CopyDiva

I returned last night from the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. It was cool to have a co-locate with The NewComm Forum (#sncr), which made it really easy to connect with some of those folks who wouldn’t have attended IMS. I especially enjoyed my all-women dinner with KD Payne, Jen McClure, Susanne Rockwell and Mihaela Vorvoreanu.

There were definitely a few nuggets I pulled from the conference. David Meerman Scott made a powerful opening by showing just how dead the traditional print media is for business research. And, Tim Ferriss broke the “everyone should have a blog and a Twitter account!” rule with the true but relatively no-brainer comment that if it doesn’t drive sales (for most companies) there’s no point. Now that I’m working to help the small business market, that rings very true to me.

Here’s what I thought worked well:

• Format: Initially, I thought the short (sub-60 min) format was weird, but as the day went on, I appreciated it alot. Having a new subject, format and presenters every 30 to 40 minutes meant you really couldn’t space out and nod off. The flip side to this was that its hard to get depth in that amount of time.
• Format variety: No hour-long lectures here. There were single presenters, two-person riffs, panels, etc. Again, that format switch up kept you engaged. Also, if you did get up to make a call or put out a fire at work, you didn’t have to wait too long for a new presentation. At Kutenda, we’re going to incorporate this model into our training programs.
• Pacing: Kudos to Justin Levy for keeping everyone stay within their time limit and cueing up the next session immediately. The good thing about a short format too is even if there is an unprepared or boring speaker, they are gone before you nod off.

I believe the short format made it so that people didn’t have a lot of questions, because there wasn’t time to formulate any.

Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and here are the ways I think IMS can improve:

• Ban devices from speakers and panelists: I am not going to name names, but I think its rude — both to other panelists and the audience - to check your iPhone or other device while you’re in front of a crowd. I mean, if you are that busy, then perhaps you should leave the space open for another expert. Show us how smart you really are by paying attentionand being respectful to the real world around you. NOTE: This wasn’t a common occurrance, but happened enough to be irritating. Just ban it. Problem solved.
• Gender balance: With the hundreds of applications for speakers, surely there could have been more gender balance of presenters. I know that the tech start-up world is filled with (mostly white) men, but really, if you want to be a leader in the field, show some leadership by finding those smart women who have something to share. If they don’t apply, seek them out. Get out of the clubhouse, boys. NewComm Forum did a better job of the balance piece — maybe ask Jen McClure how she does it.
• Tactical: It might really help give context to new media beginners to get a start to launch look of social media initiatives. How did the strategy get formulated? Where did that lead tactically? What did you fail at? Where did you succeed?

I’ve been hearing lately some weird restrictions placed on people tweeting. Kind of defeats the whole purpose, eh?: Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Tweet - Advertising Age.

I wasn’t too excited about Skittles site change to a Twitter feed, but I think perhaps its getting a little interesting now that they are moving around the social web. I was reading Gord Hotchkiss’ take on it, and I have to say I think he nails the rules that brands ought to consider when taking the route of Skittles. To quote here (since MediaPost has so many barriers to entry for their blogs):

1.    Thou Shalt Not Expect Everyone to Believe. As was shown in the Skittles case, if you choose to live by the Social Media Sword, understand you can also die by the Social Media Sword. Opening up the conversation to your believers also means you open the doors to the non-faithful, who will take every opportunity to express themselves.

2.    Thou Shalt Not Build Your Own Churches. Believers like to build their own churches and not have the brand build it for them. This is almost never successful. Skittles is trying to find middle ground by using their site as a shortcut to a few online destinations that help define the online image of Skittles. It’s an interesting move, but I believe it will ultimately be a short-lived one. For one thing, it’s confusing as hell.

3.    Thou Shalt Have No Illusions of Control. If a brand goes down this path, they have to accept (everyone, repeat after me — and that means you, Mr/Ms CEO) that by opening the door to the masses, they abdicate all control. If Skittles.com turns sour, all Skittles can do is pull the plug on their official endorsement. The buzz will outlive the campaign and take on a life of its own.

