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?

Social Media for B2B-10 links for the week that was in Social Media

Posted on January 26, 2010 by marc meyer

Last week seemed to be the week to talk about social media and B2B. And rightly so. You see, THAT is the niche that all marketers and consultants need to be focusing on right now. Why? Because B2B is focusing on social media. The impact of social media on B2C is obvious, but B2B is starved for information, case studies, consultants that know what they are doing and knowledge. Most don’t know in what direction to head, or where they should start.

My word to you, point your efforts towards B2B. In the meantime, here are some links that may make you better at what you do, four of which are about…social media and B2b.

1) First up is a fun site. This site is so chock full of wisdom its not even funny, well actually it is, but check out Tweeteorites

2) I couldn’t have said it better than this: Using Balsamiq Mockups feels like you are drawing, but it’s digital, so you can tweak and rearrange controls easily, and the end result is much cleaner. Teams can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting. IMHO, this is bloody simple and easy to use.

3) We cannot stress enough how important it is to engage but here is a post that stresses how important it is to, yep you guessed it, engage and also. how to win. How to Fail at B2B Social Media

4) Speaking of B2B, forget what you just read and read this. Forget Facebook and Twitter, For B2B, it’s all about Linkedin. How many of you currently use Linkedin in your social media marketing/marketing efforts?

5) In my humble opinion, some really smart women get the short end of the stick in our business. However. thanks to Lee Odden, they are getting some nice recognition in this post of 25 women who rock social media. I’m happy to say that I know 3/4 of those mentioned on this list.

6) Ever heard of Shamable, the no BS social media guide? Me neither until last week. Some good content/writing here.

7) Remember when I told you to forget about Facebook? I lied. Again. New Study Reveals Facebook Better Than Twitter for Marketers So another question to you: Are you using Facebook as a marketing tool? If so, in what way? How are you measuring?

8. Buzzom has some nice analytics tools and some cool graphics. Don’t worry it’s free.

9) So all of that B2B stuff probably has you confused on what you should do right? Stop, go, tweak, advance slowly, what is it? Well maybe you should read this Forrester post on Social Media’s impact on B2B marketing budgets.

10) Lastly, I Love the concept of Twitterfall but the interface sucks.

Take all of these posts and share them. Learn from them and then do your thing. Lastly, make sure you have fun doing it. Peace.

The sea change in Twitter sentiment

Posted on January 20, 2010 by marc meyer

I thought it was just me and thus I wrote about the rise of the transactional conversation of Twitter on Monday. Then yesterday David Binkowski threw a post up on Shamable about gaming social media. At the same time Hubspot put out it’s 3rd state of The Twittersphere report. And Todd Defren lastly writes about moving the needle on Twitter. All of these posts and reports and what have you, alluded to something that may be occuring before our very eyes and that’s this:

Conversations on Twitter have deteriorated into flat out unadulterated pimping of one’s wares, or the company they work for.

As new marketers and companies flock to Twitter, their predisposed notions of how to use Twitter have been fueled not only by us subconsciously, but also by other marketers and individuals who “think” that the best way to use Twitter is as a one to many broadcast mechanism.

Subconsciously, we have become a party to and have embraced traditional marketing on Twitter.

The conversations have eroded into flat out pimping, so has the spirit of what all of us celebrated no less than a year ago. The conversation and ensuing relationship. But not, for some of us, we’ve become jaded, and wary of what it it that you want. For some of us, the quality of the conversations are few and far between and it’s our fault.

I know, some of you are going to fire back and say “What conversations?” You’ll say, “Twitter is not a platform for conversations and never was.” You’ll say,” Who can have conversations in a 140 charcaters or less?”

The interuptive interaction?

And maybe that is what the true evolution of what Twitter is or what it should be?… A way for brands and individuals to pimp themelves and try an extract something from the engagement.

Instead of learning more and developing a relationship with the people you follow and that follow you, Twitter now just might be turning into one big drive in theater to make out in now. Who needs conversation?

Coca-Cola knows how to work the crowd on Facebook

Posted on December 3, 2009 by marc meyer

As I was reading through The Big Money Facebook 50: Companies making social media work.article yesterday, I saw that Coca-Cola was the number one brand on the list. I wanted to see why so I decided to check it out. When I got to their page I was greeted with this.

Which prompted me to ask or question on Twitter the following:

The answers came fast and furious. Surprisingly or not, they were mixed and I can see why. As social media marketers and brand execs struggle with the best way to have conversations wrapped around their brand, they always run the risk of reverting back to a push style method of marketing. And that’s the rub.

What if consumers prefer that method? Or just don’t care? They just want whatever the brand is willing to give them for free, and they don’t care. So with that being said, giving up all of my contact information, profile information and my friends information for what might be behind the welcome screen doesn’t matter. Apparently not. Or the promise of what might be behind the curtain is compelling enough for me. Given Coke’s status as the number one brand on Facebook according to this list, I think we know the answer.

