If the term is Greek to you, here’s a video from author and journalist Jeff Howe that’s featured on the site providing some perspective on crowdsourcing.

Clearly, something clicked.

I had moved here six years ago and was perplexed by our region’s inability to tell those outside of St. Louis that it was a great place to live and work.  So, about four years ago, I pitched much of the structural marketing tenants of St. Louis Doesn’t Suck to someone who was in a position to actually do something about it. His response: “Let me tell you why you couldn’t be more wrong.”

He just didn’t get it. It was an insular reaction from someone in a region that has historically behaved in an insular manner.

And if we do, in fact, want to tell the outside world about the strengths of St. Louis, to get new companies to move here, keep home grown talent here, and have young people graduate from college and flock to the region — we need to erase this mindset. We need to forget our region’s history of inactivity and demonstrated unwillingness to collaborate, and create a new model.

And for now, all I can say is — we’re working on a true community effort, for the people by the people. Elasticity will play a role, but hopefully, so will thousands of other St. Louisans.

Below is my my post from Forbes.

———————-

ST. LOUIS DOESN’T SUCK

I’ve lived a somewhat nomadic existence in my adult life, moving from Richmond to Miami to New Orleans to New York to Raleigh to St. Petersburg.  Six years ago my wife and I reluctantly moved to St. Louis but very quickly found it to be a great place to live, work, and raise small people.

St. Louis has its problems like anywhere else, but there’s a lot to like: good schools, nice parks, great public institutions, competitive sports teams, strong corporate base, the world’s largest mustache (Gateway Arch), and plenty of places that make delicious beer.

In the last two weeks, however, two stories have taken pot shots at my adopted hometown.

First there was a farcical piece in The Onion that the Labor Department reported 4 million new U.S. jobs in October, “though government officials hastened to add that the new positions are all located in the St. Louis…” I love The Onion but it essentially delivers the underlying message that people outside of “The Lou” think it’s not so hot.

Then there was something a bit uglier.  Yahoo! Health reported St. Louis to be among the 10 saddest cities in America based on suicide and unemployment rates, the percentage of households that use antidepressants, and other factors.

Oye gevault!

I’ve got to believe St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission, the Regional Chamber & Growth Association (RCGA), or St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley can’t like pieces like these.

The trouble being that nearly every political or civic entity in the region working to fix metro-St. Louis’ reputation is doing it on their own, in a silo, with little coordination with other partners. There have been some quiet efforts to galvanize private sector forces, but nothing has materialized primarily due to the political infighting that seemingly lies beneath the surface.

Why do you think that despite being a relatively safe place to live, St. Louis crime statistics are listed by the FBI as being four times higher than the national average and the city is routinely noted as one of America’s most dangerous? It’s because as the city and surrounding county battle for turf, they refuse to do what most other major metro areas do in combining regional crime statistics which leads to better rankings.

Thank you Mssrs. Slay and Dooley.

So with all of this in mind, as my holiday gift to St. Louis, I’m going to outline a strategy for altering St. Louis’ reputation on the national landscape.

St. Louis Doesn’t Suck

Let’s begin with the foundation — one that’s a bit edgy and disrupts the same conservative Midwestern sensibilities that caused the city to foolishly pass on hosting Red Bull’s popular Flugtag event a few years back.

You see, despite a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch report citing that the city attracted more young people than it lost for the first time in eons, the city has a long way to go in drawing the younger workforce that leading edge employers crave. And as my partner Brian Cross wrote on his blog, natives are still looking elsewhere for post-graduate jobs.

After all, a recent Stanford or Univ. of Miami graduate doesn’t really care if St. Louis is “Perfectly Centered. Remarkably Connected.” They want to live and work somewhere that has a thriving downtown with a great night life and is perceived to be progressive.

Which brings us to the St. Louis Doesn’t Suck campaign, focusing on delivering four key messages that support any thriving metro area:

• St. Louis has affordable housing: According to the Cost of Living Index Calculator, greater St. Louis has the lowest cost of living among the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan areas for 2010.

• St. Louis has a collection of outstanding education resources: The cities of Clayton and Ladue have two of the finest and well-funded public school systems in the U.S., there is a nice collection of high ranking private and parochial schools, and a several leading colleges including Washington University — regularly ranked in the top 10 nationally.
  