4.    Thou Shalt Understand the Web is a Fragmented Place. What is interesting about the Skittles experiment is that it’s a tentative acknowledgement that the sum total of a brand lives in many places online. The idea of defining the boundary within one Web site is long dead.

5.    Thou Shalt Honor Thy Product. You have to have a pretty damn popular product to take this step. There’s probably nothing more innocuous than Skittles (who could hate a little fruit candy?) and yet some still managed to spout bile all over this little social media stunt. The more beloved the product (and the company behind it), the more secure you can be in letting your fans be your spokesperson.

6.    Thou Shalt Accept What One is Given. If your brand builds a devout following, your customers will take it upon themselves to generously share more than you ever expected about what the brand is, what it isn’t and what it should be. You have opened up more than a dialogue; you have embarked on a weird and wonderful partnership with your customers. Embrace this or lose it. Consider the story of Timberland, who had no idea that they’d become the chosen footwear of hip-hop. At first they disbelieved it, then they ignored it, then they fought it — and finally, they embraced it. Today, you can customize your Timberlands in pink and purple with your own monogrammed tag and customized embroidery: a fully pimped pump.

7.    Thou Shalt Know Thy Flock. If you’re going to intersect your faithful where they live, you have to know something about them. David wondered if Twitter was really the best social media choice for the Skittles target market. If your brand has already established online places of worship, spend some time in stealth mode and get the lay of the land before you go public.

8.    Thou Shalt Listen. Online gives you thousands of listening posts to get the pulse of your brand. One example I saw this week: the iPhone app Dial Zero. It’s a nifty little assistant that gives you tips to avoid the dreaded voicemail dead zones for over 600 companies. A quick look up and you have tips to connect with an actual live person. But what’s even more interesting is that it shows real-time comments from people who’ve recently called.

9.    Thou Shalt Live Up to Your Flock’s Beliefs. With devotion comes responsibility. In return for their brand loyalty, they will hold you to a higher standard. They have emotionally invested in your brand, so if you disappoint them, it will leave a bigger scar than just a passing frustration. Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.

10.    Thou Shalt Count Thy Blessings Every Day. Brand evangelism. Brand loyalty. The willingness to pay a premium. An unwavering devotion untouched by the millions in advertising spent by your competitors. A much lower cost of acquisition. And millions of pages of customer-generated content. All brands should be so lucky.

The question I have is, if more brands do it, when do we reach the critical mass of boredom from the social nets? When do people get tired of this next round of gimmicks? To me, it seems like the cycles for that get shorter and shorter, forcing faster creative cycles and perhaps not well thought out executions. We’ll see.

Here it is in full: MediaPost Publications Brand Religion: A Reading From The Book Of Skittles 03/05/2009.

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I am no Dooce, nor even a Chris Brogan, so I am not exactly Internet famous. However, even for those of us who are not part of the digerati (digirati?), the social media realms can have some weird after effects in the real world. Last night I went to Startup Drinks here in Boulder, one in any number of similar events that seem to happen weekly, if not daily here (who goes to all these drinking fests?).

Frankly, I usually know more people, but this must have been a slightly different crowd. As I stood around speaking with the few I did know, a complete stranger walked up to me. “CopyDiva, how are you?” Turns out this was a person who follows me on Twitter and somehow recognized me from my photo. I felt like maybe I was one of those people you sometimes see who have left a conference but still have their name tags on.

Did I have a name tag on?

No, not in the real sense, but in the Internet sense, yes. When you’re out in social media folks, remember you never take your name tag off. So don’t get too taken off guard when you’re in an unfamiliar place and someone walks up to you like they already know you. Because they just might.