So what’s my point? Yes the conversations are important but sometimes customers don’t want to talk with brands, they just want what the brands are willing to give them provided the customer is willing to give up its privacy. Do you really think that Coca-Cola is that sexy of a brand to be worshiped all the way into the #1 spot on Facebook? No. It’s the allure of what might be.

Is the social web the answer to our ailing economy?

Posted on November 2, 2009 by marc meyer

I’m going to guess that for a majority of the people out there, the answers that they seek are not in social media. Nor is social media the answer for a lot of businesses that have fallen on hard times. But damned if they are not looking.

They lift up the hood and they see this

Yet the number of searches going on for the term “social media” per month hover close to half a million. So for most, when they get those search results, and try to make heads or tails of them, it looks like this:

Yet people are wanting to know what it is and how they can make it work for their business. They’re searching for the answer. And the answers they find come from people who have never done it.

They are social media virgins

What social media has done for a lot of small businesses and large ones as well, is it has provided hope at a time when there is not a whole lot of good news to hang your hat on these days.

Hope is not a bad thing because it’s closely aligned with dreams, and right now for a lot of people, that’s all they can bank on. It’s why they wake up every day. Except hoping social media is going to change your business, it’s culture, and the people using it, and ultimately save it, is crazy. You’re looking for a quick fix and sadly, social media is not a quick fix. That doesn’t mean however, that it doesn’t work, because it does.

But there are people out there claiming that they can make social media work for your company and save your company quickly. Be wary. be very wary.

Social media is not the solution to what is ailing you. In fact, there is a strong likelihood that what is ailing you, is completely out of your control. But you are looking for ways to break out, to try something, anything that will turn the tide in your favor. So you’re looking at social media, looking at it hard.

The ripple effect of a bad economy if you will, causes you to look at everything in a different light. Including social media.

Yes, Social media is transformational, it just doesn’t happen over night. I wish it did, but it doesn’t. Chances are, the more you can wrap your arms around what social media can’t do and what it’s not, the better off you will be.

The Depth of Your Social Media Growth

Posted on October 29, 2009 by marc meyer

If you were to look at the following image, what would you say the expanse of your social media exposure, involvement or engagement would be?

Let’s assume that we all start off as seedlings in social media, and as we learn more, we grow. As the tree grows, so does our comfort level. Eventually we branch out and we all go in different directions, yet we all come from the same seed. We all have the same background and the same foundation.

It should all start with listening, learning, lurking and laboring. Lurking? Yes, lurking. Call it passive participation, but we all have done it. We watch the conversations, wondering where we can insert ourselves into them. If we don’t we lurk, we hover if you will.

Laboring? Even passive participation takes work. It takes effort and you have to put forth effort.

As we progress and grow, we become more comfortable in our need and desire and ability to contribute to the conversations around us. It’s a natural progression. But to make the leap to creating content is a bit more longer and takes a little bit more growth.

On the surface and by the looks of the tree, it almost seems that we all should or could be part of the yellow on this tree. However even those that are most comfortable with social media right now are not part of the yellow.Yet the desired or expected outcome from participation and creation lies in the blue areas of the tree.

Yett if we look at Forrester’s Social Technographics results, surveys show that when it comes to social content 21% of online US consumers are Creators, 37% are Critics (those who react to content created by others), and 69% are Spectators, meaning that the majority of people in Forrester’s survey would find themselves more at the root level of the social media tree.

Look at Jake Mckee’s model. The 90-9-1 Principle where 90% of users are the “audience”, or lurkers. These people tend to read or observe, but don’t actively contribute.

9% of users are “editors”, sometimes modifying content or adding to an existing thread, but rarely create content from scratch. and 1% of users are “creators”, driving large amounts of the social group’s activity and driving a vast percentage of the site’s new content, threads, and activity.

If we look at it from that standpoint then the tree will be inverted, where it’s all about how “rooted” you are and how deep your social media penetration is. The deeper, more involved you are, the more rich the experience is.

So which version of the tree are you? Where do you see yourself? Should the tree be a 100 year oak or a common weed?

The Top 45 Objections To Using Social Media

Posted on October 8, 2009 by marc meyer

If you’ve been in the business of social media for any length of time, whether you have been selling it, marketing it, or implementing it, you will have heard one of the 45 objections below. What really makes this list though, is that the majority of it came from you and your clients and your experiences. It was crowdsourced from Twitter!

However, There’s a larger and more important issue here though, and it’s one in which you can and should, use this list as your cheat sheet. YOU need to be able to answer all of these objections. Or at least anticipate that your clients and prospects will be voicing these concerns and more.

Feel free to add to this list.

1) Why should I? I don’t need to. Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean I have to.

2) It’s a fad, I’m going to stick to what works for our business

3) It costs too much

4) I’m in no hurry

5) I have no desire

6) It will require too many resources within our company

7) I’m worried about the legal ramifications

8) We’re better off by doing nothing

9) To risky

10) You can’t measure it

11) We give up too much to the customer