Tag Archives: Marketing

17 things that a social media consultant, agency or customer can’t do for you.

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learn

This started as a post that was born out of frustration. After about 4 rewrites, I have softened it enough that it now speaks as a document that the client, the consultant and the agency can speak to when they begin talking to each other. I have not even covered strategy, objectives, scope or expectations, but at least we have a starting point.

This is not meant to be snarky, ok maybe a little, but it is meant to be somewhat of a cautionary post as well. Part of it being that I have made most of the mistakes myself. I’ve learned from them and yet, I still make them, because what I am still learning is that no two clients are alike. The dynamics are not called the dynamics for nothing! Feel free to add to them as well.

  1. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you to “do a blog”.-Just because they want you to do it, doesn’t mean you can. It’s not right for every business but let’s say it is. You just might not have been built for it. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just that the assumption can’t be made that everyone is capable of writing a compelling blog with compelling content.
  2. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you to do “social media”. You don’t do social media. If you’re an SMB or department head and you hear that, look at your phone and say you have to take this call..
  3. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you how to write for SEO, the User, AND for Social. It’s not easy, it’s time intensive, and not for the faint of heart and probably not in their DNA. Though it is a great quality to possess. If they are asking or expecting you to, be afraid, be very afraid.
  4. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you to understand the relationship between search and social. Why? It’s an art as much as it is science and to be honest, why should they? It’s not what they do! Should you take the time to at least understand the dynamics? Yes.
  5. A social media consultant or agency can’t, won’t, or might not teach you to understand when it’s appropriate to not to do something with social media. Why? It’s not in their best interests. What you might not hear is that some aspects of social media are just not right for every business. Let’s not jam round pegs into square holes just for the sake of getting the business. As a decision maker always ask why. It’s you’re right. Which leads to #6.
  6. A social media consultant or agency won’t teach you to understand the why. Why? Because they don’t really care about theory, they might not get it, nor do they want to spend time educating you. You need to take the time yourself to understand the why. Preferably before they come calling. Make them squirm. Dazzle them with your knowledge.
  7. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you to know when not to pimp your stuff. Why?  Because if you think it’s the right thing to do and you’re a traditional marketer, chances are, you’re going to do it anyway. Like the analogy of the actor who thinks he always has to be “on” when he’s in public. You don’t always have to pimp your stuff.
  8. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you to be yourself. They can tell you, they just can’t teach you. You will figure out that being authentic goes a lot further than #7.
  9. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you how to have real conversations. You know the difference, really…you do! You have them at the dinner table every night. That’s real.
  10. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you how to have real online conversations that result in business. Slightly different from #7 but no less impactful or important. The gist being that you can’t force the action.
  11. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you how to not be disingenuous. You’ll find out real quick how this one works. It’s generally when you learn what the word flame means in the online world and the only voice you hear is youw own.
  12. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you how to not be overt and blatant with your marketing message. Why? You’ll think that it’s the right thing to do to, until you see otherwise. See #10
  13. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you to have your “ah-ha” moment, you’ll know when it happens. You will have it. Though they may have the skills to set up a moment for you, they’re more fun when you have them on your own time.
  14. Agencies can’t teach patience and perseverance- they don’t care. That’s not their business model. Though that is a cornerstone element of social media.
  15. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you to want it- if you don’t want it, then you won’t want it…this speaks to #17
  16. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you to write FBML why? Because chances are they don’t know what it is. They will  just outsource it
  17. A social media consultant or agency can’t teach you how to “be social”…You just have to try.

Hopefully you can’t take these nuggets for what they are-lessons learned.

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Brands: You can’t hide and then expect to participate in social media

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pickup-basketball

So I’m late. There’s a killer pick up game of basketball going on down  at the park.  I know they play every Monday , Wednesday and Friday at 5pm. For weeks I sit and watch them. This time I’m gonna play. There’s 11 guys including me. They pick up teams and I don’t get picked. WTF? I know I can play with these guys, their games are weak. Yet, I still don’t get picked. Why is that?

