With Paul’s permission, I’m taking a conversation that we had via email (below), and re-publishing it here, edited for length.

Paul lives in the UK, where he says the new media phenomenon has yet to catch fire among the marketing community. There simply aren’t enough Pauls or Hughs to go around, it seems. Recently, Paul has found himself without employment, and has publicly blogged about his search, his struggle to find just the right fit, and the question of whether to publish one’s CV online.

Paul Fabretti

Paul’s Blending the Mix blog has always been a great read. Like me, Paul spent many months at the beginning reading, reflecting and commenting on the many new media marketing lessons published on the web each day, before beginning to publish his own original thoughts and ideas about marketing on the new web. All of this over a two year time span, give or take. In short, Paul gets it, and has had plenty of time to put much of “it” into practice. What’s more, he has a direct marketing background that helps him understand the dynamics of the old way of “pushing” information, and the new way of using information to “pull” visitors to you.

Since it hasn’t long since I was in a similar position as Paul, at the crossroads, I wanted to add some perspective for both him and his prospective employers about the value of what Paul already understands. And so begins a peek at our conversation:

Paul: In all honesty, most people I get interviewed by tell me I don’t have enough online experience. 2 years is nothing compared to most people I hear get interviewed so how do you show you have the knowledge without having anything to show for it?…How do you pitch what you do to clients by the way? How do you persuade the skeptics who think it is mumbo jumbo?

JB: To the sceptics who say two years is not enough, I say two years is an eternity in new media. How far have we come since we both starting blogging, etc? How much experience could one be expected to have in such a new and rapidly changing biz? Added: (Wanted: Facebook Apps Developer with 3-5 Years Experience! Joke stolen from kk+)

As for pitching clients, I sell them on what I know they want. Forget about the technology, the tools, the strategy, and first address this simple fact: The web allows them to put their already great (hopefully…) relationship building process online. And they can create and track word of mouth online, as long as they join the conversation with the best of intentions. Reaching more people, and creating lasting client relationships; that’s the return.

Web content is more important than ever, and if they have no strategy to manage it, they’ll get left behind. Years of experience managing “Web 1.0″ campaigns are less relevant, in my opinion.

Paul: You make a great point about a fast-changing environment providing little opportunity to gain experience. To be honest, I think it is one thing to use new tools (like blogging or twitter for example) but quite another and much more important, to understand how these tools should and should not be used for commercial purposes. I fear that the UK is not as aware of most of the tools I know and understand, and as such any experience i do have seems largely irrelevant! As you say, with new ideas cropping up all the time it is as crucial to keep track of it all. I also like your take on knowledge sharing on the net. There are always people out
there to share the knowledge and experience with.

JB: Paul, it sounds as though you’re in a perfect spot to help more companies discover this stuff, and your take on the fact that they are merely tools and not strategies will be infinitely helpful to the first smart employer who snatches you up.

It’s a shame that more companies in Paul’s neighborhood (Manchester) don’t already see the value in the kind of knowledge he possesses. Still, being the first with a great idea has its advantages.

Please join me in wishing Paul the best of luck in his search, and feel free to add your suggestions and comments to the discussion.

Today I received an email from The Tyee, an independent news blog here in Vancouver, BC.

It was a pitch of sorts, asking me to check out their new video, and spread the word. It must have worked, because here I am posting about it, just minutes later. Watch the video, then check below for my postmortem of the campaign and pitch:

Pretty entertaining video, especially to those of us in Canada who recognize the antagonists depicted in the short, among them Izzy Asper and Conrad Black. Both are famous for making big bucks while doling out little or no credit (or pay!) to the dedicated folks creating their content. I didn’t laugh while watching the video, but I smiled and nodded up and down several times.

Breaking down the campaign and pitch

The Pitch: Although it was a form letter, the email alerting me to this campaign was addressed to me, and acknowledged the fact that I have commented at the Tyee in the past. The letter also indicated that there was incentive for forwarding it along; a number of different prizes, all in conjunction with the “green” theme, including carbon-neutral goodies and a pair of flip-flops made from recycled tire rubber.

