This week on the Overflow Podcast we take a look at a web community that Fluid Media has built called Baseballisms.com, as a way to demonstrate the need for adapting, organic, and of course Fluid approaches to your web presence.

Based upon this real case study with our own baseball community, we can attest firsthand to the fact that no matter how great the original concept for a web site might be, it will end up morphing and changing to meet the needs of the audience.  If the site does not adapt, chances are the growth of the community will be severely limited.

Baseballisms started as a site where we attempted to collect email addresses to distribute daily messages containing public domain content.  Instead it has become a fan based community where our content is supplemented by user generated content.

We believe that putting the web site on the Wordpress blogging platform, and now using the Thesis Template, we have been able to maintain a level of flexibility that would otherwise have been hampered by developing a traditional html web site.

Fundamental branding however is important to establish a strong foundation. This actually allows for flexibility to make modifications to the features and services provided by the web presence.  Keep good branding tactics in mind from the start such as fonts and color choices, multiple applications of logo, a strong tag line .. all of these things can help to maintain a consistent message even while being fluid in other areas.

In the end, be solid and fundamental in developing your brand initially, so that it allows you the freedom to be fluid so you can adapt to what your community is telling you that they want you to be.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

This week we dive into a topic that might be considered a little bit contradictory to something we have always espoused in the world of social media, establishing multiple profiles.  Demonstrating transparency and open communications has been a mantra towards establishing long term credibility in the new world order of marketing.  In today’s episode we talk about how having a different Twitter profile can keep the conversation nicely segmented.

First we chat about our fine telephone and internet service provider here in Atlanta called Digital Agent.  Howard Hunter and the crew have been taking care of us for almost 10 years now, and we find days when the service goes down as infinitely bizarre.

And, by the way don’t forget to set up a Firefox browser plugin called FoxMarks to make sure that you can hop from machine to machine and still maintain your same bookmarks and passwords for ease of use.

We have our business profiles on Twitter that are focused on social media marketing, advertising and other topics that cross over into the personal such as music, baseball, families and anything else that happens to cross our minds.  We are fairly open regarding what is going on.  Recently, we have discovered some value into taking our Baseball related profiles and having very specific conversations and relationships around just that topic.  Nothing else flows into the stream, making it easy to engage in the subject at hand… Baseball.

For businesses, we have seen a trend where corporate communications guidelines are directing or supressing what can be tweeted, so some are choosing to set up their own personal profiles to segment the topics of conversations.  It could be detrimental to the direction we want to take social media clients in, which is to be open and not to try to spin the conversation.  Let the customers help you to direct the communications.

We don’t want this strategy to be misconstrued .. we are simply trying to silo the conversations so that Baseball is what we know we will find there.

The tools that we have including Tweetie, Twitterific, Tweetdeck, Seesmic .. all of the applications make it much easier to manage multiple accounts now.

Is there is difference when considering managing multiple Facebook accounts?

In fact, in our case we do have an account that is used to manage and set up client Fan Pages so that the activity is not mixed into the normal stream that friends would see.

More and more decisions will have to be made from a political standpoint regarding letting a client or co-worker get access to a full Facebook profile.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

What would have happened during the events of 9/11 had today’s social networks been in use eight years ago today? That is the question that Cameron and Joe address in this week’s Overflow Podcast on the anniversary of the attacks.

During the podcast we recollect our actual whereabouts on that day, and what we were doing on the moment we first were made aware that the Trade Center had been hit.

We try to make complete speculation about how we would have witnessed the scene if there had been Twitter, Facebook and probably most importantly YouTube on that day.

In many cases we have said that social media has been better at capturing live events instead of traditional media, however in this case the second plane hitting the tower on live television could not have been any more powerful. Technology would have provided  more eye witness accounts at ground zero and we might have experienced the horror to an even greater degree as video became available.

It is possible though that GPS technology, Google Latitude, Brightkite or other location based technologies could have helped loved ones locate each other.

We also cannot forget the millions of people not directly impacted by were stranded in airports around the country, the personal stories that they experienced would also have been included in the social media distribution of meta data.

We have discovered a repository of 9/11 videos that is being powered by our friends at Magnify, and is part of the Camera Planet Archive.  At this web site is some of the video that might have been distributed almost in real time on that day of September 11, 2001.

