Marketer's Lab

Antisocial Media

I maintain a presence on a couple social networks, but I'm not on Facebook, I don't Twitter and I only post to my blog every couple days. (Pause while marketers reading this gasp and then transition to chuckles about what a Social Media loser I must be).  My Google reader,  until a recent "reader bankruptcy" where I nuked everything and started over, was a logjam of unread posts and other content.  With all the buzz about everything social, my inability/choice to limit my social stuff has me feeling a little antisocial.

Yes we're in the "age of conversation" and 'everyone is smarter than the few" and we all need to be transparent and collaborate while we watch the "world get smaller", but how much is too much?  I came across a piece by Phil Johnson over at AdAge who did a nice post on this very subject.  Phil also points to a more inflammatory post by Peter Madden who calls out "Facebook as a freak show", not surprisingly drawing the ire of many a Facebook fan. Interesting to read the comments on the freak show post, here's a couple excerpts: 

From the "You just don't get Social Media" camp:

"you seem to be echoing the standard sentiments of a neophyte user"

"Um, is this a post from about 3 years ago that's been accidentally re-published? I can't quite believe it would be current."

"Facebook is an early look at the future of digital advertising and social/consumer CRM."

"Facebook is to the future of advertising as Google was for search."

"If this article is satire, it's only mildly amusing."

"If the author is serious, then he's just one more dinosaur stuck in the tar pit that is traditional advertising."

From the "Skeptical of Social Media" camp:

"I'm tired of hearing about who posted what on your message board. Get back to work"

"Facebook, like any form or social discourse, faces the risk that the overall tone of the conversation is dominated by the lowest form of discourse." - Robert Heath

"I guess if your looking for depth in an online community stop playing in the shallow end of the social networking pool"

"a conversation consisting of "Peter is getting on a plane in Las Vegas... Brittany is having french toast for breakfast... Gary has the sniffles" is a bore in ANY medium."

Religion, politics and now apparently Social Media?  Why is this so hard?  My theory is that everyone is looking for the "right answer", when there isn't one.  Every audience is different, every product is unique and the marketing dynamics for every campaign vary.  To claim Social Media, however you define it, works or doesn't ignores all these unique characteristics. 

I am wildly passionate about the opportunities Social Media makes available, but also appropriately skeptical that it's a magical world where all your marketing dreams can come true.  If there's one thing Social Media has taught us is that there are few absolutes, probably not a bad thing to keep in mind as we evolve along together.

Beginner's Mind

Are you a marketing know-it-all or are you a clueless marketing turtleneck?  Chances are you're like me and exist somewhere between one of those extremes with variations based on the topic in question.  No matter where you exist on the knowledge continuum, it can't hurt to do a little self assessment.   

Here's the challenge for all of us as marketers; there's a massive, and I do mean massive, volume of information to absorb to be really good at our craft.  The new breed of marketer needs to understand all the traditional 4 P's, but in the context of a fast moving and complex on-line marketing landscape, how to apply meaningful measurement and metrics, how to integrate across multiple media and channels and deliver tangible business results.  Add to all this the need for a sophisticated understanding of brand dynamics and positioning and how all the aforementioned elements impact that brand and it's easy to see how marketing has become a challenging place to be.  Welcome to Marketing 2.0.      

Years ago somewhere in the depths of a Tom Peters book there was a section where he challenged readers to develop and maintain what Eastern religions labeled "beginner's mind".  His assertion was that as people move in their careers they tend to develop the attitude that they "know what works" and were resistant to looking at things in a fresh way.  I've caught myself in this mode and have seen it many, many times so I know this is a real issue and can be a huge barrier to solving problems and getting things done. 

Of course if you mention this concept to any group of people you'll get lots of head nodding and agreement about the idea, but I know from my own experience that even when you're aware you should be in beginners mind mode, it doesn't always happen. With the challenges of navigating and thriving in the midst of all the moving parts I mentioned above, thought I would offer a couple ideas on how we might be better "beginners".

Humility - Seems simple enough, but I am always amazed how many marketers I see faking it, unwilling to seek out expertise elsewhere.  Acknowledge you need some education and you'll be amazed at others willingness to help.

Ask stupid questions - Related to the above, don't be afraid to ask if you don't know.  Chance are good you aren't the only one who needs the information. 

Be a sponge - This seems to be innate, or not, so harder to do if it doesn't come naturally, but aggressively seeking out and attempting to absorb as much as you can is a very good thing.

Seek out experts - If you don't have peers who can help, seek out experts elsewhere.  There's an expert out there on just about any topic you can imagine. 

Love what you do - I don't think I've ever met anyone in any field of work who was truly great at their job who didn't sincerely love it.

Let's all try to be better beginners.

