Last week, I opened a new Twitter account, @All4Monitoring, to support the new social media monitoring service I’ve been offering clients.

Why start a new Twitter account aside from helping me plant seeds for this new offer? Actually, I have a very clear intention for it. As the profile says, it’s “All about monitoring, including links, pointers and the odd challenge to companies to see if they’re listening. Are you all for monitoring?” (Sidebar: The link from the profile is to our new site: socialmediamonitoring.ca, a URL I couldn’t believe was available given the presence of serious social media monitoring players up here in Canada.)

The idea is to become a hub for all things related to social media monitoring. So you can expect to learn about new monitoring services, talk about familiar ones, participate in the odd twtpoll here and there, and general observations about monitoring the social web for all kinds of different reasons.

Of course, you can play a role. To get the most out of this new Twitter account, it would be great if you could:

• Follow and reply to @All4Monitoring
• Tag any tweet with #a4m to point us to stuff and get our attention (as you can see, this hasn’t taken off just yet!)
• Provide feedback on the account
• And anything else you can think of within your comfort zone and the realm of Twitter

I’m viewing this effort as an ongoing experiment with a clear direction. If you have any ideas for how this account can evolve, let me know. I’m all ears!

Otherwise, I’ll see you out there on Twitter!

P.S. Feel free to connect with me on my personal account, @MarkGoren.

Give and take.

Over on my original blog, I talked about the notion of Give + Take Marketing quite a bit. The underlying notion of it being simple - to get something, you need to give something. Be a giving brand and you’ll see the benefits of customer loyalty, word of mouth and the sales that come with it. (Surely not as simple as it sounds…)

Lately, as I preach the importance of extending your web presence - “Planting Seeds”, a term readers here have become familiar with - to lead people back to your online hub, I’ve become reminded of the Give + Take premise by one of my favourite music bands, the Dave Matthews Band.

Earlier this summer, after seeing them in concert here in Montreal for the first time in years, I became reacquainted with one of their old hits - You Might Die Trying. The chorus in this song goes:

If you give, you, you begin to live.
If you give, you begin to live.
You begin, you get the world.
If you give, you begin to give
You get the world, you get the world.
If you give, you begin to live.

How true.

In fact, it’s the first tenant of Planting Seeds. Get out there and GIVE. Act as a resource. Be human. Get real. Point people to links. Introduce people to one another. Help others out. Give first. And give a lot. Only then can you begin to live what this whole “social media” thing is all about.

Would love to know how you feel about this. How do you give? And what have you taken from your generosity?

One way to Plant Seeds is by reaching out to other bloggers and developing relationships with them. The better the relationship, the more they’ll be willing to plant your URL, as the theory goes. (Of course, the quality of your content does have something to do with that too.)

Recently, a colleague asked me what I thought about this:

I’ve been reaching out to other bloggers to try to get on their blog roll. Surprisingly, I’m getting a bit of resistance. I’d think the mutual exchange of blog roll mentions would be a no-brainer. But I’ll keep plugging away. Any advice to entice them to reciprocate?

My response is bellow, slightly cleaned up:

Bluntly, bloggers hate being asked to trade links. Hate it. Getting onto someone’s blog roll is something you have to earn, and the only real way to do so is to get out there in the community and become known to the bloggers who you want links from. First thing you can do is comment on their blogs, but if you do, be relevant. Don’t just be there to plant your link. Leave a comment and add value to the post. Your link will be attached to your name, so if you’re consistently leaving comments, they’ll find you. If they like your content, they may eventually add you to their blog roll. But it could take time.

Other thoughts on this:

• Befriend these same bloggers on the other networks where they’re most active. Look for the ones on Twitter because you’re already there (note: referring to my colleague) and established. When you speak to them on Twitter, go in with the same mentality as when you comment.

• Add the bloggers you’re targeting to your blog roll. If they’re doing a vanity search and subscribe to updates, they’ll find your blog. It’s a way to help them discover you.

• Along the same lines, you can also build posts based on something these targeted bloggers have written. Your link back to their post will also draw their attention to your blog.

Put all together and you can see how you can build a connections and alliances through honest effort. If your content appeals to these folks, you’ll be linked to one way or the other.

•

In short, you can sum up my response in one sentence: Earn your links; don’t ask for them.

Add your thoughts below!

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Social Media for Government conference in Ottawa. The event was put on by the Advanced Learning Institute out of Chicago (organized by master conference planner Kelly Flynn) and, as always, was a great success with an excellent line-up of speakers.

In my presentation, “The Moving Conversation”, I explained the Planting Seeds concept and used this high school analogy to get the message across.

