Welcome to another installment of our Voce Nation Podcast series, which focuses on companies and individuals doing meaningful and innovative things in the social media and communications space.

Last week, the team got together to discuss our thoughts on what’s in store for social media in 2008. Click the player below to listen to Andrea, Mike, Josh, Scott, Ryan and Michael riff on some key trends and issues affecting the industry in 2008. If you prefer to download the file directly, you can click here.

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I recently had the chance to speak with AAA’s Janie Graziani. Janie is a part of AAA’s national public relations team and the person in charge of the organization’s online newsroom, as well as all social media and web-based communications. In this brief Q&A, she shares her thoughts on how to keep the online information flow going within such a large organization.

Voce: Over the years AAA has changed from a non-profit organization that provides primarily roadside assistance to one that also offers a range of financial and travel-arrangement services with over 50 million members in the U.S. and Canada. It has an online newsroom and a public service website, AAA Exchange. How do you coordinate the information provided on both sites and decide what appears where?

J. Graziani: The AAA website is primarily a media website. It’s designed for the media to learn more about AAA and who the national and local media contacts are. The Exchange site is designed for consumers and provides public affairs and public information services.

Voce: What are some of your challenges in managing the newsroom?

J. Graziani: There are several challenges. One is just keeping the newsroom up-to-date and fresh. AAA is a large organization, and trying to make sure that the newsroom has all the latest information is a challenge; the public relations staff helps keep it updated and provides new information almost every day, and just making sure that we are providing the right kind of information that the media and their readers and viewers want is a big challenge. Another challenge is getting sufficient bandwidth and space on the servers for all the podcasts and videos we’re offering the public.

Voce: You mentioned the videos and podcasts. Who should be listening to them and why?

J. Graziani: Media and consumers both can listen to the podcasts since they provide a lot of information about what AAA is doing such as its involvement with motor sports and our sponsorship of NASCAR. We also have information there about safety, for example how kids can ride their bikes or walk to school safely — so parents and children, teachers and school administrators and anyone else who is interested in safety can listen to them.

Voce: Accessing some of your information, such as the video releases, requires prior registration. Who is the audience for the online newsroom – the media and the public?

J. Graziani: We’re interested in learning who among the media is logging on and downloading what video, we want to track what information is being used and who is using it. All the video in the newsroom is downloadable in broadcast quality and is designed for the media so they don’t have to contact us to send them material – all they have to do is download it, it’s very turn-key, very simple.

Voce: What’s your definition of media? Does it include online, offline, and even citizen media and citizen journalism?

J. Graziani: We’re very interested in being in contact with citizen journalists and bloggers of all types. We’ve actually recently changed the vendor we use that provides us lists of journalists, and one of the criteria we used in choosing the vendor is that they include bloggers within their media lists.

Voce: How does the information provided online coordinate with other membership materials?

J. Graziani: When we launch something new, we put the new information up on the main pages of the newsroom and also try to provide additional links and information on the Exchange or on AAA.com.

Voce: So would you say that AAA’s social media efforts help people become better informed about your services? For example, have you noticed an increase in the number of readers/viewers or listeners since going multimedia, or an increase in interest?

J. Graziani: We get a huge number of hits through the newsroom. We recently got more into social media where we are trying to push information out through different social media tools, although we don’t have any hard numbers to share yet.

Voce: How are you promoting AAA’s social media efforts to the organization’s core members and those who aren’t members yet?

J. Graziani: We have plans to do several things with social media that would be of interest to different targeted groups. For example, we have the AAA school safety patrol and we’ve begun a page on MySpace.com that features the school safety patrol.

Voce: What are some tips you can offer other organizations with a diverse and large customer base regarding how to effectively conduct social media outreach?

J. Graziani: One tip is to just get online and start doing it do it. You just log onto a site like Twitter and LinkedIn and then look at the site and see where it fits into your publicity plan and then actually work it into the plan. But the very first thing you need to do is create an account and build a profile. Another tip is that before you actually build a profile on these sites, determine what the three or five things are that you want to get across, what your main message is, and figure out what you want to have on that page. Nothing is set in stone, you can always change a picture or a headline.

Voce: How can people get in touch with you if they have any questions?

J. Graziani: They can e-mail me at jgraziani@national.aaa.com

“How do you measure social media programs?”

You know, I try not to, it’s a buzz kill. I’m kidding…

This question surfaces all the time. It’s hands down one of the biggest challenges we marketers face, but come on, it’s not impossible. Yeah, we need better weights and measuring sticks for new media — they will come — but don’t let that stop you from adapting and customizing an approach that works for your business.

There are three things you should think about when it comes to measurement, each I’d argue are equally important:

Outputs
Pretty self explanatory, right. Is content being created? It could be a blog post or a forum topic or a video, you get the gist. Try not to get too hung up on the “how much” part of the output. Focus instead on the quality and relevancy of what’s being produced and the utility of the medium for you and your customers.

