It’s interesting how issues seem to come at you in waves. Some are like rolling thunder beginning as far back as you can see from the shore. Others are like sneaker waves, crashing over you and knocking you down with full force. Over the last several days I’ve been engulfed by the topic of whether brands should respond to online criticism no matter who leverages it. And as I started to poke around, it appears the topic seems to be on the tip of everyone else’s lips as well.

In the post Responding to an Online Critic: Get your Timing, Target, and Tone Right , Shabbir Imber Safdar and Jason Alcorn discuss their opinions on whether or not to respond to bloggers who are critical of your company or products. They claim that by giving visibility to little known bloggers and naysayers–by responding to them at all or by linking to their posts in your response–you are providing the blogger unwarranted visibility and credibility. They lambast Richard Edelman for not only the outpoken way he challenged Jason Calacanis’ assessment of PR as unnecessary, but for the mere fact that he addressed this criticism at all. They suggest Edelman should have simply let the issue lie, where it would wither and die on the proverbial vine of old news.

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This statement is one reason why I started this blog in collaboration with an awesome group of in-house corporate marketers who manage social media from strategy and execution to reporting and metrics.

There is a perception of many in the social media space that corporate marketers just don’t get “social media.” Take this video, for example whereby Loren Feldman of 1938 Media interviewed SEO Expert Michael Gray (full video below) asking about the definition of social media. It’s unclear if it is his definition of social media or what he thinks corporations use social media to achieve.  Nonetheless, here are my initial thoughts.

In one statement, Michael says that social media is about customer service and he is right. He cites some really good examples of how companies like Southwest and Comcast utilize social media to find and address customer complaints. However, customer service is JUST one component of social media, and is closely aligned with what Forrester refers to as their listening objective within the POST method.  At Intel, we are looking at a comprehensive listening strategy and will utilize several tools to monitor conversations in an attempt to better understand the people we serve.

He goes on to say that (referring to corporate) “they don’t want to connect with you, they don’t want to be your friend”; and I completely disagree with him.  We at Intel value our customers and understand that they are real people and that relationships matter more to them than one-way marketing messages.

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Rather than paying a $2,000 licensing fee for an already viral photo, 3M decided to recreate a fake watered downed version and call it their own. Now, they are going viral but for all the wrong reasons. This is just one of many posts that have and will be written about their faux-pas rather than their savvy marketing. What they should have done is taken notes from Motorola’s marketing folks. When Motorola saw the fame and viral effect of the “Backdorm Boys” they didn’t try to steal their idea with their own recreation. Instead, they approached them with an offer that resulted in their participation in what ended up being the “most effective use of interactive marketing - new media” at the 2006 Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards.

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Okay, not very newsworthy, I know.  But since I work for Intel and on this project specifically, I thought it would be a good idea for me to mention it. This was one of my very first projects since being hired by Intel back in April; and I will also be serving as the managing editor until I can find the right person to fill that role.

Over the last couple of years, there has been severe ridicule of corporate blogs in that they are boring, unimaginative and complete failures; and I’d have to agree. In fact, Forrester recently conducted a survey and found that most B2B blogs are “dull, drab, and don’t stimulate discussion” and that “Seventy percent stuck to business or technical topics, 74% rarely get comments, and 56% simply regurgitated press releases or other already-public news.” Granted, this is not a B2B blog and will focus on consumers, there is still some merit to these findings.

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I thought I would follow up to last week’s post on The Jim Rome Show.  Writing about radio got me thinking about the new forms of audio media out there today.  The first thing that came to mind is satellite radio.  I have never paid for the service, but I have friends that annoyingly love it.  While satellite radio is great, we all know the MP3 player has been the real game changer in audio media.  I am sure there are thousands of thoughts on the web about MP3 players out there, so I will avoid boring you with mine.

For many companies, webinars (or, if you prefer web seminars) and podcasts have been a great way to get your message out.  At MySQL (now the Database Group at Sun Microsystems), we have been using webinars to inform our users and to generate leads since 2004.  After the Live Webinars take place, we post the recording of the webinar on the website.  The basic idea is to provide useful information that our community wants to hear in a format that is interactive.  All we ask in return is some general information .  Our community gets useful information, we get some information about our community.

After Sun Microsystems bought MySQL I started to look into what Sun is doing as far as podcasts or webinars.  I discovered SunRadio on BlogTalkRadio.  I have only attended a couple of events and they have been good.  It is a great way to get out information and allows interaction.  Sun has recently announced a new show called Socially Speaking, a show focused on social media.  The first show is today at 3pm PST and features Shel Holtz on Digital Communication.  I thought a few people here might be interested.

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How do you tell management the reason a campaign isn’t returning the results they want is because the campaign sucks? You might as well tell them their kid’s ugly.

(I didn’t have a picture of an ugly kid - mine are too cute - so I decided to pick on @brandmilitia’s ugly dog - sorry Justin)

I usually run into this problem in two scenario’s:

1) I’ve inherited someone else’s project that was ill-fated from the beginning.

2) The objectives of the campaign mysteriously change after the campaign is launched

Inheriting someone else’s Frankenstein project.

There’s really not much you can do. The person/s often times didn’t have a clue what they were doing and wanted to use some Web 2.0 “stuff”. They get some bad advice from a vendor that wants to sell them some tactic that they don’t really know how to execute on. And since they’re already an approved vendor list for “interactive” they go with it.

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