9 posts/sites that are required reading

Posted on August 29, 2008 by marc meyer

I read so much that my eyes water sometimes. When I get home and walk in the door and set my laptop bag down, it’s nice to say-I’m home, time to take a break. Except, after about an hour or two and I’m finally settled in, what do I do? I fire up the laptop and read some more. I’m an information junkie and I suspect a lot of you are too. So since we have a 3 day weekend coming up. Here are some blog posts and websites for you to ponder over and check out.

Shel Israel has some interesting thoughts on the future fo social meda, don’t worry Shel is all about brevity but it’s still good.

Here’s a really interesting post from Veronica Giggey at Social Media Group, why? because she’s a project manager there and she’s looking for an internal collaboration tool. This struck me as odd, yet honest. Hit her up and see if you can help her!

I guess the big Yahoo Mash experiment is over. Actually I didn’t know it was just an “experiment”. Maybe that’s what you call something that doesn’t work.

This absolutely boggles my mind about Facebook and I’m still catching hell about this post I made on Social Media Today

Check out these numbers on how associations are using social technologies, over at Chris Carfi’s site, they’re actually higher than I would have thought!

Why do you exist?

How uber cool is this? meglobe

Valeria Maltoni asks what’s beyond the conversation, because she never thought it was just about the conversation itself. It’s a great piece.

And lastly, the socialization of your personal brand part III

4 reasons to be excited about the next 5 years

Posted on August 29, 2008 by marc meyer

According to the Gartner Hype Cycle, they have identified 27 emerging technologies to keep an eye on. They have also predicted that 8 of them will have a major transformational business impact. For that reason, those 8 should be strongly considered for adoption by technology planners in the next 10 years. Of these 8, there are 4 that have caught my eye and thus have a particular interest to me.

The first of the 4 is Web 2.0. Although if you look at the below diagram, Web 2.0 is currently in Gartners “Trough of Disillusionment”. Though it almost sounds like some type of business purgatory, it will emerge within two years to have a transformational impact, as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications-according to Gartner. If you cannot get excited about how Web 2.0 is transforming the web and the way we utilize it, then you just might not be geeky enough. That’s ok though, there are enough of us out there that truly are “giddy” about the direction we’re heading.

The next area that Gartner feels is about to explode is Social computing platforms — you’d have to be living in a cave on the island of Fiji to not suspect that consumer-oriented social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, are causing companies of all sizes to evaluate the role that these sites, or various components of these sites, including their enterprise sized brethren, might do to transform and elevate the way that they currently communicate and do business. What’s more, the individual components and their ilk are forcing people to re-think what it means to be social, to re-evaluate what communities are all about, and how all of this can change the way we might interact with each other in the future.

If it hasn’t been obvious to this point what would be on Gartner list, its Microblogging— Thanks to Twitter specifically, and Plurk and Friendfeed to a lesser degree, microblogging is the new kid on the block in the world of social networking. But if microblogging is the new kid, it’s the new kid who can hit the ball out of the ballpark the first time he picks up a bat. The potential has already been leveraged by some pockets of the online community such as social media marketers and PR people, but it is also slowly being adopted by some forward thinking leading-edge companies who are using it to communicate with its customers, and employees. It’s becoming and will become another viable tool in a companies quest to engage it’s customer, communicate with the customer and brand their products more effectively.

Lastly, I’m going to lump 2 together. Corporate Blogging and Social Network Analysis I think that corporations, because of the advent of Web 2.0 technologies and the emergence of social networks and their niches, are starting to realize the importance of communicating like they never have before. We throw around the word transparency and I think it has never been more self evident what the upside can be to these organizations. As soon as Corporations can get a handle on the how’s and the why’s of blogging, they will be well served to incorporate it into their marketing mix. My suggestion would be to start with the book Naked Conversations.

Social Network Analysis is a natural extension of Web 2.0, social computing platforms and microblogging. Because we are in the realtive infancy of these aformentioned technologies, the measurement of these is still as well, in it’s early stages. Analyzing the impact, the ROI, the level of engagement, the depth, the reach, the frequency, the conversations, the numbers- of social networks is something we talk about every day. An example of a company that does monitors social media would be Radian 6. As social networks continue to mature, look for this aspect as well to become robust and very vertical and very in demand.

So take a look at the diagram below, which ones get you excited to be in this space?

Hey, is my nose bleeding?

Posted on August 28, 2008 by marc meyer

Humility tends to be in short suppply these days. I suppose after reading and writing about the importance of relationships, ego traps and hero worshipping yesterday that I might have at least learned something or had taken my own advice to heart. Something. Anything. It’s as if I just tuned out.

Yep, in the course of ohhh say 24 hours, I have been knocked down to size and humbled by one client. I was told I was not assertive enough by another would be client that I had been working with, who in hind sight wanted me to be more agressive and forcefull. And lastly, I had another potential client essentially tell me to give them what they had asked for and not what I suggested they need. All in less than 24 hours!

