Strategic Public Relations

Instagram's Android Launch Complete's the Picture for Brands

With 1 million downloads made in the first 24 hours of its release, Instagram's long-awaited Android app has clearly been well-received.

The Android release was a bit of a tidal wave as you can only access the platform via its mobile app or using your app login to use web-based options that tap into the Instagram API.

More users mean more potential for your audience being on the platform. So here's a quick recap of Instacontent, from here and elsewhere, to help users get their sea legs with an app that's gotten a serious second-wind. 

Watch How Brands Do: There are a variety of brands with an established Instagram presence. Luxury and beverage brands have quickly taken to the platform, having found a user base. But the media are also using it to give you backstory access around events like the upcoming U.S. Presidential election.

But before you follow everyone's well-documented lead, ask how this fits into your larger social > online > marketing > business strategy. If it doesn't roll all the way up, it's not worth investing time and resources.

Manage Your Feed: Statigr.am, by far, looks to be the best way to manage your feed, track statistics and even organize your photos and the people you follow into lists. It even allows you to message each other users through the site,  gives you promotional tools and promotes contests from other brands and users.

Use Supporting Apps: If you're taking pics with your phone, you can access a handful of apps to make your images stand out and better represent what you're trying to communicate. And there's a lot of Instatips too to help you optimize your use of Instagram.

Back that Pic Up: You'll want to have a backup copy of your photos, right? Well Google+ app users have it easiest as Google+ can automatically backup your phone's pics. But there's also options for Dropbox users and everyone else.

Take It Elsewhere: Some brands are tapping into the API-provided portability of Instgram content. Starbucks streams relevant user pics into its online Coffeehouse. And any user can easily stream their pics into a Tumblr or onto Facebook for non-Instafans to check out their work. And don't forget sites like Animoto make it easy to turn your pics into a video.

Go Offline: Photowalks are a great way to get a handle on the app and its potential. I've organized two of them and they're fairly simple to execute. If you're not about socializing in real time, you can still use any number of sites to print your pics in a number of ways. I've used CanvasPop forexample and highly recommend it.

It's Deja Vu All Over Again
With apologies to Yogi Bera, I'm already seeing a lot of Twitter "how-to" content becoming relevant again. From filling out your profile and using an avatar to posting content before following a ton of people -- many of those basics apply here (and to Pinterest!). You can even project an Instafeed by user or hashtag, to create a visual back channel at events.

How's that for a link-laden, to-do list? It's not even taking into account Instagram-related content I've curated on Pinterest and Scoop.It. There's a lot of opportunity and creativity in this site. If your audience is not on it, you can still use it for your own personal reward.

Follow me on Instagram
Cross-posted to my work blog.
Infographic via Visual.ly 

5 Examples of How Social Media is Changing the 2012 Elections

There are plenty of ways you can use social media to follow the long march from the Iowa Caucus to the November Elections. Several sites, including Instagram and Tumblr, are being used by candidates for the first time to engage and inform citizens.

From behind the scenes access from the media and each candidate's content to larger sites tracking how the candidates are doing overall, here are just a few sites to check out.

1) 2012 Elections Site | Google: By far, Google does the best job of a non-news organization tapping its products to bring you a complete destination for bipartisan election content. It's using search, YouTube, Google+ and even Google Calendar to fuel its efforts. And in addition to covering the elections, it has a toolkit to get voters engaged in the process.

2) Media Mentions | Washington Post: Media Mentions tracks how candidates are doing in news coverage as well as on Twitter. And The New York Times, with the help of Big Data, will tell you that candidates who do better than expected will get more media coverage as a result.

3) Tapping Klout to Rank Candidates? | CNN: CNN using Klout is a big win for the polarizing ranking site. I'm hoping someone also comes back to note how well ALL of the platforms did as a predictor of candidate success. As we've already seen, unexpected outcomes are standard fare. And we're already seeing folks use a single social platform to make assertions about which candidate might/could win. UPDATE: Mashable asserts Twitter can predict who's winning the GOP presidential race.

