This is the quandary faced every day by social networkers as they create and manage their online profiles and list their favorite books. I don’t know that it’s possible to approach these activities in a way that reflects who you really are. Many of us certainly must ask ourselves: What kind of impression will I make with these choices? How will people evaluate me?

Thirty years ago encyclopedias were popular. You could put 15 leather bound volumes in an oak bookcase and impress your friends with how important education is in your home. Back then we would have called this “putting on airs.” Today it is called “building your own personal brand.”

I got to thinking about this yesterday as I participated in some interesting Twitter conversations speculating on whether you could actually learn anything from what books a person had on their online bookshelf on Facebook’s Visual Bookshelf, Good Reads, BooksIRead, and so on.

What’s on your bookshelf? Are there books there that you didn’t actually read, or that you didn’t like? I admit that I am a book snob in general, and my bookshelf reflects this, but it’s not online artifice because it is a reflection of what I actually do read.

Tags: iread, good reads, online bookshelf, facebook

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Some of the best lessons are taught by evaluating real world examples, but I detest the piling on mentality in social media, and this morning, I was guilty of this, and I apologize for that.

We (I in other words) need to remember there is a difference between a case study, and a person. It’s hard to know where to draw the line, and how to discuss the behavior without attacking the person.

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Who are the real Twitter luminaries and which Twitter stars are the creations of fans and troublemakers?

Check out my June column on Talent Zoo, “15 Tweets of Fame.” I’d love your help expanding the list, so if you know of any well known public figures on Twitter, authentic or not, that I missed, please add them below in a comment. Thanks!

Tags: Henry Rollins, MC Hammer, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Colbert, Chuck Norris, David Letterman, Bill Gates, Borat, William Shatner, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Seth Godin

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A fork “on the road,” or “in the road?” You be the judge

While I have not located any definitive reference citations to support my contention, I would argue that there is much precedence for the use of “in” in this context, notwithstanding that I was trying to create a linkage between the actual fork I discovered, and the colloquial expression “fork in the road” having nothing really to do with cutlery.

There are dozens of situations in which “in” is used in common parlance in connection with streets and roads, even when, more accurately, something might be said to be “on.” We would never say, for example, “the plate is in the table,” but we would say:

• Why is that man standing in the street?
• That car is stopped in the middle of the road?
• There’s a bump in the road.
• There’s a dog in the street.

In each of these examples, replacing “in” with “on” would be awkward and uncommon, or dare I say, wrong. This usage is highly variable with other forms of streets. One might say “in the highway,” though that is a bit stilted, but one would not say “in the freeway.” (Brits and Canadians might.) Jack Kerouac would say “On the Road,” but it seems only when we are talking about a person traveling, or en route do we say “on the road” vs. “in the road.” For example, we are “On the Road to Mandalay,” but not in it.

I would be interested in any “official” rulings on this point.

I remain, your friend in letters,

J.R. Postman

Tags: on the road, in the road, rayanne langdon, fork in the road

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While I attempted to categorize types of blog posts, Leah does a nice job describing the varied and not always flattering kinds of bloggers out there, including:

• the attention junkie/those who need an ego fixation
• the lazy/undisciplined blogger
• all over the place/depends on the blogger’s mood that day
• antagonistic/this blogger is usually unforgiving and angry, usually tries to be persuasive
• impulsive/is a serial blogger with abandoned blogs
• story telling/often a deep thinker

Leah did a great job and unfortunately, I saw myself in far too many of her descriptions. For example, I’ve got a draft blog post titled “Confessions of a Serial Blogger” about all of my abandoned blogs. But I’m not an attention junkie. No way.

Tags: leah mcchesney, mediameme

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Every free video service, and even some of the paid video distribution networks, have what I call “drag.” They pull along a little red wagon full of undesirable content behind them. Positioned alongside this often questionable content, your message could end up sending a viewer to a competitor, or worse still, cause them to be offended.

