Marketing Talk

A couple of weeks ago, I participated in my first ever G+ hang-out. I know I haven’t been the most ardent supporter of Google Plus – some of the rather sexist articles that came out when Google Plus was in beta soured me on the platform a bit. The busy stream and other facets of G+ world never have gotten me too excited. However, the hang-outs are pretty neat. Much like Skype, the hangouts offer you a chance to talk to people face-to-face. Unlike Skype, it’s possible to talk (with ease) to a lot of different people (up to 9 others). No matter where they are or where you are, hanging out is as easy as a click of a button.

I found myself on kind of an endorphin high after my first hang-out experience. In fact, Brian Vickery and I created a new multi-platform show out of the deal. Talking to people with actual voices and faces and mouths that moved was so wonderful. Going back to the 2-D world of Facebook and Twitter seemed like kind of a let-down after that. Everyone was back to looking the way they always look when I see their avatars. There was no laughter, no tonality to anything that was being said.

Kaarina Dillabough and I will be offering deeper thoughts on this in a couple of weeks, but it seems like people are kind of getting restless with social media. In fact, Marcus Sheridan just wrote a post about how valuable social media conferences are because (ironically) they assist in connecting you to people face-to-face, in “real life.”

This all has to do with the personal nature of our lives and our dealings with other people. But I’m also wondering if perhaps we are moving away from the time when social media was a business in and of itself. I’m wondering if social media is evolving into something that is no longer a “thang.” You know what I mean? It’s no longer newsworthy in and of itself. It’s moving to a place where it’s no longer the whole story, it’s just a footnote. What could that mean for you, for me, and for all those people whose careers have been made by the social media thang?

It never should have been a “thang”

You might recall the “Social Media Revolution” videos that have been floating around YouTube for awhile now. It was hard not to get sucked into that mentality even two years ago. Facebook, Twitter, the potential for new kinds of communication – all of this was still new. But from the beginning, there have been voices cautioning against the “social media thang.” Take, for example, this presentation by Olivier Blanchard from 2010 – “Your business isn’t social media” is a point that is reiterated often in the talk. And that was from two years ago. More recently, Mike McGrail wrote a post suggesting that the age of the social media guru is coming to an end. Just today I read an article from AdWeek asking if social media community managers are really marketers. People are no longer buying into the aura of social media as a revolutionary concept. People want accountability. People want to get back to their real businesses.

What does this mean?

I’ve never been one to play the prediction game before, but in this case, I have a few guesses as to what is going to happen in the next few months to a year as a result of these trends.

The game will get uglier: As the value of a “social media guru” subsides, I think competition is going to drive a lot of the communication online to an increasingly ugly place. There will be increased supply versus decreasing demand. As people work to maintain the status they have built over the last five or so years in the online space, they will become more defensive, more prone to making broad generalizations, and more apt to dismiss people who disagree with them. There will be more “call-out” posts to undermine the competition, too.

Streams will quiet down: As people engross themselves in business versus social media, Facebook streams, blog communities, and Twitter feeds will slow to a crawl. I think a lot of us are already seeing this happen. This blog here is a prime example. I’ve barely blogged here for about two months. I just don’t have the time anymore.

Conversations will mature: Sound bites about ROI having to do with your mother will no longer be acceptable, which is the point Mike makes in his post. As social media changes from a “thang” to a tool, people will want more serious advice about how to use social media, how to measure social media efforts, and how to pivot if something either does not work or works better than expected.

The gurus will disappear: Blogs focusing only on social media best practices will die out, and it will seem sudden to those of us who have been in this space for any amount of time. People will no longer want to focus solely on how to get retweets. They’ll want to know how to use Twitter as part of an integrated marketing plan with a goal of increasing sales by 3%.

“Tradition” will make a come-back: There has been a lot of talk in the online world about how this or that thing is dead. Advertising, email, direct mail, the press release – almost anything NOT social media has been consigned to death at least once, right? As the shine evaporates on social media, people will begin to realize that some of those “traditional” marketing tactics weren’t so bad. In fact, we can now revisit those ideas in new and exciting ways that weren’t possible five years ago. Advertising, PR, and other marketing methods can be enriched and made more interactive with social media. They do not need to be replaced by social media. As we all long for handwritten notes and face-to-face connections, so too will companies begin to long for ways to actually market their products versus simply “engaging” with people.

