Rick Mahn's shared items in Google Reader

An Experiment in Brand Journalism

amaruggi@providentpartners.net (Albert Maruggi) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:38:54 PDT

I covered the South by Southwest Interactive Festival from a mobile perspective because that is the “hot” area for the social web. I am fascinated by location services and what I think are the conservative predictions by web analysts that half of the web connections will be on a mobile device within 3 years.

The mobile device is central to social web 2.0 growth, “because it is carried with the user at most times, is ideally placed to capture information at its source, and is a key enabled of user-generated content and social web interaction.” The report also predicts that the mobile web market will reach $19 billion by 2014.

I am fortunate to have had Verizon Wireless, a regional client, to also be interested in supporting this coverage. We decided to have a little fun with this project as well. I took several new Verizon mobile devices with me, the Droid by Motorola , and Devour with Moto Blur, the HTC Eris, and the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus. Also the Verizon Wireless MiFi mobile hotspot, which I happily named, “Web in my Pocket”.

The coverage around this project is not meant to be a review of phones or service, just how we used them and how they were presented within the context of brand journalism. Author David Meerman Scott talks about brand journalism in his book New Rules of Marketing and PR, also in a recent Marketing Edge podcast episode

I believe this will be the way marketing, PR, and trade journalism morph into coverage of topics, products, and services. It will become part of the conversation of these topics in social ecosystems.

Web In My Pocket

Look it’s one thing to make a voice call driving 80 miles an hour but it’s another to connect to the web, send emails, upload photos from your lap top with Wifi speed. That’s what my traveling colleague Rick Mahn, founder of Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul and I did on this road trip. It was virtually uninterrupted coverage using the Verizon MiFi in the car plugged into the car charger port. We didn’t miss a beat with other work back home or with the Twitter stream following our trip on #smbsxsw Oh, did I say 80 miles an hour, no I was mistaken I meant 70, sorry.

I gave it the nickname “web in my pocket” during the Social Media Breakfast at South by Southwest. The popular morning gathering of those interested in social media and marketing held a wonderful breakfast on March 14 at the Hyatt hotel in downtown Austin, TX. There were more than 200 in attendance which would push many hotel WiFis to the max.

I was either A) selfish or B) considerate in that I did not tap into whatever open network was available, I did turn on the Verizon Mifi, which was a secured network requiring a password, to access the web, twitter and email. It was fully charged so the couple of hours during the breakfast was a snap. I also used it during some of the peak times of the SxSw conference panels which worked out great. Selfish or considerate you decide.

WordPress.com Outage Takes Us And 10,199,999 Other Blogs Down

MG Siegler — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:31:43 PST

As you may have noticed, TechCrunch was down for an extended period of time this afternoon. In case you haven’t read about why yet, it’s because WordPress.com suffered through some 110 minutes of downtime, as WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has explained just now on the company’s blog.

TechCrunch is one of the millions of blogs hosted on WordPress.com (not to be confused with sites that run the WordPress software but are hosted elsewhere). All told, some 10.2 million blogs went down — wiping out some 5.5 million pageviews, WordPress estimates. This was their worst outage in 4 years.

So what happened?

Mullenweg says WordPress is still gathering details but their initial diagnosis is that “an unscheduled change to a core router by one of our datacenter providers messed up our network in a way we haven’t experienced before, and broke the site.” He notes that this also tripped up all the mechanisms to prevent a total failure, so that occurred. Luckily, no data was lost in the outage, it just simply could not be sent out.

Mullenweg ends with, “I hope it will be much longer than four years before we face a problem like this again.” So say we all.

CrunchBase Information

WordPress.com

TechCrunch

Information provided by CrunchBase

Confirmed: Google Reader is Going Real Time (Updated)

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:58:24 PST

We just received confirmation from Google that Google Reader now consumes PubSubHubbub feeds in real time. Until now, it often took half an hour or longer before new posts from popular blogs and news sites would appear in Google Reader. Now, however, posts from PubSubHubbub-enabled feeds (including our own RSS feed) have started to appear in Google Reader almost immediately after they are published.

Sponsor

Update: Our original reporting was based on the increased speed we and other bloggers noticed yesterday. We have now received confirmation from a Google spokesperson that our informed guess was indeed correct. Google will post an update about this news in the next few days. We have updated this post to reflect this new development.

From Slow to Real Time

Bloggers and readers started to complain about Google Reader's delays shortly after Google launched the service in its current form, but until today, Google hadn't really done anything to address these complaints.

Google began to publish real-time feeds for shared Google Reader items in August 2009. Until now, however, Google did not consume the real-time updates from PubSubHubbub-enabled feeds, even though most of Google's own blogs and FeedBurner now publish in real time. Google's App Engine, too, offers support for PubSubHubbub and some of the most popular real-time notifications bots are hosted on App Engine.

It's important to note that these real-time updates (~~assuming our observations and those from other bloggers turn out to be true~~) will only work for PubSubHubbub-enabled blogs. One of the major problem with Google Reader is that it pings relatively obscure feeds very infrequently and this won't change anytime soon if these feeds don't support real-time updates yet.

How to Enable PubSubHubbub on Your Blog

If you use WordPress and want to enable PubSubHubbub on your own blog, you can do so by installing the PubSubHubbub Wodpress plugin. By default, every blog on Blogger and Posterous already supports PubSubHubbub. Update: we mistakenly reported that WordPress.com blogs use the PubSubHubbub protocol, but WordPress.com actually uses the rssCloud format, which Google doesn't currently support.

If you're using Feedburner to manage your RSS feeds, you can also turn on Google's PingShot service and sent out PubSubHubbub announcements in real time.

Discuss

Google Launches Powerful Mobile Shopping App for Android

(author unknown) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:20:57 PST

Shared by Rick Mahn
Nifty cool. Seems like a good shopping app, but I still like Shop Savvy.

Google Launches Powerful Mobile Shopping App for Android

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:54:52 PST

Google has just rolled out “Google Shopper,” a new mobile application for Android devices that offers a variety of different ways to search for products.

In addition to basic search functionality, users can search by voice, take a picture of cover art, or scan a bar code to get detailed product information and price comparison. Google introduces the application on its website and in the video below.

As AndroidAndMe notes, the app clearly competes with the likes of ShopSavvy, who tells the publication that Google [and Amazon] “are and always have been our biggest competitors.”

Google could deal a much stronger blow to the upstart by including Shopper –- currently a Labs product –- with new Android handsets. We also don’t see why Google wouldn’t extend the app to other mobile platforms as well.