This tag-along content comes in several forms.

Advertising

Many video upload/viewing sites present advertising messages alongside videos. Revver for example presents subtle Google Ads or banners, such as an ad for Verizon, at the top of the page. I did a search on “women entrepreneurs” and above and alongside serious business videos I was presented with ads for a wacky Martin Lawrence movie, jewelry, and a banner ad promoting a medication for bipolar disorder.

Ads on some sites are extremely inappropriate, offering Viagra and Cialis, or dating services, adding an undesirable sleaze factor to the viewing experience. Perhaps worse is the prospect, quite real, of a viewer being hijacked by an ad for a competitive product or service.

This is not true of all sites. YouTube and Vimeo do not seem to have this problem. I can’t say unequivocally whether this is universal for these sites, but I did not see advertising, other than promotions for other videos, while I was browsing these sites.

Related Videos

Another area of risk is in “related” videos offered by many services that by virtue of a few keywords become informally linked to yours. YouTube, for example, offers a scrolling list of related videos. This offers a multitude of ways for your message to be diluted or connected with something you’d prefer not to have your company associated with.

Delta Airlines ran a contest and identified a real employee to record a safety video, which the company then posted on YouTube. The campaign was a big success, gaining national media attention, and the video has close to one million views (more I would argue than live flight attendants have received in the history of aviation.)

If you visit the YouTube page displaying the video (you get there either by going to YouTube, searching “Delta Flight Safety,” and playing the video, or by seeing the video somewhere else and clicking on the embedded player,) you’ll see YouTube’s list of related videos, which includes one from a disgruntled passenger titled Delta Flight 6499, SEVEN HOURS on the tarmac. Does Delta really want to drive viewers to this?

Comments

Video upload sites that offer viewers the opportunity to comment also pose risks. This is really a problem on YouTube, where it seems there are thousands of people with nothing better to do than leave comments like “this video sucks” and “fail!” Maybe your video IS bad, but a hundred comments confirming this fact don’t help.

There are other ways to upload and play video without exposing your company’s message to these kinds of scenarios. I don’t claim to know everything about either all free video services or paid services, but I do know there are alternatives.

A lot of companies are using Brightcove for example, where you pay by the month based on number of streams viewed. You can “skin” the player with your logo and company colors. It is embeddable, so it can be inserted into a company blog post, social media newsroom page, or on a third-party blog just like a YouTube video. The difference is, you’re now driving traffic to YOUR site instead of YouTube. Sure, more people are visiting YouTube, so if large numbers of views is your goal, I recommend BOTH approaches. Do you own branded embed on your company sites and then upload the same video to YouTube. Brightcove also manages hosting, so you don’t have to worry that demand spikes and bandwidth will be a problem.

There are a number of similar offerings to Brightcove, such as Permission TV, Maven Networks, KIT Digital, The FeedRoom, and VMIX, Twistage, and Move Networks. I have singled out Brightcove not because it is the best of these (though it may be), but because I am familiar with it.

Many of the services I’ve listed above, and many others, also offer streaming video, and this is generally done with an embeddable player, so most of the same concerns apply.

So if you want to upload video as part of your communications strategy, remember you have many options, and things might not be as simple as they seem. Make sure that your company’s message isn’t tarnished by being presented in the wrong context.

Tags: Brightcove, Vimeo, YouTube, Permission TV, Maven Networks, KIT Digital, The FeedRoom, VMIX, Twistage, Move Networks, embeddable video player, enterprise

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I was working on a blogging training presentation for a corporate client last night, trying to answer these questions. Here’s what I came up with:

Experiential: The experiential post uses personal experience to tell a relevant story. It is distinct from the trivial post, which can also be a narrative, because the experiential element is a story telling technique, but the larger story in the post is relevant to the company’s business. An experiential post might be based on observations made at a conference, solving a customer problem onsite or by phone, or even of a longer term experience, such as bringing a product to market, or hiring a new management team. A well written experiential post can be interesting and engaging. I write speeches for executives, and have always found that personal anecdotes are extremely effective and credible in bringing the company’s products and services alive.