I have seen many signs pointing to these changes. Some subtle, like gentle whispers on a windy night. Some less subtle. But I think we are most decidedly moving in a direction that will take us away from social media as a “thang.”

What do you think?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/modeltalk/5019679913/ via Creative Commons

Have you ever watched Ken Burns’ The West? There’s a story in there about a fellow named William Swain. William was a teacher and a peach farmer, and as the historians say, he had what would have been considered a very comfortable existence. He wasn’t famous or super wealthy, but his life was comfortable and stable. All of that changed, though, when the gold rush started in California. Suddenly you could get rich just by putting your spoon into a river. For William Swain, his comfortable life now seemed substantially more boring and less comfortable. Young men around the country started to dream about what that extra money could get them, and that was in addition to all of the adventure tied to heading all the way over to California. Suddenly good enough was NOT good enough.

To be 100% honest, the world of social media often brings William Swain to mind. Indeed, I rather much empathize with his state of mind. My life is extremely comfortable. I’m not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. My life is comfortable and stable. But the longer I stick around in the online world, the more feeble my life seems to feel. Factually, many people in the online world seem to be wealthy, or at the very least they post that way. If I didn’t read the news and only got my sense of the world from what I saw on Facebook and Twitter, I’d be apt to think there was no great recession. It seems that people are always eating out at fancy restaurants, going on 2-week vacations, going to conferences, buying additional houses…there is not much talk about money pressure in these parts.

But it’s not the updates that make social media feel increasingly like an exclusive club. It’s the almost palpable sentiment that if you don’t live your life like a wealthy person, you’re probably a coward. Take, for example, one of my particular hot buttons – that whole, “Don’t be afraid to fail” thing. People blog and tweet and Facebook about failure as if there are no consequences. Go tell your boss what your terms are. If you get fired, hey, that’s okay. Go leave work and the online world for 2 months. If things fall apart, hey, who cares. You have a great experience to look back on.

To me, and feel free to argue with me here, this is the perspective of a person who doesn’t have to face a lot of real-world consequences. If you are wealthy, losing your job may be okay. You can float on by for awhile. Maybe a long while. If you want to start your own company, the obstacles before you aren’t as monumental. If a family member suffers a major health crisis, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to cover it. You will face some consequences, but they are of a different nature than someone who doesn’t have a lot of expendable income.

It seems like a lot of people in the online world have a Nike “Just do it” attitude. If you want to change jobs, do it. If you want to move somewhere else, do it. If you want to travel a lot, just do it. There’s a tint to these kinds of statements that almost hinges on bullying. “If you don’t do this you’re giving up on life. You’re a coward.”

Or, possibly, you don’t want to go into brain-numbing debt?

Is Social Media Rigged for the Wealthy?

The more I have thought about this, the more I begin to wonder if the “social media game” is really rigged so that only the wealthy can truly succeed. For example, there’s this overriding thought that in order to start really getting your star to rise, you need to “be seen.” The best way to do this is to go to a lot of social media conferences, right? Let’s take SXSW Interactive in Austin, which sort of gets the social media conference season going. The badge just for the show is $950. That does not include (to the best of my knowledge) any transportation within the city of Austin. I don’t think that includes your hotel stay. It doesn’t include travel. That’s for one conference. Just one.

For someone who is leading a comfortable but not money-filled life, this single expenditure would be a challenge. If getting seen is part of what helps you climb the ranks in the social media world, how can a person who is not wealthy start to make an impact? Can you compete with in-person relationships if most people will never meet you in real life? Maybe, but I would posit that the odds are stacked against you.

So, now it’s your turn. Is social media a rich person’s game?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danni_m/536492895/ via Creative Commons

I was working on my computer the other day (big surprise) when something unbelievable happened. You’ll never guess, so I’ll just tell you.

I got a message from Neo. That’s right, that guy we thought was a fictional character played by the increasingly delicious Keanu Reeves – he’s real. Turns out the Matrix trilogy is all based on a true story. At least in so far as the world of social media is concerned.

Basically, Neo asked me to spread the following message – if you’re in the world of social media, you are being sucked in by the Matrix, and you need to break your way free. Thinking that I was of a far inferior intellect (this from a guy who says, “Woah”) he then broke this down for me and asked me to do the same for you.

