In social media, cluttering the space, confuses the topic

Posted on October 5, 2011 by marc meyer

I’m the biggest proponent of social media that you could possibly find but I am also the one that told my daughter that she doesn’t need Facebook. She’s 14. I also told a group of 400 parents and educators that anyone under the age of 16 doesn’t need to be on a social network. I got a standing ovation for that one. I didn’t get a standing O from my daughter however.

On the one hand I will tell a company that they are missing the boat because they are neither a social brand nor a social business, so they better get with it. On the other, I will flat out tell some people and some companies that they have no business playing in the social space. Why the flip-flop?

You’re going to roll your eyes when you read this next line, but hear me out. When social media first came on the scene-it was about the conversation. But what happened next was that companies and developers smelled blood in the water. They saw that we liked conversations and connections. Soon we were offered multiple sites, multiple touchpoints and multiple opportunities to have conversations. However, a lot of us, no, the majority of us, don’t need to be having conversations 24/7/365. But what happened? Start-ups and new companies have flooded and have inundated us with so many social applications and sites, that they have confused the basic premise of what made social great in the very beginning.

It’s not just about building and maintaining connections. It may have been initially, but not any more. And thus…we don’t need another social network. We need to develop the one’s we’re in. At this point, it’s no longer about growth and it’s all about engagement. Sometimes when I see another “new” social app or site that is claiming that it will simplify or aggregate my confusing and complex social life, I roll my eyes. Why? They’re not making things easier, they’re forcing me to a) Look at and evaluate ( which I invariably do) another vendor/application b) Decide whether the current sites and apps I use now are still effective c) reconsider my loyalty d) disrupt the flow of my social engagements.

Perhaps that’s why the social landscape changes so rapidly. Developers are constantly rolling out bright new shiny things that they think we’ll need or that they think will make our lives easier, more productive, more connected. Or does it? I’m sure there’s over a 1000 social apps or more that I currently do not have on my phone or desktop that could make my social engagements better. But really? Better? Or just more cluttered and confusing?

Southwest Airlines: When Offline Meets Online

Posted on September 28, 2011 by marc meyer

There was a time when Southwest Airlines were the darlings of social media. The numbers and the feel good stories were numerous and plentiful. However, Southwest Airlines notwithstanding, employees far and wide, seemed to have never received the memo about the impact of social and digital within the organization. Alas, some never seem to or ever will get that memo. The memo is simple. In this new digital age, everyone is always under a microscope, a microphone, and a magnifying glass. Southwest seems to be the poster child for this transgression.

When social becomes the conduit for airline passengers who feel they have been wronged, social media becomes the vessel to take that message to the masses. It’s funny and somewhat ironic, but if it were not for social media, the perception of Southwest Airlines as the gold standard for airline travel would probably be pretty intact.

3 recent cases come to mind.

1) Kevin Smith, writer/director, get’s thrown off a Southwest flight for being too fat. He immediately starts tweeting about it and the issue goes from smoldering to flammable to toxic and media outlets immediately pick up on it. The airlines tries to make it right and apologizes.

2) Billie Joe Armstrong, singer from Green Day, gets kicked off of a Southwest flight for baggy pants and tweets about it. The media pick up on it and the issue goes from bad to worse and then the airlines apologizes.

3) Leisha Hailey actress, gets kicked off a Southwest flight for kissing her companion and she tweets about it. The media picks up on it, the issue goes viral, and the airlines apologizes.

What are the lessons?

1. You may be the gold standard of social media engagement but that doesn’t mean you can escape criticism.

2. Every employee needs to understand the implications of a customer situation spiraling out of control when that customer uses social media to feed the flames.

2.(a) Every employee needs to understand that every customer is now capable of voicing their displeasure and their bad experiences online. Even if it was a misunderstanding. Thus the ramification of every action needs to be measured.

3. Corporate social media policies need to include triage components for customer situations that go awry. $100 gift vouchers might not cut it.

4. Sometimes the resolution will not be pretty no matter what you do and sometimes the positive resolution never gets told via social.