This repository is a powerful effect for the future generations so that they can understand what our experiences were like as it happened.  It underlines the importance of a project like StoryCorps which provides a way to capture our personal histories.

Would these tools have helped in the healing process?  It probably would have .. we would have reached out to the friends that we have made online using the social networks.

We also have to consider the global social networks that we have grown as we would have been able to witness the events through the eyes of the world.

How do you think the technology would have changed the national experiences on that day in September 2001?

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

For the second time this year, Cameron and I have presented to a classroom of students at the Art Institute of Atlanta. We are invited by our friend Larry Stultz, Department Chair at the Institute, to discuss real world implementation of Social Media Marketing.

As much as we are able to provide information to the students during these discussions (btw, we always have the group re-arrange the furniture into a circle so that we are discussing, not presenting), we are able to get back just as much feedback on what is working for this particular demographic.

This week on Overflow we discuss our impressions of social media networks through the eyes of this group of students.

The most prominent feedback was the widespread immersion in the use of Facebook versus the total disregard of Twitter. The take away seemed to be that Twitter was just another place that needed updating, and everyone that needed to be kept abreast of their actions was already part of their Facebook network, so Twitter was just a duplicate task.

This finding is reinforced by an article in the New York Times just this week regarding the “driving force behind Twitter“.

The students were not aware of the search and conversation (hashtag) capabilities of Twitter that provides much of it’s value. They were also not aware of the acquisition of FriendFeed by Facebook at all, and the additional features that it will bring to the network,  such as real time search.

This may also reflect the theory that at a young age, the most important measure of value is to have a popular group of friends.  Everything that a young person does revolves around friends and family, precisely the type of influencer relationships found on Facebook.  Twitter tends to be more self promotional, news gathering, research driven, and less concerned with relationships.  The difference between the use of Facebook and Twitter may simply come down to the hard wiring of age.

We did get into the topic of job search and employers use of social networks to review the “character” of potential hires.  Of course, the students felt that it was not a fair assessment but agreed that some form of constraint must be applied when posting on line.  They believe that at some point in the future the playing field will be balanced where both employers and employees will have things in their lifestream demonstrating questionable behavior.

The other big take away element from our conversation was the complete lack of circling back around after an online transaction to leave a comment or a rating.  It actually didn’t seem to occur to the group to participate in the dialogue surounding their interaction with the product or service.  Again, it seemed to be deemed another task that was not important to them.

We tried to emphasize the importance of using comments in a number of ways.  In one sense, it will help them to get discovered as a “personal brand” as they look for employment after graduation, particularly if they can point to a large number of quality blog posts and comment discussions about relevant topics.  It is also important to them as consumers.  They admitted to having ratings influence a buying decision, so it only stands to reason that they would have better results if there was a larger pool of ratings to review.  Growing the percentage within their demographic who are willing to take the time to rate an item will help to build up more meta data, providing more relevant feedback when it comes time to search and transact.

The only time someone in the class had actually gone through the process of leaving a rating was based upon a tourism experience, and it was encouraged by the property.  We addressed this issue in our Overflow podcast called Make the Offline Ask.

The last bit of insight that they were able to impart, was their preference to have an interaction with a brand if there was a way to make it more “personal”. A character or a spokesperson who was speaking through the Facebook Fan Page was going to get their attention more than an impersonal brand.  Examples might include the Burger King King and the e-Trade Baby.

Once again, we’d like to thank the class for having us in to discuss Social Media.  If you are interested in having us speak or present to a class please send an email to jmagennis@ befluid.com.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

This week on the Overflow Podcast, we get into one of the tools of the trade.  We tend to talk about high level social media strategy or changes in the marketing landscape, but we don’t want to forget about how we are able to make this whole thing happen.  Cameron and Joe focus on using Skype for personal and business on this week’s episode.

It also came up that  I recommend the use of the Plantronics 470 USB headset (paid link) for recording podcasts, and while we’re at it I’ll also throw in the recommendation for Logitech Quickcam MP (paid link).

After our decision to take our marketing office to a virtual environment, we needed to have the ability to communicate via video conferencing as well as a simple solution for recording our weekly podcasts.  Skype easily meets both of those requirements.

Cameron shared a family holiday scenario for using Skype to bring all family members into the celebration, no matter the geographic difference.