This is uninformed and it's already being seen that the correlation between quantity of Twitter followers, Facebook likes and YouTube views does not necessarily correlate to the number of votes. In fact, this gets back to the discussion of influence. If someone has all the social buzz, but not the votes....

4) See the Elections Unfold | Instagram: The "niche photo site" points out three major news organizations using the platform to augment their coverage. And it gives me a wicked idea (evil laugh).

5) Politics & Election News | New York Times: Book-ending our examples is the New York Times who is devoting significant resources above and beyond curating their own news to cover the election. In addition to a mobile app, its bloggers and interactive team are going deep to deliver some interesting insights and examples of social's impact in the 2012 elections.

Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn

A scan on my part shows nothing of permanent of note from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn just yet. Twitter is showing folks how to live tweet for a better election experience, noting how Twitter and live TV go together like peas and carrots. But based on its White House Town Square effort, I'm sure they're capable of a more substantive offering.

Facebook is being tapped for live chats as well. It's good to see an engagement platform being used more for, uh, engaging with voters.

Instant Social Traction
It's wild to see how quickly and thoroughly single moments in an election, or other nationally broadcast events, can unfold through social media. From Santorum's unfortunate shared meaning of his last name (no link, just trust me) to his fashion choices.

Social spoofs will be an interesting sideline to distract from the carpet bombing of political ads we'll see online and offline increasingly over the following year. In a year that election spending is touted as helping to save big media, you know we're in for some serious political noise this year.

But based on the above alone, I'll note social is helping bring a new experience to the the 2012 elections -- online, offline and on TV. It's early and we'll surely see more interesting examples of how it's used to inform and engage voters.

Can Facebook Reinvent Vending Machines?

Maybe the Bad Pitch blog has jaded me, but it's rare for a relevant pitch to ping my email. So when it does -- it sings. The latest siren comes from the National Automatic Merchandise Association (NAMA).

Vend Trend
In 2007, I noticed a lot of interesting vending machine concepts in play.** The above is a PSFK-inspired video for a reader-generated trend discussions. I even did a follow up post on the vend trend. Back then I learned Japan is the vending machine capital of the world, with more than 20 machines for every citizen.

Machines once serving up only shelf-stable snacks and cold drinks are now dispensing everything from gold bars to breakfast meat. But in the U.S., vending machines have less ubiquity than Japan and a bit of a perception issue.

Vend. Love. Win.
The NAMA is attacking this issue, in part, with a Facebook contest: Vend. Love. Win. According to the (good) pitch I received: "This online contest is...the beginning of a larger campaign designed to boost awareness and generate excitement among consumers about the vending experience. 

"The program is geared largely to Gen Y consumers due to recent NAMA research indicating that Gen Y prefers vending over convenience stores and grocery or drug stores."

According to Vending Market Watch a key challenge the research found is the need to overcome the perception that vending does not provide a good value for the money, along with not having the products consumers want and not being able to make a transaction without cash.

Mobile Vending Museum
In addition to the Facebook contest is the Gratitude Tour, "a mobile marketing tour of innovative vending machines that will dispense free products in large urban settings" that will kick off in seven cities in September. A mobile app focused on vending and nutrition is under development as well as games and a component targeting other associations -- Vending Vanguard. NAMA is communicating with Gen Y friendly associations focused on various facets of college.

"Will It Vend?"
Check out the Facebook page. I'll wait. What do you think about the contest and the rest of the campaign's components?

Without more context, the campaign feels more like a lot of stuff. But I will dispense with the criticism (see what I did there?) as I want them to succeed. I'm obviously pro-vending machine. And I'm hopeful there's an integrated thread running throughout the above list -- a thread that will make the campaign results sing to the NAMA in the same fashion as their pitch sang to me.

**Prior to 2007, my fondest vending machine memory was in this NSFW clip from the movie Slap Shot.

Content Is Not King

Guess who suggests content is king and who suggests content isn't king? The answer usually depends on the job of whomever is answering the question.

