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Margie ClaymanMargie Clayman

Marietta, OH

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Archives for October 2011

The Winds of Change Are Blowing

October 15, 2011 by Margie Clayman 21 Comments

It’s a cold and windy day here in my hometown. I am sitting here with my heat on, my new wireless router enabling me to watch Netflix via my Wii console, and I am thinking how darned lucky I am. I am thinking about the people who are outside today, the wind cutting through whatever clothing they have on. Because this is the kind of wind that can get you no matter what you are wearing, no matter where you are. A leaf blew up onto my door and clung there a moment as if even it wanted to get inside. How lucky I am. How unfair it is that so many people do not have a quarter of what I have.

As these thoughts pass through my mind, I sign into the online world. I have always seen so much potential for platforms like Twitter and Facebook and blogging, not necessarily for business alone, but also for just making the world a better place. When people put their minds to it, as they have done before, Social Media can become a force of nature, making the world better, helping people in all sorts of ways. To me, this is the potential magnum opus of the online world. Making a dent in world hunger. Giving homes and voices to the homeless and the sick. The possibilities are endless.

And yet, as I sign into the online world, I feel like I am stepping into a high school cafeteria, not a place where great things can happen. And let’s face it, the high school cafeteria at least had hot pockets. I sit here and watch people take pot shots at each other. The same people. The same arguments. All of that energy thrown into the same efforts. “Hey, make the online world better. Follow me and not that guy.” It’s so boring. It’s so juvenile.

I am feeling like there is too much going on in the world, and honestly, when you get right down to it, I’m feeling a little spoiled that I’m a part of this online world. I feel like we’re sitting on a porch on a house resting on top of a big hill, and below us a town is bursting into flames. We’re sitting there saying, “Boy, someone should really do something about that. Let’s argue with each other about who to follow on Twitter!”  I’m just not interested in those conversations anymore. There’s more important stuff going on. So much more important.

I love blogging. I love conversing with you here. But I am thinking that maybe the direction of my blogging needs to change. Maybe it’s time to start using my blog to highlight ways we can improve the world instead of just commenting on how people no longer know how to act with civility online. That’s been made clear, and my writing about it will not change anything. And maybe my writing about real issues going on in the real world will not change anything either, but at least I will feel of the world and not apart from it.

Are you feeling that wind?

Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/sarahjjay

Filed Under: Musings

How Lou Imbriano Helped Me Catch Chris Brogan’s Wave

October 14, 2011 by Margie Clayman 12 Comments

First, some backstory.

A lot of people think that I tend to stray away from really passionate opinions on ye olde blog because I’m super nice and like to leave room for conversation. In fact, this is 100% false. I am one of the most evil people around and almost everything I do is self-serving. Now, in this particular case, what I garner from failing to put myself 100% behind any concept is some insurance for the future. If I leave air in the conversation and room for doubt, that means that I can come back later and say, “Woops, I was wrong.” It’s like when I was a kid and I insisted I hated yams. Then I actually ate one with brown sugar and butter and I realized I really like brown sugar and butter on yams. That was a tough one to eat crow about, but that took years. Now this here thing, well, it’s only been a week between mind-changes.

Remind me not to go into politics.

Ehem, so, back to the story. I am reading Lou Imbriano’s masterpiece, Winning the Customer. It is truly masterful. You should go read it. And I’m saying that having not quite reached the halfway point, so you know it’s good. Anyway, Lou is talking in this particular section about breaking down your database so that you can a) build relationships and b) get your spenders to become big spenders. These both sound like things that businesses would gravitate towards naturally, but then you’d also think businesses would gravitate away from embezzling and insider trading. You just never know.

As I’m reading this chapter, I’m starting to get really excited. It’s really not about general demographics anymore, right? Saying that you’re targeting “Males ages 17-54” is not really what marketing is about anymore, or at least it doesn’t have to be (sidenote, yes, this is what I get excited about on Friday nights. Leave me alone!). Then I started thinking about social media, and my brain took an unnatural leap right towards Google Plus. Lou is talking about how to make your big spenders feel really special, how to make your not as big spenders want to spend more, and how to get people who may not know you get to talking about you. Each of those groups, and many besides, require different kinds of messaging. Just like you can do via Google Plus Circles.

A sidenote to my sidenote about the sidebar

Those of you who loyally (or crazily) come to my site often may recall that a few days ago we were talking about Google Plus for business. I believe I said something along the lines of, “My trepidation about Google Plus for businesses comes out of two major channels of thinking.” That is in stark contrast to what Chris Brogan and other folks (some of whom commented on that post) have been saying about the business potential on Google Plus. But I wasn’t seeing it.