  Danforth Plant Science Center

• St. Louis has a strong employment base: Did you know there are more plant scientists in the St. Louis region than any other concentrated area in the world? We do a great job telling each other that here — just not the outside world. But thanks to the likes of Monsanto, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and a host of mid-size and smaller plant science related entities in the region — and the fact that the city is located within 500 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. corn crop — St. Louis is arguably the center of plant science research and innovation worldwide.  Add that to the fact the region is also home to 21 of the Fortune 1000 companies with leading employers like Anheuser-Busch/InBev, Peabody Energy, Emerson Electric, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Boeing, Mastercard, Nestle-Purina, and Build-A-Bear — and the case is easy that there are good jobs to be had.

• St. Louis has rich cultural resources: Let’s start with the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals and the team’s fine downtown ballpark. Then there’s one of the top ranked zoos in the U.S. that also happens to be free of charge to enter, a symphony that is highly respected worldwide, one of the largest urban parks in the U.S., a very healthy and diverse collection of restaurants, tremendous live music venues, acclaimed art and history museums as well as a City Museum that is beyond explanation, and the list goes on.

Not sucking at all thus far. But now comes the hard part. How do we best deliver these messages? It takes a comprehensive approach that not only touches the manner in which people seek and find information today, but then compels them to take action.

St. Louis Doesn’t Suck harnesses the most meaningful marketing communications channels and surrounds working adults ages 22 to 55, delivering a consistent message that St. Louis has the housing, education, employment and cultural resources that encompass a great place to live, work, visit, and play.

The tools the program leverages include:

• Digital centerpiece: While the Regional Chamber has tried, there’s no digital centerpiece or website that represents the region in a way that makes you want to stay on the site for more than 30 seconds. It’s an ADHD world people, and to keep an audience — especially today’s 21 – 35-year-old young professional — you need engaging and fresh content that is comprised of the people and entities that enrich the region telling the story in first person.  No one really wants to read, “Situated at the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers, we have a tradition of leadership in transportation, distribution, and logistics.”

• Video speaks volumes: A strong message in 60 seconds can potentially say far more than 1,500 words of text. Let’s see CEOs George Paz of Express-Scripts, Hugh Grant of Monsanto, Energizer’s Ward Klein talking about their vision. How about young employees from Arch Coal, HOK, or Brian Cave showing people their favorite haunts around town?  Remember the “I’m a Mormon” campaign from the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints? Very strong stuff.

• Social media: Yes, have a Facebook page. Sure, a Twitter account is nice. More important, however, you’ve got to understand how to use these tools other than to simply have an account or page, like the Regional Chamber’s Facebook page that has 140-some fans. How about livestreaming a free concert from the Pageant music venue on Facebook; or get a group of CEOs from mid-size companies engaging in a Google+ Hangout with some top college students talking about what they are looking for from the local workforce; or take suggestions from city residents via Twitter (and actually use one of them) on how to improve a public park.  Just spend some time looking at how Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak engages constituents on Twitter. It’s not your standard press feeder.

• PR: Once you’re doing some of these things and there’s an actual story of change to tell, take some leaders of influence on the road in tandem and visit some national media. And by “leaders of influence,” I don’t necessarily mean the Mayor and head of the Regional Chamber. It’s about the sum of the city’s parts — a coalition of leading CEOs, the heads of the five local angel investors group,  a handful of leading entrepreneurs.  Or, how about pitching a recurring HuffingtonPost column from the mayor or a collection of local CEOs? Why not ask InBev CEO Carlos Brito or one of his top lieutenants to write a column on beer.

• Mobile: There are more cellular phones in the U.S. than there are people, and at the very least any centralized website for a coordinated effort should be mobile enabled. But think bigger: an app that serves as a virtual tour guide, has push notifications for events, and includes searchable capabilities for activities meeting specific criteria.

• Paid media: Look at a small, controlled program of paid media — traditional and digital. How about a Letter to America ad in the Wall St. Journal about the needs of American business co-signed by a group of local CEOs, but more important use Google Adwords and Facebook cost-per-click to drive to engaging video content telling first person stories about the region.

