Marketing Talk

I can hardly wait to pull the trigger on this week’s #30Thursday. The reception I get to this project continues to be warm and enthusiastic, but what really makes me happy is that people are starting to catch the fever of sending me posts that they’ve enjoyed reading and writing. Some amazing posts are gathered here. It’s been a privilege to read all of them. I hope you enjoy them, think about them, and learn from them as much as I did!

1. Recommended by @SuzanneVara, and I’m so glad she did: What is the cost of being too efficient or being inefficient? Are we missing good experiences because we’re so hurried? Jason Sokol covers these questions and more. A truly great read!

2. @SueYoungMedia suggests that getting ready to join a chat is comparable to being a helicopter parent. Great post, especially if you are new to chats!

3. @ellenbrown wrote a beautiful post that I’m hoping you can’t relate to on a personal basis. How to keep moving, and why to keep moving, after a major loss. Recommended by @SteinbrecherInc

4. @ar_turnbull wrote a great piece called “Why Marketing.” I dig his perspective. Do you?

5. @jonathanfields wrote a great post about how to target your marketing efforts. “If you talk to the world, you’re talking to no one.” Recommended by @SuzanneVara

6. Showing why everyone loves her, @SuzanneVara also recommended this post by @markwschaefer. What is a friend these days? What is a “friend?” Poignant and powerful.

7. @briansrice of B2C Marketing Insider put together a great post featuring Twitter resources. Take a look and read on!

8. Suzanne Vara left a fantastic comment on post about Klout last weekend. In fact, her comment was so good I told her she should turn it into a blog. That’s just what she did with this mighty fine post about Influence and math. Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

9. My friend @MayaREGuru hit on something big when she tied the Pareto Principle, SEO, and Real Estate together. Check it out!

10. My buddy and #Tweetdiner co-founder @pushingsocial hit it out of the ballpark with this post about why you shouldn’t (and maybe can’t) just blog for yourself. Talk about passion in a post!

11. New friend @cristianisdaman wrote about honesty in PR this past week. I think it’s more about honest listening. Great story with a great perspective!

12. @cristianisdaman also suggested that I head on over to a post by Brian Solis. So I did. Now I’m recommending you head over and read about the Eco System versus the Ego System. Warning: Reading this post will raise your IQ by 17 points.

13. @PamMktgNut wrote a great post about how blaming a Social Media platform for your failings is really not appropriate. I couldn’t agree more. Another recommendation from Suzanne Vara!

14. I really enjoyed this post from @sterlinghope this week. A lot of people say that they are “afraid of this Social Media stuff.” Sterling Hope asks you to use your voice and Be Heard. Great post full of passion.

15. My friend @dwesterberg has been working on a series in her blog called PR 101. I found a post from April about professional photography and why it’s still a good investment. Check it out!

16. My friend @rockinrobync wrote a really stunning post about life, loss, and why we all need to make sure we give a little of ourselves every day. Words to live by and to let guide us.

17. My lovely friend from Montreal, @ExoPoirier,  wrote an excellent post regarding whether or not marketing should be outsourced. He makes a great case for using an agency, don’t you think? 🙂

18. @thevintagemama wrote a lovely guest post for my friend @tommyismyname this week. Remember Mr. Rogers? His advice is so good that it can transcend childhood and older technology to still be relevant in Social Media.

19. @tilakp thought this post from The New Yorker, “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” was worth mentioning this week. I have to say, I couldn’t agree more.

20. New friend @ashleighblatt wrote a great post about filtering distractions and getting productive. If you struggle with focus, this great post is for you!

21. My new friend @j2_whittington wrote a post about getting through that 1st semester of law school – this is what Social Media can be used for at its best – helping other people along.

21. I loved this post by @cspenn. When you ask someone to read your content, you are asking them to spend their time with you. That’s why creating content is a great responsibility. You won’t regret spending time with this post.

22. @BethHarte did a post that captures something that has been on my mind for quite some time (I’m going to blog about it in my own peculiar way sometime soon). Even though Social Media is a brand new tool in a brand new toolbox, a lot of PR and Marketing people are still pushing. Time to update the tactics, folks!

