Comments on: Quit talking about Social Media and Go Make Some Money!

By: Ari Herzog

Ari Herzog — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:23:41 +0000

It really comes down to a simple phrase that Jason Calacanis mentioned at the Silicon Valley Insider a while back and I heard echoed two weeks ago at the New Marketing Summit outside Boston:

Fire your PR firm.

Now, this has a grain of salt attached. This assumes your PR firm, Mr. Big Business, doesn’t know the difference between Twitter, Yahoo Messenger, and text messaging and the approximate demographies and benefits of each.

Most PR firms, like most big businesses, separate new marketing from old marketing. If that’s true with Mr. Big Business, the PR firm must be fired and I or you or someone else must be hired at a fraction of the cost to propel the same message at a fraction of the cost but receive 3 to 5 to 10 times as many inbound leads and sales.

I’ll make money by saving the company money. Is that enough of a ROI to take a risk?

By: marc meyer

marc meyer — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:02:58 +0000

@Valeria It does depend on the company, but you can listen, evaluate, think and plan and strategize, but at some point, like Shailesh said, you have to break the huddle and dip the toe. I’m not saying blindly, but we all do have to get off the sideline and into the game.

@Ed To my point, what people maybe most concerned with these days, its the shortest route to making money-whether that is the route of social media remains to be seen.

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:31:03 +0000

When I first raised questions about how online communities are built, I faced fierce opposition with a full list of groups, say Facebook, as the biggest counter-point. They are right, they have groups and many of them easily chalk up anything from hundreds to thousands of fans.

I am not at all thrilled by metrics. You have the groups, but are companies engaging them? In my environment where PR agencies and marketing consultancies are metric-obsessed, you can say it’s nightmare at where I am. Who ever cares about the fundamental objectives? Who ever cares about interactive nature? Who ever cares about the deeper values? Hardly any.

By: Valeria Maltoni

Valeria Maltoni — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:24:25 +0000

Be where your customers are. Programs? More like part of how we talk and write across media. What is your goal? What do you want to accomplish? That comes first. Then go ahead and create a strategy to get there. Agree on what success means to you and your company: less people writing negative stuff about you? More people talking with you? And so on. Keep track of it, be attuned, tweak, learn, keep going.

Really, Marc it does depend on the company. Some organizations cannot even begin to listen internally… all the way to a moderate place in between. Companies tend to be in two businesses: (1) making money; (2) managing risk. Period. To me getting serious = skin in the game.

By: marc meyer

marc meyer — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:13:13 +0000

@shailesh, you’re right, it’s time to brak the huddle.

By: Shailesh Ghimire

Shailesh Ghimire — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:12:08 +0000

Very timely post considering we’re in planning stages for 2009 budgets. The temptation is to pick a technology and run with it, but the bigger question that needs to be answered is how willing a business is to see these programs through. It starts with understanding your clients and all that work that is needed.

I fall under scenario two personally. I’ve spent a lot of time educating clients on what is out there, we are now breaking the huddle, they just need to call the play so we can score some points!