It seems PR people lean towards giving content the crown. Social media professionals give social the monarchy. And so on.

For my entire career, I've focused on content in one way or another. Content's definition has expanded as the roles involved in creating it and publishing it have evolved. In fact, an entire discipline has emerged just to be more strategic about marketing with content.

And while I've been a defender of content's crown in the past, I've come to understand the truth about the so-called marketing monarchy. There is no king. No queen. No monarchy. The relationship between content, technology and consumer is more of an ecosystem, or perhaps it's just more easily explained using organic terms.

Organs, Kingdoms & Content
Saying that content, or social media or search or the latest shiny new object is king, is like arguing over which organ of the body is most important.

It's actually an old joke where the brain, the blood, the stomach, the eyes and the legs all make their case as to why they are most important. And when the anus makes its case, the rest of the organs simply laugh in disagreement. So the anus shuts down and, a few days later, the other organs apologize and the anus wins the argument. But the point is all of the organs are interrelated and therefore important.

Content, Context, Curation
So whether we're considering paid, owned and earned -- remember the ecosystem. It's all the more critical if you consider the noise consumer's are immersed in through our efforts. And to meet consumer needs and expectations we simply add to the noise.

Brands compete online with more than 1.6 billion messages. EVERY. Single. Day. That's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blog posts and even news releases.

The Business of Content
In Program or be Programmed:10 Commands for a Digital Age, Douglas Rushkoff brings up an even more important point when talking about content's role in capitalism.

Essentially he notes that the internet has helped create a hyper-captialism of sorts wherein the closer you are to value creation the further you are from the money. Just ask anyone writing for Huffington Post (paid or free). There are more examples. But it points us towards the trend of curation.

There are many flavors of curation. And it requires aggregating a good portion of the noise from which to curate the best bits. But it's another part of the ecosystem to keep in mind. We're seeing more examples of media outlets mixing up the ecosystem to provide the best, most relevant product to its readers.

New York Magazine is a great example. It uses original content as a foundation to build upon while curating content and featuring user generated content in the form of web videos.

The King is Dead
Would any media outlet suggest content is king? They'd be ignoring the oxygen paid media brings its brand. And calling it oxygen vs king, queen or court jester is more accurate. So think ecosystem while we dance on the monarchys' respective graves.

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UPDATE: Facebook's Vadim Lavrusik reinforces my point in a Nieman Journalisim Lab article noting how story structure has changed in five key ways: context, social, participation, mobile and personalization. 

Brands & Blogs: Building Better Relationships at Savvy Blogging Summit

It's been almost two weeks since I attended Savvy Blogging Summit with my Empower MediaMarketing colleague, Jessica George. We were asked to speak on building better relationships between brands and bloggers.

Empower's done more than a dozen different outreach projects for clients -- online and offline. We posted our presentation at the Scoop.It page we created for the event.

We learned as much as we taught at #sbsummit. The attendees had to apply to attend and were focused on improving their blog. This translated into a passionate crowd that helped reinforce a few points during our presentation and conversations with #sbsummit attendees.

Make it Easier:We extol the need for a community relations approach with bloggers over a media relations approach, but we don't identify any direct ways for a blogger to contact a brand.

Bloggers are more than familiar with being pitched. We've even counseled them on creating "About" pages and sporting badges if they're "PR Friendly." But bloggers aren't familiar with seeking out like-minded brands. Perhaps we need a page on brand sites for bloggers -- much in the way we have newsrooms for the media. If we're taking a different approach, we should have a designated way for direct contact to the right people (agency or brand).

Broadcast vs. Engagement: It always seems to come back to this topic. If you understand social media is an engagement tool and not a broadcast tool, it's easy to understand how the best bloggers for an outreach project may not have the biggest audience. We don't need the biggest audience, we need the right audience. With the right audience, brands can gain insight into how they can better meet customer needs. And they'll build loyalty throughout their interactions with these bloggers.

