For those of you that don’t read the same news sites that I do (I’m a geek — it’s what I do — don’t judge), the Open Graph API is a software interface that allows websites to integrate Facebook functionality directly into their pages. So while “social media” has been big for quite some time as we all know, this is  a major step towards a truly social web experience. Now you can “like” things without logging into Facebook and you can see what your friends think about a particular website while you’re browsing it.

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore even believes that this technology may even grow up to threaten Google.

It’s a little premature to say where this is all heading, but we at Zero-G know that we want to go along for the ride and see for ourselves. Today, Zero-G Creative is unveiling our new “social” homepage, equipped with a “like” button and seamless integration with our new Facebook fan page.

Within the next month we expect to be doing Open Graph API integrations for our clients and we’ll make those details available soon. But in the meantime, we hope you like us. We hope you really like us.

Coincidentally, our friend Jeff Hilimire opened a debate on his blog this week asking whether social media is best managed by an agency or by the brand and I was compelled to weigh in. Here’s what I said:

In the idealistic world that exists only in my head, I’d prefer to see agencies stay out if it entirely. But that’s not reality and I think many brands are going to require the assistance and guidance of an agency to plan the strategy, provide feedback and likely handle some of the upfront and ongoing effort to maintain the strategy. But I think it is a HUGE mistake for a brand to outsource its social media entirely to an agency as it seems many are doing. As a culture, we’ve immunized ourselves to advertising in part because of overload and in part because people have become increasingly aware of how “manufactured” advertising is. By contrast, we are drawn to social media because there’s still an element of authenticity there that has been stripped out of traditional marketing, advertising and PR over the years. Ultimately I believe that brands need to control the tone, content and tempo of their social media, no matter how impractical it is from an organizational perspective. I believe that impracticality can be overcome in many cases with a combination of effort and creativity

But it’s hard to overcome the disappointment and betrayal that our best customers would no doubt feel if they ever discovered that they were being misled. How would you feel if you found out that a company insider you’ve been developing a relationship with was actually a ghostwriter or a fictional character?

Authenticity is a prerequisite for a successful social media effort and outsourcing it wholly to an agency is disingenuous at best. Agencies can and should play a role — this is a big job after all, but any scenario that takes the brand out of the driver’s seat is a failure in my book.

Don’t give your brand’s voice away. No one can manage your company’s relationships or evangelize your company’s products and services as well or as passionately as you can. Should you ask for advice? Should you engage others both inside and outside of your organization to brainstorm ideas and help you evaluate success? Absolutely. But I could never offer or endorse any service that encourages companies to outsource such a critical element of their brand.

Business owners, I promise you — you can do this and you can do it well. It takes time and effort, no doubt — both commodities that are easily outsourced. But is also takes care and authenticity which are much harder to buy and impossible to fake.

We were talking to David Meerman Scott — author of World Wide Rave — on our radio show this morning and he has an unusual perspective on distributing content online. When offering an ebook or a white paper, most marketers would tell you to offer your content in exchange for an email address or other personal information. The rationale is, of course, that a business owner should be able to A) determine who is downloading their valuable content and B) have the ability to follow up with that individual afterward.

Scott didn’t think so. In his experience, he claimed that allowing site visitors to download the paper without providing any personal information would increase the interest and readership of the content several times over.

So what’s more valuable? The information you get from the people who download your content online or the much larger readership that you may be missing out on because you are asking for information?

We’ve decided to make ourselves guinea pigs in this experiment. For the first time, our white papers are available with no strings or required information to provide. You can find them here:

• 8 Common Small Business Web Design Pitfalls (+ how to avoid them!)
• 10 Steps Towards an Effective Small Business Marketing Plan
• What to Look for When You’re Hiring a Design Firm

For the next few months we’ll be openly reporting on how these papers do in terms of any increase in downloads and whether or not we see our online leads diminish as a result of this. Stay tuned, this should be interesting!

Yesterday will certainly be remembered as Barack Obama’s day but something else changed as well… Marketers, tech junkies and newshounds will also remember yesterday as the day that social media — the real-time interaction, participation and sharing between people via online tools — truly came of age and took on a profound new relevance.

If you ask me where I was at the moment President Obama was inaugurated, I might tell you I was at my desk in my office just like always. But more likely, I’d say I was on Twitter. Keith and I watched the proceedings live via streaming video online. And while it was going on, we were both watching the simultaneous commentary on Twitter as people shared their feelings, emotions and discussed the most minute details of the proceedings. We contributed as well, typing our thoughts as the new President delivered his inaugural address.

But what’s most remarkable is that our experience connected us in a very tangible way with millions of others around the country and the world. People watching from their homes, offices or in coffee shops, people in the mall in Washington and people from across the ocean. People posted their takes on the speech, their hopes for America and their photos and videos throughout the day. If you search for “obama inauguration” on Flickr, you will get more then 43,000 results. On YouTube you’d find 34,000+.

Another remarkable thing to take note of was how the “legit” news media leveraged the online chatter in their coverage. It seems appropriate that yesterday would mark a new high-water-mark in the usage of social media by the press since those tools played such a huge role in getting Obama elected in the first place. Social media was actually integrated almost seamlessly into yesterday’s coverage. CNN’s video stream featured a live feed from Facebook, featuring users’ status updates as the inauguration happened.

CNN also gets kudos for compiling this 3D photo montage of “the moment” Obama was inaugurated — from thousands of photos, mostly user-submitted. The power of that image is magnified when you realize that this implementation of social networking has changed the very definition of photography, i.e., one photographer, one lens, one experience. “The moment” allows us to experience the inaguration through the crowd’s collective “lens.”

