10 little things SMB’s might be missing when launching social media

Posted on April 5, 2010 by marc meyer

I use SMB’s as an example here, but when reading Todd Defren’s latest blog post, apparently it is something that permeates organizations both large and small. What is it?

What are companies (SMB’s) usually missing when jumping into the social media waters?

They’re missing the point.
They’re misunderstanding the commitment
They think you can outsource it
They think it’s a switch
They don’t try as hard as they could
They don’t measure it or…
They measure the wrong things
They lack knowledge
They’re expectations are unrealistic
They don’t give it enough time

That’s it.

But you know what the great thing is about all of the above bullet points? They all can be fixed.

How?

Education. Education will help them get the point, but they need to know where to get that education. You can help them.
Understanding the hard work involved will address a lot of the unknowns. We can all relate to what happens with hard work. But there needs to be an emphasis and a complete understanding of how labor intensive social media can be.
You can outsource it, but it’s easier to understand when you don’t, the more you understand, perhaps the more capable you are of knowing what you can and cannot do internally.
It is a switch but when you treat social media as such, others can tell, they see your lack of commitment-they see the half ass effort.
If you don’t try, then what should you expect? I’ve always said, if you give 100%, then no-one can ever say that you didn’t try. You can take it out of the equation. But make sure you’re working smart.
You measure your efforts when you sell, when you advertise, when you hire, when you buy etc. etc. so this is no different. You just need the right tools to measure the right things.
Look up the definition of social media ROI and that will tell you what you should measure with social media.
Social media changes daily; the tools, the sites and the cool things, they change daily. Stay current. Pick 10 sites and dump them into a reader and read it every day.
Create reachable goals. Teams and coaches create goals-you should be no different.
Set up your expectations tied into your goals and give it all a legitimate time frame. But know it is a long term deal.

Now go get it done!

18 reasons a social media snake oil salesman might want out

Posted on March 16, 2010 by marc meyer

Last week I wrote a post that got a tremendous amount of love from the folks over at social media today and rightly so, it was all the reasons why I love social media.

But what if you were sick of it? What if you were a snake oil salesman trying to cash in on the social media phenomenon and you were starting to realize that this social media stuff sucked? What might be your reasons for getting out and jumping into real estate short sales or something?

Your excuses, er reasons might look something like this:

1) You didn’t realize how much work it took

2) You realized that people aren’t into your “get 200 Twitter followers” for $19 a month program

3) Your social media certification classes didn’t really take off like you thought

4) Stealing other peoples content was hard work

5) Spamming hashtags wasn’t driving any business

6) No one is calling you or responding to your sign up landing page with exclusive offers and social media tips

7) People were not sharing your viral videos that you stole created

8. Strategy? What strategy?

9) The trusting client is pissed because the Twitter account you created for them with the 30 tweets, 30 followers, and the 5000 people you’re following, hasn’t really amounted to anything

10) There was too much to learn

11) You’re tired of RT’ing others on your 6 month old Twitter account

12) You never figured out what that Facebook vanity URL thing was

13) Case studies? On what?

14) Social media is dead anyways

15) You hate creating content and no one was coming to the blog

16) Social Media ROI isn’t important

17) It doesn’t work

18) When someone asked you about Gowalla and Foursquare you looked at them like this…

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15 reasons to love social media

Posted on March 9, 2010 by marc meyer

My last few posts have been about the darker side of social media and thus I wanted to clear something up. I am the biggest champion of social media that you will find and here’s why. I may get a little spicy sometimes, but that doesn’t diminish all the “good” things about this crazy space and all that it delivers to us daily. So get a gander at these 15 reasons and when you’re done reading them add your reason to the mix.

1) Today I have a very large network of close and semi-close contacts that I can reach out to at a moments notice. Chances are, you do too! 4 years ago, I did not have anything remotely close to this type of network.

2) If I need a really good PR firm for example, I can contact that person today and we’d know each other well enough to have a very nice conversation… without the usual vetting process. The confluence of PR and social media ain’t no coincidence.

3) If I wanted to have someone guest post on my blog and bring their incredible smartness and knowledge to the table, all I have to do is ask. Have you ever thought of asking someone? You should. There might be some really smart folks in your network and you might not even know they are following you!

4) If I have to refer a killer web design person to someone, I can do that in 5 seconds. I’m sure you know of someone too. I could come up with a list of 10 in no time.

5) Need a good email marketing company? I know one or two. In fact, I got to know someone from a pretty cool company just in the last 2 months, Thanks network.

6) How about a good social media monitoring company? I can help you, I know a few good people there. What’s great about this one particular company? They don’t push the product, they just act like normal people should act.

