Marketing Talk

Last year, I did a 100-post series that I called the Engagement Series. I have learned a lot about engagement since then. In fact, I learned a lot just in the process of working on the series.

Engagement has become a much-despised term, mostly because a) It is so incredibly over-used and b) It often masks what is really important in the online world.

That being said, I pulled some posts from the series that I thought would help frame engagement more as a way to navigate the online waters and less as a nice word to throw around in lieu of something more solid and useful. I have decided to group these posts into an e-book, and I am making that e-book available here, free for download.

My only real price is that I would love feedback. If you read it and love it, spread the word. If there are things I could (or should) improve, please let me know, because this is a learning experience too.

I hope you find this helpful and enjoyable. I really am looking forward to hearing from you. And thank you!

To download the PDF, just click on this link and it should download for you right away:

Engagement E-Book

A little after I started tweeting, when I still had about 75 followers and was convinced that Twitter was a complete puzzle of fluff that I’d never understand, I happened upon Mack Collier’s #blogchat. If you are not aware of #blogchat, it is one of the biggest chats in the world of Twitter. Twitter chats are great because with the simple use of a hashtag, you can talk to people in a group about one single topic. Blogchat, of course, focuses on all things blogging.

When I first started participating in the chat, I was entranced by how helpful and welcoming everyone was. I was shocked that so many ideas could float back and forth from peoples’ fingertips. If you are new to either Twitter or blogging, I still highly recommend that you give Blogchat a try.

All of that being said, I’ve become a bit disenchanted with #blogchat of late because of a back-and-forth that has become all too familiar. It goes something like this.

Person A: I love getting comments on my blog. It helps me build community, it helps me engage, and it helps me hone my content to what my growing community wants to read.

Person B: Comments are stupid. You can’t build a business based on comments. Get out of your fluffy unicorn-filled world.

Factually, as is the case in so many social media conversations, both people have a point. The difference is in objectives.

When you’re not blogging for business

A lot of people who are blogging are not blogging in order to make money, technically. For example, while I work for Clayman Advertising, I make no pretense that my blogging will put more money in the company’s pockets. I blog because I really enjoy conversing with people online, and if my blog is a way to make people aware of our company, that’s great. I hope that is happening, but this is not something that will lead directly to a sale, in most cases.

If you are blogging to raise awareness of yourself and your thoughts, or if you’re blogging for fun, or if you’re blogging because you want to have a place to vent your most heartfelt frustrations, creating awesome content that inspires people to comment is a great goal to have. There are numerous blog posts that can teach you how to get your audience revved up, how to create actionable content, how to help new bloggers, and more. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with this approach. It’s admirable, in fact, to want to create consistently great content that your growing community responds to (whether positively or negatively).

Blogging for your business

Here’s where the problems lie. If you are blogging because you want to increase sales, those anti-comment people are on to something.

We’ll come back to this again and again throughout this series, but here is a core nugget of truth. In the world of social media, numbers, those things that everyone lusts after and expresses envy over, really don’t mean much. Why? Well, let’s say I make a tiny tool that is used for precision machining. If most of my readers are either in the same exact business as me, or if a lot of my readers are people I met in a chat about my favorite soap opera, the chance of any of my comments leading to a sale is pretty slim, right? The same goes for the number of subscribers, the number of retweets I get, the number of Google +1s I get, etc. The amount of exposure becomes irrelevant for a business blog if the audience you’re getting exposed to is not going to ever buy from you.

As Marcus Sheridan wrote on his excellent site, “Community is NOT the holy grail of blogging and online success.” Why did Marcus say that? Because if you focus solely on engaging and comments and social media stuff, your blog simply will not pull in any additional sales. In fact, one might argue that if you are spending a lot of time trying to get more comments, your company might actually lose any sales it was gaining before you started your blogging efforts.

Awesome is also not the holy grail

Piggy-backing on what Marcus wrote, “being awesome” is also not a business plan. First of all, “awesome” is relative. For some people, “awesome” may mean content that is beautiful and poetic. For others, “awesome” may be something that kicks them in the butt and gets them moving. For others, “awesome” may be content that solves a problem. For a business blog, this latter category is most often going to equate to success. How can you solve your readers’ problems?

If you have the right audience, your content probably does not need to be the most eloquent ever. It does not need to use swear words, nor does it need to use 10-cent words. It just needs to make the case for your product or service. It needs to inform your target audience. For the world of social media as a whole, your content might appear to be about as boring and pointless as anything anyone has ever seen. You might not get a ton of comments or dozens of retweets. But if your content convinces a reader that they need to buy from you, you’ll get what a lot of other bloggers don’t get – money in your company’s bank account.