Lastly, since this is to get the word out about The Tyee, the fact that the page containing the video also has a full explanation of The Tyee, its people and its message, one only has to follow this one link to find out everything they need to know.

Ideas for Improvement: A shorter post slug on the campaign page, so it looks cleaner. Plus, I suggest a more personal letter of approach for “blogger outreach,” even though the letter from Editor David Beers was quite good. While I’m at it…The Tyee could afford to cut the word count of most of their posts in half, and increase the number of characters that appear in one’s reader via the feed.

The Verdict

Whoever is responsible for the campaign should be proud of themselves.

Reader, If you’re an American, and the unabashed Canadian sensibility of both the video, the campaign and The Tyee itself has escaped you, then just trust me when I say that this is exactly what our country’s media landscape needed. Tyee, you are indeed “A Feisty One Online.”

*For the uninitiated: “Tyee” (wikipedia entry) is a reference to a large salmon, usually a Chinook, and doubles as a cry when said fish finds itself at the end of a lucky angler’s line. “Tyee! One on!”

While I was in Korea, things seemed to change at a mile-a-minute. Google bought Feedburner, David Meerman Scott shipped the first review copies of “The New Rules of Marketing and PR,” (thanks, I got mine David) and some guy built a Flickr slideshow app that lets you embed a Flickr slideshow, just to name a few.

And while I was still groggy from the jet lag, etc. I made a few changes of my own. For starters, I test-drove the aforementioned slideshow app, see the result here, using some of my Seoul pics:

Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.

Also, I’m quietly launching a new site dedicated to my way-too-big ego, using Wordpress, and mapped it to www.jordanbehan.com. The amazing thing is that the whole site cost a mere $18 USD/yr. And it would have been cheaper (package deal for domain and mapping) if I had bought the domain from Wordpress and not Yomamma. I mean, Godaddy. Today’s lesson: for just $15 USD, you can have your own Wordpress blog, including your own domain name. What are you waiting for, world?

That new site will be home to some video podcasts, and all of the rants that I hold back from here. I felt like I couldn’t goof off on the company site as much as I do in general, so the more personal, reflective and downright silly side of me will be published on the new site. I will continue to publish marketing and PR news and tips here, hopefully at a steadier pace than I have of late.

And if I don’t publish a newsletter soon, I might as well board up the shop; I get an average of four or five subscribers a week, and I have neglected them for months. Bad me!

Facebookers, MySpacers, YouTubers, and bloggers of all kinds, hear this!

If you put something on the internet, people will read it. And I mean everyone; not just your friends and online contacts, but your employer, your pastor, your ex-boyfriend and maybe even your mom. Mine certainly does .

I don’t mean to instill fear, or dissuade anyone from sharing information online. I am obviously a major proponent of all things online networking-related, and there is little about me that you can’t read about online. And then there are the photos. But it’s important to remember that if you put it out there, it will be seen.

This topic comes up at just about every blogging-related conference I’ve been to (yes, several thank you very much) and those in the know tend to agree; there is “no security by obscurity,” to paraphrase Roland Tanglao (I think it was). Meaning, you can’t assume that the internet is such a massive space that the photos from your drunken exploits on that Thursday that you called in sick won’t be found by the boss you lied to, eventually.

My generation is the last that will have to experience a paradigm shift here; us “grown folks” have had to decide whether we’re comfortable with “putting ourselves out there.” The young ‘uns seem to have a reckless “devil may care” attitude with a lot of what they publish online, and my message to them is simply this: tread carefully.

Recently, over lunch with Six Apart’s Anil Dash, this very topic came up, and he said that they screen the MySpace pages, YouTube channels and blogs of every job applicant they get at the company, and anytime he talks to school groups, etc. he’ll bring up this fact, just to watch their reactions. “Shock and awe” pretty much sums up his description of the ensuing discussion and question period.

