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

The politics of social media

Posted on August 25, 2008 by marc meyer

This past Friday I was interviewed by the AP about a blog post I did awhile back on the top political social networks. Given that the Democratic national convention was firing up this week in Colorado, the reporter wanted to know what I thought people’s current perception and usage might be of social networks for political groups and their associated impact and influence. A valid question. I told him that surprisingly enough, from what I found, the number of actual social networks devoted to politics was not as great as one would think or I would have expected, given the current state of affairs. But that’s changing, and it’s changing fast.

This is not to say that there are not tons of blog sites with political themes, or You Tube videos with political themes, or a myriad of polticians with websites, Facebook pages and or blogs, that’s a whole ‘nuther story. It’s just that politics and social media are just evolving slower than I would have thought.

But back to my point. Though there are not AS many social networks as one might think, the usage of what is available online in regards to Web 2.0 tools has never been higher. Take what Barack Obama did with enlisting his followers and everyone else to sign up for the email and text message on who his VP would be. Clearly Obama has realized the power of mobile and is using it as another way of communicating his message. A political candidate communicating in as many ways as possible. Novel concept.

No doubt we have evolved into a text messaging mad society, so this made perfect sense. Embracing social media and the micro-blogging platform, however, is something that someone in the Obama camp thought might make sense as well, and thus he is now being followed by 67,000 people on Twitter.

On the other hand, objectively speaking, it would appear that John McCain is slow on the draw given that he only has a website. With no offense meant, I told the AP reporter that it appeared the Obama was embracing Web 2.0 and McCain was embracing the Commodore 64.

I think what you might find even more interesting though is that according to Think Progress , Joe Biden is one of the most wired politician of the bunch. he currently has a presence on Facebook, MySpace, a blogsite, a website, a Flickr page, and a YouTube presence. Not sure about the Twitter presence though.

As I have always maintained, contrary to an earlier post, that social nets need to go vertical in order to be successful in their own right. For politics, this never made better sense. Eventually, what you’ll see is each social cause or political concern will have it’s own social media platform in which to engage its users, trumpet their causes, raise awareness and most of all… raise money. If anything, the emergence and usage of social media has armed every citizen with the ability and opportunity to now speak their voice via, wiki, blog, youtube video, chatroom, and social net, like they have never been before.

As the awareness levels continue to rise on just what a social network can do not only for the regular person on the street with a cause, but also for a candidate or politician, so will the number of active social networks specifically geared towards these niches. Because of social media, never before has the average American had as big an opportunity to speak and be heard above the noise. But what comes of it, still remains to be seen.

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? .

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.

In social media, What’s more important? The technology or the user experience?

Posted on August 19, 2008 by marc meyer

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Kim Kobza, the CEO of Neigborhood America. If you are not familiar with NA, they are one of the top players in the social media platform space. To say that it was interesting is putting it mildly. We kept taking the dry erase pen from each other constantly in the course of an hour to drive our points home on a white board about our thoughts on all things community and social media related.

My take away points were many but I kept thinking about one thing even 3 days later. That being-What drives the community? What is more important in the social media communities that we swim in? Is it the user experience or the user interface? Kim and I discussed what makes the community thrive and there are some interesting variables that determine this. Not the least being if we look at the 6 degrees of seperation theory, the sixth person is as important as the primary or focal person in the chain. Kim’s point that if you has a brand champion, this person is important yes, but the others on the peripheral are as well. In my head the best way I can wrap my arms around this is to perhaps think of worker bees being as important to the community as the queen is. They are integral to the survival of the colony.

My point to Kim, was that I could have this new and shiny social community ready to launch, and in my mind I totally got it, it made sense to me perfectly, and my thinking would be it would totally rock the social media space. My thinking and hope being that the buzz would bring in some fantastic members and thrive, quickly. But what if the technology was too slick? Could it have too many bells and whistles. Absolutely!

Which brings me to my point-Isn’t the user experience as important if not more than the platform? I don’t like to say dumb it down, but as technology people, we are exposed to cool tech stuff everyday and we get it. But put yourself in the shoes of the stay at home mom or the somewhat savvy electrician who has a familiarity with Myspace or Facebook for example. Will they get it? Maybe , maybe not? Do you want to take the chance that they “might” get it?

The user experience and the user interface are each predicated and determined by the other in my mind. If you have the technology but it’s broken and doesn’t perform, then you can forget it. If you have a community ready to go but they can’t understand how to use the technology, then they are gone. If you have a community that can grasp the technology quickly, and the technology is solid. Guess what? The user experience is elevated. With that being said, as managers and developers of communities, we need to walk that fine line between what works for the user and what the user can work with

Serve me what I want, not what you think I need.

Posted on August 18, 2008 by marc meyer

The word community is derived from the Latin communitas (meaning the same), which is in turn derived from communis, which means “common, public, shared by all or many. Makes perfect sense to me what makes a community thrive. Give the people what they want. What they want, is people that they have something in common with and then beyond that, an experience to share and talk and engage. If they can’t do those things because of things out of their control. They’ll go elsewhere.

