The Power of Social Technology

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

"I get social technology now."

When asked to share 6 word stories describing what they perceived as sticky takeaways from PoST, people had insightful, sometimes poignant, memories to share. From seeing first-hand the power of the individual story, to practical skills like engineering virality. But I really like how Trevor boiled it down: "I get social technology now." (under 6 words, too!).

At the start of the quarter, I had several friends who thought I was crazy for waking up at 7am twice a week to go to "Twitter class." (Why? What is the point? Isn't social technology for narcissists, you narcissist?) As a Twitter virgin and limited Facebook user, I thought I was kind of crazy, too. I didn’t get social technology, but I was intrigued. Turns out, this class has been a complete pleasure. Time after time I've been surprised and delighted by both the utility of what we've learned, and more generally by how the class has encouraged me to think critically and differently about big questions (like 'What is social good?" and "What does happiness look like?"). In ten short weeks we've all progressed significantly in terms of engaging with, employing, and leveraging social technology tools. We formed pods and found projects of passion, advanced our ideas and goals using the design process and the insight from an incredible ecosystem of speakers and participants, and we ended up with an amazing body of work that will live on beyond the scope of this class. We've literally seen first-hand "the Power of Social Technology," and I think most, if not all, of us (former skeptics included), would agree that, we get what it's all about now.

Jennifer's final lecture was focused on happiness. Somewhat of a departure from the discussion of social technology tools, but it was a wonderful way to conclude a class that has threaded inspiring ideas about social good, and the meaning and path to happiness throughout. A summary, in 8-point list form, with 140 character comments...

Finding Happiness: 8 "Weird Principles"

1. Time shift
Only work 3 hrs/day. (Deep, hard thinking.) Find temporal sweetspots, map to key domains & identify homeruns.

2. Work on projects you love (not like)
Endorphin release from projects of love. Anticipation has same effect! "I" = fear/uncertainty, "we" = growth, motivation.

3. Reframe expectations
CK Louis has it right: http://bit.ly/entitledsociety

4. Create a reward system
Behold the power of small rewards. Employ emotional buffering. Redefine "Completion.”

5. Carve out clear areas of incompetence
Save time by publicly declaring areas of incompetence. cooking + housecleaning saves 500hr/yr each

6. Cultivate emotion contagion
Find ways to constantly communicate positive emotions. "Lllll!"

7. Create sticky memories
5 minutes on the beach with a camera -->vivid positive memories for a lifetime.

8. Improve sense of humor
Laughter --> Happiness. Many studies to prove it. Spend time with people you LIKE (doesn’t happen as often as you would think…)

Thank you @aaker, and the whole #StanfordPost ecosystem for a memorable, wonderful experience.

PoST Oscars

Wow!!!

No real sleep since Saturday and a nonstop schedule since 8am Monday morning. Still, the only think I can think about are the morning PoST presentations. I missed the SoCal Oscars; here are my awards for the 2010 PoST class.

Best Animation: Unnamed Company. A warm and well told story that was at the heart of a project that originated as women4women. The human to video transition made this a very complete project.
http://prezi.com/hhgehrg97pqr/ourunnamedcompany/

I recuse myself from judging EnhancEducation. Inside information: Ben Knelman really made this shine coming down the stretch. Check it out again if you can. Great soundtrack.
http://vimeo.com/10004640

Best Documentary: The Haiti presentation came alive when the on screen doctor returned from Haiti and walked into the classroom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhZ1bHKkGus

Best Business: Piazzza applied classroom theory to the real world and generated real business. Check out how much they have grown. Great leverage from the Google SuperBowl add.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVxY9G3FP8U

Best Picture: The big award of the day has to go to project Baby Warmth. Along with Always a Bridesmaid, this was one project where I caught a sneak preview from a week ago. They brought in a great story and made it even better. Such a smooth telling; it is ready for any possible audience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=806lhde1yVc

Best Special Effects: The high tech wizardry allowed this presentation to be fully interactive as the inspiration from the early parts of the video became the trailers for the rest. Very cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdBqKwqzUCQ

Best Comedy: Words fail me. This was just too funny and a story that nicely wrapped up inside the video. For PoST people in the at the live showing, there were great lessons from Ann on the anti-viral nature of some personal stories. Send this down to Hollywood, there is enough material here for a pilot. HBO?
This is so funny it can't even be released. I gave a warm smile yesterday to one of the main actresses; she still doesn't know she is famous.

Best Production: An early favorite in the PoST class, Charrette delivered with a great pitch for bringing design more firmly inside the business school.
http://vimeo.com/9973350

Best call to action: The final video from Raja and Sam left me entrance and wanting to see more. They had the best call to action. Also beutifully cinemetography with video over video and a nice long day of group artwork.
http://thebubblesproject.com/ (don't forget the s on bubbles)
http://vimeo.com/9950965

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

PoST Presentations

Monday, March 8, 2010

A Fruitful Investment of Time

Wow! What an awesome presentation by all of the pod groups today. I am very impressed by the amount of time and energy that all of the groups invested into today’s presentations. While most of us in today’s class were rubbing our eyes from the weekend’s work, the look of contentment in the eyes of the group members was evident.

The MyHaitiStory group found that its investment in sharing the good news of its success and contribution to a valuable cause produced a cathartic effect in all of us. I imagine that other groups, such as Embrace and SEE, found similar emotional benefits to their investment in their PoST projects.

When you have an opportunity, please take time to view the MyHaitiStory video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhZ1bHKkGus

Jason B.

Looking Back - What A Long Way We Have Come!

When I first signed up for the class, to be honest, I wasn't sure how it was going to be. it's unlike most GSB classes - more artistic, more experiential, more free-form, and definitely less about spreadsheets. The speakers came and talked about their personal stories and experiences with social technologies. I was at first most concerned with whether I would learn tangible things from the class, as I would have in a class like "debt markets." :) The experience has been getting better and better as the course progressed and reached its climax, in my opinion, today. The visual presentations that all the teams showed were truly impressive. I loved how each story revolved around particular person(s) and emotions we can personally relate to.

