YouTube: the global TV channel

Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:22 am UK

I caught a few minutes of President Obama’s Google+ Hangout last night as it was streamed on YouTube.

If you’ve done a Google+ Hangout video chat before, you’ll be familiar with the format and this was no different. Except, of course, it was the President of the United States plus five lucky citizens chosen by +The White House to hang out live with the Pres in a carefully-controlled setting. Plus the millions of people worldwide who tuned in, as it were, to YouTube to watch and add text comments. Plus those doing the same on Google+, Facebook, Twitter… wherever they were online.

‘Tuned in’ is an apt descriptor as the immediate thought I had when I did just that on Google+ was “This is TV.”

If last year’s Royal Wedding that was broadcast live on YouTube was a demo of YouTube as a TV channel – a global one at that – that captures imaginations with a compelling event (content, in a word), then yesterday’s presidential Hangout is surely a clear sign that the channel just changed.

Why watch TV on a TV any more when you can immerse yourself, interact on the net, share your experiences and the recorded content itself, via any capable device that connects online?

Talk about disruption! No wonder the US entertainment industry – and that includes mainstream media like TV – likes things like #SOPA and #PIPA, to which +Clay Shirky‘s call to “pick up the pitchforks” is so compelling.

Reshared post from +The White House

Missed the Hangout with President Obama? Check out the full video here and let us know what you thought.

Google+: View post on Google+

Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.

Good experience with a mobile Google+ Hangout

Posted on January 15, 2012 at 11:48 am UK

One of the most appealing things about Google+ is the Hangouts video conferencing feature. It lets you conduct impromptu video conversations with up to ten people with just your connected computer and a webcam and microphone. Nothing to install or subscribe to (it’s a free service) and it works very well.

I’ve done more than a dozen of these from a business perspective – including a number as FIR video interviews and panels – and they’re a terrific on-demand and informal communication tool. While there’s no native recording feature (and I can’t imagine that’s something Google isn’t working on), you can record your Hangout session via a third-party program such as Camtasia to create a video, which you can then publish or share via commercial services like YouTube.

On Friday, I took part in a terrific Hangout discussion hosted and recorded by my podcasting partner Shel Holtz together with Stuart Bruce and Phil Gomes. For the first time, I connected and participated in the discussion using my mobile device, a Samsung Galaxy SII smartphone.

I used the latest version of the Google+ app for Android to join the Hangout that Shel had started (you can’t start a hangout yourself from a mobile device).

The screenshot shows what I could see on my phone’s screen – in this case, Phil’s fine features in the large image, and the Google+ avatars of my three co-participants at the top left of the screen. The black-ish rectangle you see on the right beneath Phil’s image is a small video of me as captured by the SII’s front-facing camera which, for some reason, wasn’t captured when I grabbed this screenshot.

I was really impressed at how good the overall experience was in taking part on a mobile device. I had my SII’s earbuds/microphone combo connected so I could hear everything with crystal clarity, and talk hands free as well. I did the Hangout from my office; my desk is very close to the wireless router so the wifi connection to the phone was max strength, something I’m sure helped a lot with the overall smoothness of the network connection.

As you’ll note if you watch the video recording of this Hangout, there’s quite a bit of image movement from me as I was holding the phone in my hand so every time I moved or shifted in my chair, the image suffered a bit. (Note for next time: find some way to prop up the phone.)

The Google+ app for iPhone is also good – check out the experience recounted by Marshall Kirkpatrick in the early stages of the Google+ Hangout rollout for mobile.

So you’re not restricted by location if you want to join in a Google+ Hangout – a supported mobile device and operating system plus a strong network connection and you’re good to go.

Engaging outside the inbox

Posted on December 20, 2011 at 8:51 am UK

Doing some email housekeeping earlier this morning, I got thinking about the futility of much of one’s day-to-day email.

Even though I’ve been using a nifty program called NEO Pro for the better part of the past decade that sits on top of Outlook, and which automates the essentials of email organization for me, I just asked myself: Why?

I’m increasingly finding that the most useful, valuable and effective ways to exchange written thoughts, ideas and then make decisions involve the informality of connecting with people via social networks rather than email.

For me, that typically means – in order of preference – Twitter direct messages, Google+ private messages and, in distant third place, LinkedIn inmail or groups. I’m increasingly hearing how people are using Yammer or Salesforce’s Chatter within the enterprise to equal good effect.