After identifying a handful of #sbsummit attendees my employer has worked with in the past, it was reassuring to see that these bloggers were chosen due to relevant content and a high level of engagement. Of the #sbsummit attendees, none of the bloggers we worked with previously had the highest level of reach.

Need a specific example of the potential of relevance over reach? Kosher on a Budget is a well-differentiated blog written by Mara. And in addition to the obvious kosher brands, Mara also knows which mainstream consumer brands have gone to great lengths to gain kosher status for some of their products. But some of these brands are more focused on other niches, tapping the gluten-free consumer perhaps, without realizing the full benefit of their investment in kosher. If they'd like a group of consumers as fiercely loyal to them as their gluten-free consumers -- they should contact Mara. She's got a relevant blog with a loyal readership. And regardless of audience size, I can't think of anyone better to help a mainstream brand do with their kosher products what they're already doing with their gluten-free products. Disclaimer: we cooked up this idea in a quick conversation after I finished my presentation.

Owned Media Opportunities:Tapping into the right niche of bloggers to help create content owned by the brand is an under utilized opportunity. Who better to create content that will resonate with brands' target audience than its most loyal, well-informed customers? This is not paying for a post or a product review on a blogger's site. This is tapping bloggers to fuel your next content project. It's akin to hiring freelance writers and requires full disclosure. Media outlets are already tapping into this at a local and national level. And as more brands become publishers, this is a bigger deal than brand, blogger or agency yet understands. This is due in part to brands and bloggers defining relationships to date, for the most part, as an exchange of access or free stuff for content. We've watched this approach derail some time ago.

The PR Disconnect: One of the big disconnects between bloggers and agencies can be paid media. Many bloggers are treating their blog as a business. As a result, they'll be discussing paid and owned media opportunities with brands. Most PR people conducting outreach are used to working primarily with earned media. In fact, if they've got a media relations background, odds are good they've only worked on earned and owned media opportunities. Any suggestion of paid media can create confusion and incorrect assumptions between the agency and the blogger. But not only do PR people need to get used to this concept, they need to account for it in the budget when planning outreach projects. This is not a free exchange -- free stuff for free content.

2nd Moment of Truth: A brand and a blogger may be perfectly matched. But a poor initial pitch, or disconnects like the one above, can prevent any relationship from being created. Bloggers and brands should give each other a second chance. One attendee told a story of a bad pitch that turned into a business relationship. So instead of the first moment of truth, perhaps we need to put more weight on the second moment of truth when building relationships between brands and bloggers.

The Hypocrisy of Silos:Many of the #sbsummit attendees focus on saving money in some form of another -- from living more simply and being frugal to tapping into coupons, promotions and other deals from various brands. But to mention TLC's show "Extreme Couponing" was the rough equivalent of saying Voldemort to a Harry Potter fan. Why? The show single-handedly has marketers putting all coupon bloggers, savings bloggers, frugal living bloggers into a single, unseemly bucket.

The week we presented, Ad Age's cover story even warned marketers to "beware the coupon mom." But to make such a general, sweeping statement based on the extreme of one "reality" show is foolish at best. It's akin to journalists letting a few PR people making bad pitches color their view of the entire industry. Looking at the attendee's blogs, I saw a more common theme of home, family and wholesome living. The bottom line being that agencies need to spend more quality time developing a targeted list of bloggers. There are many facets to any blog. And while they may have a primary focus, they cannot always be placed into a single silo.

All of the above are either opportunities or reminders of what's keeping brands, agencies and bloggers from doing something bigger, better and more effective for all involved. Needless to say, Jessica and I really enjoyed being involved with the event.

5 Things You Can Learn On A Photowalk

Over the weekend, Cincinnati Social Media held a photowalk within downtown Cincinnati. We had amazing weather for it and, in two hours, I took 120 pics and walked a little over a mile with more than a dozen #cincysm members and Instagram fans.