I think what truly made this a special learning experience for me includes the following:
(1) Learn the art of storytelling. It's often an understated business skill. Just look at Steve Jobs, how he stages every Mac World product launch in a dramatic, and flawless fashion! Every successful business, especially a consumer business, requires great storytelling to engage its users. We are all human and have emotions. We "fall in love" with products, ideas, places, as we do with people. The best thing a business can achieve is to make its customers fall in love with its products or services - to connect at an emotional level. How do we do so? At the lower level, you can meet a checklist of requirements they ask for. However, the true experts in the area know to connect with their customers beyond meeting a laundry list of features. Apple doesn't make the most feature-rich product; instead it often provides fewer features. However, they make products that people simply love. They have a consistent image and character for all their various products, Steve is a master at telling you why Apple's products are better than any competitive solutions. Storytelling skill is particularly important in the new age of social networks, when people rely more on their friends' opinions and recommendations than an authority. People are wired to love stories, especially the ones told well. A great story can be organically spread, as we've seen in the growth of Kiva and many other successful ventures. What's great is to learn from some of the industry experts as we develop our own stories, from the technical director at Pixar to a producer from BBC. It's simply an amazing learning experience.
(2) Experiment. Just do it. This class has cost me the most time among all the classes I've taken this quarter, and is one of the most time-demanding classes at GSB. However, I had so much fun doing it, for the most part (except for an overnight battle learning Final Cut Pro). I would never have discovered how much I actually enjoy making short films! Frankly, I felt intimidated initially that I had to build a video story, after seeing what previous classes had done. I had never used those tools and didn't even know where to start. Now I'm really proud at what I was able to achieve within 2 months leveraging all the resources the class provides. We interviewed, wrote the script, picked the actor, shot the clips, and edited the video. The class' requirement for us to all roll up our sleeves and actually "produce" a visual story really forced us to start experimenting, and through the process, to learn deeply. Experiments offer active learning, which is the best way to learn. By making mistakes, you often learn more.
(3) Creative thinking. This is related to "storytelling", but I particularly enjoyed how this class exercised a different part of my brain. It's no longer just numbers, spreadsheets, analytical papers, or boring corporate powerpoint presentations. We still track numbers, like clickthroughs, signups, etc, but we also learned about human-centric design thinking. We learned to think creatively about engaging users. We learned to build stories that entertain people while naturally providing our value proposition. We learned to tell value than to sell. We learned to make viral videos. We tried different things. Some worked and some didn't, but we learned a great deal.

Looking back, I learned so much and will surely exercise it immediately!

6 Word Lessons

Today's class reminded us that social technology can be a powerful tool to motivate people to come together and act. The stories from the following class groups affirm this claim:
1. Unnamed Company: Amy and Anna’s story – US and Libya: “Demand More”
2. EnhancEducation: EPAPA and SEE collaborate and sustain students in college
3. Haiti StoryBanking: story of Janet and Goerge and how they were affected by Haiti  texting  peace versus doing more / volunteernation.tv  ONLINE STORYBANKING (ie myhaitistory on facebook)- Over 300 people became fans of myhaitistory - Don’t let personal stories disappear – “what’s your story”
4. Piazzza: launched on jan 4 -> used btwn students and professors  luck of meeting techcrunch  limited number of accounts  facebook fan page to get 15 friends to post  what’s a good idea hypothetically may not translate into what people will actually do  rolled out to classes across the world even in highschool  live to 20 classes
5. Embrace: too small to keep warm  baby incubators for extreme affordability for low birth rate babies at risk of hypothermia -> video on Sat evening and already 400 views  imagine what you could place in your hands  too small to regulate own body temperature – 20 M low weight birth babies – incubators cost 20k - Problem becoming possibilitiy -> 5 idealists creating a miracle “Embrace” – made for $25 – Hope.Life.Embrace – between hands “an infant’s future”
6. Wanted Change: people + plans to help = better world. Tweet: [how do you help] #wantedchange
7. Charrette: executable design strategy – experience architects  developed their brand through their video / pictures / inspiration from d. school -> bridge gap between design and business -> dschool related to problem of designing snack food  innovator/future/make unexpected obvious/connect/happy
8. Beautiful Things: making people feel less lonely; connecting/ blank canvas / unexpected / fun / relax and enjoy and not consume quickly / time expands / something unexpected emerges from a collective slowing down and engaging with everyone’s canvas/ www.thebubblesproject.com

Nevertheless, one group in particular realized that social technology was not the appropriate vehicle with which to spread its message:

Always a Bridesmaid: social technology wasn’t necessarily successful / why it didn’t work  didn’t want to share their stories b/c talking “smack” – only 3 stories were shared which illustrates: when you are asking to share something that has a negative connotation don’t want to share on social media when friends are involved

Here are some 6 word stories from the guests today which affirm the power of social technology:
"Technology enables. People connect"
"The intersection of social media for social change"
"Advance defend Stanford reputation"
"Creating social change through civic participation"
"Technology and philanthropy to have the biggest impact"
"Connecting people over shared life experiences"
"I build ultra low cost applications"
"Make waves for good through participatory media"
"Saving the world with credit cards"
"Help people create and deliver world changing presentations"
"600M people can create big change"
"Awareness is easy behavior change is hard"
"Online platforms for scalable change"
"Fascinated with transforming stories into action"

Some interesting resources from today's guests:
tweet #wantedchange
Whoclicksmylinks.info
The technological citizen blog
www.thebubblesproject.com

Friday, March 5, 2010

Are you happy?

Are you happy?

In the Jesuit school where I was raised, it was one of the recurring questions asked when reflecting on our lives and what we wanted to do with them. Happiness was also the theme of Jennifer Aaker's PoST class on Wednesday.

When you ask people about happiness, many view it as something from the past. We tend to rewrite our past, our childhood for example, and remember perfect times when we could do whatever we wanted, when we wanted. Even more people view happiness as something in the future: they might not like what they are doing now, but it will bring them happiness later.

In the present, we struggle with the meaning of happiness. Coming with a definition is as personal as it is hard, especially when you realize that your view on happiness changes every 5 years. Try filling the blanks for each age range in this mad lib; you will realize how your goals have changed and will change.

We start _________ (11-14), but soon fill up with _________ (15-18), and feelings of _________ (19-22) until we leave those behind to go _________ (23-26), before gradually trading ambition for _________ (27-30), developing an appreciation for our _________ (31-35) and our _________ (31-35), and evolving a sense of _________ (36-40), for which we feel _________ (36-40), then _________ (41-49), _________ (41-49), and finally _________ (50+).

The key insight in all this? Don't spend too much time worrying whether the decisions you make will make you happy: what makes you happy changes all the time.

So, how can we be happy now? A good place to start is to surround ourselves with happy people. Emotions are contagious. Spend time with the people that make you feel good and pay attentions to those moments. One of the keys to happiness is reflecting on the happy moments instead of taking them for granted and focusing on the not-so-happy ones.

But how can we focus on those? We have to turn them into sticky memories. We want those moments to be the first ones to surface when we think about our lives. Typical sticky memories are spontaneous moments, surprises and even more so, traditions. Traditions, such as the one we have with our families, can have their specific flavor, their specific rituals: they can have their own brand. Let me give you an example, for every birthday, my grand-parents used to have a special dinner party with all my cousins and I. No parents. They had their brand "le diner des cousins" (the cousins dinner) and rituals: too much food and wine bottled the same year the birthday boy or girl was born. Those dinners are amongst the best memories of my life.

How does happiness tie in with social media and social good? First of all, I feel that social media have focused a lot on sharing happiness. Whereas traditional media keep showing in more and more details the scariest and depressing pieces of news, social media are about sharing the good things that happen to us, showing photos of happy people, sharing tips to be even happier. When tragedies happen, social media are used to provide help and express sympathy not to show the most gruesome images of the catastrophe.

Here is the class' dragonfly model for social media campaigns: Focus + Grab attention + Engage + take action. What better way to achieve the two middle goals than making people happy? In order to do that, you have to know what make you happy and share it and also reflect on what make the users you want to reach happy.

Let me give you the "average" answer to the mad lib.

We start simple (11-14), but soon fill up with angst (15-18), and feelings of confinement (19-22) until we leave those behind to go conquer the world (23-26), before gradually trading ambition for balance (27-30), developing an appreciation for our bodies (31-35) and our children (31-35), and evolving a sense of connectedness (36-40), for which we feel grateful (36-40), then happy (41-49), calm (41-49), and finally blessed (50+).