There is also a simple Skype add-on called Pamela (paid link, again) to help with the recording process. The software is a simple download and install, that records your calls and saves them in an MP3 format for editing and production.  If you have any additional questions about creating a podcast, please contact me at jmagennis @ befluid <dot> com.

This functionality, combined with cell phones and now Google Voice, is making the old telephone closet, and eventually our telephony provider obsolete.  We anticipate going away from our VOIP provider as soon as we can port over our numbers into Google Voice.

Over the years there have been some signals that security concerns may be something to consider when evaluating Skype.  We cannot adequately communicate the exact issues so we’ll link to the experts so that you can decide for yourself.

Businesses can also look at virtual meeting tools such as GoToMeeting and other Citrix products as secure means for effective communication.

NOTE: Can’t believe we didn’t mention the impending IPO of Skype (I’ve got to start writing things down for these podcasts) and the impact it might make positive or negative to the service. The stated intention for eBay buying Skype in the first place was to help buyers and sellers communicate more efficiently.  That has not come to fruition, and in fact the opposite appears to be true in the auction world, where less communication is the preference.

Keep and ear to the ground to see what happens with Skype, but in the meantime take advantage of the flexibility that this peer to peer communication functionality can bring to your personal and professional lives.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

OK, we just wanted to have a little fun with this week’s Overflow Podcast.  We recorded late on Friday afternoon, coincidentally the day after Twitter got hammered by a DDos attack.

We had decided earlier in the week that we were going to talk about the types of tweets that we could do without. Tweets that are not relevant, add debris to the stream and could simply be eliminated. Using Friendfeed this week, where there are terrific conversations held in real time,  in an easy to follow interface, simply reinforced the amount of junk floating in the Twitter stream. It’s Twitter flotsam and jetsam.

We’ve always seen Chris Brogan say that a great blog post is to make lists .. so here is our list of the types of tweets that we have to navigate around and cause us to lash out .. or maybe not lash out but basically just unfollow.

Are you someone who puts these tweets out into the stream?

• Twittascopes – please, save your horoscope for the funny papers.

• Multiple autoposts, all at once using services such as AutoTweets, Twitterfeed, Proxifeed, and the myriad of other automated ways to send out a tweet. If you must do this please try to spread out the timing of these messages because we skip them when they appear all bunched together in the stream.

• Auto re-tweet services where users of the service are automatically sending retweets of all the others within the network, no matter the relevancy of the message.

• The person who posts mudslinging comments in the political arena. If all you can do is be insulting it’s time to unfollow.

• Tweets that “Guarantee 400 Followers per day!” …. Here is the sarcastic post that Chris Brogan did about this recently.

• Any twitterer who starts with the use of term BREAKING NEWS before every tweet.  Nice try but it’s not going to work more than a couple of times.

• The misdirection quote .. inserting an inspirational quote with a link back to a book or sales program is not cool.

• The unfortunate DJ party on Blip.fm while following on the iPhone.  Not an issue with the twitterer themselves, just a technology / Apple issue. There are great Friday night DJ’s on Twitter who would be awesome to listen to, unfortunately not on an iPhone.

• And dare we say it .. we love all of the #followfriday props that we get from friends and followers, but it’s run its course.  The original purpose of promoting interesting people for others discover was noble and important early on, however it has now gone overboard and has lost its impact.  There is a right way to recommend someone and there is a wrong way to do Follow Friday. Let’s just call a timeout and find something new that we can do.

Well, that’s our list.  We avoided the well documented auto-dm and sponsored tweets, but we’d love to know if you have tweets that you just can’t stand in your tweet stream. Let us know in the comments what we have missed .. we’ll amend this list and give you credit!

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

On the Overflow podcast this week we start out with an immediate detour into discussing telephony applications on the iPhone such as Skype and Google Voice.  

The Skype SMS and telephone functionality is redundant to the features of the phone, which just so happens to be the public rationale  for removing the Google Voice app from the iTunes store.  We have to look a little bit deeper into whether the app is deactivated on my phone or just no longer available.

The topic we chose to discuss this week relates to broadcast media outlets requesting that viewers follow them on Twitter, and why would anyone actually choose to do that.

We use the example of Fox Sports promoting their Twitter account during a Los Angeles Dodgers game and pose the question wondering why anyone needs to receive tweets about scores, upcoming programming and promotional messages when there are many other ways to get that information. It’s a classic example of an old media entity entrenched in their thinking of “broadcasting” a message via channels.