Timesuck 2.0

It seems like not that long ago there we were all drowning in email.  There were stories about declaring email bankruptcy and lots of suggestions for how to deal with the massive onslaught of messages.  I don't hear anyone boasting about how their inbox volume has disappeared so going out on a limb that email volumes haven't decreased.  Apparently the deluge of email wasn't enough, now we have this whole "Social Media" thing to find time for. 

To be honest, I find myself a little schizo when it comes to social media.  Me The Curmudgeon says its a giant waste of time, adding to the cognitive noise and time management stresses of each day.  Don't even get me started on Twitter.  Me The Social Media Evangelist believes in the power of connections, communities of interest, "micro-marketing" and the richness of the information and interactive fabric that is called social media.  I like to think I'm not alone in my conflicting attitudes, I sense a lot of marketers are underground with their doubts for fear they'll be characterized as old school (Marketing 1.0).

Curmudgeon or evangelist, social media "value" is based on how it improves our use of time.  Does it allow you to interact with a community around a specific topic faster than other alternatives?  Does it allow you to gather market, product or other insights more quickly?  Do you have the time to contribute to the collective in a meaningful way?  To benefit from much of what social media has to offer requires an intellectual contribution to the whole.   

"Begin with the end in mind" is one of my favorite expressions, not sure if its attributed to Yoda, Confucius or an old Franklin Covey Seminar, but good counsel in any case.  Your company has a blog, great.  Now what?  You've taken the plunge and started using a feed reader, great.  Is it doing a better job of gathering up more information you'll never read?  You're on facebook, what to do with all those new friends?  Before you jump into any social media effort, have very clearly defined objectives.

What we are talking about with social media is a set of engagement tools.  Used wisely, these tools represent an incredibly effective means of learning, sharing and collaborating with audiences large and small.  Used without setting clear goals or with unrealistic expectations on the need to contribute, they can do substantial damage and become a giant resource drain.   Be focused, be purposeful, contribute content of value and remember its all about time.

Test Your Web Site, No Homework Required

If you're not familiar with HubSpot's Website Grader, its a very smart tool that provides a quick assessment of how well your web site is performing on overall marketing effectiveness.  They use an algorithm that includes over 50 different variables to kick out a "grade" for your site.  The whole process is as simple as plugging in your URL, letting the tool do its magic and waiting to receive your site's score on a 1-100 scale. 

Along with the score you receive a nice little profile outlining how your site fared in a number of areas. Included are assessments of Metadata, heading summaries, image summaries, interior page analysis, readability level and even several off-page criteria like domain information, Google PageRank and indexing, inbound links, directory entries and a review of several social media dimensions.   (See a sample report).  If your site does particularly well and you want to brag about it, you can proudly display a website grader badge on your site like the one on the right in this post. 

One of the other features I found to be super useful was the ability to define a handful of competitors and see how well they ranked for keywords, traffic, inbound links and a few other measures.  They also store your report at a personalized URL if you'd like to access the report at a later date. 

Take the test, its quick, easy and provides real value that you can immediately put into action.   

Social Media is For Closers

In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, you might remember the scene where Alec Baldwin, the sleazy sales boss, tells his struggling sales team that the highly coveted Glengarry sales leads are only "for closers".  His character (Blake) is by most measures pretty ruthless, focused on closing deals at any cost.  While his approach is extreme, he touches on a principle most marketers are missing in our approach to social media impact. 

The kinds of social media measurements we tend to focus on are similar to what one might measure if managing the activity of a salesperson.  How many calls are made?  How many meetings are set up?  How many opportunities are in their pipeline?  Are they establishing rapport with the prospect?  Are they maintaining the relationship with the prospect?  All totally legitimate questions, but if you had a salesperson who was doing all those things well for a long period of time and never made a sale, would you consider them successful?  Probably not.

We tend to talk about performance measurement in terms we're familiar with; impressions, CPC, CPA,  click-thru, visits, conversions, etc.  We also talk about things like engagement, influence and authority as indicators of social media success.  At what point do we ask people to actually buy something?  Asking for the sale (via marketing) is not some shameful task only left to salespeople, its an organic element of the sales process that seems more awkward to omit than include.  So much of the current social media approach feels to me like rewarding the salesperson for building rapport, but never closing the sale.

Flashback to the dot-com days when sites were all about "eyeballs" as the measure of success, but most had a hard time paying the bills with eyeballs.  A great deal of the discussion and thinking around social media feels eerily similar to me but replace eyeballs with "influence", "conversation", "dialogue", "community", (insert social media buzzword of choice here).

Sales results are truly the ultimate ROI measurement for marketing, so ask yourself if you want the Cadillac, the steak knives or the other alternative? (This will make absolutely no sense to you if you aren't familiar with the movie, so watch the trailer link for this piece).