5. We need to learn from previous situations where customers have taken to using social media to voice their displeasure.

6. The left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing. Offline and online need to coexist harmoniously.

At some point, screwing up and then apologizing for it, can get old. We know about the experiences of stars who tweeted their displeasure, but are there more that we don’t know about? Should Southwest be the fashion police? Should they be the judge of what is considered obese? Should they be imparting their morals on their passengers?

Who is right? Who has the power? Those that have access to social networks versus those that can’t defend themselves?

The Random on Social Media, Music, Sports, Books and Movies

Posted on September 26, 2011 by marc meyer

Sometimes I just don’t have the oomph to put a complete holistic 400-600 word thought/tome together, so instead these are things on my mind from last week.

I keep repeating the following quote and can’t help but think this is incredibly accurate. “We don’t have a shortage of data we have a shortage of insight”, from Monika Wilczak

I’m bummed about R.E.M breaking up, but to be honest, I can’t remember the last time I got excited about a new release from them.

Is there a second act to social media? If so what does it consist of? Less desktop and more mobile if you really want to know.

Rather then waste a complete Sunday watching football, it’s more fun to come home at the end of the day and watch the highlites. Though repeatedly checking my mobile device for fantasy football updates throughout the day doesn’t hurt either, right?. Who would have thunk it? The Bills and the Lions?

I’m excited to have Lauren Vargas hosting this week’s 129th edition of our weekly #socialmedia tweetchat. Mark it down, every Tuesday at 12 noon est. 1 hour.

Kat French, who has one of the coolest names, is helping us put our 120 plus socialmedia tweetchats into a book-I know… Not another social media book. Can you feel it? I know I can.

A woman told me I looked like Brad Pitt over the weekend-she was very old. I do want to see Moneyball though.

I just watched an analysis about the HP CEO ouster and read that they have had 7 CEO’s since 1999… That’s 7 in 12 years.

Best shoes for running? Asics hands down. and in a pinch, I love Power Bar Energy Gels for the boost before and during a workout, or even during work!

While traveling/flying, I’ve been reading 2 books simultaneously one is called Bounce by Matthew Syed which talks about how prodigies are not born, they are made, from hard work. The other is about ESPN-Those Guys Have All the Fun, a good read but loooong.

I was in DC this past week, I went to Matchbox for lunch and ate some sliders and oh by the way they were awesome, and then I drove around the corner on 7th and stopped at Red Velvet Cupcakery and picked up a dozen cupcakes and flew home. Only 3 tipped over. You can’t go wrong with their signature red velvet cupcake.

How come companies are undeterred by the fact that the average CTR (clickthrough ratio) for web based banner ads is nowadays around 0.2% and yet continue to pump millions into it? I think we all need to look closer at Mobile instead.

I was at Whole Foods over the weekend and decided to ask the wine dude, if he could suggest a wine under 20 bucks that was smooth and tasty. Ironically, he says try the Cupcake Vineyards Red Velvet… It was good,(see no headache) and it cost 11 bucks.

Last 2 thoughts. 1) As social media has evolved over the last 5 years, do you think it has been set up in a way that it uses others so as to enable others or ourselves for that matter or… Has it been created to help others? Who’s benefiting more? The have’s or the have not’s? 2) Should Google or it’s competitors pay us to use their search engines? i.e Loyalty rewards?

Have a great week everyone.

Information versus Opinion and Search versus Social

Posted on September 20, 2011 by marc meyer

Information versus opinion. Whats the difference? Is there one? What matters to you when you are on the verge of buying something? What is your go to process for vetting a new product, service, or company? Does the process change depending on the type of purchase? So here’s the scenario, I want to buy a new big screen TV. So I do research. My research consists of what?

A) Typing in “big screen TV’s in Google

B) Typing in a specific brand into Google

C) Going into a social network and letting 500 of my most intimate friends know that I’m thinking of buying a TV

D) Going to Yelp

E) Going to Google and typing in “product review sites” into the search box because Yelp didn’t work.

