Pete Blackshaw: Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today's Consumer-Driven World
First jump out of the gate on publishing, and a thrill beyond thrill to have this opportunity. Very important message about what it really takes to manage a business or brand in the era of consumer control. This book is far less about social media marketing campaigns than the role of customer service and "consumer affairs" in the marketing mix.
Charlene Li: Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
More important validation about the role of CGM and social media as it impacts business. Both writers very smart and experiences in the space. Will write more once I get through the entire book.
Gerald Zaltman: How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market
Gerald Zaltman doesn't write specifically about CGM, but his core themes about the unconscious drivers of brand affinity provide some critical clues and insights behind what's really going on among today's passionate and viral consumers. (*****)
Don Novello: The Lazlo Letters
My dad was in advertising, and he would uncontrollably laugh while reading this book that. In many respects, Lazlo was the first "citizen's journalist" or blogger for that matter. His CGM was all about experiences with companies, brands, or VIPs. (*****)
Seth Godin: All Marketers Are Liars
I'm a huge fan of Seth Godin, but this one was just OK. I probably read it with a higher set of expectations that the book would be a bit more critical of the marketing industry. It's hard to disagree with the core premise of authentic story telling, but some of his points overstated the obvious (**)
James Heskett & Others: The Service Profit Chain
A major inspiration for much of my thinking about CGM. Heskett's a former b-school professor.
Seth Godin: Free Prize Inside
I'm not going to tell you what's inside, but I guarantee you'll be surprised. (*****)
Jeffrey Rayport: Best Face Forward
Rayport taught the HBS class that fueled my fanaticism for the "marketspace." The inspiration continues. (*****)
Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point
How does the ripple create the wave? Read on! (*****)
Malcolm Gladwell: Blink
Trust your gut! It's not as irrational as some claim. (*****)
Kelly Mooney: The Ten Demandments
Kelly gets it! She's been working with some of the nation's top brands. Deep understanding of shopping behavior. (****)
Jon Berry: The Influentials
A solid case for why so-called "Influentials" matter. Authors really know their stuff. (****)
I'm flirting with 500 friends on Facebook? The question is: how much is too much? Is there a "point of diminishing returns" in how many folks I friend? How do I sustain the conversation among friends in a meaningful way? What is friendship? These are the big questions I'm asking as the I reach the 500 mark.
Check out the burst of online conversation on blogs in the final hour of this evening's Super Bowl. The green represents discussion deemed to be "sports" oriented, and it's clear that most of the spike you see is attributable to the final moments of the Super Bowl. This is taken from Nielsen's BlogPulse tool, which monitors over 70 million blogs every day.
A few minutes ago my colleague Jon Gibs forwarded me a BBC article noting that today the "word 'weblog' celebrates the 10th anniversary of it being coined on 17 December 1997." Unbelievable! Has it really been 10 years? Now, in fairness, lest anyone be deluded into thinking I was on top of this mega-trend back in 1997, let me admit up front that I just didn't have an early clue about any of this until about five years ago. And the real tipping point,
I will admit, came when I impostered my way into an intimidating (yet unmistakably stimulating) A-List blogger event on November 6th 2004 entitled BloggerCon, organized by the likes of Dave Winer and held at Stanford University. Although I already had a blog dedicated to my Hybrid Car experience (HybridBuzz.com), and our pre-Nielsen company Intelliseek had already created a blog portal known as BlogPulse.com (a perpetual thanks to then-employees Natalie Glance, Matt Hurst, and Sundar Kadayam for pushing us hard in that direction), I learned quickly at this "don't talk unless you have credibility, passion and authority" conference that I was barely scratching the surface of what the blogosphere was all about! I'm still scratching my head, but I do know this: the blogosphere is at the heart of the unprecedented changes taking place in media and communication today. 
Yes, there's hype, and I've written about this plenty, but with the blogs has come an unmistakable, largely bottons-up publishing revolution, and we're continuing to feel their impact across all levels of communication: consumer, corporate, media, and beyond. The blogophere has also laid tracks and runway for CGM2 (consumer-generated multi-media), social networking on platforms like Facebook, and an unmistakable (and long-overdue) corporate "reset" in thinking about relationship marketing, conversation, consumer relations, and of course -- my favorite topic of all - customer service. And so yes, a "Ten Year Anniversary" certainly worth celebrating.
Every month or so Peter Kim publishes a list of top marketing blogs entitled the M20. Somehow I've managed to consistently make the list (which makes me scratch my head a fair amount) but there are a host of other excellent blogs that cover similar themes and issues. This week he was a bit more generous in his link-love, and I've basically lifted his expanded list of highly readable blogs written by marketing executives. See below. More background on Peter's approach here.
Sometimes you just need let the numbers tell the story. I'm beginning to pull together various notes and conclusions from 2007, and in the process ran a series of trend charts on BlogPulse.com. This tool charts out the number of references against a given term or phrase among total new blog postings. Nielsen's BlogPulse tracks about 66 million blogs, and roughly 700,000 new posts are indexed every day. Here's a shortlist of buzzmakers for the year.