• SEO: I saved this for last because online search is the magic bullet. It’s what everything drives towards. And if you don’t have an SEO component as part of an integrated marketing plan, you lose. Think of it this way: you own a business in Miami and you’re tired of all of the fair weather sports fans there so you tell your director of facilities it’s time to find a new headquarters town. What does that director do? He puts together a due diligence committee and they all start doing research — online — using search engines and terms like “best cities to work” and “best cities to live” and looking at tax incentives and quality of life, etc. In short, all the other stuff you’re doing in the marketing channels are filling the SEO funnel that needs to be filled, stacked, stuffed and overflowing with good news.

St. Louis isn’t perfect — the local  style of pizza is horrendous, our NFL football team should not be playing in a dome, the airport is an embarrassment, and the traffic lights aren’t timed.  More important, we still struggle to create, attract, and retain more skilled workers.  It’s an old-time, Mississippi River-based manufacturing economy that’s yet to fully reinvent itself that last year lost 14 percent of its professional services companies (law firms, architects, ad agencies).

Without question, St. Louis does not suck. But with the exception of one very smart tourism campaign developed by the CVB, we typically do a terrible job of externally articulating what those offerings are.

Perhaps by stepping out of our comfort zone, moving beyond silly turf battles, and developing a comprehensive approach to marketing the area, St. Louis can better promote a region that has much to offer.

Happy holidays.

In our last installment of Forbes “Two On Two,” Jason and I discussed the brand marketing fallout from recent doping accusations made against cyclist Lance Armstrong and examined findings from an Arbitron/Edison Research study on social media use.

This time around we look at the recent sale of MySpace and discuss the implications of a recent Georgia court ruling on the legality of anonymous online posting.

Thanks for watching and please let us know what you think in the comments.

The New York Times reported that conservative operatives correctly predicted he would be caught in a sex scandal a full month before it happened. Their source: the Twitter users Weiner was following that were in plain sight for any other Twitter user to see.

Many of us understand the openness of social media represents an incredible opportunity for data mining and analysis for marketers. Now, it’s clear these tools can be used by your political opponents to find your interests and weaknesses at a level never before available.

These evolving media dynamics are indicative of the social media landscape becoming, for a large number of Americans, the principal medium through which we connect, share, engage and learn. And clearly, politicians are no exception.

Which begs the question as to why the communications function on Capitol Hill has not been given greater due. After all, next to crafting policy, communications may be the most important function within a congressional office.

Wouldn’t elected leaders be better served by placing greater emphasis on receiving more senior level counsel from professionals who are deeply experienced in leveraging social media channels in building brands, managing issues, and sharing ideas?

Consider the most effective communicators amongst our recent presidents: JFK, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. It’s no coincidence they are perhaps the most beloved president of the past 50 years. And make no mistake: these communications skills stemmed from sound strategy (and for one, a career in acting), which is an art form developed through experience, trial and error.

The group monitoring Rep. Weiner’s Twitter feed used Twitter’s open architecture to identify a pattern in the young women he was following. Although they couldn’t read the private messages he was sending, they correctly guessed what was going on — he was essentially cyberstalking young women and they even took the step of reaching out to some of them to warn them about Weiner.

The fact that Rep. Weiner used a public tool to feed his impulses clearly tells us a great deal about his judgment, even while having some veteran communicators guiding him. But it also indicates how little Weiner and others understand about these new means of communication that have become commonplace tools.

Twitter and Facebook are incredibly powerful assets for reaching constituents directly with very targeted announcements/promotions. This is an area younger political (and corporate) staff are very well versed in, having been raised on a steady diet of instant communication.

But knowing how to do something and guiding lawmakers through today’s social media landscape are two very different skills. Indeed, how these tools can be used for and against you is an area that is only thinly understood.

So the question is: who is qualified? Who can sit across the table from a member of Congress and clearly delineate what that person can use their personal social media accounts for in representing their office, map out how much time should be spent each day engaging with constituents through digital channels, understands channel content and can comfortably discuss the types of photos that should be used, and when to respond to or ignore negative feedback?

Just like anything else, it requires practical experience, having already learned from trial and error, managing meaningful issues, and understanding how to truly leverage the nuances of today’s social media toolkit.

