A number of my friends either are, or plan to soon be, writing their first books. I’m really excited for them. I was in their shoes a year ago, plowing through writes, rewrites and edits, putting thoughts on paper and hoping someone out there would think the topic was interesting enough to plop down $24 for a book about it.

All of the folks I’m referring to, in addition to several others, have asked me if writing a book is worth it. While there are few thrills for someone who classifies themselves as a writer more pleasing than seeing your name on a real, hard-bound piece of literature on the shelves of a real bookstore, I thought it appropriate to share a few thoughts with you on the value of writing a book.

The Book-Only Perspective

From a strictly business perspective, and looking at the book project as a singular business venture, writing a book is a horrible idea. This doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing … keep reading. But the simple math looks like this (based on my experience as well as conversations with other author friends):

• The average book advance for a first-time author is probably $10,000 to $15,000.
• The average time it will take you to research and write your first book (assuming it’s a 300-page, business book) is probably about 100 hours.
• The average time it will take you to edit your first book (same assumptions) is probably about 25 hours.
• The average time it will take you to plan the marketing and promotions of your first book, including booking speaking gigs and the like, is probably about 10 hours.
• The average time you will spend on the road promoting and speaking about your first book, provided you want to aggressively sell the bejeezus out of it and perhaps even hit a few best-seller lists, is about another 100 hours (and that’s conservative).
• So let’s say you get paid a $15,000 advance and put in 235 hours. You’re basically getting paid about $64 per hour.
• The $15,000 is an advance on your royalties. So you don’t actually get paid more than that until your book sells enough copies to account for $15,000 of your cut. This is probably going to be about 10,000-12,000 books. Most modestly successful business books sell about 5,000-8,000 copies. So, chances are, you’re not going to see a dime beyond the $15,000.

I don’t know about you, but my hourly rate is a bit north of $64. So looking at a book deal alone, it’s a no-brainer: Go do something else.

Bookshelf (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Honestly, if you self-publish, you can earn far more than the $2.00 or so per book you’ll get with a publishing company. But you don’t have distribution channels like Barnes & Noble, etc., to help you, so you’re sacrificing reach for per-book profit. While many, like Mark Schaefer, have self-published very successfully, I can tell you from personal experience that Scott Stratten could never have texted me from Melbourne, Australia, to say he just saw No Bullshit Social Media in a store had I not been with a legit publisher.

I’m sure Mark and several other self-publishers have made more than $15,000 on their books. But you’re going to need a large online audience and a hell of a topic for your book to be able to hit that number. For me, self-publishing is not a smart route if you don’t have a built-in audience of 50,000 or more blog readers, Twitter followers and the like that can account for buying 5,000 or so books. No, the numbers don’t sound high on what you need to sell, but it’s harder to get people to buy that many than you think.

And depending upon your content, maybe a paid e-book or even a “report” is a better option. Social Media Explorer is about to launch our first market research report, The Conversation: What Customers Are Saying About Banking. It will be priced at around $300 (for an approximate 100-page report) and focused on a narrow industry. But if we sell just 50 of them, the revenue will greatly exceed what I’ve made from my first book, thus far.

The Book-Plus Perspective

The reason you actually write and publish a book is not to make money from sales. Unless you’re Stephen King. You write and publish a book for credibility. That credibility allows you to charge more for what you did before.

As a social media marketing consultant, my hourly rate increased. As a professional public speaker, my fee increased. In a matter of days (on or around Sept. 15, 2011), my hourly rate jumped $50 per hour (which was conservative … I could have gone up $150). My speaking fees almost doubled. (I’m still one of the cheapest social media keynote speakers on the market, though.)

As a result, I’ve probably pulled in about $40,000 in additional revenue from September 15, 2011 until now. When you look at that perspective, writing a book is a no-brainer: Write your ass off!

But Honestly …

The worst thing I could do here is mislead you. There’s a lot more that goes into the Book-Plus perspective than just getting a book published. I know a number of people who have published books who didn’t already have an established presence or professional public speaking career to speak of and, thus, weren’t able to capitalize on the opportunity.

Sure, they raised their rates, but a book alone isn’t going to allow you to go from charging $100 per hour to $200 per hour. You’re going to need a sizable online following or audience, some strong client pedigree and the drive to go after clients willing to pay more for your services. You’re not going to be able to go from charging $2,000 for a speaking engagement to $5,000 without that same sizable audience, some really crisp keynote talks and some word-of-mouth buzz that you’re good at holding a room and delivering a great talk.

Having a book brings you credibility, but it’s not going to close the deal for you. You’re still going to have to be a stud at lots of other things before you can make “published author” translate to more dollars.

There are lots of other secrets and insights I could share about being an author, the book writing process, the book publishing world and the like. But those are for another time. (Not to mention, I don’t want to make my publisher any more freaked out than they are that I wrote this. Heh.) This gives you what I think is an honest look at what the business of writing a book is really like. Hopefully, it will help you figure out whether or not you want to dive in and get published.