Here’s the quick demo from Google:

Do you use shopping apps like Google Shopper and ShopSavvy on your mobile? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Android, Google, Shopper

Tags: android, android applications, Google, Google Android, shop savvy, shopping

Tutorial: Making your WordPress blog Android and iPhone friendly

Clark Wimberly — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:17:56 PST

A few weeks ago we launched the new Android and Me mobile site to almost unanimously positive reviews. The outpouring of support for my first major mobile build really got me excited and to return the favor I wanted to try to share some of what I learned.

This article is intended for those who already have a web or WordPress background. If you don’t quite understand how to put together your own templates, this might not be for you. For a long time we used the excellent plug-in WPtouch, which is a great solution for those uncomfortable with building from scratch. This isn’t a simple fix, we are going to get our hands dirty.

Let me start by saying that the following advice is a random collection of things I picked up while building the Android and Me mobile site. I’ll also start by saying I’m not a professional mobile developer. I do, however, bring years of traditional web and WordPress experience to the table and have recently been dropped head first into the mobile world. I’ve been enjoying it immensely. These are my findings:

Detecting mobile devices

The first step in creating a mobile site is detecting the devices trying to access your pages. The newest version of WordPress (2.9+) has made this a rather simple task with a new, built-in in conditional tag: is_iphone. Documentation on the function is hard to come by (it isn’t in the WordPress conditional tag list) but so far it’s proved to be an extremely elegant solution to selectively serving mobile templates to mobile users.

I found is_iphone on accident while digging through the WP core files and tested it on our development server and it returns true for Android as well (I’m guessing because it’s looking for the webkit browser agent). And using it is easy. The basic structure is like so:

<?php if ( $is_iphone ) {?>
     // mobile template
<?php } else { ?>
     // regular template
<?php } ?>

So, for example, if you wanted your single entry template (single.php) to check the device and serve the proper template, you could do so like this:

<?php if ( $is_iphone ) {?>
     <?php include( TEMPLATEPATH . '/mobile/single.php' ); ?>
<?php } else { ?>
     // entire contents of your regular single.php template
<?php } ?>

The above code is rather simple. If WordPress determines the browser is run on an iPhone (or Android device) it will know to use your specific mobile template (I’ve put all my mobile templates within a /mobile folder). Within your mobile templates you can use WordPress functions the same as you would in any other template. I’ve even got my mobile templates broken down into smaller pieces (as is customary when templating) like a mobile-specific header, footer, etc. In a regular template to call the header you can use the function:

<?php get_header() ?>

My mobile header is a completely different beast than the desktop header. It contains far less scripts and contains many key pieces needed to complete my mobile layout. So I created a new header, located within /mobile and within my mobile templates I can call it like so:

<?php include( TEMPLATEPATH . '/mobile/header.php' ); ?>

At the time, the is_iphone conditional seems to only return true for iPhone and Android users. Palm and BlackBerry users appear to be left in the dark. If that bothers you, there are many other ways to detect mobile users but for our purposes Android and iPhone cover our target audience. If that offends you as a Pre user, prove me wrong and show up in our analytics.

Also, since it’s an official WordPress function, hopefully they will expand it in the future to cover other smartphone platforms. In fact, I propose we change the tag’s name while it still fresh to is_smartphone.

Making things looks right

The great thing about designing and coding for a mobile device nowadays is just how awesome smartphone browsers have become. There are almost no differences between your markup for desktop and for mobile (with the exception of target device screen size). It’s the same site, only lightweight and smaller. Cut out whatever extra jazz you can, but for the most part the Android browser can handle the load.

The main concern is screen real estate. I’ve collapsed our three column desktop site into a single column for mobile. The site retains the same look and feel but is much more efficient on smaller screens.

Also with a small screen usually comes content that is much too large for the device, which is why smartphones have something called a viewport. The viewport is a screen sized looking glass that lays over a much larger page. Everything you see on the screen is within the viewport. Everything you can’t see is not.

With Android 1.6 came support for different screen resolutions (and thus different viewport sizes). To level the playing field we can add a custom meta tag to our mobile site’s header (/mobile/header.php)

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; minimum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;" />

The viewport will be sized automatically to screen width (320px, 480px, etc) and will be zoomed to a scale of 1.0 (preventing the site loading waaaay zoomed out with everything very tiny). We’ve also set the viewport to not be user-scrollable, which will give our site a much more app-like feel. If you’d like the users to be able to zoom in and out, this would be the time to decide such.

When a phone is rotated and the orientation switches, the viewport resizes. Because of the ever changing screen widths, it’s important for your layouts to be fluid. When I first got my Nexus, I was worried the wider screen width would lead to odd layout challenges (images aren’t as easy to make fluid) but setting the scale and zoom to 1.0 makes the images appear the same size on all devices.

Here is where it gets really get confusing, though. On a Nexus (or Droid, for that matter), an image that is 300px wide will span the entire width of the screen. The result is a 300px image filling a space with considerably more pixels and you get a nasty upsampling effect (for lack of a better term). My layouts were rectified but my images on the high density screens just didn’t look good.

Luckily, the webkit image sizing engine came to the rescue. In the past (and on desktop browsers), if you rendered an image on-page smaller than it’s native size you’d see be able to tell. Images would get pixelated during downsampling. Not so on mobile devices. So for post images, for example, I call up a slightly larger image than I need and then downsize it right in-page (just using the width and height properties on the img tag). On the high resolution devices the result is a super crisp and properly sized image. I try to use this effect minimally though, on a page that lists a bunch of post thumbnails I just display an actual thumbnail at native size (the negative effect is less obvious on smaller images).

I’m sure calling up slightly larger images (less than 200px larger) will increase load times a tiny bit but I couldn’t live with launching a fresh new mobile site and having muddled images on the high res devices. And with ever-increasing network speeds I hope in the future it becomes even less of an issue.

Now we build

That’s basically it. Once you’ve got your conditional check in place and your viewport settings correct you can start the process of rebuilding all your templates on a mobile scale. Like I said, I put all my mobile templates within a single folder, /mobile. In the folder I’ve got any and all the files I need to make the mobile site tick (templates, images, scripts, etc).

To make a mobile page template (or archive template, for that matter), you simply open your current template and add the conditional at the top. Since a mobile layout tends to be much simpler, you can even cheat and use one mobile template to cover many desktop templates (on the mobile site I’ve got a single archive.php template that covers all my categories, tags, authors, etc, which I found much easier than creating a new template for each).

