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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10 more social media sites, links and posts you might have missed this week

Posted on March 12, 2010 by marc meyer

Ok so the dust settles on some crazy posts that were rattling in my head this week and then poof, you have to wake up and keep going. Yesterday consisted of a killer pitch for a very large SEO project in which the client said afterward that they had never received such a detailed proposal before, and yet… that’s the way all of my proposals are. I was taught well.

That’s all good, but I have more important things for you at the moment, and that’s a list of valuable social media links, posts and sites that will help you do what you do, better. So let’s get to it.

1) I don’t know who turned me onto this but I love the simplicity of Plancast

2) I’ve been talking about Yourversion for awhile now, it’s essentially your version of the news, posts and stories that interest you. I know, not that big a deal right? Well just check out how the information is presented to you.

3) I came across this post of 35 Great Social Media Infographics and I like it for 2 reasons. 1 is that the visuals are great but 2, the posts behind the visual representation are just as good.

4) You will absolutely dig this. Make a thank you movie

5) If you have not seen or heard about this yet, it’s pretty cool. It’s essentially a social media policy tool. You can build an internal social media policy in 12 easy questions. It’s a good start.

6) Jeremiah Owyang, from the Altimeter Group put out a nice report on 18 Use Cases for Social CRM that’s worth a read for those of you playing in the social CRM space. If you don’t play in the space, you need to read this anyway, because it impacts the way you’re going to deal with your prospects and clients, especially the enterprise ones on the whys and what fors of Social CRM.

7) Amplicate collects similar opinions in one place; making them more likely to be found by people and companies. Kinda fun.

8. When I tweeted about this my tweet essentially said that my faith in the coolness and greatness of UGC has been restored. Watch this one year walk/beard grow time lapse and smile when it’s done.

9) This little site/tool certainly has potential. Convert PSD’s to WordPress with Divine, though I have yet to play around with it. Let me know if you do.

10) There are so many great sound bites in this article in the New York Times about branding and the “me” economy. Just an absolute great read.

Anger, Denial, Acceptance in a Digital Agency

Posted on March 11, 2010 by marc meyer

I’m so thematic. The flow of my blog posts have gone from one extreme to another. But for good reason… Anger at clients for parting ways with me. Denial of the fact that clients are not paying me and now acceptance. Acceptance that though I indeed love what I do and know how to do it well, it may be time to do it for someone else. Though having your own digital agency is cool and fun and certainly sexy, it also presents its own set of unique challenges.

In fact, there have been instances over the past 2 1/2 months or so where I have gone through every stage on this graphic.

It goes something like this:

Shock stage: Initial paralysis at hearing that one of my best clients is tightening it’s belt and will no longer be utilizing my skills.
Denial stage: Trying to avoid the inevitable, I angle to salvage the deal by offering an alternative service/skill and the client agrees but at a rate that is substantially less than what I was charging.
Anger stage: Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion. I’m now pissed that it has come to this and want to take it out on something, so what do I do? I write a blog post about it.
Bargaining stage: Seeking in vain for a way out, I work doubly hard with my other clients to make sure that they are happy and look for new business. I realize that times are tough and everyone thinks they can do what we do.
Depression stage: My other large client has now missed 2 invoicing periods and now I have turned into a collection agency and have stopped work on their account. The final realization of the inevitable is starting to sink in. It might be the realization that maybe having a digital agency in Southwest Florida wasn’t such a good idea in such crappy economic times.. So to combat this bout of depression, I wrote a post about the situation. It seems to help some but offers little solace.
Testing stage: I call this the looking for answers or seeking solutions stage. I have decided to use my network to see what else is out there, determined to make the best of a bad situation. I know the timing is not exactly the best right? But sanity is important right now.
Acceptance stage: I’m realizing that it’s not only tough to run your own agency, but it’s also tough to do the majority of the work, job the rest out, manage it, find more clients, look for talented people, stay current, do proposals, write posts etc. etc., Knowing this and coming to grips with the situation has allowed me to finally find the way forward, and realize that yes, I still love social media so much that I blogged about it. 🙂 but I can have more of an impact on a larger scale in another capacity. So though I will continue to consult in some capacity as I go forward, it’s time to see what else is out there as well.

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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…

The Top 20 Health and Fitness Social Networks

Posted on March 4, 2010 by marc meyer

One of my clients, a very large sports drink company, has indirectly nudged me into taking a look at the state of what I drink, and ea, on a daily basis. As well, it’s opened my eyes to what we all eat and drink. The offshoot of this has been that I have been paying a lot of attention to the health and fitness social space.

With that being said, in my opinion, here are the best social networks for health and fitness that I’ve found. The criteria being user interface, strong usage and interaction, fresh content, results driven design, strong call to action, incorporation and usage of multiple digital properties and a solid scalable platform.