Good luck!

Last week, the state of Alabama recognized the one-year mark of one of the most brutal and deadly tornado outbreaks in anyone’s memory. It was not a celebration, nor an anniversary. It was a stark reminder of just how much nature cares about our First World Problems. Even with the latest and greatest in warnings and technology, more than 250 Alabamians lost their lives on April 27, 2011. That element of the devastation should always come first in any discussion.

With that firmly on the record, there are some interesting things we can learn about how technology has changed us. I want to talk for a moment about my friends Pete and Sherri Blank.

When “being pinned” is not good

They were at home with their two children when the second wave of storms came through Clay, to the northeast of Birmingham. They got the tornado warning in time to flee to the “man cave” in the basement — and were fortunate to be in the half of the basement that didn’t collapse. However, they were trapped under two-and-a-half stories of home. And by trapped, we mean they really didn’t have free range of movement at all.

Madison, their daughter, had her smartphone, and was immediately able to post a Facebook update that indicated they were alive. What is even more telling is that within three hours, nearly every material need for the Blank family was filled by family and friends. Yes, there is insurance, and FEMA, and the Red Cross, and churches, and a whole host of resources there to help. But assistance doesn’t have to flow from the top-down in as bureaucratic a fashion as we’ve become accustomed.

Observation: In disasters, people will use their own technology and personal networks to share information and marshal resources. In the past, emergency responders would have pleaded with the public to “stay connected” with portable radios and D-batteries. Everyone would have been plugged into a general broadcast platform, which can only herd people through the largest one-size-fits-all conduits. However, more of us aren’t getting our news that way anymore. We get teases and links through our social networks, and click through to read more if so inclined. Why would you invest hours listening to The Generic when you’ve already cultivated a feed of people who are specifically relevant to you?

Takeaway: As a business or brand, you have to recognize that in these instances people will gravitate to their networks even more. I am not inviting you to figure out how to spam through their friends — but I am suggesting that you be highly strategic in what you communicate and how. Knowing what people are really sharing is more than half the battle, and the great thing is you can use your own personal network as a listening post. (and knowing when to not say anything at all is the most important skill of all.)

Bottoms-Up

James Spann at ALSOCME (Photo credit: ALsocme)

James Spann is the chief meteorologist for the ABC affiliate in Birmingham. I worked with him for several years. He was an early adopter of social media. (He’s currently approaching 100,000 Likes and 60,000 Followers, which is phenomenal for a local weatherman in the 40th-largest TV market, with just 740,000 households.) And he manages his accounts himself. (Do check out his talk with the Alabama Social Media Association – it’s first-rate.)

After the storms passed, James found himself in a peculiar role: connector. Hundreds of his followers who knew of desperate needs tweeted him with requests, and asked for retweets. Thousands of people who wanted to help pinged back, wanting @Spann to relay what they had to offer to the greater community. James was stuck at the nexus of this incredible engine of spontaneous good, and was afraid of the consequences of stopping. He may have been close to developing “ReTweet Blister.”

Observation: Spann didn’t ask to become a valuable post-storm resource, but he found himself with that opportunity.

Takeaway: There is incredible power and value as a connector. “Content” has resurfaced as the buzzword of the day, with Content Marketing and Content Strategies and Content Generation propping up a lot of consultants’ time and billables. But you can’t deny the advantage that comes when one is known simply as an engine for connection. But don’t wait until destiny taps you on the behind and gives you the chance to step up — start cultivating a rich and diverse network of people who don’t yet know that they will need each other. This is very different than Community Management, where it is assumed that the community already has commonalities and can approach each other.

Emergent Order

During the first 48 hours, it became ridiculously difficult to keep up with @Spann’s twitchy retweet finger. A lot of really good information and heartfelt offers were sliding off the page as new offers and cries for help piled on top. What was needed was some degree of curation — but nobody had the time to do it.

Enter my colleague, Jamie Sandford.

Jamie pitched an idea to Spann that would turn the tide. Instead of just blindly retweeting the messages through the same conduit, they pitched a pair of complementary hashtags: #ALHaves and #ALNeeds.

Two chainsaws and a pickup truck with a front winch. #ALHaves

Need help pulling three trees off my mother’s house in Argo. #ALNeeds.

Shelter in Ashland about to run out of bottled water. #ALNeeds.

You get the idea.

Now, instead of locking into @Spann’s total feed of everything (including, gasp, actual weather forecast information,) those who needed water could enter a Twitter search for #ALHaves+water.

Observation: Within a few hours, the hashtags caught on — even with people who had no idea what a hashtag was. And with the distributed nature of that informal information network, we will never conclusively know how many Solutions met Problems last April and May.

Takeaway #1: Listen. Someone might have an idea that can make your task a lot easier.

