Tag Archives: Social Media marketing

10 Social Media, SEO, and Marketing questions/thoughts I had in Church.

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So I’m sitting in church and they’re passing around the collection plate. At which point I started thinking that clearly the church is hurting too because the little baskets are really flying down the aisles. Given that church is a great place to take stock of all things in ones life, I grabbed my smartphone and jotted down the following thoughts and questions.

  • Social media measurement and its associated metrics will change with the changing of external markets and it’s influencers.
  • As the economy changes, so do the rules of engaging the consumer and marketing to that consumer. They have to. They must.
  • Will or should social media engagement be measured differently in tough economic times? Yes?
  • Should or will the tone of marketing and social media marketing change?
  • Do peoples expectations of social media change during economic woes? No. because they haven’t set any precedents yet.
  • Do we change benchmarking for social media? My thoughts are we would have to, since there is zero empirical data to go off of.
  • How important does social media optimization and SEO now become? I think it’s huge.
  • If times were different would some social media startups have a fighting chance? or do they now have an even better chance of surviving? Which is it?
  • Will social nets thrive now or in the next 24 months given the current state?
  • Their success will be determined by what? The same metrics? Or can startups afford to be measureed by engagement only?

So I was still feverishly texting these into my notes section of my phone well after the collections had been taken.  At which point, I looked up and saw that I was getting some nasty looks from the following: the people in the pew to my right,  the people directly to the left of me, my wife, an usher, and my kids, who thought I was playing Bejeweled.

That’s ok though, because If I’m thinking of these things,  maybe marketers, social media marketers, start-ups and even GOD might be too! Though divine intervention as a variable into any metric is a given, right?

You have no idea how much you know

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I was on the phone yesterday with a student from Columbia U who is doing her Masters thesis on a certain aspect of social media. We were on the phone because we exchanged a bunch of emails and she felt that maybe a call was in order. After 45 minutes of talking about all aspects of social media we were done. I hung up and I thought to myself; “Wow, did all of that just come out of me?”

Let me sum up what I chatted about.

  • I told her people like Scoble and Chris Brogan had devotional followings yet were different in nature and focus.
  • I mentioned that people like Brian Solis offer an interesting take on the landscape that is the ever-evolving moving target of social media.
  • I mentioned that she should check out Naked Conversations as a primer on what the blogging scene is all about and where it came from and where it’s going.
  • We talked about how Twitter is a great way to connect with Rock Stars, A-listers and thought leaders, but can still pull people into your circle that you have no reason why they are there.
  • I told her she should check out Danah Boyd and some of her work on Social media, teens and class divisions
  • We talked about why people do not contribute right away in social networks, though they have joined a community; and that it could be they’re just not completely comfortable yet.
  • As well, different demographics have different comfort levels in embracing new media.
  • We talked about communities and how individuals and brands operate within those communities.
  • I abused the words authentic, transparent, and “real”.
  • I’m pretty sure I did not take a breath.
  • I stressed that Chris Brogan is walking the line that separates saturation and Scoble like status.
  • I told her that Seesmic would be a good way to connect with people in regards to some of her social network questions
  • I’m pretty sure I mentioned David Armano
  • We talked about the goal of brand participators in communites and the challenges they face in trying to connect with their users and customers
  • I forgot to tell her which of my favorite blogs would help her in her research, so here’s the shortlist.

———————–

  • Brian Solis– Brian is very giving with his thoughts and observations on social media and PR,
  • Valeria Maltoni– If you want deep, thought provoking takes on all things social and beyond, I highly suggest you add her blog to your list 
  • Adam Cohen-Adam is a new add to my list but I enjoy his take and the variety of his posts
  • Ari Herzog-good writer, good take and his posts are timely.
  • Peter Kim-I’ve been probably been giving Peter too many props lately but man his stuff is so insightful.

So after all that, I sat there and started thinking. My first thought was that earlier in the day, I was explaining social media to a bunch of people in a doctors office. The first question out of their mouth was to ask if it was like an online dating site. Ouch.