Think of the web as two parts, the first being your website and the second being your web presence. While it’s no doubt important to have a proper home base, that being your website, it’s an unreasonable expectation to wait for people to show up there. With millions and millions of websites and networks having generated billions of pages of content (and counting), you have to move the conversation from beyond your four digital walls, get out there and network.

Same thing if you’re a teacher. Think of the classroom as the teacher’s website and the rest of the school as her extended presence. In the classroom - like you with your website or blog - the teacher is the expert and the lesson goes according to her plan. Students can add their two cents by raising their hand, just as visitors to your blog can by leaving a comment. But whether the students are engaged in the content is another story. Maybe some are, but others may not be.

To get her message across, sometimes the teacher has to get out of the classroom. She has to look for her students on their turf and speak to them on their terms. And, further, each student may have a different hang out. So, if the teacher wants to spend time with a jock, she’ll have to get the gym. With a geek, maybe she’ll want to get to the chess club. You get the idea.

Point being, if the teacher doesn’t leave her classroom, get involved with students in a different way and find different methods to engage them, she may never be able to get through to them.

And the same is true for you and your customers. It’s up to you to extend your online presence and find different ways to speak with your audience. In other words, get out there, plant seeds and wait for each one to grow.

Last week, with all the buzz of the new Skittles web effort starting to fade, I asked where people stood. Was the effort wasted, or was it good that a brand put itself out there, had a little fun and experimented with social media?

A video (see sidebar or visit this link) of a discussion between Jackie Huba (blog: Church of the Customer; books: Creating Customer Evangelists, Citizen Marketers; Twitter: @jackiehuba) and David Armano (blogs: Logic + Emotion, Experience Matters, Business Week; Twitter: @armano) was the catalyst for the discussion.

Without further ado, here are the results:

(For RSS readers: Agree with Armano: 39%, agree with Huba: 26%, both have good points: 11%, let’s move on: 24%. Total votes: 39)

My take? I’m with David and others like Mack. I find it hard to watch all the criticism come down on a brand that’s trying something different. Too much knee-jerk thinking by people who preach experimentation in this space and then jump on companies that do, as if they could advise the client better.

Good on Skittles for trying. The buzz created was interesting to watch. Did it sell more candy? Well, it did in one case at least. Will it have a long term effect? The answer to that depends largely how they grow the seeds they’ve planted and engage those who have joined their Facebook page, have connected with them on YouTube and all the other networks. If they have a long-term plan in place to handle the different networks and get their community going, this just may turn out to be more than an experience. It can be a resounding success.

Last call on your thoughts. What do you think?

Earlier this week the online world went mad in reaction to Skittles’ new “website”. (I encourage you to take a look if you haven’t already seen it.) Fact is, it’s not so much a site as it is a compass to different brand-related social media chatter and communities.

Readers of this blog will ikely agree that it’s a real Planting Seeds plan in action.

The question, though, is what the plan really is. Is it a stunt to gain some short-term buzz? An experiment that’s helping Mars (Skittles’ parent) learn about the social media sphere? The two sides are nicely debated in this video and in these posts by Jackie Huba and David Armano.

So what I’d like to know is what you think. As a result, I’d encourage you to take part in this Twtpoll or share your thoughts in the comments below. Next week, we’ll look at the poll results and see where everyone stands.

For added insight on this topic, please check out the following posts:

• Skittles Social Media Experiment, Fad or Trend?
• Skittles.com social media experiment, what’s really important
• Launched: Skittles.com
• Skittles new “website” leaves a bad taste for some
• Skittles’ social media campaign: FTW or Epic fail?

Now that you’ve done your research, what’s your opinion?

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. This cartoon was published in today’s Montreal Gazette and the paper’s editorial cartoonist, Aislin, is award-winning and brilliant. I’ll let the image do the rest of the talking.

For fun, check out Aislin’s archive.

Credit: Aislin, Montreal Gazette, March 3, 2009

Tags: MontrealGazette, Aislan, Editorial Cartoon, Twitter, Planting Seeds, Planting Seeds Online, PlantingSeeds.ca

Geoff Sowrey, in a recent post over at Experience Matters, the Critical Mass blog, says, “Blog or die“. In the post, which echoes so much of the Planting Seeds analogy, Geoff writes:

“The internet is a noisy place. It’s filled with every type of company and personality, all trying to make themselves heard all at the same time. (Marshall McLuhan would have exploded from joy if he’d lived to see today’s internet). Like standing in the middle of a loud party, it’s hard to be heard. That’s why presence is so important ‚Äî people will pay attention to those they perceive as important. You need to be staking claims in a variety of places, and investing time and effort in key areas to ensure the quality and intensity of your signal can rise to the top.”