The thing to stress here is this isn’t some magical fix. We aren’t just changing a width here and there and calling it a mobile site. This is a ground-up rebuild that is creating new templates for mobile use. It’s a labor-intensive process but the result is more than worth it.

Bonus points

Along with making your layouts mobile-ready, there are numerous other tweaks you can make to enhance your mobile presence. In the header you can add a link to an apple-touch-icon (which will also be recognized by Android). When a user bookmarks the site and adds the link to the home screen, he will be presented with your custom icon.

<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url') ?>/mobile/images/home_icon.png" />

Setting an icon lets your site have a very specific and branded look on a user’s home screen. Icon are usually sized at 48×48 but again you can use a large image for a crisper result. Even Google does this, some of their icons are 57×57.

Another good practice is using minimal javascript touches to add native-looking functionality to your site. On the Android and Me mobile site I built a small menu that slides in and presents the user with navigation options (search, categories, etc). I’ve also done things like not display the comments by default, waiting to reveal them only when the user wants to see them.

The webkit engine also supports some new CSS properties I wasn’t accustomed to using at a production level. CSS3 makes it possible to generate drop shadows and gradients on the fly (whereas in the past you might have needed an image). Adding gradients is pretty easy and there are even online generators to make it even simpler. Using the new CSS properties at your disposal allows you to create a quicker loading and more dynamic layout (code changes are always easier than image changes).

So what’s next?

In addition to layout changes, there are some pieces of content that just don’t need to be displayed the same on the desktop and mobile site. One example are YouTube embeds. On the mobile site it displays a very large object that hangs way outside the viewport. To remedy the situation I’ve created a custom, mobile-aware shortcode. This allows our authors to add something like [vid id=”s8Uo0JErJXw”] and the site will automatically spit out a full YouTube embed on the desktop site and a neatly formatted link to the video on the mobile site. I’ve also done the same with market downloads. On the desktop site you get a QR for scanning, on the mobile site you get a link for clicking.

I’ll be taking a look at WordPress shortcodes in a future article but I wanted to check with you guys to see if there are any mobile-specific questions you want discussed in a future tutorial. Anything you see on the current site you want explained? See something I’m doing that could be improved? Let me know!

PS: I’ll be speaking tonite at the Austin Android Users Group meetup. If you are in Austin and interested in Android, come on by!

PayPal and Facebook Credits Will Play Nice After All

Barb Dybwad — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:19:01 PST

Long imagined to be a potentially significant threat to PayPal, the Facebook Credits payment platform will actually work with its once theoretical rival, according to a post on Facebook’s blog announcing a strategic partnership between the two companies.

Under the deal, PayPal will become a payment option for purchasing Facebook Credits, which are still in use only sparingly in certain apps and games. Considering the burgeoning size of the micropayments business model — especially via transactions inside social games — the Facebook Credits platform could eventually be a huge revenue driver for the massive social network.

The news reveals that Facebook’s agenda is not to disintermediate or eclipse PayPal, and that likewise PayPal doesn’t perceive the Facebook Credits initiative as a direct competitor. We think it’s a good move on the part of both companies, in that working together could be more lucrative for each site than trying to battle head-to-head. It also means that folks without access to credit cards will be able to purchase Facebook Credits more easily.

The deal also specifies PayPal integration for advertisers, who will be able to purchase Facebook Ads via its payment platform. Though less significant than the partnership on Facebook Credits, it does offer a nice alternative for advertisers who prefer to manage transactions via PayPal.

What do you think about the Facebook/PayPal partnership? How do you see the future of Facebook Credits playing out?

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: casual games, facebook, facebook games, microtransactions, payment platforms, paypal, social games, social media, virtual goods

Does Blogger Outreach Still Work?

Aliza Sherman — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:00:17 PST

In early 2007, the Council of Public Relations Firms (CPRF) and APCO Worldwide partnered to learn more about interactions and relationships between public relations (PR) professionals and bloggers. Findings showed that PR professionals who understood blogger “culture” were having more success in communicating in this online channel than those who do not.

In the study, bloggers cautioned PR professionals that traditional outreach methods would not be effective with them; they were adamant that a smart, well-researched approach would work best. The study goes on to say that “most bloggers tend to write about subjects they are passionate about. And most of the time, the product (blog) is wholly owned by them. Therefore, their blog and the subject matter are extremely personal endeavors.”

I haven’t seen a more recent study of a similar type to show what has changed, but as someone who engages both in blogger outreach with my company and blogging, I feel that the landscape has fundamentally shifted.

I’ve noticed a significant decrease, year over year, in how responsive bloggers are — or more accurately, are not — even to individualized, customized and thoughtful outreach. In 2007, response rates were between 20-25 percent positive (the percentage of bloggers who published information provided to them or responding to our outreach). Toward the end of 2009, I began to see a marked drop-off of in acknowledgments from bloggers, much less actual published responses to email outreach. In my company’s experience, we’ve found the response rate to decrease to less than 10 percent, even less than five percent in some cases. This poor response rate is even despite the fact that our relationships with individual bloggers have strengthened over the years.

The decrease in blogger outreach effectiveness can be attributed to a myriad of factors including

The recent FTC rulings on marketing firms and blogs
A glut of PR requests to bloggers, so most no longer get opened
The realization by many bloggers that they now hold an increasing degree of power and influence in terms of information distribution, so they are becoming more selective
The fact that many bloggers are still not businesspeople, and don’t even look to PR as a source of fodder for their blogs
A continued misunderstanding about blogging culture and what bloggers need or want by marketers
There’s a misconception that all bloggers want to be approached by PR reps or to receive press releases, so firms keep throwing stuff out there to see what sticks
The fact that not everyone who blogs is open to blogging about things other than their own lives or work, especially products they don’t actually use.

Putting On My Blogger Hat

As a professional blogger as well as a personal blogger, I find myself drowning in pitches from PR firms. On the personal side, I find that unless they use the correct email to pitch me and keep the pitches very short, to the point, and on target with my blog topics, I pretty much ignore the emails. I simply don’t have the bandwidth. Plus, my personal blogs aren’t really commercial endeavors.

On the professional side, I look for a prominent mention of the blog they’re pitching me for (such as WebWorkerDaily); exactly what they are pitching (a new application to help web workers do something better, for example); and how familiar they are with what I write. There is nothing more effective in pitches to me than one with a highly targeted phrase like “I noticed your blog post about RSS feeds last week and wanted to let you know about my client’s new app that would really benefit web workers by helping manage their feeds.” Bingo!

