Dave Walker

Greenpeace is running a vote for the name of their adopted whale, and thanks to some Reddit (they even changed their logo) and Boing Boing postings about a “super clicker“, the name “Mister Splashy Pants” is out in front with 69% of the vote. The next most popular name has 3%.

Looking at the list of names and their meanings, it’s not much of a surprise that “Mister Splashy Pants” is the clear cut favourite.  There is no distinction between the other names.

Virtually ever other name has a very earnest sound and meaning. It may be my bias towards the English language, but I don’t make a huge distinction between “Aiko” (Japanese for “little love”), “Malaya” (”free” in Tagalog (Philippines)) and “Shanti” (”peace” in Hindi). While there may be a certain lilt to the word, nothing jumps off the page until, halfway down, “Mister Splashy Pants” shows up. This name jumps out of a sea of otherwise pretty but neutral names and smacks you between the eyes.

Now, I know that a lot of earnest, sandal-and-hemp wearing people will be offended by this (”it’s a name a grade 3 class would give a hamster”), but nothing will bring attention to Greenpeace like a whale named “Mister Splashy Pants”. On December 1 (the day after the contest ends), the newspapers will be full of “Mister Splashy Pants”. Not so much if the whale was named “Talei”. Why? It appeals to us on so many levels. It’s goofy, it’s unusual, it’s fun to say and write (Mister Splashy Pants, Mister Splashy Pants), and it is incongruous.

What are you doing to stand out and bring attention to your product/service/cause?

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Blogging can bring out the best and worst in a community. Commenting on blogs is the fundamental way to create conversation and build community, and legitimate commenters can extend and enhance the conversation. Unfortunately, open comments attract people “who make it their business to criticize anything written and the people who wrote it, in some sort of sad attempt at self validation by being nasty towards others for the sake of it.” (Duncan Riley, “Comment Trolling Has A Psychological Explanation” on TechCrunch).

Certain posts tend to bring out the trolls, especially any post slamming Apple, so it seems. Rob Hyndman went through this experience recently when he blogged about the difficulties he had upgrading to MacOS Leopard (an upgrade that’s gaining some notoriety).

My favourite comments from the Comment Trolls:

• “So what you are saying is you didn’t understand the install proccess, and then finally did an archive and install and yet didn’t understand how that worked either? Why would you be using some idiotic, 3rd party password file when Apple builds this functionality into both Tiger and Leopard? What other obscure software have you installed? My 12 year old understands this stuff far better than you do.”
• “I sure hope no-one ever follows your advice.”
• “wow rob, you are a dummy.”
• “buddy, you deserve a typewriter for being such a retard. along many here who added likewise zero computer knowledge.”

Comments like these add nothing to the conversation, and, for a novice blogger (which Rob certainly is not), can be quite difficult to manage. Andy Wibbels writes: “A big fear among newbie bloggers is how to handle things when a rogue commenter starts using your blog’s comments as their own private graffiti board - especially if they start hurling abusive language at you or other commenters.”

So, what can you do when a rogue commenter shows up? Here are 8 strategies:

1. Ignore it. If the post is getting a lot of comments, often the commenting community will chastise the troll. It may not stop the troll, but it may add a new dimension to the conversation. However, if this is not the tone you want to set for your community, you need to take action.
2. Step into a flame war. If a member of your commenting community (regular or casual) gets into a flame war with a troll, step in and tell them you won’t stand for this kind of discussion, and block them if necessary. This is your blog and unless you encourage this kind of aggression, it will poison the community.
3. Delete the comments. This won’t stop the comments coming, but it will remove the offensive material from the site.
4. Block the troll’s IP address. There are tools on the administration side where you can block the address from where a troll is coming. Persistent trolls can switch IP addresses, but they’d have to be pretty dedicated. Check the help forums for your blog tools to find out how to do this.
5. Moderate your comments. Moderating comments doesn’t allow for spontaneous conversation, but you can preview comments before they are posted. Be sure to moderate new comments promptly.
6. Use a comment spam filter. Spam filters can catch comments based on language (usually a list of offensive words); this can prevent some of the more offensive comments from being posted. Try the Akismet plug-in; it’s been good for me.
7. Review what you write. Some types of blogs seem to bring out the trolls. If you want to bring out the Comment Trolls, try slamming a Mac product. This will bring out the evangelists.
8. Don’t fight them. The Comment Trolls aren’t looking for debate or discussion. Responding to the comments will invite further flaming - any response is often what they are looking for. Ignore them, and hopefully they will go away.

Blogging is about putting your ideas out to the public. Everyone has different ideas, and you must expect some controversy once in a while. The majority of comments are usually well-reasoned and extend the conversation, but the trolls can sour the experience. Just remember, it’s about them, not about you.

