Talking With Tom

Merry Christmas. And welcome to the #LastWord in the 2011 Talking With Tom series of interviews with some of the most well known, and folks who ought to be well known, Digital Thought Leaders.

While you, the reader, voted that Stephen Colbert should be the last word -- that didn't work out. However, I am happy to report that via social media channels alone I was able to contact a producer at The Daily Show who did put me in touch with Mr. Colbert's personal PR team. But that was as far as it got -- seems they didn't deem a Talking With Tom interview of high enough value :-( Needless to say, it goes to show that Social Media channels certainly can be a wonderful conduit to reaching folks you don't yet know.

But poetic irony plays out -- because I'm truly thrilled to bring you a person who honestly, ought to be the last word.

You see, DJ Waldow is not only one of the smartest guys in social media, especially in the email marketing realm, but has been one of the biggest supporters of Talking With Tom since the very beginning. What makes that such a big deal is that, while DJ is now the CEO of Waldow Social -- his own firm -- for most of the year he was the Community Manager for Blue Sky -- a competitor of Emma, the sponsor of Talking With Tom. And I just think the fact he would be such a huge supporter of a competitor's marketing effort is a class act.

I also love DJ's answer because like him, I'm feeling it and wondering if others are too. And if he's right, it really changes the game where social media is involved. So give his answer a quick listen and be sure to stick around to the end when he talks about the coolest part of being a new dad! Great stuff and really shows the guy behind the brand.

Then when you're done.... if you want to dive a little deeper, check out this next video interview. In preparation for the 2012 year of Talking With Tom -- I explored the idea of doing deeper interviews with my subjects. In this inteview below, DJ and I talked more about his ideas behind the social media backlash and how that may or may not effect consumers and marketers. My apologies for the audio/video sync on this -- not sure what happened, but I'll be sure to figure it out before next year!

I want to thank you for playing along in 2011 and invite you to stick around in 2012.

But more importantly, I'd LOVE TO HEAR what you thought about 2011 and YOUR IDEAS for how I can make this blog more valuable to you in 2012.

As you can see, one of the ideas I'm toying with is longer form interviews with one or more thought leaders (at a time) to dig deeper into the issues that we all should be discussing and learning about. Do you like that idea? Are there other ideas that you like better? Maybe move away from video and go with a straight Podcast (audio) version? Seriously, let me know.

I'm going to take a couple of weeks off while I revamp for 2012 and seek out a SPONSOR for the 2012 year -- but stay tuned... I'm planning to be back in January with something interesting and I'd love to have you join me.

And speaking of sponsors, I want to take this last minute to thank Emma. Last January you took a huge leap of faith and sponsored this effort. You took a leap and came along for this journey and at every step you were nothing but supportive. I could not have asked for more from a sponsor and am eternally grateful to you for making this wonderful journey possible.

It has changed my life, my career and created such wonderful possibilities for me -- and I have you to thank for it.

Peace. Goodwill and Happy New Year to each and every one of you.

God Bless.

  -Tom

I'm very excited to bring you the next to last Talking With Tom interview. Scott Monty is the Head of Social Media at Ford, a podcaster, and the proprietor of The Baker Street Blog -- more on that later.

Scott's always had Ford on the forefront of What's Next, so I was especially looking forward to how he'd answer.

So what's next for Ford in social media? According to Scott, more video, LBS and mobile efforts as well as an exciting Facebook integration. But I'll let him tell you about that. But it sounds pretty cool.

Unfortunately he won't be able to give you the backstory on The Baker Street blog because somehow that segment of the interview either didn't record or was deleted by my 4th old playing with my phone.

Either way, it's a shame because I know many of you have told me the last "personal" question has become your favorite part of the interviews. So my apologies to Scott and y'all because it was a really interesting backstory on why Scott's such a big Sherlock Holmes fan.

So enjoy Scott and BE SURE TO TUNE IN NEXT WEEK when I reveal if Stephen Colbert agreed to be the #LastWord here at Talking With Tom.

Want to hear from other smart digital thinkers?Subscribe to have these interviews sent directly to your email. See ya in your in box.

As always, a big thanks to the email marketing company, Emma, for underwriting the costs to produce this little project. If you want to learn more about Emma and their email marketing system, just click that link you just read.

He is a man who really needs no further introduction, but I'll give him one anyhow.

Tom Webster is the Vice President of Edison Research. You probably know Edison as the company that does all of the exit polling during the elections, but they also do a lot of great research in the social media space and Tom leads the charge to help the rest of us discover and understand that research.

If you've heard him speak you know what I mean and if you haven't heard him speak, you should look for him on the next conference calendar.