If you don’t mind me saying, to me, that sounds pretty awesome. What do you think?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/headlouse/1484615917/ via Creative Commons

I’ve been watching a story float around for the last few days about how Twitter is censoring people. There was apparently a black-out for some folks yesterday to protest this Twensorship. If you read or scan the headlines, it looks like Twitter is censoring people on a country by country basis. The Huffington Post ran a headline that said, “Twitter Boycott Palnned To Protest Twitter’s Censorship Plan.” CBSNews.com ran a story titled ” Twitter’s Censorship Plan Rouses Global Furor.” With these types of headlines and stories in mind, I broached the topic on Twitter and ended up in quite an interesting conversation with Sandy Hubbard (@sandyhubbard) and Cynthia Schames (@CynthiaSchames).

As it turns out, Twitter may be getting attention for things it is not doing. In an article for Reuters titled, “Twitter’s censorship is a gray box of shame, but not for Twitter,” Paul Smalera notes that it is not Twitter that is actively blocking tweets. Rather, certain governments are asking that Twitter block content. Smalera writes,

Further, for a country to censor content, it has to make a “valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity” to Twitter, which will then decide what to do with the request. Twitter will also make an effort to notify users whose content is censored about what happened and why, and even give them a method to challenge the request. According to Twitter’s post, a record of the action will also be filed to the Chilling Effects website. The end result of a successful request is that the tweet or user in question is replaced by a gray box that notifies other readers inside the censoring country that the Tweet has been censored…

In essence, some could argue that Twitter is actually helping to highlight countries that do not allow free speech.

Internet versus the world

The overriding question to me is whether Twitter should pay credence to these governmental requests. The capitalistic argument is that in order to operate in a country, you have to work within that country’s framework. Google has world of experience in fighting governmental restrictions in China. It was noted in our conversation that countries are asking that content deemed “criminal” should be blocked. All well and good, but sometimes “criminal” can have a pretty wide berth. As a small example, I found this interesting Wikipedia page that delineates freedom of speech by country. Did you know it is illegal to blaspheme against religion in many countries? Did you know it’s illegal in France to create content that promotes race hatred? Do people in every country know 100% what the restrictions on their freedom of expression are? Will these little gray boxes come as a complete and total surprise? Can we revolt against things we aren’t aware are there?

The slippery slope of freedom

Defining the freedom of expression in a way that makes everyone happy is extremely difficult. I abhor racism. However, if I argue that yes, race hatred should be banned in the online world so far as content goes, am I really for freedom of expression? There are a lot of points of view that I find offensive. If I say that they should be censored because they bother me, isn’t that an awfully slippery slope?

Adding more complexity to the problem is that Twitter has a rather hands-off approach when it comes to issues of cyber-bullying. They will not block a person you accuse of bullying. Their company line is that you should call the authorities if you feel you are in danger. If we say that potentially harmful content is ok to censor, should we not have  a plan in place to ban content that actually IS harming people in real time?

These are all complicated questions. I’d love to hear your thoughts about them!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/isaacmao/9753846/ via Creative Commons

As I have been working on my marketing myths series at ye olde blog, I have become more sensitive to other, how can I say, confusions that exist in the online world. Lines are perpetually blurred. Terminology is consistently used in situations that really don’t warrant those terms. You get the idea.

Two areas in particular keep coming on to my radar. First, there is an oft-overlooked  difference between truth-tellers and jerks. Second, there is a mighty big difference between creating link bait (or comment bait) and actually complimenting a person. Let us explore these areas together, shall we?

Jerks versus Truth-tellers

When I was a kid, like, in eighth grade or so, I thought it was my job to be a mirror of the soul. Well, to my friends, not to myself, of course. I would call my little friends up after school and say, “You know, what you did during choir today made you look really bad, I think.” Then I would proceed to analyze their behavior, describe to them why they were doing what they were doing, and then, being a kind soul (mostly), I’d offer advice on how to eradicate the complex problems I was sure they were experiencing. To me, it seemed like I was just being a truth-teller. Based on how my friends responded to these missions of soul-seeking, I’m thinking they felt rather much like I was a jerk.

In the online world, we run into the exact same kind of scenario, except that there seems to be more pressure to be that truth-teller, right? You want to be the person who tells that so-called a-lister that they are dead wrong about something because in your head, it feels like you are doing lots of people a favor. You are saving them from a world of bad experiences. And in fact, this may be true. But have you ever noticed the vitriol that surrounds these online truth parties? The person who is having truth fed to them often refers to the truth-tellers as haters. And so the conversation devolves into name-calling, mob-fighting, and other things that have come to signify all of the least attractive aspects of the online world.