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When I talk to my social media clients about generating social media traffic, the question inevitably comes up: How can we get on the front page of Digg? And I answer: Are you sure you want to be on the front page of Digg?

Digg’s advantage is the ability to deliver raw traffic to one particular post or article. If the article is written in a Digg-friendly format known as ‘linkbait’ (lists, breaking news, etc.) and you can mobilize your friends and fans to Digg the post, you can drive a significant amount of traffic to the article.

However, this traffic generally does not convert well. They are one-time visitors which generally do not convert well: they don’t click on ads, they don’t visit other pages on the site and they rarely turn into regular visitors or community members. There’s always the argument that with a volume of traffic you will inevitably get some people who convert, but how much effort are you putting into getting a 0.1% conversion rate? That’s 100 conversions per 100000 visitors. And you have to repeat that tomorrow. And the day after that.

The quality of visitors is also questionable. The etiquette within a community usually prevents the more immature commenting and name calling; the lack of a community can garner lots of stupid, non-constructive commenting. Simply opening up commenting to the world doesn’t ensure valuable participation; the majority of comments on YouTube videos are mostly ego-builders for the commenter (although it’s nice to have a pat on the back for a cute video, would you invite a commenter to dinner?).

It boils down to this: Do you want lots of raw traffic for one day, or a steady group of committed fans who visit regularly and contribute to the conversation? This will affect what you write, how you write it, and the other techniques you will use to meet your social media marketing goals.

I am currently working with a client where raw traffic seems important. This business relies on volume, and getting as many people as possible to convert - conversion measured in this case as simply moving over to the main site. However, getting people from the blog to the main site is a huge challenge, and there are big questions around the effort of blogging relative to the conversions.

On the other side, the community is strong. The Facebook group and Page is a success; there is a lot of action and involvement. These are people who are committed to the company and the community, and these people are the company moneymakers - people who directly contribute to the bottom line.

The raw traffic option looks great in the web stats, but you need to ask yourself: does the traffic convert relative to the effort? Should you be chasing traffic or should you focus on building community? Think about how you use Digg yourself. Are you looking for breaking news or something to run the clock out on Friday afternoon? Digg is great. Are you looking for content - things that closely relate to your personal and professional interests? StumbleUpon is a far better tool. And of the two, which kind of site will you become more involved with?

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Yesterday, Chad Lorenz wrote of the death of email in Slate Magazine; to quote Mark Twain “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Email has a long way to go before it is dead, and a long way to go before it needs to see a doctor about that cough. I agree that email has lost it’s position as the Great Communication Poster Child. The lustre has worn off, and email has been relegated to the communication toolbox rather than being displayed prominently on the shelf.

The ways we communicate are as varied are the people who communicate. Sometimes we sit down for a long conversation, other times we give a speech, and often it’s shouting a couple of words across the room. Back when email hit the mainstream in the mid-90s (don’t forget - email has been around since 1961), it was seen as the communications wonder-child - “nothing could be faster and easier than e-mail”.

Email quickly showed its shortcomings - synchronous communication being the primary problem. Like letter-writing,  email was not suited for conversation. ICQ and instant messaging soon became the favoured method for non-verbal synchronous communication. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of different forms of digital communication, including mobile text messaging, wikis, blogging and microblogging, and messaging via social network profiles. All of these tools work in conjunction with email; they are not replacements.

Where does email fit in? Email is still the tool of choice for long-form, one-to-one asynchronous communication. A letter to family, business communication, contact from a web site - email is still a great tool for that. But planning the office Christmas party? Too much back-and-forth; wikis might be a tool of choice. Sending a link to a group of friends? Microblogging (Twitter) solves that nicely.

Although it may be true that teenagers are abandoning email, it’s not a wholesale rats-abandoning-the-sinking-ship scenario yet. Teenagers are the early adopters for the new technologies that address email’s shortcomings. The style of communication dictates the tool, not the other way around. Many conversations are synchronous back-and-forth chats, to which email is not suited. Teens have adopted new technologies that make this more efficient, accounting for a decline in email use.

Like most email users, I get frustrated with email - I count over 90 emails flying around a company of 10 people regarding the Christmas party. An in-house blog, microblog and wiki could have solved this, and made it much easier to plan this party. And I am perfectly happy with the size of my, well, you get the idea…

Email may go the way of the telex eventually, but it will be a different form of asynchronous long-form one-to-one communication that replaces it. Not Twitter.

