The May ZimmNews has just been published. If you are not receiving it then get yourself a free subscription. You can find the latest ZimmNews here.
Here’s some of what you’ll find in this month’s ZimmNews:
I hope you like it and thank you for reading!
Just in time for a presentation I’m giving at the Turf & Ornamental Communicators Association meeting tomorrow (Blogging and podcasting for profit. Sponsored by Ewing Irrigation and PBI Gordon) is this report from Universal McCann titled, “Power to the People, Social Media Tracker Wave 3.” (pdf-24MB) They’ve done this study globally 3 times now so it’s got some interesting comparative data in it. Basically folks, new media is where it’s at in today’s online world no matter what country you’re in or what your occupation or age demographic. So for those of you who still wonder why you should know more about this, your questions will be answered. If you still wonder then let’s just say you have gotten off the Cluetrain. Here’s some interesting points and I urge you to download the report with the link above to read the whole thing.
Here’s the percentage of respondents who agreed with these statements:
There’s so much information in this report that I can’t even begin to point it all out. It’s all good. Just take some time, take a deep breath and say, “I will read it and I will try to “get it.”
Via Podcasting News
Here’s my buddies Steve Mays and George Kopp getting ready for a live Ustream.tv webcast from the Coffee Zone in Jefferson City, MO. I stopped by before they started then went home and watched it.
I’ve been testing the cameras I’ve got to see if I can get a better picture for my streams. Below you’ll find a test I did with my Dell Latitude and a Logitech RightSight webcam a few minutes ago. I think that a small camera is best so I’m going to get a webcam that works with my Mac and take that on the road to experiment with.
I don’t know what you think about live web streaming but I think there’s a lot of very cool applications for in in agricultural communications and I’m going to be trying it in the coming weeks.
I haven’t been doing much updating here lately due to the extensive amount of online event coverage projects we’re involved in. In just the last couple weeks that has included the National Agri-Marketing Association Convention, Alltech International Animal Health & Nutrition Symposium and National Association of Farm Broadcasting’s Washington Watch program. During that time I was posting on multiple blogs daily and we started a new concept called Agwired Mobile and AgWired Live TV (using Ustream.tv). Additionally, we’re really incorporating Twitter into the AgWired community and you’ll find my most recent Tweets at the top of the AgWired site.
It’s just a continuing development of the community we’ve developed and our way to be in the online conversation. If you’d like to get a perspective on what that means then you should check out this post on “From the X Degree.” via Teaching Online Journalism
You might want to say that we’re just “early adopters” and that somehow this means that since not everyone in America is doing this or consuming this then perhaps it’s not something your company or news organization should be doing. Tempting if you’re afraid of the future I guess. However, it is the future of journalism and how people will and are consuming news.
I’ve always been proud of the fact that I keep my email in-box at no more than 100 but that’s getting hard to do. Right now it’s over 400. My feed reader has over 900 unread. Yeow.
Although I’m an evangelist for using new media and various social mechanisms to stay connected I know people are having some trouble coping. Here’s a video interview with Steve Rubel on just this topic.
Last week I appeared on the Brian Lehrer show talking about my role with Edelman Digital and how I track trends. We cover marketing pollution and tips on how to manage information overload with desktop search, RSS, simplified GTD and the Gmail Personal Nerve Center.
Marketing Guru Steve Rubel Talks with Brian About Info Overload from Brian Lehrer Live on Vimeo.
Here’s the latest from the Association for Downloadable Media on their draft of standards for advertising and download measurements:
Guidelines and Standards Comment Period
On April 16th, ADM released two documents for public review. We encourage public comments in order to refine and enhance the documentation. The public comment period will end on May 16, 2008.
Advertisement Unit Standards
Draft posted for discussion April 16, 2008. PDF Download
The purpose of the Advertisement Unit Standards is to provide baseline recommendations for advertisement units in order to better facilitate advertising transactions relating to downloadable media.
Download Measurement Guidelines
Draft posted for discussion April 16, 2008. PDF Download
The purpose of the Download Measurement Guidelines are to establish baseline recommendations for how individual publishers, companies and organizations can measure how downloads are delivered to consumer audiences.
Please participate in the refinement of these documents.
Please comment the following ways:
1. Enter your public statements in the comments section in the document comments pages:
* Advertisement Unit Standards Comment Page
* Download Measurement Guidelines Comment Page
2. Send your confidential statements to info@downloadablemedia.org
3. Send your confidential statements via mail to:
The Association for Downloadable Media
611 Pennsylvania Ave, SE #164
Washington, DC 20003-4303
We just launched a new service today tied in to our AgWired site called AgWired Mobile.
Free AgWired news headlines to your mobile phone. Sound like a deal? You bet it is and it’s available immediately.
Now you can have “What’s New In The World Of Agribusiness” delivered right to your mobile phone. It’s headline news via text messaging that will keep you agricultural marketing professionals on top of your game. Sign up now:
Just text “agwired” to 46786
That’s it. You’ll get confirmation immediately and then you’ll get AgWired headline news updates automatically. News will normally be sent between 8am-5pm, Mon-Fri.
