I’ve been helping the guys at Sports Tracker with their social media strategy and the launch of their fabulous mobile application and online service.

It’s incredible fun and motivating to work with a bunch of talented and passionate individuals who are willing to take risks and throw themselves out there. The way you have to if you want to really engage with your audience and earn their trust and get them to “like” you :)

Check out the unconventional launch press release we (props to Jari Salo) put created and the intro video (props to Jari, Aleksi Koskinen and Kristiina Wheeler) to the service.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELVzxFfl44Q

Find out more about Sports Tracker at www.sports-tracker.com, Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

Share/Save

Paul Isakson started a very interesting and inspiring discussion about the future of marketing campaigns in his latest blog post.

I commented already and would be cool to hear more takes on the subject…what will the campaign of the future look like, does such a thing even exist and I think most importantly are we ready for that?

So head to Paul’s blog and take part in the discussion!

Share/Save

Fact #1: Social media has radically changed and continues to change the way people behave and consume.

Fact #2: This fundamentally changes not just how companies approach marketing but how they need to restructure their organization and operate to be relevant in this “Facebook Era”.

The Big Question: How can you drive and accelerate that change?

Answer: Find your Life Hackers.

Who, what?

Life Hackers are the passionate open minded individuals hiding in various parts of your organization that are always questioning the norm and trying to do things differently. They are the ones who just won’t do things the way things have always been done. They optimistically embrace new technology and apply those advances to make their work more productive, efficient and god forbid a lot more fun.

To enable true change you have to go out and identify these people. You have to listen to them and take that scary leap of fate by trusting them and giving them the power and means to be the agents of change in your organization even if all your senses are screaming against it.

And if you are really brave bring them together for added effect and enjoy the ride.

P.s. Really looking forward to Charlene Li’s new book Open Leadership that should touch on this thought as well. Recommended!

Share/Save

Imagine you live in a village sometime in the end of the 19th century.

You buy your bread from the village baker every day. You know it to be good, tasty and healthy and you know he won’t overcharge you for it. Why? Because you are close to him. You know him. His reputation in the community is linked to the quality of his bread. And if he would try to make a better profit by cutting back on the quality of his ingredients and raising his prizes while still claiming that his bread is “the best in the village” the community would call his bluff immediately and he would be out of business (and out of friends).

Enter the age of mass production and mass communications. Suddenly the baker can make more bread and sell it to more people than ever before. He also realizes It’s no longer his reputation that is on the line. It’s the brand, the company that gives the promise of good quality bread to it’s customers. Not him.

The baker also realizes that in is new global village the people can’t share experiences as they did in that small village where everyone knew each other. Instead what he says in his advertisements passes for the truth.

This is when greed (some also call it human nature) takes over and the baker cuts back on the quality of his ingredients in the hope of better profit.

And so it goes that it works (really well actually) and the baker makes it big with the help of his friend mass media and an industry of creatives and artists helping him craft his new truth. This goes on for quite a while and they get really good at it. They get so good at it that everyone actually forgets what it was like to live in that little village.

But then…along comes a thing called the Internet.

At first the baker and his friends try their best to ignore it. Then they try to use it as just another means for distributing their truth. And while the baker and his merry men are busy trying to exploit the Internet the villagers start using it to connect and share the real truth about the bakers bread….just like they did back in the day.

And before the baker can say “oh shit guys, I think we’re f**ked” the village is back. And it’s back with a vengeance.

So what is the lesson of my story, you ask?

For the bakers:
It’s time to focus all your energy to listening to your villagers, being a part of your community and baking the best bread possible. You can’t fake it anymore, sorry.

For the villagers:
Make you voice heard. You have the tools and the right to do it. Don’t settle for ok.

For the bakers merry men:
Figure out how you can help your baker embrace the Village Values. Help him listen, react, learn and develop his bread. And then help him get the real truth out.

Share/Save

Listening to Kristina Halvorson (CEO of Brain Traffic) at Web 2.0 Expo last spring got me thinking about content on the web. Kristina is on a mission to make brands understand that content on the web is much more trickier to create and master than content in non-interactive media. If you have not yet checked her presentations and thinking – do it now :)

What Kristina’s presentation got me thinking about is how you could make your content not only satisfy the needs of your audience on your own site but how can you make that great content even better by letting it leave home and go out there and make an impact in the world wide wild web? And how could you link it back to you in a way that increases the relevance of the original content for you and especially your audience? So that you don’t just create good content and let it live it’s life out there but instead spark ongoing conversations that lead to transforming your content from good to killer.

Here’s what I came up with. I call it the Social Content Loop.

This is how it works:

<repeat>

1. Spark
   You act as the catalyst. Sparking conversations and reactions with everything you do: Offline, online, marketing, comms, r&d – everything should be designed to be a spark.
2. Disseminate
   Build platforms that are geared for disseminating your content – spreading your sparks. All campaigns, all activities need to let your audience take part and spread the word.
3. Nurture
   When your sparks have left home you need to look after them. Make sure they grow in to bonfires by fueling the discussions. By nurturing them.
4. Aggregate
   And don’t stop there. It’s good to have bonfires but you should also get some of that fire and warmth back home. Aggregate the discussions and show them on your sites. Be transparent. Highlight the valuable comments and the discussion on your own site.
5. Filter / rate
   Ask your audience to filter and rate everything to help you gauge what is important and relevant for them. Listen and learn and then go out and create more content, more sparks that you know your audience wants.