Outgrowths
Again, pretty simple. What stems or grows from the content that was created? It could be comments, links, tags, diggs, votes, etc. How people choose to participate with the content will vary so try to think about the value and weight you place on certain actions — and how you might better enable them.

Outcomes
Basically, the net result or response to the first two things. It could be attention (influencers, media), amplification (memes), engagement (quality/quantity of comments), sentiment (positive/negative), this is where you have to simply interpret and weigh the shake out. And then compare your analysis to whatever the hell your goals were to begin with. Oh, and then pray they line up.

Keep in mind, all of this is just one approach to measurement — an admittedly simple one for an increasingly complex web. I tend to think social media measurement will always be half science/half art, and maybe for that reason, always be a headache too, but hopefully this gives folks a framework to pivot and build on.

[Cross published on Media Guerrilla]

Podcasts are the wave of the future! They will kill radio dead. They will kill TV dead (okay, that’s a “vidcast,” but roll with me here). They are the cornerstone of user-generated media that will unleash an avalanche of talent upon the world! Die, evil global big media, DIE!

Oh wait, sorry — that mantra is from 2005. And, let’s be honest, that prediction ranks right up there with the 49ers winning the Super Bowl this year. Gobal big media seems to be doing okay. At least that’s what Rupert Murdoch told me last week right before we bumped fists and he said “word is bond.”

So podcasts haven’t taken over the world, not just yet — but do they sell stuff? For niche companies selling niche products to niche demographics, the answer seems to be “yes.” One case in point is Skeptic Magazine, which has turned a sponsorship with the podcast Skepticality into a circulation-increasing endeavor.

Skeptic Magazine is a publication of the non-profit Skeptic Society, an organization that promotes critical thinking and espouses the values of science as opposed to myths, magic and charlatans of all makes and models. Skepticality is a podcast that, no surprise here, covers the same content. Hosted by Derek Colanduno and Robynn “Swoopy” McCarthy, Skepticality was heavily featured very early on iTunes when the iTunes podcasting page came online. The show quickly generated a large following, with an estimated 18,000 listeners tuning in to each episode.

Daniel Loxton is the editor of Junior Skeptic, Skeptic Magazine’s sub-title that promotes critical thinking among younger readers. Daniel was a guest on Skepticality in January, 2006.

“I stumbled across the show through iTunes in about November of 2005,” Loxton said. “I liked it right away: it was fun, personal, smart, and noble. So, I wrote the hosts just to let them know I appreciated what they were doing. They then invited me on as a guest. That gave us a social contact we wound up building upon later on.”

Social contacts through social media? Who’d have thunk it? The concept of podcasts as information distribution started to circulate around the Skeptic Magazine staff, and Daniel suggested a sponsorship of Skepticality.

“I knew that launching an original new podcast would stretch our resources, and that we had many other important projects we wished to pursue,” Loxton said. “Our goal is outreach and education, so getting into the podcast market successfully could carry a risk that for-profit companies might not recognize: we could take audience away from the other skeptical podcasts.”

So instead of creating a competing podcast, Skeptic Magazine sponsored Skepticality.

“It was amazing to me to get the validation from Skeptic,” Colanduno said. “To me, Dr. (Michael) Shermer and Skeptic Magazine were in my mind the standard for how it should be done. Very little bashing on people, and well put factual information with little to no spin of any sort.”

BUT DOES IT SELL STUFF?
So everyone is making nice-nice here, but what’s the bottom line?

“The honest answer is that we don’t exactly know,” Loxton said. “We think it does sell stuff, but we’re too small an organization to invest heavily in market research.

“We receive tons of positive feedback from listeners, many of whom tell us they subscribed to Skeptic after listening to the show. This suggests, anecdotally, that it is reaching people. More substantially, the duration of our alliance correlates with a period of healthy growth across the board: for the show, for our online sales of books and lectures, and for Skeptic magazine subscriptions. The problem is that we’ve made other improvements to our editorial content, our web presence, and our wider media presence, so it’s difficult to tease apart the variables.”

Hard metrics aren’t available, but the marriage of independent podcast and established magazine is a perfect fit for Loxton’s marketing checklist.

“Skepticality gives us the capabilities we wanted in the first place,” Loxton said. “It gives us the chance to distribute audio educational content for free, worldwide, and to better address topical concerns; the chance to introduce our work to the original audience of Skepticality, and an additional platform for promoting our other efforts and our other allies across the skeptical world.”

Welcome to another installment of our Voce Nation Podcast series, which focuses on companies and individuals doing meaningful and innovative things in the social media and communications space.

Here I talk with Chris Shipley, the Executive Producer of the DEMO Conferences and co-founder of the Guidewire Group. Click the player below to listen to the podcast interview with Chris. If you prefer to download the file directly, you can click here.

Chris talks about what she looks for at DEMO, whether we’re close to another tech bubble, and why it’s not just Silicon Valley that has a lot to offer in the tech arena.

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