Archives for December 2010

You’re sitting at your computer staring at Twitter, and you’re thinking, “Hmm. I can count the responses on my @ page with half a hand. I don’t even need all five of my fingers for this.” You’re trying to figure out what the problem is. You’ve read everything out there about how to tweet. You’re keeping your tweets to 120 characters so that there’s room for people to retweet you. You’re posting links to interesting articles. You’re trying to talk to people. But it just doesn’t seem to be working. So you decide that it must be your persona, or your user handle, or some combination of the two, that’s holding you back. You’re going to start again, and this time you’ll keep a certain tonality through all of your tweets. You’ll update your avatar to really seal the deal!

You, my friend, are on the way to a serious ailment called Social Media Multiple Personality Disorder, or SMMPD.

I’m not just blogging about SMMPD, I’m also a survivor

You are not alone in heroically fighting this acronym of an ailment. I’ve had about as bad a case as doctors have ever seen. Over the last year, I’ve had:

4 different Twitter handles

3 different blog sites & URLs

2 different Facebook accounts

And I’m not even going to talk about my partridge in a pear tree.

This is serious, folks.

Now the nice thing about SMMPD is that it is a very preventable burden. You just need to put in a little time.

Start before you start

Do you remember the big 80s anti-drug war call, “Stop before you start?” If you’re too young to remember that, please don’t tell me. Anyway, to avoid Social Media Multiple Personality Disorder, you actually need to start before you start.

Start what, you might well ask, as well you should.

You need to start thinking about what exactly you’re going to be doing. You need to have a game plan. You need to have some X’s and O’s laid out.

I know, this can be a real buzz kill. You’re ready to jump on the Twitter and blogging bandwagon, right? But hey, look what happened to me. Do you want to admit, one year from now, that you went through 4 different Twitter handles? I would think not.

So, let’s talk about things you can plan in advance. These are things I really wish I would have thought about at least a little bit before signing into Twitter hastily during a lunch break (true story).

What are you hoping to achieve? When I started that first Twitter account, I had the very loosy goosy, not 100% honest objective of “seeing what Twitter was about so that we could discuss it with our clients.” That was part of my goal, but that’s not really something to shoot for. As a result, my tweets were scattered, not very personal, and probably were kind of boring. My blog? I had less of a plan for that. What do you really want out of Twitter? Or if you’re tweeting for business, maybe the better question to ask is what actually need from Twitter. What do you want your blog to do for you? Don’t say, “Oh, I just want to write.” Really think about it.

How are you going to achieve those goals? Your goals will create a path for you, but you can still decide how you want to travel on that path. Some people just walk on the path – their tweets might be straight-laced for the most part, very professional, very business-oriented, perhaps. Other people might run – they want to reach their objectives as quickly as possible. Still others might choose to skip or hop on foot. How are you going to travel on the path you’ve set for yourself?

Who are you? This probably seems like either a really deep and existential question or a really simple question. Either way you slice it, you need to know how you want other people to be able to answer this question. It doesn’t really matter how you answer it, right? You already know you. You already know your company. If you ask someone a year from now, “Based on my tweets or on my blog, who do you think I am? What kind of person am I?” what kind of answer do you want to get?

This is just the beginning of what you need to start on before you actually start tweeting or blogging. Now, don’t panic if you’ve already started tweeting and blogging. Take a step back, invest in some time to answer these questions, and then see if you want to stay on the path you’re on or if you want to move on over to another one. Changing once is “finding yourself.” Changing as much as I did is when you need to see your Social Media physician.

What I did wrong

So how did I end up with SMMPD?

Simple. I didn’t start before I started the first time, the second time, or the third time. I jumped from one idea to another without really thinking about the ramifications. I didn’t have a compass. I didn’t even have a destination. I was just loafing about, hoping that something I would say would magically become viral. Viral in a good way, not in an “Ew” kind of way. Guess what? It didn’t work.

Now let’s talk about you

Are you worried that you might be showing signs of SMMPD? Are you feeling that itch to change your name or move your blog or create a whole new online persona for yourself? Before you jump into something new, let’s talk about it. Why are you feeling the need to change? Have you thought about ways to achieve your goals based on where you are now?

Talk to me. Let’s prevent SMMPD.

Image by Benjamin Earwicker. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/bjearwicke

Well, do ya? Punk?

Maybe you’re saying to yourself, “Man, my Google Analytics graph looks like it’s trying to dig a hole to China. Maybe I should give up.”

Maybe you’re saying to yourself, “I’m just tired of tweeting as if I’m alone in the universe. It’s so depressing. I don’t get it. This isn’t worth my time.”

Maybe you’re wondering if this whole Social Media experience is just a reflection of how dumb you are, or how inept you are, or how unattractive you are as a person. After all, look at all of those successful people. It all seems to be effortless for them.

Yep, you need a slap in the face. Are you ready for it? Lean in, a little closer. OK, here it comes.

We. Have. All. Been. There.

Here are a few things I can tell you.

The people for whom it all looks effortless – they’re like ducks. They might look nice and serene floating around on the pond, but their legs are paddling madly under the water. And guess what? This’ll really knock you silly. The more effortless it looks, the more effort it takes.

Social Media is maddening. It’s maddening because it’s all about people, and people are unpredictable, weird, silly, aggravating, and all kinds of other things. Nobody can really predict what an entire population will do about anything. Do you think you’re the only one who gets mad amounts of traffic for posts that you think are your worst? No way. Not by a long shot.