Takeaway #2: Let the technology do the work for you. Where possible, let social tools do what social tools do well — and look for ways to allow sharing to be as frictionless as possible (while still getting the job done.)

Now, your turn.

What takeaways did I miss?

(Special thanks to Jason Falls and Explore Nashville, for its contribution to the Red Cross in the state of Alabama.)

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The coolest thing has been happening lately, and it’s making me feel really special. Suddenly I know people who are in ads. And not just any ad – major, national brands. I feel like I’m brushing with celebrity – and yet, these people aren’t traditional celebrities, they’re bloggers. And they happen to be friends of mine.

There is an escalating trend for brands to feature bloggers, mainly parenting/lifestyle bloggers (formerly known as mom bloggers – a term you all know I hate), in print and even some television ads. I think this is insanely cool, and not just because I know these people. It’s cool because it values the blogger as an influencer in a way that they haven’t been, up to now. Bloggers are being asked to make appearances on behalf of brands and to appear in advertisements, and that’s just. plain. cool.

You may ask, okay, but are these bloggers getting paid for their appearances and ads? To be honest, I haven’t asked them. I am going to assume that, given that the bloggers I’ve seen featured recently are all smart, savvy businesswomen who are running small media empires, that they have found a way to get compensated for their time and likeness in a manner that suits them: financially or otherwise.

For marketers, this trend is borne out of some actual research. BlogHer’s 2011 Social Media study suggested that consumers preferred marketing messages from bloggers they knew over a celebrity ad, and that 53% of women blog readers have purchased a product based on a blog recommendation. Particularly in the worlds of fashion and beauty, bloggers are wielding power to encourage purchases in a far more direct and measurable way than a celebrity ad or endorsement ever can.

BlogHer’s most recent research, the 2012 Social Media study, goes even further and compares consumer trust in other forms of social media – including Pinterest and Facebook – and found that a sponsored, disclosed review on a bloggers’ site earns more trust than a Facebook friends campaign or a celebrity endorsement. And trust in those blogs drive purchase intent for many product categories.

If bloggers can truly move the needle for brands in the trust and purchase intent departments, why don’t more brands work with bloggers?

The answer, of course, is complicated. I’ve written a lot about the problems that PR departments and agencies have with social media, and that’s certainly part of the problem: that PR departments are not set up to develop advertising or integrated marketing campaigns, which is where this new blogger-brand relationship is headed for some brands. A brand wishing to use bloggers instead of celebrities must either have a creative and clever ad agency, or a very savvy PR department or agency, whose budgets cross borders and who can work together in a really coordinated way.

I think it’s time that bloggers step up to the plate, too. I do know many bloggers who understand their value to brands, but I also know many who dramatically underestimate what they can bring to the table when they work with brands. That’s not to say that every blogger should command $500 for a sponsored post; rather, I think that bloggers should get creative in thinking about the kinds of work they can do with brands, and brands should do the same. Hopefully they’ll come up with interesting projects they can do together, beyond the sponsored post, like hosting events together, creating editorial and resourceful brand content, and yes, having bloggers endorse products in ads.

By the way, those ads above? They feature my friends Ana Flores from Spanglish Baby, Audrey McClelland from MomGenerations, and Esther Crawford.  I’m so proud of each of you and can’t wait to see what you inspire in other bloggers and brands.

Julien Smith’s new book, out today and part of Seth Godin’s Domino Project, is essentially about overcoming our core human instincts to flinch under pressure. Granted, flinching isn’t always bad — it can protect you from danger — but the main type of flinching Smith hopes we can work around are the types that keep us from controlling our destiny, accomplishing our dreams and doing the things we truly want to do but are often afraid of.

The Flinch is not just a business book. It’s an inspirational book for anyone who has some hurdle they wish to accomplish. Whether it’s lose weight, get that big promotion or even break the ice with that handsome guy at the coffee shop, this book will help you learn to recognize your own flinch mechanism and give you some actionable steps to rid yourself of the hesitation.

Like other books in the Domino Project, The Flinch is short, manifesto-style, easy-to-read and pithy. (And since this one is sponsored by the Domino Project, it’s actually available for FREE as an e-book.) Smith’s style really shines in this work. And it’s different from that of his Trust Agents co-author. While those of us who have been reading Julien for years have seen it on his thought-provoking blog, it’s nice for the publishing world and mainstream folks to be able to hear his distinctive voice.

Smith make’s you think. He pushes your boundaries and perhaps even makes you a bit uncomfortable at times. The Flinch is certainly all about making you uncomfortable, but in good ways. We have to become uncomfortable if we’re ever going to grow and blossom into that person we know we can be.

