With all of this “Pacers, NBA Playoffs, Atlanta, New York, Miami, Eastern Conference Finals, #BlueCollarGoldSwagger, #BeatTheHeat” Twitter chatter, are you experiencing déjà vu?

Does the Indiana Pacers loss to the Miami Heat in Game 5 of the 2012 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals feel like just yesterday? Still a sore subject?

I apologize, but I have one more “Debbie Downer” thing to mention before I go back to watching the Pacers versus Heat rematch. This time last year, we were also getting wind of Larry Bird’s retirement as Pacers President.

I only bring this up, because I am not a sport’s analyst, reporter, enthusiast or even a passive commentator. While I have nothing new or noteworthy to contribute to the “Pacers, NBA Playoffs, Atlanta, New York, Miami, Eastern Conference Finals, #BlueCollarGoldSwagger, #BeatTheHeat” Twitter chatter, I do have a fairly useless, sort-of Pacers-related, definitely Larry Bird-related, fun fact. And, if this fun fact is news to you, it might be worth a mention during an Eastern Conference Finals commercial break.

The Twitter bird has a name. Meet Larry. Larry the Bird.

Former Twitter logo

Catching my drift?

The Twitter bird is named after basketball legend and former Pacers coach and president, Larry Bird.

Twitter’s co-founder, Biz Stone, grew up in Massachusetts. While those of us from Indiana think of Larry Bird as a Hoosier, I imagine Stone was wide-eyed and grinning when Larry Bird led the Boston Celtics to two NBA championships. That may or may not be the reason Stone named his company’s logo after the basketball legend, but in August of 2011, he did confirm Larry Bird is the namesake.

Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, confirms the Twitter Bird icon is named after Larry Bird.

It is still unclear if the new Twitter bird kept the name, but until I’m told otherwise, I’ll call him Larry.

I hope you remember this tidbit of unnecessary social media knowledge next time you, too, have nothing new or noteworthy to add to a NBA Playoffs conversation. And, finally … Go Pacers! Beat The Heat!

Every May, the team at Raidious takes a day to work from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We pack up our laptops, vacate the Command Center, set up a Speedway version and get to work. We love spending the day with our clients, partners and the occasional celebrity. This year, we took in a practice day, a stroll through the garages and plenty of sun!

If you are interested in joining our team or our client roster, be sure to get in touch!

To view larger versions of the photos above, be sure to stop by our Facebook Gallery!

In part one of this series by Raidious CEO Taulbee Jackson, we learned what the brand newsrooms is, and the first reason your strategy is likely to fail. Real time marketing is more complicated than you realize. Here is pitfall number two in our ten-part series.

#2. You think you can just dive in with tactics.

It’s not just about using the production process real newsrooms employ to produce content in real time. Yes, it’s true: digital marketing does not work without content. Content is the fuel that drives every single online interaction on the internet, regardless of channel. Every digital marketing problem is a content problem, and brands do need to be able to get content produced in real time. But building a brand newsroom is a tactical answer to much deeper strategy, operations, culture and marketing theory problems. “Change the corporate org chart” kinds of problems. If you don’t have an understanding of how your owned media strategy is going to integrate with your paid and earned strategy, do not pass go, do not collect $200 . . .  stop what you’re doing, and handle that. If you think a content audit and that crazy spreadsheet you call an editorial calendar is a real time content strategy, go straight to jail. You don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re not ready yet for real time. If you do have a firm understanding of how owned, earned and paid media are going to work together to produce a business outcome, and you’re appropriately allocating dollars and resources, and you’ve gone through the basics of owned media strategy . . . like risk assessment, developing a business case with measurable KPI’s, creating personae, developing taxonomy, building a subject topography, working through all the governance and distribution issues, creating the appropriate engagement, monitoring and moderation strategy . . . then you can have your newsroom.

We’ll be releasing numbers three through ten as we countdown the launch of the new Raidious website.

When you work for a company that specializes in content marketing and online brand management like Raidious does, there are often a lot of numbers flying around behind the scenes. As a production specialist and one-half of the Raidious analytics and strategy team, I get to wrangle those numbers into charts and tables and figure out what they even mean. And let me tell you, sometimes the numbers don’t do what you want them to.

When I started working here back in January, I learned the ropes by diving in and making sense of things along the way. Now, months later, it’s become way easier to understand when it’s time to cool my jets versus when it’s okay to panic, yell “Fire!” and reevaluate the situation.