Why was yours different?

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Three Secrets to Happiness

Secret #1: the meaning of happiness will change for you every five years

Check out the migration happiness model:

“We start simple (11-14), but soon fill up with angst (15-18), and feelings of confinement (19-22) until we leave those behind to go conquer the world (23-26), before gradually trading ambition for balance (27-30), developing an appreciation for our bodies
(31-35) and our children (31-35), and evolving a sense of connectedness (36-40), for
which we feel grateful (36-40), then happy (41-49),calm (41-49), and finally blessed (50+).”

Write your own!

See how the meaning of happiness changes for us every five years? So don’t be so hard on yourself when you are making decisions because what makes you happy today will change in five years. Therefore, the correct decision will be the one that will allow you to evolve the meaning of happiness for yourself

Secret #2: Surround yourself with happy people

You must surround yourself with people that provide positive emotions. Emotions are contagious and positive emotions spread faster than negative emotions. Whenever you are around happy and inspirational people you are happier and you work faster, better and deeply.

Ok, this sounds easy but how do I really know if the relationship is positive or negative? When you are interacting with someone ask yourself two questions: 1) How many times have I felt a positive feeling (ie. Smiled)? 2) How many times have I felt a negative feeling (ie/ rolled my eyes)? If the ratio is 3:1 or better you know you are surrounding yourself with happy people

Secret # 3: Create and cultivate memorable moments

When we look back at life we can only recall the moments that we actually remember. So, for us to believe that we had a happy life we need to be able to remember a lot of happy moments. Be strategic about this!

What makes you remember a moment? 1) It is memorable: it may seem spontaneous, it could be a surprise or it becomes a tradition (better if it has rituals) 2) It is sticky: it has a “brand”

Try it!

Here is an example of one of my most memorable moment in the past two years:

My Debrief Brunches: Every weekend I get together with my best friends for brunch so we can update each other on what is going on in our lives. We have a brand (Debrief Brunches), we have a tradition (every week) and we have little rituals (we always go in our pajamas)

Happiness is...

I walked into class with the expectation of wrapping up one of the most amazing courses I have taken at the GSB. Instead, I walked out with a million questions and an urge to sit alone and just think: Are we actually aware that the meaning of happiness changes every certain period of time or do we live in pursuit of reaching a fixated state of happiness … one day?

Jennifer’s main message today was that if we internalize the idea that “the meaning of happiness shifts every five years”, then we will make better decisions and choose a better career. In fact, she proved her point by asking us to “fill in the blanks” the paragraph below by inserting the feelings we associate with each age group. This was a very rich exercise as I got to hear how different classmates foresee their lives changing. Although I could share with you my own, I have chosen (with their permission) to share with you the abstracts that were written by Beatrice Pang and Amanda Gharghour from our class. They are just more beautiful and articulate than mine.

“I start dreaming to be an artist (12-14 yrs) but soon fill up with social pressure to belong to the majority (15-18 yrs) and feelings of lost identity in a new environment (19-22 yrs), until we leave those behind to go start proving myself to the world (23-26), before gradually trading ambition for my true passion (27-30), and developing an appreciation for our families (31-35) and our friends (31-35), and evolving a sense of limited existence (36-40), for which we feel happily every day (36-40), then connected (41-49), grateful (41-49), and finally blissful (50+)” – Beatrice Pang

“We start curious (12-14 yrs) but soon fill up with anxiety (15-18 yrs) and feelings of introspection (19-22 yrs), until we leave those behind to go chase dreams (23-26), before gradually trading ambition for inner peace (27-30), and developing an appreciation for our family (31-35) and our true self (31-35), and evolving a sense of belonging (36-40), for which we feel empowered (36-40), then generous (41-49), content (41-49), and finally settled (50+)” – Amanda Gharghour

Do you spot the similarity? After listening to a few classmates share their abstracts (and after analyzing my own), I realized that despite the difference in word choice, there is actually a similarity in the way we all view happiness at the mere start and end of our lives. When we are young, we all associate happiness with being naïve, curious, and excited. When we are old we associate happiness with gratefulness, peacefulness, and settlement. And what about the meaning of happiness between the stages of youth and maturity? Well, we are all different. We each enrich and accomplish happiness in our own unique ways. We all start simple and gear up to explore the world, but look forward to ending our lives having accomplished peace after a rich journey.

So, what is happiness to you and how do you anticipate it will change? Fill in the blanks and be prepared to make decisions based on what you choose happiness to be like during the next five years for your life.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Tilting Towards Happiness

Fill this out. If you already have, try it again. It's like Mad Libs as Jennifer said, and who doesn't like Mad Libs? In each of the spaces fill in the feeling/idea you associated with the age range (and if you haven't gotten to the age range yet, write what you anticipate will go in the box for you).

We start _________ (11-14), but soon fill up with _________ (15-18), and feelings of

_________ (19-22) until we leave those behind to go _________ (23-26), before gradually

trading ambition for _________ (27-30), developing an appreciation for our _________

(31-35) and our _________ (31-35), and evolving a sense of _________ (36-40), for

which we feel _________ (36-40), then _________ (41-49), _________ (41-49), and

finally _________ (50+).

In the spirit of sharing, these are my answers separated by slashes in a weak attempt to disguise them (awkward/more awkward + insecure/tentative hope/test my dreams/a sense of self/husbands + kids/parents/satisfaction + maternal-ness/grateful/proud/fulfilled/truly happy).

One of the things I am still thinking about after this morning is that while we often let ourselves believe that we are either happy or we aren't, that happiness is stumbled upon by chance and not created - this is not necessarily true. Happiness can very much be something we are able to influence. I can't articulate this as clearly as Jennifer, but here are a few nuggets I walked away with:

Being very conscious about how we spend our time, with whom we spend our time, can have a big impact on our happiness.

It is useful to anticipate that we will face an evolving definition of happiness. If we do this, we can tilt our careers, decisions and family around this changing definition.

If you know down deep what it is that is important for you to do. In your life, in your career. You need to figure out how to go out there and do it.

In your life, if you see a crack in the door, go through it.

Create sticky memories.

Jennifer shared a sticky memory of hers with us, so I will share one with you:

When I was a kid my mom would sometimes tell my best friend Fiona and me stories about the "great abominable snowman". My mom only told these stories in the summer time and only late at night when it was past our bedtime. We had to beg and plead for her to tell them to us, and when she finally relented, we were hit with a great tidal wave of excitement and would jump up and down and squeal with delight. We would sit outside on the back porch with mugs of hot chocolate stuffed with marshmallows and big, soft, completely worn down cotton blankets. We would snuggle up on either side of my mom because we were both too scared to be anywhere else. We knew the story line by heart, "Two young girls named Nicole and Fiona went hiking in the Himilayas when they started to notice suspicious things...", but we would nonetheless get goosebumps and scream and let ourselves be thrilled by the story every time.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Power of Storytelling Feedback

Today in PoST the class broke up into smaller sections to meet with storytelling coaches.

Take-away #1: meet with storytelling coaches at every opportunity.

Take-away #2: (especially in any situation where the above impossible) SHARE your presentation ideas with other people as early and as often as possible. Don't wait until you've gotten it to be "good."