F) Going into a forum and looking up the product name to see what others have to say

G) Asking my neighbor, my co-worker, my college roommate, or the father of my son’s best friend.

H) All of the above

Some of you probably would do all of the above. I see a problem with every single option above with the exception of option G. Here’s why.

Option A) is probably the most confusing. Why? Simply because a lot of consumers do not know what types of web results they are looking at. They don’t understand what can be bought, i.e. PPC versus a gamed organic result. Either way, the consumer may be in for a lot of hard work trying to find some information-thus this may be a case where they decide to forgo doing research and just go straight to Best Buy and get the deal.

B) Typing in a brand name lends itself to resellers bombarding you with “their” deal. At the least, when has doing research on a brand lent itself to a highly ranked result of a brand reporting that it’s product sucks? Not going to happen? So the results will always positively skew in their favor.

Option C) has some potential just because more and more consumers are turning to social media for help with purchase decisions. According to Cone Inc.’s recent research, consumers are seeking out product information and reviews; they’re interested in both the good and the bad since 80 percent of respondents look at negative comments and 87 percent of respondents look at positive comments with the biggest growth area for purchasing decision information being blogs. The only problem? Blogs can be gamed.

D) Let’s say I never went to Yelp before, my first thought is “Oh cool, this is handy”. Next thing I know, its been 2 hours and I have not been doing any research and I realize that Yelp is not the site for product research.

E) My first thought is, do I really want to go down this path?

F) This one has potential, provided the forum that I use has people in it that are genuine and are not cloaking themselves as regular people, but really are trying to promote their product. Don’t think that happens? Think again.

Option G) Probably my best bet, at least I get a real answer. Funny thing is, it’s not a web based derived result and decision, though the process of purchase may actually happen through the web. But then when I know what I want, finding it at the best price, is completely different than deciding what’s is the best performing brand . See the challenge foe the brand?

Look at how brands have to compete and win against you, your friends and relatives, against gamed search, gamed social and everything else, in just trying to get a message out that says, “Hey our product is good trust us”-

Even better, the company that says “Hey our product is good, but don’t just trust us, trust the people thst bought from us-That’s the gold! But the larger question is how can a brand simplify the process of aligning it’s existing customers with potential new customers while still trying to maintain some type of objectivity thats not clouded by reward systems and incentives? Tough to do isn’t it? Are we now on the precipice of the Infopinion?

Avoid Managing the Minutiae of Social and Search

Posted on September 14, 2011 by marc meyer

Remember all of the Rocky movies with Sylvester Stallone? How could you not? He only made 6 of them. In the very first movie, Mickey, Rocky’s crusty trainer played by Burgess Meredith, had a couple lines in the movie that I will never forget. Some of which seem to be appropos for two reasons. One, they apply to the worlds of search and social and two, they just makse sense from a business standpoint. But beyond the lessons that we can learn from Mickey-the real lesson is in the title of this post. But first let’s look at one of those lines and see what “the Mick” has to say.

#1 Mickey constantly is telling Rocky to “Stick and Move”

Mickey wanted Rocky to “stick and move” because essentially Rocky was too slow to stand in front of someone and go toe to toe with them. Sticking and moving is a method involving landing jabs, while backing away without giving his opponent, Apollo Creed, an opportunity to launch a barrage of shots to Rocky’s head. Apparently Rocky did not heed that advice as well as Mickey wanted him to.

In search and in social, there are so many moving parts that it’s easy to become stuck in doing one thing and one thing well or badly for that matter. Call it Myopic or blinded by focus, while not necessarily a bad thing in search and social, there are just too many moving parts. It’s better, or I should say tantamount, that you understand how search can makes a good social strategy better and vice versa, but all the while not becoming bogged down in the 101 type of activities that alot of people tend to hover on. Stay high level and keep moving; and yes I know it is the little things, but in this case, it’s about moving and being effective and the bigger picture.

