Archives for December 2010

Do you remember the movie The Usual Suspects? It came out back in the mid-90s. It was the first “surprise ending” movie that I really really liked. I wasn’t quite ready for The Crying Game back then.

If you still haven’t seen it, let me summarize the non-spoilery parts for you. A handful of men, “the usual suspects,” are arrested for a crime that none of them committed. They decide they’re all going to get revenge, but in the process of forging this alliance, they come to realize that really, they were all gathered together by a massively powerful man who goes by the name Keyser Söze. They have all wronged him in some way, and their payment to him is essentially to carry out a suicide mission that will knock out his enemies. What four of the men don’t realize is that the Keyser is actually one of them.

The interesting thing about Keyser Söze is that he is able to create a network of very different people to carry out the actions of his empire. He is constantly using other peoples’ personality traits (flaws and good points) to his advantage, and people seldom realize that they are serving this purpose for him.

The five main characters of the story (I won’t tell you which one is the Keyser) can be compared to five different kinds of bloggers. I’m going to share with you how you could blog like Keyser Söze and incorporate these other kinds of bloggers into your team.

Verbal: Verbal is a meek guy, somewhat handicapped by cerebral palsy. His skill is that he aligns himself with whomever he perceives to be in control of the situation, because he doesn’t think he is capable of controlling things himself. As a  blogger, the Verbals of Social Media will align themselves loyally with you if you make them feel like they can contribute something without shouldering the weight. If you show that you are a good resource and can offer guidance, you will be able to win the loyalty of these kinds of bloggers, and they will go out and help you promote your work.

Dean Keaton: Dean, in the movie, is dating a class-A lawyer and is trying to get a major international business going, but he used to be a very high-stakes player in the criminal world. He insists throughout the movie that he is done with the game, but of course he can’t really stay away, especially when he is offered wealth beyond his imagination, along with a little control. Getting the Mr. Keatons on your team as a blogger can be done by offering them guest posts or promoting their posts. They may say, on occasion, that Social Media is a dirty stinking world, but they keep coming back for a little more glory, and they like to be told that they are invaluable. If you feed the ego of these folks a bit, they will work for you.

McManus: McManus is the person in the movie who you can really believe is a criminal. He’s easily angered and finds it very easy to pull out his gun and kill people. He’s wild and doesn’t like to plan much, and he likes to stir the boiling pot. In the blogosphere, the McManus folks are the ones who like to post blogs that attack other people or who raise extremely controversial questions with their blogs. They can be hard to get under your wing, but if you let them know that you’re on their team, they’ll be loyal to you. Sometimes the best way to do this is just to mention their blog posts in your own when you are citing 2 opposing views. Give their position a nod. Show them that you read and understood what they were trying to say.

Fenster: Fenster is played by the barely recognizable Benicio del Toro, and he is McManus’s long-time partner. He is the comedy relief in what is otherwise a pretty dark film. He is loyal to McManus and not really to anyone else. He doesn’t really take anything too seriously but he likes money a lot. The Fensters of the blogosphere may not blog a lot about really serious subjects, but they may also get a huge following because they seem accessible. If you can build a partnership with these bloggers, you can benefit from their pull in the Social Media world.

Hockney: The final member of the Usual Suspects clan is Hockney. Hockney’s crime of choice is to hijack trucks that are carrying valuable materials. There are a lot of Social Media Hockneys out there. They want to hijack your blog by making snarly comments, maybe. Perhaps they want to hijack something else that they perceive is a valuable advantage for you. To get a Hockney on your team, you need to make them think that you are giving them your “secret sauce.” Give them a small secret and let them think it’s the key to the castle. Maybe you do a post about how you approach your own blog. Maybe you comment on their blog posts too, building them up when you think they have something good to say. Make them think that they have already hijacked you so that they aren’t looking for anything else. Always keep your eyes on them, but let them talk about your blog posts for you. Let them mention the comments you make on their posts. It’s all part of your evil plan.

Of course, finding ways to incorporate different kinds of people into your own community is not evil, whereas the Keyser, well, he’s a real mean piece of work.

What other kinds of personalities do you see out there? How can you help them and also inspire them to help you? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Being in the world of B2B, and being in an agency, and being in an agency that handles advertising, among other things, I’ve become pretty accustomed, over the last couple of years, to hearing about how various things are dead.

Today is #b2bchat day, and I thought I would honor my fellow B2Bers with a post about how things maybe aren’t dead. Positivity? Well, consider yourself warned.

One thing that always seems to be counted out of the fight is advertising, even despite the success of Mad Men. Perhaps Mad Men will seem less nostalgic and more in the now after you read this article from BtoBonline.com called Ad Spending Grows as Economy Recovers, by Kate Maddox. Put those coffins away!