Now, my little marketing hamster in my brain is running full tilt. I’m thinking kinda like this: Let’s say you get your “elite” customers into a circle on Google Plus. Once a week, or once a month, you post to just that circle saying that you are sponsoring a special event that only they are invited to. Now, another circle could be people who visit your website via a specific promotion. Maybe that’s a “warm leads” circle. The list of circles could be dizzying, in fact.

Kind of cool, right? And it’s right there looking at me in the face saying, “HELOOOOOO!” But it took Lou Imbriano’s totally unrelated to Google Plus book to get me to see it. Weird, huh?

I’m not *just* eating crow though

I still think that dividing people up into these circles is something that would be super duper time-consuming. And how do you know for sure what people can or can’t see in Google Land? I still find that confusing. And how do you move someone from the “leads” circle into the “elite” circle? That’s a lot of detail. But I guess it’s not that far different from what people have done with rolodexes and email databases and stuff like that, right?

Marsop’s Fable

The moral of this story, of course, is not really 100% about Lou, Chris, Lou’s book (read it), or Google Plus. What I really want to tell you is that even here in the online world, it’s okay to change your mind about things. It’s okay to evolve. Just, like, I dunno. Don’t be a jerk about it! Ya know?

Are you smelling what I’m cookin’ here? Or am I cooking up  a big casserole of crazy? You tell me!

Image by Roger Kirby. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/theswedish

Filed Under: Book Reviews

The Myth of Give To Get

October 13, 2011 by Margie Clayman 31 Comments

When I first started doing this whole Social Media thang, as it were, I had a lot of ideas in my head. I wouldn’t say that was particularly my fault. My brain was, well, I don’t want to say it was manure mixed with soil, but the grounds were very fertile for seeds of ideas and concepts. There were many many farmers who came up to me and said, “Hey, look, it is a new person, and her brain is ready to be planted with rows and rows of my ideas! I meant, best practices! Yes!” And so, ideas were planted in my head, and they started to bloom and grow. In a twist that only the makers of Inception could have conceptualized and made into a B-grade movie, these ideas became so engrained in how I did things that I thought they were MY ideas. I’m waiting for you still, Leo DiCaprio.

Now, I speak as if I am a grizzled veteran, but in fact I have only been at this game for about a year.5. Yes, in baby years I’m 18 months old, just teething and learning that I can stuff either my entire foot or my entire fist into my mouth. These are very exciting times.

Ehem.

[Read more…] about The Myth of Give To Get

Filed Under: Marketing Talk, Musings

Let’s Talk About Facebook Pages

October 12, 2011 by Margie Clayman 4 Comments

When you think about marketing on Facebook or business on Facebook, the “page” is what seems to come to mind most quickly. The page sort of epitomizes everything social media was supposed to do for companies. You can see your customers (and prospects), which enables you to put a face to a name and get to know them. The page allows you to integrate images and videos, which are great ways of keeping people interested, if not entranced. You can give news directly to the people connected to your page, and you can use the internal Facebook ads system to drive your target audience to your page. You can even see insights that will tell you how people are using your page and when they’re using your page.

What could go wrong?

Well, as it turns out, creating an interesting and worthwhile Facebook page is more art than science, just like most other things in the online world. I saw a page once where the administrator of the page kept posting product photos and then “liking” the photos. Yikes. That’s a party I don’t want to be invited to.

During my torrid love/hate, hot/cold relationship with Facebook, I’ve come to a few conclusions about pages for companies or brands. Here are some of my thoughts.

If people don’t know you, they won’t like your page or won’t stick around long

One common mistake I see in the business world is that companies think that they can create a fan page and all of a sudden people will start flocking in. If you’re Coke, that could be entirely true. If your Batty Sheen Car Fluid, maybe not so much. People are already battling a lot of noise on Facebook, and that’s just from people they call friends or family. To “like” your page means there has to be some interest for them. Starting a page and praying to the Zucky gods will not help you. Nor will inviting your mom, your 17 cousins, and your 20 friends from high school. They want to support you, but they’re probably not your target customers. What you need to do is either create a cause related to your product that people can get behind or work on transporting your existing “fans” from other places over to your page. There are lots of great ways to do this, and there are lots of black hat ways to do this. One interesting tactic I’ve seen is a print ad campaign that actually drove traffic to a Facebook page rather than a website. Pretty snazzy, huh?

“Like” is not synonymous with “I wish to buy from you now.”

It’s easy to convince yourself that a person who clicks “like” on your page will also spend money with you. However, just like “like” does not mean “I want to marry you,” “like” in Facebook world doesn’t mean, “I wish to buy your full line of products.” For more on this factor, visit Jay Baer’s post that shows that most people who like a page do not expect to be bombarded with marketing messages.

There is no one rule that will work for everyone

Finally, I’ve learned that you need to figure out what the fans of your page actually want from you. Some fan bases want you to be really personable and happy. Other people just want the information that they expect you to provide, and if you have a smiley face there more power to you. On our 12most.com Facebook page, most of our content is represented by a feed of our posts. It seems that people are just fine with that. But if you try to shove a lot of content into a different kind of page, you’d probably get a lot of blow-back, right? So you need to experiment, listen for feedback, and adjust your strategy as you go.