Hell, I even wrote a blog post titled, “Serve me what I want, not what you think I need”. Talk about doubting yourself! What has this taught me? Alot. Below are 10 points with associated posts that I need to always keep in mind and maybe you should too!

Happiness, Heroes and Relationships: 3 Lessons

Posted on August 27, 2008 by marc meyer

Interesting day unfolding before me today. I’m going to provide you 3 lessons in relationship marketing. One of the first blog posts I read this morning was written over at Jason Falls’s social media explorerer. The post was about how social media can open the door for happiness marketing. I’m down with that, since scare tactics seem to be de rigueur these days. My take away points from this are as follows:

Social media offers a way to build your business by making people happier, rather than the other way ‘round.

People who feel like they’ve been heard are happier than people who don’t.

If you refer to yesterdays blog post, you will see that one of my deadly “sins” for a social media marketer are the pissing off of a customer. Any time we can make a customer happy, shouldn’t you take it? When you help someone or make them happy, are you not happy as well? Isn’t that, or can’t that have a viral effect? Come on people start thinking of the power that you posess to make people happy and use it. The quality of a good relationship will make YOU happy. Lesson #1.

So after reading this article, I happen across Peter Kims’s blog post titled How to create successful hero marketing and my take away from this was to beware of gods with clay feet and to thine own self be true. Essentially Peter is saying that you either worship your heroes in social media, you want your heroes to notice you or you want to create your own hero persona. Please read his whole post, it really raises some questions on just what exactly is it that we want to achieve? Below is part of my response to his post.

The hero marketed to his followers and they did as they were told because their egos told them that perhaps it would open doors and allow them to get closer to the marketing guru…But once they got in, I think some might have realized that it was just another NING network.

But it serves up two good points that you have mentioned. Seth leveraged his hero worship status to drive sales via WOMM and the viral aspect of invite only status: and his followers/readers and their egos fell for the ego trap and bit.

The relationships that you cultivate all have a motivation. The ones that have the most impact on you and your life will be the ones that make you happy. They also will be the ones that to a certain degree are mutually satisfying. That isn’t saying that they might not involve some ego, but relationships are as much the driving force social media as any other component. i.e. the conversation and the realtionship that springs from it,is not a monologue. Lesson #2.

Relationships. it’s what drives everything we do. Relationships are our universe. You might not agree but I will tell you that in the immortal words of John Donne, “no man is an island” especially in social media. Our relationships define us as much as any metric in social media. For example: Number of visits, Number of subscribers, number of readers, number of followers, number I’m following, blogs I’m reading, people I recommend- ALL Relationship driven.

But in some cases the relationship is not perfect. It has it’s “warts and all”. And we’re taught that we should tuff it out and eventually things will get better. Well you know what? In some cases that just isn’t true. And people end up bitter and angry and saying things they don’t mean because they stayed in the relationship entirely too long. Which leads me to Maggie fox and Geoff Livingston. They decided to not go through with their planned “merger”. They called it off a little over a month after they had announced they were teaming up. Rather than fight through it, they both had the foresight to realize that maybe it wasn’t going to work out. So the end result? A relationship intact. Some disappointment but in the end, no damage done.

In the end, it’s all about the quality of ALL of the relationships you cultivate, and what you do with them in all of there various forms and stages. Lesson #3, Can you say Micro Interactions anyone?

Social media marketing’s 7 deadly sins

Posted on August 26, 2008 by marc meyer

With apologies to all of the spiritualists out there, this post is not to make fun of the “real” 7 deadly sins. This is simply a way to magnify the importance of getting it right versus screwing it up seven times over. Over the last few days Peter Kim and I have exchanged emails over topics that swirl in and around social media marketing, and somehow this blog post evolved. I am not sure how it came up exactly, but then again, thats how a lot of these posts start. But the subject of this post seems to dovetail nicely into what is being discussed lately, especially on SMT.

So there’s a lot being discussed every day about social media marketing, what works, what doesn’t, why, how, when, etc etc. In the past I’ve written lengthy pieces on what social media isn’t, but how about 7 things that you better not do in social media marketing? That in and of itself would be something to throw up on the fridge with a fridge magnet right?

1) In your push to increase customer loyalty and retention, you’ve driven your customers away with poor messaging, poor communication and complete disdain and compassion for them and the product they love. You’re Insincere and it shows. You nod your head and pretend to listen, but you decide that you know what’s best. That’s a bad choice.

2) In your zeal to hit the ground running with your product, you have failed to realize that the product has serious deficiencies and you choose to launch anyway. It could be that your product is either being hurt by the initial buzz of bad publicity, has been hurt or bashed by 3rd parties, or the word on the street is, it just doesn’t work. Your product awareness campaign has only increased the awareness of how bad the product might actually be. Why? You were not listening and your timing could not be worse.