While I've planned a ton of events over the years, every one is different and you can still learn something new each time. So here are five things I learned on the #cincysm #instameet.

1) Cameras Are Not Required: While I was inspired to organize this event by Instagram, it didn't matter if you had the app, or an iPhone -- all forms of capture were welcome. Others had Androids or their SLRs in hand. But a high point of the day was when I realized two children were using their Nintendo DS' to take pictures. The kids were accompanying their parents on the walk. 

2) Back Stories Make Big Stories: It was great to meet some folks for the first time that day as well as others I'd known online, but had not met in person. One attendee had not been downtown for about five years. So it was great to get his perspective on how much the city has changed and improved. Everyone seemed to contribute a lesser known fact about buildings as we walked. This gave a great back story to the pictures we took and we got to know each other better in the process.

3) New Perspectives Will Find You: I've spent a lot of time downtown over the years and knew the path we took has plenty of photo opportunities. But there were still certain spaces, perspectives and details I saw for the first time. Photowalks are great when you're out of town, but they can also reconnect you with a space so familiar that you don't pay attention to it.

4) Promotion Before Makes For Difficult Follow-Up After: Events are shared  and overshared via social media. This one made it to LinkedIn (which serves as CincySM's web page), Facebook (not everyone targeted were CincySM members), on Instagram and all of these pushed to a MeetUp site to keep it organized. This is fine -- even without the context. But it makes it tough to track everyone down post-event. All 12 attendees have different online preferences and a different point of reference for the event online. In addition to Flickr and Instagram, we're using DropEvent for a spot to aggregate images (h/t Christiaan). But even if everyone agrees to a single hashtag and rallying point post-event, you still find yourself repopulating the same sites you used to promote the event with this update.

5)  Organizing For Flexibility Is Critical: With a lot of events -- from weddings to conferences -- your attendance can change at the last minute. So I had multiple routes in mind in case we needed to split up into smaller groups. And as we walked our route, we tried to tweet/instagram a few pics so folks could catch up to us. This worked out well. But for the next photowalk, I'll also designate a single way for late comers to communicate with us so they can catch up more easily during the event.


The event was great and it was a blast taking a ton of pictures with Cawood, FranToh, Stuku56, Castlepoint, JustThinkChris, TorenCastle, GlennaVonHenna, Kathy Jo love blue, Tattooprincess and Pezhunter. Stay tuned for the next one. We'll definitely be doing more.

Intel's "Museum of Me"Facebook Campaign - FTW!

Intel's "Museum of Me" Project is being dismissed as "narcissistic" by Mashable and creepy by nearly everyone reporting on it. But the seamless execution combined with how it plays into individual Facebook users' personal world to make its point is why I think it's a total win.

Seamless Exeuction
The design and technology combine into seamless user experience. I clicked a link to the site, accepted O Auth and a few seconds later the above video played (with music. I muted the audio for the above due to tech issues on my end).

Of course this dead simple experience with fast, jaw-dropping aesthetics is the whole point. The video ends with Intel's "Visibly Smart" tagline. And for a company selling me something inside my computer, it's found a great way to show me why they make a difference.

Haters Gonna Hate
As these things go, there are (always) haters. Mashable is digging on the site due to Intel's servers being overloaded by demand. But if a different brand was behind the campaign, I'm willing to bet Mashable would suggest this outcome meant it was a viral hit? This could be a bigger issue for Intel vs. a non-tech brand. But it's the online equivalent of preferring too few seats at your event vs. too many so you can report a "standing room only crowd."

Like Acquisition
The site's sharing components make it simple for visitors to create a Facebook Photo Album as a souvenir of their visit to Intel's museum. This has a powerful impact.

Intel's Facebook page Likes jumped from 1 million Likes in late May to 1.3 million Likes as of earlier today. And in less than 12 hours I saw the Museum of Me site likes jump from 25,000 likes to 125,000 likes. Consider the reach of 100,000 likes distributed through 100,000 news streams. What's the math on how many potential Facebook users might see the campaign?

