Twitter. Facebook. YouTube. Blogs. Digg. StumbleUpon. When it comes to social media, these are the tools and web sites that everyone seems to be talking about.

But there is another underlying set of Web 2.0 utilities that more people (businesses specifically) should be discussing — and using — for their ability to truly engage and mobilize a customer sales force.

Leverage Obama's Best Practices for Your Business

I’m referring to some of the companies, products and tips detailed  in the back section of the “Obama Playbook: How Digital Media and Social Media Won the Election,” a 30-page special report put out by MarketingProfs.com this month. I can’t list them all, but here are a few of my favorites (disclaimer: I helped write the report with the incredibly prolific MP.com staff writer Kimberly Smith)

• UserVoice – One of the best ways to get customers involved and engaged, is to give them direct feedback into your product or service. UserVoice makes it easy for customers to do just, allowing them to leave suggestions, and vote on the suggestions of others (wisdom of the crowds). Administrators can let consumers know the status of their suggestions, including whether any are being planned. People just want to be heard — UserVoice.com lets them do that.
• Pluck — These days, consumers expect some of type of social media interaction with nearly any site they visit. Pluck provides the actual tools to help provide these capabilities. Through its on-demand platform, Austin-based Pluck increases enagement through user comments, ratings, recommendations, reviews, photo and video sharing, forums, social networking profiles and more.
• Simplified Messaging –What, this isn’t a product! No, but for all its high-tech wizardry, the Obama’s success was rooted in something very simple: simple, clear, crisp messaging that resonates (hope and change anyone?). You can have the greatest product in the world, but if the messaging is muddled, getting your customers behind it is that much more difficult. As Obama campaign staffer Scott Goodstein notes, messaging that resonates gets pushed around a lot faster.

There’s much more in the report, including analysis of every part of the campaign, from Facebook to email marketing to mobile. There are also interviews with the Obama staffers who made history happen. Become a premium member of MarketingProfs.com today and get your free copy. Let us know what you think!

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SDNN.com Investor and Interim Executive Editor Barbara Bry

Following my post last week detailing some of the juicy story lines at SDNN.com, as well as providing some web measurement data of different news sites, I received an invitation via blog comment from Barbara Bry, interim executive editor at the online start-up, to tour the newsroom.

Sure, why not? I admire entrepreneurs, especially ones who try to tackle the turbulent news media industry. In addition, I needed to complete my SDNN.com trilogy, this being my third post on the subject. It was also a chance to be on the other end of blogger relations.

Bry, who together with her husband Neil Senturia raised more than $1M for the venture, met me at the gates of the fortress-like compound of XETV-Channel 6 on Ronson Road, where SDNN.com is housed, just before lunch. She gave me a quick tour of SDNN.com’s 2o-person editorial and sales operations (all nice folks), and we headed to break room where we sat down for a 30-minute chat/interview.

She defused my first question — What the heck happened to Ron James?! — before it ever came out of my mouth, with the not surprising “can’t discuss because of legal reasons.” Not even a little? Nope. Are you moving on? No comment on that either. (An email to Ron James got the same reply). But clearly, SDNN.com is moving on without James, the organization’s executive editor who was suddenly removed from his position just days after the launch.

Bry was eager to detail some of the upcoming things SDNN.com has planned, as well as dispel some anonymous blog chatter that SDNN.com would go under on April 10. Users of the site can look forward to:

• The launch of a radio station in early May (AM 1700) that will feature a morning drive-time broadcast called “A Conversation with San Diego.” The show will be hosted by Joe Bauer (he of Hudson & Bauer fame) and will also be streamed live from the web site.
• The launch of new section fronts for sports, business, lifestyle, politics, etc. The first two sections, sports and lifestyle, will launch next week, followed by 2-3 new sections every week until there is about 30 sections overall.
• New advertising vehicles, including a business directory listing service that will feature hundreds if not thousands of local businesses for free. For a fee, businesses can choose to upgrade their listings. Newsletter sponsorships are also planned.

SDNN.com Home page

Bry says the response from advertisers so far has been good, with inventory sold out for the first five weeks. In spite of the economy, she believes online advertising will continue to grow — it’s why she and her husband decided to help bankroll the venture. “We believe in the future of online advertising,” she said. “The numbers read show online advertising continues to increase. More companies are spending a larger share of their ad budgets online.”

She declined to say what SDNN.com’s initial traffic goals were, but by the end of the year hopes to average at least 3M page views per month, which would put the operation at break even, based on corresponding ad sales. Asked what SDNN.com will need to do to be successful in the long run, Bry took a moment to think before responding simply:

“We have to produce quality content on a day in and day out basis, we have to update the site frequently … and we have to generate enough advertising revenue to pay everyone.”