3) Because of #2, in your quest to create brand advocates you have created the anti-brand champions who have made it their goal in life to do everything in their power to make sure that your brand does not succeed. You made enemies and you continue to not listen and you decide to push on without addressing it. Could it have been, that you might not be listening or refusing to even try?

4) In pushing to roll out your social media marketing plan, you miss the mark completely and are marketing to the wrong people. In fact these people may have had their fill of social media marketers, social networks, and are essentially hip to the overtures of marketers in general. So again, in your rush to create new revenue streams, you’ve decided to beat a dead horse. Not knowing your customer and assuming you did. Bad. Guess what? You again must not have been listening.

Are you sensing the recurring theme here yet?

5) You decide to do it your way. You think your one way style of contacting and talking at the customer using the latest social media tools should work just fine in its own intrusive way. You sir or madam are not respecting the rules of engagement. You have lost your protocal compass. You have decided that frequency is better than reach and breadth is better than depth. You have not heard a thing that has been said.

6) You’ve decided that you need to hide behind a few layers. You don’t want the customer to know anything about you, the company, the realness of the people behind the product. Nothing. You have decided that a fake persona is the best route to driving sales and stickiness. Wrong. If you’re not being transparent, then you’re not being you. You have something to hide. One of the most important aspects of social media marketing it being transparent, or had you not heard that yet?

7) You’re not honest, you’re not who you say you are. This speaks as much to #6 as it does all of the rest. But one of the keys to any relationship be it personal, or business is honesty. Just look at the code of ethics on the WOMMA They get it, and so should you. It may sound trite but keeping it real has never meant more than in social media marketing. Oh yea, you might want to shut up and listen too!

I’m sure that there are tons of social media marketing faux paus’s that we can all think of it. In fact Jim Tobin over at Ignite Social Media has a nice post about it. The aformentioned 7 are just some that have really been standing out for me lately. And to be honest, I have made some of these, but I have also learned from these mistakes as well too, and have tried like hell to not repeat them. Who was it that once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are destined to repeat it?” Last question, with the 7 points mentioned above, can you figure out what collective quality might benefit you the most?

7 sites to visit today.

Posted on August 25, 2008 by marc meyer

I’m going to make it easy on you. Here are 7 things that were interesting to me and maybe you should read them in your spare time today or tomorrow.

Chris Kieff says that Seth Godin screwed up, I know it’s shocking isn’t it?

Adam Cohen thinks that there is a danger of communities becoming too diluted I think what he means is that social networks are becoming too water downed, too many choices perhaps? You decide.

Kami Huyse espouses that a course in basic human etiquette might be better than one in blogger relations, which I think we could all use since manners and etiquette have gone away quicker than you can text BRB.

Discover the real you here at Signal Patterns

Rohit Bhargava, freshly back from China, posts on an Insiders guide to marketing on Flickr, in detail.

Brian Solis with the second part of his three part series the socialization of your personal brand

Here is a rockin post by Geoff Livingston that you have to read, titled The Naturals

Social media pie charts for 2008

Posted on August 22, 2008 by marc meyer

Sometimes I feel like social media is like the following pie chart.

Where the majority of people are talking about it (blue), some are actually doing some pretty cool things in the space (red) and others wannabe in the space and think they are in the space (green) and very very few are actually experts (tan). What do you think? .

Twitter bands of influence

Posted on August 22, 2008 by marc meyer

When will Twitter reach the outer bands of where it could possibly have the greatest impact on brands and people? Currently the Twitter circles of influence are skewed towards the Twitterati-light blue. These were the early adopters and thusly have 5 figure amounts of followers. The next band-green or the elitists, are folks that in some cases, have as well, thousands of followers and mutually follow thousands of others.

This is not as large a group as you might think but their influence can be felt amongst the next layer of heavy Twitter power users-red. These folks also have a lot of followers but generally its on a more 1:1 ratio i.e a thousand followers and following a thousand. Your next group-the blue band, are mostly listeners or followers and may tweet from time to time, but it’s not as heavy a group of active tweeters as the people above them. After this group is the yellow band- these are the people who know they have to be doing something on Twitter so they may get an account, but either barely use it or never activate it. This group also consists of brand squatters and hijackers

Your last 2 groups have the biggest potential for marketers and yet have little if any Twitter presence. The outside band is the largest and has the largest potential since this is essentially all of your brands. these brands are waiting for someone to show them how they can use Twitter to market and sell their products. What they don’t know is that there are only 6 degrees of separation that separate them from listening and participating in conversations with some of the top minds in marketing, PR and social media, on the many ways that Twitter can improve, enhance and market their brands.