I can’t say that I read every email pitched to me — it is just not humanly possible. I can say that the PR people who politely but regularly nudge me several times to gauge my interest in their pitch have gotten a lot farther with me than the ones who threw a pitch at me like spaghetti to a wall. Kindness and consideration along with persistence wins the ink. Getting annoyed that I haven’t responded, or that I’ve had to switch a demo call at the last minute isn’t going to win any brownie points. We’re all just people trying to make a living, and we all have a life.

The other thing I find incredibly effective in terms of pitching me on behalf of a client is not only the thoughtfully targeted pitch but regular pitches that can provide me with ideas for new blog posts. I look forward to those emails and count the PR people who help to make my professional blogging life just a little bit easier as important contacts. That’s the power of relationships. You care, I care, we work together, everyone wins.

Alternative Ways of Engaging Bloggers

Because of the decrease in effectiveness of blogger outreach carried out in the manner of traditional media outreach, there needs to be alternative ways to engage bloggers to help produce valuable and educational content for our clients; build greater awareness of client brands; and have a measurable impact in the blogosphere. Some of these tactics include:

Blog panels. Select bloggers who are knowledgeable in a given area to provide guidance on a company or organization’s blog editorial calendar that can be syndicated on their own blogs in a coordinated fashion. This is a more credible and effective tactic when the participation is a voluntary and non-compensated position; however, there must be a mutual exchange of value and all value exchange must be disclosed.
Blogger pools. Select bloggers who can be guest authors of a company or organization’s blog by identifying a pool of qualified, expert and diverse bloggers who can contribute content – with or without compensation – for the exposure. Again, if compensation is involved, it must be disclosed.
Blog sponsorship. Identify key blogs and bloggers reaching the “right” audience and offering to pay them to sponsor content that meets particular guidelines. For the bloggers who are in the business of blogging, this can be a more attractive relationship, and both parties must make sure a paid sponsorship is properly and prominently labeled as such.

As the blogging landscape continues to change, it is important for us to engage bloggers in the conversations about best practices in blogger outreach and continue to build more meaningful relationships with bloggers similar to the way we’ve cultivated relationships with the media but realizing the differences. If I feel we have a strong base of blogger relationships in a given industry or area, I may recommend blogger outreach to a client in the future. However, building a targeted blogger list from scratch without relationships solidly in place is proving to be a less effective and more expensive endeavor than it was three years ago.

Do you engage in blogger outreach? Or are you a blogger being approached by marketing types? What are your thoughts on the topic of blogger outreach as an online marketing tactic?

WiFi On The School Bus

Mike Masnick — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:05:29 PST

WiFi has been showing up on airplanes and trains lately, and in Silicon Valley, it's used on the special shuttle buses that companies like Google and Yahoo use to get employees to work. But what about for high schoolers? The NY Times recently had an article about a high school out in the far reaches of Arizona that has put WiFi on a school bus, and found that the impact is really quite amazing:

Wi-Fi access has transformed what was often a boisterous bus ride into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared.

"It's made a big difference," said J. J. Johnson, the bus's driver. "Boys aren't hitting each other, girls are busy, and there's not so much jumping around."

What's amusing here is the juxtaposition of this article with recent articles that fret about kids spending too much time online, with worries that they're becoming addicted or wasting time that could be better spent. But, here the article is suggesting exactly the opposite: that not only is more internet access leading to a less rowdy bus ride, but it's helping the students become better students.

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Corporate PR Breaks Barriers Between Company & Customer

Todd Defren — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:00:14 PST

A guest post by Scott Gulbransen, Senior Manager of Public Relations/Social Media at TurboTax.

When Todd Defren asked me to hammer out a post for his blog while he’s basking on a sun-drenched beach somewhere, I was honored … and also disturbed that an image of him running down a beach in a Speedo popped into my head. I am not sure what that means, but, please trust that our relationship is purely platonic!

Being a corporate PR professional, the use of social media has changed our day-to-day job in a way that is transformational. If you had asked me five years ago about dealing with customers everyday on Twitter, I would have scoffed at the notion. But here I am, engaged in helping customers understand what we do, helping them solve problems and thanking them personally for being our customer.

While many large companies get heaps of praise for spending millions of dollars on “social media campaigns,” public relations professionals have a much different and, in my opinion, important role in shaping the future of social media.

We live in a time when customers demand more from us. No longer are monolithic corporations and the products they produce enough. Consumers today demand more attention, more of a voice and clear action when demanded. Companies and their PR staffs – and agencies – can no longer hide behind the media or behind closed doors in a high-rise.

The customer is knocking at the door and they demand real, one-on-one conversations.

In my view, there is no one better than in-house corporate PR staff to help drive culture change and remove the barrier between the company and the customer. It’s not just a function of customer services reps or phone centers to deal with customer complaints or issues. It’s not enough to have an email link where customers can send suggestions and comments that get lost in the bureaucracy. As professional communicators, we have to step up and lead the way.

It’s the role of PR in today’s socially minded companies to push the business toward change and open itself to more transparency and interaction with the consumer. As many a social PR guru has said in the past two years, it’s about putting the public back in public relations.

Companies and agencies that are doing social well, and in a deeply meaningful way, understand this and it’s producing bottom-line business results.

The question is: do you work for one of them? If not, how will you make your business become one?

Scott Gulbransen, when not listening to Van Halen or AC/DC loudly on his iPhone, is the Senior Manager of Public Relations/Social Media for Intuit’s TurboTax. In his role, he doesn’t get to live out his inner Eddie Van Halen much but he does lead social media and other communications efforts for the brand. You can follow him on Twitter @prgully, and his personal blog is found at www.scottgulbransen.com.

HOW TO: Integrate Google Buzz Into Your WordPress Blog

Christina Warren — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:12:39 PST

GMAIL USERS: We hope you’ll join the discussion over on Mashable’s Google Buzz account.

We’ve discussed how you can integrate Buzz with your other social networks, but what about integrating Buzz with your blog? If you use a self-hosted WordPress blog (sorry, WordPress.com users), there are already a variety of Google Buzz plugins and add-ons available.

While it’s clear that people are really taking to using Buzz to share content and communicate, the service will undoubtedly reach more users as its sharing tools are integrated into other social sites. From buttons to social stream in your side bar, here’s how you can integrate Buzz with your WordPress blog.