The key to the above paragraph, in my opinion? Investing the time and effort. If you’re going to be on a network and not putting in the time, not adding value to people who may be following you, then there’s just no point in being there. And the other key, though unmentioned here? Well, it’s not just that people will pay attention to those they perceive as important. They’ll also pay attention to people that add something important to their lives. And that can be accomplished in so many different ways. By answering questions. Solving problems. Pointing to valuable resources. Making introductions. The list goes on.

Later on in his post, Geoff points out what he believes to be the major issue with spreading your voice around:

“Hopefully, you’ve already noticed the problem here. Microchannels ‚Äî as cool and enticing as they are ‚Äî are tricky to coordinate into a cohesive message. It’s sort of like trying to pull together lines from a dozen different books so you can read “Dick and Jane.” It also requires work for the reader (e.g. reading multiple Twitters or looking through Flickr pictures). And that (drum roll, please) makes it really hard to easily provide your point of view.”

He goes on to advocate blogs as the solution to this problem. The one place where you can take people in and point them around.

Now, that’s all true. But I’d argue that this is not the only way to do so. In fact, in some ways, FriendFeed (join me on Friendfeed) may be a much more effective way to bring your wider presence together onto one page. And, to make it even more robust, visitors to your FriendFeed page can also comment on individual posts, so the entire conversation can be held over there.

Blogs are certainly powerful, and that’s true for a whole host of reasons. But, if you’re establishing a wider presence and looking to bring it all together, I’d say Friendfeed is a better option for keeping your multiple conversations together on one page.

Any thoughts on Friendfeed vs. a blog for keeping track of your microchannels?

Tags: PlantingSeeds, Planting Seeds Online, PlantingSeeds.ca, Mark Goren, Geoff Sowrey, Critical Mass, Experience Matters, Blogging, Blog, Web Presence, Micro-channels, FriendFeed, Twitter, Flickr

Sometimes the best way to plant seeds are to have someone else plant them on your behalf.

Now, you may be asking yourself, “Does he mean I should ask people to link to me or write about me?”

Ah, no. Or, well, yes. But indirectly.

The goal is to give others a reason to give you a shout out.

But how?
• By creating content worth linking to
This is the holy grail of creating content. When someone links to you, either to build on your idea or simply to call attention to your thinking, you know you’re doing something right. It’s validating to know that what you’re putting out there is getting noticed and making other people think. If that results in a link back to your site, the seed has been planted and, suddenly, you’re exposed to a wider audience.
• By being likeable enough to want to help
A big part of why people are connecting to others online is to extend their network. But while it’s one thing to have a lot of online “friends”, it’s quite another to form real connections and come away as likeable. Develop trust, become a valuable resources and, over time, others will be more likely to want to point their network to you.

Why is this so important? Because with all the tools and channels available for Planting Seeds, someone else’s link has many ways to help your message flourish and grow.

A good example - and really why I’m thinking about the subject this week - is happening right now.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been fortunate enough to attract links from some great people. And in doing so, I’ve been able to see just how that one seed can grow in different ways.

1. Yesterday, Valeria Maltoni, writer of the Conversation Agent blog and friend, linked to me in a post titled, “Organic Marketing“. Valeria is a renowned blogger with tons of respect and a very wide reach.

2. The post lead to a Tweet from another mutual friend, Adele McAlear. Adele happens to have a following of 1,839 people on Twitter, so her tweet travels far and wide.

3. And, then, today, “Organic Marketing” was picked up by Social Media Today and run in its entirety - opening up PlantingSeeds.ca to a whole new audience.

One seed, three sites. One seed, far greater exposure. And it’s all thanks to the two reasons mentioned further up above.

The other part of this equation? I’ve linked back to them, widening their reach and introducing their sites to new readers as well. It really is all about give + take marketing, if you think about it.

How have you seen your network grow after someone planted a seed on your behalf?

Related stuff:
• A shout out also belongs to Warren Sukernek, who also linked over to this site this week. Warren is known as the TwitterMaven, and he pointed to two posts I wrote here early on about the microblogging platform. If you want to know more - a whole lot more - about Twitter, grab the feed to his blog, or follow him on Twitter (@WarrenSS) and @delicious.

Tags: PlantingSeeds, Planting Seeds Online, PlantingSeeds.ca, Conversation Agent, Valeria Maltoni, @ConversationAge, @AdeleMcAlear, Adele McAlear, Marketing Monster, Organic Marketing, Social Media Today, Give + Take Marketing, Creating Content, Being Likeable, Social Media, Social Networks, Social Networking, Twitter Maven, Warren Sukernek, WarrenSS, @WarrenSS