While there is one point in the book when you think Smith is trying to advocate for the independent, rage-against-the-machine lifestyle he leads, the principles in The Flinch can be applied to any situation. If you want to be a corporate climber — a suit — you’re still going to need to overcome your own genetic disposition to flinch. So anyone can get something out of this book. And I, for one, think everyone should buy it, read it and try to soak up the lessons. We’ll all be happier with ourselves if we do.

I don’t do many singular reviews of books anymore, choosing rather to lump several into one big video review, so you know this book is an exception to the rule for me. And it’s not because I know Julien and want to see a friend do well with his book. I wrote this review and want you to go download The Flinch for yourself for one reason and one reason alone:

When I put it down, the first thing I wanted to do was find my own brick wall and run through it. When you finish, that’s what you’ll want to do.

The Flinch is available on Amazon in electronic format for free.

Don’t you hate writer’s block? You know you have brilliant ideas, but there’s that damn blank screen staring at you when you sit down to blog. Nothing happens. The brain’s in idle. Frustration begins to creep in. (Remember Jack Nicholson in The Shining?)

Many people struggle with writing. But I believe anyone can write and blog with the right approach. It’s not brain surgery, but it does take some work.

First, get over the idea that you have to write a blockbuster blog every time. We find in our training that many corporate bloggers are by nature analytical and perfectionists, which creates a lot of extra agony. It’s great to hit a home run, but mostly this is about hitting lots of singles and doubles.

Blogs are bursts of communications-probably closer to a semi structured email than a traditional article. You’re not writing a white paper or essay. Think “light” and “just good enough” (see the just good enough marketer).

Here’s 7 starting tips to help you get rolling:

1. Pick your prime time and block out your calendar
   If you’re a morning person, blog in the morning-that’s when the creative juices are flowing. Block out  60 to 90 minutes and don’t do anything else but write (no email, tweeting, etc) “Batching” your time is critical. Pick certain days a week, same times, and make it a routine (Ex: 8 am Mon-Wed-Fri).
2. Pick one central idea/concept
   Maybe you just had a great meeting with a client and you came away with a buckletload of ideas-now cull those down to the top 3 to 5. “Just came out of an amazing meeting, and forced me to rethink XYZ subject…”
3.  Stick with a simple structure
   Blogs should have clear beginning, body and end. A simple structure might be: main argument, opening, 3 supporting points, conclusion and supporting points as needed. Done. (optional: call to action).
4. Organize your ideas
   Use old fashion outlines or programs like Evernote-whatever works for you. Experiment-for instance, try index cards (I use these for presentations). Think of it like cooking-you want all your “ingredients” organized and set aside before you start.
5. Use #s and bullet points
   Yes we beat this technique to death (7 Steps to Eternal Wealth, etc) but it works-and it keeps you focused. It’s also easier to write in bullets vs blocks of prose (and it breaks up the copy for the scanning reader)
6. Use stories
   Stories should come naturally, but they take time to develop. So develop a file of personal stories you can call on later to make specific points. You can usually draw on 2 or 3 key points from each story.
7. Just write
   Some people freeze, and never get out of the starting gate. Blogging is a lot of “ready, fire, aim”- just start writing, and you can fine tune it later.

When finished, do a quick review: Is your blog:

• Authentic? (your voice)
• Relevant (think audience needs)?
• Engaging
• Threaded with a clear message?

You should be able to eventually crank out blogs in 1 to 2 hours.  The exact time is less important than establishing a personal editorial and publishing system that you continually improve. You want a well-oiled machine.

One more note: the real key to blogging is coming to the table ready to write; it’s a mindset. That means you should be on the constant lookout for story ideas-industry conferences, your kid’s soccer game, books and articles, etc. Keep a notebook or tape recorder handy, capturing and massaging ideas. Think like a journalist. Don’t wait until you sit down in front of the computer: organize in your head (themes, angles, key points) as you go along.

You need to make writing part of your life. Like it or not, we’re all in the content business now.

Related articles

• 10 Ways to Never Run Out of Blog Ideas Again (hubspot.com)
• 5 Shortcuts for Creating Remarkable Content (hubspot.com)

Caught wind last week of a fairly interesting announcement that made me take pause and wonder if traditional media, in this case, radio, is starting to come around to the whole social thing. My buddy Jessica Northey has joined the nationally syndicated “Tony and Kris In The Morning” radio show as online correspondent. She will create something they’re calling a “Digital Daypart” for the show. It was officially announced today.

To spell it out a bit more clearly: A nationally syndicated radio show has hired a blogger/Twitter personality to be their online extension, giving the morning show a virtual presence beyond that of manufactured Twitter feeds and news release link drop accounts many traditional media are guilty of.

It’s inaccurate to call Northey a community manager, thought that’s certainly part of her role here. She writes a social media column for AllAccess.com, the world’s largest country music and radio online community, as well as for several other country music publications. She started Country Music Chat (#CMChat) on Twitter and is an experienced online radio personality as well as social media strategist and founder of Finger Candy Media. Her use of social media to build an audience around her own writing and work for country music radio stations is pretty impressive. She’s amassed over 140,000 Twitter followers and an audience for her blog and writings that gives her a reach of about 4 million people.

