When I first started blogging back in 2005, a curious group made an appearance on the DC Blog circuit. Playaz Ball is a shockingly offensive group of men from Atlanta, who take great pleasure in providing entertainment in the form of often confusing and usually hilarious (and expertly photo-shopped) antics.

I was contacted by the alter-ego of supposed ringleader "Phil", who wanted to share the story behind the Playaz. Phil himself disavowed all correspondence and added "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

Whether writing for the love of Kenny Rogers, the cure for bird flu, the Playaz Business Model and correspondence or the Pope’s visit; the Playaz have their hands in a little bit of everything.

Larissa: What are the Playaz all about, how was the idea formed?

Phil: The characters were formed before the blog was even an idea. The infamous "Christmas cards", that so many of you have received, were the original inspiration for the characters. We wanted to make a Christmas card that was so absurd - a combination of Bing Crosby (the clothes) and David Crosby (the drugs and mustache), I guess. Once we did that, I wondered what would happen if we put this on the internet? I didn’t even know what a blog was at the time.

So I stumbled across "blogspot", posted a picture of Phil and emailed the link to the rest of the Playaz. Again, just for our own amusement. Then we were curious to see how people would react to these peculiar looking gentlemen when they stumbled across the site - and thus its "purpose": to amuse and confuse people. I saw a reaction to our website a couple of years ago on a message board that read "it’s hilarious, and fairly well written. I just haven’t figured out the point of it." And that’s pretty much Playaz Ball in a nutshell.

It just so happened that I clicked on the "Next" tab at the top of blogspot, and it took my to the (now defunct) "Blackberry Debutantes" which led to the "Cleveland Park Men’s Club" blog and more. The thing about that blog was the comments…the comments were generally funny and so I decided to insert "Phil" into the mix — making a constant barrage of reactionary comments to what other people were saying, in that "out of touch with reality yet authoritative" tone that Phil takes and people kind of took to it, and that’s how we made that DC connection.

"…blogging is kind of narcissistic by nature, and Playaz are the most narcissistic characters of all…"

But delving a bit deeper, Playaz Ball is really a sort of satire on blogs in general - blogging is kind of narcissistic by nature, and Playaz are the most narcissistic characters of all - they feel their world is more important than anyone else’s, and their stories reflect that, despite how ridiculous or unbelievable they are. In fact, and coincidentally, Playaz Ball is sort of like what the CPMC was, but on steroids and more pompous.

The name came about from the yearly trek the five of us make to Charleston each year. Tac would always document the trip and make a DVD, so he asked "what should I title it?" and I decided "Playaz Ball" would be the complete opposite of what you’d call a golfing trip of five white dudes going to Charleston.

Larissa: Can you give me a quick overview of who the Playaz are?

Phil: Longtime readers know there are hidden links in the banner on the site that give each Playaz’ bio. Outside of the blog, the Playaz have all known each other for a majority of their lives. I’ve known Bon since I was 3.

Larissa: What is your most memorable Playaz moment?

Phil: Hmmm…tough question. I don’t think I can name a single event or post. I think it’s generally be able to know that there are certain reaches of the internet that we’ve reached that I’d never have imagined…and that’s not to say we’ve accomplished anything at all…just the fact that we’ve somehow intertwined ourselves in the DC area - for all I know, Dick Cheney has read Playaz Ball at least once.

I mean, there’s so many friends I’ve made whom I’ve never even met through this blog…from DC to Ireland. It’s been a really interesting experience.
Actually, I think I love the comments more than anything else. I often go back and read old posts just for the comments. They’re hilarious. We don’t have many readers, but we’ve got some great ones.

Larissa: What do the Playaz wives think of the blog?

Phil: If they’re honest, they’ll admit it’s great. Publicly they roll their eyes and just pray it never comes back to humiliate us when one of us is running for public office or something (a possibility).

Larissa: What inspires the Playaz?