This is all very big picture, fluffy, maybe not entirely helpful stuff. I know. I kinda figured you’d say, “Great, now we know what Margie thinks. And that helps us how?” So, I also want to link you to this post by my friend Tommy Walker, which pretty much explains everything you could want to know about how to start a Facebook page and make it work. You can watch the video or read the transcripts.

What are your thoughts about Facebook fan pages? What have your experiences been? Let’s talk about it!

Image by Asif Akbar. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/asifthebes

Filed Under: Marketing Talk

Being Kind Doesn’t Make Me Stupid

October 10, 2011 by Margie Clayman 92 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about the online world lately. Well, I mean, about the big picture stuff. In various and sundry places, I’ve let little tidbits of these thoughts pop out. I’ve talked about how you shouldn’t sell your soul just because you want to get in with the “in” crowd. I’ve talked about how being mean in the online world just makes you look, well, mean. I’ve talked about how being nice is often equated to being boring. But really, there is one key issue that is at the core of all of those posts.

I think people assume that a kind person is a stupid person.

I am not really sure why that is. Is it because the world is so cruel it’s hard to imagine anyone would want to waste their time being nice? Is it because some folks think the meaner you are the cooler you are? I don’t know. I don’t get it, but I feel it. I feel the condescending attitude some people use when they talk to me online or offline. I feel it when people fail to beat around the bush and flat-out insinuate that I’m an idiot for being nice to people. I think some people even think I’m easy to manipulate or a real push-over.

Being kind doesn’t make me stupid.

A little story

A lot of people have told me that they want to get to know me a little better. They note that I don’t tend to talk about myself very much – a rather unusual characteristic to offer in the online world, I suppose. Well, let me offer you some insight into why I prefer to err on the side of kindness. It’s just one story of many.

A few years ago, I went out to dinner with a person who tended to really bust my chops. We had good times, and I came to realize a lot of the harsh criticisms they gave were out of concern and worry. However, we mixed approximately as well as oil and water. This dinner was no different, and I just wasn’t in the mood for it, so I got up and left. I was angry. I was fed up. I just didn’t feel like being raked over the coals, and I figured at some point we’d get together and make up for it.

As it turned out, that was the last time I ever saw that person. They died about a month later rather unexpectedly. I had not heard their voice since that dinner, nor had I gotten a chance to smooth things over.

How often do I wish I had stuck around and been a little more patient? Almost every day. Do I ever want to make that kind of mistake again? Heck no. It’s not worth it. It’s just not.

But that doesn’t mean I’m stupid

My desire to leave as few bridges burned as possible does not reflect upon my intellect. It does not mean that if you walk up to me and say you need $100,000  I’ll smilingly write you a check with no questions asked. It doesn’t mean that I am completely unaware of when I am being picked on, made fun of, offended, or otherwise treated shabbily. I just have better things to do in life than to get all frothy about it.

The glorification of jerks

In the online world, the jerkier you are, the more credit you get. If you pepper your posts with cuss words, call people out, and are generally unpleasant, people seem to want to get all the closer to you. It’s a real paradox. And I think it can make being mean or jerky kind of tempting. Who wouldn’t want to be feared and revered, right? And after all, those kind folks, they’re so “safe” and boring. *yawn*

Well, if that is what it takes to make it big in the online world, I shall be doomed to mediocrity. But from my safe perch, I would say this. One day, you will say something that you regret soon after. You will assume that you have all of the time in the world to make it right, say you were kidding, apologize, or otherwise even out the situation. But something will happen that will steal that option from you. Are you prepared to live with that as a trade for online respect?

I’m not.

Does that make me stupid?

You tell me.

Filed Under: Musings

Let’s Talk About Keeping Kids Safe on Facebook

October 10, 2011 by Margie Clayman 13 Comments

My biggest fear in the online world has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the safety of children. I think that on Facebook in particular, it’s really easy to do things that could have alarming consequences because everything seems so safe there on the surface. You can lock down your content, you’re talking to your friends and family for the most part…what could go wrong?

Unfortunately, as we have seen over the last couple of years particularly, a lot can go wrong, especially for kids and young adults who are trying to figure out that whole pesky “life” thing – both online and offline.

Now, I want to say two things. First, I am not saying that children should be tethered to their parents and prevented from exploring the online world. Second, what I will present here are worst case scenarios. However, I feel it’s important to occasionally sound the alarm and just say, “Hey, are we thinking about this?” There’s a particular reason I worry about that, too.

[Read more…] about Let’s Talk About Keeping Kids Safe on Facebook

Filed Under: Marketing Talk, Musings

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