For instance in search, there’s the whole aspect of campaign planning, or the strategy itself before you even launch or relaunch. There is creating search programs just for branding purposes. There is SEO, both on-page and off page for main sites and micro-sites. There is PPC, there is mobile, local, and of course the whole analytics side of it all. The point being that all of these can be managed separately and or they can be managed as channels that contribute to or funnel into the bigger picture. It’s a huge task and yet one that is best managed by sticking and moving.

The key here is to attack and address all of these and see where they fit or fall within your organization, but not get caught up in the minutiae of managing them. Now some companies, the smaller ones, can get away with just doing some of the above mentioned tasks and not doing others, and I might add, doing it well, but larger ones at the enterprise level cannot. If we’re to understand that all of these components contribute to greater profits for a company, think how social now is playing into all of them. Social has virtually the same amount of moving parts.

In social you have to have the ability to create and manage a strategy, understand and manage social analytics, create blogs, wikis, microblogs, manage profiles and activity feeds, create and manage communties, create tags, create and manage campaigns and then rinse and repeat. Very similar to search, and yet, both very complimentary as well. The scary part? All of this can be done at both the enterprise level and the SMB level.

The common themes? A couple of them. One is the digital consumer. Another is the digital vendor. and still another are the digital expectations of and aspirations of both. Another, is how extremely well search and social play together. And still the last 2 themes? One is how important it is to stick and move in managing both search and social concurrently-especially in todays rapidly changing digital world and the other? Don’t get caught up in the minutae of managing both search and social- they are large, fluid, everchanging monoliths. “Stick and move Rock, Stick and move”.

Eventually we’ll all be good at social media and then what?

Posted on August 9, 2011 by marc meyer

I was talking to a really smart person yesterday, way smarter than me, and I told her in no uncertain terms that eventually, this whole social media thing will eventually flatten out. Pretty soon, a lot of us, if not all of us, will have a pretty solid grasp of what social media is, and and how we are supposed to use it. So instead of just a few of us knowing what’s going on along with the requisite snake oil guys, they’ll be a whole slew of us running around who actually might know what they’re doing. It’s inevitable. For some of you snake oil dudes-the clock is ticking

Just like the early days of the internet and AOL, of email and using Hotmail and Outlook for some good ole’ email blasts, of SEO, of pay per click, of content marketing and so on and so forth. In each case there was always that big learning curve and once everyone overcame that, then all of a sudden you had people and companies left and right who decided to wrap whole business solutions around disciplines such as internet marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing and content marketing.

What happens is, as more and more people learn social media, they then turn right around and flip that new found knowledge into a business that is either directly or indirectly related to it. That’s technology.

So then what happens is that some people are no longer deemed a social media specialist as much as they become a generalist. Face it, we all to a certain degree become generalists. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. It means that surface level discussions now have the potential to take deeper dives because we all have a general understanding.

Right now, we’re still stuck in a semi-education mode with social.

My point though is that the days of the lone ranger, of the actual social media knight in shining armor riding in to save the day, will start to wane. Eventually when a mar-comm person or an IT person, or a PR person is hired, the skillsets will include a healthy understanding of how to use social networks, how to build communities, how to engage users in social nets, how to drive engagement in social nets and how to measure social engagements. Those will be “must have’s” and not “would be nice” reqs-and that won’t be asking a lot either.

The day is coming. We’re not there yet but eventually finding a director of social media won’t be too difficult and having director of social media in your title will be the same as being a director or email marketing or SEO, they’ll be everywhere; which will still be cool, but as I said, eventually, you’ll see that everyone will have experience “with” social media on their resume right alongside all the other must have skill sets . We’re close but not yet. But when we are there, then the real fun will begin.

Leverage Multi-Social Media Platforms to Tell Stories

Posted on July 28, 2011 by marc meyer

The emergence of transmedia storytelling over the past decade has lead to or created some unique opportunities in social media. First, let me back up and quickly explain what transmedia is to the uninitiated and in full disclosure mode I hadn’t really heard of the term up untila few weeks ago, but I dig the term.

