Social Media, Smocial Media

Ever shot yourself in the foot? I’m not talking about using a firearm to do the deed, I’m talking about using your mouth. If you’ve ever stood in front of an executive and spent precious time explaining why they needed be involved in social media you have.  

Let’s face it, there are still too many in the marketing field who belive social media will replace movable type as the most significant invention of all time and that we who use its power to benefit our businesses are turning digital water into digital wine. To those who fit this description I have simple message: Get over yourself.

What we’re doing with these blogs and podcasts and videos and social media press releases is taking advantage of a lot of work that was done by those who created the miracle that is the Internet. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. But when you stand up in front of Mr. and Ms. CwhateverO and begin to pontificate on the beauty of Web 2.0 and the wonders that flow from it, you deserve to be met with glassy stares because they didn’t invite you in to talk about blogging and podcasting and Twitter and the next shiny object. No, they invited you to tell them how you are going to differentiate their company from its competitors. They want strategy not tactics. And social media is not, repeat not a strategy.

All the elements that make up social media are simply ways of distributing your message – whatever that happens to be. Granted they are very powerful means of distribution, but let’s not lose site of what they are at the core. When we do is when we are in danger of taking to the top of the mount and preaching the glories of social media.

Keep it simple, talk strategy. Remember, it’s not about you it’s about them.

Look who’s back

Been a while since I’ve been here. My last post dates back to October 1 and I’ve not been back since. I’ve had a very, well, to put it simply, changed filled few months.

The company I went to work for in January 2000, SoftBrands, announced an agreement to be acquired by Infor. Infor is a $2 billion enterprise software firm located in Alpharetta, GA. The deal was set to be closed during the dog days of August, but I figured I’d be better off if I started shopping my talents elsewhere…just in case. As luck, networking and self marketing would have it, in early September I was offered a position in the corporate communications. They wanted me to develop a global social media strategy. My summer went from “Oh no” to “yes” in the blink of an eye. But nothing stays the same now does it?

On November 2, I was notified that corp comm was being realigned to better serve the company and my role was being eliminated. I’ve lost a lot of colleagues over the years to workforce reductions and realignments, but this is my first time on the receiving end. I can’t say I like it much, but there are a couple of good here.

1. I’m interviewing with some great companies for roles that will challenge me and help me grow personally and professionally.
2. I get to spend a lot more time with my ladies – 6, 4 and 21 months – and my lads – 14, 11.
3. I’m able to relieve some of the daily burden from my bride’s shoulders.

Now that I have some down time – when I’m not pushing out resumes and doing interviews – I hope to get back on the blogging bandwagon. I’ve been building up ideas for posts and It’s time I get them down on “paper.”

In the meantime, if you hear of anyone looking for an accomplished marketing communications professional, send ‘em my way.

Thanks.

The NHL goes where others fear to tread

@goaliegirl tweeted about the NHL’s use of Twitter and I felt the urge to comment.

As a huge fan of hockey (pro, college, high school & youth) I am simply giddy that the NHL gets social media and is using Twitter to generate fan interest. Unlike the NFL, and even some college conferences, the NHL is embracing social media tactics and the benefits they can bring. Seems an odd thing on the surface, but look beneath and you’ll see the logic.

Then NFL and NHL have one thing in common: both are professional sports leagues. Other than that they are worlds apart in popularity, pay scale, TV revenue and just about any other metric you can throw at a spreadsheet. For those who don’t know the “H” in NHL stands for Hockey.

I grew up, and still live, in Minnesota and hockey is woven into the fabric of my life. I have two boys who’ve been playing for years and two girls just starting out. My youngest is only 19 months so she won’t be playing for a while, but we’ll have her on the frozen pond before the end of winter. Even though I have an irrational emotional attachment to the game, I’m pragmatic enough to realize the hockey talk outside of the snow belt is not a normal part of the conversation. Apparently the NHL knows that as well.

The NHL is the CBS News of professional leagues, constantly languishing at the back of the pack, and anything they’ve tried hasn’t changed that. Outdoor games are interesting, but after a couple non-fans loose interest.  When Carolina was rolling toward a the Stanley Cup a couple of years back, they had trouble selling out the building (Not much of a natural fan base in the Southeast).

In contrast, the NFL is the number one revenue generating professional sports league in the country. It’s annual television contracts are worth billions and the Super Bowl always ranks near the top of the highest rated shows. It gets more press than it deserves: ESPN spent months covering the Will-Favre-sign-with-the-Vikings-or-won’t-he saga. And it dominates television sports every Sunday and Monday from September through January.

In short, the NFL is no. 1 and happy to move slowly in an effort to protect that ranking. The NHL, running a distant 3rd, has nothing to lose and risks very little by jumping on the social media bandwagon, provided they do it properly.