It all morphs into a smart branding campaign with a whole lotta like behind it.

Twitpic, Instagram, Flickr & Facebook - Got the Picture?

For some reason, I know that I started using Twitpic three years ago today.

You could care less and I don't blame you.

So in addition to pointing to my first Twitpic, most viewed Twitpic and one or two others illustrating this post, I'll make some observations about photo sharing platforms in general.

You may not care about this either. But the odds just shifted significantly.

All Bets Are Off
Just a few short months ago it seems we could classify platforms based on what you did there: social networking, photo sharing, publishing. But even then it didn't acknowledge LinkedIn's focus on business, Facebook's ginormous user base, Flickr's deep community and Say Media's killer Ad Network.

And as these sites have evolved, so have consumer habits. Case in point: the second most used search engine is YouTube and not Yahoo. Yahoo's busy competing with AOL as they try to become content players instead of what they built their brands on respectively.

Assumptions Make Us Stoopid
I'm not being nostalgic with the above observations. My point is to dig deeper and go beyond commonly-held beliefs. Platforms evolve quickly...more quickly than the dot com days.

We assume that teens do nothing more than text. That's a safe assumption since the number of text messages sent and received each day exceeded the population of the earth -- in 2007. But it's not safe to assume they don't watch TV. They simply text while doing it. It's called a multi-screen experience.

So while Flickr and the other two top photo sharing platforms combined are dwarfed by Facebook when it comes to number of images hosted, this is more than a quantity discussion. Consider what else Flickr provides its users. That's why they're still around today -- in blatant defiance of The Highlander Complex. And if that reason ties to your target audience it's a viable option for your consideration.

Less is Even More
Twitpic and Instagram are other disruptions in the photo sharing discussion. Suddenly my iPhone can take and edit pictures that look better than the ones I take with my camera. And it's obviously easier to share those pictures. As we see a trend of consumers that are more into documenting the experience than the experience itself, we need to consider what that means.

This is all part of a larger discussion around content and what value it delivers the consumer and their role in creating it. Content is king oversimplifies the discussion. You have to consider the consumer, which then drives how and where you serve up "his majesty." And it doesn't even begin to take into consideration concepts like sharing and curation.

Slowly Unveiling a Story
The short form, heavily-social Twitpic, Instagram and others offer opportunities to tell very short stories. Tagging helps fashion those stories into volumes. Two interesting examples of sites trying to tap into this are Hash Album and a promotional site set up by Brisk for SXSW, BriskPic. It was a crowd-sourcing/packaging test by Pepsi. Did they learn from it? Let's assume yes. But don't underestimate the power of simplicity when it comes to images. Could they replace a news release? Depends on the news. Much like Twitter, it's forcing communications to be stronger, yet shorter. Our skills increase as consumer attention spans shrink.

What examples have you seen of brands tapping into photo sharing in a way that added to their message? 

Brands Go Offline, Get Experiential for Social Media Success

Starbucks, Best Buy and Home Depot are some of the most successful brands in social media.

And one of the secrets to their success can be found offline.

• Starbucks makes sure customers have access to exclusive content through its Starbucks Digital Network.
• Best Buy uses mobile and QR codes to take consumers from the printed circular, online to in-store. Once in-store QR codes continue to help inform the consumer's shopping experience.
• Home Depot's robust how-to channel on YouTube makes easy to see why the brand's in-store demonstrations are a popular way to "turn doing dials up a notch."

These socially-established brands understand the importance of using online and offline to increase customer engagement. The above examples might seem extreme or unrelated to other brands as these three brands have several thousand retail locations between them. So let's look at two, smaller consumer packaged goods examples of using experiential marketing to bring a brand to life.

Peeps Random Acts of Sweetness Tour: Just in time for Easter, the Peepster Volkswagen “chick” is touring "the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest to celebrate its new online store and to connect directly with loyal fans and new fans in select markets."