COOL YOUR JETS
1. If monthly gains are smaller for the reporting month than they were the previous month, that’s okay. The key thing to remember is that there were gains. Even with the most-talked-about, highest-profile clients, there are still occasional dips in gains. It just happens, man. Fortunately, even the smallest gain will cause a total month-over-month percentage increase.

2. If there’s a holiday coming up, depending on your brand and the holiday, you could see great engagement and reach gains on your social channels. And then, after the merriment has settled and the holiday has passed … your numbers could drop. That’s completely normal. Your decrease in numbers is likely just a return to normalcy.

3. If you just held an awesome social media contest that went over really well, you’ll likely see lower numbers the following month. This is totally fine, as well. Just remember, you were probably publishing way more content at that point that more or less demanded engagement. If you were able to hold a successful contest, your audience is clearly interested in what you’re all about, and they’re probably going to stick around to see what else you’ve got.

4. If it’s a shorter month, and as a result, all of your numbers are in the red, that’s okay, too. Shorter months often lead to smaller numbers. Think about it: With fewer days to publish content, there is less for your fans and followers to engage with and share.

FIRE! FIRE!
1. If gains get smaller and smaller or completely disappear, you’ve got yourself a problem. In that case, look for new people to follow on Twitter that might like your brand; they’ll likely either follow back or look at your profile. Also, keep pushing out content that is consistent in tone and frequency. Finally, engage with your fans and followers. Being human and showing a little personality will make people much more interested in what you have to say.

2. If there is a holiday and your company is one that could cater to that holiday, but your numbers don’t increase … you’ve got yourself a problem. In this case, start showcasing your products and any specials you might have that make your company different from the rest. Look for new followers on Twitter, and interact with your audience on all of your social networks to make sure your brand is out there as an option.

3. If you’re holding a contest but nobody is entering, there are several things that could be going wrong. First, your audience could be too small. Second, your audience might not be appropriate for or interested in the contest you’re running. Third, there wasn’t enough build up or publicity for the contest before it started. Forth, you might not be doing a good enough job at consistently reminding people about your contest. Finally, the prize isn’t enough to motivate people to do what you’re asking of them. Figure out what the problem is, and the solution should be pretty self-explanatory.

4. If a situation occurs or news breaks about something bad happening and you’re not all over the situation, you’ve got a whole slew of potential problems coming at you. The most important thing to do here is to monitor and moderate the situation as best you can. If you don’t, you could risk brand and reputation damage depending on the situation. Along with that damage comes the possibility that your social media audience could diminish and your content engagement numbers will decrease as a result.

Learning which numbers matter, which numbers don’t, and how to manage it all can take quite a bit of time and work, but in the grand scheme of things, it really does make all the difference. Fortunately for many companies in need, that’s what Raidious is here for.

What is the balance between creativity and data when making branded content? And what exactly constitutes your content?

Wired Magazine recently published a profile of photographer Platon, who has taken portraits of some of the most powerful people in the world (Obama, Putin, Zuckerberg) and some of the most influential artists (Woody Allen, Prince, Susan Sarandon).

In the article, Platon says, “Photography is just the technique, it’s the grammar, but it’s never the content.”

This is a very interesting point. If the photography isn’t the content, what is? And what does this mean for the other kinds of content marketers are producing?

Platon’s photography is remarkable because he finds the emotion, story and character beneath the exterior of a giant international “brand” of a person. The content we create to promote must be viewed in this same way. Infographics, white papers, videos, status updates and posts we create aren’t the content — it’s the technique we use to deliver the content that is the message of the brand. The content is always the message.

And yet …

The godfather of communication theory, Marshall McLuhan, famously stated “the medium is the message.” By that, he means the method we use to communicate influences the message itself — the medium is “any extension of ourselves.”

On one hand, Platon is saying that the photography (the medium) isn’t the message, but a technique. McLuhan says the opposite, the message is so greatly influence by the medium that the medium itself becomes the message. It’s an over-simplified argument, but it’s one that content marketers should know how to answer. Is the medium a technique or the message?

For example, is a breakup that much worse when it happens over text? Does the medium change the message? Does it make it that much terrible?

The creative in me wants to side with Platon. We all want to think we’re creating something so captivating that it transcends the medium. But the scientist in me agrees with McLuhan, that the reason Platon’s photographs are art has more to do with the still life (and often very close) representation that allow us to inspect the subject in our own time and space.