7) Want to know who you need to contact in regards to social media and non-profits? Here’s one for you. Thanks to social media, these people have a chance to influence us in a way that allows us and them to make a difference in this world. We need more of that.

8. Because of social media, my network, no matter how jaded or pissed I can get sometimes, allows me to get jaded and pissed… and they’re ok with that. They still like me in the morning. 🙂

9) Social media has allowed me to contribute to one book and create a rough draft for another. It’s allowed me to present at conferences, write articles in magazines and speak on the radio and create projects that connect some very dynamic people together.

10) Without social media none of us would be allowed to share the cool things we are doing 24/7/365. That doesn’t mean we always care about all of it, but you have a channel to express yourself now that you didn’t have before.

11) If I need help, all I have to do is ask. Need proof? Check out the 50 people that have hosted Hashtagsocialmedia. I asked and they said yes.

12) If I’m asked to help or assist on something, and because I generally know who is doing the asking, I don’t hesitate, thanks to social media.

13) Because of social media, when I meet someone for the first time, like a Jason Falls for example, I generally am “not meeting” them for the first time. We already know each other.

14) Because of social media, we have something to talk and write about every day.

15) If I didn’t know you before and now I do, chances are it’s because of social media.

At the end of the day, it’s still all about the relationships, the connections, and the conversations. For that, I’m thankful.

The dark side of good work in social media

Posted on March 5, 2010 by marc meyer

So last week I wrote about how I was bummed about the possibility that it was time to part with one of my favorite clients. You will be pleased to know that in an 11th hour brainstorm I came up with a new strategy wrapped around search and their existing UI and we are going to continue the relationship.

But let’s talk about another client.

Clients come in all shapes, sizes, issues and challenges. Especially the start-up ones. Calling yourself a start-up doesn’t really allow you certain rights and privileges. Nor does it allow for you to not pay your bills. No matter how cool, exciting and promising the product is. This particular client I have, has not paid me for the month of January or February. So I have suspended all work.

But here’s the problem. Call it the dark side of good work. Simply put, your good work will and still resonates long after you have departed. It shows up in search in the form of great websites, sweet artwork, graphics, compelling, link juicy blog posts, articles, white papers, e-books, comments, mentions, profiles and bookmarks that you created all on behalf of the client. It shows up in the work done to stem and drive down negative press for the sake of reputation management. It shows up and it shows up high if you know what you were doing. And I know what I am doing.

So the awareness campaign work I’ve done for this client over the last 3 months is now starting to show up all over the search engines. I knew it would and that was part of the strategy.

So you might say so what? Well, let’s say they choose to not pay me and the relationship is over, but they continue to do business. Which I think is what is happening here. I’ve laid the groundwork for them to continue to do business, and yet they can’t pay the people or persons responsible for them to “continue” to do business. Where is the justice in that? There is none.

But lets say they just ran out of cash and can’t pay me. What now? My complaint with that would be, “You shouldn’t have contracted with me in the first place if you knew you wouldn’t be able to pay your bills”. Oh and by the way, there was no reason for me to know they would not be able to pay their bills.

One of the interesting dichotomies in all of this is that we are always fighting the good fight over the value of what we do, the value and importance of social media, the correlation of social media and SEO, and it’s effect on business. You know and I know it works, and yet business owners can blow you out the door at a moments notice with perceptual skepticism; and yet your work lives on.

I wish there was a switch I could turn on and off for this but there is not. Some of you might even say, well go ahead and use social media and search to trash them. I could, but I don’t roll like that. These are tough times, and the things I’ve seen and have had to deal with over the past months, have told me so. I continue to take the high road but am not sure how much longer I can put up with being the cool little agency who continues to get played by its clients. Might be time to update the resume…

Engagement by proxy

Posted on February 3, 2010 by marc meyer

I was looking at the definition of proxy for some odd reason the other day and I was struck by the irony of the definition.

Last week, Todd Defren, who is taking a unique approach towards the social media space by discussing the ethical side of engagement, blogged about ghost tweeting and ghost blogging. Essentially asking his readers to determine whether doing either or not doing them, had any ethical merits.

But I have news for Todd and everyone else. Ghost blogging and ghost tweeting happen a lot. A lot more than people will care to admit. It happens because people that write and talk and engage for a living are a lot better at it than people who don’t do it for a living. And those that don’t, would rather leave it to those that do. Though I applaud him for taking the high ground on this issue, Todd knows it’s a lot more prevalent than most will admit. So do I.

Is there a solution, I don’t know. There might be, but it has to meet the criteria of the agency and the expectations of the client. Good luck with that.

Engagement by proxy.