Phil: I’ve told people many times - there’s an awful lot of truth woven into the fabric of Playaz Ball. It’s obvious I’m a fan of the Onion, because many stories are written in that vein. For the actual ideas themselves, it just comes from knowing the Playaz inside and out - by this point, they’re fully evolved, so when a story comes up in the news, sometimes you can immediately tell "this has Playaz’ involvement written all over it". Otherwise, it’s just whatever pops to mind on a given day - how do any of us come up with this stuff?

Larissa: What’s next for the Playaz?

Phil: I’m not really sure. Personally, I think the Playaz are heading to their sunset. It all depends on how much further I want to go, but I think the tales have just about all been told.

Most of the really successful blogs I know are good because they focus on one thing. Whether it be Engadget, Perez Hilton, or Smashing Magazine, each of these top blogs cover a specific topic.

While those blogs may be required to stick to a topic, the idea makes me think about the goals and missions of this blog. Would I be more successful writing only about restaurant reviews and cooking? Or just about fashion and beauty (though, maybe I’ll leave that to my friend at Sprinting in Stilettos)? What if I focused only on social media and marketing, one voice among many friends?

Part of what makes me unique as a person, is that I have multiple tastes and different ideas about things. Arbitrary rules that don’t make sense. Sure, everyone does, but I’m so weirdly consistent in my inconsistencies that it makes more sense for my blog to be a bit all over the place. Take food for example…

Examples of my food quirks:

• I won’t eat raw tomatoes in slices, wedges, diced or whole (like cherry tomatoes). I will eat them diced in salsa, as ketchup, soup, or as flavoring in a larger dish.
• I’m allergic to all nuts but peanuts and almonds. That said, I’ll eat peanut butter, raw peanuts, and almond flavored foods. I won’t eat plain raw almonds, unless they are smoked.
• I don’t eat fish dishes or other things that taste of the sea. But, I will eat fried fish (fishsticks, fried cod, calamari, clam strips), salmon loaf, smoked salmon flavored cream cheese, and the occasional crab cake (with lots of filler).

If you think about what social media professionals evangelize, it all comes down to authenticity and transparency. Usually this relates to a company offering a personal voice to the corporate blog, or making sure to be genuine and accountable for their actions on and offline. Whether this means being open and honest when a crisis happens, or providing great customer service, success for these companies usually comes with a personal touch.

I think this can translate to a personal blog as well. It wouldn’t be true to myself, or my "personal brand" if I focused on just one topic. My thoughts, interests, and ideas are all over the place. It’s hard for me to identify a niche audience I want to cater to, when I read and enjoy so many other types of blogs out there (just look at my blogroll). I don’t want to write for just one type of audience, I want to draw in people like me, with many different interests. And, most of all, I want to blog for myself. Which is just about as authentic a thing as I can think of to do.

Today I attended the Women in Technology seminar, "The Intersection of Marketing and Technology" held at Viget Labs. Very excited to see it was a packed house!

Panelists for this event included:

• Katie Hanusik (moderator), Vice President, SpeakerBox PR
• Matt Goddard, Principal, R2 Integrated
• Susan Kearney, Former CMO, Voxant
• Jen Krupey, Director, Marketing Services, Viget Labs
• Brian Reed, CMO, Boxtone

Matt Goddard: The web is a buying engine, not a selling engine. You don’t own your customers, your customers own you. With social media, customers are controlling the process. Don’t fight it, understand the process - build your infrastructure, strategy, and technology around that. how do they want to purchase - not how do you want to sell.

Marketing is a digital ecosystem. Ask yourself the question - does your tactic make it easier for someone to buy a product?

Digital ecosystems are made up of three pieces. The user experience, tech/systems, social networks and social media. All contribute to an approach for ROI. Take a new view of your CMS and CRM. In the future, in a B2B environment with a sales cycle - you need to connect the dots between visual marketing and salesforce automation and CRM.

Digital marketing incorporates SEO, SEM, E-mail, social, and display (advertisements etc.). You must drive people to your ecosystem. This gives you a way to be engaged, have great technology, and bring people together.