Having my little chuckle to myself, my next thought was about what I just verbally spewed out to the grad student from Columbia, who by the way, didn’t know as much as I expected. This gave me pause to ponder what do I know? Was it alot? A little? 

Well, maybe I do know a little about some things but… I do know this. The people that I deal with, and talk with, and share with, and laugh with, everyday in my communities, know a lot. ALOT.  And everyone else outside of these circles or spheres that I float in, just might not. And that’s pretty cool. So I wanna thank you for letting me be a part of that.

Quit talking about Social Media and Go Make Some Money!

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Ok so by now we all know the hows and whats of social media and social media marketing. At least, we better.  Hell, I’ve written a books worth of articles myself on the subject. And lately we’re all writing about how to use social media in a down economy. Or whether social media can survive the meltdown. Or how to use social media to deal with the crappy economy. It seems everyone has their take on what to do. Scoble says we should listen. 

 The Buzz Bin says keep a cool head and keep morale up. We can even go to extremes and ask Will the Recession Spell the End of Web 2.0? or we can go to the opposite end of the spectrum and be forthright and ask whether you would tell your employees and customers how bad it is?  Don’t get me wrong, those all are great and relevant posts, but we gotta move on.  So let’s take this to the next level.

Seriously, you do not have to look far to read another article about how one can use social media to improve their marketing, or how bad it is out there. Between the two, We get it. It’s in our face all day every day. But now, it’s time to get serious.

Scenario one:  I’m a big company and I don’t have time to be pitched and I don’t have time for social media marketing initiatives to ramp up, but I’m willing to try them. What can your social media marketing campaign, Mr. Agency/Marketer/In house CMO do for me right now? What can we roll out that will show immediate results?

Scenario two: I’m a marketer/agency. I now do not have the luxury of educating you Mr. Big Company on what social media is and how it can benefit your company- I now have to show you direct ROI with a timeline that is reasonable and cost effective. What’s your plan? And do you trust me? Because my ass is now on the line.

So wutcha gonna do? Do you have a plan? Playtime is over.

Even our “friends” over at Forrester have said, “quit dippin the toes and invest only in programs that can deliver on measurable metrics.”

So what are the programs? Do you even know? You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Page views and traffic aint gonna pay the bills. Talk to me. Do you have a plan? Which of these below can make you or your client money?

5 huge tech trends that you can’t ignore.

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That’s it. Just 5. But why just 5? Because these 5 are rockin’ our world now and will continue to do so for the next 10 years. Do you remember the Gartner Hype Cycle? I blogged about it awhile back in regards to certain things we can be excited about over the next 5 years. Take a look at it real quick.

Ok Now look at this next slide real quick:

 

Ok, one more and I will let you off the hook.

 

 

So the hype cycle pretty much lets you know where certain “things” are in their growth development. It’s a great point of reference and doesn’t take a long time to figure out. Samw with the next slide, what does it tell you? It tells you that music is important to us. Always has, always will be. Here’s a quick 1 question quiz: What does the MySpace business model revolve around? Music and social networking. Ok So there’s 2 trends that will not be dipping anytime soon. Awhile back I wrote a blog post about the top 44 music related social networks and to this day it still pulls traffic. I recently tweeted a question as to what brick and mortar industry has completely dried up but thrived online-answer: music

Trend #1 Music will continue to thrive online and you cannot ignore it.

According to Comscore  In August 2008, Americans conducted 11.7 billion core searches, virtually unchanged from July, as Google Sites extended its lead in core search market share by 1.1 percentage points.

Search is, the gateway to everything that we do online. You may see some play in regards to trying to refine search into more of a niche based environment, but the bottom line is search will alway be the mainstay of any internet based activity.

Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in July with 63 percent of the searches conducted, up from 61.9 percent in July, followed by Yahoo! Sites (19.6 percent), Microsoft Sites (8.3 percent), Ask Network (4.8 percent), and AOL LLC (4.3 percent).

Americans conducted 11.7 billion searches at the core search engines, nearly identical to the number of core searches conducted in July. Google Sites handled 7.4 billion core searches (up 2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.3 billion and Microsoft Sites with 977 million.

