I mean, what better way to illustrate how the tools of the social web can be used effectively in marketing than to employ some of those tools to “crowdsource” a comprehensive presentation?

Here’s how it works:

• In the comment form below, leave your input as to how companies can use tools on the web to join their community of customers and start conversations.
• I will take those submissions, and from them I will build both a PowerPoint presentation and speaker’s notes. I will then publish those under a license, effectively making the presentation free for all to use, provided they attribute the contributors and blog about their talk.
• It’s truly open source, so you can edit the slides, the notes and your resulting talk to suit you, as long as you re-publish your changes under a CC license.
• Sound like fun? Well then chime in! In the comments below, give us your real world examples, ideas, case studies, recommendations, brain storms; whatever you’ve got.

I think this can be a lot of fun, and serve as a great way to help others understand the way the web is changing how companies can better communicate with their customer base, and truly join their communities.

So let’s hear from you! Here’s your chance to have your best ideas and voice heard, and to take the message to the streets, along with the ideas of your fellow marketers, bloggers and social media experts.

Comment away; make it a sentence, or make it a few paragraphs, your choice! And don’t forget to leave your link and name for the credits!

Cheers,

Jordan Behan
jordan[at]telltenfriends.com

Update: After some chit-chat in the comments, Rob Merlino has decided to buy a url for the hotdogtruck blog, at www.thehotdogtruck.com. Also, Bob LeDrew points us to his latest CBC article on this very topic, and I’ve selected a quick byte here:

All these social media have a few things in common. They are based in the idea of conversation, or dialogue between equals. A static Web site delivering tightly scripted messages doesn’t work with this new world.

Exactly.

Update #2: Cynthia has chimed in with a focus on B2B, and another gem of a quote:

Choose a select group of customers that are your raving fans/evangelists. Have a conversation with them about how/if they would like to interact, collaborate with your company. Or with each other. Then select the best social media tool–blog, online community, message board to fit your unique community.

Bullseye. Also, big thanks to Chris Heuer of the Social Media Club, who gave the go-ahead to pull bits and pieces from his previously published content, with attribution. That is, after all, what Creative Commons licenses are for.

Anybody else have an article or concept that they’d like to have referenced?

At the Northern Voice blogging conference, held this weekend at UBC, I learned a lot.

Sure, I expected to come away with a new perspective and plenty of fresh ideas, the surprising thing to me is what I learned.

I attended a number of great sessions over the course of the weekend, covering a diverse range of blogging topics. For instance, on Saturday morning I attended Richard Erickson’s “Blogging 101,” not so much to learn the basics of blogging, (I like to think that I have that covered) but more importantly to hear what Richard’s ideas of the basics were, and to hear the questions being asked in the session. As someone who prides himself on opening people’s eyes to the wonder that is blogging on a regular basis, it was refreshing to see so many new bloggers thirsting for more info on how to create, promote and grow their blogs. Richard didn’t disappoint, and the crowd participation when it came to questions like “How do I get more readers?” was for me the essence of what the weekend was all about.

Photo of me with camera (and unfortunate finger position) by Kris Krug.

Sessions such as Friday’s “Photocamp” and Saturday’s “Digital Photography for the Web,” both hosted by Kris Krug were also highlights for me; learning the intricacies of my new DSLR camera and its differences from my old film shooter is a steep learning curve, and the refresher tips were a big help. As Kris pointed out, the room was filled (on both occasions) with several professional shooters, and to hear their input was infinitely helpful. Many thanks to the likes of Roland, Warwick and Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, and apologies to those I’ve left out.

Saturday morning started with a keynote by Anil Dash of Six Apart (makers of Typepad, Live Journal, Moveable Type and Vox) and he was excellent. Great use of Powerpoint, and a terrific look at blogging that was informative and relevant for all levels of the “blogerati” in attendance. Among his points that struck a cord with me was that “a date stamp is a social contract,” promising readers that the author will be there to respond to comments, and will continue to publish fresh insights.

(Photo of Anil Dash by Laughing Squid)

Amazingly, Mr. Dash has been blogging since 1999, and was uploading diary entries using Notepad and and FTP before that (He considers the advent of the permalink to be the beginning of life as a “blogger”). Simply put, his presentation was everything that a keynote for a blogging conference should be, and lunching with him and Dave Shea on Saturday was a treat.

Another great highlight for me was Dave Olsen’s “The 3 P’s of Podcasting,” as much for his presentation style as for the easy-to-absorb content. Using what was later jokingly referred to as an “underhead projecter,” he whizzed through 60 or 70 slides in a manner that was reminiscent of both Bob Dylan and a certain scene from the film Love Actually (one of Mrs. Behan’s favorites). I’ll have to find a video of Dave’s talk, as it has to be seen by all podcasters.

