TheWayoftheWeb

A bit of a half-formed thought I needed to share whilst spending some time removing a shockingly large amount of unused applications from my PC and trying to rationalise my ever-increasing collection of email addresses and online identities.

When it comes to introducing social media marketing and building content and community at Bauer Media, it isn’t a simple case of just deciding every brand should be on Facebook, for example, and it magically happening. A large part of the work is deciding and clarifying the objectives of using a new channel, and also looking at the benefits in terms of allocating resources, whether financial or human.

Hence why I spend a reasonable amount of time looking at work flows, and working out how we can most effectively work across various channels, and which elements of content work best when shared across various places.

In plain English, it means working out which content we should import into Facebook, or whether we should automate updates to Twitter for certain things, and which location makes most sense for teams to manually update etc.

The irony being that my own profiles and workflows for my two blogs, Twitter profile etc etc have been done on such an ad hoc basis, I really need to sit down and work out a workflow for my personal online world.

And I don’t think I’m the only one.

Which started me thinking about which specialist skills in content, marketing, strategy and management are going to increasingly become things that most people will be using:

• For instance, when it comes to attention-grabbing headlines, how many people are learing how to craft effective content in their Facebook status or tweets on a daily basis, without even consciously thinking about it.
• How many people are starting to think about which sites they want to use, and how to effectively update them efficiently?
• How many people are starting to learn about sharing content and marketing it via social networks and social bookmarking sites simply because they want to be more popular, without ever realising they’re marketing themselves?
• Are people doing their own personal PR, emailing and following people who might repeat their content?

I don’t mean this in terms of people using buzzwords like ‘personal brands‘ – that’s for marketing and aspiring marketing people to make it sound more glamourous and exciting.

I mean this in terms of someone who could come from any walk of life, using the internet, and almost subconsciously incorporating various skills because they want people to see their Youtube video, or to get more friends on Facebook or Myspace.

There’s an understandable backlash from experienced digital marketing people against the growing number of ’social media experts’ who have a personal Twitter account but haven’t demonstrated their work for their own company or anyone elses. And I’m certainly not saying that this means anyone could run a marketing campaign without any experience or training.

But I just wonder, in addition to the rise of amateurs who are uploading great photography or editing videos etc, whether there is the same blurring of lines between professional management skillsets and what everyone is starting to do as a normal part of their internet life.

So help me out: What traditional management, marketing, publishing, strategy type skills do you see becoming used by everyone, even on a basic level – and what implications do you think it has for the future? Will everyone be more aware of what goes on within a company? And is that a good thing?

You may have already seen the blog outcry regarding comments made by a Ryanair employee after Jason Roe claimed to have found a bug in the Ryanair site.

The comments on his blog included the gem: “what self respecting developer uses a crappy CMS such as word press anyway” – which got picked up by a certain Matt Mullenweg, and a lot of other Wordpress users (Guess which CMS I use and recommend!)

Then the official response from Ryanair poured petrol on the fire:

(From Travolution) Stephen McNamara from Ryanair said:

“Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion.

“It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again.

“Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel”

Now both Ryanair and boss Michael O’Leary are not afraid of controvery or picking a fight.

But…

Google blog search for Ryanair Feb 24, 2009. Top blog is Matt Mullenwegs

Then comes….

Google News search for Ryanair Feb 24

Resulting in:

Normal Google Search: Feb 25 - Idiot Bloggers in at #4

What is interesting is that Ryanair currently has a fairly strong position in terms of competitors (It’s them and Easyjet, really), and it’s unlikely to see any strong rivals enter the market in the current economic climate.

And certainly previous controversies, or plans just announced to increase charges for luggage etc, haven’t hurt them too much in the old media world.  They had cheap prices and some name awareness.

But there’s no guarantee someone couldn’t arrive with a difference approach if the market is viable – for instance Jetblue or Southwest?

And funniest of all:

Imagine any other company actively courting negative publicity and high ranking negative search returns on the same day as it’s revealed Ryanair plan to keep customer costs down by selling advertising on their booking website.

And Brand Republic also says: ‘Nearly all of Ryanair’s flights are booked online, which the airline plans to use to bring in advertising from non-travel and FMCG brands.’

In summary:

They’ve gone out of their way to guarantee prominent negative results on a major source of almost all of their revenue, on which they are building plans to advertise irrelevant companies which will surround a site on which people want to complete a purchase quickly and efficiently, and on which a confusing bug/anomaly has been discovered.

Bonus extras:

Compare that to Richard Branson phoning someone who complained about Virgin airline food.

Suddenly that cheap flight might not seem worth the saving, particularly when a sandwich, crisps and a drink can cost £10, a mobile phone call is £3 per minute, and it costs you £10 each way to check your luggage, which is likely to rise shortly.

Would anyone now believe;

““Overpriced retailers like Stansted have conspired with the airlines to get passengers to show up three hours early to spend money in their overpriced shops,” Mr O’Leary said. (The Times).

Or:

‘Ryanair critic called ‘idiot blogger’ by staff member. After flying with them last month, I feel like one too’ (The Telegraph)

I received a good response after yesterday post on Virgin Radio becoming Absolute Radio…thanks to everyone that Stumbled, Dugg, or Twittered it, or came along and had a look.

I must have audio on my mind, because although I’m not a huge fan of podcasts, there are a couple I felt I should mention.  I’ve never been a fan of talk radio, so I never really gave podcasts as much of a chance as I probably should have done – especially with a commute that’s done in about 20 minutes.

But maybe that’s partly down to hearing subjects I want to actually listen to – until podcasts it was reserved for the vary occasional audio biography or documentary about my favourite musicians.