I caught up with Tom behind one of the curtains at Blog World Los Angeles (insert lame joke here) and what I got was exactly what you'd expect from Tom; something a little different, something interesting and an idea that we all should embrace.

Tom's idea of "What's Next" focuses on research and how research in the online world and research in the off-line world will marry together to create insight.

Give Tom's interview a quick listen and then let Tom I know what you think of his prediction via the comments below.

Want to hear from other smart digital thinkers?Subscribe to have these interviews sent directly to your email. See ya in your in box.

As always, a big thanks to the email marketing company, Emma, for underwriting the costs to produce this little project. If you want to learn more about Emma and their email marketing system, just click that link you just read.

Lights. Camera. Action! This week I'm thrilled to introduce you to Steve Garfield, the author of Get Seen, which coincidentally was the book I read that was part of where I got the initial idea for Talking With Tom.

I caught up with Steve at Jason Falls' No, Bullshit Social Media book launch party at Blog World LAX. He was kind enough to agree to an interview on the spot, so forgive me -- the audio isn't awesome and as you'll see, we have fun trying to get ANY decent lighting.

But we do talk a lot about the impact of small form devices like iPhones on the future of social and digital media. Well that and cooking lemon oatmeal fish recipes found on Steve's favorite cookbook - Google.

Want to hear from other smart digital thinkers? Subscribe to have these interviews sent directly to your email.

As always, a big thanks to the email marketing company, Emma, for underwriting the costs to produce this little project. If you want to learn more about Emma and their email marketing system, just click that link you just read.

Really excited to tell you what happened this week on my quest to interview Stephen Colbert!

I actually made some headway. So watch the update and then cross your fingers and toes for me.

Joe has obviously been watching the space and his discussion of the topic will make you say, hmmmmmmm.

But a word of warning, be nice in the comments because when Joe isn't playing VP of Content for Eloqua, you will often find him in a ring - as in boxing ring - his favorite hobby.

So now that you've given his interview a listen, what say you? Think he's right?

Want to hear from other smart digital thinkers?Subscribe to have these interviews sent directly to your email. Just another way Talking With Tom is working to make you a better you in 2011. See ya in your in box.

As always, a big thanks to the email marketing company, Emma, for underwriting the costs to produce this little project. If you want to learn more about Emma and their email marketing system, just click that link you just read.

I thought it would be interesting to get his thoughts on "what's next" and as I expected it was. Our conversation includes a discussion of hyper-personalization and "osmosing," which I'm pretty sure is a new term he invented - but one I'm adding to my vocabulary.

Give Grey's interview a listen and then, do me a favor. Go see the new product updates from Emma
, which are really pretty stellar. It will make them and you happy you did. I mean after all, if it wasn't for them, there'd be no Talking with Tom... So go say thanks by seeing their new Feature Palooza.

I've followed Lee on Twitter and via his Top Rank blog since I first started paying close attention to this space. He's one of those super smart guys that makes the complex simple.

I was able to grab him for 10 minutes at Content Marketing World in Cleveland back in September and he expanded on his thoughts around how keyword marketing is going to evolve.

So if Google traffic means nothing to you and your brand, you can go now but if you'd really like to know how you'll drive more traffic to your blog or website  in the future, you may want to give LEe's interview a quick 2 minute view.

And as a bonus, you'll also get to know the one funny thing about Lee that up till now, no person has ever known.

As always, thanks for stopping by and be sure to let Lee and me know what you think of his thoughts.

In addition to being one of the nicest guys in social media, Chris Brogan is also one of the smartest and forward looking ones. So I was truly pumped to catch him last week at Blog World.

I fully expected Chris to point us all in a direction that I wouldn't anticipate and he didn't disappoint. I found his answer to "what's next" to be both compelling and insightful. And as a bonus, you'll find out what's behind those "goodnight moon" tweets you see in his Twitter stream every night.

So if you haven't yet, go watch Chris' interview right now! Then let me and Chris know what you thought of his answer.

Want to hear from other smart digital thinkers?Subscribe Now to have these interviews sent directly to your email.

As always, a big thanks to the email marketing company, Emma, for underwriting the costs to produce this little project. If you want to learn more about Emma and their email marketing system, just click that link you just read.

Are we finally at the place of marketing nirvana?

Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time?

This week's digital thought leader, Chris Baggott thinks that nirvana is what is next.

Chris, who founded Exact Target before creating his current content marketing platform, Compendium, knows a thing or two about delivering custom messages to folks by using sophisticated data matching tools.

Want to hear from other smart digital thinkers?Subscribe to have this sent directly to your email.

As always, a big thanks to the email marketing company, Emma, for underwriting the costs to produce this little project. If you want to learn more about Emma and their email marketing system, just click that link you just read.