(Dave O preaches podcasting, photo by Robert Scales)

For me though, the most thought-provoking discussion was during Alex Waterhouse-Hayward and Darren Barefoot’s session on “Why Do We Blog?” Darren’s “tag clouds” of the responses to his survey (to which he received upwards of 1200 replies) were a real eye-opener, as I discovered that many bloggers have entirely different motivations from my own for maintaining a blog. For some it’s therapeutic; an outlet for their deepest secrets. In fact, the subject of blogging for business barely came up, and I guess in reality my motivations for blogging go much deeper than “it’s good for business;” a realization that I came to only after I heard the reasons that others have for engaging the medium.

As an example, 64-year-old Mr. Waterhouse-Hayward publishes his blog to be his legacy; a record of what he was thinking on any given day that his grandchildren can enjoy long after his passing. He cares very little about readership, and his blog is void of both comments and categories or tags. Also, he diligently posts daily, a commitment that he sees as necessary for something to be referred to as a diary (He quoted the Latin origin of the word diary as part justification for this, but I missed it) I had a chance to quiz him on the lack of categories later in the afternoon, and it seems that decision was driven more by ease-of-use for himself, and keeping his sidebar neat and clean. I told him that if I were his granddaughter, I would prefer a better index of his posts in the form of categories (What did Grandpa have to say about…) but he seemed steadfastly certain that the idea of categorizing his entries would be too stifling, and I have to respect that.

(Darren Barefoot’s slides by leftantler)

Wisely, Barefoot didn’t try to get his data to support any sweeping generalizations about blogging as medium and why we choose to do it, but rather admitted that he was no closer to answering the question than before he took the poll. For his own reasons for blogging, he cited (paraphrasing here) his desire to entertain, provoke thought and shed light on different topics for his audience; a feat that he accomplishes like clockwork with several posts a day. Roland Tanglao said it best when he quipped, “It’s working.”

It was a weekend that has really made me think hard about why I blog, and to re-evaluate some of the decisions I’ve made along the way. I can think of no better time to share some of my own reasonings than right here and now, so here goes:

• When I started, I think what I wanted was a forum to brag about all the things I had learned, especially relating to marketing, and impart that knowledge to whoever would listen. If you’ve been reading for a while, you know that in this area, I’ve been fairly consistent.

• After a few months of posting, I started to get comments, and I noticed a pattern. In most cases, I seemed to get a higher number of comments and links when I made it about me; offering my opinion on things and the occasional glimpse into my personal life. Since discovering that fact, I have tried to speak in a voice that is genuinely me, without turning the entire blog into a constant stream of narcissism. Personally, I think I talk about myself a bit too much, but perhaps the self-loathing that comes with that realization provides a bit of balance. Now that I have admitted it publicly here, I’m off the hook, right?

• Also of note: Although I am most certainly a proud Canadian (another personal fact: I have a maple leaf tattooed on my left pectoral) I chose to write all of my posts with American spellings. Almost half of my readership are from South of the border (that’s the Canadian border, my American friends) and I decided that it was best to publish with the Yank spellings of words like “colour” and “favourite,” which, as I write this, Firefox has identified as spelling errors of course.

(Sitting down to upload some shots. Photo by Jeremy Latham)

The best part about blogging for me? The comments. I love seeing my link count climb like crazy, and I monitor all of my stats quite closely, but there is simply no better metric than that of generating responses from others, and knowing that I have instigated a conversation.

In the spirit of that, I would love to hear your responses to the question “Why do We Blog?” It seems it is different for everyone and as I have just discovered, reflecting on it and putting it into words is a great exercise that only helped to reinforce my passion for this exciting and dynamic medium.

——-

Once again, the tags from the weekend are northernvoice for posts in Technorati, and nv07, nv2007, northernvoice and photocamp for pics. In a stroke of brilliance, the organizers have created a mashed-up feed featuring the blogs of all who attended the conference! Happy reading!

The Race is May 6th, and I’m going to make it happen.

Today my sister and I ran our first half-marathon-distance training run. (13mi, or 22k for us Canucks) I wanted to run a picture of us running, but nobody wants to get up that early to take a shot of us.

My knees hurt, but I will soldier on.

Here’s a fun one for all you creative types out there…

Fellow former BCITer Kristen Landry has a contest on right now to name her business. She and her business partner Stephanie are custom woodworkers and cabinet makers, and they are located here in Vancouver. They make handmade wooden furniture and custom cabinetry.
The contest (the prize, anyhow) is open only to locals, but if you’re far away, why not throw in some suggestions just for fun? Here’s the details:

• The Prize: A handmade, custom coffee table, with your choice of wood!
• The Rules: None really, save for the aforementioned geographical exception.
• The Deadline: March 15th, so get your suggestions in soon!
• How to enter: Leave your suggestions here as a comment, or email them directly to Kris: chickflip[at]hotmail.com.