How can we differentiate between when we are being truth-tellers and when we are being jerks? In my own case, it turned out to be all about a sense of self-righteousness. In other cases it may be about motive. Are you trying to get attention or do you really believe what you are saying? Are you really trying to tell the truth or are you trying to get some spotlight for your own thoughts and feelings?

More to the point perhaps is how you deliver the truth (or what you perceive to be the truth). If you reply with a patronizing or condescending tone, the likelihood is that people will not accept what you are saying as helpful. If you approach the topic from a point of truly wanting to help, what you send out will be more in line with what you (hopefully) wish to receive.

Too often I see people revert to what can only be described as a jerky way to attack bloggers in particular. Saying that a post is stupid or that an idea is stupid is not shining a light on the truth. It is only belittling the person you are talking to. What is the line between truth-teller and jerk? Are you treading it carefully?

Link Bait versus compliments

The other thing I’m seeing a lot of is link bait or comment bait masquerading as complimentary posts. How can you tell which is which?

Let me give you an example.

I came upon a post not too long ago that was titled something like, “Blogs to watch in 2012.” I was excited because I thought, OK, maybe this is another list of “up and comer” bloggers that I can get to know. Towards the top of the list were the following blogs – Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan, Copyblogger, and Jeremiah Owyang. Now, these are all great blogs, no question. But do we need to be informed that we should “watch” these bloggers? Even people who may not know a whole lot about social media tend to have a passing familiarity with these folks. None of the blogs (or bloggers) were really described in detail – in fact, only the first few lines of the “about” page was copied in most cases. Blogger names were not given, just the name of the site. In this kind of scenario, one can only assume that the motive here was link bait (or comment bait…or both).

Now contrast that with the list that Danny Brown produced at the beginning of 2012. In this list, which was also called “bloggers you should watch in 2012,” Danny led with the blogger’s name. He detailed what he liked about each person’s blog, which also indicated that he reads each blogger’s work regularly. The names were names not everyone might be familiar with (I was not aware of all of them) so there was an opportunity to build up the following for legitimately awesome but perhaps underrated bloggers.

See the difference?

Lately, Forbes in particular has been dotted with the same sorts of “top of social media” lists, and it is giving the concept of blog post curation or curation of any kind a bad name. Throwing up blog sites that have hundreds of thousands of subscribers is not doing anyone any favors, especially if it isn’t even clear whether you’ve ever read a single blog post from those sites. Those folks don’t really need help with exposure or publicity – they’re doing quite well. The problem is that often times people who genuinely deserve some kudos and appreciation may get overlooked in the midst of a post that otherwise looks like nothing but a scam.

I love making lists to shine the light on people who I think are great. It’s one of my most favorite things to do in the online world, because to me, that’s what the online world *should* be all about. Heck, that’s what the world world should be all about. But even I have been accused of writing these posts just to get comments or trackbacks, and it’s gotten to the point where the joy in writing such posts has mostly departed. I do not want to take the time to curate great posts only to have it fall into the same disdained group of scam posts. I’m sure many other people feel the same way.

To me, paying a compliment is something easily identifiable. If you show that you really believe what you are saying, people will (most of the time) take it for what it is. If it’s clear that you were just barfing up top names or sites with no real sentiment attached, that is not something that will be viewed as complimentary. Rather, it will be viewed as nothing short of a sham, a scam, and/or crap.

Two Poles of Problems

To me, these two issues represent two of the most omnipresent problems in the online world. People who are masquerading as truth-tellers but are really just jerks are giving a bad name to anyone who really believes something or really has an important point to make. They make everyone feel defensive and skeptical.

Similarly, the penchant for writing posts specifically to get traffic or comments or links is despicable, but spreading swiftly. These kinds of posts give a bad name to anyone who truly wishes to promote others, thus feeding the never-ending cycle of self-promotion (because the alternative will only make you worry, right?).

What can we do to more clearly define these differences? What can we do to make the online world less polarizing?

I’ve said my piece. Now I’m ready for yours.

First image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/malurisho/2924173228/ via Creative Commons

Second image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clover_1/2259985318/ via Creative Commons

Third image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/christinehawks/2788148212/ via Creative Commons

Fourth image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arsalank2/3746601623/ via creative commons

Full disclosure – seeing as how I work at a family-owned full-service marketing firm, this post could be construed as a bit self-serving. However, I also happen to really believe what I’m about to tell you. For what it’s worth!

