Margie Clayman

Marietta, OH

Archives for February 2011

Does transparency kill authenticity?

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Imagine, if you will, the following scenario.

You’re walking your way through Twitter and the blogosphere when someone you like and respect a great deal sends you a direct message.

“Hey, I have this ticket to that huge expo you wanted to go to. I’m not going to use it. Do you want it?”

Well, you jump at the chance. You know that the ticket probably was a major investment for someone – your friend, or maybe a friend of your friend. You go to the conference and you have a fabulous time. You’re really grateful.

A couple of months later, that same friend sends you a second direct message. “Hey, I just got my book published. I’d love for you to read it and write a review. Be honest!”

Let me ask you two questions.

First, are you going to mention that this person gave you a ticket to that conference a couple of months back?

Second, are you going to say anything acutely negative about the friend’s book?

The conundrum is transparent

This seems to be to be a pretty quintessential example of the “can’t win” scenario.

In the interest of being transparent, people sometimes treat their blog posts like mini confessionals. “Oh, and I talked to this person in the street on May 27th, but now I’m just quoting them. And this person loaned me a quarter for a vending machine five years ago, but I’d have liked their book anyway. And this person I have talked to in real life on at least 3-4 occasions, but I still highly recommend you attend their webinar.”

People expect these kinds of confessionals in Social Media because one of the first things you hear when you go online is “be transparent.”

However, this also creates, at least in my mind, an issue of just how authentic we can really be online. It makes me wonder if people do nice things in this space so that you can owe them a solid later. It makes me wonder if you REALLY are being honest when you come clean about your friendship with an author and then in the next paragraph tell me why I should buy 17 copies of your friend’s book.

Another hypothetical

Let’s say that you’re doing another book review for a friend of yours (your friends are very accomplished!). You start out by saying that you both work for the same company, your boss supported the book, you wrote the forward, and you got a free copy long before it was released to stores.

What is the incentive for anyone to keep reading? With everything you just became “transparent” about, what are the chances that you’re going to go on to bash everything about the book? I’d say slim to none. In fact, I stop reading.

A real life scenario

This has been on my mind for a few reasons. I’ve encountered a lot of blog posts lately that have me concerned about how genuine some content really is. Are you bashing that person because you REALLY think they’re crap, or is it maybe because every time you do that you get 57 comments on the post? Are you raving about that book because you REALLY think it’s amazing, or is it because of all of that stuff you just “came clean” about?

It’s also on my mind though because of my recent experience reviewing The Now Revolution. It occurred to me, as I started reading, that I had been entrusted with two copies of the book before it even was officially launched. I was entrusted to review the book, and i was entrusted to then find a neat way to send at least one copy of the book out to my community.

Could I really say anything negative about the book?

As it happens, there really isn’t too much that bothers me about The Now Revolution. In fact, with just 2 chapters left, it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a couple of years. But what if it hadn’t been? What if there had been a lot of points that just galled me?

I decided that the best path would be to be me. You know who I am. I think, to some extent, Jay and Amber know who I am. I’m not going to say negative things just because I want to create a riot on my blog site. I’m not going to gush at something that’s not gush-worthy.

I feel pretty strongly that I would take that line regardless of the situation. You expect it from me. I expect it from me.

It might be boring. It might not make me a lot of friends in some cases. But I have to be able to sleep at night.

What do you think?

What do you think? Would it be better for someone to not be transparent about all of their ties so that you could take their opinion in without all of that bias? Is it better to know where someone stands but accept that maybe it’s not 100% what they truly think?

What would you do? What do you see?

Let’s talk about it.

Image by Ivan Prole. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/iprole

Amber Naslund and Jay Baer to visit TweetDiner!

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Stanford Smith (@pushingsocial) and I are very happy and excited to announce that on Saturday, February 26th, at 9 PM EST, Jay Baer and Amber Naslund, authors of The Now Revolution, will be visiting us at #tweetdiner – a virtual stop on their whirlwind book promotion tour!

Based on the book, the diner will be divided into four sections, each about 15 minutes each (though if there’s good convo we won’t be strict about this).

1. What kind of culture works best? What kinds of personal traits are important to nurture for Social Media?

2. Listening and responding

3. Crisis Management

4. Measuring success

We’ll make sure we serve up the best virtual food and the most comfy booths will be all set for you.

