xPotomac

Context Always Mattered, Now It’s Crucial

As the flood of content marketing continues to populate the interwebs, you’re starting to hear context come to the fore. Context was the overriding theme at yesterday’s xPotomac conference with almost every session featuring conversation about the need to provide context.

It’s ironic, because in reality great brand and marketing campaigns have always resonated thanks to context. From the Maytag Man to Oreo’s slam dunk Instagram ad during the Super Bowl, people had an affinity to the creative and message.

Moving back to today, the Internet content of now demands time. Whether it’s a few seconds to absorb a photograph or several minutes to read a thoughtful post, you need to stop paying attention to whatever else you are doing and invest in that content.

Often to get that attention, this content has some sort of tangential context to the customer. Meaning, the content relates to a personal or professional interest. When marketing doesn’t have context, customers simply ignore communications.
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Full Visual Integration

Jen Consalvo of AOL

Perhaps the most noteworthy change in digital media in the recent past is the rise of visual media. From photos and now increasingly videos, we’ve seen Instagram and Pinterest become two of the top social networks, both ranked in the top 50 U.S. web sites overall by Comscore. And to boot, Facebook and Google+ have reacted making visual media core components of their networks. That’s not to mention new upstarts like SnapChat and Vine.

The revolution continues with the full integration of visual media. Jen Consalvo, COO and co-founder of TechCocktail, is presenting next week at xPotomac on the visual revolution. Here’s a sneak peak at some of the things she’s going to talk about…

GL: How has photography changed social networking in the past two years?

JC: Photography has always been a means to communicate, but the tools that have become more mainstream in the past few years have made visual imagery much more integrated and seamless in terms of the flow of our communications.

When the social tools we use everyday include images within the flow, so that we’re not clicks away from images, they become the conversation, not merely an attachment or secondary thought. Just look at all the 2012 memes, like “Texts from Hilary” or the Ryan Gosling tumblr blogs “Hey Girl” – you can quickly see Images and video are the primary communication tool.

GL: Infographics, fad or forever?
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Marketing Writers Face Dramatic Shift

Bon Jovi at the Verizon Center

Current content conversations focus on the written word as conveyed via interactive or print. That’s about to shift toward more immersive media experiences, forcing marketers to write and design for live environments. Immersive media creates a new demand for dramatic writing skills, usually the domain of more artistic forms such as plays, films and broadcast.

The crossroads is here.

While most content marketers focus on blogs, newsletters, white papers and guides, the need to develop visual and audio centric media increases.

In discussing the Google Glass Project/augmented reality session for next week’s xPotomac conference with Patrick Ashamalla, we focused on these challenges. In many ways, interactive designers and writers know this shift is caused by the untethered internet.

Today, most companies create a flat experience filled with text on a digital canvas, e.g. a website, document, infographic, or the like. These forms of content require a stakeholder to invest time reading, in essence a distraction from their real personal or business life.

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Big Data, Influencers, Privacy and Other Digital Termites

next10, Day2, 12.05.2010
Image by NEXT Berlin

Andrew Keen remains the most constant and prolific critic of digital media advances and their impact on society. His books Digital Vertigo and Cult of the Amateur have made him a bit of a pariah in some circles, and an intellectual hero in others.

He was the ideal choice to close xPotomac on February 25, as the conference discussed future technologies. This podcast offers a sneak preview, which is also transcribed below… We got into all sorts of fun things, including big data, influencers, privacy and other digital termites.

GL: Well, we’re really excited to have you here in D.C. and I can’t wait to see you. First of all, for people that don’t know you, why don’t you quickly explain your background to them and what you did with Digital Vertigo.

AK: So I’m a writer, I’m a broadcaster, entrepreneur, accountant of a company, Audio Café, I have a weekly show on TechCrunch, columns for other people including CNN, written two books Quasi Amateur, which was critical of web 2.0 and the democratization of the Internet. I just came out with a new book this year Digital Vertigo, which is critical of technology’s obsession with transparency and openness.

Some people see me as a technology reactionary. I’m not really. I’m as wired as anyone.

But, I am more skeptical of some of the social and cultural consequences and see the way in which the web continues to disintermediate both the experts and the creative class: the writers, musicians, filmmakers. I don’t think generally it’s benefitted creative people. It’s been great for entrepreneurs, great for programmers, technologists, investors and VCs, but not so great for the creative industry.

GL: In your mind, how does big data fit into that picture and what are the challenges that we’re facing with it?

AK: Well, big data is the current buzzword when it comes to describing the world we’re living in. I fear this: On the web we’ve all essentially become data. There’s an excellent writer, he wrote a cook called The Information, James Gleick, and he writes we’ve become data, we’ve become data in the Digital Age.

I think he’s right. We are distributing ourselves on the network, and I’m fearful of the impact it has both on our privacy, in terms of our identity and of our relationship with each other. I fear that the more we reveal about ourselves, the lonelier we become, the more we actually destroy the social.

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The End of the Social PR Revolution

Soup Lines
Image by OakleyOriginals

In building the program for xPotomac (February 25th), I sought to address a sea change in media evolution. That change spells the end for the social PR revolution, a marketing movement embodied by brand-led conversations over the past seven years.

We are currently experiencing a throttling of branded, online grassroots power. Specifically, it’s becoming harder and harder for marketers to be seen with branded earned media and social updates.

This evolution is best evidenced by the increasing role of owned and paid content placement (as discussed, content marketing is the 21st century nice description of advertising), and social or native advertising.

Other signs evidence this change, too. Social search and stronger policing of black hat SEO by Google has put a premium on paid search again. Facebook’s use of Edgerank to force companies and individuals alike to pay for attention is another harbinger of this fate.

The rise of big data and the forthcoming wearable computing revolution — themes that run throughout xPotomac — will cause a further throttling of online grassroots pipes.

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Why Klout and Kred Fail

Untitled
Image by Continuum

Last Friday, I spoke at TEDx Peachtree about how any of us can become influential and affect change in our world (you can read my speech here).

The speech took to task social scoring technologies Klout and Kred for failing to predict influencers and movements as they arise.

Attention — and more specifically public recognition of influence — almost always occurs after the fact. Someone who achieves a high Klout score for something notable already created that act.

That does not mean they will repeat their successes and inspire widespread action over and over again.
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xPotomac: 7 Tech Trends Changing Media


BlogPotomac, my old social media conference, returns on February 25, 2013 under the new name xPotomac.

The opening salvo in the xPotomac series features seven new media technologies impacting businesses and marketers now and in the immediate future, hand-picked by myself and conference partner Patrick Ashamalla. We’ve already got our keynotes and emcee lined up, too!

To distinguish xPotomac, the event will feature a “gladiator” presentation format with conversations only and no powerpoints.

Speakers will present in a tight setting with the stage centered in the round or in a horseshoe formation. Each session speaker has 15 minutes dedicated to their topic, followed by 30 minutes of question and answer from the audience.

More on the revised conference after the raison d’être for the post, the seven must watch media trends for the first xPotomac:
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