In the comScore August 2008 analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led with 10.2 billion searches, a 2-percent increase versus July.  That’s billion! Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 2.4 billion searches, followed by Microsoft Sites with 1 billion and AOL LLC with 839 million.

Trend #2 Search ain’t going nowhere.

According to Hitwise, MySpace.com received 67.54 percent of the market share of U.S. visits in August 2008 among a custom category of 56 of the leading social networking websites.  The market share of U.S. visits to the social networking site decreased 2 percent in August 2008 to 6.40 percent of all U.S. visits compared to July 2008. Visits to the category decreased 17 percent year-over-year. But check out the chart below:

What do those numbers mean to you? It means that MySpace had 66 million visits in one month and Facebook had 28 million. The fact of the matter is that social media and social networks are interwoven into the daily fabric of our lives. I know, it’s not like it’s earth shattering, it’s just not a fad anymore. It’s legit. It will continue to evolve and the potential will always be there for someone to do something different and exciting and unique with the social media application. Could that be you? I hope so.

Trend #3 Social networks will continue to evolve and grow larger and gain in importance.

A recently released UN study indicates that by the end of 2008 mobile phone use worldwide will reach 50% of the earth’s population for the first time in history. Although the percentage of mobile phones in North America, Western Europe and most of Asia is much higher than 50%, in developing countries, a mobile phone is still considered a luxury.

Mobile phone ownership rates have been rising significantly, almost at an exponential rate. Countries like  India, Brazil, and China are seeing crazy growth in the number of people owning a cell phone. In fact, China had an estimated one billion cell phone subscribers in 2007. At the current rate of growth, there will be over 3.3 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide by the end of 2008.

So there’s no escaping the fact that cell phones are now-another essential part of our daily lives. Grab the keys, grab the wallet, the purse, the backpack and the cell phone. Ok so we get that. But now, pay attention.

According to a recent online survey conducted by ABI Research, nearly half (46%) of those who use social networks have also visited a social network through a mobile phone. Of these, nearly 70% have visited MySpace and another 67% had visited Facebook. No other social networking site reached 15% adoption mobile adoption.

So what are these consumers doing when they access their mobile social network? They’re checking for comments and messages from their friends, with both of these features registering above 50% for mobile social network users. Posting status updates also has proven popular, with over 45% of mobile social users letting others what they are up to via their phone.
What we are seeing is a melding of 2 functions into one via the hub of the cell phone. Or is it the hub of the social network?  There’s no doubt that a social network is increasingly becoming a central hub for communication across online and mobile domains for a lot of people. Because it’s  allowing them to consolidate activities or processes. From text, to email, to chat, to phone calls, to exchanging of data, uploading images and downloading songs. The phone and the social net. allow thesee things to occur almost seamlessly. As a trend, the centralization of a consumer’s cell phone activities combined with their increased social network usage is only going to make adoption of mobile social networking more inevitable as we move forward.
Trend #4 The growth of the mobile social network will be steady and exponential.

Here is trend 4a for you as well:   comScore M:Metrics reports that in June 2008, 20.8  million U.S. mobile subscribers and 4.5 million European mobile phone subscribers  accessed search during the month, an increase of 68 and 38 percent from June 2007, respectively.  The U.K. had the highest penetration of mobile subscribers using search at 9.5 percent, followed closely by the U.S. at 9.2 percent.  That’s right, Mobile Search.

Ok last one-And it’s a no-brainer. Check out the slide below. It’s from December 2007, but the message is loud and clear.

Google Sites  ranked as the top U.S. video property in December with 3.3 billion videos viewed (32.6  percent share of videos), gaining 1.3 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for more than 97 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 358 million (3.5 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 340 million (3.4 percent) and Viacom Digital with 238 million (2.3 percent).

In total, nearly 141 million Americans viewed online video in December. Google Sites also captured the largest online video audience with 79 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 43.9 million and Yahoo! Sites with 38.2 million. So if you don’t already know it online video consumption is growing at a sick-ass rate.

Trend #5 Online video consumption will evolve into an acceptable replacement for a TV.

