Joanna Lord on SEM and social media from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

This sum­mer I had the chance to sit down, on a sun-splashed day in Santa Mon­ica, with Joanna Lord, a col­league at Socialmedia.biz who’s a lead­ing indus­try expert in search engine mar­ket­ing (SEM).

Joanna is co-founder and chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer of Your­Job­Stop (for­merly TheOn­lineBeat), one of the top job search ser­vices, and last week she announced plans to move to Seat­tle (we’ll miss you in Cal­i­for­nia, Joanna!). Seat­tle is where she pre­sented at Search Mar­ket­ing Expo (SMX), a search-heavy con­fer­ence that tack­les sub­jects like SEM, pay-per-click (PPC) tac­tics and search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO).

In this 9-minute video, she talks about how brands should be using Twit­ter to iden­tify strate­gic con­tacts and push your con­tent out, the use of SEM, the impor­tance of mon­i­tor­ing and track­ing your brand’s rep­u­ta­tion, and some of the things that com­pa­nies need to take into account in an era of social media and empow­ered consumers.

Watch, embed or down­load the video on Vimeo

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Xsights is a new start-up that has just come out with its Light app for the iPhone, which enables its users to bring print to life. Xsights makes it pos­si­ble to trans­form sta­tic printed items that can be cap­tured through the cell phone’s cam­era into an inter­ac­tive mul­ti­me­dia expe­ri­ence. (Dis­clo­sure: Xsights is a Blonde 2.0 client)

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Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. Chief Tech­nol­ogy Officer.

Social net­works becom­ing more rel­e­vant to offline lives

I have been to every Web 2.0 Sum­mit since its launch except for one (when I had a speak­ing com­mit­ment in Toronto), so it was good to be back at the ven­er­a­ble tech­nol­ogy con­fer­ence in San Fran­cisco this week. This year’s event was not a somber affair, but it was con­sid­er­ably smaller in atten­dance: prob­a­bly 50–60 per­cent off its high of a cou­ple of years ago (that’s my esti­mate, not offi­cial). Just look at the Flickr stream: prob­a­bly one-tenth the size of a cou­ple of years ago.

Here’s my Flickr photo gallery of the sum­mit — that’s Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. Chief Tech­nol­ogy Offi­cer, above. I briefly got to meet him back­stage. (Dis­clo­sure: I was admit­ted with a press pass.) His deputy, Andrew McLaugh­lin, dis­sected dumber-than-dumb U.S. reg­u­la­tions — in effect pre­vent­ing Gov­ern­ment 2.0 from tak­ing place — at the Web 2.0 Expo last spring. I asked Chopra about this from the floor and he talked ani­mat­edly about the progress his office is mak­ing in cut­ting the red tape to ribbons.

If there was a theme this year, it was this: Con­tent is get­ting increas­ingly social. We see that through the major social net­works (Face­book, Twit­ter), through news orga­ni­za­tions that are strug­gling to find a busi­ness model (the social journalism-friendly Huff­in­g­ton Post is expand­ing its staff), and through a pan­poly of new “social search” and “real-time search” results rolled out by the major search engines.

The tech press has already cov­ered the news­wor­thy items com­ing out of the Sum­mit (a sis­ter event, Web 2.0 Expo, is held each spring in SF and will be held Nov. 16–19 in New York). Chief among them: announce­ments that Microsoft’s Bing search engine will now offer results from the real-time Web via Twit­ter updates (at bing.com/twitter) and, soon, pub­lic updates on Face­book (no money was exchanged), and Google will now offer a deeper set of Twit­ter updates, includ­ing some­thing called a social cir­cle (social search), due to debut early next year.

So here are some snip­pets of the scene at this year’s Web 2.0 Summit:

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Anthony Edwards of “ER” fame did his first tweet — to raise funds for the first children’s pedi­atric train­ing hos­pi­tal in Africa.