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Associated Press reports that Ebbsfleet United, a fifth-tier UK football club, has just been purchased by 20,000 fans. Each fan bought into the team for $72, and has a say in who plays, who is traded, who is picked up, and the day-to-day running of the club. The goal is to move the team into the next conference up, League Two.

Every armchair quarterback must take a look at this. Fans have always been very vocal about the performance of their teams, and here’s an opportunity to put your money where your mouth is. However, I wonder about the ability of the group to work effectively.

A group is more likely to come up with a good decision if everyone is  independent; independence being the freedom of influence from others. However, in a group like this, there will be a powerful set of influencers - the more vocal and passionate fans will be able to influence the less committed people. Since this will be a social, and probably quite public, venture, the lack of independence will play heavily on the decisions of the group. Fans will influence other fans, leading to pressure on the individual to conform to the group.

There is a tendency for individuals to go against their better judgment for the sake of conformity to the group (Solomon Asch, Social Psychology). Groups put strong pressure on individuals to conform, especially among homogeneous groups. However, since the pool of fans spans 70 countries instead of just a local group of 20,000 in Kent, there is a certain amount of diversity here which bodes well for independent input.

Can the group make a better decisions than single expert coach or manager? While group wisdom consistently outperforms average individuals, expert individuals can be equal to or better than the group. I wonder how much of an expert a 9th place, fifth tier club can have. While the group can probably perform quite well at this level, I have doubts that this would work at the Premier League level.

This will be a very interesting experiment with potential ramifications for the future of sport. Keep an eye on this one.

For further reading, check out The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

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… that the best way to clean an oil-spill bird is with Dawn dish detergent - “they (the bird rescuers) [are] most likely to use Dawn, which they receive in large donations from Proctor and Gamble” (Slate Magazine Explainer).

There has been a lot of testing throughout the last few decades, and, according to the International Bird Rescue Research Center, “‘Dawn’ dishwashing liquid was a standout! Oil seemed to fall off the feathers! Rinsing was easier than we thought possible.”

I didn’t know that. And I will look at Dawn twice the next time I am shopping for dishwashing liquid. It seems to work (well, at least on oiled birds), and, via donation, P&G is doing something good for the world (no word on how much oil is spilled getting the product to market, though…).

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Even more annoying than an intro movie. Ask me for my postal code right off the bat? No way to skip around this? Sorry, rona.ca, bad idea.

For people visiting the site for the first time, you haven’t built any trust. Why should I give up a piece of myself before you show me what you have?

For returning visitors, if I just need to check on something - product, store hours, whatever, why would you throw up a roadblock like this? I’ve already committed to your company - why would you drain my goodwill reservoir like this? The rest of the site better be damn good.

This is serving you, not me. A web site, especially for a major retailer, needs to serve the customer, not themselves. There are plenty of ways to capture this information later. Entering the site is not the time to do it. Imagine if you were prevented from entering the store before you gave up this information. What would that do to your retail sales?

If you really need to look at geographical distribution, look at your server logs, or run Google Analytics. How many people are living in “A1A 1A1″?

Web Retailing 1.0 at its worst.

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So far, I’ve seen two instances of friends becoming fans of companies with a Facebook Page, and both times I’ve checked out the page because I know the friend is into really interesting things. And I discovered a really neat blog - PSFK - Ideas, Trends and Inspiration.

I know I’ve questioned the value of Facebook’s new ad program, but I’m seeing a couple of things: first, the note in my news feed is not overwhelming - it looks like any other piece of news from a friend, and this is well done. Facebook has notorious ad-blindness, but the news feeds get read. Second, the companies I’ve seen so far are small companies, not the big multinationals. And who doesn’t like to support the underdog?

We’ll see how this works out; I’m spending the next couple of weeks developing pages for three or four companies, and I’ll be talking about the process and seeing how it comes together.

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Vandelay Design has just published a collection of over 50 articles on social media, including articles StumbleUpon, Facebook, Second Life and a lot more. Check out the collection - there’s a lot of insight here. And many thanks to Vandelay for publishing three of my own articles.

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Found an interesting quote in an article in The Times Online (UK):

Social networkers go to MySpace and Facebook to chat with friends, not to champion brands. But, they do chat about the things they are most passionate about, and often that means brands, cool brands.

There is a very subtle but extremely important difference: we talk about brands in the course of a conversation but we don’t have a conversation about brands.

Products and brands come up in the flow of conversation - this is normal. But when was the last time you sat with a buddy to talk about the latest iPod? People are passionate about products - technology, music, cars, makeup, etc., and people talk about these things with their friends. However, if a “friend” (Facebook superficial acquaintance?) of mine kept pushing his product  - that was the conversation - he would not be a friend much longer.

Marketers need to figure this out, and Facebook’s new system isn’t helping.

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