Oh, and I guess we should mention that two lucky recipients will receive a free copy of The Now Revolution – one from Stan and one from me.

Will we see you there?

Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do

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As we head towards the Spring “new show” season on television, I am lamenting the fact that I no longer have Lost around. Sure, there was a lot about the show that bugged the heck out of me. For example, why did we spent 2.5 seasons getting really deep into a character only to have him completely disappear for the last half of the show? That’s a mystery that the riveting conclusion did not even attempt to answer. Still, it was a fun show to complain about, a fun show to hypothesize about, and I got to be pretty good friends (or so it seemed) with the characters.

One of the characters from Lost has been on my mind lately. His name was John Locke (there was another character who went by Rousseau – my friends and I had a great time trying to figure out how the presence of two great philosophers would play out in the overall story line) and his catch phrase, if you will, was “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

In Social Media, this should be your mantra.

You’re an island in an archipelago

People tend to emphasize the word “social” in the phrase Social Media, but the reality is that in terms of executing your plans, building your brand, and achieving success, you’re on your own. You can talk to the other islands around you, but when push comes to shove, it’s just you who’s out for you.

This can be really, really easy to forget or overlook. After all, there are all kinds of people offering you advice. There are people who you think of as really powerful and successful, and they’ve all got a story about how they got there. It seems so easy to follow their path, stepping in the footprints that they left. It can be really easy to feel kind of intimidated if you think maybe you want to take a step off to the right.

Don’t let people tell you what you can and can’t do.

It worked for me. It might not work for you.

Social Media lends itself to thinking that you can paint by numbers. For example, when I was having massive problems getting anything but crickets to pass over my blog posts, I asked some people I respected what on earth I could do about it.

“Ask questions!” One person said. So I started ending all of my blog posts with a question mark. Nobody answered.

“Comment on another person’s blog regularly,” another person told me. I did that. And nothing changed.

What you find out is that you have to dig out your own strategy. You have to customize everything you do to your personality, your objectives, your readers, and your community. These pieces of advice I got worked well for the people that were trying to help me, but they didn’t work for me. They may or may not work for you.

Don’t ask what you can and can’t do

The sky and the ground are your limits in Social Media. There aren’t even agreements on best practices. One person’s spam is another person’s marketing campaign. Don’t be afraid to gather information or to ask for advice, but always look at it through the prism of that person’s experience. Don’t believe that anyone has all of the answers for you other than you. Don’t believe that what you are doing is “wrong” just because someone else thinks it’s silly. What matters is if what you’re doing works for you and what you’re trying to do.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Unless you want them to.

The Now Revolution: Listening and Responding

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I’m grouping chapters 4 and 5 together because really, they fit together quite well. It’s almost like, I don’t know, like there was a plan behind this book…??

So chapter 4 is about listening. Now, if you’ve been around the Social Media world for awhile, there isn’t a whole lot in this chapter that will cause your jaw to drop, per se. However, if you are new to Social Media, or if you’re wondering how to get your arms (corporately speaking) around what’s going on in the Social Media world, this chapter could be one of those rare life-changing chapters. Seriously.

What’s nice is that while I had seen a lot of this information about listening before, Jay and Amber don’t assume that the reader is a complete idiot, which, I have come to realize, is an unfortunate common trait of many other Social Media books. This chapter reviews information but not in a “This is how you spell Twitter” way. References to malt liquor and Christina Aguilera make sure that you’re paying attention, too!

The next chapter, chapter 5, is about how to respond to what you listen to. The really interesting thing about this chapter, which I have not really seen in too many other places, is that it places a lot of emphasis on listening to your co-workers, your bosses, your employees – other people in your place of work. This is a brilliant concept which I’m surprised, frankly, that I haven’t seen more of in the Social Media world, but it makes a world of sense. If you can’t keep each other in the loop within your own company, how can you be of one mind externally? How can you communicate with people from other companies if you can’t effectively communicate with the person 1 cubicle over?

Chapter 5 also encourages people/companies to determine what kind of players they want to be in the Social Media world. Do you want to just ignore things and pretend that problems don’t exist? Do you want to dip your toe in the water? Do you want to take advantage of the “opportunity economy” where your next customer could be created, it would seem, from being, purposefully, in the right place at the right time?