When Facebook announced its new messaging system a couple of weeks ago, I found it kind of eerie how Mark Zuzkerberg specifically said that he was not gunning for email marketing. I tweeted to Christopher Penn, VP of Strategy & Innovation at Blue Sky Factory, an email company, and asked him what he thought of all of this. Shortly thereafter, he wrote a post called “It’s Dead, Isn’t it?” I think it says all that needs to be said about death warrants for any industry.

Is customer service dead? Is PR dead? Healther Whaling (@PRTini) suggests that maybe both are alive and they are working together! Give her post, called “Can you measure the ROI of Customer Service,” a read. I hope you find it as interesting as I did!

Back in September, when Google Instant launched, everyone was saying that SEO was probably dead. Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media was not pleased with this death sentence. Not surprisingly (if you read Lisa’s posts), she verbalized this sentiment.

And by the way…I hope that posts about things being dead will be dead in 2011 🙂

What else have you seen diagnosed as being dead or mortally wounded that really wasn’t? What else is making a comeback? Share your thoughts here!

About a year ago, I decided that I would do the unthinkable – I would buy myself a pretty expensive…toy. Yes, I bought myself a Wii. The main reason, truthfully, that I wanted a Wii is that I had heard of Wii Fit and EA Sports Active. I hate going to gyms, and while I love doing Yoga, it isn’t cardio enough. So essentially, I bought my Wii instead of a treadmill or something like that.

There’s one thing you learn about the Wii eventually. The sensors mainly care about the position of your controller or your nunchuk. This is particularly evident when you are doing arm exercises. If you point your controller up like you’re supposed to, the game will count it as a shoulder press, whether or not you have a resistance band wrapped around your fingers.

If you wanted to, you could probably figure out a way to do the whole work-out without doing anything except moving the controllers the way the game expects you to. The game would pay you accolades. You would be told that you had accomplished your goals. You just wouldn’t have really accomplished anything meaningful.

In Social Media, the same logic holds true. There are certain things that you can do that will get you attention or more followers or whatever you are striving for. If you attack an influential person, for example, you are likely to get his or her attention and lots and lots of blog traffic. If you auto-follow everyone who follows you, you will likely grow your own follower numbers pretty quickly. If you promote yourself 24/7, you will likely gain a high quality reputation.

People expect you to do certain things in this game, and if you appear to be doing those things, you will be told that you have accomplished your goals.

Have you really worked out, though, if you don’t hold the resistance band in your hands while you stretch? Are you really accomplishing Social Media greatness if all you do is play the game and go through the motions?

I like to do the actual exercises. Sometimes I don’t hold the controllers quite right because I am concentrating on the actual exercise, not just what the sensors will pick up. Sometimes I work up a sweat and I get kind of sore. I like it that way.

How about you?

The world of Social Media is filled with pretty words.

There are people who will tell you exactly what you want to hear.

There are people who will tell you exactly what they want you to hear so that you do something for them.

Pretty words can be mesmerizing.

Me? I’m an action figure.

About a month ago, Beth Harte wrote a post called about market segmentation, how marketers have used it in the past, and how Social Media is changing the game. Essentially, Beth points out that Social Media allows us the opportunity to do what we’ve never been able to do before – understand how our customers are talking and acting in their “native environments.” Sometimes, what we hear and learn isn’t so good. Other times, it’s fantastic. The danger is that a lot of people and companies are depending on Social Media alone now instead of integrating what is learned into other channels and segments of the company.

Wednesday is Integrated Marketing and Communications day for me, and I join Beth Harte and many other great people for #IMCChat at 8 PM EST every week. So this week, I thought I would examine ways that companies are integrating Social Media into other marketing channels or facets of the company – via these posts.

Cheryl Burgess wrote a fantastic post about Crisis Management a couple of weeks ago. This neatly defines the issue that a lot of companies are facing right now in terms of their marketing and their branding. As Cheryl points out, Social Media crises must be integrated into the overall crisis management plan.

This marvelous post by my friend Barry Dalton, titled Things aren’t always as they appear, analyzes how Social Media can work together with many other departments and channels to round out a customer service experience. What you learn about your customers from Social Media can affect how you train, how you finance, and many other factors.

In March of this year, Scott Monty, head of marketing for Ford, blogged about how Social Media plus email is more power. Integrating email marketing with Social Media has been a hot topic this year. Next week I’ll focus just on that subject alone, in fact! In Scott Monty’s case, he simply notes that integrating email with Social Media allows companies to talk to customers in a “less disjointed” way.

Some companies are looking like they are behind the times because they are not using Social Media as they should. Leigh Durst talks about Amazon’s failing Social Media strategy and even offers them advice. Do you think Amazon responded to Leigh’s post? Another example of how Social Media could and should be integrated into branding, reputation management, and customer service.

Looking back on 2010, how has Social Media impacted other areas of your business? Share your thoughts here!

image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/rubenshito