There is a way for broadcast outlets to use social networks incorporated into their on air content, as Rick Sanchez of CNN has demonstrated how to communicate with an audience and to incorporate their messages into his broadcasts.

Another example of integrating Twitter into a broadcast is Kyle Petty answering questions on the TNT broadcast of Nascar races.

The alternate view may come into play when considering local news organizations or broadcast outlets.  Just as in search becoming a very localized and personal experience, there may be some value in following an entity that will be disseminating local weather, traffic and headlines in real time.

We took a look at the Fox Sport South use of Twitter and determined that there was a big gap between the number of followers 1,151 versus following at 113 … but worst of all is that the stream has not been updated in a few days even though they were trying to “live tweet” the last game.  That’s a big fail on their part and someone needs to immediately determine the Twitter strategy for that organization.  Are you listening Fox Sports South?

What does this mean for a business owner? Does this reinforce the transparency and personal nature of business that social media is pushing the corporate world towards?  I think so .. get out from behind the corporate veil and get to know your customers and engage with them directly. Do not set up a twitter account as some faceless entity distributing your brochure ware.

How about the upcoming fall TV season? Will there be a plethora of sports integration, prime time programming soliciting followers, and any other attempts to request permission to send broadcast messages?

To reiterate, broadcast networks need to come up with a strategy before just diving in. An attempt to just throw things at the wall to see what sticks is a poor excuse for a plan.  There are ways to interact and grow an audience as a broadcast medium, but it means allowing real communication and not just looking at Twitter as just another distribution channel to broadcast messages.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

It gets a little deep during this week’s Overflow podcast.  We end up touching upon the metaphysical aspects of putting our lives out there on social networks, and whether or not that is a “good thing”.

The impetus for this discussion was the funeral this week of my younger cousin Elizabeth, after we lost her to breast cancer. The funeral brought my family together from around the country with the shocking revelation that life has gone on and we have not done a very good job of keeping in touch.  Children have been born and aged without all of us having a sense of what is happening in the family on a consistent basis.

I shared my belief that had everyone participated in social networks to a greater degree, we could have had a more connected life experience.  More importantly, I felt guilt and remorse upon finding out that Elizabeth had attempted to write a blog and I had not been aware nor shared in her experiences through reading and commenting.

Taking this thought to another level, I am starting to envision the “science fiction” concept of a mind meld between the brain and the network happening. Here is our life on these networks in a chronological order, with all of the various interconnected mediums carrying our personal histories.

Although you may not be touching the true essence of the person, these social platforms may be the closest we have to living forever.

To attempt a bit of a connection to business in this heady discussion, it must be considered that as we all start to live our lives constantly connected, there will be times where an uneven balance may occur regarding how much information is known.  It may be a disadvantage from a negotiation perspective if this imbalance occurs.  Ethically there will be challenges in terms of right and wrong uses of this personal information.

Businesses will have to understand that their employees will be sharing the good and the bad of everyday life within the walls of the organization, so they better be buttoned up and provide a quality work environment or they will find more difficulties with customers as well as recruits.

Is this all a good thing?

From a personal privacy perspective, living with a totally connected stream available, searchable and viewable forever will have ramifications that generations will have to adopt and live with.

The benefits however outweigh this privacy issue as we are able to maintain more information about ancestry, heritage and personal relationships that are currently hindered by distance.

Relationships will no longer be masked and guarded as everyone’s life trajectory will be accessible, so those skeletons will no longer have much weight and we can get right down to connectedness based upon the true nature of the individual.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

This week it’s all about content creation.  Over time on the podcast we have focused on the distribution channels and the fancy new social networks that have sprung up to allow us to reach a wider audience than ever before, but to get back to basics this week, Cameron and Joe talk about good content.

The Overflow podcast is a perfect example of a way to generate content for a particular topic of interest.  We determined early on that we were going to need a way to consistently come up with ideas to include in blog posts, and since we have these types of conversations on a regular basis anyway, why not turn it into audio content and then take the transcripts and turn into something to be indexed.