Blog­gers, jour­nal­ism, celebri­ties and what the future holds

There was a lit­tle bit of a SXSW vibe at the just-ended Blog­world Expo in Las Vegas — a com­mu­nal feel­ing where the goings-on in the ses­sions (on the whole, con­sis­tently engag­ing) were over­shad­owed by the face time and first-time encoun­ters between long­time Twit­ter friends. To be sure, Blog­World is a smaller affair than SouthBy — one offi­cial told me 1,500 peo­ple turned out for the Causes/Activism track on Thurs­day, 5,000 for the next two days — but from my van­tage point, it seems that the social media phe­nom­e­non has reju­ve­nated ones of the world’s old­est and largest new media gatherings.

Twit­ter was front and cen­ter through­out the affair, both on screen — where rolling tweets of each session’s hash­tags were dis­played (though not con­sis­tently) — and as a way for conference-goers to fig­ure out evening social plans. And cam­eras and recorders were ever­where — here’s my Flickr set of Blog­World.

Below is a recap of the high­lights in my field of vision (see after the jump). In addi­tion, I just posted 8 tips for rais­ing funds online — a recap of the Tools for Non­prof­its panel that I mod­er­ated at Blog­world — over at our sis­ter site, Socialbrite.org.

Jour­nal­ists vs. blog­gers: Can we please move on?

As reg­u­lar read­ers know, I’ve been blog­ging about jour­nal­ism, blog­ging, and the need for jour­nal­ists and blog­gers to love each other and use the best ele­ments of both worlds since 2001, when I started this blog (then called New Media Mus­ings). http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=101042 See, for exam­ple, Blogs and Jour­nal­ism Need Each Other in Harvard’s Nie­man Reports in Fall 2003.

So it’s now irri­tat­ing, and not merely tire­some, to attend a new media con­fer­ence where too many of the ses­sions veered into hos­til­ity toward tra­di­tional news orga­ni­za­tions. The audi­ence ques­tions to and reac­tion to CNN week­end anchor Don Lemon (below), was a case in point.

Why should blog­gers want to work with CNN? Lemon should have more art­fully worded his reply — “The plain truth is that my plat­form is big­ger than your plat­form” — but, with the excep­tion of a few out­liers like iJus­tine or cross-over Twit­ter celebri­ties, that’s still true. It’s not about CNN, it’s about reach and bring­ing value to more people.

The notion that crowd­sourced ama­teur jour­nal­ism can sup­plant pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ism, and actu­ally do a bet­ter job — which many in the audi­ence truly believe — is not only ludi­crous but poten­tially dan­ger­ous to our demo­c­ra­tic insti­tu­tions. Jour­nal­ism that fer­rets out cor­rup­tion, that takes the pulse of a com­mu­nity, that sheds a light on inter­na­tional events is hard work, some­thing that the crowd tends to avoid. Just ask any­one toil­ing in over­worked, under­staffed inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism pub­li­ca­tions like Spot.us, Alivein­Bagh­dad, Pro Pub­lica, or the just-launched Oak­land Local.

Sim­i­larly, I’ve finally found a fun­da­men­tal dis­agree­ment with my friend, col­league and fel­low Trav­el­ing Geek Robert Scoble. I tweeted my dis­may at the bottom-line premise of his panel, How Social Media Is Chang­ing the Def­i­n­i­tion of News: that news sites should pass along rumors and second-hand reports with­out fact-checking them. “The old world was i fact-checked before I pub­lished, in this new world i can cor­rect it after the fact,” Scoble said.

Imme­di­ately after the panel, he cited TMZ’s early report on the death of Michael Jack­son and the fact that no one remem­bers who reported it sec­ond. “It’s over. It’s over,” he told me, refer­ring to journalism’s authen­ti­ca­tion function.

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Dia de Los Muer­tos dancers, photo by Kwan Booth

Today, after months of plan­ning and pro­gram­ming, a new com­mu­nity news site went live: Oak­land Local. And while there are now thou­sands of hyper­local, city– or region-focused cit­i­zen media sites around the world, Oak­land Local is one of the few that offers a blend of non­profit under­pin­nings with a staff of inde­pen­dent, pro­fes­sion­ally trained journalists.

My friend Susan Mer­nit — we’re two of the founders of the Pub­lic Media Col­lab­o­ra­tive — is the founder of the com­mu­nity news and infor­ma­tion hub, which she describes as “a site for Oak­land focus­ing on social jus­tice issues, includ­ing cli­mate change, air qual­ity, food access, arts as activism, and iden­tity, race and ethnicity.”