The coaching session, as you might have gathered from the above, was awesome. In our session, my teammate Ryan and I (team "EnhancEducation"), got to meet with two other teams ("Project Baby Warmth" and "Always a Bridesmaid") to bounce our ideas off of storytelling coaches Raymond Nasr and JD Schramm. Each of our teams got to share where we were in our projects and how we were envisioning telling our stories in our final presentation next Monday. It was infectiously fun to hear our classmates' projects - and the feedback everyone got from the coaches and each other was both energizing and illuminating.

Take-away #3: Define your audience, but in a way that motivates you (as well as your presentation)

When Raymond began to suggest that for our project we choose as an imagined audience "the education..." I expected him to finish the recommendation as "the education community." Or perhaps "the education non-profit community" or something of the like. Something collective. Our video, after all, was hopefully going to reach many people, not few, right? And you should envision a suitably massive audience if you aspire to have big impact, no? But his sentence concluded quite differently than I expected, when he recommended we imagine our audience to be "the education editor of the New York Times." As soon as he said this, it completely changed my mental frame. When addressing a faceless multitude in your mind, it's easy to slide into persuasive strategy that is equally abstract. But if you're going to talk to a single person (even if only in your mind), your persuasion goal has to become very clear, and the appeal or limitations of your tactics are thrown into high relief. By selecting this individual "audience" - especially one that represents a creative challenge for you - it actually can galvanize you to think bigger, rather than smaller. We took away from Raymonds advice not only a new frame that clarified our goals, but also a completely unsought-for excitement that perhaps even we could make a video that would turn the head of the editor of the NYT.

Take-away #4: When your story is part of a larger story, think of a great 'hourglass' academic job talk.

Our coaches shared with us a great metaphor* for effectively situating your work into a larger context:

Think of an hourglass...

Begin at the wide top - the full picture or potential

(this is what this field of research is trying to do; this is the big picture of our organization's efforts on x)

Then narrow to what your particular piece of work is doing or achieving

(this is what my article contributes; this is what our division is working on)

Finally, flare back to the ultimate significance of your work and how it connects to the big picture

(this is what my research implies (or could lead to); here's how our division's work is transforming the entire organization's initiative)

*speaking of metaphors, find a powerful one to tell your own story! Metaphors can bundle the complexities of your story into a single concept that compellingly conveys your ideas. (brought to you, again, courtesy of your local GSB storytelling coaches)

Take-away #5 = take-away #2, again

I think all of us at points were surprised to learn what parts of our story ended up resonating the most with others, and each group walked out of the meeting armed with a couple stories or approaches that we previously hadn't thought of as our strong-suits, yet which turned out to be our listeners' favorites. You really can't know what will resonate with people until you test it out. Yes, a lot of the time you can predict reasonably-well which stories or parts of the presentation are the best -- but there will always be those surprise flops or favorites you just couldn't see on your own. So don't wait to show your presentation to your roommate or cubicle-mate or spouse. We'll always be surprised how much there is for people to respond to even when "it really isn't finished yet!"

Monday, March 1, 2010

Something Old and Something New: A Hybrid Approach to Unleashing the Power of Social Technology

While many of the initiatives we've profiled in class can attribute their success to the unexpected virality of their messages, my team has taken a big bet on our final project and decided to ditch hoping for complete strangers to help spread the word about our goal and instead, focus on "intentional virality" (spreading our message through a ladder of personalized emails).

Our project - developing a strategy for Challenge 4 Charity (C4C) to augment its fundraising efforts by targeting individual donors in addition to its existing strategy of focusing on corporate donors - is composed of 3 main parts:

1 - Developing a Facebook fan page to gather current MBA students at C4C-member schools and encourage them to highlight classmates, who they view as C4C "heroes" for the incredible work they have done in the non-profit space, on the Page's Facebook Wall. These "hero" profiles are intended to excite the Page's fans about the incredible people involved in C4C. Check out our Page and become a fan. We're 419 fans and growing!

2 - Creating a video to engage the target viewer (MBA alums from C4C-member schools) by nostalgically reminding them that even though some of the "I want to save the world-like" dreams they had while at business school might currently be crowded out of their minds by the stresses of everyday life, they can satisfy the urge to give back by supporting C4C in its mission to cultivate the next generation of socially-minded, big dreaming, business leaders.

3 - Leveraging the personal and professional networks of both our 419 Facebook fans and the current MBA classes at the 9 C4C-member schools to spread the word about our initiative. Rather than crossing our fingers and hoping our video and broader message become viral, we have decided to create "intentional virality" by sending personal emails to our fans asking for their help in spreading our mission and video to their former colleagues and friends who attended C4C-member business schools. We will provide our advocates with a template to facilitate the writing of the email and are banking on this "personal ask" being the key to breaking through Inbox clutter and driving our target audience to open the email and either click through to the video or directly to the Facebook Cause link where one can donate directly to C4C. It's emotionally tougher to delete a personalized email from a friend/former colleague than one from a perfect stranger.

Here's to hoping our hybrid "intentional virality" approach (Facebook, video, personal note/email) yields a lasting fan base and some financial support for C4C!

A traditional marketer’s guide to social media marketing

Introduction

I set out to create a guide to help marketers navigate social media. To answer questions like:

Where do I start?
How do a use these platforms together for a single campaign?
Within platforms, what is the order with which to drive success?
What are the best metrics to use for each?

However, I quickly realized that this was going to be a somewhat impossible task. Aside from being a completely dynamic ecosystem with new tools emerging all the time (the list below is absolutely not comprehensive), a lot of what you decide to use really comes down to personal preference. The biggest thing I realized was that after a basic understanding, the next best thing to do is ask: "What would I like to be able to measure or what do I wish I knew?" There is a likely a tool available or in development to get you there.

Upon realizing this, I decided not to attempt to take on the entire world of social media. Instead I focused on how to get started on some of the largest tools and then provided a list and brief description of additional tools you can use if you want to get more complex.

Before touching any of the tools below, remember our traditional marketing mantras:

Understand the needs of your target consumer, how your product category fits into their life and how they perceive your value relative to competitors (you can use the tools below for insight)
Know what you stand for to them and what you want to become
Know what objectives you are trying to achieve with your marketing campaign
Think about the experience of your brand you want to create
Craft a story that will be compelling to your target consumer and that will help move them from their current state to the objective you set out above
Figure out how to spread your story based on where your target consumers are and how they are interacting (see potential channels below)
Test! There is no reason to guess anymore – try multiple things and see what works and move quickly

The big kahunas:

facebook: This is usually the easiest place to get people engaged if you are sharing interesting content – go where the people are and allow them to participate where they already want to spend their time

Step 1: Create a Fan Page
-Consider this your blog on facebook
-Register for a fan page on facebook and create interesting content that engages your consumers with content they are interested in that supports your brand and the story you want to tell
-Offer promotions and breaking news
-Advanced pages will require additional development to create apps to run on your page such as survey tools and altering the design of you page through the facebook API
Step 2: Run Ads
-Set up ad campaigns (do multiple at a time to test resonance) and track what happens
-All that is required is a picture and short statement
-Click through is highest when you use ads to direct people within the facebook platform (i.e. to your fan page) as opposed to your website or other off-facebook sites
-Remember that once someone is a fan, you can reach them at any point and anything they do on facebook will go into their newsfeed generating additional free advertising
Step 3: facebook connect
-Allows you to link people’s activities on your website to facebook
-Actions taken on your website can get loaded into facebook newfeed and people can invite their friends to your website
-Takes additional development
Step 4: Measure and adjust
-facebook analytics tracks: advertising performance, responder demographics, responder profile, conversion tracking
-facebook insights is now providing insights about action on your fan page