There are a lot of commentaries out there about why companies today don’t need to work with an agency. Here are a few that I’ve come upon over the last year or so.

Jason Falls noted that agencies consistently struggle with social media

Jeremiah Owyang posited that social media boutiques are kicking the butts of traditional agencies

Business Insider just published an article noting that the traditional media buying agency is dead (there’s that ole “is dead” again!)

And then of course there are the multitudes of comments I see online. Agencies will swindle you at every turn. Agencies will try to sell you on SEO best practice and end up getting you black listed. Agencies will give you bad advice and then ask you to buy them dinner. Agencies are like the ones presented in the show Mad Men.

Some agencies really are that bad

I have heard people I know and respect tell stories that make me ashamed for all of agency-kind. There are traditional agencies who still insist that social media is a passing fad. There are agencies who don’t think websites are, well, necessary. There are agencies who really do pass on simply awful advice and then ask you to pay through the nose. These are not myths. Most unfortunately.

But this is not also the way every agency works. In fact, if I may put this thought into your head, now more than ever is a time when the “traditional” agency could be of great service, if only companies were open-minded enough to consider the potential benefits of the agency-client relationship.

What can an agency do for you?

There are several reasons why agencies are in fact NOT bad news. I summed up this belief in a post I wrote for Dawn Westerberg awhile back called The Many Headed Employee. Factually, the world of marketing is growing and evolving at a pace that is hard for anyone to keep up with – even if that is your entire raison d’être . People who are running a business need time to do just that – run their businesses. But there is a growing sentiment out there that if you’re a business owner, you need to be able to do everything tied to your business, including marketing. Business owners are feeling the pressure to design their own websites, run their social media marketing initiatives, design their own ads, and so on.

Why do that to yourself?

Let’s get a little more precise.

Problem: Your website is not showing up well in search and you know enough to know that you need to optimize it.

Potential Solutions: This article from Clickz.com delineates three main options you have once you decide you need to optimize your site. You can try the “do it yourself” method, you can hire a black hat SEO agency, or you can try a white label, legitimate SEO agency.

Where an agency can help: Let’s say you opted for solution 3 – going with a high-quality SEO agency. Fair enough. You might think that a traditional agency wouldn’t be needed there. However, if you are working with an agency that has its hands in a lot of your marketing tactics, that agency can help give the SEO agency a more deep and holistic insight into your company. Sometimes the words that perform the best on Google are not the actual words that would help your company the most. An SEO agency can’t always know that and you might not have the time or inclination to interface with them in that kind of detail. An agency can serve as a liaison between your company and the SEO agency so that your website gets optimized in, well, the most optimal way possible.

Problem: Your company needs a new website.

Possible solutions: You could develop your website in-house, learning CSS and DreamWeaver or content management systems in your free time. You could hire a web development firm. The possibilities are almost endless.

How an agency can help: Let’s forget for the moment that many agencies are also capable of designing and implementing websites. What is the argument for an agency assisting you with this rather than you and your team doing everything in-house? Apart from the fact that your agency knows all of the possible places that could drive traffic to your website, and apart from the fact that your agency should already be well-versed in how you want to speak to your existing and potential customers, it is highly advantageous in the business world to have an outside opinion.

Sometimes our businesses are like our kids – we’re so close to them and they seem so perfect and KNOWN to us that we can’t see any problems or flaws. A good agency can take a step back and say, “Yes, that’s the terminology you use within your walls, but how does your customer talk about your products or services? How does the industry define these terms?” Moreover, an agency can approach your website with an already existing knowledge of what types of creative you like. An agency can look at your website and say, “No one is going to know how to navigate this.” An agency can help you make sure you have a viable call-to-action on every page and ways to track other marketing tactics via your web analytics.

Problem: Your Twitter campaign can’t be correlated to any sales.

Possible solutions: You could just quit altogether. You could contact a Twitter expert. You could keep trying the same thing, hoping it will all start to work eventually.

How an agency can help: A well-rounded agency (yes they do exist) can help you look at social media marketing through the lens of a fully integrated marketing initiative. If your Twitter campaign isn’t generating sales, an agency can offer you an outside perspective of why that might be the case. Rather than simply saying that you’re probably just doing something wrong, which a 100% social media consultant may do, an agency can look at who is following you and help you analyze whether those people are likely consumers of your product. An agency can do research to determine if any of your competitors or customers are even on Twitter. More to the point, an agency worth its weight in salt can step back and say, “You know, this doesn’t seem to be working, but here is another solution.”