In conclusion, here’s the most interesting aspect of them all. The hub for all of the above trends can and will be centered on one thing, Your cell phone.

Where does UGC rank on your trust meter? 10 perspectives on User Generated Content.

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This is going to be an ongoing viral tweet. and I will continue to update. I think it’s a very important topic.

I’m going to start off with a great post from Steve Rubel titled ethical social media marketing that I think we should all read and send to others.

Next here’s an article from newsweek in which the author thinks that the UGC pendulum is swinging back towards the experts.

Better read this one user-generated content site gets sued by copyright owner for naughty uploading habits of users

From an SEO perspective we have: Maximizing SEO Returns with User Generated Content

Here’s a blog dedicated to UGC

Here’s a great article by Paul Chin about the value of UGC which I highly recommend.

Want to know about the rise of user generated content? Read this article from Entrepreneur

and then the dark side-or When user generated content goes bad

Are you someone’s user generated content? and All (User-Generated) Content Doesn’t Want to Be Free:

Now at this point you should be getting the gist. So, what are your thoughts on user generated content? Do you put more trust in your peers and communities than you do traditional media, online media and word of mouth? Who’s blog do you trust? who’s opinion do you bank on? Do you find yourself spending more time online than watching or listening or reading traditional media sources?

Take the UGC Survey

Hey people, let’s step it up.

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I was sitting in the stands of a basketball gym a few nights ago and talking to one of the major movers of one of the top social media companies in the country, and I had asked him what’s going on at work. I like to see where they’re at sometimes since they are right in the thick of it usually, and I’m always impressed in the directions they head. He told me that they were looking to do more and to do bigger and better things with companies rather than just to pitch or create wikis, and blogs and communities and what not.

Don’t get me wrong, they “do” do more, it’s just that the perception or thought right now with other large companies wanting to get into the social media game is “this is what works with others-so lets do that”. He said they were looking to expand their reach and their depth of  what that can do instead of offering component driven solutions on large scales. Great strategy.

This made complete sense to me. In fact I had been mulling over that corporate perception and social media perception of late with the posts I had been reading in my reader and on some social sites I frequent. 

My thinking was it had become somewhat static, one dimensional and monotone like in its themes. Or maybe stale? Tired? Repetitive?

Think about it, we are creatures of habit and we do what the pack is doing. We see what works and we do the same. Isn’t that the way certain companies are approaching pitching social media solutions to large companies. They see what has been successful elsewhere and then take the same approach and basically say we can do that to? Yawwwwwwwwn. Go ahead and do that. But how bout you stretch out and take a chance on doing something bold and different?

Which was the essence of  what my friend was saying and I applaud their thinking for this. We, and they are only limited by our collective thinking of what social media can do. Right now we’re implementing what we know what works instead of turning it inside out and attacking it from a completely different vantage point.

 I implore that tact with some of the incredible collection of thinkers that I subscribe to. I personally believe that we have only scratched the surface of what social media can do and I plead with you to step back and really think about the ways and means in which we can take this piece of clay that is social media and shape it into things that we have not even begun to fathom as being possible. Let’s eliminate… the echo.

SEO and SMO are conversation starters.

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Last year Jason Calacanis wrote a blog post how he thought that SEO and SMO were bullshit. Now I know in some parts Calacanis is approaching demi-god status and in other parts he’s villified to no end. Hell, he has 35,000 followers on Twitter, which is a fairly significant number of people who put a lot of stock in what he says. I’m one of those followers too. But that doesn’t mean that I agree with everything he says.

I had been thinking about the role of SEO and SMO in internet marketing lately and decided to do a cursory search and that’s when I found Jason’s article. It’s not the driving force behind this post but it does give it some legs since Jason and others have deemed some of what is done on the level within SEO and SMO circles as unacceptable.

Over the last year and half and even before that, I have engaged in some pretty healthy SEO as well as SMO for clients. And it has worked. I utilized what was available and knew what I was doing. According to Calacanis that would make me a snake oil salesman. Talking SMO then, Calacanis said the following:

Anyone who hires an SMO firm is an idiot. The whole point of social media is TO BE REAL NOT FAKE!!! Just be yourself and participate… that’s all it takes (and note, participation is not just putting in your own links, it’s voting/commenting on/submitting other people’s content too!).