We have sort of come to a point where there is a fine balance between entertainment, quality and brand message.  We are now more open to accepting content that in the past would have been deemed amateurish, whereas now it comes across as “real”, “grassroots”, or “authentic”. This also bodes well for brands that are able to incorporate user generated content into their communications package.

Social media and the ability to listen to the intended audience is driving content creation, as corporate communications people can test various approaches and let the audience dictate what works and create based upon that feedback.

One of the things that we do not do as an agency is create link bait by posting controversial articles.  Those content developers are the online version of talk radio hosts who are trying to fire up an audience even though they may not necessarily fully believe the statements they are making.

With all the excitement about the ability to produce video and audio podcasts, we should not forget that quality photography is an excellent way to ensure that your brand message is being communicated properly. It has always been a heavily weighted component of the print production world and should not be diminished in the online realm.

It is an exciting time to be in the content development business because the tools are available at reasonable prices, so even some extreme content such as animation can be considered when it never could have in the past.

How do you feel about going way out there with your brand with the only intention of simply trying to attract attention? For example, in Atlanta the Great Southern Wood company has gone with the Yella Fella as a memorable character to reach consumers.  Could you see doing something along these lines or do you prefer to stay more literal in the messaging platform that you use?

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

It’s been a few weeks since our last edition of the Overflow podcast, partly due to vacations but also because of attending the NASFT 2009 Fancy Food Show in NYC, on behalf of our client Wicked Jack’s Tavern.  This is the third year that we have attended, and each time we get even more excited about the opportunities that we can present to this brand.

As usual we get great accolades for the work that we have done in developing the graphics and brand platform, so that is of great encouragement to us.  It’s even greater to receive the compliments face to face with actual food industry professionals.

However, this year we really felt that the key message that we wanted to deliver to this audience was how to use social media to attract attention and to build an audience.   We used search of twitter to connect with others at this massive event (last year we attempted and there was very little activity), and following up on our own advice regarding the “Offline Ask” we placed business cards with a request to join the Wicked Jacks Facebook Fan Page all around the booth.

What turned out to be the best promotion we did revolved around something that we continually stress, the development of quality content and the tool that we used to create that content was the Flip Camera.

We documented the show from the perspective of The Wicked Jacks Tavern booth, with the help of Kristen Lewis we presented the three days of activity plus some added elements to keep the viewer involved.

It is important to note that the use of a Flip camera lends itself to getting spontaneous shots and not the storyboarded productions that most big companies are used to getting.  Since this is an affordable way to get high quality footage, it will allow for an honest representation of whatever your brand message is, no matter what size of a budget you have.

On a nightly basis we would return to the hotel to edit down the parts that were inconsequential and to make it more appealing from an entertainment perspective, then we would post it to YouTube and to the Wicked Jacks Tavern blog.  With a Tweet in the morning we would attract attention to the video as well as the trade show booth.

Kristen was even astute enough to pick up on an odd behavior from the people who were sampling rum cake, and so it was documented on the day two video.  This is actually how it happened!

Did you catch the scene where Cameron goes in pursuit of the Baconnaise booth? The entire concept of using new media and social media to launch a brand is where we are intending on taking the folks at Wicked Jacks.

You can also see the art elements that Cameron integrates into the videos which are so necessary for keeping a viewer interested. The building itself was visually interesting and you might also notice some of the long shots contained motion and closeups of extraordinary quality,  even though the camera is as small as a cell phone!

Note that we encountered a booth issue that we believe hurt our traffic flow, so in the spirit of a totally transparent Fancy Food Show experience, we document our displeasure and we ended up moving the booth.

Day three is always interesting because it becomes the “grab every sample you can!” day which you can see documented quite nicely by Kristen and Cameron.

It is interesting to see people respond to the site of a Flip camera. Some don’t actually realize that it is a video, however as more and more of these devices and iPhone video cameras become ubiquitous, everyone will understand when they are being captured in digital bits.  Storytelling and documentary will never be the same.

Finally, these videos are now online, tagged accordingly, getting indexed and will become evergreen content that will become part of the search results for future exhibitors and attendees at the show.  It will be great to hear from folks next year that they have seen our videos.

We should also point out that on this podcast we also briefly touch upon the results that our client Cathinka Chandler has seen from a product video going viral on YouTube.  The details can be found in this post on The Kush Report.

Have you produced any videos? What types of content are you finding compelling? Let us know in the comments what you are doing these days.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.