I plan to attend a free Webinar with Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday, February 11). If you aren’t familiar with Pulizzi and Barrett, they wrote Get Content. Get Customers, a book I highly recommend it. Here’s a nice overview passage from the book blog:

In the last few years, buyer behavior has changed dramatically. Your buyers are now increasingly knowledgeable about what they want to buy. They aren’t surfing aimlessly, hoping to be influenced by marketing messages that arrive out of the blue. They want to make up their own minds based on their own information-gathering. Therefore, buyers need content that makes them smarter and more knowledgeable. Vendors who provide that content will win. Simply put, all the rules have changed. You need to approach the marketing game with a brand new marketing mindset. Those that can adapt will flourish. Those that don’t…well… think of dinosaurs.

It’s important to realize that “provide that content” means, in most instances, provide it for free. Offer something of substantial value before a sale ever happens. And for that matter, continue offering valuable content on a regular basis to existing and prospective customers or members. It is one of the surest ways to build deep, long-term relationships on the new Web

I’ve seen this dynamic very clearly in my own efforts. Writing blogs and publishing a free eBook on Learning 2.0 (now downloaded more than 15,000 times) have probably done more than anything else to help me with launching a consulting business and building a brand. I’ve reaped rewards that a direct monetary investment in advertising or other traditional “interruptive” marketing means would never have produced.

This approach lies behind my suggestion to Curate Your Catalog with a Blog and is also key to my perspective on how open education might work for associations. If you haven’t tuned into content marketing yet – or are simply looking for more insights on it – I recommend visiting the Get Content. Get Customers. blog and downloading the free excerpt there. Also, visit the Content Marketing Today blog. Finally, recommend keeping up with what people like Wired editor Chris Anderson and entrepreneur Yaro Stark are saying about the economics of giving it away and the “free line.”

That’s just my two cents – free of charge.

Jeff Cobb
Hedgehog & Fox

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One of the comments I got in the evaluations from an open education session I did at this year’s ASAE annual meeting was that it would have been good to have an example from the association world. No doubt I had already put this person to sleep when I got to the slide with the National Science Teachers Association, so I thought it would be good to immortalize that example here as a Web link. Knowledge conveyed during meeting sessions can be so ephemeral.

Of course, part of the point of my session was that only a handful of innovative thinkers like the NSTA have embraced open education so far in the association world – or, for that matter, anywhere outside of academia or the NGO sector. In fact, I am hard pressed to find another example. I am betting, however, that will change in the not-too-distant future. Not because it would be a good thing to do – thought that is certainly a good thing for any organization with a mission related to serving the public good- but because market forces will make it happen.”Opening up” will be a necessary strategy for attracting and retaining customers, and it has the added benefit, when done well, of spurring diversity of input and inspiring innovation.

I’ve written about the topic at some length in Can Open Education Work for Associations, so I won’t dwell on it here. Pointing out the NSTA example, however, also gives me the opportunity to point out a related phenomenon that is bubbling up. Namely, open accreditation.

The wide variety of high quality educational resources now available on the Web for re-use and re-mixing, whether by individuals or institutions, raises new questions about how effective engagement with these resources can be validated. How do I know – as an employer, for example – that you really went through everything Stanford Engineering Everywhere has to offer and actually got something of value out of it?

There are no firm answers to this question yet, but an interesting conversation is under way. Like open education in general, I don’t yet see many signs of this creeping into the association world, but organizations that engage in any sort of accreditation may want to put an ear to the ground. There may be threats here, but more likely I think there are opportunities for those who are thinking innovatively. Here are a few links into the conversation:

• Open Accreditation: A Model
• Momentum on Open Accreditation
• Imagine There’s No Courses

Jeff Cobb
Hedgehog & Fox

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I noticed last week on Mashable that the “final numbers” are in for Radiohead’s 2007 experiment, in which the band let people decide for themselves how much to pay for a digital download of it latest album, In Rainbows. In general, the view seems to be that the experiment was a big success with one of the main data points being that “Radiohead had made more money before ‘In Rainbows’ was physically released than they made in total on the previous album ‘Hail To the Thief’” (via Music Ally).”