Transmedia, according to Henry Jenkins a professor at USC is “the art of conveying messages themes or storylines to mass audiences through the artful and well planned use of multiple media platforms”

Multiple media platforms. Boom.

So let’s think through that quickly about the multiple platforms that you, me, and your organization can now use to convey your key message themes: Blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Forums, Websites, QR Codes, Group Buying sites, and LBS( location based sites)-to name but a few.

Transmedia is a cool word, and though I’ve not used it that much, the important line or word for me from the above ethereal definition is this. It’s all about story telling. A good friend once told me that we shouldn’t sell as much as we should tell stories, and you know what?

He’s right. We should tell more stories.

What’s cool is that digital media’s variety of platforms allow people and companies, equally, the ability, though some do not take advantage of it, to do just that-tell stories. Rich stories. The advent of open source blogging platforms like a Drupal or a WordPress, and the creativity that Youtube has allowed, have given users the ability to tell these rich verdant stories of their lives, our lives, and the myriad ways in which they touch us and we connect with them.

That’s cool.

So where is the opportunity? There are good marketers and Ad people that make a difference digitally. Not all of them are in it to use CGI to create a talking dog to sell a can of beans. The story tellers are the one’s leveraging the power of digital. These are people toeing the line of brilliant social and visual creativity who are going out and telling stories that open our senses, our eyes, our ears and cause us to respond in a mutual dialogue.

That’s part social media and part real life. It’s real people telling real stories of their lives, their experiences and their challenges to each other and sometimes its not pretty. It’s social cinema verite’. It’s story telling.

Quit selling and go tell stories.

Who’s making the rules in social media?

Posted on July 15, 2011 by marc meyer

I know it sounds like I’m bucking the system right? Or I’m challenging authority. Or I’m that guy who says, why are we doing it this way on his first day on the job… But here is where my head is at. Back in the Oh so heady dot com bubble days I became part of a very large team working on a startup. I remember thinking I had died and gone to heaven-I mean it was a dot com, I was going to be able to retire by the time I was 35. I came into the project mid-stream and yet the product had essentially been built. And I remember that very first day that I got a look at the site that it wasn’t right.

The reason? Simply put, a bunch of software engineers and developers built a system in which they assumed they knew what the user wanted without really asking. There was zero intuitiveness to it and I remember asking anyone willing to listen-How do they know the users will want this? Blink…Blink…

Let’s fast forward 11 years. I’m in a meeting in which I was talking to a bunch of department heads about the major social platforms, I alluded to Twitter in particular and how it has changed. The interface has not really changed and the “way” you’re supposed to use it functionally speaking has not changed-but the way in which we actually use it has-Dramatically. You see, when Twitter was first created it was meant to be a way to update people on what you were doing quickly right? Remember this comment from the naysayers? “Why do I care what someone had for lunch?” For the most part, the way it was built and the way it was intended to be used held fast. But…

What has changed is that we the users have redefined how we use Twitter. We have decided that Twitter is a great way to share links, to share content and to consume content. Sure you can have those short staccato like conversations, but we have chosen to use it in another way that suits are needs and desires. It is now purely a content consumption and content push platform. That’s not to say that Twitter is not good for conversations any longer, but obviously what Twitter has done for us, for them and for the Google+’s and the Facebook’s of the world, is that it has defined a new action that has been woven into the fabric of our social lives. The action of sharing a piece of digital content in the form of a link. Pure and simple.

In the evolution of social, we might say that first it was blogs in which the written word was used in long form, then Twitter in short form, followed quickly by Facebook who then realized that Twitter was onto something so they borrowed the Twitter stream idea… The underlying theme in all of this is that we, the users have determined what we want from our social networks and how we will use them-and not the engineers. Although I still have a problem with the narrowness of defining what the social actions must look like or be called, i.e. “likes”, “friending”, and “follows”-We still have the power to really define them in the ways that we want to treat them.

The biggest mystery however lies with marketers trying to get inside the heads of the users to determine how they can turn them into loyal brand advocates. Stay tuned.