The Tony & Kris Show started in 1991 in Gadsden, Ala. Country music fans in San Diego know them from their 10 years on the air there. They went nationwide in 2008. They have an active Facebook and Twitter presence and both hosts blog on their website. But Northey will amp up a social presence. She told me the website will be re-tooled to focus on the fans. Talent Revolution’s Brandon Hill (@SpeakToTheGeek) will partner with the show and Northey to bring tech tips and tutorials to the site. Northey will provide content around country stars and hopefuls, as well as social media notables the show’s audience may find helpful as they learn new communications channels.

While I’m not sure if country music fans are necessarily clamoring for technology tips, the fact that Northey and Hill are driving the content there makes me excited they’ll be exposed to it.

My guess is this may start a trend, or at least cause other radio shows to consider a similar move. Having an online extension of your brand, and something of a celebrity as that extension, is a smart play for the program. Northey is known enough and skilled enough to manage the online content and community, but also an experienced talent in the country music radio world as well. There aren’t a lot of people in the world with her experience, so she is unique. But you could begin to see other radio and even television programs looking for that online edge ready and willing to pony up for talent … social media talent.

And that could be both good and interesting for our little world.

What do you think? Is the next wave of talent acquisition in the social space going to be in the traditional hiring the non-traditional realm or are Northey’s unique talents enough to make this an anomaly?

The comments, as always, are yours.

Related articles

• Credit Where It’s Due … (socialmediaexplorer.com)

Image via Wikipedia

The Anthony Weiner incident is baffling. But it forced the traditional media’s hand a bit this week on social media. The fact the Congressman used Twitter to post what most consider an inappropriate photo of himself intended for a female that wasn’t his wife made the media pay attention to social media’s favorite conversation place. Unfortunately, many media members not only confused the coverage, but potentially biased their audiences.

Three members of the media interviewed me this week for comments on the Weiner show. My general thoughts are that if you don’t understand that anything you post on social media platforms has the potential to be seen by anyone, well, you’ll soon be left holding your wiener. How a seemingly intelligent person … an elected official no less .. would A) Take a picture of his crotch; B) Send it to someone else; and C) Do it on a public platform, completely escapes me. It has the potential to be the dumb ass move of the century.

But two of the three media members who interviewed me asked a question phrased roughly like this:

“Why does social media make people do these things?”

The same reason newspapers make you ask the wrong questions. Social media had nothing … let me repeat … SOCIAL MEDIA HAD NOTHING TO DO with Anthony Weiner’s screw up. The blame for Anthony Weiner’s screw up lies in one place and one place only: Anthony Weiner. He could have texted the picture, emailed the picture, blown it up a Kinko’s and mailed it … the medium is not the culprit. The culprit is.

As with marketing, Twitter is not what makes people love your brand. Neither is Facebook or blogs. The messages you send. The value you provide. The connections you facilitate and the relationships you nurture … that’s what makes people love you.

The only tool to blame in the Anthony Weiner case is Anthony Weiner.

Related articles

• Weiner shows it’s easy to screw up in social media (mikemoran.com)
• Can Congressman Weiner teach us about social media? (mikemoran.com)
• The Weiner syndrome (powerlineblog.com)
• Anthony Weiner Admits to Sending Crotch Shot [Video] (gawker.com)

Funny how things work out.

You’d think “journalism” was dead as a door nail. Newspapers, magazines and TV news are in decline, and the golden age of reporting dating back to Watergate is long over. Yet there’s a demand in Silicon Valley, and beyond, for people who can dig up stories, create interesting angles, and write compelling blogs.

That sounds like a journalist to me.

Bob Duffy, a senior social media strategist at Intel, got me thinking about this when I spoke to him a few days ago. Duffy, acting Community Manager for Intel’s AppUp(SM) developer program, isn’t an editor, PR guy or traditional marketer. But he does understand the need for journalism skills – and he’s right in the middle of an emerging trend, with brands taking on new publishing and platform responsibilities.

The way he sees it is that there are several levels of “media” now: the traditional media (ex: WSJ); major influencers (ex: Engadget), independent bloggers/influencers (ex: Steve “Chippy” Paine, product reviewer) , and then, corporate blogs and communities.

Duffy points out that brands like Intel are doing a lot of what independents and other media are doing- interviewing developers, showcasing best practices, creating connections between different tech players. Basically he’s trying to create the platform and context for key industry discussions–and draw in developers (also see his blog here). *

This is a long way from the old PR model, where you court a few select media and try to control the message and outcome.  Duffy’s reaching out to anyone and everyone that could be part of the community, and lets the discussions flow.

“We don’t try to control the conversation or message, we just want to provide the context.”

