Transcript

This is ”˜Professor’ Goetsch reporting from the Spectacular San Francisco Bay Area offices of the Podcast Asylum.

I’m sure everyone who listens to FIR gets e-mail advertising social media webinars, trainings, and other services. Ragan Communications is hardly alone in sending invitations to these events, though I think they may be the most prolific.

But a few days before Thanksgiving, I received a message that provoked more than the usual “Oh, look! Someone wants to charge me money to tell me what I already know.” In fact, it disturbed me so much that I felt I had to share it here, even though the person who sent it is someone I know”¦and used to respect.

Back when he was producing his “Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy” podcasts, Tee Morris used to call these “Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot Moments.” It was kind of like the Bad Pitch Blog for authors who did Really Stupid Things.

In this case, it’s more a matter of consultants behaving badly. You’ll see what I mean when I read the message. I had to spell out the problem to the person who came up with this gem, but no one who’s heard Shel and Neville—or anyone else in this space—talk about transparency is going to need me to tell them what’s wrong with this.

The only thing I’m leaving out is the name of the company and people involved. I’m not sure they deserve my protection, but I am sure that the lesson here is bigger than one misguided “thought leadership” firm.

Subject: New Cheap & Easy Social Media Management

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Clients:

For too many years I have been preaching, imploring, begging and coaching my clients and prospective clients to master the ways of marketing by blogging, and to start maintaining a presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the other major centers of current web marketing.

A few of you have become expert and have benefited. Most of you are too busy to do it all yourself and don’t want the hassle of fussing with the technology. Some of you have thrown up your hands in despair.

So here’s the good news: We’re going to do it for you, and it’s not expensive. For a limited time, you can start for as little as $500 a month. Our new business will review and set up all the components of your social media infrastructure. We’ll even extract and write your blogs, or edit your original blog posts. We’ll Twitter for you and maintain your connections. Without breaking a sweat, you’ll be a master of the new social media.

And there’s no start-up fees!

All we want is your success.

Call us now and let us start building your public profile.

The part that really got me was the bit about maintaining connections. You’re going to have my relationships for me? Will you sleep with my boyfriend and take my mother out to dinner? Don’t you think they might have something to say about that?

I bet Lee Hopkins has a sound clip of someone beating their head against the wall. I’m not sure it’s my head that needs contramural therapy, however.

When I objected to this person that Twitter is like a cocktail party and individuals do not send other people to attend cocktail parties on their behalf, he seemed completely oblivious to the five years of controversy surrounding ghost blogging, never mind the criticism Guy Kawasaki came in for when he hired people to tweet on his behalf and got caught at it. My colleague seemed to have entirely overlooked the social aspect of social media, and to be pursuing a numbers game whereby he could build an instant “platform” for his clients, who are mostly business-book authors.

It’s true that Twitter can work fine as a broadcast channel—if you’re the Dell Outlet sending notices of your latest deals. And there are lots of social media services a consultancy can provide its clients in good conscience. You can help them write a great LinkedIn profile or develop a good Facebook Fan Page. You can help with media monitoring. You can provide all kinds of training.

But if you can’t make people’s friends for them in person, what makes you think you can do it online? And why, just when the big companies are finding that they have the most social media success by acting more like real people, should real people start acting more like big companies used to?

Literary agent and one-time blogger Miss Snark used to keep a Clue Gun for situations like this.

And the frightening thing is that like the social media certification mentioned on FIR 506, there are people who will fall for it. According to the person who sent the e-mail, there have been several takers already. He even asked if I’d be interested in participating in the project—since I’m a ghostwriter, you know.

You must be joking. I’d have to be certifiable.

Professor Goetsch, signing off.

FIR 500

This is ”˜Professor’ Goetsch reporting from the Spectacular San Francisco Bay Area offices of the Podcast Asylum with my thoughts about what Shel and Neville will be discussing in the next 500 episodes of For Immediate Release.

I have no idea what the hot technology of the day will be when we reach Episode 1000—though I do hope we’re not going to be talking about Twitter in every episode between now and then. If Twitter sticks around, I’d like it to move into the background, like e-mail, and become a tool people take for granted and say “Remember, when Twitter was first introduced, companies wanted to block that.”