The book is building in a very logical way to a point where a company could create not just a really sound Social Media strategy but also a really healthy internal culture that the Social Media presence would send out. I would also say that while I felt a little left behind by chapter two, these two chapters offer great information that could be as useful to an individual as to a Fortune 500 company. That takes a pretty good hand.

One final thought, which really isn’t specific to these 2 chapters, but man – I so appreciate that there haven’t been any typos (at least that I’ve seen) in this book. And I’m really glad that Jay and Amber opted to keep the book professional but fun. I’ve dabbled in some books where it seemed like the author thought that readers would want to read a book the same way they approach Twitter or Facebook – there can be such a thing as too much personality, not enough info (said in my best Dr. Evil voice). If I were writing a review for the back cover, I think right now it might say something like this:

Chock full of knowledge ideal for people from Fortune 500 C-Suites to individual professionals who want to learn about Social Media, this book is charming, innovative, and darned fun to review. I meant, read.

Signed, Margie Clayman, Queen of Everything, Esq.

I’m going to make a wild guess here, by the way, and say that Amber wrote both of these chapters. It’s really not fair because one of the chapters mentions Jay in the 3rd person – the level of mind games is clearly over the top 🙂

Image by Kristina Rogova. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Kristina_R

Strategic Networking, Cross Promotion, and Facebook

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This is post number four in a series of posts from Facebook expert Tommy Walker. If you have questions, leave a comment here or visit with Tommy on Twitter at @tommyismyname.

“No man is an island.”

Human beings do not thrive when isolated from others. Facebook Pages are no different.

Too often, while bringing their business online, people forget the importance of some of the most intermediate marketing principals, namely strategic networking and cross-promotion.

And while this article will focus on using Facebook as the vehicle for strategic networking and cross-promotion, these principals should really be applied to any of your online properties.

First of all: Here’s why you need to be doing these things.

Forming an alliance with a business that targets similar demographics to yours allows you to exponentially increase your exposure.

By aligning yourself with another entity with similar core values, the message of all parties involved is strengthened.

You see this a lot already and may not even realize it. It usually takes two forms.

  • The one-off partnership
  • The ongoing cross-promo partnership

The one-off partnership

The one-off partnership’s marketing usually takes the form of, “Company X teams up with Company Y to raise money for children’s home” (or to fight cancer, save the rain forest, send you to the super bowl, you get the idea.)

This partnership shows these two companies share core values. The goal is to deliver what is promised in the marketing message, of course. But whether the partnership continues depends on whether Company X and Company Y acquire a certain percentage of each other’s market.

On Facebook, you’ll see major brands do this in the form of “limited time only” sponsorships.

Coke did this with by doing a “cheers” drive in support of the Boys and Girls Club.

Pringles used its credibility to raise awareness for testicular cancer by partnering with Movember.

On the surface,  the brand is leveraging their audience to raise awareness of a particular cause.

The cause is more inclined to encourage their supporters to become a customer of the sponsoring brand, thus giving it a reason to sponsor again in the future.

But dig a little deeper. What else does this type of promotion do?

Promotions like this flesh out a brand, it makes them more human. It shows they are aware of more than just themselves.

On a local level, businesses can leverage their fan base to raise awareness of  a high school fundraiser, a local animal shelter, or the neighborhood children’s home.

Bloggers can leverage their fan bases on Facebook to support niche causes, draw attention to a program they support, or discuss big events that could have a major impact on their industry. (For example, I was just asked by Rutgers University to write about mobile marketing in order to raise awareness of their mobile marketing Mini MBA program.)

The key is to make sure that both target markets are a fit for the one-off promotion.

The ongoing cross-promo partnership

The very article you’re reading is an example of an ongoing cross-promo partnership.

Margie and I have both guest blogged for each other, and provided I don’t make her mad, there isn’t any reason why we won’t continue to do so.  You’ll also see Margie over on Stanford Smith’s blog, “Pushing Social,” quite often, and they both host #tweetdiner on Twitter over the weekend.

On the big brand level, you see this way more often than you realize.

