full Serve Productions in Toronto put together.  Sylvain worked on the project during a long haul of two months and split the cost with the producers.  All the staff worked for free – but all are using the piece as a demo reel to show their services.

Stop Motion | The Long Haul from DUMAIS on Vimeo.

Knowing that Vimeo is a destination for not just supportive filmmakers but bloggers and agency types, Dumais didn’t think of premiering his piece anywhere but Vimeo.

With the help of Whitman's golden pick, the video went viral.  72,000 views in 11 days.  The video got picked up by Andrew Sullivan's website and then featured on other well-known blogs.  Sylvain has been on the phone with talent scouts, camera accessory manufacturers for sponsorships and Good Morning America.

Sylvain cherishes the nurturing environment that Vimeo has created: “Well, the Vimeo community has really great and generous feedback. It's a hub for a lot of creative people both professional and amateur and is somehow more serious then let's say, YouTube. So when people see something they like they often comment, mostly positively and constructively as they create video as well and know about the medium. Vimeo is always evolving where as YouTube looks the same since forever.  I'll say the most important and great thing about it is the content and the users.”

Of course the web is one great pool to steal from and Dumais knows with popularity comes the double edged sword of someone lifting your ideas.

Dumais: You know what I really think? I think that an ad agency will decide to do something really similar for whatever brand they work with as it often happen. If I'm lucky enough, they'll ask me to do it (or re-do it)! If not, I'll be able to say that that big production is inspired directly from my work. Either ways I'm winning out of it as it will get me attention.

I hope there is at least one smart bold agency out there that will ask Dumais to do make something completely new and different.

In the meantime, make something beautiful and upload it on Vimeo or just subscribe to the RSS of their staff picks here.

(If you liked this post won't you please comment or subscribe using the links below).

Can Facebook Reduce Heart Disease?

In my last post on social networking predictions, I predicted that in 2009 it would be discovered that Facebook lowered heart disease.

Sounds far-fetched?

The introduction to Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, tells the story of a town in Pennsylvanian named Roseto made up almost entirely of native Italians from a small town in Italy.

"In Roseto (Pennsylvania), virtually no one under 55 died of a heart attack, or showed any signs of heart disease. For men over 65, the death rate from heart disease in Roseto was roughly half that of the United States as a whole. The death rate from all causes in Roseto, in fact, was something like thirty or thirty-five percent lower than it should have been"

Gladwell writes of a Doctor, Stewart Wolf, who performed an exhaustive study of the town and surmises from the findings that what had insulated the people of this Pennsylvanian town - was a social network.

"They looked at how the Rosetans visited each other, stopping to chat with each other in Italian on the street, or cooking for each other in their backyards. They learned about the extended family clans that underlay the town's social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof, and how much respect grandparents commanded....They counted twenty-two separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2000 people."

Isn't that what Facebook is doing so well? In my own experience I'm getting back in touch with friends from my ancient past (grade school through college) all the way up to present day clients.

I'm learning what they are doing, meeting their immediate families, and discovering what causes are important to them.

We're sharing the mundane, the sweet, and the sad. Recently a FB friend passed away unexpectedly. Her "wall" became an instant memorial where I learned so much that I never knew about her.

I'm going to keep my Facebook circle small. I want this circle of friends to stay intimate and important to my life for years to come.

And, I'm hoping it keeps my heart strong.

How are you using Facebook?  

image credit: Bob Fornal

How To Use Social Networks & Media for the First Time

 

       We were all newbies once. If you're still not sure that social networking is right for you - just know - that I was like you.  I'm here to tell you the water is fine... come on in.

I am a principal in a communications firm. My partner, Dan Krystallis, and I both work with existing clients and market to new ones to constantly diversify and grow our business. My brief but intense participation in social networks and media has already brought me new contacts and new opportunities.

LinkedIn

I first started using LinkedIn in 2007.  For those of you unfamiliar with LinkedIn (though I think that's a real minority), LinkedIn allows you to place your professional story on-line and then start searching for people who you can include in your network.

LinkedIn makes it quite easy to load your email contacts and find who also has a LinkedIn profile.
When I first started out, I wanted people in my network who I actually knew pretty well. These people were my past colleagues, vendors, and past clients; people who could vouch for me.

The value of your network is to find out who are the people in your networks' network.