I do think that the broad outlines of the show will continue to be the same, though, because whatever new communications tools appear, we’re going to see some companies using them well and some companies really putting their foot in it. And there will be early adopters wanting to keep the whatever-sphere “pure” and non-commercial while others want to jump in and “monetize” as quickly as possible.

I think we can confidently expect to hear Shel say “New media don’t kill old media: old media adapt” a few more times in the next five years.

We might even find out whether he wins his bet about the persistence of print newspapers.

How to Celebrate

Now, here’s what I’d like to suggest everyone do to celebrate Episode 500. First, if you’ve never left a comment before, leave a comment.

Then go out and tell someone about FIR. I think we could easily double the listenership overnight if we did this. That’s not just a nice thing to do for Shel and Neville, but a service to anyone who’s interested in PR, communications, marketing, or social media. I sat next to a professional communicator on my last flight to Cleveland, and she was very keen to hear about FIR when I mentioned it in a follow-up e-mail. Heck, I got “Best Answer” on a LinkedIn question for pointing someone to the recording of the panel with Mark Ragan about how to convince your boss to use social media.

So go forth and spread the good news!

”˜Professor’ Goetsch, signing off.

The main points of this report are as follows:

• While it’s absolutely true that finding and subscribing to podcasts is more complicated than it should be, you can listen to or watch most podcasts without even owning a portable media player, never mind knowing how to transfer files to them.
• Leo Laporte nets more than $1 million per year from the TWiT podcast network. His subscriber numbers might have plateaued, but that’s different from saying the medium is dead.
• Live streaming is just what some of us embraced podcasting to get away from. It’s not just the timeshifting factor, either: production values invariably improve if you don’t go out live.
• TV set-top box delivery is only valuable for video podcasters.

This report is included in For Immediate Release episode 490.

The most diplomatic option (and the one ”˜Professor’ Goetsch prefers) is to click ”˜reply privately’ in order to give the person sending the invite a chance to remind you where you met, who you know in common, and why you should accept the invitation.

• The patent appears to focus on retrieving rather than producing podcasts
• The company states through its PR agency that it has no intention of interfering with independent podcasters
• For some reason, Volo seems incapable of getting that message out to the public, and uninterested in responding to the blog storm

Links: Quit Panicking About the Volo Podcasting Patent

This Report from the Asylum is brought to you by Locus Confusus.

Plus a report from David Phillips, listener comments, and the usual spots from Ragan Communications and CustomScoop.

Shel and Neville will be back for Monday’s show. The listeners will no doubt be relieved—but nowhere near as relieved as Dan and Sallie!

• There’s still no device that makes it easy to find, subscribe to, update and listen to podcasts without connecting to a computer
• The technology for producing podcasts hasn’t changed much, though there are now more WordPress plugins for adding podcasts to blogs (such as the Blubrry PowerPress plugin used here)
• Podcasters may be a subset of the group ”˜media producers’ or ”˜content producers’, but ”˜Professor’ Goetsch, at least, is a podcast consultant, not a media consultant.

This Report from the Asylum is brought to you by Podcastus Overproductus. For an example of this syndrome in action, listen to BASF’s The Chemical Reporter.

About the Panelists

Terry Gault, VP of Services at The Henderson Group, has been a coach, trainer, and consultant in communications skills since 1997. Terry writes both business and personal blogs, is active on Facebook and LinkedIn, and posts videos to YouTube.

Michael North has been engaged in Sales and Operations for 26 years. He uses Google Blog Alerts, Yahoo! Groups, and teleconferencing in his consulting practice—as well as good old-fashioned FTP.

Sandy Shepard wears many hats: lawyer, speaker, author, and lifestyle trainer. She has made effective use of blogging, podcasting, Google Alerts, and iGoogle. Her current passion is SendOutCards.com.

Financial advisor Jeff Stoffer, CFA, CFP, pursued a successful cooking career before discovering a passion for finance and investments. Jeff has begun using article marketing and is investigating integrating audio and video into his website.

The panel is moderated by BACN Executive Team member, social media evangelist, and self-confessed geek Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with “sketch”).

Today’s Report from the Asylum is sponsored by Advertissimus Maximus.