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Last month ( I know, I’m behind), the Mile High SMC had our monthly meeting at Maggiano’s in Denver (thanks to them for the great free snacks and appetizers). The presentation on SEO and Social Media was pulled together by Jim Brown from Quark and Monica Valdez, now with New Frontier Media.

To a packed house, Monica and Jim, both search marketers, outlined how they are using social media to boost the return on their search engine marketing investments. Monica focused on the key points of having a strategic approach, not only researching your keywords well but really focusing the tactical social media aspects based on priorities, resources (will people really spend time updating) and getting a direct boost to a campaign.

Jim showed examples from his current work at Quark, where he is the only “official” social media guy. One point he made that resonated with me was the idea of owning a search page - basically, if your results are the majority on the 1st page of a search result, then you own the page. He’s using social media to help him own very targetted keyword pages for Quark. Jim ignited some controversy when he talked about deleting negative comments from the Quark Facebook Page. His perspective was that overly negative comments along the lines of “Quark sucks” didn’t really warrant retention. I think I could agree with this, but it gets into a slippery slope as to what’s really negative, and what’s feedback or criticism. You decide.

If you want to download a copy of their presentation, here’s a direct link: SEO & Social Media

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William Ayers when he was young, idealistic & dangerous

If you were even remotely paying attention to the mud-slinging prior to the election, there’s no way you missed the Bill Ayers controversy - you know, the one that Sarah Palin latched on to to say that Obama was hanging around with terrorists. I have a lot to say about that, but I won’t. Instead, I point you to an Op-Ed piece written by Bill Ayers in Saturday’s NYTimes to illustrate an amazing display of restraint in these “pay attention to me” times.

There’s alot of conversation about responding quickly to negative posts online, particularly ones that have to do with personal or brand reputation (see the Motrin Moms controversy - anyone remember that?). The Bill Ayers story offers an opposing viewpoint. It posits that sometimes, the right decision is no response - avoiding the spotlight, take no calls from the media, make no comments on a blog. Total silence.

Instead of jumping into the fray, he let his personal reputation be battered, knowing that anything he said would be twisted and perhaps create worse problems for the Obama campaign. He stuck with this decision even though he received death threats. Even though it was probably very upsetting to read, hear and watch what was being said about him. He waited until after the election was over:

“With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.”

Whether you agree with Bill Ayers or not, his decision, and the Op-Ed, show a grace and media skill not easily come by. He stated his ideals, apologized for indiscretions, and explained what he did (with the hindsight of more than 35 years as reflection). He defended his reputation now, when frankly, no one is paying attention. And he used one small paragraph to explain his limited association with President-elect Obama- plainly and simply.

In today’s wonder of instant media (and instant access to many viewpoints), it takes great courage to leave open the door of controversy and let vitriol die its own death. How would things have turned out if he had jumped in? What would have been the impact on the Obama campaign? Would Bill Ayers have opened himself up to an escalation of death threats?

What do you think? Would it have been better for him to speak out during the campaign?

Last night’s Mile High Social Media Club at The Whisky Bar in Denver was quite a happening. It’s great to see repeat attendees, plus many new ones as well. And, to top it off, the panel was terrific too.

Bryan Person did a great job of moderating the conversation about community. The focus of the evening was understanding community from the perspective of a community manager of a public community (not a private branded community). TIm Poindexter, from Disaboom, and Tiffany Childs from Denver’s Yelp community gave some interesting perspectives on:

• growing a young community and making it vibrant and engaging enough for members and others to want to participate
• managing a member who is trying to hijack a discussion
• dealing with people who violate the terms of service
• how companies can stay authentic within these communities (by being honest about who you are, good advice for anyone in a community)

It’s always interesting to hear what questions people have. Being as there were many PR people in the crowd, they got a number of questions about how to handle bad reviews (on Yelp), how to pitch story ideas to community bloggers and the community managers, and how to sponsor or advertise in the community without offending the members.

Thanks to the people at Flock for the T-shirts we were able to give to each of our speakers.