You’re ignoring the real world

Neo reminded me that before he met Morpheus, he thought everything was cool. That was before he found out he was a pod person living on a destroyed planet. He said he has noticed that people who become deeply involved in the world of social media seem to have a similar problem grasping the real world versus the illusion that social media creates. For example, if you live in the world of social media, you might think that you can do nothing but drink coffee at Starbucks and still make a profit. You might think that measuring ROI is like measuring the ROI of your mother (clearly ridiculous in the context of the real world). You might think that doing nice things for other people is a great business model.

Neo says that these things are akin to him believing he was okay in his regular ho-hum life and job. But, he reiterates, he was a pod person living on a destroyed planet.

Woah.

The Agents Don’t Want You To Question Things

Neo wanted me to point out that the more he tried to break through the Matrix, the more agents came after him (he denies that seeing Hugo Weaving in person was a turn-on – my legs turn into jello just thinking about it). Anyway…

The more he questioned things, the more powerful and persistent the agents became. Neo suggests that this same dynamic exists in the world of social media. There are people who want you to believe certain things, like the idea that everything except social media “is dead.” If you argue with these folks or try to prove that they might be on the track, you are apt to be called a “hater,” a “drinker of the haterade,” or “president of the hater club” (I’ve actually never seen the latter but I feel it would be a nice twist). Sometimes, begging to differ can result in you being at the wrong end of a bloggy flash mob, all of whom are proclaiming your hater status. All of this seems to encourage people to NOT speak out against ideas that might be flawed.

Neo wanted me to say that he was giving a very knowing glance in his alternate dimension. I’m not sure what he meant by that.

The Good and the Bad in Dealing with Morpheus

Finally, Neo wanted me to point out on his behalf that there were advantages and disadvantage to his relationship with Morpheus. Morpheus is the one who helped Neo break out of the Matrix, and for that Neo remains grateful to this day. However, Morpheus also led Neo in some directions that weren’t as beneficial. Laying the whole “messiah” thing on Neo’s shoulders in rapid fashion put a lot of unwanted pressure on the poor guy (he wants you to say “aww” at this point).

Neo suggests that when you find your Morpheus in the online world, it can be easy to follow them blindly. After all, they were right about the Matrix thing so they must be right about other big things, too. However, even people with the best of intentions can lead you down a path you don’t want to travel on. Neo suggests the best way to break through the Matrix is to think for yourself and follow your own guidance.

He also suggests buying some VERY shiny black leather trench coats, but I’m not sure that is entirely necessary in this case.

Do you have any messages you’d like me to pass back on over to Neo? He said he’d be welcome to help me answer any questions or comments, although he can’t divulge too much about his dimension, and he hopes you’re okay with that. If you’re not, well, he can pretty much kick your butt, so I’d just nod and say a-okay!

I’ve written a new e-book called The ABCs of Marketing Myths. You can read about it here!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trinity-of-one/20562069/ via Creative Commons

Recently, the same conversation has crept up on me across various online platforms. It goes something like this.

Me: Something about a person’s blog

Them: Oh, well, my blog is still nowhere as big as yours. I only get x number of visits a week.

Me: Um…that’s about ten, 50, 100 times what I get in a month.

Them: Silence

Here’s a screen capture of my blog traffic from May 5 – June 4, 2012:

That big peak there is 480 visitors in a day, which is one of the highest traffic days I’ve ever had (might be *the* highest, actually).

To put it another way, from May 31st – June 4, a one-week period, I had 831 visitors. Some of the people I’ve talked to recently have 1,500 visitors over the same length of time.

Although my daily average number of visits has just about doubled since my first year of blogging, as far as traffic goes, I’m still very small potatoes.

And yet…

When I first started blogging, my blog traffic, which at that time was about 10 visits a day, used to really get me depressed. I couldn’t seem to figure out the magic formula of getting people to my site. I couldn’t get people to comment. Had I continued to focus on my blog traffic, I might not still be blogging, because boy can that be discouraging.

What came to matter to me more than the numbers was stuff like the fact that I can proudly say that all of the bloggers I respect most in the online world have commented here at one point or another. I can also say with no small amount of amazement that every blogger I respect most in the online world has shared one of my posts. I can say with a stunned sense of disbelief that I’ve gotten to blog on sites that I view as role models rather than a place where I rightly belong.

Would I trade any of that away for a higher PeerIndex score? Would I rather have an AdAge Power 150 badge? Would I prefer to have a little badge that counts out traffic or subscribers?

It’s not even close.