</repeat>

What the Social Content Loop allows you to do is keep your own house warmer even when you don’t have the budget, time or means to keep sparking and lighting new bonfires. And it will also help you make your bonfires bigger and longer lasting.

Share/Save

This almost brings a tear to my eye :)

Check out this really nice recap presentation of the thinking that has been happening in and around the Nokia Digital Marketing team during the past few years. I’ve been fortunate enough to work closely with this brilliant group of thinkers and advocates of change and I gotta say I miss those days. Not to say that this is the end of the collaboration – maybe more an end of an era.

Anyhow…check it out and let me know what you think!

Share/Save

The Finnish Government (or to be precise the Prime Minister’s Office) just hopped on the crowdsourcing bandwagon with their ideoikasvua.fi -site that aims to crowdsource ideas for sustainable economic growth. Cool, right? Wrong. Unfortunately.

It’s a nice step to the right direction I’ll give them that but why won’t you go all the way and do it right? Why have a two month submission window with a very strict step-by-step Q&A structure that will put most people off at the start? And if you want to start a dialogue like you claim why force visitors to submit their answers to your questions before letting them view the thoughts other people have submitted?

While you are at it why not create something more open and inviting that would get us non-academics hyped and excited as well about helping our dear country take the next step beyond Nokia-land? An environment that would facilitate an ongoing open and inspiring dialogue between the people running the country and the folks down in the trenches. From now ’til we reach that great new future and beyond.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this is not a great step to the right direction. I just hate it when the opportunity for something ground-braking is wasted because of the paralyzing fear that dramatic change inflicts in people. The fear of leaving your comfort zone and just boldly going where no man has been before.

Bottom line: They are looking for game changing ideas but are afraid to lead the way. I just feel sad for all the crazy interesting ideas we could have shared that will now never see the light of day.

Share/Save

A friend of mine (props to Misko Iho) created a small Christmas miracle during his surfing trip to Africa. By using just Facebook, email and SMS’s he rallied his friends (and their friends) to donate a small amount each to help get backbags, pens, rulers and other basic school equipment for the kids of the local school. Result: 8384 items packed into 470 backpacks ready for school = 470 lives changed.

What Misko and his friends did got me thinking. Why aren’t the big charities more active in social media?

I’ve worked with some of the biggest charity organizations on the planet. We’ve talked about social media and it’s impact on what they do and tried to figure out ways for them to embrace this clearly potent new way of sharing information more efficiently and also recruiting more people to their “cause”.

The interesting thing is that they do see the obvious potential but are for some reason unable to embrace it.

Let’s take Unicef for example. They are the biggest and the most powerful. They do a lot of good BUT admit that they are having trouble convincing their beneficiaries that their money is indeed used in the most efficient and beneficial way all around the globe.

How to do this then when armed with Social Media? Should be pretty self-evident: Let your audience choose where their money is spent and show the concrete results of the work (like Misko did by posting pictures on Facebook) = Give them a social object that they can share with their friends (“this is the village I’m supporting”) and the tools to share the message easily all throughout the web.

Simple, eh? Not for Unicef.

Their argument is that they need to be able to direct the flow of support / funds themselves as they know best where the help is needed. I see the point but I’d argue it will also be a fundamental issue for them in the future if they indeed want to engage a broader more internet-savvy audience that is used to being actively involved and is not content by buying the Unicef desk calendar for Xmas.

The change needed will not be easy as it means rethinking some of the fundamentals of how the big charities work but it is inevitable as people want more control and will therefore flock to smaller grass-roots charities that operate more transparently, are more agile and thrive on user involvement.

They will flock to look for alternatives in the Long Tail of Charity. That’s where I found Misko’s project. And I have yet to buy a Unicef desk calendar.

Share/Save

My Social Media detox ended up being longer than I anticipated…at least when it comes to blogging. I’ve been Facebooking and even firing off the occasional Tweet but as much as I do enjoy blogging I just have been…lazy…I guess is the word I’m looking for.

Anyways – I’m back and will post some thoughts in the next few days…on content strategy, brands and social media, the role of brand sites in 2010 and some rants on the music industry. You know: The usual stuff :)

p.s. Some changes in my work life: Bye bye N2 & hello freelancing = Drop me a not if you’ve got something cool cooking and would like to have an extra brain in your team.

Share/Save

Week 3 of my Social Media Detox. No Facebook status updates, no Twitter, no Flickr, no Dopplr, no Delicious, no social media of any sorts.

And I feel great. The fact that my 500+ friends don’t know what I’m doing 24h day is actually a huge relief. Interesting.

My analysis: I think we might be overdoing this crazy social sharing frenzy and at some point soon we’ll see a backlash of people disconnecting and longing for the days when fixed phone lines ruled. To a time when leaving the office actually meant you really did leave the office.

At the moment I have to say I’m all for hopping in the DeLorean.

Share/Save