So let’s look past the obvious in the Weiner scandal, and instead, consider that elected officials need sound counsel on how, why and when to access social and traditional media from someone both skilled in the art of communications and experienced in the use of social media channels.

In the end, any politician who uses these tools without professional guidance does so at his or her own risk.

One of the many trends looked at was the Top Local Brand Mentions on Twitter during 2010. Interesting enough among the Top 10 brands mentioned, the two companies on the list are both clients of ours! Congrats Charter and Anheuser-Busch!

View the entire report here.

Corresponding landing page:
http://goelastic.com/optimize/

Here are a few:

a) GoodSearch and GoodShop. These sites have been around for a few years, and it’s a fairly easy concept. Powered by Yahoo!, GoodSearch is a search engine that donates a percentage of their advertising and sponsored-search revenue to the charity of your choice every time you search and/or click on a search result. With 97,870 nonprofits signed on, the results can add up (The ASPCA has earned $38,000). GoodShop is just as simple, go to (almost) any online retailer from a link on GoodShop.com and a percentage of your purchase will go back to your cause. Period. Different retailers have different percentages, so you can even shop by impact; there are hundreds of options, ranging from 1% to 30%, and most places also offer deals and coupons for going through GoodShop. This service, of course, relies on a nonprofits’ ability to galvanize their community to pay attention and consistently think of the organization on a daily basis. Because it costs nothing, it’s worth it to set up an account and see what you get. If they can effectively get their crowd to install the toolbar, it becomes a passive way to help a cause without actually changing too much habit. I’ve personally seen it work; passionate supporters make this their homepage, use every opportunity to search, knowing it’s helping their favorite organization. (I’ve actually seen them use it almost ridiculously to get to somewhere like www.facebook.com.)

b) SwipeGood “rounds up all of your debit or credit card purchases to the nearest dollar and allows you to donate the difference to the charity of your choice.” Banks have been encouraging this method of rounding up to the nearest dollar for savings plans for years, but this is an interesting twist. You can set a monthly limit if you want, and they do charge a service fee (they are a business themselves), but the average monthly amount donated is $15. Many donors wouldn’t dream of a $200 annual gift, but might say yes to this “keep the spare change” model. This is more active, actually spending your money, but still in a very passive way in that nonprofits just have to get their community to sign up, not make constant appeals for donations. Although this is fairly new, 343 charities are signed up, and again, there’s seemingly no downside for the organizations.

c) Sparked “makes it easy for people with busy lives to help nonprofits get valuable work done when it’s convenient. We call it microvolunteering.” Full disclosure: this hooked me in immediately. I have about 4 volunteer gigs on my plate right now in addition to a full-time job, and am in no position to commit to more. But the idea that, on a break from doing work or a project, I could spark my own creativity and contribute to a cause with no commitment or relationship was riveting. I spent at least 5 minutes on the site, signing up quickly and easily through my Facebook profile and browsing the 2000+ projects available, and even submitting to one. Granted, this site is going to inherently reach tech-savvy people for tech-savvy projects, there is only so much you can do in a few minutes online. But I was surprised by what I saw, and impressed by organizations’ creativity in their ability to come up with tasks that could really benefit from crowdsourcing. Some called for help writing or editing copy, websites, or blogs. Some asked for a logo re-design or brochure layout, some just asked for ideas or feedback for promoting an event, naming a campaign, etc. Signing up includes a short profile where you choose your favorite passions (i.e. arts, environment) and your skills (i.e. copy-editing, design), so they can best match you with opportunities that might interest you. I saw responses ranging from 2-3 word answers to an excited, “Yes, I can do this for you! Email me your files at xx@xx.com!” I don’t see any advertising, so I am unsure how the business operates, but again, I don’t think the nonprofits have very much to lose by posting a few things here and there to get free help. It does cost them some time, and potentially staff salary, but the responses thus far have been rich, relevant and seemingly quite helpful. There are multiple success stories on the site that suggest there’s something to this. What’s appealing to me, as a former nonprofit professional, is that you can engage talented people without having to spend the staff time/money on recruitment, training, management, recognition. If you have the staff capacity to attempt to reach and cultivate the people you interact with on Sparked.com, more power to you. If you don’t, you just got results, the volunteer just got some warm fuzzies; you both got what you wanted without any commitment from either party. It’s a one-night stand for volunteering.