She touted SDNN.com’s commitment to “hyper-local” coverage, including multimedia content, as a differentiator against SignOnSanDiego.com, the web site of the Union-Tribune, VoiceofSanDiego.org, NCTimes, and SDDT.com, otherwise known as San Diego Source (the county’s first online news operation).

“We think about our viewer as being interested in three different places: where they live, where they work, and where they play. So how can we make help them make decisions about each of those areas?” she said.“Where you live you might be interested in the quality of the schools. Where you play, you might want to know where to eat and who is giving out a coupon.”

Asked why she decided to tackle a news media venture as her sixth start-up venture, Bry brought up the analogy of the horse and buggy around the turn over the century. People still need to get around, she said, they just wanted to do it in a Ford. She believes it’s same with news – consumers are transitioning from print to online. “I really believe what we are doing here is the future of journalism,” she said, noting the multimedia, multitasking capabilities of her nine-person editorial staff.

Other interesting tidbits from the interview:

• In a moment of reflection, Bry talked about how hard it was to raise the $1M needed to fund the start up, which she termed the toughest of any venture she’s been involved with. The reason: during the first week of fundraising back in October, the stock market tanked.
• She said James approached her and her husband about the venture last fall — both Bry and Senturia had met James while hosting a show about entrepreneurs on SignOnSanDiego.com’s Internet radio show.
• The launch of SDNN.com was delayed in part because of an inadequate content management system that couldn’t scale and handle the multimedia demands of the new web site.
• She said new CTO and COO Kevin Hall, whom she knew from her days at ProFlowers.com, is now building proprietary technology on top of WordPress blog software. “Because of him, we now think of ourselves as a media and technology company,” she said.
• SDNN.com editorial contributors, which include many of the well-known former UT staffers, are getting paid a share of the ad revenues based on the number of page views they generate.
• On SDNN.com’s approach: “We are going to have a bit of an attitude. We need to be trustworthy and credible. At the same time there is a little bit of irreverence.”

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The San Diego News Network (SDNN.com) launched to much fanfare last week — at least among local Twitterati, who Tweeted up a storm about the debut of the built-from-scratch, web-only news operation. The Twitter-buzz is completely justified, given the number of juicy story lines:

• In the face of a dying newspaper industry, an entrepreneurial husband-and-wife team decide to bankroll the launch of an upstart online news operation. Neil Senturia and wife Barbara Bry, SDNN.com CEO and associate publisher respectively, reportedly sank $1 million into the venture.
• They partner with Ron James, SDNN.com publisher, who returns to compete directly against his former employer, SignOnSanDiego.com, the online arm of the financially crippled and recently sold San Diego Union-Tribune, which unceremoniously let James and other talented SOSD.com execs go last summer.
• Lurking in the background is another local online news operation, not to be overlooked: the critically acclaimed VoiceofSanDiego.org. (I’ll also throw in the NCTimes.com, which operates in North County San Diego, and SDDT.com, the online outlet for the San Diego Daily Transcript, a downtown legal publication).

Given this juicy set up, I decided to look at several audience measurement services to see just how far SDNN.com has to go to eclipse its online competitors. The answer: quite far.

Here’s a graph from Alexa.com showing SignOnSanDiego.com enjoying a sizable lead over NCTimes.com, VoiceofSanDiego.org, and, of course, SDNN.com, which just shows up as small blip having just launched. The numbers reflect daily reach, or percent of global internet users. I looked at Compete.com, Quantcast and Alexa.com, and found the latter to be most accurate.

Is the intense competition and Everest-like climb to the top news to SDNN.com? Not likely. They know the landscape and must feel confident in James ability to replicate his success at SignOnSanDiego.com — and before that Time Warner Road Runner and San Diego Magazine. James, a new media wizard, has partnered with several local news organizations, as well as brought in an all-star cast of former local print reporters, including former U-Ters David Elliott, Arthur Salm, Maria Hunt, and Ruth McKinnie Braun to name a few.

It’ll be interesting to watch things play out. I’m guessing SDNN.com, operating a much lower overhead, probably doesn’t need to come close to matching SignOnSanDiego.com’s audience to turn a profit, but you know they’ll be trying. Here’s wishing good luck to the SDNN.com crew, as well as to Mark Davis and his staff over at SignOnSanDiego.com. As Davis recently Tweeted me: “The good news for the audience is that competition can only make everyone better.”

Amen.

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