Will Premium Content Cross the Last Mile?

The last mile in social media has proven to be a long one.

Several weeks back I published a blog post entitled the Three Phases of Social Media Maturation that generated significant interest. It attracted more than 2,000 readers in a week with nearly 25 re-tweets and a set of excellent comments.

The post overviewed a set of lessons learned we’ve picked up at Strategic Communications Group (Strategic) in the execution of social media campaigns on behalf of global leaders like Microsoft, British Telecom (BT), BearingPoint and Sun Microsystems, as well as emerging growth companies such as GovDelivery and Epok.

The initial two phases focus on defining program goals, establishing an editorial content strategy, publishing on a consistent schedule, and promoting in targeted social networks and online communities. When successful, the result is the attraction of a loyal, thriving and expanding community of readers and followers.

The third phase – what a client of ours at Microsoft referred to as the last mile – involves tapping this community of followers to identify business leads and opportunities. Of course, the tactics employed must remain consistent with the tenets of appropriate social network participation. This means no spamming or shameless self promotion. Rather, the mission is to motivate the right targets to raise their hand and express the desire for a more meaningful business dialogue.

It’s during the last mile that the return on investment (ROI) of a social media campaign becomes real and measurable. This is why the frustration meter at Strategic is on the rise. We’ve had success in enterprise sales support and, when coupled with competitive intelligence gathering, we are set to deliver on deal capture programs for multi-million dollar procurements a client may be pursuing.

Yet, the area of straight lead generation remains a work in progress. We’ve employed a number of approaches -- including an e-book offer, survey requests and wiki collaboration -- with marginal return. Perhaps the give-away hasn’t been compelling? Or the survey participation required too much time? We are still thinking this through.

We are also now evaluating how to effectively incorporate premium content into the editorial strategy of our social media campaigns. Tech blog extraordinaire GigaOm has given us a model to emulate. Their recent introduction of a $79 a year subscription service called GigaOm Pro creates a potentially lucrative new revenue source, without negatively impacting the loyalty of the blog’s readership base.

For Strategic’s clients, we do not anticipate publishing premium content via our social media efforts for direct revenue generation. Rather, the offer of high-value case studies, white papers, customer interviews, etc could be the tactic that helps us cross that last mile.

Bloggers in the Crosshairs

There are lots of things we can accept as not particularly good for your health. Smoking comes to mind. Loading up on salt in your diet isn’t so smart either. And for me, playing basketball against guys who are typically 10 years younger produces a healthy revenue stream for my orthopedist.

Blogging should not be an activity that falls into the high-risk category. Yet, for a number of profile, influential bloggers this appears to be the case.

Consider GigaOm’s Om Malik. He is a true innovator and helped craft a viable Web-based publishing model. Yet, at about this time last year he suffered a heart attack at a relatively young age.

Om is still banging away on the keyboard, but much of the content for the blog now comes from his cadre of supporting writers.

Even scarier is today’s announcement from TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington that he plans to “take some time off and get a better perspective on what I’m spending my life doing.”

The impetus for Arrington’s decision was a recent encounter with a scorned entrepreneur at the DLD Conference in Germany. This knucklehead crossed paths with Arrington in a crowd and spat in his face before slinking away.

Oh yeah…there was also the death threat Arrington and his family received last summer from a nut case with a felony record and a gun. Arrington was forced to hide out at his parents’ house because the police can only intervene once a person acts on the threat.

Erick Schonfeld wrote an excellent post about Data Privacy Day in which he pointed out:

“The more of our lives that we put online, the less privacy we have. It is as simple as that. And this is a problem that will just get worse over time. You cannot be fully engaged on social networks, blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, FriendFeed, and all the rest without opening yourself up to phishers, scammers, and identity thieves.”

Bloggers put a whole lot of themselves out there for public consumption and the risks that come with that are real. I know. I get lots of nefarious Email solicitations for investment scams and business opportunities.

Plus, I even warranted my own threat last year after writing a post on crisis communications. It was vague, so I gave it little attention. But, in light of Arrington’s dilemma a threat might register a bit more.

This is a real issue and something an executive should carefully consider prior to engaging in social media. My take is that the value delivered -- increased visibility, thought leadership, lead generation and search engine optimization – far outweighs the risk.