Our December event is in the process of being finalized, and is expected to be a breakfast in Broomfield, possible at Sun Microsystem’s offices at Interlocken - close enough to Boulder for those of you who find driving all the way to Denver just too much.

Stay tuned for details within the next week.

Image via Wikipedia

I, as well as some other folks, have been thinking alot lately about influencer lists. Top 50 this, most influential that, etc. Are they a sham, do they have some value, what is the constant fascination and desire to be on one of these lists?

Then, yesterday, Pepsi sent out promo kits to 25 “influential” personalities in the social media space, to drum up discussion of Pepsi’s new logos. Now, certainly, there aren’t Pepsi influencers in social media. And, there’s no saying that Charlene Li, Chris Brogan, Peter Shankman and others have any interest in, or even drink Pepsi. In fact, I’d reason that perhaps one of the reasons these folks received these packages has to do with their personal/professional relationship with Pepsi’s new global social media strategist, my friend Bonin Bough. Or, their relationship with Steve Rubel, who’s PR firm does work with Pepsi.

So, does influence matter here, or really, is this more about personal connection? And, other than the blip from blog posts, flickr pix and tweets from yesterday, what will Pepsi gain from the experience? They’ve got 100+ subscribers to their pepsi cooler Friendfeed group. What’s that doing for them? Is the goal good will, warm fuzzies from the online community?

Thinking about this reminds me of when I went to pitch a measurement account to Crispin, Porter & Bogusky. Talking about influencer marketing when you’re pitching people who hawk french fries is, well, just a bit silly. There are no french fry influencers. The only people who might regularly talk about Burger King french fries are the food pundits, and they are not saying nice things about those french fries. So, trying to influence them as a way to sell more french fries isn’t a good strategy.

Pepsi has a deep challenge — like other mass market producers and big brands — how can they be highly targeted in social media, which is all about building connections, when they pitch a product with mass appeal? We’ve heard about many of the experiments that larger brands are making in social media, many of them failures or showing few tangible results. Smaller companies seem to do better, at least anecdotally, because they don’t have the scalability problem of big brands.

Maybe Pepsi will figure out the magic bullet in all this for the rest of the big brand marketers. Then again, maybe its just a cool experiment.

Mass market companies will continue to be challenged by the social media need (desire? opportunity?) to go small scale and targeted. It’s not a model they understand or are comfortable with.

Here’s an article I wrote for Energy Central’s Marketing Muse publication - a broad brushstroke on social media marketing:

The Social Media Bandwagon: Jump on board using your marketing sense

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’re hearing the drumbeat of social media marching it’s way over and threatening to overwhelm you with new technology, too much information and the grand prophecy of solving all your marketing and communications problems. With so much swirling around, it’s really difficult to make sense of it. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, blogging, social networks and on and on. What can these really do for you in marketing? Will they solve your marketing problems, or will they just consume more time and resources?

The answer can most definitely be a “yes” to all of the above, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The biggest problem for businesses right now is understanding how to derive value from social media. Fortunately there are many potential opportunities to gain value, from product development to internal communications as well as customer support and marketing. But, where do you start? Here are some typical questions I get:

• What tactics work best for the energy industry?
• I get how it works for B2C companies, but how can you implement in B2B companies?
• How can I make any time to participate?
• Nobody talks about (your product or industry here) online, so what’s the point?
• How can I sell my boss on moving some of our budget away from traditional channels and into social media?

Talking tactics

Let me put this out there first: Social media are very new and new forms appear frequently, so at this point, there are not tried-and-true tactics to use in the energy industry, or any other industry. Certainly, companies like Burger King have had one-off wildly successful viral campaigns — like Subservient Chicken — but, as more people delve into social media, there will be fewer of those wild successes and many more smaller ones. Just like in the early days of the World Wide Web, companies are in there experimenting, having successes and failures. But, there are ways to narrow your scope. The best way to do that is to understand how social media changes the distribution of media.