This is the balance of the content marketer. We have to pick the right medium to deliver content effectively (McLuhan), but also create something that stands out as remarkable, and doesn’t just rely on the medium to do the work for it (Platon).

Getting on Twitter because that’s what businesses do, or sending regular emails because it’s best practice isn’t enough. You have to be good at it, and definitely better than your competition.

Here is a fun little promotion I got to work on for @WalmartNewsroom & their exclusive EARLY premiere tickets for the upcoming Superman movie in June. Tickets go on sale tomorrow, 5/18 at 8am local time.

#SeeSteelFirst only from Walmart

Is the brand newsroom approach the right operational approach for managing real time owned media? Absolutely, without a doubt. Nobody is a bigger proponent of this idea than me. The marketing operations model has not changed significantly since DDB paired up writers and art directors in the 60’s. Agencies, PR firms, and client-side teams have not evolved operationally with media habits over the years. It’s way past time for change, people… but the concept of the “brand newsroom” is just the tip of the iceberg.

Just because this is the right operational approach for owned media doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea for brands to attempt to do it in-house. Nor does it mean it’s a bad idea. There are lots of good arguments both ways. Like most questions in marketing, it depends on the brand. Clearly the companies that are doing this well in house are very successful with it. They are an inspiration, and they are helping marketers think different. So, here’s to you, Coke. Thank you Red Bull. There are a handful of other companies that have similar efforts going on, and there is a lot of good work starting to happen in this space with those brands. That only leaves… well, the rest of the marketing world. But, just like video edit suites and TV production studios and animation workstations and social media command centers, brand newsrooms and the operational approach and real world requirements associated with them are not the right in-house solution for every brand.

First of all – the “brand newsroom” approach popularized at this year’s Super Bowl that everyone is now so excited about was not groundbreaking… it was just high profile, and marketers were ready to understand it. The most truly interesting thing about it is that it has inspired marketers to take the next step down their maturity path to fully understanding the new realities of marketing ops in the real world. After all this buzz about social media and content marketing and inbound marketing, we are finally starting to understand which questions to ask. We’ve matured from “what’s social media” to “how do I handle monitoring” to “how do I drive conversion” to “wow, it’s really just about content” to “oh, it needs to be in real time”, in about three years. That is fast for our business. Now, we are finally considering the operational implications of all this . . .  because the operational methodology of agencies, PR firms and in house marketing teams is failing to fulfill the real world requirements. They’re not staffed or structured to handle it. The newsroom approach was built for it, and gone through a lot of evolution and refinement as media has evolved, for the last several decades. Soon, marketers will mature even further and get to the deeper issues, like the long term implications for traditional marketing theory, the need to totally rethink integrated marketing strategy, and the implications for spend allocation. . . but let’s deal with the operational issues first, since that is where the conversation’s at in today’s reality. The answers will come soon.

So – you may be asking, “why should I listen to this guy about real time marketing and brand newsrooms?”. You probably have no idea who I am. Let me introduce myself. My background and experience is in marketing and audience development for broadcast, broadcast news and production, and I spent some time as an account planner, moving into a VP, digital role on the agency side for a large regional firm. Everywhere I have been, I was always the “digital guy”. Agency people – you know the guy I’m talking about, you all have had one. The go-to person for “websites and email and interactive stuff”. That was me.

Instead of spending the last decade becoming an “influencer” on the topic of content and real time marketing and brand newsrooms, like Armano and Rubel and those kinds of folks, I started a company – I tend to learn faster by doing, rather than discussing. I asked the right question, and solved the right problem. I spent all my time testing and optimizing it in the real world with real clients, and delivering real world business results. My company has a 100% success rate growing audiences for brands. We are structured, staffed, and operate exactly like… an embedded brand news team. And we have been operating like this, by implicit design, for years.

I’m the CEO of a real time owned media services company called Raidious. We found the answers marketers have been searching for… even if they didn’t know they were, even though it was right in front of them the whole time. How do we handle digital? How do we handle social? How do we staff for this? What skills do we need? All good questions in their time, and tough problems to solve. But Raidious was purpose built to solve the only problem that matters in digital marketing – creating and converting audiences on brand owned media channels. Every online channel is real time. Every medium is social. None of them work without content. All of them are dependent on audience development to work. So – the tactical problem is a content problem, because the strategic implications revolve around audience development and motivation. By definition, because media (all media) is an always on, non-linear, place-shifting, time-shifting multichannel multi-device environment – the solution -strategically, operationally and tactically – has to be functional in real time.