23. @Julien’s post that I enjoyed this week is another thought that has been rattling around in my skull. We are all going into ourselves or, as Julien writes, culturally privatizing. We are no longer sharing technology or sharing in real life. Is that the way humanity is supposed to evolve?

24. My friend @knowledgebishop is co-hosting a new chat! #TCChat (TechComm). Here is the info!

25. The sensational @salamicat wrote a great post about something she (and many of us) are missing. Metabolism! Where did it go?

26. My pal @SMSJoe has a great post about mobile marketing. 12 questions to ask before you dive in. Great stuff!

27. Richard Guha wrote a thought-provoking post over at the MENGOnline blog. How Social is Social Networking? Check out the comic he posted with it!

28. @MackCollier (king of #blogchat) has a very thought provoking post up about how Twiter is growing like a weed thanks to the iPad and smart phones. Interesting 1:1 ratio there, non?

29. This post is from August 19 and I only just saw it now! But @CASUDI, who is my often-times chat friend, really nailed how to get going on chats (and how to end up being an addict like me). If this is something you are interested in, read this post right away!

30. Finally, last but not least, Chris Brogan wrote a fantastic post on how to create a personal brand. Only he could write a post about such a complex journey and make it seem like you could figure it out in five hours. If you’re interested in more information on how to plan and implement personal branding, this is the post for you.

Have you ever noticed how much complaining there is on Social Media sites about, well, Social Media?

It gets to feel like you’re hanging out with Homer Simpson’s dad sometimes, doesn’t it? Ohhhhhh I have so many people I need to get back to. I have blogs to read. Facebook is such a time hole. And ohhhhh the Twitter. Makes my back ache with all the typing and the chatting.

Does this strike anyone else as kind of…weird?

A lot of people kind of pick on me because I seem to be in every chat ever in the universe. “Don’t you get tired?” I get asked a lot.

My hands certainly don’t appreciate the one tweet per minute I tend to average during a chat, but you know what? I don’t care. Do you want to know why?

It’s fun.

When I think about the people I respect in this crazy mixed up world of Social Media, one commonality strikes me on the head as if I was in one of those V8 commercials. They all enjoy this stuff. Various reasons, sure. But the joy, the passion, the personal satisfaction they get out of doing this stuff is apparent. Look at the passion that my friend Stan (@pushingsocial) talks about all of the time. Or how about all of the passion and love that Suzanne Vara (@SuzanneVara) puts into her posts. Maybe take a look at Sterling Hope (@ambercleveland & @kaywhitaker)  and how clear their passion is in all of their blog posts.

Social Media is a lot of work. That’s true. A lot of us are here because of professional reasons. That’s true. There’s a lot of time and dedication in this particular brand of soup. Very true.

But seriously? If you do not enjoy blogging or tweeting or Facebooking, you are not doing yourself any favors by tweeting about how much you hate tweeting or blogging about what a time investment Social Media is. Nobody wants to read about how busy you are. After all, they’re busy. I’m busy. We’re all busy.

I started noticing a difference in my Social Media reality when I decided to approach it as if it was a virtual extension of the most fun job anyone could ever ask for. And that’s how I still view it today. I enjoy talking to you. I enjoy learning from you. I enjoy helping you out when you’re in a jam. Do I hope that I get to network with some people or companies that I could work with in the “real world?” Of course. But I don’t sign in to Twitter with dollar signs in my eyes. I sign in to Twitter and I say, I wonder if @Dwesterberg is around. I wonder if @ellisvalincomm has posted today. I read blog posts by folks like Chris Brogan and Jay Baer and Trystan Bishop (@KnowledgeBishop) because they teach me and because I have a ball getting a view into their brains.

Are you having fun? You’ve entered the most amazing cocktail party you’ll ever get invited to. You can rock in the fetal position because there are too many people and the music is too loud, or you can get on out here and dance.

You know where I’ll be, right? 🙂

Image by Jereme Peabody. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/peabody111

I was running around accomplishing a lot of little errands on Saturday. Because I, like a college student, still have to use quarters in order to get my clothing clean (grr), I stopped by the little bank inside my grocery store to buy a roll. The store was on the way to lots of other places I needed to go.