Susan adds: “Oak­land Local is launch­ing in part­ner­ship with 35 local non­profit, neigh­bor­hood and com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions. We com­bine post­ings of their news and infor­ma­tion with blog­ging and with reported sto­ries from a top qual­ity news team (Susan Mer­nit, Amy Gahran, Kamika Dun­lap, Kwan Booth, Ryan Van Lenning and oth­ers). We are media part­ners and col­lab­o­ra­tors with Spot.us, Newsdesk.org, The Cen­ter for Inves­tiga­tive Report­ing, New Amer­ica Media, End­less Can­vas, Youth Ris­ing, Youth Radio and Youth Out­look. Our site offers forums, a direc­tory of 320 local non­prof­its and a blog direc­tory of 180 active local bloggers.”

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I had the coolest inter­view recently. The gang from Meta­nomics invited me to take part in the Meta­nomics Com­mu­nity Forum yes­ter­day “in world” in Sec­ond Life, where I spent an hour in open con­ver­sa­tion with around 35-plus folks in world: On My Mind with Chris Abra­ham — Com­mu­nity Forum.

I loved it because every­one on Sec­ond Life is bright, pas­sion­ate, curi­ous, open, and smart — fel­low nerds, maybe. What made my day, how­ever, was that I was being inter­viewed as though I were from an alien culture!

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This slide show on Top 10 Pharma Efforts In Social Media has been get­ting trac­tion on Slideshare.net (2,400 views and 20 peo­ple have “favor­ited” it), so thought I’d share it here as well.

I’ve been doing social media con­sult­ing for a com­pany in the health care/pharmaceutical space, and so I’ve been try­ing to immerse myself more deeply in how social media can be of value — to patients, doc­tors and com­pa­nies — in the health care space.

This is now par­tic­u­larly timely, given the Food and Drug Administration’s pub­lic hear­ing on the “Pro­mo­tion of Food and Drug Administration-Regulated Med­ical Prod­ucts Using the Inter­net and Social Media Tools” on Nov. 12–13. Among the issues to be addressed: adverse event report­ing; ful­fill­ing reg­u­la­tions; account­abil­ity; post­ing cor­rec­tions, links, and opt-in choices. You can vote your con­science at this online sur­vey.

It’s a much-needed clear­ing of the air, given that reg­u­la­tory uncer­tainty has held back the indus­try from inter­act­ing with the pub­lic to a con­sid­er­able degree. Pharma blog­ger John Mack is help­ing lead the charge in get­ting the pub­lic to respond to the FDA’s ques­tions regard­ing its reg­u­la­tion of social media. I’m with those who say, yes, social media does fun­da­men­tally change the land­scape and require a rethink­ing of decades-old prac­tices. (I think the FDA should take a page from the FTC in plac­ing empha­sis on dis­clo­sure of pay­ments com­ing from the industry.)

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In today’s world where we have an option of which search engine to use, we find our­selves per­plexed regard­ing the ques­tion: Is Google the best that search can be? Even for those of us who con­sider our­selves to be Web savvy, find­ing the right search term can often be tricky. And once we get the search results, we must screen through an abun­dance of infor­ma­tion in order to find one or two truly desired results.

To under­stand a lit­tle more about the world of search, let’s go through our time machine, and check back on how search started.

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In a world in which every­one seems to be a chicken lit­tle speak­ing of the end of tra­di­tional jour­nal­ism, PR and adver­tis­ing, there are very few peo­ple who are work­ing toward guid­ing the indus­try toward suc­cess in new new media. Some inter­est­ing books about “what’s next” that I am read­ing are The Chaos Sce­nario by Bob Garfield and Free: The Future of a Rad­i­cal Price by Chris Ander­son. Add to this list David Henderson’s new book, Mak­ing News in the Dig­i­tal Era, a book that is part analy­sis, part brief­ing, and part pathfinder, explic­itly guid­ing read­ers through the very con­fus­ing social media landscape.