Because they don’t know me. Even though I’ve been watching them for weeks, they don’t know me. I could have easily played dozens of times over that span of time and yet I chose not to. Now when I want to, they don’t want to let me, because they don’t know me or anything about me. I’m not even a  familiar stranger to them.

All I had to do was take that first step and become part of their little community. I don’t even rise up when they needed a 10th guy so they could run. Benny, Joe, Arnold, Rambis, Chris D, BV, California, Stick, Coach, and Jackie, could have used me but I stayed passive and quiet. Just watching.  All it would have required was an occasional appearance in one of their games, and I could have played any time I wanted. Minimal effort on my part to get the ball rolling.

You’re a brand, thinking about social media. Thinking about community, about your customers, about growing your reach and your depth. Thinking about getting in. What should you do? How would you do it?

Is it really about being transparent?

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avoidance

In Business, I don’t really have a hard time saying “I’m sorry”, I just don’t like saying it, because it constitutes either failure or the inability to “do” something. It conveys that perhaps you did not hold up your end of the bargain. And yet, a lot of people cannot say it or do not say it, or, do everything in their power to avoid it. That makes things worse.

I don’t like saying “No”, because it means I can’t or won’t do something for you. I am refusing to do something for you. Some people do not like to hear No, or in some cases won’t take No as an answer. Others, instead of saying No, agree or say yes, when they really shouldn’t. That’s not a smart thing to do.

I don’t like saying ‘Goodbye”, because it signifies that our current engagement is ending or over and sometimes you don’t want it to end. Other times saying goodbye is exactly what’s needed a “good” bye. Sometimes, it’s just time.

In life, and in business,  some things are painful to do. We don’t want to do them because they hurt or we fear that we will lose business.  The three things that I mentioned above are all communications issues aren’t they? But in each scenario, its a form of communication that is often times necessary but avoided. Which again, makes things worse.

Sometimes we do have to say No.

Sometimes we do have to say I’m sorry.

and Sometimes we do have to say Goodbye.

What happens to the marketing person, the social media specialist, or the PR pro that decides to incorporate those three words into their lexicon?

They get Respect. Street Cred. and probably more business. Is this about being transparent?

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Augment your social media marketing efforts with honesty

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mechanics

Whatever you are doing for your clients right now isn’t enough. You may be doing what work’s for YOU because YOU know it works, but is it enough? Is it what is best for your client? Ok it may be, but I bet you, you could be doing more. Why do I think that? It’s simple and I’ll explain.

I was at a client meeting 2 weeks ago and  after everyone had cleared out, the president of the company asked me a question. It was one of those make or break moment type of questions too.

He asked me what I thought.

I sat there and was getting ready to go down a path I had gone down many times before. It was going to be the part-pitch, part-what-you- should-do type of comment, when I stopped and decided right then and there, to take a different approach.

I took a big breath.

I decided to tell the president that if I owned this project/company, if this was MY company, this is what I would do.

I told him what I would do and why. It wasn’t the I’m good at what I do rant, it was the “this is broken and its not working and I need to fix it type of comment”.  It was the, “here’s what I need to do to make it right comment”.

Simple, honest and dead on.

Guess what? It worked!

A lot of what I was referring to were elements of social media that needed to be in place to make an already thriving community/website more interactive and more conversational. Did it need to be radically changed? No. A new website? No. An overhaul of a social  media presence? No. It didn’t need any of that. It needed some tweaks and some changes in strategy, that’s all. What it needed was a dose of reality sprinkled with honesty.

At the end of the day, it’s not about bangin’ the client for as much as you can get, or getting the project at any cost, or saying what they want to hear. It’s about you being honest and seeing the challenges of running a business from the perspective of the business owner.

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20 Twitter brands behaving badly

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brands

I was doing some research for a Twitter webcast that I have coming up, and something caught me by surprise. I came across a post featuring the 100 most mentioned brands on Twitter. While the list is interesting, what I thought was more interesting and what prompted this post were the number of brands that were mentioned(talked about) a significant amount of times and the ones that I could think of, who did NOT have a twitter presence.  Some might not think much about it. But to me, given what is happening with Twitter, I think it is somewhat significant. Why? What a golden opportunity to talk with people about your brand that already talking about YOUR brand!

