Marjorie Clayman’s Writing Portfolio

Professional writing profile of Marjorie Clayman

Marketing Talk

A Bit On Slacktivism

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Running rampant through the world of social media this past week has been a 30-minute documentary developed by a group called Invisible Children. Their purpose, as they state it, is to capture Ugandan war lord Joseph Kony by December 2012. Given that many feel the “sweet spot” length for an online video is no more than 2 minutes, the fact that a 30-minute video went viral across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter is pretty amazing. However, shortly after the video began to spread, questions began to arise about Invisible Children. Were they keeping over 30% of the money they were raising? Are they supporting organizations that may be just as bad as Kony? Are they putting Ugandan citizens even more at risk?

In doing some research about this I found an article from Mashable asking if the whole thing was a hoax. The article said this may be the latest example of slacktivism. As it turns out, a lot of people really don’t like the idea of “slacktivism,” or the concept that “liking” or “retweeting” something is a form of activism. So, let’s talk about this a bit in detail.

Of marketing myths and activist legends

If you read my blog posts on occasion, you know that one of my great concerns is that businesses are being misled as we plod through the 21st century. Companies are being told that “engaging” online is enough to grow their businesses, and they are also being told that there is no way to measure the impact of their social media marketing. “Try to tell me what the ROI is of your mother,” they are told.

Of course, this is inaccurate. Companies need to make money still. And of course, there *are* ways to measure your social media marketing.  You can measure how much time (and hence how much money) you are investing, and you can measure what you get back. That’s ROI in a nutshell. If you are putting a ton of time in and not making any sales, well, that’s going to be a big problem in short order.

I worry that this same sort of mind-block is invading the world of social good. Now, the term “slacktivism” seems pretty harsh. And hey, I believe in online serendipity. I believe that if you can get the right information to just the right person, amazing things can happen. So if you change your avatar purple and someone asks you why you did that, you have a chance to explain it’s for yada yada cause, and maybe that person has just what that organization needs to really jump forward. Social Media makes these types of things possible. But not all of the time. And for some causes, serendipity is too fluffy and it takes too long.

Now, here’s the disconcerting part. If we keep traveling down this path of “raising awareness,” which is very much like the “engagement” that businesses are taught about in the online world, we are going to forget about what these organizations need RIGHT NOW. They need money. They need volunteers. Some need blood or organ donations. Some need blankets and canned goods. Some need people who can dig for water in local villages. It’s really dangerously easy to forget about these things as you immerse yourself in the world of social media, just like it’s really easy to forget that what your business needs is sales, not friends.

Isn’t it easy to think to yourself, “Phew, I shared that video. That’s my good deed for the day!” Of course it is. Isn’t it easy to think, “Well, I “liked” that cause on Facebook and I was the 100th person. So that’s great. They’re on their way.” Of course it is. But just like businesses are in danger of going broke without even noticing it, we are at risk of becoming lazy when it comes to doing social good. I don’t think we’re there yet, but the seeds have been planted. The best of intentions in the world of social media can slowly mold into a sort of hypnotized “Friends and contacts are all I need” mentality. This could mean tremendous problems for all levels of our society, from the individual to the business to the social good campaign.

Back to Kony

So what do we make of the Kony 2012 campaign? Is it good that we are talking about Uganda, a country where children have been raped and abused en masse for years? Sure. Is it good that we are talking about Ugandan citizens and what they are facing? Yes. Is it good that the video went viral? Could be. It’s interesting at any rate.

But is this enough to disprove slacktivism? I’m not sure. How many people shared the video without watching the whole thing? How many people donated based only on the video without doing further research?

Social Media makes it so easy. So easy to feel successful. So easy to feel that you’ve accomplished your business or societal goals for the day or the week. This might be the greatest danger of social media. A lot of voices make a loud roar, but a lot of people only yelling just creates noise.

What do you think about all of this? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/advocacy_project/518031316/ via Creative Commons

Join the fun at #usXsw!

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It’s that time of year again. SXSW is in full swing (almost) down in Austin, Texas. I remember the first time I heard about SXSW. It was back during my Lost fangirl days, and a friend of mine got to meet Dominic Monaghan down there. And Elijah Wood. We’re still friends, but it was rocky for awhile. Little did I know that just a few years later, SXSW time would become a much talked-about social media orgy! I meant…conference. Conference. But here we are.

Sadly, I could not make it down to SXSW this year. Part of it may have been that I didn’t really try. But I know that a lot of people are feeling sort of listless knowing that this weekend is going to be filled with drunken tweets from the heart of Texas, and gosh..what can the rest of us do?