Google Buzz Buttons

Mashable started sporting some nifty Buzz buttons a few days ago and lots of our readers have wanted to know how to add a similar feature to their own blogs. As it stands right now, how our Google Buzz buttons work (and how the buttons other sites are using also work) is that they create a share link from that post to Google Reader. As long as Google Reader is connected with your Google Buzz account, your publicly shared items will also be shared on Buzz.

Already, a number of enterprising WordPress plugin developers have answered the call to add Google Buzz buttons to WordPress posts.

Let’s take a look:

Google Buzz Button

Internet Techies created the Google Buzz Button plugin that allows you to add a “Buzz This” button to each of your WordPress posts. That icon probably looks pretty familiar — that’s because the button was designed here at Mashable (though it isn’t the same plugin).

The plugin options are relatively limited — you can choose what “rel” attribute you include with the link (the default is “nofollow”) and you can choose to display the button before or after your post content. You can also specify the icon’s height and width. Making some changes to your WordPress theme’s CSS options, you could further customize the appearance of the button, but as it stands, it’s a pretty basic (and easy) way to add a Buzz button. If you want to add Buzz manually to only certain posts, there is a template tag that you can add to those posts.

WP Google-buzz

Another button plugin option is WP Google-buzz from Arpit Shah. This button is extremely similar to the Google Buzz Button plugin, but it adds a few more options. You can choose to show the button before or after content or to add it to posts manually, but there are also options for what style button you want to use. Depending on how you have your blog setup, you might want to use a different size or style of button.

WPBuzzer

Hameedulah’s WPBuzzer is the most robust of the Google Buzz button plugins as of right now. The style of the button is almost identical to what Mashable and the Google Buzz Button use (albeit, not quite as clean), but the options are where this plugin really shines.

You can choose where you want your buttons to appear (on posts, on pages, on the home page, in your RSS feed), whether your want the button to appear before or after the post, the target for the button (a new window or a pop-up share option) and even the CSS style. You can also choose to use a small or large button.

The biggest feature is that you can track share counts (just like we do at Mashable) if you have a Bit.ly API key and login.

Light Social

The Light Social plugin takes a slightly different approach to the Google Buzz button. Light Social is a plugin that inserts a set of social share links at the bottom of each of your WordPress posts. This way links to Digg, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are all automatically at the bottom of the post. The developer of Light Social updated the plugin to include a Google Buzz icon and share link as well. If you want to add lots of social options to your posts — Light Social is a good approach.

Buzz In Your Sidebar

It’s one thing to let other people share your content to their buzz accounts, but a big advantage of Buzz is that you can aggregate your social activities into one place as well. Check out these options for adding some Buzz to your sidebar!

Google Buzz ER

If you want to share your Buzz content on your blog, check out the Google Buzz ER plugin. Google Buzz ER is extremely cool. It’s a widget that will display your public Buzz content. Just enter in your username and define how many Buzz entries you want to display and drag the widget to your designated choice in your blog.

That’s it! Now you have Buzz in your sidebar! Plus, as an added benefit, other users can click on “comment” to immediately respond to what you share. As of right now, the Buzz API doesn’t allow other people’s comments to become viewable, so only your public content is going to appear on your blog.

BuzzCounter.net

Another option for adding a Buzz widget to your blog (WordPress or otherwise) is BuzzCounter.net. Just fill in your username and you can generate the JavaScript to paste onto your website or blog!

Buzz Your Comments

There are a number of different all-inclusive comment solutions for WordPress — there’s Echo, Disqus (which we use here at Mashable) and IntenseDebate. IntenseDebate is owned by Automattic, the people behind WordPress.com and some of the main contributors to the WordPress.org project. So it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s the first of the solutions to offer Buzz integration into its service.

If you use IntenseDebate on your blog, you can now easily add a Buzz It button to the top of your comment form. This won’t let people Buzz their own comments (we expect something like that will come in the future), but it adds another “Share on Buzz” option for your post to your visitors. If you use IntenseDebate, you can activate the Google Buzz This plugin by enabling it in the Plugins Directory.

Keep Your Eyes Peeled

As Google Buzz continues to evolve (remember, it isn’t even a week old), more and more integration options are going to sprout up. Let us know what sort of integration options you’d like to see in the future in the comments! If we missed one of your favorite Buzz plugins, let us know!

Reviews: Digg, Disqus, Facebook, Google Buzz, Google Reader, LinkedIn, Mashable, Twitter, WordPress

Tags: buzz, Google, google buzz, how to, List, Lists, Wordpress, wordpress plugins

UPDATED: Has Amazon Won or Lost the e-Book War? Both

Mathew Ingram — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:40:14 PST

Amazon’s battle with book publisher Macmillan was a valiant attempt to retain control over pricing in the rapidly changing world of e-books, but its weekend display of brinksmanship was short-lived. The online retailer yanked Macmillan books from its virtual shelves — both e-books and regular books — on Friday, triggering an online flame war with Macmillan authors and many of their supporters, but by Sunday night Amazon had capitulated and agreed to accept Macmillan’s new pricing model.

Update: According to a research note from J.P. Morgan, the Amazon/Macmillan dispute isn’t quite over yet. The brokerage firm said that as of 5 p.m. ET on Monday, “many best-selling Macmillan titles appear to still not be available on Amazon, suggesting the situation is still not fully settled.”

The unseen actor in this little mini-drama, of course, is Apple. With the launch of the iPad, the consumer electronics giant tilted the balance of power in the e-book market decisively away from former leader Amazon, even though Apple’s device isn’t shipping yet. The company also negotiated a new payment structure with publishers like Macmillan, which is being referred to as the “agency model.”

In a nutshell, instead of Amazon or Apple behaving like a retailer of e-books — someone who should get to set the ultimate price of the product, as I argued in this post about Amazon’s duel with Macmillan — they would instead be treated as an agent of the publisher, and receive 30 percent of the list price of the book in question. The surprising thing about this arrangement, as Brad Stone notes in the NYT’s Bits blog, is that this gives publishers exactly the kind of pricing flexibility music labels wanted from Apple but were repeatedly denied (they eventually struck a deal late last year).

So Amazon has lost and Macmillan has won, right? Not exactly. One of the ironic things about the battle is that the pricing model Amazon was resisting will pay the retailer more than the model it favored, which would have seen all e-books priced at $9.99. Under that system, Amazon actually loses money on each book, since it has to pay publishers about $15 for them. Under the “agency model,” Amazon will be paying publishers about $10 per book, and selling them at between $12 and $15 apiece (under the arrangement described by Macmillan, prices will decline over time).