The teller I approached looked at me kind of like I was infringing on a super fun time. She started getting my roll of quarters and then asked me if I had an account with that particular bank. I said no, worried that I was going to be denied my laundry-saving coins.

“And why is THAT?!?” She asked.

I was a little taken aback, quite frankly. I kind of wanted to respond, “Well, because at my bank I’m not talked to like I’m an idiot.”

As it turns out, this bank was offering a really really smart promotion. If you sign up for an account with the bank and put $50 into your account, you get $75 of groceries free. Really I guess it ends up being $25, but still, $25 can at least get you a dozen eggs now, right? The promotion was clearly the idea of some smart marketing person. You’ve got people who are obviously coming to the store. If you’re talking to them, they have noticed that you are situated in the store, and it would be easy to convince customers that they could take care of banking and grocery shopping in one fell swoop.

Brilliant, right?

Sure. Assuming you don’t treat your customers like idiots.

Needless to say, even though as a marketer I appreciate the good idea, I did not sign up for the promotion.

In Social Media, we talk a lot about great ideas, but in the “real world” you have to execute those ideas, and a lot can get lost in the delivery. Even the best plan can be flushed down the toilet by a tonality or facial expression that is inappropriate for the situation.

When you are trying to bring customers into your network, whether online or offline, remember that we all want to feel like we are brilliant. It’s easy to tear people down. Customers will be loyal to you if you make it easy for them to feel smart. I would have felt pretty smart if I had looked into this bank, gotten some free groceries, and taken care of a lot more than I had planned on in that one single trip, right? Instead, I am writing this post about a woman who blew an opportunity to get a new customer.

Which scenario would you prefer?

Image by David Duncan. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/D-squared

Last week an article came out from Smashing Magazine titled “Does the Future Of the Internet Have Room for Web Designers?” Our web guy at work sent me a link as soon as it came out and then @LizStrauss, among others, tweeted it over the weekend.

I have a lot of thoughts and sentiments about the issue. As an agency person, I would love to tell you that there is only one real answer to this question. I have a bias.

There is something I would like to add into the mixing pot, however. I think sometimes that in the marketing world, people think “design” just means “how something looks.” People say that a well-designed ad is good because it is aesthetically pleasing. The design of a website is judged on how the website looks and any fancy, cool programming the site offers. This is part of design, but it’s not the only thing. Design in marketing is like architecture. A good architect wants the building to look pretty, but she also wants the building to work the best way possible.

In the information age, information needs to be accessible

The argument that Smashing Magazine makes is that people aren’t really visiting websites anymore because everything is becoming app-based via mobile devices. When people do go to websites, they want the site to be simple, easy to navigate, and they want it to be attractively utilitarian. To me, this would be a reason for more web designers, not fewer. You see, a web designer’s ultimate job, when it comes right down to it, is to make sure that a person who has no idea where they have landed can find the information he or she is looking for. Drop-down menus, easy navigation, sensible site maps – these are all part of what web designers offer.

In an era when content is king, it seems to me that this would be the ultimate time for web designers and web design to shine. Companies have key pieces of data that they want visitors, leads, prospects, and existing customers to find. While this seems easy, it takes expertise in how the web works to bring other people into a world and, without live support, help them find not only what they need, but also what the website owner wants them to find. It takes a nuanced balance of giving information and selling. It means walking a fine line between offering enough information to avoid frustration, yet also enticing people to stay a little longer and dig a little deeper.

Not just an online question

The article in Smashing Magazine is symptomatic of what is going on throughout the marketing world. “Oh, we don’t need those people, we don’t need these people. We don’t need professional photographers, right? We don’t need people who have studied art and graphics because we can kind of sketch things out now, and there are programs that make it serviceable. And after all, people are just after information. They don’t care what things look like.

I have my doubts about how much of that is really true. I think that people want to access information with ease, but I think they gravitate towards places that make the search pleasing and maybe even fun/informative. Whether we are talking about an ad, a sell sheet, or a website, “design” means more than just making something pretty. It’s making a beautiful cooking knife that glistens in the kitchen light and cuts a can as easily as a tomato. It’s making a car that makes everyone jealous and yet also has great gas mileage.