I mentioned the Radiohead experiment more than a year ago, when it was in full swing, in Radiohead Free Association, so it seems only appropriate to come back to it now that there is some data on how it went. In the meantime, any number of myths have grown up around the band’s efforts, and there has been at least one very good blogosphere discussion about the pros and cons of the “free association” model.

I still have my doubts about how well a fully “free” model, or even a “pay what you want” model would work for most associations, whether it be for membership fees or, as I suggest in the previous post, educational offerings. But as a tool for thinking strategically about the value your organization offers, the Radiohead experiment remains very powerful – all the more so now that it appears to have been a clear success.

What I find most compelling about the Radiohead experiment is that by offering the “pay what you want” option – with “nothing,” of course, being one of the possible choices – the band really put its value proposition on the line. And in doing so – and here is the real lesson of the experiment, in my opinion – Radiohead likely increased its value to its core fans (by once again proving itself an innovator) while also increasing its engagement with hoards of potential fans who might very well never have had anything to do with Radiohead. That substantial income flowed from all of this is testimony to the fact that Radiohead actually had something of value to offer in the first place.

I suspect few associations will or should embrace a fully free model any more than Radiohead has. The band, afterall, stood to make a great deal of money off of physical sales of albums and concert appearances even as it embarked on its experiement. But I think that offering some subset of an organization’s value in a free, open, or “pay what you want” model is becoming essential for cultivating new members and customers as well as simply maintaining relevancy in a given field or industry.

What do you think? Is Radiohead on to something that might be relevant for your organization?

Jeff Cobb
Hedgehog & Fox

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Can business models based on giving away content and allowing it to be re-mixed and/or re-used really work? Anyone who has been watching the Web closely over the past few years knows they can, but their are still plenty of doubters out there. It’s good to have some case studies to reference.

The video below (click here if you don’t see it) is a documentary by Frances Pinter and David Percy called Publishing Open Content. It features interviews with three entrepreneurs who have been successful with open approaches: Tom Reynolds from Random Acts of Reality,  Timo Hannay, of nature.com, and John Buckman, of Magnatune. (27:27 minutes)

If you don’t want to watch the full video, you can also view each interview indvidually:

• Tom Reynolds
• Timo Hannay
• John Buckman

It may seem a bit odd to throw this in while in the midst of posting a series about how to sell more e-learning, but one of the points these entrepreneurs make – and one I have also made in my Can Open Education Work for Associations series – is that open content and paid content are generally quite complementary.

Thanks to Open Education News for pointing out the posting about this on the Creative Commons blog.

Jeff Cobb
Hedgehog & Fox

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Common Craft has a new video: Social Media in Plain English. Like all of Common Craft’s previous videos, it has inspired a multitude of comments and embeds across the Web. And rightly so. It is very good, and you should watch it. To make it easy to do so, I’ve embedded it below. But read on after viewing: To provide educational eye candy is only part of my aim in today’s posting. (Click here if you are reading in a viewer or on e-mail and don’t see the video below.)

As education, this is brilliant. Common Craft once again demonstrates great prowess at distilling seemingly complex concepts down into everyday terms. If you don’t understand how social media might impact your business after viewing this, you may just be beyond help.

But aside from being great education—or more correctly, as a result of being great education—this is fantastic marketing. Lee and Sachi LeFever, the husband and wife team behind Common Craft, have created a tremendous brand and distribution network by offering a series of high value videos like Social Media in Plain English for free.

Why would they do this? Their success is such that it makes the answer self-evident. The free content, because it is both entertaining and highly valuable, has created an amazing amount of traffic. By my count, they have had more than 1.3 million views of their social media-oriented videos on YouTube (see list below). That translates into substantial brand equity for Common Craft, and it also has translated into clients for custom development services. Not bad for two people working from their home in Seattle. Much better, I am sure, than the usual advertising and direct mail campaigns could have ever produced.

So what now? Viewers of this latest video will notice the message at the end that says Lee and Sachi have basically suspended all custom development activities and are concentrating their efforts on the Common Craft Store, where educators can download high-quality versions of the popular videos for use in corporate training or other classroom-type situations. This option, however, comes with a price tag.

Will this approach work? I’ll probably never know the full details of their results, but certainly there are reasons it might. First, because they have kept overhead low by leveraging the Web as a promotion and distribution network, they probably don’t have to sell all that much to produce a profit.