Hopefully, TechCrunch’s Arrington will reach the same conclusion. His contribution to the technology community is incredibly valuable.

Media's Mel Brooks-like Reporting

In his movie History of the World, Part I producer, director and actor Mel Brooks repeatedly proclaims that “it’s good to be the king.” Although he was playing the role of French king Louis XVI, Brooks’ catchphrase most likely captures the sentiments of Google’s leadership posse – Schmidt, Brin and Page.

That’s because even their me-too product announcements generate a whirlwind of press attention, and send competitors scurrying into the shadows. Consider Google’s entry into the Web analytics space last week with its Ad Planner service. Market leader ComScore’s stock tumbled 23 percent in a day.

The Washington Post’s Kim Hart led her story with this insightful observation, “Suddenly having Google as a competitor could quickly spell death for a smaller firm.” Buried in the article was the point that advertisers may be reluctant to let Google measure the effectiveness of ads placed in its other services.

Google Enters ComScore’s Turf
Washington Post
http://tinyurl.com/3fue8m


This week Google trumpeted a new virtual world and chat service called Lively. While the New York Times fawned over Google and its innovation, it took blog GigaOM to provide a much-needed dose of perspective:

On first glance, Lively seems too similar to several existing MMOs, making it an also-ran without a key market distinguisher to be truly compelling (besides being from Google). You can stream YouTube videos in these rooms and embed rooms on websites, and it’s got appealing cartoon visuals and a fairly intuitive interface, but that’s true of numerous online worlds already out there.


I have repeatedly applauded Google for its efforts to develop new services as a means of diversifying its revenue. The company could easily rest on the success (and profits) of its search business. Yet, it recognizes the need to innovate to remain in a position of leadership and strength.

The concern I have is with the lack of insight and analysis provided by journalists when it comes to reporting on market leading companies. Their responsibility is to inform and educate, and that demands asking tough questions.

If business and trade media continue to go through the motions, the reader exodus to online news sources and blogs will accelerate.


Google Introduces a Cartoonlike Method for Talking in Chat Rooms
New York Times
http://tinyurl.com/6zkhw5

How Lively? Google’s Me-Too Virtual World
http://gigaom.com/2008/07/08/google-lively/

Mending Media Mistakes

It eventually happens to all public relations professionals. A corporate executive is misquoted in an article or a media outlet inadvertently reports an inaccurate fact or statistic. With traditional print media, your best hope was for a correction to be published in a future issue.

It’s different with Web-based media. Check out how the influential bloggers at GigaOM corrected a fact in their assessment of Monster.com’s acquisition of Affinity Labs.

The take-away here: it’s important to quickly take action if your company is misrepresented in an article. Contact the journalist, point out the inaccuracy and validate your suggested correction with supporting facts and/or a third-party resource.


Monster.com Pays $61M to Get into Social Networking
Posted: 04 Jan 2008 02:57 PM CST

Career site Monster Worldwide has bought social networking startup Affinity Labs for $61 million in cash, the two companies said today. A jobs site getting into business networking makes a little more sense than, for example, Cisco buying Tribe.net and Five Across, but the purchase price seems rather high. Affinity was just getting off the ground and had raised only $6 million from Mayfield Fund and Trinity Ventures.

Affinity Labs’ products consists of seven recently launched sites aimed at various professions, among them the informatively named NursingLink, PoliceLink and ArtBistro. None of them are seeing traction yet — VentureBeat reports fewer than 500,000 visitors per month in total.

Update: The company contacted us to say it has 800,000 visitors per month and about a million registered members. Affinity CEO Christopher Michel contended that the acquisition price was appropriate given Affinity was generating “not a small amount of revenue” through highly targeted advertising including email newsletters and lead-generation. He also pointed out that Goldman Sachs released an analyst note praising the acquisition.

At the same time, shares of Monster hit a two-year low today due to forecasted online recruitment declines.

There is some history here — Monster was already providing advertising to Affinity and Affinity was giving Monster account holders access to its sites. Further, Affinity CEO Christopher Michel had sold Military Advantage, also a Mayfield investment, to Monster for $39.5 million in 2004 after raising $31 million in funding, so maybe the shareholders were able to defer a better return to a few years later.

At last check, shares of Monster (MNST) were down $1.14 at $27.79.