Twitter: Twitter is great for driving people to other interesting content and making announcements. Share interesting content and you will amass followers who you can later drive to your website, blog, or facebook when you post new interesting content

Step 1: Create a profile
-Go to Twitter.com to create a profile
-Create as much interesting information about your brand as possible
Step 2: Find influencers and others you can follow who are interested in your topic and
-What the hashtag: look for hastags on your topic – see biggest contributors, activity and reporting around specific hashtags and follow active participants
-Listorious: find Twitter lists related to your topic
-search.twiter.com: Find conversations and people about specific topics
-Twitterrati: find most famous tweeters
Step 3: Learn the lingo and tricks handle or Twitter user name
-@kimgould is your twitter handle or user name - keep is short and simple -#: comes before a topic of conversation (can search hashtags to see who is talking about a conversation)
-Bit.ly: shortens twitter links since you have limited characters and allow you to track metrics for them
Step 4: Tweet interesting content that people would want to click on
-Tweet links to videos, pictures, blogs, articles
-Co-tweet – set tweets to go out later
-Launch surveys: Socioltoo
-Re-tweet interesting stories from others (especially those with a lot of followers) -Promotions and breaking news
Step 5: Get fancy with other twitter tools
-Tweetdeck, seismic desktop, Tweetie and twitteriffic (allow you to monitor what is going on in Twitter more easily)
Step 6: Measure and adjust
-Twitalyzer: Analytics for voice in social media - measure influence, clout, generosity, impact, engagement, velocity, retweeted, retweeting, references, referencing, updates, followers, following, lists, hashtags cited, generates report of top 25 people in your network who had biggest effect in their networks
-Twinfluence.com: track your and others influence

Blogs: If you are a company, you don’t necessarily need a blog. Blogs are great places if you want to get user generated feedback, allow for idea contribution and to have conversations. Only have a blog if it has a distinctive purpose from your website (i.e. your website is very corporate and non-engaging). It is too much to drive consumers to a website and a blog.

Step 1: Create a blog
-Blogger.com: Easier to use - don’t need development, but can look more amateur
-Wordpress: Takes some development work, but allows for more advanced customization and functionality
Step 2: Post interesting content
-Provide content
-Start conversations
-Listen and respond
Step 3: Drive people there
-SEO - editing website content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines
-SEM - increasing website visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, paid inclusion and linking with other pages
-Utilize your other active social media channels
Step 4: Measure and adjust
-Google analytics
-Omniture
-Other search metrics: WebTrends, CoreMetrics, WebSideStory / Visual Sciences, Indextools, Unica, ClickTracks, & Microsoft

Additional players:

YouTube: Social media’s home for video content place

Create a channel for content related to your brand
Can share link to video in Twitter, Facebook and blogs

Flickr: Social media’s home for picture content place to share and hold video content

Can create community for photo sharing
Can share link to albums in Twitter, Facebook and blogs

LinkedIn: Create network for your company where people can find people they know who work there and with similar interests

For those with more time:

Ning: Social networking of theme specific networks - if talking to a specific community with a popular group it is a great place to reach them
MySpace: Similar to facebook, but different demographic – focus on bands
Digg, Reddit, Mixx: User generated news feeds of popular stories
Crowdvine: Social site aimed to help people connect, meet and conference
Stumble Upon: Personalized recommendations to help you discover the web based on your interests
Friend Feed: Allow you to create a customized feed made up of content your friends on other collaborative sites have shared, including news articles, photos, etc
Social Bookmarking siteas (del.icio.us): Allows you to create web bookmarks you can access anywhere and share with others
Forums: Message boards about specific topics
Foursquare: iPhone app where you can incentivize consumers to engage with your brand and physical spaces - create fan groups, offer coupons, reward your most loyal fans
Gowalla: Similar to foursquare with more of an emphasis on the real-world game it has created Buzz: Google Twitter - can connect twitter feed to show up in buzz

Paid aggregator metrics companies across social networks:

Radian6
BuzzMetrics
ScoutLabs
comScore

Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Power of (small) Emotions:

Wednesday’s class had what was, in my opinion, one of the most impactful talks I’ve yet to hear at the GSB. Sep Kamvar talked to us about his career beginnings and the importance of thinking small: to think new, to think deeply (allowing one to focus), to be small to think small (to control for costs and minimizes risk) and most importantly, how often the biggest rewards in life are the small ones. Even with all of Sep’s success, one of his fondest moments was the simple phone call he had with his parents telling them of what he accomplished.

Sep then introduced us to what felt like his ‘baby’ – his “We Feel Fine” project he built with Jonathan Harris, which was shown at the MOMA in New York in the spring of 2008 – Design & the Elastic Mind. The project mission is “an exploration of human emotion on a global scale” – an almanac of human emotions. He showed us the video he and Jonathan created with both the imagery and quotes they captured with their algorithm. Sep called it a “madness movement” – I call it absolutely beautiful. The unique way in which they were able to capture raw, human emotions was incredibly powerful to watch. Check it out here: http://www.wefeelfine.org/book.

When asked what motivates him, Sep answered thoughtfully, “there’s a lot of interesting things to be done”. He seeks to make an impact by creating things that are interesting and useful to people. I have a feeling that Sep still has a few awe-inspiring creations that we have yet to see.

Art with Heart

I was turning over Professor Aaker's phrase "the meaning of happiness shifts with age" in my mind when Sep Kamvar entered our classroom. Maybe this was the framing effect of the introductory lecture she gave to "We Feel Fine", but I was struck by how Sep seemed to exude both a peaceful centered-ness and a barely contained excitement for his varied research interests.

Sep started out speaking of small things. Like the quest for a unique PhD thesis topic that he could call his own - "If you do something everybody tells you not to do, you can ensure it is your own". (Note to self-remember and recall frequently)

Sep's intellectual prowess and technical grasp really impressed me, but what I found most captivating was that throughout his esoteric research involving extending the "Power Method" to harness matrix algebra to solve the problem of conducting personalized search**, he never lost sight of the fact that he was ultimately addressing the needs of real people, looking for things on the web.

Sep's transition to describing the web as an emotional space for self-expression was seamless. He was ahead of his time, thinking up tools that would become useful as relationships became encoded on the web years before they eventually did.

Sep left us with some simple, profound parting thoughts -

think small to think now
think small to think deeply
be small to think small
often, the biggest rewards in life are the small ones

If you were as intrigued by the wondrous workings of Sep's mind as I was, check his projects out at - http://kamvar.org/. I think of his videos (http://www.wefeelfine.org/ andhttp://www.iwantyoutowantme.org/) as Art with Heart <3.

This line in his website really captivated me: "These two opportunities, the web as an information source for humanity, and the web as an accessible, dynamic, and interactive medium, are the basis for my work."