I am very intrigued to watch as businesses develop to help facilitate the human need to help. We’ve all watched technology take a front-seat role in worldwide disasters in Haiti or Japan, and be it time, talent or treasure, people want to give back. It’s smart of nonprofits and businesses alike to offer easy ways to do so on a daily basis. What have you seen lately that invites you to get involved online or through social media?

The interesting thing is that social media is changing the search marketing industry more so than anything in the past 13 or 14 years.  Not only do social media sites, blogs, comments and other social tools effect search rankings (and therefore how companies market through search), but Facebook and Twitter have their own search engines to surface content on their platforms.  While Twitter’s may be somewhat rudimentary and giving rise to the popular #hastag, Facebook has grown a little more sophisticated as evidenced by their recent presentation on EdgeRank.

Now, this is completely expected.  With so much conversation going on in Facebook, it’s getting hard to hear anything.  Imagine if your newsfeed had everything from everyone you follow (from important stuff to lost sheep in Farmville).  You couldn’t keep up.  So Facebook put an algorithm in place to help decide for you.  This blog post isn’t to explain what an object or edge is, or how affinity, weight or time decay do to the edge score.  For now, let’s just go off of the preface that you need to have great content that people interact with recently to show up.

If it isn’t heated already, this should super-heat the space for “news feed optimization” or just plain “social media optimization.”  And it’s like the beginning days of search marketing in the search engines all over again.  We just have a few new engines (and algorithms) to pay attention to now.

And it matters.  Businesses are utilizing social media more and more, and being “found” is crucial.  And, like traditional search engines, the basis is understanding the “rules of the game” (the algorithm), but more importantly, coming up with great content.  Now, every bit of great content still needs a boost to be seen, for sure.  Smartwater didn’t just put Jennifer Aniston on YouTube and figure it would go viral.  They “seeded” it.  It’s a great piece.  And with some proper PR, social media support, and seeding with influencers, it has over 6 million views in 3 days.  Well done.

EdgeRank is just the beginning.  The traditional search portals are looking at integrating what they can from the social sites, and the sites themselves will continually work on their algorithms.  Social media “optimization” is going to be the thing that the agencies all begin to start touting.

And that’s a good thing.

PR and social media disasters are abound these days as companies and agencies continue to relegate their actives to young, inexperienced team members figuring they “know social” more due to their age.  Social media is quickly becoming an art AND a science.  And that should help shake out some of the so-called “social media experts” in the field.  Anyone can create a Facebook page or post on Twitter (or, or, or)…but you start to separate talent when you need engagement and results from your social media activities.  Now, you need to account for the algorithm along with creating content that engages, and figuring out a plan to make sure that great content is seen.

It’s not easy anymore.  And the harder it gets, the better the agencies will have to become.  That’s good for businesses as there will be fewer (but more qualified) candidates in the industry.  Although, it will be interesting when the question moves from “what’s your twitter strategy” to “what’s your EdgeRank strategy?”  At least the second is a pertinent and real question.  I don’t think many of our competitors would have a good answer to the second.

However, if you would like to know ours, or want us to put one together for you….

But did you know that farmers — yes, farmers — are finding Twitter to be an effective tool? Indeed, we work with a number of agriculture-based clients such seed-maker Monsanto, crop-and-commodities predictor Lanworth, Intervet Schering-Plough, and SFP to name a few.

Its given us fascinating insight into how farmers use social media tools and the impact those tools can have on their business.

Farmers have long-been reliant on mobile tools, and as social media drifts more commonly to mobile-based platforms, they are delving into text and Twitter to communicate with other farmers about things like crop and weather conditions.

Now, let’s keep things in perspective. Thus far only 2 percent of farmers are using Twitter according to The National Association of Farm Board. But don’t forget, only 8 percent of all Americans overall use it, so don’t let the low percentage fool you — it’s meaningful.

But as CNBC’s Kate Kelly is reporting, commodities brokers and traders are paying close attention to those farmers who are using Twitter because it can have a bottom line impact on the markets.