Trivial: A trivial post is an off-topic post about personal experiences such as travel, or the purchase of the latest consumer electronics gadget. These do not generally relate to the business, but they can be useful in helping the blogger connect with his or her audience through shared experiences. The typical trivial post covers things like “should I get one of the new iPhones?” and “the cable company made me wait four hours.” From an emotional standpoint, the biggest byproduct of Web 2.0 is that people are empowered to whine and complain about things frustrate them, and this is often the kind of content found in a trivial post. While it does create a bond between the blogger and readers of the blog, it can become tiresome, and may reflect poorly on the executive’s public persona.

Strategic: An executive blog is perfect for communicating strategic information, such as quarterly results, a product announcement, a launch, or the goings-on at a major company event. Strategic posts are “deliberate,” that is they are designed and timed and not spontaneous. In a large company they are likely to be group efforts (despite all the hoopla about authenticity) in order to align with approved messaging and comply with financial disclosure requirements and other regulations. (Don’t let any CEO of a large company tell you that he or she does these posts solo. It just doesn’t happen that way.)

These tend to be important, particularly in terms of offering blog visitors something to comment on, but are not as interesting or effective as experiential or analytical posts.

Analytical: An analytical post offers an in depth discussion of a particular technology, industry trend, socioeconomic situation, business strategy or other topic. These posts are most like traditional print commentary in that they involve research, and while espousing the blogger’s point of view, should show balance and quote credible third party sources. A well written analytical post is great for “selling” the company’s strategy, or helping explain why the company chose a certain approach to a product or service. This kind of post also helps the executive be seen as engaged and knowledgeable about things that go on outside the four walls of the company.

Responsive: The responsive post is generally a rebuttal or reaction to another blog or a column. It isn’t really an altogether different post category, but since it is a response, the structure and the tone are unique. It can have many or all the elements of the analytical post. The responsive post may be driven, for example, by the need to get the company’s point of view into the conversation in reaction to a highly critical post, or to make people aware of a highly complimentary post. It’s also useful for generating topics when you’re not sure what to blog about, but when instead of reacting, you “blog first,” you start the conversation and you control the agenda. By starting the conversation, you better demonstrate originality, and the courage of your convictions, instead of taking a reactionary, and often defensive stance.

TOH Link: Many bloggers like to publish favorite links with little or no commentary and some even maintain separate link blogs for this purpose. The Tip-Of-the-Hat link post is the little brother to the responsive post. It is often just a few sentences long, and may start “great post by Dave on why social media is like the Peloponnesian War…” with a link to the post. Without at least a few lines on why Dave’s post is so great, and a few reactions or contributions that expand the conversation, these kinds of posts are of little utility in a corporate environment.

Educational: The educational post is often Web 1.0 content in disguise, but if the blogger is knowledgeable about the topic and involved in writing the post, it can be effective. These often have titles like “Top 10 Strategies for Long Term Data Archiving,” or “Popular Models for Utility Computing.” (You can see from all of the hypotheticals in this piece that I have spent WAY too much time in IT.) A former Google engineer told me that the Google algorithm loves numbered lists. This kind of post also has the potential to bore readers and evoke cries of “marketing hype.”

Crisis: The crisis post is a special case and difficult to critique in this framework. These are an unusual kind of responsive post in that they are based on reactions to events, announcements and other critical situations that may seriously affect the company’s reputation and its financial health. This type of post doesn’t really fit in this discussion, because it’s not something you make a strategic choice about. My advice: try not to have crises. If you do, post as soon as you can, briefly and honestly.

There are no doubt 100 varieties of blog posts that I haven’t covered here, but I thought I’d share this in case you find it useful. I’ve used similar explanations to help new bloggers answer the question, “what should I blog about and what tone should I use?”

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