 Fan Tweetups first took place earlier this year during the Stanley Cup playoffs and were a great success. But the playoffs run through June, so the weather warmed – and casual fans turned away – the league found success using Twitter to maintain interest. Replaying that same strategy as the 2009-2010 season is set to open this week is a natural follow up and one that I’m sure will be repeated throughout the season.

If necessity is the mother of invention, the NHL is trying to prove desperation is the mother of adoption.

Train your people to use the phone

As a rule, it is better to give than to receive. However, as with all, there is an exception to this long-standing rule: voicemail.

I love receiving voicemail from people. So much so, that I rarely pick up the phone unless the caller ID is from someone I know. My love of voicemail comes not from an irrational desire to feel needed, rather it is based in my completely rational desire to be entertained – and have I been entertained.  

A couple of years ago we started receiving voicemail in a wav files. Not coincidentally, I started saving the best of the worst for future use. Today I can announce that the future has arrived. I’ll be sharing share some of the voicemail I’ve saved, edited to remove names, companies and phone numbers for your amusement.

My aim is not to embarrass – hence the heavy editing-  but to inform.

As a means of communicating, the telephone is irreplaceable and it is imperative that we learn how to use it properly. Nothing new here, right? The problem is there are far too many people who’ve not been trained to use the phone as a tool for doing business.

I suffered from the same lack of training until 1998. I was working as an account executive for the MNN Radio Networks in the Twin Cities at the time and one of my colleagues had the good fortune of meeting Steve Kloyda (@SteveKloyda), founder of Telemasters. Station management arranged for the entire sales team to take Steve’s 5 week training.

Each week, we met individually with Steve to listen to calls we recorded – voicemail and connections - with prospects and customers. I won’t speak for everyone, but through self critique and with Steve’s coaching I learned to use the phone as a business tool.

I don’t mean endorse Telemasters – although I highly recommend it – but I do want to endorse telephone training for anyone in your business who uses the phone for their work. Keep in mind they are representing your company and the impression they make will last forever. Make sure that impression is positive.

I’m off to the studio to begin editing and commenting on the worst of the worst.

Anatomy of a failed SEO initiative

I want to personally thank Tom Pick of WebMarketCentral for his tips on selecting an SEO consultant. His post dredged up some bad memories and very good lessons learned from my own experience.

(Stick with this post and you’ll find additional nuggets of SEO wisdom you can pull out when you need them)

A couple of years ago - late summer of 2007 - we launched our first-ever SEO initiative. We did it to support a brand-spanking-new website that was to be launched on January 1, 2008. We were bound and determined to do it – design, content, meta data, etc. – right from the beginning and knew just enough to get us in trouble, so we decided to engage the services of an SEO vendor. After a few weeks of researching best practices, we identified three potential vendors and started the evaluation process. 

I haven’t polled the team, but I’m willing to bet there is a consensus that we made a poor decision. I know we did our due diligence and asked all the right questions, but the project still crashed. A lot of time was spent discussing tactics – white hat v. black hat – and we were convinced the chosen vendor used white hat SEO practices. In the end, what was positioned as white was turned a dingey gray through the combination of two key pieces to any SEO initiative: content and keywords.

The vendor’s proposal called for a list of 50 keywords from which they would develop content that would link to appropriate pages of our website. The vendor developed pages were positioned as a deeper layer of content that, through intra-linking, would increase organic search rankings. Makes sense. The more links to relevant content the better.

Red Flag no. 1:The first sign of trouble came when we saw the questionnaire that was to drive the development of the keywords. From the first question to the last two things were painfully clear. First, the vendor’s key market is small retailers. Second, their practice is structured around companies that have little if any website experience – design, content, etc. I must admit I cringed a bit when I submitted the answers, knowing they would be used to develop the 50 keywords. My cringe was vindicated a few days later.

Ref Flag no. 2: The keywords returned were, in a word, worthless. I’m being a bit extreme, but the truth is most of what the vendor delivered was meaningless. There were a few semi-useful keywords, but most had no basis in the reality of the industry I serve – manufacturing. Disappointed, but not completely disillusioned, I contacted the project manager only to find out they were not really a project manager at all. Worse yet, I found there was no project manager assigned.

Red Flag no. 3: Worser yet, the vendor does not assign project managers. Instead, there is a different body for each step of the process – keywords, content creation, link building, and so on. Worser worser yet, no one body knew how to communicate with other bodies assigned to the case – if communication was allowed. They lived in the ultimate Silo Land. I insisted on and got a point person assigned for the balance of the project.