We were the first agency specifically created from scratch to take the newsroom approach to real time marketing. In fact, we’ve been working on solving real time content problems using the newsroom approach since 2006. We created the concept of the Content Correspondent, a cross-functional role based on how reporters work – in 2007. I was one of the of the first to use the term “owned media”, helping define its integrated relationship with Earned and Paid months before Forrester’s popular early research on the topic in 2009. We developed the first comprehensive strategic methodology built to address owned media strategy, creating and refining best practices around real time marketing theory, strategy, and operations in 2010. Raidious was the first agency to create our own real time brand newsroom, which we have used for client work every day since it launched in 2011.

Everyone is familiar with the real time marketing efforts for this year’s Super Bowl, and how brand newsrooms were used to accomplish it. My company created and ran the “brand newsroom” for the Super Bowl. We developed the strategy and designed and built the command center. We also executed all of the real time marketing – including all content development, social media monitoring and moderation, email, blog content, web video . . .

Did we do the Oreo work? Uhh. . . no, that was a different shop. I’m not talking about the Super Bowl everyone’s talking about right now, with the iconic Oreo interaction . . . I’m talking about one that happened the year before – Super Bowl XLVI . . . in February of 2012.

We’ve spent the last six years creating and optimizing everything from strategic process to production process to technology all the way down to the psychographics of the perfect employee. We literally wrote the book on this stuff, it’s coming out this summer. We’ve helped organizations like Walmart, the U.S. Government, Turner Sports, Finish Line, Klipsch, and over 40 other brands figure out real time marketing. Along the way, we learned a few things here and there about what it really takes to do this well, both within our company and on the client side. I would like to share those things with you here. Not to scare you off, or discourage you from building your own brand newsroom –  just to make sure you know what you’re getting into – in the real world, it is not as easy as it looks.

If you want to take your company in this direction, there are several things you need to consider before you start building out a brand newsroom, and addressing your company’s real time marketing needs with tactics, tools and resources. Considering these real world implications will, I hope, ultimately lead you to the new marketing reality you’ve been searching for… but it can be a rough trip getting there. You have to forget a lot about what you think is reality, and unlearning what you currently know to be true is always harder than learning something new. Some can’t or won’t do this, and will cling to historical operations best practices, and that is okay. There will always be a need for great brand strategy, great TV spots, great relationships with traditional media… there is nothing wrong with taking the blue pill. At the same time, if you’re going to take the red pill, you won’t be sorry – but you should know how far the rabbit hole goes. Here are some current realities that may be a challenge to you and your company as you move to a real time newsroom model in the real world:

#1. You believe you’re in the content business. Actually, brands are not in the content business. Neither are agencies or PR firms or digital shops. More importantly, they are not in the audience development business. That is what newsrooms are about – not creating content in real time – creating audience that can be monetized. Be focused on the end, not the means. Audience development is the newsroom’s sole reason for being. Everything about news organizations, from culture to employee compensation is built around moving the audience needle. If you’re building a brand newsroom to enable real time content production, instead of enabling audience development across all your owned media properties, you’re looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

We’ll be releasing numbers two through ten as we countdown the launch of the new Raidious website.

We’ve all seen it before. A new initiative, a new project, a brand spanking new strategy to go along with it all. Then a few months go by, the project is sideways, and that great strategy document your team put together is buried under a stack of forgotten coffee cups and that sweatshirt you use as a pillow for late nights at your desk trying to get things back on track. We’ve all been there.

What went wrong? How did you go from the promising start, to the middling results, to an emergency U-turn? We’ve compiled five common mistakes that will kill your strategy.

