Written by Shawn Vincent

LinkedIn is the first Social Network I joined, this was long before it had status updates. I signed up, make a dozen connections or so and said, “so what?” The Facebook and Twitter came along. The moved much faster and were a lot more fun. So I kept up connections on LinkedIn just because as a tech professional I had to.

But lately thanks to the influence of a few notable people (Robert Urban, Jason Bingham, Sharlyn Shelton) I’ve given it a second look. I’ve been wickedly impressed with the dexterity which wich my partner in crime Robert Urban navigates his contacts, and can turn an on-point digital engagement into a productive phone call.

So while I’m still enamoured with Twitter, it moves fast enough to keep me engaged, there’s no denying the deeper, stronger contacts that are made and kept with LinkedIn. So perhaps it’s appropriate that on this day, the day that LinkedIn had it’s IPO (for way more than anyone expected), I’m officially re-embracing LinkedIn.

We’ve set up a Digital Media Bistro group on LinkedIn, and we’ll see if we have a different set of conversations there than we do on Facebook or with the #DMBistro tag on Twitter.

Written by Shawn Vincent

Tuesday’s (May 17, 2011) Bistro was an open discussion about Digital Media, with an emphasis on Social CRM, QR Codes, and Digital Giving. We’ve selected Digital Giving as the topic for our first Panel Discussion on June 2. While we prepare for that, here’s a brief summary of what we discussed:

Social CRMs

There’s traditional CRMs like Salesforce, and there are Social CRMs like JitterJam, but so far, to our knowledge, there is no viable tool that combines the strengths of both into one. Perhaps Salesforce’s purchase of Radian6 (for $326 million!) will solve this problem. It certainly explains why the enterprise Social CRMs cost an arm and a leg (roughly the annual salary of a junior digital media specialist). It makes my favorite new Web tool SproutSocial seem like a bargain (starting a just a few dollars a month). It is agreed that Social CRMs have a long way to go, but that said, Social CRM might just be THE Digital Media term for 2011.

QR Codes

We generally agreed that QR Codes are really cool, but nobody really uses them. A couple of us had nice experiences using QR Codes at retail stores to help us comparison shop (with handy links to product reviews), but we’ve used them for little else. If the adoption rate is that low for the participants of the Digital Media Bistro, imagine how sad it is out side the bubble (we live in a tech bubble, nerds). There are two problems with QR Codes 1) you have to know to download the QR scanner app to read QR Codes, and 2) there’s seldom anything good at the other end of the code. For QR Codes to go mainstream, stores and restaurants are going to have to start giving some MAJOR discounts and incentives, otherwise, I’m not taking my phone out of my pocket. Don’t know what a QR Code is? Find out more with this groovy web app.

Digital Giving

I currently give to a couple of projects online. The act of giving seems very separate from the entity to which I’m giving. I want to be more involved. I’d like to vote on how I want my donation spent. I want updates that show me the results of my generosity. Many charities try to do this, but they are underfunded and lack the technical resources. Most charities run with a limited staff (who are not there for the salaries) and are executed by teams of volunteers (who are not always reliable for ongoing strategic endeavors). Charities need to remember that, in the end, they’re selling a product: my sense of self worth; and I expect them to deliver. Digital Giving will be the topic of our first Panel Discussion on June 2, 2011, where we’ll explore this topic in much, much more detail.Tuesday’s (May 17, 2011) Bistro was an open discussion about Digital Media, with an emphasis

Written by Shawn Vincent

I recently had a professional engagement as a web consultant for a prominent college. The engagement lasted for about a year. At the beginning of the effort, I was warned that the Distance Learning crew would have “all sorts of crazy ideas,” and that I should summarily dismiss them. You see, they we’re using silly tools like Moodle and Elgg, and their haphazard innovations would disrupt our more important business of rebuilding the website.

So the distance learning crew was sent back to their basement dungeon, and I sat through endless meetings where debates raged on about drop-down menu styles and font colors. I explained why Twitter is important many, many times.

At the end of the year, when it was finally agreed what color the fonts should be, I paid another visit to the Distance Learning crew, except now they weren’t in the basement, they had a new office on the top floor of the building; it looked like the inside of a spaceship from a Stanley Kubric sci-fi film (they designed it using Google SketchUp). Oh and while the committees had been arguing, they just went ahead and built a new website.

What had changed was this: during the year that I worked on the web project, the Distance Learning’s enrollment surpassed traditional enrollment.

Suddenly they had the lion’s share of the funding. They innovated so quickly, the traditional leadership structure at the school couldn’t keep up and, hell, they wouldn’t have understood what they were seeing anyway.

So most of the college existed in the server room: that’s where the teaching and learning happened; that’s where homework was assigned and turned in; that’s where tests were taken -- in the server room, and on laptops and home computers all around the world.

A revolution had taken place, and the old guard didn’t even know they had been defeated.

Digital is not the future of education, it is the present. It’s just not happening everywhere at once. And for those institutions that fail to embrace the tools at their disposal, the will surely fail, or if they survive, they will surely fail their students, who, born after the rise of the Internet, are already light years ahead with the technology, waiting for their schools to catch up.

Written by Shawn Vincent

For social media consultants, there is a narrow window where we can find real success.

With small businesses (with limited resources), we count on the business’ principals to be active participants, to share their expertise, to take a personal interest in their online persona. The best we can be is their coach and strategy guide. If they don’t do their work, they will fail. If they pay us to do all their work, they probably won’t see a return on their investment.

Bigger businesses (with adequate resources), can afford for us to manage the strategy and the tactical execution. However, red tape from lawyers and big wigs can stifle a campaign before it takes wings. And if it does take off, there is always the danger that they will take the project in house and send us packing.

Somewhere in between there is a class of business that has a budget, management has buy-in, and the principals are willing to contribute content and make some of their own status updates. These companies are in the sweet spot. As digital marketing consultants, our job is to make sure our clients are in the sweet spot before we commit to their projects, otherwise, we will surely fail.