The key point is Intel is stepping into a new role-it’s not really PR or marketing. It’s more of an aggregator role, a facilitator of conversations around key topics. Even that description comes up a little short since it indicates a semi-passive strategy vs Intel’s aggressive approach.

For instance, Duffy’s constantly reaching out to developers and providing that platform for discussion. “I notice you wrote something on XYZ subject in our forum, would you mind writing a blog for us and giving us your perspective?..”

It’s also playing the role of story-teller, or at least facilitating stories.

The new model- corporation as facilitator, story-teller, and new media-confuses many people who are accustomed to the old media model. When I was driving a new editorial program last year to transform HP’s enterprise blogs, most managers got it-but not all; some (including my old manager) just couldn’t break away from the old marketing model to embrace the new one.

One reason is we all grew up with these old marketing and media models, and there’s  been little disruption to the media model for decades. There was THE MEDIA (the professional editors, producers, etc) and THE CONSUMER. You consumed content. The media produced it. Real media pros (and I was one) looked skeptically at non-journalists who tried their hand at the craft.

Now anyone who can write, produce content and hit a publish button is in the game.

I imagine it was like this after the printing press was invented in 1450; before the invent of movable type, everything had to be written and copied by hand. Suddenly, writing books wasn’t just confined to a select few scribes or monks; anyone could potentially publish. This led to an explosion in books, and other types of publications.

So now we have brands like Intel, the free electron bloggers, the bigger blog powerhouses (Huffington, TechCrunch)  and other hybrids-a crazy mix of new media players, all competing for attention. I’m amazed that some companies are still watching from the sidelines, like deer caught in the headlights.

This doesn’t completely replace traditional media. No one expects Intel or any brand to provide unbiased opinions like a WSJ. But to ignore it is stupid- if Intel and other brands have their way, their voices and impact will grow. Competitors will suffer.

The challenge now, says Duffy, “is to be able to move resources quickly enough to be relevant.”

This isn’t about creating one-shot, message-driven campaigns, and moving on. “It’s about reallocating resources for sustained engagement.”

He also realizes his forums are just one channel for discussions, and that Intel has to be nimble enough to engage across the blogosphere.

Back to the journalist issue: It’s clear the lines are blurring between traditional media and leading bloggers, as Jason Falls recently pointed out. Also clear, at least to me, is companies need to hire more writers and editors, and create editorial systems to drive blogger content.

Some social media advocates like Mitch Joel are arguing  for even more–hiring an army of journalists who  just write non-biased industry articles.  The hell with marketing messages and company-spin, just focus on delivering compelling content that will draw in audiences.

So journalism is back in style, sort of. Intel will have to continue mining the Internet for stories and good sources, writing about key issues that keep customers up at night and trying to stay ahead of rapidly-moving trends.

However it pans out, as Duffy is showing, the world has changed; the cheese has moved. Companies better adapt or get left behind.

*NOTE: According to the blog the Intel AppUpSM Developer Program:

• Provides developers with everything they need to create and then sell their applications to users of millions of Intel® Atom™ processor-based devices.
• Gives developers, OEMs, and the ecosystem a framework to deliver great new applications directly to consumers.
• The Program provides software development support, application validation, and a worldwide distribution channel for applications and application components

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Marshall Kirkpatrick passed me in a hotel corridor in March. He was rushing into his panel at South by Southwest in Austin. I was just leaving one. He nodded and said, “Check out the site. Just broke something potentially big.” The news of Google Circles wound up being not as big a deal as, say, Watergate, but in that moment I knew we were firmly planted in a New Establishment.

Marshall and I have been friendly for several years. I even contracted him to teach me the then-mysterious ways of RSS back in my agency days. While we don’t exactly hang out, I love Marshall’s writing and insights. He really is a brilliant guy. His work has helped ReadWriteWeb become one of the top blogs in the technology world. I’ve pitched him a few stories over the years. He’s called me for a few quotes, too.

Marshall Kirkpatrick. Image via CrunchBase

But it was that passing tidbit in the hall at a hotel in Austin, Texas, that Marshall became a media member rather than a blogger to me. Not to discredit his work to that point! He’s always been a journalist if not labeled as such — and a good one, too. But he broke a story. He scooped the competition. It wasn’t just about providing great content in a new medium and sometimes eschewing the norms of traditional communications anymore. Marshall, and ReadWriteWeb, are playing the media game.

I love the fact Marshall gets jazzed about breaking stories. It’s exciting to have information before others. And when the others include competitive websites that can beat you to the punch and benefit from it, the excitement is palpable. Mind you, it’s not that people will run and read the story on TechCrunch, never to pass RWW’s servers again. But rather that the first web source to the punch often gets the lion’s share of both credit and traffic … search engine benefits and more. When Marshall scoops ReadWriteWeb’s competition, the traditional media notice and link appropriately.