I’ve been preaching about the importance of video for the lazy obese culture that we promote and have become, with that being said, Mypypeline.com realizes that perhaps the best way to be effective is to have a video site devoted to health and fitness, though the name is odd.

Yoga is hot, no pun intended and getting hotter. The Yoga Today website is clean, actually has a business model in place, incorporates video, which is key, has established a community which makes sense given the passion of this niche and still has lot of FREE content. This site rocks.

Check out some of the great content on The Fit Blog which has just as much of a shot to create a loyal and robust audience as do larger more interactive sites

Fitfiend has a nice interface and seems to be a nice little community with a tag line stating, “fit, active, connected”.

Speaking of a great design and and even better premise or call to action, look at FitByFun

I think this next site FoodFit could be one that I actually would use a lot, just given that I’m really trying to eat better. My only complaint is that there’s a huge banner at the the top of the page that diverts the eyes. I’ve cropped it for your benefit.

Onlinedietzone has potential but when you land on the site a video auto starts and the interface is a bit confusing and relies on the user to figure out what’s going on.

One site that has really evolved since I first landed on it was DailyBurn. I love the tag line-Burn Fat, Lose weight, Gain muscle. Pretty much says it all. Easy signup, clean interface and focuses on the community and it’s ability to stress accountability. Huge user base.

One of the important things about fitness, is a support network, i.e. strength in number leads to support, encouragement and common goals. With FitLink, it meets all of those criteria and more. I love the interface here and the site gets a lot of traffic and participation.

Sparkpeople can you say busy?

I like the niche-ness of Extrapounds

I love how clean this interface is at Wellsphere

FitClick‘s Social Fitness tool helps you to design a diet plan and workout, and you can also track your progress. Sort of SOP for a lot of social fitness sites. Tho I have a big problem with the skyscraper and banner ads pimping Jillian Michaels.

I like this next site for a few reasons, not the least being that the it’s about support groups. I have said for quite some time now that eventually social media will become more about specific niche’s than it will be about melting pots and this site Daily Strength is about groups and communities. I know it’s not specific to Health and Fitness, but allow me this free pass.

This next site My Fit Tribe has so much potential but is lacking in someone keeping it updated and current, but I love the design and the premise.

This site from Fitness Magazine might be the coolest. It’s somewhat of a narrow niche, but wow, create your own video workout? Was looking for an iphone app for it though, because what better way to utilize this than to take it to the gym with you? One complaint, page utilization is not good. You’ll see why.

Sometimes we have so much information and content, we feel that we have to give it all to the user. We want to show them how much we have and what we can do, what ends up happening though is that we end up vomiting the information on to the page. That what happened to MapMyRun. Hey remember what the name of your site is? Maybe that’s all you need to do?

This site has all of the social elements it needs to be successful except for one. I’ll let you see if you can guess. But nevertheless, Exercise TV has a clean UI with video, blog, community, Facebook, Twitter and iphone app integration all working towards engaging the user at every touch point. But…Who or what are they missing out on?

One of the fastest growing companies on the Inc 5000 List and also one of the most visited health and fitness sites according to Compete. Lifescript would appear to have it all. Including the tacky ad placement in the top right hand corner. Other than that, I like this site.

What can I say about this last site? Livestrong has a great design and it hits on all the topics and issues that are front and center in people’s minds these days. It engages, challenges, interacts, revolves around community and it is totally wired socially.

In conclusion don’t forget that I said that these were my top 20 based on my criteria. Your criteria might be different and that’s fine. Most importantly is the fact that we, here in the United States, are an obese nation, and the more that we can use the sites to eat better and get in better shape, the better we all will be.

I have a client…

Posted on February 25, 2010 by marc meyer

I have a client who has been with me for quite some time now, and last week I got a really strange email. It merely said.

Call me.

So you know what went down. I knew what was up. When I called him last week, he told me that maybe it’s time to end the relationship. But in a nice way. He told me that business has been way down and I knew that it had been, so it came as no surprise.

No amount of speaking to customers through various means of social media and optimizing websites was going to make their business pick up given the sorry state of the economy in portions of the rust belt. Though they are a national company, a good chunk of their business is in the Northeast. Plus they sell a frivolous type of product.

And yet, as soon as he told me that, the heart skipped a beat and the little sweat you get on your temples started to form and I immediately went into “save” mode. But there’s one problem with this.

He may be right, it might be time to cut the cord with one of my oldest clients.