It's like that Kevin Bacon game.  Through Kevin Bacon every single actor is 1 or 2 degrees away from him because he's been in so many films. The larger your network, the better the chance that that Director of PR from Johnson & Johnson is somehow related to you.

If you've been working in the professional world for a while there are a whole bunch of people that you've lost touch with.  They are still out there. Some of them are doing well. Very well.

When I was with AT&T in the mid-nineties, we teamed with a revolving door of top notch marketing, events and communications people.

LinkedIn gives you a great reason to find people from your past.  Simply wanting to get back in touch is a great excuse to connect with people from your past.

I remembered a creative director by looking at a decade old address book of mine.  There he was in LinkedIn.

He remembered me (in a positive way!) and I asked if I could say a brief hello at the new firm he had been working for the last year.  A short meeting with him led to two more contacts and meetings at his company.

I haven't received  a contract from this company.  But they know the caliber of my work, and I believe they will call (if I remind them every now and then) when the right opportunity presents itself. (BTW, from my experience, on average, it takes a year - from the initial meeting - to land a new job from a cold call or referral that I engineered).

In August of this year, I wrote an email to 5 LinkedIn network contacts that I haven't see in over a decade and in some cases two decades.  In the letter I asked them for one referral. Just one.

Three of the five blew me off.  But the other two gave me names that I followed up with and held a face to face meeting to show my work.  Again, no job yet. But seed planting is what having a business is all about.

This morning, a person in my network said hello (via LinkedIn's built in email system) wished me a happy holiday and sounded very interested in the idea of partnering next year. Why today?

Here's what I think: she must have seen a status update that I had just typed - it caught her eye - and it set off a series of good recollections of the last time we worked together.

I try to make my status updates on LinkedIn really particular: "Christopher is pre-interviewing Grad Students for a Higher Ed video."  I figure if  prospective clients see my status and know I'm working hard at something - they will feel comfortable working with me knowing that I'm "in the game" delivering value for clients like themselves every day.

A couple additional thoughts:

I don't share my entire client base on LinkedIn. There is a lot of competition in my industry and I don't want that competition looking at whom I work for and then swooping in.  That's not very open-social-networky of me. But it's a policy that makes me sleep better.

I've made my LinkedIn profile available (It functions as an "About" page) for readers of this blog on the top menu.

Facebook

I joined Facebook two months ago. Boy, was I late to the party.  So many folks from High School and College days were there and interested in getting back and touch and "friending" me.

Now for some people getting back in touch with past folks from when they were 14 - 22 is the last thing they want to do.

But for me, some of the most interesting and intelligent people that I have known through the years happened to go to my high school and college.

Their status updates are witty and always worth reading. The adventures they are having in their professional lives are worth knowing about.

I've even connected with my old Geometry teacher.

With each new "friend" I usually have an email or two conversation with them or IM  to update them on what I've been doing in terms of family and work.

These friends are now like "agents".  As they go about their daily lives and if they happen to run across a video communication need, I am on the tip of their brain because they've been reading my status updates (sometimes funny - sometimes work related - sometimes family related). Also, all my blog posts are on my "wall" for any and all to see.

Here's what has happened since I joined Facebook.

Remember that Geometry teacher I told you about. He left teaching and is now the Chief Sustainability officer for a wonderful non-profit organization in NYC. We've been discussing ways to use social networks and web video marketing for E-philanthropy, to find new employees and to foster better internal communications. I've just been asked to be on one of his organization's advisory boards in the coming year.

I started Blogging. With Facebook's ease of billboarding what is important in my friend's lives, I was able to check out blogs written by my FB friends.  Every post is given an automatic status update (Typepad has an app that makes this happen) and it was just so easy to click and read what was on my friends' mind.

Seeing that my FB friends could be my first initial audience, I was ready to start writing.

Blogging

There are a lot of blogs out there. Do we really need one more. If what you have to say is interesting then yes we do need one more.

Don't know how to start? I started by reading other people's blogs. For me it was Adam Singer's blog The Future Buzz.  It really inspired me.  He's got a great voice.

You'll find that that good blogs offer great information or great story telling.

My blog tries to be helpful to people who work in PR, Marketing and Communications but I also want it to be of interest to the person who "Stumbles upon" it.

It's a bit of a treadmill. I don't write every day. But I do think about what to write about every day.

In terms of a marketing perspective, it has been really fun to try to get people to read the blog.