Ironic isn’t it that blogs find themselves competing for inbound links from the old gray ladies of the world, isn’t it?

And if you don’t think the big blogs worry about the competition, try pitching them on a tech story. TechCrunch, Mashable GigaOm, RWW … all believe a valid reason not to write about a start-up or news item is that one of the others, “already covered that.” These blogs, and others in various niches, are as competitive and paranoid as the New York tabloids or competing dailies in big markets.

But playing the media game makes blogs of that ilk not blogs at all. While there’s no solid, black line that a website crosses one day, winning a virtual promotion to the category of “media outlet,” the bigger the audience, the more focused the business goals and the more respected a blog’s outputs become, the less of a blog it really becomes.

Perhaps the labels are unnecessary. Any publishing platform is technically a media outlet. Credibility and consistency seem to be the biggest factors in whether or not that media outlet will have an audience. But even those are variable. Perez Hilton, for instance, doesn’t really have journalistic credibility. But for some good gossip and entertaining tidbits to nosh on, it beats many.

Do we need to distinguish between blogs and media sites? Does the tie to traditional, off-line outlets make a difference anymore? Or is the proof just in the pudding. I trust ReadWriteWeb for tech news as much as I trust Wired, Fast Company or even the Technology section of the New York Times (which, by the way, offers RWW headlines on its website). RWW is a trusted source. Marshall is a trusted journalist … whether he would call himself that or not. (He does, by the way. But many at his competitors still call themselves “bloggers.”)

In 2009, Michael Stelzner at SocialMediaExaminer tried to position his then infant website as an “online magazine.” He specifically wanted to avoid the word “blog.” My guess is because his target audience included people beyond the social media world, many of whom associated “blog” with a publishing platform that is, shall we say, unpolished. Mention the fact you author a blog to many mainstreamers today and you’ll still get an unspoken roll of the eyes. So, perhaps labels are still important.

Regardless of what we call what we do, the fact that these little online journals have evolved to produce mega-profit driven publishing platforms that garner thousands of dollars per month in advertising revenue and are authored by teams of people who have goals like scooping the competition or breaking a big story means there’s a New Establishment. Certain blogs and bloggers are now the gate keepers of information. They are the holders of the public conscious, at least in their spheres of influence. And, as a result, we the public owe it to each other and them to hold them to the same high standards we’ve tried to hold the old guard.

We must question their motives. We must insist they source, credit and fact-check. We must hold accuracy, fairness and balance precious when considering our content selections.

Because if we don’t, then we’ll never be able to distinguish truth from the noise. And when you can’t do that, in the strangest of ironies, you have what now passes for traditional news media.

We live in a new era. One of radical transparency. Wikileaks is exposing state secrets. Facebook is reconditioning us to share more of our selves, even if we don’t want to. Whether it’s making your buying preferences known to fuel smarter advertising delivery systems or leaking war strategies, the global democratization of information is forcing our hand — good or bad — to be one important thing: honest at all costs.

While I personally believe many of the secrets shared on Julian Assange’s Wikileaks to be appalling and detrimental to the greater good, he is serving as a conduit for supposed whistleblowers within organizations and governments. If (or dare I say when) he is stopped, 10 more like him will pop up. Wikileaks is the modern day equivalent of the Pilgrims setting sail for America. Those sharing the information (protesting the Catholic Church) are willing to pay ultimate sacrifices (freedom, perhaps death) for the right to share it (worship freely).

Facebook, while several hues below on the terror alert scale, is merely trying to convince us that giving them unfettered access to our habits, preferences and likes allows them to serve up smarter, more relevant advertising to us. The more relevant, the more we respond, the more effective their platform is, the more revenue they generate. They also think there’s no separation between people at work and people at play and that no one should have a problem being tagged in an image with someone else. You were there, weren’t you?

While in theory the openness of our lives certainly can produce greater user experiences, connections and the like, radical transparency is very uncomfortable for many. Sure, many of the many are older generations who see no value in gathering information about people from someone other than the people in question, but why should we trust the Zuckerberg Zeitgeist when we don’t trust our governments, or even each other, to protect our privacy, our data and keep it holy?

The notion of radical transparency offers an interesting ethical dilemma. We acknowledge in our relationship with governments, companies and brands that we want complete honesty. Yet we hesitate to share of ourselves in similar ways.

Do you consider yourself an honest person?

Let’s put a different spin on what radical transparency means in today’s world. If we demand transparent honesty from our government, our churches and synagogues, our companies and brands and perhaps even each other, who will be the first to stop lying to our children about Santa Claus?

My son’s kindergarten class wrote letters to Santa last week. The teachers wrote responses and mailed them out shortly after. Since my son attends a private, Catholic school which is partially administered and governed by the Archdiocese, I can connect enough dots to offer the opinion that the Catholic Church is complicit in the lie of the commercialized version of Christmas.