We’d love to have your feedback and ideas as we develop this new service.
The new media pioneers just keep on opening up new channels of communication. Stay up to date on your phone or on your computer with AgWired!
If you ever want to unsubscribe (why would you?) then just text “agwired stop” to the same number.
AgWired Mobile is powered by Commodity Update.
You could say “Wow” when you talk about 40 percent growth. So go ahead because that’s what a recent study by Arbitron-Edison Media Research study titled, “The Infinite Dial 2008: Radio’s Digital Platforms” found. Here’s some nuggets from the study:
The study also found out how important mobile phones are to people today:
More than one in five (21 percent) consumers said radio has a big impact on their lives; ranking second only to mobile phones (33 percent) as the audio platform/device that has the biggest impact on people’s lives.
Why do we care about mobile phones? Can you say iPhone? And what about texting to that “audio” device eh?
Since I’ve brought your attention to Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody,” I thought you’d enjoy seeing him dealing with Colbert on the subject.
I am hoping to attend the New Media Expo again this year and have been keeping up with Tim Bourquin, founder, via his emails and now I’m subscribed to his blog, Webernetting.
His most recent post struck a nerve and I posted a comment on it. I thought I’d point you to it and won’t post it here. One sentence in his post struck a real nerve with me and is probably what most prompted me to write a comment.
Worse yet, some seem to think that if you do find a way to make your living successfully, you’ve “sold out” and are no longer true to your audience.
That couldn’t be less true as Tim knows. I am very happy and thankful for the success we’ve had. It has allowed ZimmComm to continue to develop and help a growing number of companies who want to make use of new media tools to communicate with their customers.
We’re going to keep working at it.
If you’re managing any kind of an RSS feed then I hope you know about Feed Validator.
I’ve been using this little web application since I started blogging and podcasting and it has been the biggest help of almost anything I use. All you have to to is enter the url for the feed you want to check and click on the word “Validate.” That’s it.
Either your feed is valid or it’s not. If not then it will tell you exactly where you have a problem and suggest how to fix it. I love simple things that just plain work.
ZimmComm New Media is a charter member of the Association for Downloadable Media and glad to see that progress is being made. I sure wish I could be at ad:tech but I know we’ll be represented by some great people. Check ADM out though:
The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), formed to focus on best
practices for monetizing consumer-downloaded content, hosts the new Get the Download initiative to be held at the upcoming ad:tech San Francisco show April 16 and 17, 2008. ADM puts the call out to all downloadable media creators, media companies, agencies, publishers and distributors to Get the Download from the ADM.
Get the Download focus areas will appear in several formats at ad:tech including 1) four ADM Forum sessions designed to provide the downloadable media audience with ad standards & guidelines and market insight; 2) an ADM Get The Download booth for added accessibility to the association and its members; and 3) a slick urban roof-top party set to bring out some of the industry’s best creative talents.
Leveraging the association’s charter, the ADM has devised four motivating forum sessions taking place in rooms 130/131 of the Moscone Convention Center. These forum sessions are comprised of information created to better educate on the industry role the association is taking to help advertisers realize more impact for their advertising dollar. (more…)
The latest edition of our monthly newsletter, ZimmNews, is now available.
If for any reason you didn’t receive it and would like to then you’ve got choices. You can subscribe to our ZimmNews using this link or you can view an archived version of the newsletter with this one.
This edition of the ZimmNews contains the following sections:
New Media Tip
Where Have We Been
Where Are We Going
What Others Are Saying
Best of the ZimmCast
The AgWired We
Submit Your Questions
Feedback is already rolling in. For example, I’ve already had a new “What Others Are Saying” emailed in as follows:
“Gee, I can even keep up-to-date on my family vacation during Spring Break…if I can avoid my wife and kids killing me for using my Blackberry.”
Signed,
Loving it in Paradise
Also in this month’s ZimmNews is a coupon for first time users of our AgNewsWire service. I hope you like it and thanks for reading!
I now have a copy of Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” in my hot little hands. This book can help you better understand how and why new media communication tools are working. I’ll try to add some thoughts from the book as I read through it.
For starters, let’s look at a statement in chapter one, “. . . forming groups has gotten a lot easier. To put it in economic terms, the costs incurred by creating a new group or joining an existing one have fallen in recent years, and not just by a little bit. They have collapsed.”
Clay’s talking about groups. Any kind of group. Could be farmers. Could be farmers who love green tractors. Could be any group of people you can imagine. Until recently it wasn’t easy or inexpensive to belong to groups much less create and manage them. I suppose you could think of the listeners to a local radio station as a group. But how much does it cost to buy an FCC license and transmit your signal? More than you and I have. Been there, done that.
Today though, using new media tools like blogging or podcasting, which includes social networks like Facebook, I dare say most people can afford to create their own group and have global reach. This is allowing many more groups to exist. It also means companies are having to re-think how they get their message out since there are many new and different channels to do so. It also means they can’t apply the same measurement standards to the tactics they’re using. If they do then they’ll find themselves stuck in the same old, same old and wonder why others are getting ahead of them.