Well, fret no more, my friends. Jeannette Baer and Joseph Ruiz have you 100% covered. The second annual Twitter event – #usXsw – is about to begin!

What is #usXsw?

The #usXsw even takes the heart and soul of the #usguys group and ramps it up to SXSW caliber. Starting on Friday, March 9 and lasting on through to Sunday the 11th, you will find lots of great stuff happening in this stream, including chats led by some of the best people around, trivia games, prizes, and some plugs for charities and social good. And that’s not all. You can do it all from the comfort of your own home. You can even wear your PJs! Now really, what could be better than participating in a SXSW type-event in your jammies? I can’t think of hardly anything.

As for me, I will be heading up a discussion on Saturday night from 8 PM till 10 PM EST. Our topic will be how storytelling brings together communities and and helps businesses. Yep – some things in the online world can accomplish both things. Is that crazy or what?!?

If you want to follow the schedule of events, just keep your eyes glued to the #usXsw stream, and bookmark the UsXsw site for information.

Hope to see you in this virtual realm of awesomeness. If you stop by, make sure you tip your hat to Jeannette (@myagenda) and Joseph (@smsJoe) because they put a LOT of work into this baby. And thank the loverly sponsors, too. Cuz they rock!

Got it? Get it? Good!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/omarsc/454707209/ via Creative Commons

Myth: Glorifying Others is the Key To Your Dreams

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Well, here we are on myth letter G. Seems like only a month ago we were on letter A. I think we were on letter A a month ago. Anyway…

Like many things we have talked about so far, this particular conversation really comes down to a sense of balance. Nuance. Subtleties that do not then explode into massive generalizations. And in particular, this topic we’re going to discuss for the letter G is more relevant if you are marketing or running a business and using social media tools as a part of those efforts. If you are here for other reasons, the myth can perhaps become truth.

The Myth – Give To Get

I’ve talked about the “give to get” thing before. In truth, the concept is a really nice one. If you promote someone’s post, they might promote yours later down the line. If you help someone out of a pinch, they’ll think of you when they need to buy the kind of service your company sells. It’s all part of the “be human” thing we talk about so much in the online world. Promote others. Share information. Scratch someone’s back, get your back scratched. In principle, it seems like nothing could go wrong here. But in fact, I’ve noticed two problems that can arise from this overwhelming urge to “give to get.”

Problem 1: You give, but you might not get

I have bad news for you. Are you ready? Take a big deep breath. OK, so…look. The world of social media – it involves people. You know, those yucky, hairy, 2-legged creatures that roam the earth. Ever since that whole apple incident, humans have proven to be a tad unreliable. A tad fickle. Maybe even a bit sketchy. To wit, if you give to some people, they might not even say thanks. They night not recognize your giving as the great gift it is. They might not give back, either. At that point, you have a decision to make. Do you keep giving in the hope that maybe that person is just really busy and will get to you eventually, or do you decide you’re throwing pearls before swine? These are tough, very human decisions. But such is life. Online and off.

Problem 2: If you give everything away, it’s hard to make money

Here’s the real problem that the “give to get” myth has caused for people trying to do business in the world of social media. Niceness does not pay the bills. A lot of the problems we run into now in the online world, like controversy surrounding people wanting to charge for their content, are the direct result of the initial philosophy that social media is all about “giving to get.” It’s not to say that you can’t win business by supporting others. It has happened. Referrals can happen. But that can take a REALLY long time. An indeterminate amount of time. Meanwhile, you are not making money. That’s a shaky plan for a business, right?

As companies and other folks navigating the social media waters discovered that they were not making money, that they were in fact bleeding money, they attempted to backtrack and are now trying to raise money for content they send out there. Unfortunately, in many cases, this is a significant flip-flop from where we were 3-4 years ago, when money in the online world was not the point.

Be nice, but be realistic

At some point, if you are hoping to use social media to grow your business, you have to think about making money. Sadly, we do not live in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trekkian world where everything is based on your talents and how well you get along with other species. Not yet, anyway. You can be nice. You can promote others. But you need to balance that with growing your own company. You need to try to make sure you are “giving” at least occasionally to people who might buy from you. For me, as a marketer, me “giving” to lots of other marketers isn’t smart. They’re not going to need our services. Now, can I promote my friends who happen to be marketers? Sure. But if that’s all I’m doing, I’m not going to find myself in any better position 15 years from now than I am in right now.