It also led me to think more about MC Hammer's impassioned comment in Bishop - "How could one or two people have the ultimate power to decide whether my music was worth listening to." MC's ability to reach out to the masses through social technology reinforced this thought of art existing in a fluid world with rich feedback loops essential to its creation and reinvention.

Lavanya A.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Happiness, Breakthrough, Sep Kamvar, and Emotional Cartography

Class today focused on the meaning of happiness (and the shifting of that meaning throughout age segments), as well as on Sep Kamvar’s story of breakthrough in the personalized search space, and his endeavors in mapping the emotional web with “We Feel Fine” and “I Want You to Want Me.” A couple lines of thought coming out of this morning:

The value-expanding impact of focus

In highlighting some of the research on happiness, Jennifer brought out the significance of the state of “being present” – time-expanding, noise-effacing happiness in thinking or doing in the narrow and simplified space of the moment itself. While seemingly constraining, and counter-cultural to the stereotypical pressures one feels to do more, think big, multitask, juggle across so many endeavors and passions, the value of such state (presence, focus) can be quite monumental in terms of reaching breakthrough achievement (whether we’re talking about a higher state of meditation, solving a math problem, or discovering a new layer of pleasure in simply listening to a song). This lined up well with Sep’s main call to “think small to think new, to think deeply.” In embarking upon his PhD research, which eventually led to a high profile acquisition by Google and a widely respected standing in the space as the guru of personalized search, Sep’s first move was to isolate a question that everyone else thought he was crazy to tackle, yet had enough challenge and motivation in it for him to “make it mine.” The focus was clear and narrow, the question relatively small, the challenge immense – and the result of the quest, monumental.

The peacefully-exciting potential for breakthrough early in life

In demonstrating the shifting meaning of happiness throughout age segments, Jennifer showed a chart that showed the decreasing connotation of “excitement” and the increasing connotation of “peacefulness” in determining happiness with age – with the intersection point occurring in the 20s, with a seeming balance of the significance of excitement and peacefulness. My immediate thought reaction was to wonder if that had anything to do with breakthroughs occurring more generally for people in their youth – whether that experience of happiness simultaneously from peacefulness and excitement optimizes a state of breakthrough thinking/acting (in other words, do we reach a maximum probability of genius in our 20-30s?). Again, Sep’s story of “figuring out” the personalized search dilemma (alongside colleagues Taher Haveliwala and Glen Jeh) a few moments later became a nice illustration of that hypothesis, having demonstrated, in their early twenties, a wonderful combination of “excitement” (passion for the challenge, risk-taking attitude of dropping out of the PhD program and investing their life savings in their venture) and “peacefulness” (the zen quality of being engulfed in solving a math problem) – perhaps in a flow state oscillating between extremes of excitement and peacefulness that provided the necessary rush & focus for their breakthrough.

Emotional cartography for the hypermodern age

Every time I am exposed to the We Feel Fine project, I immediately think of Frederic Jameson’s notion of cognitive mapping (see Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism). The expression (actually introduced by Kevin Lynch in The Image of the City) first related the individual to his or her urban environment. Jameson expands it into a process of articulation between our local existence as individuals, and our global inscription in the disorienting fluidity of multinational capital – “a conceptual instrument for grasping our new being-in-the-world,” but also an indirect grasping of our geopolitical unconscious: “in our time the referent—the world system—is a being of such enormous complexity that it can only be mapped and modeled indirectly, by way of a simpler object that stands as its allegorical interpretant, that object being most often in postmodernism a media phenomenon.” Fast forward a few decades, what more obvious candidate for that “allegorical interpretant” of the world, indeed a media phenomenon, than the socially technological internet? An interpretant that, as Sep put it, “is becoming an increasingly emotional space.” We Feel Fine becomes then a map inscribing us, individuals floating in our local existence, in the wider global referential. It moves beyond a mere techie arts project, to become one manifestation of the increasing importance (and underlying potential) of finding new ways to map and engage with the emotional web. Anyone nostalgic for the Dewey Decimal System already?

Main learnings from The Science of Social Media Marketing, from O’Reilly

Dan Zarrella made a very interesting videoblog about the Science of Social Marketing, although it lasts nearly an hour. So I have decided to concentrate here are the main insights:

- Goliath Effect: if you are small against a big corporation and after being beaten up you win, people love it. Position yourself like a David. Take the point of view that the Villain is hurting the good guy, and that the spreading of information will save the good guy, people will spread the word

- Information Voids: when there is a lack of official information, rumors spread. Make an information void and use it to spread rumors (like Apple)

- Communal Recreation: Be a Box of Crayons, not a rubber stamp. Let people add their own creativity

- New / Old: take new content in an old structure or vice-versa. People love it. Very viral

- Find and target your influencers among any other audience

- Personalize! Humans have selective attention: surrounded by noise, you still hear your name. If you personalize, people will see you regardless of Internet's noise.

- Avoid link fatigue: don’t make too many tweets

- Social behavior gets retweeted more than anything else. Tweet less about yourself, about things you've seen or heard, about abstract concepts. Tweet about Social Behavior: "We", "You".

- Use combined relevance: things that are at the same time relevant to you and to your audience

o Personal relevance gets most retweeted: things that are most important to you and the people who listen

o Audience relevance gets most retweeted: things important to your audience

- Don’t talk too much about yourself

Monday, February 22, 2010

The Corporate Social Networking Manifesto

February 22, 2010

Posted at 07:33 | http://www.loiclemeur.com

Tomorrow I am giving a talk at Stanford University with Robert Scoble and MC Hammer (pic and pic) on how social software changes marketing so I thought like sharing a few points here and had to chose a title inspired from Scoble's Corporate Weblog Manifesto in 2003, just for fun. The talk should be online on YouTube next week watch this space or my Twitter I will post it. I also have a simpler version in French.

jump on the social networking bandwagon! pic shamelessly stolen from this post

1. Listen

Use Twitter, Google blog and Google Realtime search and see what people are saying about your brand. They say nothing or not much? Your brand is dead online or not born yet, work on it. They say negative things? Great, it means people care. Too much to read it all? Fantastic, just find tools to filter.

2. Answer

Many brands only listen and never participate because they have old style push marketing habits and scared to engage users. It's the best thing you can do, engage in a conversation.

3. Focus on the negative and thank people for the compliments

Negative remarks, criticism and even insults are marks of attention. Answer those first and understand what the problem is. Follow up when it's solved, explain when you are working on it.

4. Engage 24h a day

Social software never sleeps. Hire a team (which can be a team of 2!) in two opposite timezones. It is the best investment you can make and similar to a PR agency budget. We have at Seesmic two community evangelists in the US and one in Europe so that we can cover questions non stop. Have the management participate as well, you will find me answer tweets about my products often at 1 am :)

5. Be as transparent as possible

Don't cheat. If your products have a problem or lack a feature, recognize it and explain what you are doing about it. Don't use old "put it under the carpet nobody will notice" methods, with everyone talking in public on Twitter and Google Buzz there is no chance it won't go out, in fact it's already out. Go ahead and acknowledge issues and engage with the users.