You know how you see the commercial for the movie that shows the Big Mac, then cuts to the overflowing Coke and the camera pans across the fries? We then see a little extra trailer footage again, then the family gets the bag of food, a Coke, and pull out of the drive-thru in a Ford?

By the end of that commercial, whether you realize it or not, you’ve been exposed to 4 different products. And whether you want to admit it or not, that exposure may influence your next buying decision if you’re interested in any one of those 4 products being advertised. That’s the beauty of cross-promotion.

So what does this look like on Facebook?

At face value this promo appears to be Pringles and Coke, but dig deeper, check the description.

“…win incredible prizes, like a PlayStationMove Prize Pack or a trip to the American Idol Finale.”

What’s important to look at is the picture that this cross promotion paints… Take a look at the most relatable trigger words in the copy for this update.

  • Coca-Cola
  • Family
  • Prizes
  • PlayStation
  • American Idol

Doesn’t this paint a complete picture of many American families?

Ethical arguments and personal opinions aside, this is a snapshot of these companies’ ideal target market, and if you’re in that ideal target market, the above offer is that much more enticing.

The way to do this for yourself is really quite simple.

On Facebook, you can show passive support for a Page simply by adding it to your Favorites.

You can also tag pages in posts, by typing the “@” symbol for a Page or Profile that you are personally connected to. Tagged posts will not only show up in your fan’s News Feed, but will also appear on the tagged Page’s wall. Most admins are obsessive about checking their Facebook Page, so this can be a really good way to get someone’s attention. (Warning: Do not spam!)

Also a surprisingly little used trick is just straight up linking to another Page on Facebook.

Of course, while these methods show you the actual mechanics of cross-promoting, the best way to actually work out cross-promotion deals is by good old fashioned email and telephone.

If you find another blogger whose core values reflect yours, reach out.

Leave insightful comments on their articles, share their stuff, find ways to stand out without being obnoxious. Buy their product, take or create opportunities tell people how cool they are, become an evangelist. It may not take much to get noticed, or it may take a lot.

But if you know your stuff is valuable to their audience, and their stuff is valuable to yours, don’t be afraid to ask them to check out your stuff and see if you might be able to work out an ongoing partnership.

Just remember, the key to cross-promotion is to paint the picture of your target market’s  lifestyle.

The more you can enhance that ideal lifestyle with cross-promos, the happier everyone involved will be.

Oh yeah – If you like that Margie has me writing articles on Wednesdays, share this as sign that you want to keep it going!

Now Revolution, part 3 – in which I eat crow

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This is probably going to be one heck of a short chapter review. To make it even shorter, let me say that chapter 3 of Now Revolution might be the favorite chapter of a book I’ve read since I got into this Social Media world. Yep. I said it.

Oh, you want to know why I have to eat crow first. Well, okay. Here’s the thing. There’s a huge chunk of this chapter that talks about how to integrate agencies into your Social Media efforts, as part of your Now Revolution army. Yep. That aspect I’ve been talking about since I first started blogging – Amber and Jay go into it in detail!! They outline several different ways that agencies can participate, and they even explain how you can interview an agency (as I noted in my last post) to make sure they are a good match for you.

Oh, I could just hug them! But that’s my bias. If you’re not on the agency side of the business, it’s still really good information.

The other thing I really really liked about this chapter was a discussion of how roles in a company are or can transform into new roles. Based on the premise that anyone can become an ambassador for your company online, Jay and Amber discuss how roles like “creative designer” or “HR” could change in the near or now future. This is something that not a lot of people talk about. A lot of the gurus that talk about how companies should slam into Social Media leave off the fact that a lot of companies have infrastructures that make this extremely difficult. Amber and Jay show you how you can start to move different parts of your company in this direction. It’s an evolution, not a sudden “OH, hey, we’re online now” thing.

The only thing I wasn’t 100% sure about is that the chapter segments people who listen and gather information from people who respond. I’m assuming this is more in regards to a huge company, where both responsibilities would be a full time job. Even so, I would think you’d need supremely good communication between those people and departments – they’d have to function as one entity, just like your ears and mouth may occasionally opt to work towards one goal.

So, that’s it. I have only good things to say about this chapter. I’ll be curious to hear what you think of it. I found it to be much like a very very refreshing beverage on a super hot day.

Image by Nick Bradsworth. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/nbphotogfy