It all takes so much more time than you think it will. I know, you came into this thinking that it would be a matter of minutes a day. Maybe an hour. It’s not. It’s hours, and the hours pile up into days, the days into weeks, and so on. And sometimes, like maybe right now, you just aren’t sure if it’s all worth it.

It’s worth it. You’re worth it. So now what?

Let’s figure this out together.

We’re going to figure out this game. Over the next several months, we’re going to talk about Twitter and how you can defy the overwhelming chorus of crickets that greets you. We’re going to talk about your blog and why no one seems to care about what you’re saying. We’re going to analyze how you can build your blog into your Twitter account and how you can bring your Twitter crowd to your blog. We’re going to look at what you’re doing and see what’s working and what’s not.

This is not going to just be me babbling at you via my blog posts, so don’t think you’re going to get off easy. I need to learn a lot too. Maybe you have that darned corner piece of the puzzle that I’ve been looking for. Maybe you have that “Q” that will work really well with the “U” I’ve had since we started the game.

No more Debbie Downer or Dirk von Depressing

We’re going to work together as a team, and we’re going to strengthen each other as we go. But do you know what will be our kryptonite?

Those thoughts I threw out at the top of this post.

It’s entirely possible that you are not yet as successful as Darren Rouse. It could be, and I don’t want to shock you here, that you haven’t made a fortune on Facebook yet.

So what?

It ain’t over till it’s over, and we’re far from that point, now aren’t we?

I’m looking forward to embarking on this journey with you. I hope you are looking forward to embarking on this journey with me.

You are ready, aren’t ya? Punk?

What is the essence of good customer service? It seems like it should be an easy question to answer, doesn’t it? But when you try to pin down exactly what defines good customer service, it becomes slippery.

Of course, defining bad customer service is really easy. Long hold times. Poor product quality or poor support. The stories of companies who do it wrong are numerous.

Who does it right?

As you think about this issue, take a look at this amazing post by Fred McClimans analyzing the qualities of leadership that good customer service requires. Who embodies those characteristics? Who is our role model?

Image by Rob Owen-Wah. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/lockstockb

Last Monday, the topic of #mmchat was Best Buy’s TwelpForce, and we got to hear directly from John Bernier.

Check out this great summary of the conversation by Joseph Ruiz, including emphasis on how Twelpforce succeeded in part because of an integrated approach – not just integrating the company’s efforts but creating something that was of and for the customer.

What other companies are succeeding in the use of integration? So often we hear that “nobody gets it.” Clearly Best Buy does. Are they the only ones? Tell me about your examples!

Do you remember those V8 commercials? Someone orders chicken instead of say, a carrot, and they get bonked in the head?

I just got bonked in the head, but it has nothing to do with juice. I got bonked in the head by tonight’s episode of 60 Minutes.

Tonight, there were two figures featured. One was Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve, talking about what has been going on with the US economy and the world economy since the Fall of 2008. The second figure was Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. Guess who got top billing.

Sure the unemployment rate is up to 9.8%, but check out Facebook’s Facelift!

I predict that tomorrow, Twitter and the blogosphere will be jam-packed with analysis of the “new” Facebook. There will be posts saying how the new features will help business. There will be posts talking about the privacy concerns. There will be posts talking about how the first two groups are completely stupid and inane boggling idiots.

I’ll admit, I sat down to watch 60 Minutes so that I could at least make an educated contribution to all sides of the issues.

However, I sat down to watch the show from the beginning, which means that I saw Ben Bernanke talking about the current state of the economy. I watched him talk about the fact that we can’t really go into a double-dip recession because key indicators like housing are still so low they can’t really sink enough to hurt us.

I watched him talk about how this is the worst “recovery” maybe ever in the history of the US.

I watched him talk about how families are still feeling really insecure. I watched him talk about how companies are worried about near deflation-like prices, which means more people could see their wages cut or their jobs lost.

Somehow, Facebook just didn’t seem all that interesting anymore.

This is not a new state of affairs

As a marketer, I have been cognizant of the fact that the economy, worldwide, took a major dump in the Fall of 2008. It’s hard to find companies who have not been affected. It’s hard to find people who have not been affected.

But we’re not talking about this.

Marketers, since 2008, have concentrated full throttle on new technology, new media, new opportunities, and things that are dying (print, advertising, marketing itself, computers, the internet…Paul McCartney if you say Facebook backwards).

Is that what our clients and our audiences need from us right now? Not to be obtuse, but is a case study about Twitter usage from 2007 going to help a company that’s on the verge of declaring bankruptcy?

Well, what can we do about it?

I’m not saying that marketers can solve all of the world’s ills. The woes that companies are facing are not necessarily tied to grave marketing concerns. And yes, the times are tough for marketers too. Competition keeps getting tighter. The times keep changing faster. I get all of that. Truly. It’s my life too.

But I think we  need to readjust our priorities a bit. How can this marketing advice help a sinking company swim? How can this technology make a difference for a company during these tough times?

I don’t see a whole lot of that out there. There isn’t a whole lot of recognition in this marketing community that the last almost 4 years (because things started going downhill in 2007) have been beyond tough for all of the people, all of the companies that we’re talking to.

So, I’ll read all of the posts and tweets and articles tomorrow about the new Facebook, how Mark wasn’t wearing a hoodie this time, and how he didn’t seem particularly sweaty. But it’ll be Ben Bernanke’s words ringing in my ears. We’re at a point where deflation isn’t unimaginable. We’re at a 9.8% unemployment rate in this nation. The rift between rich and poor in the US is the largest rift amongst all industrial countries.

How can we talk to that world?

What do you think?

Image by jacquet karine. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/chtroumfet