And because they have developed such trust and such a loyal following across the Web, they already have a significant installed base of potential buyers. These may represent only a small percentage of the people who have seen their videos, but even a small percentage of that small percentage could amount to quite a few sales. (Remember: 1.3 million to date.)

So what might all of this mean for more established organizations? i.e., ones that involve more operating overhead than two people working out of their homes?

First, it is well worth considering how the dynamic of “free” can work in a Web 2.0 world. Even if you don’t have the viral success of a Common Craft, offering up high value content for free as a way of building brand and cultivating a community can still be very effective. One of the keys is that the content must truly be of high value, and it must also be given in the spirit of contributing to a community, not simply as an obvious ploy to hawk other wares.

Second, you might consider whether you have the equivalent of a Lee and Sachi team anywhere in your organization. Without having to increase your cost structure significantly, are there people you can free up to experiment strategically with leveraging the social Web? Relatively few teams will produce success on the level of Common Craft, of course, but even modest successes could open up valuable new opportunities for your organization.

Common Craft has evolved. Maybe your organization can too.

JTC

P.S. Here’s a list of Common Craft’s social media videos for reference. And don’t forget to subscribe if you like what you read here at Hedgehog & Fox!

Common Craft Plain English Series on Social Media

• Podcasting in Plain English
• Twitter in Plain English
• Wikis in Plain English
• RSS in Plain English
• Social Networking in Plain English
• Blogs in Plain English
• Online Photo Sharing in Plain English
• Social Media in Plain English

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Jonathon Zittrain’s book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It has been getting a fair amount of attention since its recent release by Yale University Press. Partly this is a matter of its premise. As the description on the Yale site summarizes:

This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.

Aside from being provocative, however, the book is also free. You can read and comment on the entire thing at Yale Books Unbound.

The release of Zittrain’s book got me thinking about the very large number of books that are out there for free at this point. (Just stop by Project Gutenberg if you want a good place to start.) Among these, there are three in particular I would recommend to anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of the current Web culture in which we live.

First, Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. While Wikinomics has captured the popularity and speaking circuit prize for its explanation of how the Internet has changed business, Benkler’s book offers a much deeper and more detailed view into the ways the Web is reshaping our entire society. While it is not always an easy read, nor is it a dry text book. There is plenty here to keep the pages turning, and as Lawrence Lessig (see below) has put it “You are not serious about these issues…unless you have read this book.”

The full text of Benkler’s book is available in various formats, along with many other resources, in a wiki that was launched to complement it.

Next, a relic of the dotcom world, and yet one that has proven amazingly prescient and enduring: The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. I mentioned this one at an event I spoke at recently and was mildly surprised by how few of the executives in the room had heard of it. One of the central theses of the Manifesto is that “Markets are conversations.” If you have a significant role in running any type of organization and don’t yet understand what is meant by that statement, drop everything and get over to the Cluetrain site right now.

As with Benkler’s book, the entire text is available online, and at the site you can find links to the authors’ blogs and other related sites.

Finally, there is Lawrence Lessig’s The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Lessig has been called “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era” by James Surowiecki of The Wisdom of Crowds fame, and it is hard to argue. I haven’t yet read Zittrain’s book, mentioned at the beginning of this post, but its thesis that the freedom and innovation that has characterized the rise of the Internet is in danger of extinction is clearly a legacy of Lessig’s thinking.

If you care about innovation or have anything to do with the production, distribution, or consumption of intellectual property (like, er, reading this blog) Lessig’s book is a must read. And on a closely related note, if you are not yet familiar with Lessig’s Creative Commons project, get over there and check it out. Copyright is not what it used to be.

Lessig’s book is downloadable for free in its entirety, and on his Web site you will find links for downloading other works as well as for accessing his wiki and other resources.

Naturally, all of the above books are available at Amazon if you prefer not to read them on the Web or download PDFs:

• The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
• The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

However you go about it, though, I recommend spending some time with all three in the near future.

JTC

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With the wide array of overpriced corporate learning conferences out there, it’s encouraging to see that George Siemens has pulled together an impressive line-up of speakers to be featured at a free online conference: Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations.

The conference will run from November 15 to November 20 and will be hosted by Complexive Systems.   Sponsors include Duke Corporate Education, TechEmpower, Q2Learning, and Elluminate.  Aside from Siemens himself, the speaking roster includes other well-known names in the learning space like Tony Karrer and Jay Cross.