6. Group the feedback on a site such as user voice (see ours http://feedback.seesmic.com)

We're getting about a mention of Seesmic every minute, many brands get much more. Difficult to read it all and all the suggestions, using a feedback site "Digg like" where users can submit their own ideas and vote on the ones they want the most will help you and make them happy as they feel they can influence your product roadmap. I call it our public roadmap. Make sure you close the most requested features often.

7. Be agile as you create the products

Of course it's easier if you are a software editor than a car manufacturer when time to market takes years. Your users will notice if you listen to them and adapt your roadmap to what they request the most and if you release as fast and as often as possible. It is a good way to create traction around your products (or lose it if you don't update and listen often enough). It's not taking off? Don't hesitate and move on, create something else. I changed my entire company mission and vision from a video conversation product to helping you manage social software after I saw the video conversation wasn't taking off as expected (it will eventually, we were too early).

8. Change priorities often in your roadmap with the most requested features

To a certain extent of course, look at what is the most popular and deliver just that, your users will thank you.

9. Don't forget to innovate

Robert Scoble once said "if Porsche had listened to its users their cars would look like a Volvo". Think Steve Jobs too, Apple does not engage much but innovate and create game changer and genius products like the iPhone. If you only listen to users suggestions you might not innovate enough and your competition could take you by surprise.

10. Create a presence on most popular social software

You would be surprised by how users are not the same from one network to another. Create a profile on all of them: Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, Ning, MySpace...

11. Create content and share on all of them

You can either create different content for every network but it's very difficult, I have chosen to update them all with the same content except specific interactions to one (exemple @replies or RT should only go to Twitter) seesmic and ping.fm can help you share on all of them by just emailing, texting or using an app.

12. Identify your best fans

Some of your community members are very active and in addition to liking your products and your company and team, they tell all their friends, convert them, help evangelizing just because they like what you do. Identify your best fans and treat them as best as you can, they are your ambassadors. Read Seth Godin's Tribes, only 1,000 fans can get the word to millions.

13. Create your own little social network for your tribe

Your inner circle deserves more attention from you and will also like talking to each other in a smaller community. Creating a dedicated group on Google Groups, Facebook Group or a dedicated network in Ning will be ideal (we created teamseesmic.com and often test our products with our most dedicated users before we launch them).

14. love your users, give them small gifts and special events or products

We send hundreds of stickers every month to anyone who asks us, we created previews "for teamseesmic" of our products and special events such as this one. Your users like to be loved.

15. help them share about your brand with share buttons

That's an easy one we don't do enough, a simple "tell your friends" button to help them share it with their own community if they like it can help. Don't force them to do so though.

16. be everywhere and on every platform

That's a tough one but if you want to maximize reach you need to be available on Windows, Mac and have an iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia and Windows Mobile app... We're getting there as it's our mission to build apps, but it's very challenging for brands, especially since you need to maintain them after... Companies such as mobileroadie can help you with customizable apps which are already built.

17. use social networking internally

A good way for your team to familiarize with social networking and the real time web is to start internally with tools such as status.net, Yammer, salesforce.com, socialtext or bluekiwi. Risk is very limited.

18. participate or better, support by partnering with the events where the social software junkies go such as SWSW, DLD, Lift, LeWeb (Nespresso got huge coverage on Twitter for offering great coffee to all attendees), TechCrunch50 or throw dinner or parties at bigger events such as CES (Ford does it well)

19. Show us real people

Companies being just brands and products is also a thing of the past. We want human beings. We want to know who we talk to. See how @richardatdell (Dell) and @scottmonty (Ford) do it.

20. Use video, it's human and carries much more

Even Apple who does not engage that much has real employees giving product demos or tutorials in video, they are much more human and get much more across than text, they can get thousands of views even if they are not professionally produced, see how I do it from now and then. That video was shot without any editing or preparation.

21. Be proactive and share as much as you can. Add value, not just marketing crap.

It's great to react to the conversations, but think about creating some content each time there is something important happening. Add value. Ask yourselves how you can help others. This post for example is probably helpful for some of you even if it's also an opportunity to talk about my products, helping was the goal, not the products, but no one will blame you if you help and use your products as reference from now and then. You won't create any following if you speak like a press release. Press releases are boring. Would you talk to me like a press release if we had lunch?

22. Patience!

It does not take weeks or months, it takes YEARS to establish trust and create a real community around your organization or action. Don't expect anything coming for free or shortly, it won't happen. Share, listen, reply and start all over again. Don't get upset when you get criticized and treat it as attention. Focus on the most active users who support you they will make you happy and help you continue on the long run.

Have fun and don't treat it too seriously, be natural or let your employees be natural, it will just work.

add your own points in comments, what did I forget? Oh yes, forgot to advise you to read Trust Agents by my friend Chris Brogan and Crush it by my friend Gary Vaynerchuk if you haven't.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

“Once upon a time...”

Mike Burman and some of his students from East Palo Alto Phoenix Academy, (EPAPA) joined the 10 Feb PoST class as Dan Greenberg – CEO of Sharethrough revealed “the Art of Visual Storytelling” .

Dan started with some pointers “Remember, you can’t force people to watch your videos” and “having an aim which is simply to “create something cool is not enough” . You could see the panic in people’s eyes. So if coercion is out, and “cool” is not enough, how do you get viewers? How can you possibly go viral?!

Fortunately, Dan provided the class with a framework for how he thinks about video storytelling. His framework was based on the art of all good storytellers whether they are a news journalists, Oscar winning script writers, children’s authors, or indeed marketeers.

First, identify ONE goal, then define your audience (be explicit) and think about which emotions resonate most with them, finally tell a good story (not just a “cool” story, but perhaps something romantic, mind boggling, unexpected, funny or even outrageous).

All sounds very similar to our beloved Dragon Fly model - Focus, Grab Attention, Engage and Take action!

So what were the views of our audience?

Mirablle from EPAPA said “It’s cool!, it was a new experience that I really enjoyed”.

Knight Affiliate
Dept. of Commmunications
tel:(650)847 1764
email: mpavich@stanford.edu
twitter:Mopavich

Friday, February 19, 2010

From Newbie to Quentin Tarantino in less than 2 hours

The Video Boot camp with Jacob Klein, Enrique Allen and Ben Hess was stellar.

1. Editing video, Jacob Klein

Audio: Finding the appropriate music can make or break the video. Instrumentals work better. Listen for moments of change in the music.

Visuals: Look for a moment in the interview with an individual that defines them. You want to look for little smiles and pauses that share who they are as a person.

Structure:

Bookends: Introduce something in the beginning that comes back at the end.
L-cuts: Don’t cut audio and video at the same time. Cut away from an image, but keep the voice going. This will help the video feel smoother.
Ratio of dissolves to cuts. One isn’t better than the other, but need to pay attention to the balance. Dissolve usually works better for slow music.
Can use still, but need to add movement (i.e dropping text onto a still). Ken Burns effect moves frame across a photo or still frame.
Titles: use one or (at most) two fonts.

Tip in action: Have the audio of a person before you show their face, so the audience gets used to hearing their voice. I saw this tip in action yesterday after class during the filming of Condoleezza Rice in GSB Bishop.

2. Video’s role in persuasion, Enrique Allen

Can your video pass Enrique’s test:

good enough to pass the friend & stranger test.
have clean, clear audio.
have a call-to-action.
be 2-minutes or less.
well-planned.