There was a great AP story out last week that focused on how food companies are targeting the writers of niche blogs. It helps illustrate how important this new proliferation of “groups” is becoming. Here’s an excerpt with my own highlighting added:
One blog with a couple of thousand daily readers may not have a huge impact, but marketers can easily reach several such blogs with little effort, said Debbie Weil, a corporate blogging consultant based in Washington. “Companies are paying attention to the concept of lots and lots of tiny little markets. Added up, it’s significant,” Weil said.
The single-minded focus of blogs may be in some ways more valuable than traditional marketing since it’s easier to target an audience, said Daniel Taylor, a senior analyst of digital advertising and marketing for the Yankee Group.
These blogs usually spring from personal obsessions. Abi Jones, for example, started Heat-EatReview.com after nuking countless frozen meals for lunch at the office. Comparing notes with co-workers, she realized there were no resources for people interested in learning about the newest products in the freezer aisle.
Food blogs “may not have the mass reach, but it’s a more engaged, specific audience,” said Greg Zimprich, a spokesman for General Mills Inc. “Their readers are going to care a lot more about a product of ours.”
I know it’s not easy shifting the paradigm of the mass audience to one of multiple niche audiences but think about the value of your investment. I suggest that investing fewer dollars to reach the most motivated or engaged customers may have a greater return that spending huge amounts of money, most of which is reaching people who aren’t interested in your product or message.
I’ve had a Twitter account for almost exactly a year now but just started using it. At first I just didn’t see the point but that’s changed.
You can read a little bit about Twitter in an article on Fox Business.com.
Is Twitter the next big thing or a twempest in a tweepot? Twitter is a free “micro-blogging” service that allows users to send updates, or “tweets” — messages of up to 140 characters that answer the question “what are you doing now?” The updates are kept on the user’s profile page and distributed to friends via text messages, instant messaging, RSS feeds, and other applications.
I see applications for this that probably aren’t exactly what Twitter co-founder Evan Williams had in mind. Consider how you can quickly and easily distribute information from a meeting or an event without having to have your computer or even an internet connection. You can update your Twitter feed via your mobile phone for example. Get started and let your friends and customers know what you’re up to (that you want them to know of course).
iPods make great gifts both personally and professionally these days. Apple has a program that lets you order iPods with your logo on them in case you didn’t know.
They can be used for any variety of purposes and they’ll even pre-load content onto them for you in the right quantity.
Visit Apple online to learn more or call 1-866-364-2167.
Whether they’re gifts, promotional incentives, training tools, or rewards for a job well done, nothing can create excitement like an iPod, iTunes Gift Card, or iPod accessory. Call today and ask about our special pricing on volume orders.
There’s a 50 unit minimum for iPods. You can also order other products as well.
I’m going to be visiting San Luis Obispo and the California Polytechnic State University to do a little new media training this week. Scott Vernon has set up a double session for faculty and students titled, “Exploring the New Media: Using Podcasts to Drive Your Message and Expand Your Reach.”
This is going to be fun. The idea is to “Create Innovative New Ways to Communicate to the Industry, the Public, Prospective Students, Current Students and others!” I’ll be showing how to create podcasts and how we’re seeing podcasts being used in agriculture. This is on behalf of the Agricultural Education and Communication Department.
I know that more and more companies and even those in traditional media are looking for new employees with the skills to create multimedia content for websites and podcasts. These skills were once taught piecemeal but the computer tools of today are changing everything. If your school or staff would benefit from a session on the use of new communications platforms then you know who to call (the Agriblogger and Farm Podcaster).
If you’re an iPod newbie and wondering how to subscribe to podcasts so you can carry them around in your iPod then Apple has a great new video for you.
You can find it here.
Keep in mind that there are so many podcasts and new ones being added constantly that you’ll want to search the iTunes podcast directory periodically to see what’s available. You will be amazed at what’s there on just about any subject you can imagine.
According to an Association of National Advertisers survey it looks like advertisers are much more willing to try new ways to advertise and reach their audience or members and that includes new media.
A majority of marketers believe that television advertising has become less effective in the past two years, but marketers are interested in exploring new ad formats and new forms of video commercials, according to the fourth biennial TV & Technology survey conducted by the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and Forrester Research, Inc. The full survey findings will be revealed at the ANA’s TV & Everything Video Forum on February 28 at the New York Marriott Marquis, Times Square.
Major findings of the study include the following:
* Sixty-two percent of marketers believe television advertising has become less effective in the past two years, but close to half of the advertisers surveyed have already started to experiment with new ad types to work with DVRs and VOD programs. Eighty-seven percent of advertisers believe branded entertainment will play a stronger role in TV advertising in the coming year.
* Advertisers are eager to try new ad formats, including ads in online TV shows (65 percent), ads embedded in VOD (55 percent), interactive television ads (43 percent), and ads within the set top box menu (32 percent)
* Over 50 percent of marketers reported that when half of all TV households use DVRs, they will cut spending on TV advertising by 12 percent.
* Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they intend to spend more on Web advertising this year.
* Seventy-two percent of marketers are very interested in having individual commercial ratings rather than average commercial ratings.