The little cafe where you’re always welcome

I like thinking of my site here as a little internet cafe – internet in that it exists on the internet. I’m not a Starbucks or a Caribou or a Panera. I’m not a McDonalds or any other big chain massive restaurant. I’m a pretty small cafe where oddly there is an infinite amount of seating room for you. We can have good talks together, and you can remind me every day how lucky I am to know great people like you. Sure, you might not get a Google Alert as your comment gets picked up by Google spiders, and it’s true that you might not meet 27 new people just by commenting here. But I think it’s safe to say that we have a good time here, even when we disagree.

That ads issue

A lot of people say that they need a lot of blog traffic so that their chances of getting clicks on their ads can go up. Their chances of getting more clicks on their affiliate links will go up. That’s possible, although statistically speaking a 20% conversion rate on such things is massive. Maybe that opportunity is enough for you and you are willing to plow ahead for big traffic on the chance it will pay off. There’s nothing wrong with that although it’s a basket I wouldn’t want to put all of my eggs in, financially speaking. If you are blogging for your business you might say that a lot of traffic is how you report the benefits of the blog to your boss, but I would argue against that too. A visit could be someone clicking and then leaving. A person leaving a comment means that they read and wanted to respond. Which would you rather count?

As for me, I am not at all disappointed that I’m small potatoes in so far as the numbers game goes. When I see 831 weekly visitors on a chart, I know who a lot of those people are. I know their faces and I even remember the comments they left on what posts. I know who tends to visit every time I have a post and who tends to stop in once a month or inconsistently, at any rate. I know that most of those 831 visitors probably either taught me something or encouraged me to think in a new way.

You’d have to be a fool to be disappointed about things like that. And hey – I ain’t no fool.

Whether you’re blogging for fun or for business, there’s more to the art than the numbers game. If you are feeling discouraged, think of why you enjoy writing and conversing with other people. Why do you keep sitting down to blog even though your numbers aren’t where you’d like them to be (and that can happen at ANY level)? Focus on THAT. Because that there is the magic of it all. Truly.

Don’t you think?

I’ve written a new e-book called The ABCs of Marketing Myths. You can read about it here!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/grandmaitre/5846058698/ via Creative Commons

I’ve been thinking about the online “comment” of late. In reality, or so my theory goes, the comment is really at the core of what social media is all about. You write a blog post, someone leaves a comment, you comment back. You tweet something, someone tweets back a comment, you tweet back a comment in response. Commenting, it seems to me, is the key to everything we do in the online world, or at least it would seem to be the key to Web 2.0 at the very least. One might say that “conversing” and “commenting” are synonymous in the online world. It’s all about the trade-off of ideas and opinions. This all seems pretty basic, right?

And yet, I seem to be encountering more and more often scenarios that undermine this “basic” aspect of social media. I wanted to run these by you and see if you’re noticing the same things.

When I get tired of leaving blog comments

As a blogger, I do my very best to answer every single comment I get, even if it’s just a one-liner. I don’t always succeed, but I think if you come here you know the chances are pretty good you’ll get a comment in reply. I work hard on that because I know how busy people are these days. The fact that you not only read what I say but also take the time to comment means a lot to me. Really. I figure the best way I can show that is to reciprocate.

As a blog reader, I don’t comment nearly as much as I used to, but I’ve never really been one to leave a “nice post” comment. When I read something and I’m spurred on to leave a comment, I take time out of *my* busy schedule to leave my thoughts there. Now, a lot of the bloggers I read are really good about commenting back, and they have great communities to show for it. In fact, entire conversations develop just among the blogger and his or her commenters.

There are some bloggers, though, that never seem to respond to anything. In fact, these folks often only reply to “troll” type comments, which makes you almost wonder if that’s the kind of comment they want. I love the way these folks write, but after leaving several comments and never getting a response back, I find myself kind of wondering if I should continue to spend my time talking to, well, myself. I like to leave comments not just to see my words on someone else’s page but rather because I enjoy the dialog. If the blogger doesn’t have that same desire, I’m apt to go elsewhere. Eventually. That’s a bummer.

Commenting on Facebook

I inadvertently started a little debate on Facebook over the weekend, so I thought I would spread the chaos into the blogosphere as well. As is the case with blogging, I feel that the most fun part of leaving a comment on Facebook is engaging in a conversation (I know, these 2 buzz words are becoming evil in the online world, but I mean them in their most unbuzzy forms). If someone updates Facebook with something interesting, I tend to scan all of the comments first, then I leave my own. Or maybe I don’t leave my own if it looks like the conversation is getting ugly. But I really enjoy commenting not just on the update but also on what other people have said. I have met a lot of great people that way, in fact – they were “friends” of the person who had updated the status initially, but through regular conversing, we got to know each other as well.