Of note: In BC, business names are required to consist of at least two words, one unique and one descriptive. A really bad example of this would be “Wonderful Wordworking.” Hopefully that makes some sense, and keep in mind you’re not limited to two words; as I can testify after getting the name Tell Ten Friends Marketing Co. approved here in the Province.

Let’s hear your suggestions! Have some fun with it. There’s no limit to the number of times you can enter, and having seen Kris’ work (in photos, mind you) I can say that the winner will most certainly be pleased with the first prize.

I’m sitting back at home after a long day at “Moosecamp,” day one of a two-day blogging conference here in Vancouver called Northern Voice.

Those of you who subscribe to my feed will already have seen a few of my pics trickling in throughout the day. Expect more of the same tomorrow, but I thought it would only be fair to share my observations after this first day of action.

I attended sessions all day, ranging from “Mash-ups for Non-developers” to “Photocamp.” Oh, and I got my purple t-shirt with “Bloggable” across the front. Damn, that’s clever!

(purple t-shirt photo by Kris Krug)

The first thing that always strikes me about conferences of this kind, is how I “fit in.” See, in most of the crowds I find myself in, I am a different breed; an uber-user web kid, who everyone turns to for all matters related to the in-ter-nets, and computers in general for that matter.

In a crowd like the one at Northern Voice though, I’m just a wide-eyed “noob,” all slack-jawed because I’ve just seen a live demo of feed mash-ups that never knew were possible, or because someone confirmed that it really is Robert Scoble sitting over there in the corner.

If you’re not a habitual, obsessed blogger-type like me, and you’re reading this wondering what the hell I’m talking about, then don’t give up on me just yet. My point is simply that in the world of the web, I am but a fledgling student when compared to the kind of power-users, developers, and…let’s just say it - downright A-list bloggers that tend to show up at the kinds of conferences with “camp” as a suffix.

(me scratching, as seen by Cyprien, whose NV shots are many)

The second thing that strikes me is how many familiar faces I recognize. Thanks to the presence of little 60×60 pixel avatars on many of my online haunts, I can put the face to the name for a lot of personalities in the room, even when we’ve never met. I feel like I know them, such is my familiarity with the frequency of their blog posts, or their photo feeds, or even the sound of their voice on their podcast, if that is the case. That, I don’t mind telling you, is ultra cool IMO.

Since attending Barcamp way back in August, I’ve gotten to know a few of “the people behind the blogs,” through emails, coffee meetings, lunches and various other meet-ups. In fact, Jeremy and I carpooled to UBC together, and our firms collaborate on projects as well.

I guess what I’m doing a long-winded job of saying is that the web has connected all of us in a way that was never logistically possible before, and conferences like Northern Voice were created to celebrate that fact; to organize the collective to spawn new ideas, share them, and for at least one weekend, to press actual flesh and meet the real people behind the web presence.

For this reason, I try to make a point of introducing myself to all of those people that I feel I already know. Sure, I might come off as a bit “fan boyish,” but that’s what it’s all about for me.

Strangely, I’m coming to this realization only after returning home at the end of the day (I opted not to give myself the burden of attempting a live blog this time). Thing is though, I’m back there tomorrow. So if you’re reading this and you’re attending Northern Voice this weekend, stop and say hello!

I’ll be the guy with the goofy grin and the outstretched hand, waiting to shake yours.

——–

I will add to this all weekend, but if you want to see a slideshow of my shots thus far, it’s here. Also, if you’re curious about all-things-Northern-Voice, the agreed upon tags are northernvoice for posts, and both northernvoice and nv07 for Flickr photos.

Blog on, Vancouver.

Ever since I spotted my first Island Ink-Jet kiosk at Mayfair Mall in Victoria, BC, I’ve been taking my ink cartridges to Island Ink-Jet to be refilled.

Now living in Burnaby, I used to frequent the Metrotown Mall location, before it picked up and moved all the way to Langley. In my search for a new location, I found Nick; tucked into an upstairs corner at The Bay at Lougheed Mall on the border of Coquitlam, a full 12 minute drive from my home office.

Recently, my printer has been acting up, and finally my black ink cartridge started showing the caution symbol, a clear indication that it was time to make the trek to get it refilled. I took it to Nick, and later I was inserting it and printing a test page.

No ink! This, dear friends, was not good news. Back to Lougheed with me, and there’s Nick with a solution: pay the difference, and take an additional brand new cartridge, in case his re-setting of the existing one was to no avail. If this works, I thought- I’ll have two full cartridges! The celebration was short lived, as neither would put forth that precious ink I’ve come to depend on; except of course for dripping it all over my fingers as I fumbled with the cartridges.