While it may make more money in the short term, however, Amazon still loses, because it has to give up pricing control to publishers, and a rise in e-book prices won’t help move more Kindles, either. The retailer’s exercise in brinksmanship also made it look bad: Author John Scalzi does a good job of rounding up the mistakes Amazon made, including the fact that its unilateral removal of Macmillan books (print and electronic) turned both authors and their fans against the company. Amazon also didn’t respond when the battle broke out, letting Macmillan win the high ground.

In the long run, of course, Amazon’s biggest fight isn’t going to be with Macmillan, or even with the book industry as a whole. Its true nemesis is now Apple (Michael at The Apple Blog has his own take on the Amazon/Macmillan brouhaha).

Post and thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user Frederic della Faille.

Baby Boomers Love Facebook (And All Of The Other Online Goodness)

Mitch Joel — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:40:41 PST

One common misnomer is that Social Media and the Internet is a place for kids, teens and university students exclusively.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

One of the most mind-blowing stats about the Web came out in July of 2009 when it was reported that there are more grandparents than high school students on Facebook. While most people still try to wrap their heads around this very real reality, it looks like baby boomers (person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom) are taking to the Web, engaging, joining the conversation and taking part in many online communities. That was the news yesterday via eMarketer in the news item, Baby Boomers Get Connected with Social Media.

Here are some of the highlights:

47% of online boomers maintain a profile on at least one social network.
Facebook is the favourite social network for boomers.
Only 10% of online boomers were Twittering in September 2009.
The percentage of boomer blog readers or writers registers in just the single digits.
Although 49% of boomers said a purchase decision was influenced by an online review or recommendation on a retailer's site, just 9% said their shopping behavior was influenced by something they saw on a blog or online community.
For most boomers, being in constant contact is a personal choice, not one dictated by technology.

It's moving slowly, but it is moving. Here's the bottom line:

"Creating and renewing personal connections online is the biggest draw for boomers... Their contacts include family, friends and co-workers of all ages," according to the report, Boomers And Social Media ($695 USD) available via eMarketer. This demographic is still in the nascent phase of adoption, but the early numbers are encouraging and as the technology (this includes hardware, software and platforms) increase in ease of use, it is anticipated that these numbers will, obviously, improve as well.

Now, go out and friend your grandparent, will ya?

Tags: baby boomer baby boomers get connected with social media blog blog reader boomer boomers and social media emarketer facebook grandparent hardware high school student internet kids online community online review online social network platform shopping behaviour social media software technology teens twitter twittering university students

AT&T Should iPrepare For iPad

MG Siegler — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:51:29 PST

AT&T Beefing Up Network for iPad and iPhone – PCWorld Business Center »

Interesting notes about the iPad from AT&T’s perspective. Basically, they assume most people will use it with WiFi and will “adapt” if 3G usage kicks up. Obviously, this worries me as it sounds much like the wait-and-see approach they took with the iPhone — only to have their network crippled under its strain.

Still debating if I should get the WiFi iPad (which will be out a month earlier and be $130 cheaper — not to mention lack any monthly fee) or the 3G iPad. Leaning towards the 3G just so I can rest easy knowing that it will work everywhere, but statements like this from AT&T are definitely making me think about it.

How the PGA Can Use Social Media to Rebuild Its Brand

Jalen Rose — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:43:18 PST

Jalen Rose is a former 13-year NBA star and current ESPN sports analyst but may be best known for being a member of the famous University of Michigan Fab Five.

Let me start off by saying I don’t play golf, but I do watch and I am a big fan of the sport. Over the past decade, I’ve watched as Tiger Woods has become the face of golf around the world. He is unbelievably important to the game, and that has to change.

Having been in the NBA for 13 years I know the meaning of a sport as a business. Sometimes, superstars in the game become synonymous with their sports. Just like in basketball we had Michael Jordan, in boxing we had Mike Tyson, in tennis we had Pete Sampras, in golf we have Tiger Woods. However, those other sports went on and flourished after those stars retired. What the PGA needs to understand and implement is the notion that they cannot hinge the business of golf onto just one player — it’s not practical. Golf existed before Tiger, and it will exist after he leaves.

The PGA Needs to Move Post-Tiger

Tiger’s unfortunate actions late last year that led to his indefinite hiatus from golf have certainly forced the PGA’s hand in looking for ways to move the brand beyond Tiger. But regardless, expanding the brand image beyond a single player is smart business sense that will strengthen the league in the long run. Now that I’m an analyst and sitting on the other side, I really do see how important it is to grow the sport as a whole.

One way the PGA can move beyond Tiger is to utilize social media.

Using Social Media to Build Community

What the PGA needs to do is move forward and embrace social media to the max. Currently the PGA has a Facebook Page with just over 35,000 fans and a Twitter account with a little more than 19,000 followers. I have more Twitter followers than the PGA, an entire professional sports league. That, my friends, needs to change. There are many more people than that watching the sport. Golf is a worldwide game, so they need to address this globally, not just domestically. Players like Bubba Watson, Stewart Cink, and John Daly are just a few of the players that have embraced social media and really started growing their fan base and interacting with them.

[Editor's Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly linked to the PGA Twitter and Facebook accounts, rather than the accounts for the PGA Tour.]

There is a great opportunity here for the PGA to take advantage of technology that is really made for the fans and followers. Golf is a sport that has a great loyal viewership and dedicated fan base. The PGA needs to tap into that core audience and deliver. Here are a couple ideas:

– Engage the fans on Facebook, Twitter, and Ustream. The PGA needs to talk with the fans who are posting on their wall. They need to interact with people talking about golf on Twitter, and even have golfers give live lessons on Ustream! It’s time for the PGA to build a culture where golfers and golf fans come to the PGA’s social media accounts when they want to talk or find out more about the sport.
– Create content and promotions that allow the fans to reach out to the pros. For example, have players create personalized videos about various topics (the best shot I ever hit, my favorite course to play, etc.). Even better, set up golf clinics around the U.S. where social media fans who play the game can get a chance to meet and interact with professional golfers.

The Game Needs Tiger, But That Can Change

The other day, Phil Mickelson admitted to the press that the game of golf needs Tiger. I think that what the game of golf really needs to do is promote the other “Tigers” who are out there. When Michael Jordan retired from the NBA, the game still went on. And the NBA did not pin a single successor, but many successors that have taken basketball and the NBA to new heights.