RIA is the changing face of the web. Flex and Silverlight are changing experiences online, and allows you to connect databases.

This is one thing that is changing the engagement side. On the social side - we’re seeing movement beyond the curious passive and active users, we’re now seeing people search out relationships. This translates into customers. When you build a digital ecosystem (social engineer) - make sure you are reaching out to your customers to build these relationships.

Jennifer Krupey: Social media marketing can have an impact on business. The marketing landscape has changed. Audiences are fragmented and hyper-connected. Yesterday was TV, newspapers, radio, phone, etc. Today it’s on the web, e-mail, mobile, RSS, etc. - and now it’s social media. Through networking tools to share, communicate, and collaborate, communications is changing.

90% of consumers regularly or occasionally seek advice on products or services. 34% of internet users post opinions about products and brands.

Bottom line - nearly 50% have made a purchase based on a social recommendation.

The controversial Motrin Moms commercial. One well known mommy blogger caught sight of the ad, and the hours that followed showcased the power of Twitter and blogs. The YouTube video got over 7,000 views over the weekend and was the 3rd result for Motrin on YouTube. The story is being picked up across the blogosphere and then some. The Motrin website actually went down for a brief period, before they posted an apology.

The lesson - discover social media tools. Motrin could have identified this active group ahead of time and tested the ads accordingly. Listen - social media monitoring provides companies 24/7 access to what customers are saying. Engage - look for creative opportunities to share information and connect with your customers when they are online.

Matt Goddard: This is an example of a company trying to sell something online, and losing control. They didn’t make it a two-way conversation, and it came back to them.  Failing to ask how the product would impact the end user cost Motrin in the end.

Brian Reed: The silver lining to Motrin - is that awareness is very high of the company and product. The seven habits of highly effective (marketing) people):

Be proactive (go where they are), begin with the end in mind (model pipe & process), put first things first (no database, no deals), think win/win (what’s in it for me?), seek first to understand (buyer personas), then to be understood, synergize, sharpen the saw.

Buyers are learners. Learn your buyer personas. Increase your website traffic, increase your sales.

1. Impluse buyer - has to quickly solve the problem
2. Buyer needs to replace a product
3. Buyer learns and takes a long time to make a decision, gathers all facts

Links to buyer personas:

• Buyer Persona Blog
• How well do you know your buyer personas?

 

Flash demos and free stuff speed up the sales cycle. Buyers that can see results and how to use a product are more likely to buy if they can try. Make it free and useful, as well as something that people can easily pass on to each other.In a down economy, it’s important to show your buyer how your product will save them money.A cost saving tip? Partner on surveys. You get to share all leads and all results, at half the cost. Blogging, commenting, events, partnerships, PRWeb news releases, etc. - all contributing to BoxTone coming up in Google searches for key terms, "BlackBerry Management, BlackBerry Monitoring, BlackBerry Support, etc." Every quarter, your search engine hits should increase, you should move higher and higher up.

Susan Kearney: Voxant was seeking to syndicate news online - Reuters, AP, etc. We would then find bloggers and publishers to put that content on their site. We started with 1,300 registered with "no campaign" (did not come through Internet ads, viral ads, e-mail blasts, etc. - they were purely word of mouth), and almost 7,000 registered distributors.Breakdown of those registrants: Distributors were categorized by category.  For example, business, entertainment, and life were top categories. Knowing your users was key - news aggregators were a big distributor - they wanted a variety of news on their site. Topical sites were also important, and they anted news based on their specific category topic. 37% were personal blogs.

Word of mouth programs seemed to be the most effective. We used a variety of tools to get our numbers. We used Google Analytics, Quantcast, and so many more.