Obviously, either I’m doing something horribly wrong, or my printer is faulty. I presume the latter to be true, and my 3-in-1 printer is now marked to become landfill fodder. (Anybody think they can resurrect it?) No matter, as after a quick call to Nick, he assured me that if I brought the (now used) cartridge back, I’d get a full refund.

For Nick’s sake and my own, I wish that I wasn’t still having difficulty with my printer- although my experience in dealing with him made me realize that his level of customer service was definitely worth mentioning. After dealing with me, Nick has nothing more than a used ink cartridge and ink on his own hands since I became his customer; due to the refund he has yet to make a penny off me.

But he has done one thing- he’s secured a faithful customer, who will willingly drive to Lougheed Mall for service that I know is worth the trip!

Great marketing is in those little details:

• Making decisions based on what’s good for the customer
• The “9th Refill free” cards for your wallet
• The small print-out featuring tips on how to preserve the environment through recycling cartridges that was stapled to the small baggie carrying my refill.

Thanks, Nick. I’ll back just as soon as my new printer needs fuel.

If you haven’t already, drop by the forum, sign yourself up and say hello!

I’m pretty good at responding to questions and topics fairly promptly, and I can’t wait until that little community sustains itself!

Cheers,

Jordan.

When I saw this (on the YouTube homepage) I realized I just had to post it. After all, it’s timely, relevant and serves as a great example of customer evangelism; in part because he using the product to literally sing its virtues.

Enjoy:

Sweet, isn’t it? In other love-related news, JD made a big public announcement this week. Congrats!

I haven’t said this in a while, but I love you all. Thanks for reading!

Found via Chris Anderson:

A video that explains the concept of ‘Web 2.0,” the rapid changes happening to the web, the way we communicate, and the way we “teach the machine.”

Watch it for yourself:

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

For more: Visit the post by the video’s creator to join the discussion about this video and some of the issues it raises.

What follows is a case study of sorts; a real “look-behind-the-scenes” at some of the web marketing strategy we employ here at Tell Ten Friends.

A few months back, I replied to a Craigslist posting indicating that the poster was looking for some help with SEO. I replied, as I often do to postings of this nature in Vancouver, and a few days later Eric Burke followed up with a phone call. Eric is a local artist and professional graphic designer, and has for the last three years been working on a collection of prints that feature cityscapes and landscapes of Vancouver. To launch his new online gallery, Eric wanted to get his page rank up fast.

I was excited right away, because here was a client who already understood the value of the web and social networking, and he was gracious enough to listen to my harebrained SEO tactics:

• We started the same way you always do with a good SEO strategy; by first doing some keyword research, and later writing a list of keywords to be used in the meta data of the site, and in the copywriting on the home page. (I luuuv the optional flash presentation with music in the banner, don’t you?)
• Eric already had a blog, so we built into his existing domain, added the RSS icon, and he’s been posting regularly about Vancouver, the city that serves as both the subject and the inspiration for his art. View his latest post here, where he discusses the process of creating one of his prints.
• To increase his online social network and generate a few more incoming links, Eric went about building several online profiles to promote his site and blog:
  
  eric burke | MYSPACE

  eric burke | LINKEDIN

  eric burke | PANARAMIO

  eric burke | SQUIDOO

• We also submitted Eric to a number of artist directories online (too many to list) to open more doors to his site, and of course to generate even more incoming links for the sake of SEO.
• Perhaps most importantly, all of his prints plus his “photo-journalistic” shots are available at his Flickr account for free, under a Creative Commons license that requires attribution to the artist.
• Lastly, we embarked on a PR campaign that was exactly the right scale for a release of this nature. I submitted it to a number of my local press contacts (only the most relevant ones, and the ones I know personally), and we also distributed it online, with free submission to PR Leap (very cool, very “2.0″ PR site) Fast Pitch, and the Grandaddy of them all, a paid submission to PRWeb.
• We’re tracking Eric’s incoming links and media “traction” with just two simple tools: Eric’s existing Technorati account, and Google News Alerts, which update me “as it happens” every time an item is published on the web with the search terms I’ve specified. (Eric’s name, plus “Vancouver” in this case)

Admittedly, we had it easy in this example; The client is a very accomplished graphic designer with access to a web developer, and luckily the marketer (third person here) was able to get his ideas across very easily to these two industry experts. That said, these ideas can work for anyone who shares a few very vital characteristics with the client in this example; Eric is web savvy, and understands the value of joining these communities, making himself accessible online, starting and engaging in conversations with his expanding network of online contacts.

I hope you’ve found this little case study helpful; both myself and Eric welcome your feedback and input, and I’m sure Eric would be especially pleased if you subscribe to his feed.