To which I have to say that “SMO is the process of realizing that being authentic and strategic within a social media marketing context or environment can be beneficial.

Here’s a generic example. I have a demographic of women smokers in their mid 30’s for instance. They  happen to use Facebook. So I create a widget that provides them a way to maybe quit smoking and track the results and share them, which in turn drives them to a blogsite, a branded microsite and a branded community. To get this ball rolling, I’ve also seeded/posted articles related to all of these sites and the product and the campaign on Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Technorati, Propeller and say Reddit. All of these linked together creates a tremendous opportunity and buzz for these users to not only meet, but also to share, and perhaps learn more about a product dedicated to them. Does this mean that what I have done is black-hat or disingenuous? No. Does it mean that I have taken certain elements, linked them together and have enjoyed the linky-goodness via SMO and SEO? Yes. Am I bad? Am I evil? Am I hiding? Am I not being “transparent enough”?  Why can’t I let these social bookmarking sites know about a product launch?

Want a good example?  Buddy Media created the Check your Dudeness app for Facebook-Couldn’t this be construed as some element of SMO? They’re taking a product, a branded one and using social media to promote it. Is that gaming the system? No.

We need to get away from the fact that what the system allows us to do, does not neccessarily mean that we are up to no good, or that we’re not being transparent enough. Ok I get it. I don’t need to be told over and over and over again to be transparent and authentic. Yes there is a difference between black hat seo and white hat seo as well as black hat smo, no doubt about it. Just check akismet for aspects of that. But.. most of your brand marketers are only using the tools that are available. I can show you at least 130 examples where companies used certain aspects of social media to promote or further their brand exposure using some of the above mentioned sites and tactics. This doesn’t mean that they are operating behind a cloak of deceit.

Listen, there is a big big difference between gaming the system and utilizing what is provided to promote your product, your brand, and your company. It truly boils down to how you use it. I’m all for engaging in conversations but someone has to start the conversation. The better you are at starting a conversation, the better your chances are of someone listening and responding back. Maybe we should be looking at not how to be transparent and authentic, but more on the proper way to enagage and start the conversation.

12 sites to check out and a MySpace story.

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Sometimes I just want to effin rant about stuff going on in my life, but one of my mottos has always been to keep an even keel. I know, try keeping an even keel with all of the bullshit going on right now, right?. So with all of that noise, here are some sites and blogs that you should check out and or bookmark:

Crazy Egg is a site that provides visual representations of customer data and web traffic.

Keeping the theme of the egg, VideoEgg is a video ad network for online communities that connects brands to consumers with video and rich media across a network of more than 200 leading video and gaming sites, social networks and applications.

I was in NYC recently and relied heavily on this. I thought HopStop was invaluable.

Trendrr tracks the popularity and awareness of trends across a variety of inputs, ranging from social networks, to blog buzz and video views downloads, all in real time.

View and create user flows here @ Product Planner which is a product from Kissmetrics

Thinking of turning that white paper or ebook into something more? Check out Lulu, which I plan on taking advantage of.

Here’s a cool Linkedin app called social minder, though I haven’t tried it out yet, but it is on my to-do list.

Paul O’Brien provides the The Definitive Online Marketing Conferences List which is a nice list for all of us. Thanks Paul.

You will love Usernamecheck, this is very cool. Its very self-explanatory.

If you have not seen Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote from Web 2.0 expo in NYC. Then here you go, it’s pretty damn good.

icharts listened and read my TechCrunch50 blogpost and got back to me, so I’m getting ready to take it for a test drive.

Lastly, let me tell you about the conversation I had with a MySpace sales rep named Jason Steingold this past week. He has been historically relentless in trying to get me to buy advertising for one of our products. Relentless to the extent that even though I have told him “no” half a dozen times. He’ll send an email to me stating to “just let him know when I’m ready”. and “we have some really good deals right now”. Oh Ok Fast Eddie, I’m on it.