I know it’s a sobering thought because no one wants to see their favorite client walk, but the reasons it might be time are many. For starters, what I set out to do for them has been 100% successful. I was brought on as an SEO and social media marketing consultant, and I’ve done everything and more for them. I’ve been their tech source for information and I really felt that I have indeed helped them. Here’s a short list of “some” of things I’ve done for them:

Reworked/redesigned website for better customer engagement.
Created a major SEO campaign that optimized complete site for hundreds of keywords all of which now rank organically on first 3 pages of Google.
Created a Flickr campaign to optimize their thousands of images and to contribute to Universal search results.
Created a blog that drives significant traffic and also ranks organically on first page of Google.
Created Facebook Fan Page-nominal success but contributed to overall brand awareness.
Created Twitter account that results in10% CTR and 2-3% sales on all links.
Responsible for online sales growth and higher average sales ever year except one. 2009…

So though he’s telling me the gig might be up, and he’s probably right, I’m sitting over here wondering what more can I do? Are there things that I have not yet tried that might get me a double, or a triple even, instead of a weak ass bunt? Something big…Impactfull… I’m not so sure. Maybe…

The last thing I really want to do is take their money for not doing anything, but short of making the horse drink, I have led the horse to the proverbial ocean. Problem is, it’s an ocean, it’s salty and we’re gonna have to look around for an oasis and it might take some time, and might cost some money. Both of which are in short supply right now.

Will my client be better served by someone else with like minded skills? Selfishly I say no, but that might not be the case. I do know this though, they will not find someone with more value than me as it relates to what they deliver and what they charge.

So at the end of the day, as I peel through Peter Kim’s wiki, looking for that “thing” I haven’t done yet, thinking there might be some “other” things I could try, the reality is, as you know, that not every social media solution is the right solution for every client.

I don’t know what else I can do but maybe just shake their hand, maybe give them a hug, thank them for being such a great client, and end it.

This week’s #Socialmedia Tweetchat Topic: Social and the New Model For Market Segmentation #sm48

Posted on February 23, 2010 by marc meyer

So you know by now that we attempt to shake things up a bit and challenge people to think differently about topics and their impact on business. Our topic this week is no exception and with the skills of our moderator, we are going to test those limits. This week’s discussion is around market segmentation and how social can change how we approach it.

Market segmentation is more than what markers do with homogeneous products before deciding which actress to use in the commercial to best reach a desired consumer group. Market segmentation is defined by Wikipedia as:

“A market segment is a sub-set of a market made up of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar product and/or services based on qualities of those products such as price or function.”

This is a good start as a definition, however this does not even begin to scratch the surface. How do we take this to the next level? To explore ways by which to re-imagine consumer grouping, we must get past the traditional segmenting like demographics, geography, income, even behavioral. For many marketers, they look at data models that break out behavioral with layers of demo and geographics mashed in. This modeling then determines a budgeted ad spend for a period in time like 3 or 6 months where the messaging is developed, pricing assigned and commercial created. The problem is that by the time the ads hit, the data models have shifted and the intended groups have moved on. Now with peer reviews and endless product content the real-time web is heavily influencing consumer preferences that continue to change with increased velocity.

Savvy marketers have been using insights for more than just marketing also. Savvy marketers use segmentation for product development, pricing, marketing channel, and even customer retention. Using the last example, customer retention, the segmenting considers factors like profitability, strategic fit, product version and longevity. Can you service your customers differently with better targeting for profitability or would you be more proactive with customers who were ripe for renewal or upgrades? Now consider going beyond your internal gates and imagine the results if you combined internal factors along with external or social listening capabilities. Maybe that customer who is really loud socially is a drain on your profitability.

So what this means is that the social web is having a profound affect on preferences, therefore insights that are not derived in near-real time are simply missing the mark. If we open our research and insights departments to the social web, how can they can they use these tools that have never been considered before? Every company will find different value in different social instances, however there are some great new possibilities that are emerging:

What if you titled the buckets of your listening tools with Underserved, Disenfranchised and Contemplators? Could you use that insight to build better products or price more according to near real-time inputs?
What if you targeted people who played Mafia Wars on Facebook or joined relevant fan pages. Could you use those applications for consumers to self segment themselves and find commonalities?
What if you targeted people who used certain hashtags (#) on Twitter or similar platforms. Could you infer commonalities from everyone who tweeted #farm, #beer or #sweets?

Understanding and using social segmentation is challenging. The pace at which social moves and the pace by which people flutter around digitally are simply exhausting. Marketers like General Mills and Coke are early adopters of social segmentation and blazing a trail for others to follow. This week’s moderator Ken Burbary is going to help us sort out this topic. Ken manages the social media duties for Ernst & Young where he develops these types of solutions for their respective clients. The topic this week is:

TOPIC: Social and the New Model For Market Segmentation

Q1) Is traditional market segmentation still relevant?

Q2) What should be more important for Brands: social segmentation or engagement?

Q3) How are you segmenting your customers with Social Media?

Please join us Tuesday 2/23 at noon EST by using #sm48 on Twitter or follow our LIVE page

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

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