Of course, sometimes maintaining a public profile puts you at risk as well, as evidenced by certain goings-on in the blogoshpere of late (no link until the dust has truly settled). Just as in the “real world,” there are always a few bad eggs out there who seem intent to ruin the fun for the rest of us. But we shall overcome, and all that. It’s a lot of fun here on the ‘internets,’ and I want nothing more than to see everyone join the party, and be themselves, without fear.

Just remember that you are in public, and you should act accordingly.

(image credit: “New Issues of Privacy” from the New Yorker by NYCMotherPie)

I can’t remember the last time a web app got this much attention.

Twitter seems to be gaining in popularity at blistering speeds; creating massive gaps in opinion among bloggers about its usefulness, and whether or not it is worth all the hype.

The Cliff Notes on Twitter: It’s a nifty little web application that allows you to broadcast “what you are doing,” using your phone, your instant messager, or by typing into the window on your “home” page on the Twitter site itself. You can then choose to display a small widget (in your sidebar, for instance) that looks like this:

(apologies to those reading this with a feed, you can’t see it)

To me, there’s no secret why it’s so popular; once you have someone on your friends list, you can receive updates (as often as they feel like sharing them) on exactly what they’re up to. To draw a parallel, I’ve recently been wasting entirely too much time on Facebook, and just the other day I realized why this is (and what makes it vastly better than MySpace). It gives you an editable news feed, that keeps you up to date on what all your friends are doing with the site. If a friend comments on another friend’s photo, or God forbid changes their relationship status from “In a relationship” to “It’s complicated,” (for instance, of course) eyebrows get raised.

People want to know this stuff it seems, and perhaps even more surprising is that people are quite comfortable with sharing it, too.

I have yet to make up my mind one way or another about Twitter, but I would be remiss if I didn’t add the two cents that I’ve been able to collect so far on this latest social web widget phenom.

For one thing, the Twitter site itself is painfully slow. And I mean really slow. Like, if Myspace was forced to crawl uphill with Facebook on its back, it would fetch the proverbial pail of water long before Twitter could load my “friends” widget. And at the moment, I have just three Twitter friends.

Yes, that is your invitation to add me.

Mack has yet to make up his mind about it as well:

I’m going to keep an eye on Twitter, but stay on the shore for now. There’s a ton of buzz about Twitter right now, but is that due to what it provides, or that ‘everyone’s talking about it’? Time will tell, and right now time is something that I’m already running short on.

Mack and I tend to agree more often than not - and I think in this case we might be equally skeptical. But where he prefers to “stay on the shore,” I’m diving in head first. As I see it, it’s the only way for me to fairly evaluate whether or not it truly is worth all of the hype.

For more of a background on Twitter and to help get started (assuming your interest is piqued), I came upon this article, via Kris Krug’s feed, entitled “A Newbie’s Guide to Twitter,” which I have yet to read in its entirety, but seems to be a great way to get one’s feet wet with the app.

So, perhaps you’ll be reading an update in a few weeks time once I’ve formed a decisive opinion on Twitter. Judging by the sheer number of people (read: cool kids) using it, I might fall in love in spite of its incredible slow interface.

Have your own opinion to share? Let ‘er fly in the comments.

And oh yeah! Add me.

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!

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.

I’m finally registered. It will be my first, and my first Moosecamp as well, happening at UBC Feb. 23 and 24.
And you can bet I ordered the t-shirt, too.

The nice lads over Elastic Path (from right here in Vancouver) have put together a great white paper called “Blogging for Retailers.” (Follow link to download your copy)

If you blog for business’ sake - at all, then you should read it. They talk about retailers, specifically of the ‘large scale’ variety, but literally every word applies to any blogger who uses their content and conversation as a marketing tool; be it a service business, or any-sized online retailer. Toward the end is a glossary of terms for the uninitiated.

Also, Dave O had fellow ‘Elastic Pather’ Jason Billingsley and Bryght’s Boris Mann join him for a podcast on the same subject. A great listen to go with a great read.

Many thanks, Gents.