Here is a chance for the PGA to take it to the next level. Every player in the game of golf has a story to tell, and the game has a story of its own. The PGA can use social media to tell those stories. Yes, the game misses Tiger, but the business must go on until he returns to a (hopefully) new and improved PGA that truly engages and interacts with its fans through social media.

And yes, my colleagues get on my case about not playing — I will get into it soon.

More sports resources from Mashable:

- When Social Media Gets Athletes in Trouble
- 5 Predictions for Athletes on Social Media in 2010
- 5 Social Media Lessons the NBA Can Teach Businesses
- 5 Reasons Every Sports Fan Should Be On Social Media
- 5 Athletes Who Would Have Been Social Media Mavens

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, RichVintage

Tags: fab five, Golf, jalen rose, pga, social media, sports, tiger woods

BumpTop for Mac Launches: a Seamless 3D Desktop Experience [INVITES]

Barb Dybwad — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:24:03 PST

We wrote about BumpTop last year when it launched for Windows, and now the impressive and unique re-imagination of the computer desktop is coming to the Mac faithful. We had a chance to chat with CEO Anand Agarawala about the launch of BumpTop on the Mac and some of the company’s future plans.

If you’re not already familiar with the concept, BumpTop essentially adds a three-dimensional “real world desktop” metaphor to your computer’s desktop. You can create visual “piles” of files and documents completely unrelated to their logical file structure — handy for keeping a “working stack” of items at the top of mind. You can make files physically larger or smaller by growing or shrinking them, giving you a quick and intuitive visual representation of their relative importance.

Thanks to the 3D view, you can also “sticky” items to the “walls” in addition to the primary desktop panel. There’s also a cool search feature that’s invoked simply by typing, making quick retrieval of key items a snap. Plus, you can of course customize the look and feel of each surface with your own background image or a complete theme if you wish.

What’s Unique About the Mac Version?

Importantly, the Mac version of BumpTop is not simply a port of the Windows version. It’s been built from the ground up to integrate seamlessly with Leopard, and plays nice with your existing setup. The app is integrated seamlessly into the Finder, meaning you can enjoy all the usual bells and whistles like Spaces, Expose and Quick Look as usual.

BumpTop Mac also specifically supports multi-touch gestures for MacBook Pro and MacBook multi-touch trackpads. We talked a bit about how the forthcoming age of the tablet portends a sort of “renaissance of touch” that BumpTop seems to be fully prepared for.

Future Plans

Having already supported multi-touch gestures in the Windows version, future plans include exploring further into touch interfaces and how BumpTop can make the desktop a more intuitive experience in a touch environment. As new devices and form factors come online in the marketplace, the goal with BumpTop appears to be to embrace platforms as widely as possible.

Cloud computing also factors into the company’s roadmap, with some interesting new features in the works surrounding managing web content on your BumpTop desktop as well as local documents and files. Without getting too far into specific details that may change before feature release, it’s a good bet to anticipate some sort of widget platform emerging around BumpTop that brings more interactive and cloud-connected services into your BumpTop workspace.

For example, imagine a Facebook Wall that lives right on your desktop, providing new and unique ways to visualize your Facebook experience and associated data. Or, imagine drag and dropping a web page right into your desktop and being able to manipulate it locally as if viewing a “living page.”

No matter what specific concepts find their way into future versions of BumpTop, it’s an exciting new (and relatively rare) ambitious attempt to revitalize and rethink the desktop experience that was remained largely an unchanged paradigm for going on twenty years.

100 Free Pro Version Upgrades

The free version of BumpTop includes its core features, while the Pro version contains extra functionality, including unlimited sticky notes, scroll wheel controls for flipping through document piles, the instant search feature, multi-touch trackpad support and premium support service. BumpTop was kind enough to provide Mashable readers with 100 free upgrades to the Pro version:

The Pro version is a free upgrade to the first 100 people who sign up at this special Mashable page: http://bumptop.com/press/mashable.php.

Enjoy, and let us know what you think of BumpTop for Mac.

Reviews: BumpTop, Facebook, Mashable, Windows

Tags: 3D, bumptop, cloud computing, desktop, mac, macintosh, software, touchscreens

How to Extend the Profitability of an E-Book Beyond Launch Week

Darren Rowse — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:08:00 PST

Much has been written about how to launch an E-book to maximise sales with a big bang in the time surrounding a launch. I wrote a few weeks back about my own $72,000 E-book launch and received a lot of feedback from readers on their own big launches.

What happens after an E-book launches?

Once all the bells and whistles of the initial offer fade – do E-books continue to sell or do you need to keep launching new ones (or re-launching the old ones) to keep turning a profit?

Side Note: We just did launch a new E-book on DPS – this one is an introduction to understanding how cameras work.

These are some of the questions I’ve been pondering lately. Don’t get me wrong – a $72,000 opening week is fantastic – but what happens next?

One Strategy I’ve had Success With

After the launch week of the portraits photography book mentioned in the post linked to above the sales of the E-book did fall dramatically. Once the opening week special price ended and some of the buzz died down sales dropped to 5-10 per day. This was expected and not something I worried too much about – however as any entrepreneur I am always interested in increasing sales so I decided to start experimenting with adding some more subtle promotions.

One strategy that I’ve used is to integrate a promotion for the E-book into my newsletter auto-responder sequence.

I’ve previously written about how I use a combination of weekly updates, promotional emails and themed emails in my newsletters at DPS so I won’t fully go over the topic except to give you this visual.

This sequence is partly automated with an Auto-responder sequence and partly manual (the weekly updates in particular).

What I’ve done with my E-book promotion is to insert a new ‘promotion’ email into the auto-responder sequence. All new subscribers of the newsletter get this email 8 days after they first subscribe to the newsletter.

I’ll show you the email I send below but in short it is a fairly low pressure sales email that thanks people for subscribing and offers a 25% discount on the E-book for becoming a subscriber. I gave old readers of DPS 25% off when the E-book was first launched so I give new readers the same opportunity. Here’s the email – with the discount code deleted – you’ll have to subscribe to get it :-).

Aweber (the newsletter service provider I use) allows you to set auto-responders to go out on certain days of the week. This one only goes out on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays (as weekends have not converted as well for me and my weekly updates go out on Thursdays/Fridays and I don’t want to double up with two emails on those days).

Sales on the days that these go out have consistently been between 20-40 per day (Mondays are best as they go to four days worth of subscribers).