My only questions are these? Who is at fault? The brands and their owners for not listening, or taking the time to listen or learning how to listen via Twitter? Or, now thnk about this carefully. Are we, as marketers and communicators, not taking the time to venture outside our industry specific cocoons of Twitter followers, to talk with people who may be listening but not talking? Look at the people you follow and the people that follow you (if you’re on Twitter) How many are clients or potential clients? Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester adds his 2 cents to why brands fail on Twitter which may lend some insight as to why we all are coming up short right now.

Maybe we all need to read up on how to listen. There are lots of lessons on the art of listening. the bottom line is there is a lot of black and white out there.

How does the user measure ROI in social networks?

Posted on August 21, 2008 by marc meyer

I’ve been wrestling with this lately and maybe you can help. If I’m the social networking user and I frequent my favorite social network everyday, how should I measure my ROI? My investment of time to the site should be rewarded with what? The quality of my experience? What exactly is that? The number of people I meet? The real people I meet? the number of people I actually communicate with? The amount of conversations? Is it the stuff I create? The amount of personal interactions? the amount of micro interactions? The number of photos or songs I share? Is it the quality of my everyday engagement? Yes, yes, yes, and yes…..It’s all of those things. To each person, it is one of those, or all of the above.

So perhaps it looks something like this:

Do you see the dilemma though? I had previously written about user experience versus user interface, but what it really comes down to beyond the user experience is, the return on the user expereince or the ROUE. As a potential user of your social site, I need YOU the marketer, builder, architect or whomever- to show me quickly what my ROUE will be. Because lets face it, I don’t want to work too hard to engage others or create content. Perhaps it’s the WIIFM paradigm? “What’s in it for me”.

Is it the tools that are available for the user to create UGC? Is that a big feature? It is for Myspace. Is it the ability to add hundreds of “friends”? It is to Facebook. Is it the ability to network with notable people in business? It is to LinkedIn. You see each site has a different ROUE to offer the user. What keeps the user coming back in each scenario is, when we boil it down- the response, the return, the pay-off, the money shot. We are “geeked” by the response that we receive from whomever. The user investment for the user, is their time and efforts, and the reward for the user is a response from others. Write a blog and no one reads it, how much and how long will you write? It’s predicated on a response. Take nny user generated content created in a vacuum and the creator won’t be doing it for very long.

So perhaps the measurement should be Return on user effort as much as it is Return on user experience? Think about why YouTube is so popular. Well, it’s a few things. It’s the ability to create content for free, the ability to share it, the possibility of getting noticed, a return on the user generated content, communicating with others, a response. Notoriety. 15 minutes of fame.

So next time you’re evaluating the NBT of social networks, Look at the ROUE. Is the return on user experience and return on user effort very high? You should be able to determine that fairly quickly. In my follow up piece, I’m going to look at ROI and engagement and how we measure those as a barometer of social media success.

Twebinar 3, a Mashup of Heavy Hitters

Posted on August 20, 2008 by marc meyer

So yesterday was the final Twebinar in the series of 3. I’ve written about how successful the other 2 were and this one did not disappoint. What makes these twebinars better than good, are the components, that in their own right are singularly successful. Combined into a mashup of staccato like proportions though, they then take on a life of their own.. It is in short a live show, a webinar, live video, taped video, live Q & A, and twitter. Will it blend? Ohhhh yea it did and yes it does.

Each of the Twebinars is and was hosted by Chris Brogan from Crosstech Media, who currently is the pied piper of all things social media related and rightly so. Chris knows everyone and everyone knows Chris, so it works. Along with David Alston from Radian 6, Chris and David have melded multiple technologies and people into a workable format for robust discussions. In the course of the hour plus twebinar Chris trots out all of the hitter heavy hitters in marketing, PR and social media like Todd Defren, Maggie Fox, Sally Falkow, and Paul Gillin, to name a few, and in rapid fashion they give you their take on all things, in this case, the art of listening in the space that we all are swimming in right now. How to listen, as I tweeted yesterday is not a novel concept, but you would be surprised how often it is ignored and overlooked as a tool of measurement. All of yesterdays guests and fellow twitterers essentially said nothing to the contrary either.

I’ll tell you why I like twebinars. It’s an opportunity to share my thoughts and ideas and opinions on what I think works, with my peers, with my colleages, and with people that are looking for answers. All in an insanely fun and interactive format. In fact, all of the participants have that exact opportunity because we are as much a part of the twebinar as are the people that Chris had on. It’s why it works.

Glitches? A few but all temporary and expected. The upside? 95% of those who participated woudl do it again. And the downside? I’m sure there was a downside if someone chose to find one, but on the surface, I’d say Chris and David, and all those who were a part of the Twebinars, would say in baseball parlance, went three for three. To check out the tweets from yesterdays Twebinar, Try #tweb3 on Summize. I would keep your 2 ears open for the next one.