The whole thing is free, but you have to register. Thanks to ZaidLearn for tipping me off to this conference.

Along related lines, the ASAE online e-learning conference is wrapping up today. One of the resources that I prepared for it and will continue to maintain is an array of Del.icio.us URLs for Learning 2.0 related tags. I am trying to make these more about quality that quantity, so the array of links at each URL is not terribly long. I will be adding to and subtracting from them over time.

• learning2.0
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2l/learning2.0

• podcasting
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2l/podcasting

• blogging
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2l/blogging

• vod
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2l/vod

• slidesharing
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2l/slidesharing

• photosharing
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2/photosharing 

• virtualworlds
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2l/virtualworlds

• socialbookmarking
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2l/socialbookmarking

• wikis
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2l/wikis

• socialnetworking
  http://del.icio.us/jcobbm2l/socialnetworking

JTC

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The release of Radiohead’s 7th album “In Rainbows” has created something of a stir in the blogosphere as well as in traditional media outlets. For those who have not yet heard (or read), the U.K. band has decided to make its new collection of songs available as a digital download on a “pay what you want” basis. This is not exactly an original idea. Prince, always the innovator made news earlier in the summer by giving away free CDs through a London paper. The Grateful Dead basically “gave away” music for decades. Other examples abound. But Radiohead’s move does offer the latest sign that the Industry Formally Known as Recording is having a hard time getting up from the mat on which the punch of peer-to-peer networking laid it.

The Chicago Tribune’s coverage of the event aptly notes that Radiohead’s move stands in sharp contrast to the recent announcement that “the record industry won a $220,000 judgment against a Minnesota woman it sued for downloading 24 copyrighted songs and making them available for file sharing.” Indeed. But what really caught my attention in the Tribune’s article was a quote from R.E.M’s manager, Bertis Downs. “Radiohead’s developed a pretty good brand name over the years,” he says, “They’re in a position where, of course, they can do something like this.”

Yes, of course. Any group with that has consistently delivered value to its audience over an extended period and that has established itself as a leader in its particular niche might possibly be able to say “pay what you want” for its latest offering and expect the financial consequences to be positive. To a certain extent, this is what the average charitable organization is up against when soliciting donations. What about the average association? Would “pay what you want” for membership work? Or, more in line with the focus of Mission to Learn, “pay what you want” for an online education offering?

There may be associations that take this approach—and if you happen to belong to one or work for one, please comment—but I can’t say I have run into them. As I’ve noted before, I get asked often about pricing for online learning, and I have written about the topic here at Mission to Learn more than once (one example being the aptly titled Pricing Online Learning). “Pay what you want” is not a strategy I have advised before, and I am not sure it would work for most associations even if perhaps it should. In spite of occupying, by their very nature, a fairly prominent, visible position within their particular niches, I suspect most associations do not enjoy the kind of customer enthusiasm that U2, Pearl Jam, or Dave Matthews—other artists mentioned by R.E.M’s manager—experience.

Still, similar to pondering the question “what if your online learning program disappeared?,” considering what the results of a “pay what you want” program might be for your organization can be a useful rhetorical exercise. It may even be worth experimenting with on a limited basis to see what the actual results are. Could a “pay what you want” approach actually increase the perceived value of your offering (and perhaps your organization)? Could your online learning offerings be used less as a revenue source themselves and more as a catalyst for attendance at live education sessions or meetings—a strategy pioneered by the Grateful Dead in the music world and practiced by some of the bands above?

If any readers have tried the “pay what you want” strategy—whether for online learning or for other products and services your organization offers—I’d really welcome your comments below. Or, if you prefer to share them privately, e-mail me at jcobb_at_missiontolearn.com.

JTC

Related Items and Updates from the Blogosphere

Comment of the Day: R.E.M. Video = Open Source As In Linux: R.E.M’s more recent foray into this arena provides an interesting gloss on Radiohead’s efforts.

Radiohead Revisited: Nine Inch Nails Selling Album Online:  March, 2008. Brief posting from Marketing Pilgrim on Nine Inch Nails venture into offering a combination of free and paid options for Ghosts I-IV.

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