Not only have sales been really healthy but I’ve had some really good feedback from new subscribers who get the offer – it’s seems to be fitting well into that first 8 days of being a subscriber as an unannounced little discount/bonus.

PS: interestingly while the launch week of the book was a great result at $72k – with these types of promotions AFTER the launch the E-book will probably earn as much, if not more, than it did in the launch week over the year that follows that first week. Daily sales are certainly not that spectacular as in the launch week but with a little extra effort what comes after the launch is what will really matter to long term profitability.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Extend the Profitability of an E-Book Beyond Launch Week

CBS Would Rather Kill Off Classic Jack Benny Video Footage Than Let Fans Rescue And Digitize It

Mike Masnick — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:37:31 PST

In the past, we've seen time and time again how copyright has been used to lock up culture and make it inaccessible. At times this is literally destroying culture, as content is left on degrading media, and those who can preserve it are blocked from doing so. The latest example of this, as sent in by an anonymous reader, involves the famous comedian Jack Benny. Apparently, a bunch of Jack Benny fans have been seeking the right to digitize old audio/video footage of Benny from CBS in order to preserve it. But, in a short-sighted decision, CBS has instead decided to lock up the content and let it disintegrate away (literally):

Late last week the International Jack Benny Fan Club got some very bad news: rather than allow the club with the Benny family's enthusiastic blessing to digitally preserve some unreleased public domain Benny show masters that CBS has in its possession, the network is giving a thumbs down to the idea -- thus sealing these shows' fate so they will never be seen again. In effect, it's a bullet through the head of this body of Benny work. And here is the most frustrating tidbit for comedy fans and those who study comedy: the Fan Club offered to do the preservation at no cost to CBS.

Yes, some of this content is public domain. Of course, that doesn't mean anyone has a right to access it, but it is rather ridiculous that CBS won't even bother to release the public domain material.

Update: In the comments, Ben pointed to this response which claims that there is more to this story, and that CBS just didn't want to give the content out to this particular fan group. I still don't quite understand what the problem is with that fan group, and why CBS won't allow it, but it gives a bit more perspective on the story.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Paul DeBettignies To Present At The Fordyce Forum 2010

MN Headhunter — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:40:00 PST

I have written a few times how 2010 is shaping up to be a time when stars are aligning for me and that I am going to do some butt whooping. 2008-2009 was not fun and I am taking my revenge on 2010.

I have accepted an invitation to present at The Fordyce Forum 2010 this June in Las Vegas. This will play a big part in the whooping of 2010.

For those not familiar with The Fordyce Forum it is annual event for the Search Firm industry. Or to put it another way, this is where the Big Dogs go for their event and to be asked to speak is a big thing for me, well, anyone.

The Fordyce Letter is the source of information for the Search Firm industry and I will be able to do an article leading up to my presentation.

So what to talk about? Here it is:

11 Tools Every Search Firm Recruiter Should Use Along With Their Phone

There are only so many hours in a day and phone calls that can be made. We will talk about 11 tools every search firm and solo practitioner can use that will help with candidate generation, increase your name recognition and online presence.

Why this topic?

I find that many of my colleagues are “old school” and think the telephone is THE way to make placements. I agree that the telephone (to include the main line, secondary line and cell phone) is the primary tool but I suggest and will show how it is NOT the ONLY tool.

I will be showing how I have used these in my day to day activity along with some metrics, successes, failures and what is coming next. The material will be something that attendees can leave with and try out, practice, and/or implement right away.

For those who may be new to me, wondering why the heck I have been asked to present here is my current bio:

Paul DeBettignies is Managing Partner of Nerd Search, LLC a Minneapolis IT search firm, author of the Minnesota Headhunter blog, Co Founder and Coordinator of Minnesota Recruiters, listed as a Top 20 Minnesota Social Media Innovator, frequent speaker and article contributor on recruiter, career, networking and social media topics with his related site Be Your Own Headhunter

Here are two links for you check out the speaking gigs of the past couple years and interviews I have been a part of:

A big thank you to the folks at ERE Media for inviting me to the event and I am looking forward to seeing everyone there.

Social Media RFP Template Asks All the Right Questions

Paul — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:27:25 PST

As the social media gold rush has accelerated over the last two years,a lot of marketing consultants have signed up for a Facebook account, launched a Twitter stream and declared themselves to be social media experts. But knowing the basics of how to use the tools is nothing like knowing how to create and promote engaging content that attracts the constituents you need and deploy it in the right places.

Social Media Group of Dundas, Ontario (near Toronto) was creating social media campaigns long before they were fashionable. Founder Maggie Fox (right) is one of the sharpest strategists I know in this area. You don’t sign up clients like these unless you know your stuff. That’s one reason I asked her to contribute an essay to my latest book.

Last week, Social Media Group delivered a document into the public domain that any organization that’s evaluating marketing agencies in this realm should read. The Social Media Request for Proposal (SMRFP) template lists questions you can ask prospective agencies to separate the brains from the bozos. An important part of the template asks about experience with specific social media channels. This is important because client organizations increasingly need to spread their activities across a range of platforms in order to reach customers and business partners where they already live.

I’ll admit my eyes bugged out a bit when I first looked at this document. It’s exhaustive. But I don’t think the point is to bend an agency over a barrel to answer every single question. Choose the questions that are most relevant to your situation because nearly every possible question is here.

Any agency that fancies itself to be a social media expert should get to work answering these questions now. I have a feeling that they’re going to keep seeing them in client pitches for some time to come.

Maggie did a good interview with Shel Holtz last week explaining the purpose of the template. There are no licensing terms. Grab it and go.

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Keep Your Eyes Peeled

UPDATED: Has Amazon Won or Lost the e-Book War? Both

Baby Boomers Love Facebook (And All Of The Other Online Goodness)

AT&T Should iPrepare For iPad

How the PGA Can Use Social Media to Rebuild Its Brand

The PGA Needs to Move Post-Tiger

Using Social Media to Build Community

The Game Needs Tiger, But That Can Change

More sports resources from Mashable:

BumpTop for Mac Launches: a Seamless 3D Desktop Experience [INVITES]

What’s Unique About the Mac Version?

Future Plans

100 Free Pro Version Upgrades

How to Extend the Profitability of an E-Book Beyond Launch Week

CBS Would Rather Kill Off Classic Jack Benny Video Footage Than Let Fans Rescue And Digitize It

Paul DeBettignies To Present At The Fordyce Forum 2010

Social Media RFP Template Asks All the Right Questions