I’ve found, however, that a lot of people look at Facebook commenting as a sort of “drive by opinion” opportunity. They see an update, they want to get their opinion out there, and then they move on to the next thing. There are a few (in my view) disadvantages to this approach.

1. Someone may have already said what you wanted to say, in which case you are really highlighting the fact that you didn’t read anything else apart from the update.

2. Someone may have added a perspective that would alter your opinion

3. Someone may have said something like, “This conversation is a sore subject because xyz, can we take this offline?” in which case your comment may appear insensitive.

4. If you are vehemently for or against the initial update and voice that opinion, you could end up looking like a sour-puss if it turns out the person changed their mind in the middle of the comment thread.

It’s not to say that this approach is wrong, but it just seems (to me) to miss the whole idea of what social media is about. If you just want to get your opinion out there, why not go back to traditional marketing, where there is a lot more time between your “update” and people responding? If you’re participating on a social media platform, wouldn’t you hedge towards being, I don’t know, more social?

So what do you think? Am I being too picky? Am I taking the word “social” too literally? What are you finding out there?

I’ve written a new e-book called The ABCs of Marketing Myths. You can read about it here!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dharmasphere/20993325/ via Creative Commons

Now available at the Kindle Store!! Just click -> HERE! 

Hello! I am VERY excited to announce that I have self-published an official e-book! As you can see above, it’s called The ABCs of Marketing: Rumors and Lies the Online World Has Spread about the Ancient Art of Marketing (you can click here to preview the first 15 pages or to purchase. See below for important information regarding the e-book).

If you have been to this blog on a semi-regular basis over the last year or so, you may have seen some portions of this book already. I published letters A-Q here on the blog, although they have all been slightly modified for the book. Letters R-Z are only available in the book, however.

So what is this book about? Well, with one of my feet in the more “traditional” marketing world and the other of my feet in the online world, I have a sort of unique opportunity see both sides talk about the other. There are certainly plenty of people who still don’t really “get” social media. But it’s been interesting to see how the online world has begun talking about many core principles of marketing. Indeed, some online personalities have gone so far as to declare marketing dead (along with everything else). This kind of statement has always struck me as being rather over the top, but just saying that doesn’t really create a solid basis for conversation. And conversation is what I think marketers online and offline need. Too many people are painting with brushes that are too broad. “Agencies are bad.” “Email marketing is easy.” We need to talk about these things in productive ways for the betterment of companies operating in this crazy world.

I’m really hoping that people who read this book will start asking their own questions. I hope this inspires some more useful, helpful conversation than what seems to be the norm these days. I hope it helps people who are getting messages from the online world that might not jive with their offline experiences.

If you are interesting in purchasing this book, there are a few things I want you to know.

As of now, the book is only available for Apple devices (iPhone, iPad). The book is also only available on Blurb. If things go well I will look into moving the book into a more readily accessible platform.

If you want to purchase the book, click here.

Please ignore the option for the print version. Blurb just requires that you have that option present. 

Here are detailed instructions on how to download the book once you purchase it:

Download using either your (1) iPhone/iPad or (2) your Mac/PC:

1. Your iPad or iPhone:
   • In Safari go to Blurb.com, sign in to your account, and then go to the book details page for your book.
   • On the right-hand side find the button that says Get ebook for iPad, iPhone, iPod.
   • Choose Download for iTunes from the drop down. (A progress bar will appear at the top of the screen).
   • After the file downloads choose “Open in iBooks” to open the file. Getting an error message? Make sure you have iBooks first!
2. A Mac or PC:
•  Go to the book details page for your book.
• On the right-hand side click Get ebook for iPad, iPhone, iPod.
• Use any of the four options to load your ebook
• Text message – Open this message on your iPhone and tap the link. After the file downloads choose “Open in iBooks” to open the file.
• Email – Open this email in the iPad mail client and click the link. After the file downloads choose “Open in iBooks” to open the file.
• QR code – Use a QR reader to open the link. After the file downloads choose “Open in iBooks” to open the file.
• Download for iTunes – Click this to download your ebook to your computer to manually add to your iTunes library.