So far I've found the best way to get readers is to get write dynamic material that people can use or that touches a nerve.  Of the ten posts I've written the one word headline "Optimism" struck a chord and I went from 25 readers to 295 overnight. How did it happen? One word. Twitter.

Twitter

I attempted to join Twitter three times. But I didn't get it. Who was around to twitter? Who had the time to tweet?

It was only after I started my blog that twittering made sense to me.

Because my blog touches on the confluence of Social Networking and Video, it has the chance to appreciated by a large audience.

That audience is on Twitter.

After every post I try to think up a headline (a real grabber) of what my post is about to entice some followers to read it. With the Optimism post, I wrote this on Twitter: "Optimism. It's out there. Somewhere. Share it." I posted the URL of the post along side it.

Those seven words hooked in some influential twitter folks who have combined over 12,000 followers.

My tweet was re-tweeted and broadcasted out to those 12,000 people.  It was a taste of that vaunted quality called "Viral" and I have to say it was fun to see it happen.

However, all my tweets can't be about me and my blog postings. That will get tired really quick.

My tweets tend to ask questions of individual people I follow. I also like to broadcast a particular person that I'm meeting that day to let others know about him or her.

I don't have a lot of followers, but the ones I do have I received by putting my twitter address at the end of comments on other people's blogs.  Also the more you Tweet, the more you start to converse and say something that adds value that others will notice. And their followers will want to start following you.

You can follow me by going to www.twitter.com/chrismingryan

Hope to see you online...

The Times Are Kinda Changin'

      I've been thinking a lot about how a guy made a two year journey from obscurity to having the attention of millions.

In those two short years he went from being in front of small appreciative groups to being center stage in front of thousands at a protest march on Washington.

No, not President Elect Obama.  I'm talking about Bob Dylan.

Dylan's first album sold 5000 copies. Within two years his songs were being played all over the world. His name became a household word. Other than having an amazing song writing talent, how did he do it?  If we look to social networking there are some clues.

1. Strategic Networking.  Dylan found his network. He met the super-influencers by moving to NYC.  He knew the place to be seen: Greenwich Village. In the Village he met other artists which led to playing on their albums which led to meeting record producers like John Hammond from Columbia records. 
2. Surround Yourself With The Best People. Dylan chose the best place to be seen and heard and in so doing met the best people. But he also made some shrewd choices. He quickly signed up for representation with Albert Grossman. Grossman's big act was Peter, Paul and Mary.
3. Spread Your Message - Not By Yourself. Peter, Paul and Mary's single of Blowin in the Wind sold 300K copies in its first week. Dylan (knowing his own short comings) smartly let others sing his work. After the success of Blowin in the Wind (I'm sure he didn't mind the royalty checks), a string of other popular bands had hits with Dylan's work: Sonny and Cher, The Byrds, and the Hollies.

Today, those with a message have to do the same thing. However, we don't have to move to Greenwich Village (the  real estate is too pricey anyway).  All we have to do is find good brands to work with, create a compelling message and find a social network to watch it grow.

Image credit to: joshuawoulf

Send me your thoughts.

Yes We Can (have one more blogger)!

       This is my first blog posting.  What a time to start! The economy is in the tank. Corporations have tightened or completely stopped spending.  The same is true for consumers. 

Raise your hand if your company has just laid off x percentage of staff.  I see a lot of hands raised.

So this blog post comes at a time when reaching the most influential people in a cost effective manner is more important than ever for Mr. and Ms. Marketer.

I want this blog to be a running commentary as the world of social media becomes ubiquitous to three of the four screens we use on average every day.

Here’s what the landscape looks like to me: companies need to communicate with super-influencers (the people who spread opinionated news good and bad via word of mouse).  Luckily for the marketer, these people (from tweens to seniors) live on social networks in huge numbers.

To engage this audience, marketers are starting to use web video through social networks.  Many smart companies have already created successful campaigns (more about them later).  Many more need to start thinking about it now.

Since I’ve been in the communications business for the last 18 years, I hope to be on the front line of this transition. I am looking forward to telling you what I find. 

A few shout outs: I first read the viral term “Word of Mouse” in an e-book by David Meerman Scott.  Also: Adam Singer, Dan Greenfield, Chris Brogan, Jon Roemer and Andew Asnes all have wonderful blogs that have inspired me to start writing. 

Send me your thoughts.