And for the record, my son’s class wrote letters to Santa Claus, not St. Nicholas. The patron saint of Russia was said to leave coins in the shoes of people who left them by their door and was an inspiration for the modern manifestation of Santa Claus, but the Catholic adoration of St. Nicholas is aimed at a person far different that what you think of as St. Nick.

As I consider the notion of radical transparency and what its implications are on our world, I worry that we aren’t seeing the contradictions in all of us.

Companies breach our trust and we don’t buy their products. Our government breaches our trust and we elect new leaders. Software breaches our trust and we stop using it.

What happens when our children treat us that way?

My hope on the eve of this holiday, regardless of whether you practice it or not, is that we can come to terms with the fact that sometimes, misinformation or even non-information is not bad. Or that we can declare it to be such and truly free ourselves from the binds of untruth.

It appears the Cincinnati Enquirer is about to take yet another step along the scale of social media innovation by a traditional media member to help increase reader loyalty, advertiser commitment and continued relevance in their market despite the industry trends plaguing most of their brethren. I stumbled across a new location-based service application doing some research in the iTunes App Store called Porkappolis (iTunes link)– a hyper-local, location-based service focused on the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky market. The author of the app? Enquirer Media.

The application offers standard LBS functionality, but in a hyper-local, custom skin. Cincinnati was once the slaughterhouse capital of the U.S. and has been known as “Porkopolis” and the Pig City for years. Cincinnati.com cleverly named the application after the moniker. What’s even more cool is that coupons, deals and helpful tips in the app are found under the heading of “Bacon.” Awesomeness.

The application has some variations on the themes. You get stickers for checking in, visiting different countries (I assume … gave me one for the U.S.), etc. You are ranked in a leader board with others in your network and globally. (My first checkin ranked me 19th in the world and I was 10th after leaving a recommendation for a nearby restaurant … it’s not limited to Cincinnati use … so you know this thing is brand, spanking new.) There’s a tab for finding your friends, but also one for finding “locals” to help you connect with other users who are close, but you may not know. Overall, it’s like the other LBS’s (Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl), but different enough to be interesting.

But the addition of a hyper-local, custom, location-based application to a traditional media effort (the Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati.com are Gannett properties) is more than interesting. It shows a traditional media outlet again thinking beyond the boundaries of the print edition and even of their website. The opportunities to monetize a locally-relevant LBS are profound. It’s a chance for local advertisers to serve relevant messages to a hip and trendy audience in an emerging platform, but one that is custom to their community.

If you think I’m off-base here, just ask my buddy Todd Earwood how his TryItLocal.com is turning a Groupon-like effort into hyper-local revenue generators for chambers of commerce and their members.

And I say, “once again,” because the Cincinnati Enquirer has been the bleeding edge digital leader for Gannett’s attempt at transformation. James Jackson explained a lot about their business model with citizen blogging and utilizing social media to me back in August of 2008.

What Porkappolis does is take the national or international play of a Foursquare and makes it more relevant by making it local. Because the Enquirer is pushing it, there will be far more per capita adoption of the tool locally than of others after its initial launch. Why would Skyline Chili, a Cincinnati-based restaurant, spend money with one of the biggies if they know there’s a large adoption rate for Porkappolis in their core market?

For the record, I found a post on Cincinnati.com from November 17 talking about what Porkappolis is, but it’s not something I could find any record of being mentioned publicly. There are several posts and what-not that seem tied to the company getting the app approved and through some cursory sites that look at apps specifically, but no coverage of it. The post I found looks to be a landing page for people asking what it is.

I reached out to my contacts at Gannett’s corporate offices, who knew what I was talking about, but politely encouraged me to talk to the Cincinnati folks about it. Since I discovered this late tonight, they probably haven’t seen my messages yet. I’m sure they will in the comments. Plus, there’s enough out there online to make me believe the app’s publicity is about to happen. You can download it from the app store now, so it’s there, even if the URL lands on a page that says it’s in private beta.

Jim Lenahan, a product developer for Gannett media company, has several check-ins using the app posted on his Twitter page starting Nov. 20th. There is a Porkappolis Twitter account saying the launch is coming soon. I also found a Facebook application page (one of my Gannett contacts was listed as a ‘Friend using this App.’ Interesting.)

So, at the risk of jumping the gun on this, there it is. I sure hope their launch is, in fact, looming. It certainly impressed me and is a digital strategy I would assume many other newspapers or local media outlets will try to emulate in the coming months. Sure, I’m making assumptions on how they might use it, but I’ve talked to Jackson before and know he doesn’t just throw noodles on the wall to see what sticks. You can bet there’s not only thought, but business goals behind this. And it just might be cool enough to catch on.

What do you think? Could a hyper-local LBS make a local newspaper’s efforts more relevant to newer generations? Digital savvy users? Coupon-seeking readers? The comments are yours.

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