The changing media landscape
The advent of online media — websites, online newspapers, etc. — definitely expanded the way people consume information. But social media has radically changed it. Now, anyone and everyone is free to create content and share it. And, with so many places to find information, anyone with any small niche they care about is likely to find other people online who care about those same things. What this means is that instead of being able to reach a mass audience — or even an audience in a trade publication or a local newspaper — you’ve got to find smaller audiences to go after. It also means that you are no longer in control of the message or the brand. Whether or not you decide to experiment in social media, that fact remains. Customers, partners, vendors, reporters, bloggers, analysts — they are framing your message.
With all that in mind, here is a framework to think about taking steps into social media.

Listen: It’s difficult to know where to even start participating if you don’t know where the conversations are or what they are about. A simple, rudimentary way to start that is to do a Google Blog Search to find some blogs that are talking about topics related to your company and/or your industry. Just plug in some keywords that you’re interested in. Another place to find blogs is within an industry portal, like Energy Central. Many will have blogs themselves and may also link out to other blogs related to your industry. You can do similar searches by topic in other social media as well, including YouTube and Twitter. There are also sophisticated tools you can subscribe to that help you to understand and measure the activity about you and your competitors. This is crucial if you plan on creating a social media strategy or are interested in integrating social media into your other marketing or customer service strategies.

Discover: When you start listening, you discover what the conversations are about. How do people really feel about your company, your industry? What are they saying about you? Who’s active in the conversation? Where is it happening? Is your competition taking part? What about industry experts or analysts? Social media conversations are like being in a conversation at your book club or a party — they are more candid then you’ll ever get from a focus group, survey or research project. Pay attention to what people are saying - you might get ideas for new products or services, or find out about a customer service problem you’re having.
Make connections: Find a post that’s interesting? Comment about it. Thank the writer for the ideas or thoughts. Why would you do this? It’s really just a way of making connections — almost like a handshake through the Internet, a way to build trust, create awareness.

Share: Once you feel more comfortable simply connecting, now it’s your turn to participate. Experiment with asking and answering Expert requests on LinkedIn. Share an article you enjoyed on Facebook or another social network. That back-and-forth interaction is crucial in social media, because others will come to know you by understanding more about you. This level of trust builds as you expand your network through sharing.

Personally experimenting with social media is a good way to get your feet wet and understand the dynamics of these tools, but it may not offer you enough to make decisions about an approach to marketing. The best thing to remember about social media is that all of these technologies and platforms are really just tools you can use in your marketing toolbox. Figuring out the best ways to use them — and which ones make sense for your company — takes a strategic approach.

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I was inspired today to write about social media advertising today after reading two other posts. One tweeted by Peter Kim, commenting that a 7% click through rate for an online ad is really 93% waste for the company that buys it.  The other, from the content and blogger perspective, by Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim. Andy touches on the fact that pricing for display ads sold through ad networks (and, this is typically how bloggers get ad revenue) have dropped again, to below $0.30 on average.

For advertisers, the drop in pricing is certainly good news, because that means they get more ads from their ad budget. Is it really worth the spend though?

The drop in rates can certainly be blamed on the bad economic news, and you bet that lots of folks will blame it on that. But, from the ad networks folks that I’ve talked to, companies have big expectations for click-throughs that are never realized. Click-throughs rates are tiny, and there’s evidence that people who click through are not your target audience anyway. Plus, we know there’s plenty of evidence that people ignore display ads, meaning they don’t even look at them. Behavioral targeting technology just isn’t perfect either and since people ignore ads, is there really a point in better targeting for more ads that people will just ignore?

Then there’s the issue of the click-through being only the last touchpoint, and the only one that gets measured. True, but eyetracking studies for display ads show (sorry to be redundant) that people don’t look at display ads on the web except in search mode. This is why PPC does work.

When will we all just get sick of the entire idea of social media advertising?