That’s what design means to me. How about you?

image by Zsuzsanna Kilian. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/nkzs

If you are a child of the 80s, or if you had a child in the 80s, you likely remember the series of commercials for Prego spaghetti sauce. Various people come in to the kitchen and their worlds are shaken as they realize that their wife/mother/grandmother is making spaghetti with a jar of spaghetti sauce instead of sauce from scratch.

The tagline for the ad campaign was “It’s in there.” “It” referred to all of the good stuff you would expect to find in your homemade spaghetti sauce.

I was thinking about that ad campaign today and realized that the same tagline could be used if agencies were to rally together to explain to the world why agencies are beneficial (not that I’m biased or anything). Here are some ingredients that you might ask about if you are looking to engage in marketing.

Public Relations: It’s in there! Our agency has a very strong PR capability that includes list-building, list maintenance, and tracking where and when news releases are published.

Media Placement: It’s in there! Independent media buying firms exist, but the advantage with an agency is that media buying can get sauteed with other facets of your marketing campaign. This enhances the recommendations you’ll receive. Also, while a media placement firm may be able to place space anywhere, they likely do not bring to the table the same amount of industry knowledge or research that an agency can bring.

Web Design/Development: It’s in there! We are fortunate to have our own “web guy,” but we are also able to talk to clients about their needs and network to find people who have special expertise such as database programming. Because we also can work with clients on other facets, we are aware of what kinds of traffic will be driven to the site and how the new site will fit into the overall marketing plan.

Social Media Consultation/Implementation: It’s in there! As I have mentioned often in this blog, I am out here to learn so that we can serve our clients at the highest level of quality possible. In our particular case, we offer a proprietary service called ClayComm2.0 that includes research, Social Media “listening” programs, and program implementation.

Right now, there are a lot of experts (whether they really are or whether they are self-proclaimed I will leave to you). There’s nothing wrong with that, but I would toss out there that while pasta with fresh tomatoes is really good, and while pasta with fresh tomatoes and some oregano is really really good, a pasta sauce with all of the good stuff is pretty darned enjoyable. An agency can provide that kind of holistic marketing approach, and in doing so, we cut down on the numbers of individual companies or experts with whom you need to work.

Whatever you might need in your marketing world, hey, it’s in there.

Just don’t eat us.

Image by lisa crosdale. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/genitort

The more I dig into Social Media, the more I am entirely perplexed at how people who have more on their table get anything accomplished. The fact that they do all they do, in fact, begins to appear downright miraculous.

This weekend, I have been giving a lot of thought to priorities. Actually, this started last Thursday. Someone mentioned that one way to make #30Thursday more valuable would be to make sure I comment on every post that I include. I had already been thinking that.

Today, I realized that I am severely lacking in tweeting about peoples’ posts to my followers.

I am disappointed in myself that I am falling short in those areas. However, I also have a little problem – I am not sure how to budget my time.

Two Full-Time Jobs

Everything that I do here in the Social Media world really has come to comprise, in terms of time and effort, a full-time job. That would be awesome, except that I already have a full-time job. Working for my family’s agency, by itself, with none of the Social Media stuff I’m doing, does an ample job of using my time, my thought, my passion, and my effort. This is not a complaint. I love what I do for my job. I love what I do here, obviously, or I would just stop. However, I will fully admit that I also really enjoy eating, sleeping, and maybe even being unproductive sometimes (but not often).

Priorities are a muddle

I am trying to determine what I should add to my Social Media work and what I should perhaps cut back on. Here are some ideas.

Make 10 comments on other peoples’ posts for every post that I write

Promote 5 peoples’ posts on Twitter for every 1 of mine

Cut back on the number of chats I participate in each week (these take 1-2 hours of time…is this the best way to use my time or is it just really enjoyable and educational for me?)

Of course, I would love to grow my breadth of experiences someday and start to work on presentations and other things that extend beyond the computer machine. Where do those fit into priorities I have going now?

What am I doing that helps you the most? Would it be better for me to comment on your blog rather than write my own blogs here?

I’m all ears.

Image by Ray Smithers. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Ray7775