Ah, but what about file attachments and other enterprise-essential items? you will ask. You still need email for that. Conventional thinking would agree with you. But just ask yourself: Why? Some enterprise tools like Chatter allow file sharing. I’m increasingly using tools like Dropbox for that rather than bloating up everyone’s Outlook PST databases or Exchange Server inboxes with attachments. I’ve not yet made a conventional jump to the cloud with tools like Google Docs, but that day may come. Or not: a combination of Twitter, Google+ and Dropbox is excellent so far.

Most people I know who work for large organizations say formal channels like email won’t change. I say: Why? If people like Luis Suarez – he works for IBM, lives (and works) in the Canary Islands and hasn’t done traditional email for more than three years – can dispense with email in a big-organization setting, why not you?

See what you think after watching this documentary-interview about Luis and email.

(If you don’t see the video embedded above, watch it at YouTube.)

Engaging outside the inbox makes sense. Don’t you think? Share your thoughts here. Or let Luis know what you think. (No, that’s not an email link.)

[Later] An article in yesterday’s Financial Times headlined The end of email? reminded me that what to do about email is a subject lots of people are thinking about. Indeed, taking concrete action, such as what’s happening at French-based global tech company Atos where its CEO has stated that his 74,000-employee company will ban email for internal communication by 2013. It’s not all email but it’s a huge start to kick-start a huge task of change moving towards team-based, collaborative social communication tools and channels.

On a smaller scale, there’s Canadian digital marketing agency Klick that has already banned all internal email use. Klick CEO Leerom Segal is quoted as saying:

While email makes for a decent communication tool with clients, internally it doesn’t facilitate collaboration and basic workflow. Email has no intelligent mechanisms for prioritization, lacks context, lacks a framework for knowledge management, and saps accountability.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way?

Related post:

The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #628: December 5, 2011 includes discussion on the Atos email ban.

How B2B marketers use social media

Posted on December 2, 2011 at 7:48 am UK

The most effective social media tool for generating business leads is LinkedIn, according to a survey of B2B marketers in the US last month.

Marketing automation company Pardot carried out the survey and say they had input from “dozens of companies” to questions focused on social marketing etiquette, the influence of social media on leads and sales, the most useful social media tools, and the cost to operate social marketing programmes.

That headline metric about LinkedIn is notable, although perhaps not surprising to B2B marketers. According to Pardot’s research, Twitter is the social media tool most used by those marketers but not the one that is the best lead-generator. Indeed, LinkedIn performs over twice as well in that role compared to Twitter as this graphic illustrates.

Equally notable is the second most effective lead-generation tool – blogs. Long-form content and a place for conversational engagement appear to work well for B2B marketers.

Look, too, at how poor Facebook is for lead generation yet is one of the most-used social media tools according to Pardot’s survey.

What the survey doesn’t reveal – Pardot hasn’t published their methodology – is what those B2B marketers might have said about social media use for relationship- and community-building as opposed to the hard activity of lead generation. How would Twitter and LinkedIn have performed against each other, I wonder.

Other interesting metrics from Pardot’s survey report:

B2B marketers are spending millions of dollars annually on social marketing programmes, though nearly 30% are not tracking the impact of social media programmes on lead generation and sales.
Only 11% of marketers said their companies have a formal social media policy.
55% said contacting a social media-generated sales lead by phone or email is appropriate, even if the prospect had not invited the vendor to do so.
48% said it is appropriate to respond to a prospect via social media, if the prospect contacted the vendor via email or phone first.
All respondents said it is acceptable to invite a prospect to join a marketer’s online social networks, though some suggested the invites be limited to networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Plaxo and YouTube, versus more personal sites like Facebook.
31% said it is acceptable to critique a competitor via social media
Over 64% of respondents use “internal, free tools” only to manage social media campaigns.

Pardot has produced a neat infographic from which the image above comes. Note their tweet-quote in that infographic:

There isn’t an ‘across the board’ standard for appropriate action through social channels.

Spot on – you have to determine which are effective for what measurable goal you want to achieve. You can figure that out by a variety of means including reading survey research like Pardot’s, depth analysis from firms like Altimeter, and experimenting yourself.

(Via Mediabistro)