Now I’m spending a lot of time walking around comforting a young child, podcasts make a lot of sense – and the fact they’re devoted to technology, social media, public relations, or any interest I want to indulge unsurprisingly makes them rather enjoyable.

They aren’t exactly unknown, but I’ll recommend the collection of series at Twit.tv and For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz report as two I’ve been enjoying immensely. Twit (This Week In Tech) is an enjoyable round table around whatver has cropped up in the course of the week – and after a couple of weeks I’ve even warmed to the constantly grumpy John C Dvorak.

Meanwhile, For Immediate Release (FIR) is far more focused on the likes of Public Relations and Technology. It also features a Transatlantic partnership between two people I’ve followed in text for a while, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson.

The irony being that there’s a huge, huge difference between the style of Twit and FIR. Twit host Leo Laporte is far more…’American’ in his presenting style (not saying that’s good or bad), whereas FIR is far more relaxed and akin to a Radio 4 programme. I’m becoming a big fan of both shows – but I can’t imagine any analogue, or even digital radio station likely to play two shows at such stylistic difference to each other – let alone one after the other as I sometimes do!

(Bearing in mind I use my laptop for listening to more and more Podcasts, anyone with autoplaying music, or any video or advert that autoplays on your website or blog is instantly registered as annoying… please don’t. And in case someone spots that type of advert on a Bauer Media site – I don’t book the adverts, I’ve registered my feelings strongly on several occasions, and I don’t pretend to speak for everyone!)

I doubt I’ll be making the jump to audio any time soon – my last foray into video was shamefully wooden.But I am continuing to balance two blogs on top of my day job. You can see my latest thoughts on microblogging – particularly the new Twitter advertising site, Twittads, at www.140char.com.

Two months ago, my colleague David Cushman and I started compiling a list of ‘Web 2.0 rock stars‘. It was partly a bit of fun, but also to see if it might bring some attention to www.ditto.net (disclosure: Both David and I work at Bauer Media, who own Ditto, and know/work with the Ditto team). We also though it would be fun to see a public vote, rather than one created either by Google page rank, Technorati, or by a small group of people on an editorial team.

But there have been some really fascinating outcomes:

• Being able to watch how people are using the voting tool on Ditto – some vote for their single favourite/some re-order the entire list.
• Adding people that David and myself hadn’t encountered and discovering some cool people we might have missed. And we’re still adding more (Suggest someone/yourself in the comments, or email daniel dot thornton at bauermedia.co.uk)
• And seeing how a list with minimal promotion (Mentioned only on this blog and Faster Future) has been picked up by lots of people, including several of the notables on the voting list.
• And also turning it into a bit of a resource after David added videos to almost every rock star. It’s a good example of what the Ditto team are trying to achieve (You can see and hear one of the founders, Colin Kennedy via Dave’s writing on /Message)

So where did it spread to?

Blogs:

AFP Mediawatch

Doc Searls

Euan Semple

Joseph Jaffe

Jason Calacanis (in the comments of Rich Millington’s post)

Stowe Boyd (written by David Cushman)

Jonathan MacDonald

Wikinomics

Comments:

Shel Israel, Corvida, JP Rangaswami, Veronica Belmont and Doc Searls all appeared in my blog comments (which I suspect wouldn’t have otherwise happened!), or contacted me via Facebook. As did Jonathan Yarmis, Stephanie Frasco, Josh Bernoff, Brian Solis and The Kaiser via email. (Jonathan’s inclusion apparently made his mother very proud!)

And it also created even more debate and mentions on Twitter and Pownce:

ciaranj

enikao

waynesutton

stoweboyd

technofeliz

jasonrysavy

askfrasco

j_mac

(At which point Twitter Search broke)

And despite a relatively ‘niche’ subject compared to ‘The Best Movies of All Time‘, it’s still ranking as one of the most popular lists on the site!

All this was possible for two reasons:

1. Cush, myself, and the Ditto team (Especially John!). Between the three of us, it probably took 1-2 days to have the list at the stage it is now.

2. The desire of people to discover, share, link and contribute. From the first post I made, people were contributing great suggestions (I forgot to include Cory Doctorow, for example) And even though no-one was taking it seriously with a title like ‘The Rock Stars of Web 2.0′, almost everyone was happy to be included, supply pictures, correct information, and link back (even if they were embarrassed to be included, eh Euan?). And it was a pleasant surprise to find a namecheck from Doc Searls today.

And none of this was broadcast to anyone. As David examines in more detail, we didn’t email anyone to publicise the list. We didn’t prepare a press release, or even use Bauer Media’s global brands. We both blogged and tweeted about it in an honest and fun way, and waited to see who discovered and contributed to it. And all the rest of it occurred naturally, as people self selected whether they wanted to be involved, and whether they wanted to encourage voting from others. It didn’t make Techcrunch or Slashdot, or the front page of Digg. And judging by the timing and tone of many of the posts, people were discovering it individually, and passing it around their social networks, but it hasn’t been bridging the gap across them as you might imagine. (See Slide 4 in Cush’s excellent presentation on the future of PR)

And the great thing is that it’s an ongoing thing. We’re still adding more and more people – and the voting never ends. Unfortunately submissions are via a slightly clunky ‘email daniel dot thornton at bauermedia dot co dot uk with name, details and a headshot’ method but we’ll work to get everyone online as soon as is possible. Voting is rather slicker! At regular intervals we’ll keep everyone up to date with the results at the time, further learnings, and how we’re continuing to be surprised by the wonderful thing which is humans interacting.

Oh, and if you’ve contributed/suggest for the list, or allowed the use of your photo via Creative Commoncs, then many, many thanks. It’ll take me some time to list everyone that contributed via me, but I’ll happily list anyone as they remind me (or whinge in EaonP’s case!)