1. You don’t actually have one.
   This one is actually more common than you might think. What passes for a strategic document now is actually relatively flimsy. Not sketching out the entire strategy from branding, to publishing, to engagement, to measurement likely means that you have a gaping hole somewhere that’s going to end in tears.
2. You’re not measuring the right things
.
   You’ve got the big idea down, you know how to execute it, but how can you tell if this thing is working? Short of the mythical unicorn that is the runaway-undeniable-we’re-all-buying-houses-on-the-moon-level success measurement is going to be crucial to understanding how successful your strategy actually is. Measuring the wrong metrics can lead you to think things are actually better than they may be, or worse than things actually are, which leads to …
3. You’re too quick to pull the plug.
   This might be the most common mistake made on this list. You’re six months in to your new initiative and things are going slowly (or not going at all), and the rest of the team is starting to give you the side eye. So you do the natural thing and chuck the plan to the side and try something else — anything else — just to get things moving again. Chances are if you’ve really thought through the strategy, it’s a big idea, or at the very least a slow-moving one. Not giving a plan the time to develop is a surefire way to never know if it was going to work or not.
4. Paralysis by analysis.
   I love data. I can’t get enough of it. I don’t just want some information, I want all the information in perpetuity about everything ever. Getting bogged down by all the information you can gather about your new plan, and subsequently feeling a need to incorporate every bit of data into your plan, can often lead to bloating. The other issue is slowing your execution of your strategy to examine the minutia in the results in an attempt to fine tune every little hiccup. You have to allow a strategy some breathing room. Let it take its course and allow the execution to actually follow the plan as you laid it out.
5. You think tactics are strategy.
   A good tactical plan that accompanies an overlaying strategy plan is absolutely crucial. It’s the execution of those tactics that will ultimately allow a strategy to be successful, but mistaking a tactical plan for strategy is shortsighted in the worst way. Pinballing from one idea to another before following further tangents is an excellent way to get lost in the woods without any idea what’s actually going on. Tactics must support strategy — otherwise, what’s the point? Why are you executing tactics if you don’t have any idea what they’re there to accomplish? Keep an eye on the big picture while you work through the day-to-day execution.

On April 20, Raidious moved the Mobile Command Center to the 14th Annual Mira Awards gala at the JW in downtown Indianapolis. The Raidious team tweeted, monitored and even created Vine videos for TechPoint during the event.

I would like to recap what I learned by doing social in real time for such an event:

First, you need to prepare for the event. Establish a hashtag and create monitoring lists of keywords and influencers (know who is attending and speaking at the event). The hashtag we asked everyone to use during the gala was #Mira13.

Not everyone who is attending your event is necessarily following your Twitter account. For that case, you need to monitor for specific keywords and hashtags relating to your event so you are prepared to answer any and all questions.

Next, arrive early and get familiar with the area. You will need to know where all activities will be taking place throughout the night. For Mira Awards, there was a dinner, an awards ceremony and the after-party, all of which were in different places. You will want to take live photos of the guests, speakers and maybe even your social team to post on social for the night. Know what the lighting and noise situation will be like, where to set up your cameramen for the actual ceremony, etc. These might seem like little things, but they will end up being extremely important.

Last, recap how your event did on social. How many mentions, RT’s, or shares did you get on your content for the night? Was your hashtag trending in your area?

The Mira Awards was a success! Just to share how much of a hit it was, #Mira13 was still trending in Indianapolis the following evening. Visit TechPoint’s blog here to learn more about the event and all of the winners!

Recently, I took my family to the Rhythm Discovery Center here in Indianapolis. It was a nice day to take a trip downtown, not many were out, and we were able to comfortably navigate the mall parking, and even do some shopping with a cooperative 18 month old.

Something I realized about the Rhythm Discovery Center is that it is very well designed. This place is NOISY. Kids are running around hitting things as hard as they can. They don’t read the signs, or care that these things are musical instruments. At first you shrug it off, but by the time you get to the end of the displays, you are getting close to going crazy.

Ingeniously, the center’s designers put a giant play area full of clickers, clackers, rasps, triangles, bongos and other noisy stuff right at the end, including a sound-proof room with a full drum kit in it. Visitors can stay as long as they want and make as much noise as they can. As a visitor, though, one heads for the door after about five or 10 minutes, right through the gift shop. The end result is one that keeps visitors moving through quickly, and coming back on another day to let their kids do it all again. The visit is a great learning experience, and it is a big — albeit quick — hit with children.

The point of this story is that I realized shortly after that I believe strongly in a correlation of this to a site’s online content. There are very few sites that are truly sticky. Very few that a user truly wants to sit on and experience. There is a lot of noise, and it has become increasingly important to know your audience, and to create an experience that has the appropriate level of immersion for the type of content you are providing.

In short, it is important to know when you are being too loud. If you let someone leave, they’ll likely come back and do it again.