He’s hammered me on the quality of the demographic for the one product we market, pitched me on specials,  seasonal deals, you name it. So I sent him an email back this last time that said that his price point was too high. My exact words were, “your price points are wayyy to effin high”. Ok my mistake, I should have been more professional.

That email I sent him was more conversational than most of the emails that I send him, at least to the extent that I said more than “no thanks”, but I figured I’d be semi-nice and congenial this time. Big Mistake-I’ve now engaged him and he immediately fires back an email saying the wrong thing or definitely taking the wrong tone and tact with me in implying my naivity, my stupidity and their massive size.

At a $.45 CPM?  What other social network that houses such a large amt of your demographic can you receive targeted inventory at a $.45 CPM? 

 

So I come back with, “yea but you have a minimum spend of what?”

He responds with… drum roll please…

200k minimum for the month….but you’d get a 72 hr out clause…..

 

 

 

Oh ok, cool, so I get the 72 hour out clause on a 200k minimum spend. Damn that’s a sweet deal. Spend $200,000 to make what? So here’s how the rest of the conversation via email went down.

Me: there’s your price point mah brutha

Him: 72 hr out clause?  That’s a great deal….you guys must not be in the business of making money….just trying to help you out, times is rough son.

Nice sales tchnique there, don’t ya think?

Me: Let me digress. Our typical customer for this product does not use social media. Just because you have data that shows 10 million users that “might” use this product doesn’t mean it’s our customer. Looked at broadly, we could say that everyone is a potential customer, and I could see why you thought or think that. Your comment about us not being in the business of making money-  you might wanna work on those closing techniques and avoid using that in the future.

Him: Who’s your typical customer exactly?  1 in 4 Americans is on MySpace….pretty much encompasses people from every walk of life….

Me: Thanks Jason

Him: You’re welcome! 

Moral of the story: No wonder sales people have such a hard time communicating, articulating and understanding their customers. They don’t listen. They push and force the message. He engaged me and he had me listening and did not handle an initial skeptical rejection well.

 

Is social media marketing guerrilla in nature?

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When I wrote yesterdays post about the melding of guerrilla and social media marketing, I thought that perhaps that maybe I was a bit extreme in my analogy, but look at this diagram. Look at how they both share some of the same attibutes.

Guerrilla marketing and social media marketing-an imperfect, perfect union.

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This blog post comes from a tweet that I just had which was prompted by a tweet by Jeremiah Owyang in which he said:

Next, we need to think if media spending decreases, will marketers lean on low cost social media even though returns are generally unknown?

This statement made me think that right now marketers, advertisers, small business owners- actually everyone, is thinking about how to do “it” for less. In other words how can they drive traffic and sales and leads and eyeballs to their sites and products on the cheap. Bring in social media. One of the great things about social media and user generated content is that it can be done for no cost or a low cost. And the results can be pretty amazing if done right. Enter Guerrilla Marketing. If done right,  guerrilla marketing  can and has been very very successful in growing brands, creating viral buzz, and driving sales, eyeballs and traffic to products or companies.  Why mesh guerrilla marketing with social media marketing?  Well, lets look at the definition of guerrilla marketing:

The term guerrilla marketing was coined as an unconventional system of promotions on a very low budget, by relying on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets. The term has since entered the popular vocabulary to also describe aggressive, unconventional marketing methods generically.

So if we take the basic tenets of guerrilla marketing and meld them with social media marketing you create this marketing synergy that has all the elements of:

Cheap+Viral+ Unconventional+Social= Marketing Nirvana

Social media can be “done” on little or no budget. It is time intensive, it does require energy, it can be viral, and there is no limit on your imagination. Right?   It is definitely not constrained by conventional wisdom, and we still do not know about all the creative ways that it can be used from a marketing standpoint.

So why not?

From here on out I’m going to suggest to marketers and companies that are stuck by the challenges of marketing in a tough economy and social media marketing in general, adopt the “Flavor Flav/Brigitte Nielsen marketing concept”. Loosely defined as an imperfect, perfect union of styles, personalities and standards, that underneath the hood, are very very similar and actually work. For now. Until we figure the rest out.