Sample of the Q&A

Katie: What is a technology that is changing the market?
Matt: Eloqua allows monitoring of potential customers who are engaged on your website, and then customize their experience. The salesteam is also armed with competitive intelligence as to what customers are looking at. Eloqua can be $1,000 - $15,000 a month, depending on the size of the organization.
Jen: Everyone rushes to things when they first launch. The bright shiny object syndrome. Be careful as marketers and technologists - make informed decisions.
Brian: Video is going to continue to grow in importance. But, be very careful how you use it.
Susan: Marketers are making the transition to a two-way conversation. Communities are a great example.
Katie: How are B2B and government marketers using social media?
Susan: Blogging is one. A blog can be terrific for a B2B company.
Matt: The big challenge with B2B is they don’t understand social network theory and social media. Social network theory is the behavior that people have - asking friends etc. for opinion before purchasing. The bigger the risk, the bigger the question. Social media are tools that unleash this behavior. They make it more scalable, make the message move at increasing speeds.
Brian: When you do buyer personal, you have to think about where people are reading things. Most buyers were reading on BlackBerry - so we had to change our methods to manage that.
Katie: What is the one thing people should invest in?
Susan: Whatever gets results. The top priority is the company. Think about your business goals.
Brian: Call 50 prospects and customers. Have the dialogue, figure out what they like about you - why they bought from you and why they didn’t. Marketers are the mouthpiece for the buyers.
Jen: In terms of online and what’s working - bottom line is that buyers are going to hopefully end up at your website. Make sure it’s operating at its optimal level.
Matt: Utilize free tools at your disposal. Part of the benefit of social media is that so much is open source.

Twitter is down, but I’m currently liveblogging the WIT session on Marketing and Technology. Stay tuned!

It’s been a long time coming, and I’m proud to say that the new and improved City Sparkle has officially launched!

Many may remember me from my personal blog in 2005-2007, City Sparkle. I’m back as City Sparkle DC - with a whole new attitude.

I started blogging back in 2005 with a group blog (The Butterfly Network) about dating and relationships. In July 2005, I broke out on my own with City Sparkle, under the pseudonym Asian Mistress. I met a lot of great people in the DC blogging community, learned about blogging, and even secured a great job from my success. Some of my old blogging friends are still writing away, others have since retired.

The blog was my personal diary, documenting my good times with friends, reflections on the world, and of course the ups and downs of being single in DC. I grew a lot in that time, and can see that reflected in my writing, some of which is cringeworthy now.

In the past year, I took some time off from personal blogging. My personal and professional life had finally come together, and I needed time to dedicate to that. And now, I’ve grown up.

The blog is back, and this time - I’m coming out. If there is one thing that being a social media consultant has taught me, it’s that authenticity and transparency reign. I could have deleted all my older posts and started a fresh, new, more professional blog. But, that would mean not being true to myself, and dismissing the very words that helped bring me to where I am today, and shape the person I’ve become. Some of my past posts may be unflattering, too personal, and unprofessional - but I was learning, and growing through it all.

So, here I am, just Larissa. And, I hope to become a conduit to bridge together the DC blogging community that got me started, and the local PR/tech/social media community that has embraced me since then.

City Sparkle DC’s focus will shift slightly from what it was before. I plan to feature the following post topics:

• Current event commentary (politics, entertainment, etc.)
• Restaurant reviews - local and while traveling
• Movie reviews - because everyone Googles movie reviews
• Recipes and cooking photoblogs - from recipes I’ve made to ones I want to try (maybe we can do a joint post sometime, M!)
• DC events round-ups - where the hot parties are at, cool things to do around town, etc.
• Shopping and playing in DC - where to go, what to do, where to live, etc.
• Guest posts and Q&A’s with local DC bloggers
• Social media marketing analysis - check out some of my past posts on The Buzz Bin

Thank you to everyone for their support, and I hope that I can contribute some great content to a wonderful community. Over the next week, I’ll be updating my blogroll, tweaking the look and feel of the site, and hopefully sharing a bit more about what I’m up to these days. I hope you’ll join me for the conversation.

A very special thanks goes to Shannon Whitley - who migrated and set up this new blog for me. Shannon is a great asset and well known and respected in the technology and Web 2.0 community. You can contact him on through his blog, Voice of Tech, on Twitter or via e-mail at swhitley [at] whitleymedia [dot] com.