Same goes for you and yours.

So what do you think? Is social media really all about glorifying others? Is it really all about giving to get? Or is there something else we need to focus on here? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yoursecretadmiral/5349322938/ via Creative Commons

Myth: Failure is Sexy

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If you are around the online world long enough, one overriding factor starts to seem pretty darned exciting. You know what it is?

Failure.

You see a lot of quotes like this:

“Here are six random ideas that will help you fail better, more often and with an inevitably positive upside…”

A search on google for “failing is good” reveals a wealth of results:

You see a lot of tweets like this: The only way to truly fail is to never try. You don’t hit 100% of the pitches you don’t swing at. #NeverQuit

In fact, the romanticization of failure is such a thorn in my side that I actually ended up getting up on my soapbox about it in my review of Seth Godin’s Poke the Box.

To be fair, a lot of the blog posts and tweets and quotes out there are, I’m sure, meant to be inspirational. But it seems like we’ve gotten a little carried away, or a little separated from reality. The fact is that if you are in the business world, or if you are a marketer who is working with successful companies who want to stay successful, failure can actually be a really huge problem.

Consider this post from 2007 outlining some of the most famous product failures of all time. As the post aptly points out, failure in this case is not about a learning experience. These companies spent millions of dollars creating and then promoting these products. Would you want to say to your boss, “Well…at least we went for it!”? I am thinking that might not go over too well.

The personal versus the professional

A lot of folks in the world of social media talk about “Just going for it.” In your own personal life, that can be a fantastic philosophy. In fact, for a lot of people that push to try new things or to go out on a limb in some way can be almost lifesaving. If you’re worried about meeting new people, for example, pushing yourself to get involved in an organization can be very empowering for you. If you are worried about exercising, pushing yourself to do that can improve your life in all sorts of ways. If you don’t succeed in meeting a friendly person your first time out you can analyze why. If you don’t keep up with your exercise regimen, you can evaluate what you did to hold yourself back. You can learn from failing. You can learn from your mistakes. To a point.

Of course, there are even limits here. If you push yourself to a point where failing means that you lose a limb or fall to your death, learning from the experience is going to be a bit tricker, I’d wager.

But professionally, these days, going out on a limb can be considered reckless in a lot of scenarios.

In the world I come from, the agency world, failure is definitely not something that you want to equate with “a lesson well learned” or “a golden opportunity to grow.” In fact, that’s the reality for a lot of businesses today. The world is competitive. If you fail at your job, you know that there are literally thousands of people who will apply if you need to be replaced. Is that sexy? If your company fails to win a huge new partnership or a huge new product deal and your competitor wins, is that sexy? Will you reflect on what you learned from that experience? Maybe eventually, but it will take a long time for that dust to settle, right?

Of course, the biggest failure myth is that trying a new social media platform for your marketing campaign is a lot better than not trying at all, regardless of the final outcome. The latest splurge of posts on this topic focuses on Pinterest. Just as we heard with Foursquare and Quora and Google Plus, the posts are out there saying that if you are not claiming your Pinterest presence now, you will probably blow up. Spontaneously. It doesn’t matter if you fail there. It just matters that you try it (darn it)!

Of course, the teeny weeny problem with this online philosophy is that trying those new platforms still takes time, and as we all know, time equals money. If you or one of your employees dumps 3 months into trying a new platform and you don’t get a single lead, not to mention a single sale, what have you accomplished? Well, you lost a heckuva lot of money paying that person’s salary, for one thing. Your company might look kind of like a doofus, and many experts agree that a company looking like a doofus is not a good thing. In a worst case scenario, your efforts could really blow up thanks to a lack of knowledge or expertise and you could end up with a costly PR disaster on your hands.

Is this sounding particularly sexy to you? I’m kind of shaking in my wee boots right about now just thinking about it.

So what am I missing here? Is failure really sexy and I’m just not getting it? Is there some other angle that I am failing to understand?

Fill me in!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaxsilver/4766356883/ via Creative Commons

 

 

 

Social Media Smart But People Stupid

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Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, when I was about 8 months into my social media “stuff,” a pretty well-known person called me up and offered me a pretty neat chance at something. I was rather shocked, as you might imagine, and while I didn’t tell a whole lot of people, especially in the online world, I certainly was excited in my offline world. I mean, I was still a social media baby and this was happening. It was rather amazing. As time dragged on (and on) however, it became clear that things were not exactly going to come to fruition. In fact, after my last attempt to say, “Hey…what’s up?”I was basically given the “Don’t call me, I’ll call you” message. As if that wasn’t enough, this person used some of the ideas I had suggested afterwards. Ouch.