Wikipedia Still Trumps the Encyclopedia: The meteoric rise of Wikipedia.com continues to fascinate me (and many others, obviously). This form of "group CGM" continues to nurture trust and credibility across the web, and the number of blog links into Wikipedia punctuate that point. Who would have imagined, only a few years ago, that quirky sounding utility like Wikipedia would draw over five-times as many references online as the ostensibly durable term encyclopedia? Go figure!
Facebook Takes a Leap, YouTube Keeps Marching: As conversation goes, Facebook has jumped well ahead of peer social networking sites, especially Linked-In, and I suspect much of this stems from both the open-sourcing of application development on the platform and the hardly veiled discovery, if not embrace, by the marketing community.
Of course, these numbers may under-represent the true level of discussion about Facebook because most Facebook conversation is taking place on, well, Facebook, not just blogs. My own Facebook group , Consumer Generated Media, quickly grew a membership base that now exceeds email subscribers to this blog. YouTube, meanwhile, continues to burrow itself even deeper into the conversational vibes, aided by user growth, many tipping points of critical mass, increasing diversified content, and aggressive marketing by just about anyone who puts up a video, including marketers.
Iphone Creates a Buzz Halo: But the Real Halo Also Impressive: Unless there's a big surprise between now and December, it will be difficult to dethrone the iPhone as 2007's biggest buzz story. The buzz was strong, sustained, and diversified, which in turn kept the popular device always conversational. Meanwhile, "Halo 3," designed by Bungie Studios for Microsoft's X-Box, also has been a big CGM winner this year, peaking shortly around its release on September 25. Sample the conversation.
As Buzz Goes, We'll Always Have Paris (Hilton, not France): Not sure if this is the best news for the French tourism bureau but Paris Hilton kept pace with overall buzz that explicitly referenced Paris, France, and even far exceeded that during the ubiquitous celebrity's more controversial moments. It's hard to say whether any of this will die anytime soon. You can peruse her HeyNielsen conversation to understand some of the root drivers behind her often-polarizing discussion. Her David Letterman appearance probably takes the cake in terms of elevating her buzz levels above the competition out there.
Steroids Buzz Bonds to Barry Bonds: Guilty or innocent, Barry Bonds just couldn't dodge the vast majority of conversation on blogs related to steroids. Where buzz about steroids spiked, conversation about Barry Bonds was even higher. The only exception was around late June, when steroid related conversation spiked related to the death of professional wrestler Chris Benoit.
Rehab Talk Can't Quit With Lindsay Lohan: Similarly, where discussion related to "rehab" was concerned, it was mostly inseparable from the trials of Lindsay Lohan. Then again, the discussion over rehabilitation programs was hardly monolithic. A much broader discussion ensued across blogs of every variety about whether rehab programs actually work. Many bloggers shared first hand experiences. 
I couldn't ignore this "Unlocking the iPhone" video because it spikes to the top of the blog charts with unusual fury. Classic CGM!
Both Peter Kim and Steve Rubel are up to an interesting exercise. Both, in their own ways, are introducing new frameworks for measuring influence. Peter is tacking the matter from the lens of key marketing blogs, and as you can see he's already updated his list based on a combination of feedback and new criteria. Steve Rubel, similarly, is tackling a set of important new timely questions around "What is Influence," especially as non-blog power-pockets like Facebook start to take deeper root. See Crowdsourcing a New System for Measuring Influence. Also see Edelman's latest Social Media index posted by Edelman CEO and "Sixty Second View" blogger David Brain. I frankly think this a critical, and fascinating, exercise for all marketers and business professionals to think through, as so many critical tactical and strategic decisions in this "age of consumer control" are grounded in how we define the so-called "influencer." Again, see Peter Kim's latest list below. He must have made a terrible mistake in keeping me on the list. :-)
This is nothing short of extraordinary! Last month, I co-presented a webinar touting the iPhone launch as far and away the most buzz-worthy marketing event of the year, but it looks as though Harry Potter CGM is nearly three times that level. Just think about it: over 4% of all new blog posts reference or mention Harry Potter in some way, shape, or form. Must be magic!
Is this my imagination or is the blogosphere globalizing a bit faster than any of us expected? This chart is from today's BlogPulse rankings. 
This morning in my ClickZ column I outline "Ten Reasons Why I Should Stop Blogging." There's no short supply of candor and humility here, to wit:
Here's the rub. I've watched hundreds of folks start and retire blogs. I've seen companies and brands enter the blogosphere with almost unrestrained confidence only to be humbled by the realities and imperatives of what it takes to really get a "conversation" going. Getting the blogging equation right takes work...and practice, and self-criticism, and yes, humility. What I'm really trying to suggest in this self-flagellation of a piece is that we need to constantly ask key questions of ourselves as we strive to be relevant, meaningful, and conversational in this exciting new environment (which extends well beyond just blogging to all forms of marketing communications). As I note at the end of my column, "The rewards
can be rich – nay, incredible -- but it takes work, patience, active
listening, iteration, allowances for failure, and a very long-term view."
Oh, and don't get me wrong, I'm still dedicated to this blog, but rest assured, I'm not taking your loyalty or your depth of engagement for granted.
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