Another significant event in the history of social media that occurred just after the inauguration was the launch of the new WhiteHouse.Gov, which demonstrates President Obama’s continued commitment to social media. The site includes a blog and you can also follow the White House on Twitter, a tool Obama used throughout the campaign.

I think it’s safe to say that as of yesterday, the so-called “information age” has truly evolved into something new and incredible.

Photo by Alex Barth

Let’s talk about Twitter. For those of you that don’t know, Twitter is a “micro-blog” where users blast out short messages (140 characters or less) about what they are doing. Beyond that, the first thing you should know about Twitter is that it is HIGHLY addictive. I’ve been doing this for 3 weeks or so now and I feel constantly compelled to grab my phone and write a message or “tweet”.

But what isn’t immediately clear about Twitter is what makes it useful. This is still a little cloudy for me,  but I’ve found it a neat way to connect with people (friends, stangers and even celebrities) and makes an unconventional sounding board for insights or ideas. It’s sort of like sending an instant message to the world.

Want to follow me on Twitter? Go for it at http://www.twitter.com/erikwolf

I was introduced to QAlias by a fellow by the name of Andy Greider (and in the spirit of demonstrating the service I have linked to his QAlias profile). Essentially, for $10 a month, they will purchase your name in pay-per-click ads on the search engines to ensure that you appear at or near the top if anyone searches for you.

The ads link to your QAlias profile, which is fine, but the template is a little limiting. For example, I can only link to one of my web sites (I chose my blog). Go ahead and Google “Erik Wolf” and you’ll find my profile. You’ll also see that I’m usually competing for paid real estate with Erik Wolf the professional golfer and that QAlias won’t outbid the big sports sites for top billing. But that’s OK

While I’ve been appearing on page 1 on Google organic search for quite some time before QAlias, I do see the value in this as I (like many people out there) have a fairly common name and it’s been difficult to beat out the other prominent Erik Wolfs out there.  If not for this blog and my businesses, I’d likely have trouble maintaining first page placement. So I’d recommend QAlias for anyone with a common name and is having trouble getting ranked well, or anyone that just doesn’t have much web presence period.

The jury’s still out on whether or not I’ll keep my QAlias going long-term but I’ll probably give it another couple of months and see what happens.

Any thoughts on either of these services? Email me, would love to hear ‘em.

To see more common household items liquefied, visit willitblend.com. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

As far as the cost goes, there are a lot of variables in video depending on what you actually want to accomplish, but the short answer is that your short video will cost anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand. This depends largely on the experience of the production people you hire, the complexity of your shoot and whether or not you use professional acting talent or not.

But if you want to do video (even in this viral media overload that we’re in, it’s STILL very underused as a small business marketing tool which is a shame) here are some tips for doing it right on a small budget:

• If you are on a small budget, say between $500-$2000, don’t call a studio or a film/video production house. You’re likely not going to get a call back for less than $6-8K. They’ll never work in your budget. If you ever DO have the budget though, don’t hesitate for a minute to call one of those companies, they are absolutely worth it. And if a “professional video company” DOES say they can meet your budget, disqualify them immediately. Think local car commercials. Your best bet is to find a good freelancer. These are people that usually do a lot of work for the big production companies that you can’t afford but cost a fraction of the price.
• Get free locations to shoot at: friend’s houses, colleagues’ offices, etc. We got a location for our shoot thanks to the generosity of the Johns Creek Chamber of Commerce. If you need to pay for permission to shoot somewhere, it is likely to cost you $1-$2K.
• Hire young/inexperienced actors and don’t go through an agency. They are looking to build portfolios and will likely do your video for free in order to get the experience and the credit. Don’t know where to find actors? Try local acting schools or colleges that have acting programs. It’s also likely that the people you hire to shoot your video will know someone.
• In non-critical/non-speaking parts, use friends/family/employees
• There’s lots of royalty-free music available at low cost on the internet. If you happen to have a friend who’s a musician, original music adds a LOT of production value to a video and the ability to get it free or cheap is too good an opportunity to pass up.
• Don’t want to pay for the freelance videographer/editor? There are lots of student filmmakers out there who are talented and creative but, again, inexperienced. They may help you make a video for next to nothing plus the cost of renting professional equipment. If you go this route though, treat them like professionals — come with a clear vision and make them submit shot lists and storyboards so that you know you are going to get the product you want.
• If your video doesn’t require any recorded live audio (i.e., it’s just music and/or pre-recorded sound effects over video), you don’t need professional equipment to shoot your video. High-end video is absolutely wasted on the internet where everything is played at such a low resolution. Our video was actually shot in HD. It’s great if I ever wanted to show it on a big screen or run it as a commercial on regular TV, but it certainly didn’t need to be in order for us to run it on YouTube. So if the best you can do is your neighbor kid down the street who has aspirations of going to film school one day and a five-year old mini-DV camcorder, PERFECT! No one will ever know. But if you’re recording live audio, it’s a whole different story. You’ll be sorry you used a consumer camcorder in that case.
• Budget up front for incidental expenses… Figure out what you need in props and any special wardrobe. Also make sure that you bring lots of snacks and drinks for everyone on the day of the shoot and plan on bringing in lunch for everyone as well. And then once you’ve set your this budget, increase it 15%.

With our new YouTube video and the commercials we just made for the Reel Helper, a few people have asked if we can help with video projects. The answer is yes and if you’d like an estimate, feel free to contact us through our web site. But the best way to keep the budget small would be to use the tips I’ve outlined for you here. If this sounds like too much work, we’d be happy to help… But it will definitely lift you out of that magical $500-$2K price range I mentioned earlier.

Online video is a GREAT medium for small businesses to get their message out and it is definitely worth the effort. Especially when so few are even using video, it’s a great way to add value to your web site or get some extra “oohs and ahhs” at your next presentation.

Click here to read Seth’s post about viral marketing.