Ironically, how many times have you seen companies stray from what they do best, in the hopes of making more money doing something that they might be marginal at? And then failing? They lose their customers in droves.

The examples are plentiful and graphic and yet it still happens over and over and over again. If we take online social networks and communities, the drive for market share and penetration is on the minds of the people that launch these things. It dominates their thoughts. But what sometimes occurrs, is they see what is being offered and feel they too must deliver what social network A is doing, and provide what platform B promises, etc etc..Losing sight perhaps, of the technology or offer or idealistic goals, that initially prompted them to get in the game in the first place!

The one problem is, rather than trying to do one thing very very well, they do a lot of things that are somewhat average.

Case in point. McDonalds, we have all eaten there but why? A) because they brand the hell out of the product better than anyone and B) you always know what to expect-consistency. Keep the comments about consistently bad to yourself- but the point being they have strived to do those 2 things well while concentrating on their core business- Hamburgers. Yes they test and launch different products to cater to the whims and desires of a more health conscious public, but at the end of the day they are still dancing with the partner that got them there. Hamburgers. The McDonalds community revolves around-Hamburgers. Billions and Billions Served.

A word to all of the designers, entrepreneurs and architects of these new shiny online social networks and communities: Do one thing right and make it repeatable. First and foremost, being the community, with the communities best interests at heart. Yes we like bells and whistles, and yes they are sexy, but when all is said and done, if it doesn’t work or fails to deliver, our ever decreasing attention span will lead us back to the things, the sites and the tools that we know will deliver day in and day out. Make it consistent, make it repeatable and make sure it delivers without fail.

If you give me what I came here for and it’s exactly what I expected, I will come back. And if it is exactly the way it was the first time, not only will I come back, but I will tell my friends. But if you fail me, not only will I tell my friends, I will tell people that I don’t even know about the bad experience.

The Junta 42 Top Blogs

Posted on August 18, 2008 by marc meyer

A nice surprise occurred over the weekend as the Emerson Direct Blog cracked the top 25 of the top 42 blogs according to Junta 42. Any time we can be recognized for anything we do on behalf of the industy that we work in, it’s a nice feather in the cap.

The Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs list was designed to organize and feature the best blogs on the internet that discuss some aspect of content marketing. Content marketing is all about the creation of great, story-form content (delivered through any channel) that ultimately influences someone to buy your product, take an action, or believe in a cause Here is more detail on the Junta 42 selection process. Thanks Joe Pulizzi

You don’t know who your customer might be!

Posted on August 16, 2008 by marc meyer

I was with a group of people today. We played golf. No big deal. I found out what one of the people did for a living. I did work for one of his competitors. He was a nice guy and I was thinking of maybe seeing if he might need help with his business. He seemed nice enough that maybe I could help him too!

Then he said something funny, but I was the butt of the joke. He did not take the time to think about what I might think. Guess what? He had the potential to earn the business of someone that could have helped him out but he did not take the time to learn more about the person he was with. In the end, a client, or a customer, take your pick mis-read the situation and blew it. How well do you know the potential relationship?

Sorry Bob, you just Effed up!

Social Media Visualization Part III:10 Wordles of your peers, do they fit?

Posted on August 15, 2008 by marc meyer

In deference to Hermann Rorschach, I give you 10 Wordles from some of the more popular or notable people in the social media, marketing, and internet space that we swim in. Interestingly enough, what makes them unique, is what makes them different, yet similar. Lets check them out and come up with a few words that might describe each of their blogs.

For the uninitiated, Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

Our first Wordle belongs to Jeremiah Owyang, the notable Forrester analyst:

What sticks out? Content, brands, social, personal, chanel, community and Youtube. All of which, in one way or the other, speak to what he writes about on a day to day basis. The one that is the real head scratcher is Ronald. Jeremiah?

Next up is Toby Bloomberg’s wonderful blog, Diva marketing Blog

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Toby is all about blogging, blogger relations, business strategy, marketing and social media. Your thoughts? How did I do?

Next up is Todd Defren’s Why is the McCain reference so prominent? Todd’s wordle appears to look like it’s been tagged by some of Boston’s best graffiti artists. But PR does jump out of the mix, thank goodness.

Well, lets bring in Chris Brogan, the very prolific, as of late, Chris Brogan

Actually Chris’s wordle is very much like him as of late, all over the place. Lots of words. I mean lots. but Speech and Post certainly reveal what Chris is all about-in a good way of course. But so does email?

With that being said, Lets look at the wordle of Brian Solis

As you can see, the word information was cut off, but was essentially alone at the bottom. I find that odd for someone with this type of blogsite. As if there is some sort of disconnect between PR and the conversation and information? The wordle does reveal the things that Brian blogs about, are dead on with his passion. PR and social media.

Did someone mention Hugh Macleod?

Given the nature and style of Hugh’s blog, its interesting and appropriate to see the word prominence falling on…of all things, people! But companies and organizations fall in behind the term along with thought and know.

The next few people are certainly people we all know about, so lets see how their wordles compare. The first being David Armano’s Check out how prominent Twitter is, and like people, as well as media, talking, social and brand.