Triggers can be hugely important, especially when our medium is a link that we hope to make viral!

3. Video production, Ben Hess

Some critical tips on framing (also extended to photography):

Watch eyeline.
Mix different range of shot.
Establishing, medium, CU.
Faces, hands, eyes.
Rule of thirds.

Use the rule of thirds to achieve better composition. By not placing the subject in the center square, the arrangement will be more balanced and pleasing to the eye.

POST by Katharine
Katharinewolf@gmail.com

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Video Secrets

Well, maybe there weren't a lot of secrets revealed to others, but for me, class yesterday revealed many new details about the nitty gritty of video creation. While watching television last night, I noticed how I was observing the "Rule of 3rds" and "L cuts" in action!
Enrique, Jacob, and Ben were our 3 amigos of video. Enrique kicked us off by unpacking video's role in persuasion; Jacob followed with specifics in video editing; and Ben closed by teaching us some basics of video production. 3 talented and knowledgeable guys -- thanks!

Video's role in persuasion

A few key take-aways about what a good video must be:

Good enough to pass the friend & stranger test
Have clean, clear audio (DO NOT underestimate the value of audio)
Have a call-to-action
Be two minutes or less
Well-planned

Video editing

I highlighted the value of audio above. But where can you find audio for your video? Jacob suggested either royalty free music (mobygratis.com was his favorite), indie music (think strategically...can you cross-promote?), or stealing it. Seriously, as he said, if your video is receiving the wrath of a famous musician because it has received a million hits, that's kind of a good problem to have.

Video production

Did you know post-production can make you look 15% better? That's right. There are numerous editing tools out there that change lighting, contrast, etc. to make you look better, so don't worry about a thing if you're being filmed. People like Ben will work their magic on you!

The "Rule of 3rds" is a very important concept to keep in mind. The eyes of a subject being interviewed on camera should be about one-third from the top of the screen and about one-third from either side. This framing technique will lead to a more appealing image and will capture your interviewee in a more natural setting.

So now what?

Time to get down to business. So much to do regarding our video and so little time. My team is excited about the ultimate result, but we have a long way to go. Can't wait to see the final output!

Flash Mob!

In support of our PoST project, the New Graduate Network, Beatrice Pang and I had decided to stage a mini flash mob in Arbuckle. We wanted to show that a group of people having fun attracts even more people and that individuals can get a sense of belonging and fulfilment from being part of such a group. Having roped in as many of our friends as would agree to make a spectacle of themselves in public, we proceeded to make an instructional video of the dance steps (borrowing heavily from Britney Spears).

D-Day arrives and, several practice sessions in The Birds later... we're ready to go! The 10 minutes of invigorating dance left as slightly euphoric and incredibly touched by the support pf the 25 classmates who had gamely counted their way through the steps with us.

The editing workshop was definitely a timely and invaluable source of technical tips and advice. Sincere thanks to Enrique, Jacob, Ben, Ben Hess and to Marcus, who patiently helped us to refine our ideas for the final output. Having focused our preparation almost exclusively on the execution of the actual event, we had not thought to create a shot list and, in truth, had not thought much about the filming at all, beyond an airy assumption that our friends would film the footage (which they did with glee). Unfortunately, with no guidance from us as to what we wanted, the range of shots was fairly limited, with no closeups and few audience reaction shots. We now faced the arduous task of splitting footage into 'scenes', retrospectively creating a shot list and re-shooting to fill any blanks.

The task of editing was made exponentially more arduous by the very basic suite that I used ( the first time I have ever wished my PC was a Mac!). Synchronising video and audio was a real chore, and, apart from allowing users to adjust brightness, it did not allow for any refinement of video footage, such as correcting for shakiness or colour contrast, hue and saturation. Nevertheless, we tried to incorporate as many of Jacob's recommendations as possible, including the use of bookends, to delineate the beginning and the end, cutting mid movement, panning on stills and maintaining a high ratio of cuts to dissolves (we used dissolves to transition through the introductory sequence, then switched exclusively to cuts). Finally, our choice of music reflected his advice to be conscious of the mood we wanted to create. Opening shots were filmed to classical music, highlighting the contract when we switch to upbeat, pop music for the dance routine - this choice of music symbolic of the supportive, fun network represented both by the dance sequence and by our product itself.

Hours of editing later, our 45 minutes of footage was finally down to the recommended 2 minutes. Any and all feedback would be very much appreciated!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The 411 on Video Creation

Video Storytelling For Dummies
This morning's trifecta of Jacob, Enrique & Ben shared a wealth of knowledge on video storytelling from pre-to-post production. There were so many helpful tips, but these were my personal top 10 (many of which I tried to incorporate into our pod's videos below!):

[10] Max 2-mins video as a rule-of-thumb to optimize for virality
[09] Use color correction for faces -- increasing contrast & saturation can make people look 20% better! (I would love this feature in "real life"!)
[08] Eliminate down time in film, e.g., using jump cuts (taking out "ums"), speeding up video clips
[07] How you transition from one frame to another can be used for effect. E.g., look at the ratio of cuts to dissolves; if use one a lot the othe can be used for effect
[06] Titles: don't use too many fonts. Aim for 1-2.
[05] L-cuts: don't cut audio and video at the same time.
[04] Look for movement -- e.g., in the B-roll (fountain in the background of an interview), moving on stills so it doesn't become boring
[03] Bad audio can ruin a video, while bad video can be made into a "style". So be sure to use good microphones, etc.
[03] Iterate: no intros, observe as people watch it for the first time, listen to their initial reaction and THEN ask questions
[02] Foundation = Audio/background music; the audio is what gives the video consistency. Often choose the music first, and then build the story/visual around it.
[01] Have FUN with it!

Two video prototypes for Our Unnamed Company
Part of me wishes this session had been earlier in the quarter, as our group has been hard at work beginning to prototype different videos -- and have two videos ready for public viewing (links below). I found nodding my head when I heard something that really struck a cord with me, and thinking "ooooh! I wish I'd known that". But regardless, our group looks forward to taking today's learnings and incorporating them into our next couple of videos. That said, we'd love it if you could view our two completed YouTube videos and share any feedback you may have:

And when you're done viewing the videos, please visit us on facebook & become a fan (http://bit.ly/fcbkOurUnnamedCompany) and follow our blog (http://OurUnnamedCompany.blogspot.com) as we build the company!

Newfound Appreciation For Videos
Today's class coincides well with the GSBGivesBack White Party coming up on Friday -- over the last few days on [gsb-student-blast], there have been many many videos coming through promoting the various auction items. Having toyed with creating the aforementioned videos myself, I have a newfound deep deep DEEP appreciation for all of video creation, but in particular editing. There are a couple videos that stand out for different reasons:

The Ricecakes Video (http://www.vimeo.com/9530822) I find incredibly impressive all-around. The choice of music is extremely effective, and the video itself/effects are seemless & professional. But what I'm most impressed by are the "little" things -- which is everything from the B-roll to the popping out of equations in the "smarter" section. The main criticism I would have is that it's a bit long (~3 mins).

The 2nd MMM Video (http://www.vimeo.com/9530510) I found to be a great example of using digital stills, text on screen, and existing clips to create a cohesive and funny video. I'm sure the editing took time, but it struck me as a very efficient way to create a striking video.