Below is a list of large brands that are currently doing a really poor job of managing the Twittersphere. This easily could have been a much larger list.

  1. Nike
  2. Apple
  3. Microsoft
  4. Coca-cola or Coke
  5. Sony
  6. Adidas
  7. Nokia
  8. Skittles*
  9. VW or Volkswagen
  10. Subway
  11. Mercedes, MercedesBenz
  12. Audi
  13. Heinz or Hjheinz
  14. Lexus
  15. Budweiser/Budlight
  16. Rolex
  17. Levis
  18. Converse
  19. Toyota
  20. Mountaindew

As a marketer you are challenged every day for marketshare, eyeballs, mentions and anything else that can get people talking about and engaging your brand. For big brands, people already are talking about you. Good or bad They want to talk about you. Twitter allows you to do both. You can listen to what they are saying and you can create communities of brand champions. Yet these 20 are a) slow on the draw b) don’t care and or c) are too arrogant to “bother” with Twitter. We’ll see how long that lasts, but know this, There are many many more.

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The Pornification of Marketing

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There’s an article in todays online Newsweek about a Bud Light spot that came out in February with little fanfare and completely under the radar. However, the commercial  rivals,  if not leapfrogs over the Quiznos spot in terms of what they are suggesting, cancel that, in what they are implying, strike that, in terms of what it is saying. Bud Light has taken the game to a new level or perhaps has lowered the game to a whole new level.

Granted, the assumption is that this commercial is directed right at its sweet spot demographic; and that in and of itself is somewhat troubling if only for that fact that it tells you how much Porn has become accepted into mainstream America and mainstream marketing and advertising. The assumption being that nothing in this spot is really outside the norm for the demographic. Or as Newsweek likes to call it, we are undergoing the phenomenon of “Porn Creep”.

Decide for yourself. Has Bud Light taken things to an all time low? Does this make you want to drink their beer? Do you even care?

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Unmarketing

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Behold, marketers take it to another level with 3 spots I saw over the weekend.

In the immortal words of the Budweiser “dude”,  “Seriously…Dude..Seriously..”

Are these chin ups? Or are they chin downs? Late night direct response marketing has just gone to a whole new level.

neck

Then there was the Quiznos Video. Or was it? Quiznos denies it.

Which leads me to ask..How does the pitch meeting go down? How do things like this get the green light? Which at this point allows us to segue’ to this..

godaddy

Another Go-Daddy Spot pushing the limits of acceptability..You be the judge.

Intuitive marketing by Honda

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Not sure who the Agency is that did this spot, but see if you do the same thing that a few of us did towards the end of the spot. Great timing, great spot. Intuitive marketing/branding at it’s best!

The Customer Suffers

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customerservice

Beyond the obvious.  Small business owners closing up. Demand for products and services drying up. People losing their jobs left and right. There is an aspect of this that all of us have overlooked. The customer.

What does the customer do? Where does the customer go? What are their alternatives?

For the brands and the businesses that do survive, what are they doing to keep their existing customers? What tools are they using to keep and engage their current customers? What are they doing to get new customers?

Not that I’m keeping score, but who has the upper hand right now? and who can leverage that?

Don’t hide behind the brand

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In part deux of my series on social media best practices for Ari Herzog’s blog Ariwriter, I had planned on talking about elaborating on the need to “experiment with effort” or “experiment with engagement”. By that I mean don’t just sign up or register on a lot of different social sites and expect the relationships to bubble up from there. Put forth some effort.

But in lieu of expounding on that I give you the second part in the series which covers hiding behind the brand. See what you think and let me know your thoughts.

As a follow up. I want to add that from the conversation that I did have with “the brand”, a dialogue did evolve, and a relationship with the person behind that brand was created. And you know what? That person turned out to be very engaging, enlightening, and earnest. And that would not have happened prior to our discussion about “People versus Brands”.