In the 170 pages of Mak­ing News in the Dig­i­tal Era, David E. Hen­der­son per­son­ally walks his read­ers safely through the mine field that is new com­mu­ni­ca­tions, dig­i­tal PR, and social media marketing. Essential reading.

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How BlogHer deals with reviews and con­flicts of inter­est from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

I’ve been struck by the vary­ing reac­tions to this week’s news that the Fed­eral Trade Com­mis­sion will now begin to reg­u­late prod­uct endorse­ments not just in adver­tise­ments but also on blogs and other forms of social media. (PDF here; the regs don’t start until page 55.)

Two heavy­weight blog­gers and long­time free speech cham­pi­ons Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gill­mor — bless them — have lam­basted the FTC for its move into the online arena (here are Jeff’s and Dan’s posts, and reader com­ments). While I think skep­ti­cism is in order, and the specifics of the government’s involve­ment need to be more clearly defined, in the end I believe the FTC’s move is a healthy and wel­come devel­op­ment for social media.

I’m cou­pling my thoughts on the FTC rul­ing with an inter­view (above) I did a while back with Jory Des Jardins, co-founder of BlogHer, which I’ve just got­ten around to pub­lish­ing today. In it, Jory describes how JCPen­ney approached BlogHer with the idea of hav­ing blog­gers in its net­work of 2,500 blogs write about its new line of Lin­den Street fur­ni­ture as part of BlogHer’s review program.

As in its past deal­ings with retail­ers, the BlogHer exec team decided on this approach: It would allow a dozen blog­gers to accept $500 gift cards to pur­chase fur­ni­ture from JCPen­ney, but only on the con­di­tion that the blog­gers fully dis­close the rela­tion­ship with both Pen­ney and BlogHer, that the blog­gers be free to write reviews and pro­duce videos telling about their expe­ri­ence — both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive — and that the review­ers could not accept any adver­tis­ing from JCPen­ney. Impor­tantly, they were not paid to write prod­uct endorse­ments but to write reviews. BlogHer then assem­bled their posts into a wid­get, which they ran across their blog network.

JCPen­ney was “thrilled” with the pro­gram, and so were the blog­gers. (You can judge for your­self about the qual­ity of the reviews; this one was typ­i­cal. The authen­tic­ity is what makes this valu­able to mar­keters.) BlogHer has run sev­eral sim­i­lar retailer part­ner­ships — and in each case, Jory says, the key ingre­di­ent was disclosure.

Watch, embed or down­load the video on Vimeo

Lisa Stone, another co-founder of BlogHer, evoked the same themes in her keynote address to the Online News Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day. One rea­son for BlogHer’s con­tin­ued growth and suc­cess, she said, was they adhere to the same stan­dards and prac­tices that tra­di­tional jour­nal­ism insti­tu­tions have built up over the decades. By 2006, BlogHer “became the school­marms of the Inter­net,” Lisa said.

Every one of the 2,500 blog­gers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the BlogHer net­work must fax in a signed agree­ment to abide by BlogHer’s com­mu­nity guide­lines. BlogHer blogs must not con­tain “edi­to­r­ial con­tent that has been com­mis­sioned and paid for by a third party, (either cash or goods in barter),” the guide­lines say, and so I wish the guide­lines page would address how reviews fall into a dif­fer­ent cat­e­gory. (For the record, I think the way BlogHer has done this is absolutely fine, though this would vio­late many news­pa­pers’ policies.)

Lisa also made clear that BlogHer has no desire to impose its guide­lines on the entire Inter­net. “We don’t believe in a uni­ver­sal stan­dard for the Inter­net,” she said.

Fair enough. It’s not BlogHer’s job to police the Inter­net. Nor mine. Nor the Media Blog­gers Association’s. Two years ago I chaired a com­mit­tee to write the association’s State­ment of Prin­ci­ples, which includes this:

“Clearly dis­close con­flicts of inter­est includ­ing per­sonal rela­tion­ships, finan­cial con­sid­er­a­tions or any­thing else that might influ­ence or appear to influ­ence your inde­pen­dence and integrity. If you accept pay­ments from adver­tis­ers or spon­sors, clearly demar­cate adver­to­r­ial from edi­to­r­ial content.”

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