During the sugar- and marshmallow-fueled road trip, the Peepster will distribute candy and provide photo opps while updating the company's Facebook page. This effort has also resulted in a ton of online buzz in the process.

Little Debbie Million Smile Mission: Little Debbie is going on the road to make one million people smile. It's all thoroughly documented on Facebook.  As the Little Debbie's airstream travels across the nation, it is adding photos to its Million Smile Mosaic and giving away prizes -- including an Airstream.

Why Experiential Works
I've always been a fan of mobile marketing. It builds on a consumer's existing brand experiences and connects them directly with the brand to help create even more experiences. But without an online, social component the experience can start and end at a single event. Twitter and Facebook icons festoon the Airstream and the Volkswagen for a very specific reason.

So which comes first -- online or offline? How often is this a linear process? Regardless of which comes first, don't get so focused on the online efforts that we neglect to connect them to and to intensify them with offline efforts.


Cross-posted to my work blog.

Influence at SXSWi -- and a #throwdown with Fast Company

Post-SXSWi, I've recovered and even dug out a bit. There's still a metric ton of content I want to post. But I will point you to some posts I wrote as a contributor to The Cincinnati Enquirer's SXSW blog during the event.

During the melee in Austin, David Binkowski, Krista Neher, Saul Colt and I sat on a panel to discuss the topic of influence. Below is the director's cut of slides. We did not get through all of them, so I added a few as well as some links for reference in the speaker notes. I went long in the Slideshare version as we addressed some of the questions folks were asking on Twitter. We just ran out of time before we could answer them.

In discussing what Influence is NOT, we got into celebrity influence. This brought up everyone from Charlie Sheen (popular vs. influential), Ashton Kutcher (broad/absolute influence) and Kenneth Cole (did his errant tweet have a positive impact?), to Klout (one site can't do all the work), Chrysler (a missed opportunity for the brand to be human) and Kim Kardashian (relative influence with a specific group).

SXSW 2011 - Influencer #Throwdown: Defining Influence Once & For All

Fast Company Throws Down
One reason we ran long was a special, unexpected guest. Fast Company Senior Editor Mark Borden discussed the panel singling out the Fast Company Influencer Project in our session description. "Influence 'experiments' like Fast Company's project do more harm than good when it comes to defining and measuring influence." Borden's point is that the project was test and learn...and Fast Company did learn from it. Good point. And in hindsight the fact that we didn't ask Mark to sit on our panel is a miss. We're glad he stopped in.

But we stand by our comment. I have more of an issue with social voting projects as a whole. As I've said here previously "When we ask consumers to vote, generate content, watch a video or otherwise, we need to ask if we're merely creating a transaction to generate a metric. And if the answer is not clear, well, it probably is clear.

Social efforts like voting campaigns can be executed well and can have an impact. They can also do nothing more than preserve one-way communication between a brand and a consumer. We tend to over think this to achieve an easily-generated quantitative metric."

Recaps, Cases & Tweets
In addition to what we did talk about, one case study I wanted to discuss focused on how to find influencers. A team of folks at my employer used a process we have in place to create a blogger outreach list. It was trained on the top 20 influencers discussing DIY, home design/improvement projects. You can see more in the slides on how the list was created and the impact it ultimately had on the results.

We got some great questions and some great feedback from attendees. You can get some more back story from the discussion via our Twitter transcript if you want to dig. Or check out  recaps from Christophe Jammet and Kellye Crane. I'm also looking forward to doing a point/counterpoint on "Content is King" with Bazaarvoice's Ian Greenleigh in the near future.

"Instead of counting the people who reach, reach the people who count
My colleague's quote helps me conclude this post. There's no silver bullet, automagic shortcuts for finding influencers. While we'd (always) love better data to measure at a more exact level -- to identify different influencers at different points in a consumer's brand interactions for example -- it's a mix of qualitative and quantitative measures.

Key influencers are more than likely different for each situation/brand/project. Tie it all back to business goals and you'll be able to focus your efforts if nothing else.