Social Media Marketing is Hard Work

Posted on January 29, 2010 by marc meyer

Before we get into this, I want you to know that I have had this type of situation happen to me more times than I can count. So I have to ask you, Do you have client meetings like this? Where you ask all or parts of the bulleted questions and conversations below?

OK, so lets talk about your business objectives. What are they?
Tell me what you want to do and how you are currently doing it.
Who are your customers?
What are your current marketing initiatives?
How are they working out for you?
Do you have a budget that you allocate for all of this?
What has been the return on those activities for you?
What has been the most successful for you?
What didn’t work and why?
What’s the competition like?
Do you have any help?
You worked with another agency? Why did they suck?
So you got nothing out of it?
Lets check out the website.
Let’s see how you are ranking? Who built this? Who manages it?
So you want to know about social media?
What do YOU know about social media?

And after you have done that…the client waits for you to finish and then asks…

Can you make us a Facebook page and get us ranked #1 on Google?

Then you blink.

So, would you take the gig?

Have you ever vetted a client? Do they have any idea how difficult social media marketing is? New clients want a piece of that social media pie, but as a consultant or agency it’s up to you make them take a step back, show them that it’s just another spoke on the marketing wheel and temper their expectations into realistic and achievable benchmarks with results. If you don’t do that, you will fail and your clients will be pissed.

So would you take the gig above? What would you say to this client?

You have 11 months to step up your social media game

Posted on January 27, 2010 by marc meyer

What are you looking for when you read the latest link bait blog title? I’m always looking for the new tool. I’m looking for what I haven’t found yet, We all are. It’s why new diet books keep popping up on book shelves. Because people keep buying them. Because what worked before just doesn’t seem to be doing it now. We’re all constantly looking for a new approach, a new way to do things. Social media is no exception. We just have a different name for it, it’s called social media obsolescence.

Here’s an example:

You see as a society we’re just not satisfied. This extends to the social networks that we use. Yes, we all are using Facebook, and they are truly the exception to the rule. They are the immovable force. But other sites just die on the vine but for no other reason than it has reached it’s point of critical mass. It’s now in decline for the simple reason that we are looking for, no craving more than what that site delivered to us flawlessly.

To that end, I often find myself pondering whether I could possibly write something that hasn’t been said already. What will satisfy this rabid audience of social media consumers looking for the brass ring or the uber answer? Well the answer is, every day there is another great batch of great posts from some really smart people that I’m pleased to know professionally. Each with a new twist, a different angle, a fresh thought. Which tells us that indeed we are in the nascent stages of this monolith that we call social media.

So what’s there left to do?

What is left is for you and even me, to take all of these thoughts and processes and put them to good use and into action. Then you, my dear readers must pay it forward. No more selfish consuming.

You need to become the next legion of social media foot soldiers. We still have so many people that are completely perplexed and yet those of you that have been playing in the sandbox now for say the last year, know so much more than 75% of the population. That’s you! Start sharing what you know and what you have read. Don’t keep it to yourself. Be a creator, as well as a conversationalist. Push the envelope in 2010, you have 11 months to get it done!

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10 social sites, posts and tools worth checking out

Posted on December 10, 2009 by marc meyer

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. My Twitter stream is my RSS. Below is a compilation of sites that make me better at what I do. They cover the gamut of posts, tools and resources that someone new to social media or not, should investigate and bookmark and then share with others who might benefit.

1) This first post title 30 top blogs for social media updates is pretty good, simply because there were a few blogs (not many) that I did not know about. As well, the post also contained some links to other worthy posts.

2) If You Care About Search, You Must Care About Social Media and I do. This post rocks it contains video interviews with Vanessa Fox-pay attention to her video, she brings up a lot of solid valid points about search and social- As well as Lee Odden who stresses that you cannot ignore the intersection of search and social.

3) Check out the rankings of the Big Money Facebook 50 of the best brands utilizing Facebook. How many are you fans of?

4) A couple of weeks ago Shel Israel did an interview with E-consultancy promoting his new book Twitterville. If you don’t know who Shel is, Google his name. Pay attention to the examples Shel mentions in the interview.

5) Neoformix is a cool data visualization site, which for me helps in dumbing things down for yours truly so that I can sometimes understand them better.

6) Check out the 11 players in this post on the brief history of social network enterprise collaboration tools How many did you know about?

7) Sally Falkow is really a smart person, she recently cranked a pretty sweet slide deck

8. I’m a big fan of the Inbound Marketing University (IMU) they offer free marketing retraining programs for marketing professionals—as well as marketers between jobs—looking to gain new skills to get ahead in the competitive workforce.

9) Here’s a quick one, How popular is your website in the web 2.0 world?

10) Lastly I thought this was cool, monitor Twitter lists for keywords with Listimonkey

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