Mark Silva Interview

Mark Silva is internet pioneer.  Not only does he run one of the best interactive agencies in the country (Real Branding in San Francisco), he also started RealBeer.com way back before blogs and user generated content were buzz words du jour.

I had a chance chat with Mark Silva before we headed into the Great American Beer Festival this past week.  In less than 3 minutes, Mark manages to summarize how companies need to connect with consumers in the web 2.0 age.  Then we went inside and drank some beer.

For more on how Mark thinks, check out his blog.

For those of you reading via RSS, click here for the video.

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Lessons From MLB Blogs

Unless you hate sports or have been too busy playing World of Warcraft, you’ve probably seen Major League Baseball’s “There’s Only One October” TV.  They’ve gone with a “blogger” theme where the B or C list celebs (Randy Jackson, for example) ad actual players narrarate their entires.  Aside from the fact that you can totally tell that the players aren’t even typing on their keyboards, the ads aren’t bad and kind of get me excited about the playoffs.  At least as excited as I can get with the Cardinals or Rockies not in it.

Of course they have an online component where they’ve hired some actual players, like Jacoby Ellsbury Shane Victorino to blog throughout their team’s playoff run.  It’s a cool idea as it allow fans to get somewhat of an inside look at what the teams are feeling and a chance to interact by making comments on the entries.

It looks like this part of the campaign has been pretty successful.  Mark DeRosa’s last entry has over 450 comments.  Mostly Cub fans crying in their beer, but I digress.

They also have a fictional character named “October Gonzo” blogging.  This character has been blogging fairly normal entries that could be made by pretty much any beat writer.  This part of the campaign just rubs me the wrong way – it’s inauthentic and fails to offer any additional value that I can’t get from espn.com or sportsline.com.  And it’s pretty obvious that the fans feel the same way.  There aren’t any comments on the most recent entry, compared to the hundreds the player entries are getting.  Why didn’t they hire a die-hard fan from each playoff city to serve as their Chief Blogger during the playoffs

A couple of lessons learned here:

1. Authenticity counts. People don’t care about, or read blogs written by fictional people.
2. Blogs have a certain standard to live up to. They have to be more than what can be found in a newspaper or major media website.  Consumers/readers expect blogs to dig deeper and cover the story that isn’t being told.

Are your brand blogs authentic and dig deeper?

This Guy Gets It

Gary Vay. NER. CHUK.

If you watch Wine Library TV, you know what I’m talking about.  My friend John Moore turned me on to Wine Library TV a couple months back and I’ve been watching ever since, even though I really don’t drink wine (too much good beer to drink out there).  So, why would I watch a wine review webshow?

Now that I’ve started to learn more about Gary, I’ve started to understand why:

• First off, the dude is super passionate about what he does.  He loves wine and it comes through.  As consumers and viewers, we love passion.  Think Emeril.  Do you ever make or eat the shit he makes on his show? Probably not.  Do you watch his show? Probably.  He has passion and it comes through.
• Second, his show comes off in an easy-to-understand, bite-sized package.  Wine is complex.  But he makes it simple and less intimidating.
• Gary understands authenticity.  He loves wine and he loves the NY Jets.  Wine and football isn’t supposed to go together, but he doesn’t care.  That’s who he is, love it or leave it.
• Gary knows everything counts.  He gets and answers over 1000 emails…a DAY.  Gary makes his money selling wine in New Jersey.  Most of these emails come from the other 49 states and around the world.  Are these emails directly linked to to a sale? No, but he knows that the word of mouth generated from the conversation will eventually lead to a sale.
• Finally, in this video, I started to understand Gary as a person.  (Warning: this is an 11-minute video and it takes a couple minutes for it to get going, but it’s worth it.) Gary just intuitively understands and more importantly, can explain what is important to him.

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For more information on Gary, log on to his website.

How Much Web 2.0 Do I Really Need?

I get a kick out of trying new web 2.0 apps.  I just like to see how they work and if they can be integrated into blogs or marketing.  But just like anything else, with the good, comes the bad.  Here’s what I’m into and what I’m not.

Apps I like:

Blogging: I like blogging.  It keeps my writing an observational skills somewhat sharp. I prefer WordPress and Blogger.  i tried Typepad, Vox and a few others and just couldn’t get into it.

Flickr: I really dig Flickr and I actually should spend more time on it.  I like taking pictures and I like dropping them into my blogs.  Works for me.

Twitter: Yeah, I like Twitter.  At first I thought it was a petty site for Tweens, but it turned out to be a petty site for internet geeks.

Britekite: I’m actually digging Britekite.  Maybe it’s because I like to keep track of where I travel, but for whatever reason, I can see myself getting into this one.

Delicious: This one took me a while, but I dig it now.  Once I figured out how to integrate it with my blog and post the links as a blog post, I liked it a lot more.

Facebook/LinkedIn; I’m not “gaga” for either of these.  I’m actually pretty bored with Facebook.  Really, how much time can you spend on there?

Video: YouTube pretty much has everything, but I prefer Vimeo.  Viddler seems to be gaining some steam too, so I might check that out.

The ones I have no use for:

Seesmic: What’s the point?  Little bite-sized conversations?  I don’t know, I just think Twitter is good enough for that.  If someone could explain this to me, I might try it out.  I didn’t get Twitter at first either. so maybe there’s something here?

Tumblr: I guess it’s nice to bring all of the different apps and websites together, but other than that, I don’t get it.  I have a tumblr page, but I never look at it.  And Ustream creeps me out.

Squidoo: I really gave this one a good shot, but it got really boring really fast.  There’s just too much crap to cut thru since pretty much everyone that is on there is trying to make a buck.

Dopplr: Hmm…seems like a convulted version of Britekite.  And I’m not important enought for people to be tracking where my travel plans are taking me.

Homepages: Google, Netvibes, Netscape, etc.  I tried to use these, but I just don’t see the point.  I prefer Bloglines (although it seems like there would be a better way to organize the information) and looking thru the news at my own pace.  Call me old-fashioned.

What’s on your Web 2.0 good and bad list?

How We Use Web 2.0 to Start Brand Conversations

I’ve looked all over the interweb for a simple, social media/web 2.0 flow chart-diagram-type-thingy.  Most of what I have found is really technical (like this) and goes on the theory that everyone knows and uses EVERY social media application.

So I got to doodling today and came up with this:

Maybe this is overly simplified, but this isn’t intended for all you blog-reading geeks.  It’s more for people who work on the brand side, with small budgets and want to get the word out.

Here’s how it works:

• Content is developed.  It can come in the form of photos, in-store displays, videos, promotions and more.
• That content is packaged up and formatted for a blog. (I really considered adding “website” in that box, but decided against it).
• From there the content is shared in your favorite social networking and bookmarking websites.
• THEN, the content is promoted on Twitter.  Personally, I see Twitter in a world of it’s own and different than blogs or social sites.
• That’s it.  Pretty simple.

But give me your thoughts.  This is by no means perfect or finished.  It’s just a starting point.

ESPN Finally Embracing the Conversation

They’re a little late to the game, but ESPN is finally getting in to the conversation game on espn.com.

The good:

• They offer a tag cloud and the topics flash when that topic has been commented on.
• “ignore user” and “report violation buttons are offered
• ESPN is also offering a blog platform

The bad:

• They allow up to 1500 characters.  I’d like to see them go with the “less is better” approach and limit it to 140 so that there could some Twitter-like mash-ups/widgets and text messaging updates available.
• It looks like you have to manually refresh to see new comments.