Red Flag no. 4: In the end, I created all the keywords the vendor would use to create the content they promised. I even provided rules for how keywords could and could not be used. (For example, it makes no sense to discuss process manufacturing and medical devices on the same page). What I got back page after page of gibberish. Unusable garbage that wasn’t fit to line a digital birdcage. I called the “project manager” and expressed, in no uncertain terms, my utter disappointment with the content. The reply I got sent me over the edge. I was told that it didn’t matter that the content made no sense, only that the keywords were represented and ultimately linked to the appropriate pages of the website. That is the point at which everything became crystal clear - or dingey gray – to me.

The vendor had no intention of providing content that would actually add value to visitors to the website. With this revelation in hand, I asked about the possibility of one of these pages showing up in a search and someone, a potential prospect or current customer, seeing the nonsense we were publishing. The “project manager” assured me the chances of that happening were infinitesimally small. Furthermore, if one of the pages did pop up, the reader would likely navigate to the page, click on one of the keywords and follow that link to a page – one that I wrote – that contained the information they wanted.

Lovely. Just lovely.

In the final analysis we paid for the priviledge writing our own keywords that were ultimatley used to create worthless content that was just this side of being black hat SEO. The content as provided by the vendor still sits in a file. It is unused and will remain ever so.

Here are a few of the lessons I learned from the process:

1. Ask potential vendors what their customer base looks like. If it doesn’t look like you, say good bye.
2. When vendors talk about generating content, have them clarify exactly what that means. If their content isn’t fit for public consumption, if it’s something you wouldn’t show your mother, say good bye.
3. Ask about the team that will be assigned to the project and who the project manager is. If they tell you the team is TBD, say good bye.

I purposely did not mention the name of the vendor, although I know at least one person reading this post knows the answer, but it is a well known name in the industry. They would do well to be honest about their core market and their SEO tactics because if someone does ask, I’ll recommend they steer clear of this one.

You say you want a revolution

Do any of you read Justin Kownacki? You should.

He wrote a post last month calling for a rebellion. Not an armed insurrection for the overthrow of government, rather he wants the his generation to take social media back (I didn’t know it was taken away) from those (like me) who use it for profit and use it, instead, as a catalyst for cultural change. A Woodstock for today. The Summer of Love revisited:

Social media is still locked in the hands of the technophiles and the marketers, who focus on mechanical and business applications.  They’re either unwilling or incapable of creating true cultural change, seeking instead to find practical ways to use these tools for financial profit.  And that’s functional, but it’s not the kind of sociological earthquake that’s going to define a generation — unless we become defined as the generation who’d rather consume than create.

I understand what Justin is getting at. The internet is the most powerful distribution engine ever created. Like radio and TV before it,  but with copious amounts of digital steroids injected, the WWW has opened up a new world of sharing news, information and opinion and has shattered the barriers to entry. Any garage band with aspirations for greatness can find an audience without the aid of a manager or recording contract. Any writer can satisfy their passion through blogging. Any budding director can film  – old school I know – edit and distribute their work and not have to deal with the politics of Hollywood.

Although Woodstock is considered the defining event of the Baby Boom Generation, the phenomenon of 500,000 people spending three days stoned in the mud listening to great music did not change the culture.  It was, however, one of several pieces that came together to make a dramatic and lasting impact on the cultural make up of the USofA. In fact, the cultural change Justin is seeking might have already taken place.

Like the cultural shifts of the 1960’s and 1980’s, the ingredients for a movement were in place in 2008, but a catalyst was needed to turn the potential into the kinetic. In the 60’s it was Vietnam, in the 80’s it was Reagan and in 2008 it was President Obama.

Last November, Barack Obama rode a wave into the White House. It was a wave built using social media to distribute, and make viral the candidate’s message and the messages of his supporters. Where Kennedy used television, Obama mastered the Internet to build a coalition of supporters that would assure his victory.

Only history will tell if his election was a defining moment of a generation, or one ingredient in a larger dish of cultural change. Either way, change is not an item on a menu to be ordered when one is in the mood and, more often than not, we can only recognize it and its impact through the lens of history.

Social media levels the playing field

Traditional marketing uses campaigns to build brand awareness: Coke – “The Real Thing”, Pepsi – “The Choice of a New Generation”, BASF – “we don’t make the products you buy; we make the products we buy better”. Each is recognizable and each company invested millions of dollars to reach consumers.

I’m gonna take a stab in the dark, but I’m betting you, like me, are working with budgets that are substantially smaller than Coke, Pepsi or BASF. Guess what, it doesn’t matter because we all have access to the great leveler in the branding battle: the Internet.

OK, it’s not a perfect one-to-one exchange, but the power that lies within the worldwide web is boundless and with a little imagination and hard work you can leverage that power to create a brand for your product.

Until now, marketing and social media have been treated as separate and distinct and, truth be told, there’s argument that can be made for keeping them as such. But that doesn’t mean the latter can’t support the former.