A good marketing firm can offer you insights into your message, how you are driving people to your website, and what those visitors to your website may experience once they get there. From start to finish, the outside perspective of an agency can help take one facet of your marketing and plug it in to the full puzzle that is stretching out before you.

Just in case you think the agency I am describing here is mythical, I can tell you that our agency – the one I work for – does all of this and more. There are, I’m sure, plenty of agencies who could assist in multitudinous ways that you have not even considered.

So what do you think? Are agencies really bad news, or is it possible that there may be another story here? What has your experience with agencies been? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

PS – this post is the first in the Alphabet of Marketing Myths series, which will publish for the next 25 Mondays. If you want to keep up on this series, feel free to subscribe!

First Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daviderickson/4252172494/ via Creative Commons

Second Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zstasiuk/5650719702/ via Creative Commons

Have you ever tried to talk to a friend or family member who is not really enmeshed in social media about social media stuff? Have you said something like, “Wow, so and so just retweeted my post on Twitter and gave me a plus one on it via Google Plus and then called me a thought leader!” If so (and why wouldn’t you say something like this?) you were probably greeted with a blank stare, a pregnant pause, or a, “Is that good?” There are a lot of new words and phrases that are pouring out of the online world. Some of them are useful. I think. I can’t really think of any 100% useful ones right now. But a lot of them are really starting to drive me nuts. At the top of this latter list is the term “thought leader.”

What does this mean in the online world?

I think the term “thought leader” evolved because people became uncomfortable with calling themselves “influential” or “influencers.” Truth be told, I think the phrase “thought leader” means a lot of things in the world of social media. It could be synonymous with “innovative” in some cases. It could be synonymous with “a good predictor of the future.” Or, let’s just be honest, it could be another way of categorizing “the A-lister,” the “cool kids,” etc. However you slice it, it has always felt to me like using the phrase “thought leader” especially in a self-referential way, was a nice way to avoid looking like a 100% braggart. Thought leader makes you seem very important, but then you are leading people and so that’s kind of honorable and kind of not just about you.

Why I hate this term

I recently discovered that Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a poem called, “Thought Leader, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.” I know, surprising, right? As it happens, her thoughts perfectly align with my own (who woulda thought?) so I thought I would just share it here.

Thought Leader, How I Hate Thee. Let Me Count The Ways

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

I hate thee with all my fight and might

As thou doth blur the line betwixt wrong and right.

As thou doth kill the urge in others to race

To their own thoughts and clarity and light.

I hate thee as thou mask the height

That others can reach with their own grace.

I hate thee for the power thou doth abuse,

I hate thee for thy gathered train.

I hate thee for what you’re making us lose,

I hate thee for at disagreement you complain.

I hate thee for the doors you close,

I hate thee for the thorn in my side causes pain.

Now, let’s put this into some 21st century talk. Understand that this is not about any one person who has been called thought leader, but rather it’s what the term has come to symbolize for me.

If you’re a thought leader, by definition, you lead other peoples’ thoughts.

Why do we want that?

Social Media as a tool is still too new to be able to say that any one way of doing things is right or wrong. What works for one person is not guaranteed to work for another. What works for one company is not guaranteed to work for another. When it comes to facets of life beyond social media the idea of a thought leader makes me even more itchy. Martin Luther King was not a thought leader. All of the thoughts he infused into the world were translations of ideas from everyone ranging from Jesus to Gandhi. Gandhi was not a thought leader, he simply led people by example. He put thoughts out there and other people agreed.

When I hear or see the term “thought leader,” to me it feels like a closed door. When you are called a thought leader in the online world, it seems to mean that everything you say is right and cannot be argued with. After all, you’re a thought leader. If someone disagrees with a thought leader, we get into really mature discussions about “haters” and “haterade.” Because if you disagree with a thought leader, you hate them.

The term thought leader is, to me, what has led to the polarization of the online world in large measure. People feel they must be led by a thought leader, and if two groups of people are following two different thought leaders, obviously both groups are saying that the other leader is wrong. Hence, everyone hates everybody.

Most importantly though, the existence of “thought leaders” insinuates that you or I can’t be thoughtful or possess powerful or influential thoughts. If you are not “branded” (as cattle, not the marketing term) as a thought leader, what are you? A thought follower? Thoughtless? A snack that a brain-hungry zombie would pass by?

If content is still king online, then that means words that make up that content are the princes. The words “thought leader” used as an adjective wield a power that I am highly uncomfortable with. Clearly Elizabeth Barrett Browning didn’t like the ramifications either.

What do YOU think?

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