Now, for people in my offline world who think social media is kind of…skeevy….this did not come as much of a surprise. “These people build their careers based on pretty much nothing,” I was told. “Also, you don’t really know them.”

All fair enough, of course, but I still believed that there were people in the online world who really did mean stuff that they said. So, I got myself into another situation, then another, where I watched people act one way in the online world and then a completely different way offline. People who tout themselves as great consultants missed meetings. I entered a contest to win a pretty well-known book, won, and never received the book from the author. After following up twice, I was again basically told, “Yeah…um, I’ll follow up with you, k?”

Sadly, I have gotten to the point where I find myself wondering if anyone in the online world actually understands or absorbs what they are saying in those 140 characters or what they are saying in those blog posts. The words are always right, but are the words understood by the author, not to mention the readers?

Book Smarts versus Street Smarts

There are a lot of people who study for 20 gazillion years in colleges and universities. They can quote any Shakespeare sonnet and can probably name you 17 chemistry equations in 5 seconds.  However, they might not have any idea how to get places using the subway system. Similarly, there are people who might have dropped out of high school who manage to find a great deal of success based sheerly on what we might call street smarts or gut instinct. We differentiate between these two kinds of smarts. I’m thinking we might need to differentiate between “social media smart” and “people smart.”

Social Media Smart

What is social media smart? I would define it as being able to blog successfully, knowing how to navigate Twitter and Facebook, getting yourself on the speaker circuit and finding success there that then feeds back into your online success. In your public tweets and blog posts and Facebook updates, you know the right things to say to get yourself retweeted or “liked.” You know how the game works and you play it well. That takes skill.

People Smart

People smart is pretty different. Just like a lot of “people stupid” things happen offline, a lot of “people smart” things happen offline, too. While breaking your word in one way or another is pretty darned “people stupid,” exceeding a person’s expectations in some way is rather smart. While quoting inspirational people can be social media smart, offering help or motivation to a person who needs it in real life is people smart. While retweeting a person may be social media smart, reaching out to a person who has been quiet lately is people smart.

How can you be “social media smart” but “people stupid?”

Ah, that’s the real question, isn’t it? In order to succeed in social media, you need to at least know enough to pay lip service to things like “give to get” and “it’s not about you.” To be people smart, you have to really understand what that means. Maybe the line is getting blurry for some people. For example, if a person tweets to you and says, “Hey, I found that offensive” and you just scoff or continue, that is being people stupid, even if it’s getting you a lot of social media attention. If a person goes quiet, social media smarts might indicate that that’s one less person to worry about or compete with. People smarts says, “I wonder if they’re okay.”

Are people getting so used to typing to unmoving avatars that we are forgetting that there are real people behind those screens? Do we forget that the person we betray in real life is that same person we’ve been talking to and friendly with for a year or three? Is Social Media simply a “revenge of the nerds” scenario where socially awkward people can game the system to win notoriety of some sort?

Is Social Media really that shallow and simple?

What do YOU think is going on here?

Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/142350 

Mark Your Calendars! #tweetdiner and the Social Media ROI Question!

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The voting is complete, and the date and time for our #tweetdiner Social Media ROI Roundtable will be Thursday, March 1st at 7 PM EST. Please share this information if you’re of a mind because I’d love for this to be a great chat with lots of people! The original framing concept is below.

It seems like conversations about social media ROI are happening everywhere these days. It’s all over Twitter, all over the Blogosphere. Magazine articles ponder the ROI of social media. People ponder why people are confused about social media ROI. It has remained one of the hot topics in the online world and in the business world for months and even years.

The problem (in my mind) is that a lot of these conversations are happening like little islands. A person writes a blog post over here, a person tweets over there, and a butterfly flaps its wings in China. Wait, no, that’s something else. Anyway, I thought it would be neat to tie all of these conversations together with one chat that would focus on nothing but Social Media ROI – various thoughts, various modes of mythbusting – you get the idea.

The chat will be framed out for an hour but could go for as long as you’d want. Transcripts will be posted for those who can’t make it. My goal is that more people will come out of the chat finding themselves on the same page regarding the question (or concept) of ROI in social media. To me, the future of businesses using social media depends on thoroughly understanding this issue, so I do not take it lightly.

I hope I can look forward to seeing YOU there!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/2723457360/ via Creative Commons