Boiling it down to its simplest form, branding campaigns are designed to leave a mark, an impression on the mind. It is an impression you create and communicate, but the impression is only a perception, an opinion based on the message you provided.

As consumers, B2C and B2B became more sophisticated, their response to the bombardment of advertising became, “I’ll be the judge of that.” In other words, they wouldn’t accept what you have to say until they buy it, try it and make up their own mind. Your ads may get someone to buy once, but if reality doesn’t live up to the perception your advertising created they won’t buy again.

The power of the Internet makes it possible for all of us to turn perception into reality before they buy.

When you use social media tactics to promote the thought leadership in your company, when you expose the subject matter experts within to the market you are building credibility, you are building awareness. You are showing customers, potential and current, that there are people behind the brand. People who know the industry, people who know their customers and understand the business issues they face and are trying to solve daily.

In short, you are branding reality for your company, its products and services.

Personal v. Professional with Albert Maruggi

 A couple of months ago I saw a Twitter message from the owner of a consulting firm announcing the release of a new survey on the success of ERP implementations. A few minutes later the same individual used Twitter to take a hard line on the health care debate. In my opinion, the guy took quite a risk in mixing his professional and personal lives in a forum like Twitter where following someone is not the same as knowing them.

How many were offended by his opinion on health care reform we can’t know. Nor can we know how many will no longer consider doing business with him. But there is a number that fall into both categories.

Social media requires openness and transparency, but how much is too much? To discuss this, and other questions, I called my friend and former colleague Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners and The Marketing Edge Podcast. The outcome is the first ever Wondering Out Loud Podcast.

During out conversation we talk about the risks of mixing the professional with the personal, about the danger of “blurting” in 140 characters or less, and about how we are quick to label and categorize others. As always, Albert is thoughtful, serious and funny.

Enjoy.

Mark Palony speaks with Albert Maruggi about the risks of mixing the professional with the personal in social media.

Are you self serving or self promoting

As the adoption of social media by business expands at an ever increasing rate, its misuse grows along with it. When you engage in social media activities are you self serving or self promoting?

Have you ever considered the difference? Both deal with the self, but if you choose to practice the former over the latter, you are headed for social media failure.

Here are the definitions from dictionary.com:

Self serving: Serving to further one’s own selfish interests.
Self Promotion: Promotion, including advertising and publicity, of oneself effected by oneself.

Done correctly, self promotion will result in all the benefits – increased leads, sales and revenue – you can get through self serving means, without turning away a good chunk of your audience. If this sounds difficult to achieve, it’s not. Promoting the self – you, your colleagues, and your business – is as easy as showing your target audience what you know. How you show them, however, goes a long way toward defining which side of boarder you are on between serving and promoting.

Let me illustrate with an example of a LinkedIn discussion:

Q: My boss wants me to buy a list of emails we can use for marketing. We’ve never done this and I’m looking for advice on picking the right provider. Thanks for your help.

A1: You can buy any list you need from my company Lists-R-Us. We specialize in providing 100% opt in lists for every conceivable industry – and a few you can’t conceive of. Call me at 555-1212.

A2: Before you pick a provider you’ll want to ask several questions including how they compile their lists, what information they gather about the individual and the company, can they segment based on SIC codes, and what are the counts within the SIC’s you are targeting. Also ask to see a sample cut of the data and what accommodations they make for non-deliverable addresses. If you want more I’ve included the links to a couple of credible resources below. Hope this helps.

I will grant that the example I provided is fictional, but it is most certainly not extreme. Go through the discussions and you’ll find any number of questions and answers that are commercials. But LinkedIn is by no means the only site that suffers from sledgehammer marketing. Blogs – posts and comments – are not immune, nor are Twitter and facebook for that matter.

Provide help with information the individual can use to solve their issue. It is a way of promoting yourself, without selling yourself. Over time, as your credibility grows, you will find a growing number of people who follow you, listen to you, and offer your name to others a resource that can be trusted.

A social media strikeout

In earlier posts I ranted against theabuse of LinkedIn by people pushing products and services and the proliferation of top 10 lists on blogs. So today I’m looking through some LinkedIn discussions and came across this beauty:

Top 10 Reasons for going with (product name removed) Content Management System

As you sift through the marketing hyperbole trying to decide which CMS suits your needs best, the main question still exists; “Why should I purchase one CMS over another?” This Insight will give you ten core reasons on what makes (product name removed) CMS different than the other vendor’s products.

An Insight into what makes (product name removed) CMS stand out… Here is the link – (not gonna give you the link ‘cause I don’t want to give them any publicity)

I haven’t even clicked on the link and this abomination already had two strikes against it. Being the curious sort, I moused over and clicked on the tiny url. And what did I find but three tiny fields: First Name, Last Name and Email.

Strike three! You’re out!