The Rub of Social Ubiquity

Posted on July 12, 2011 by marc meyer

Sometimes we just want to “lay low”. Sometimes we just want to pull back and do nothing. Sometimes we just don’t want to post, share, update, comment, tweet, or chat. We just want to be. However, as each day goes by, we’re starting to see that social doesn’t sleep. The digital footprint isn’t necessarily in sand.

Social ubiquity, unfortunately doesn’t know what laying low means. With the advent of Google+ and Facebook’s landgrab of all things social, we’re edging towards an age where we all can be found at any time. Our digital footprint is becoming one which isn’t etched in sand but more like one cast in clay and concrete. What we all need to understand though, is that Google, Facebook and Microsoft want to keep us in network, 24 seven 365. This starts with a social network and then extends to email, to docs, to phone calls, to commerce, to video and beyond. Every one of these “actions” has or will have a social component attached to it. If it hasn’t already.

So where do we go once we’re reached that saturation? We “retreat” and we “treat” social as a utility. It becomes part of the fabric of our lives that we use in moderation knowing that we CAN use it 24 seven 365, but we don’t. We will eventually become more identified by the social networks that we use all the time but right now we’re still deciding what camp we want to be in, while the big 3 try to figure out what we want.

The Consistency of Being Inconsistent in Digital

Posted on June 9, 2011 by marc meyer

The only constant in life is change-François de la Rochefoucauld

Sometimes I think the toughest part of my job is trying to stay current. And I’m supposed to be a thought leader? Ha! So if I’m thinking that, what does that mean for you or the CMO, the CTO or the Director of social, or digital marketing or marketing? It means we’re all in the same boat. It means we don’t have a lot of time to learn something, prove something, sell something, justify something and then run it up the food chain to the C-suite and back then back down. What’s more, let’s add the pressure of 3 concrete tenets in the digital space:

Is what you’re doing making the company money?
Is what you’re doing saving the company money?
Is what you’re doing driving or building equity for the company?

If what you’re doing, does not concretely answer in the positive one of the above 3 questions, the clock is ticking. Digital is moving so fast, that it is really hard for a lot of digital leaders, or social media managers to show the results that are required from their C-suite counterparts.

Therefore, the one way to break through the light speed pace of digital is to know these five thnigs.

Anticipate that things will change
Be agile enough to change
Be open to change
Be inclusive
You can’t manage digital if you don’t measure digital-but know what metrics matter.

Some things do remain constant besides change in digital though. It’s up to you to figure out what works for your organization and to build out from there, but always keeping an eye on what’s next. Be agile.

Does Social Media Own You?

Posted on May 13, 2011 by marc meyer

Recently I was asked by a school administrator whether Facebook should be used as the platform for communication with another school in another part of the world. Great Idea but I can think of a better one and here’s why.

This morning I was reading an article by David Rogers about whether it was time to shut down your website and go social instead. He measures the benefits of having a social presence versus just a static web presence. Yet one of the points that he made and its one that I have maintained for a while now is this:

Social might be the cool new alternative to a static web presence but what If Facebook, Twitter and Youtube go away tomorrow? I know it seems farfetched, but the point is, what would you do? To Rogers point he states the following as a benefit to the old school web site. And it’s simple really. Own the data.

Social media platforms are owned by the companies that run them, and, as such, they are the only ones holding all the data on your customers and your interactions with them. On your own website, you own all the data.”

The point I made to the administrator was this. Facebook is cool but why not create a proprietary channel in which you own and control the data? Create a profile that is more indigenous of the classroom, the subject matter and the student instead of relying on a profile that reveals whether a student is in a relationship or not.

We need to take our lips off of the baby bottle that is the big 3 of Social Media(Facebook, YouTube and Twitter) and own the data and own the channel. We need to quit treating Facebook like a crack pipe that no one seems to be able to put down. Own the data and control the channel and the better you can control the platform.

The Silos are still there-How can you change that?

Posted on May 6, 2011 by marc meyer

Do silos ever come down? Over the past five plus years it’s been said an inordinate amount of times that-

“In order for social media to be effective internally within an organization, the silos have to come down“.

But do silos ever actually come down? Drive down any back road in any rural American town and tell me how many old silos you see. They’re still there. And they’re still being used in some cases. They’re built to last and withstand the elements.

You could spend the majority of your time within your company trying to get buy in and roll out a social media initiative and get nowhere because of “the silos”.

How do you break down silos? In a literal sense, you could take a wrecking ball to it. You could blow it up or you could start at the foundation and topple it. You could even start from within and dismantle it. Geez… The analogies are endless aren’t they? They all make perfect sense too from a descriptive, figurative sense of what you could do. But who really does that?

Most farmers or people who do not use silos anymore just leave them be and go in another direction. Silos either have outlived their use because the farmer has sold the farm or they build a bigger one, a stronger one. But they don’t come down.

The fact of the matter is that the larger the organization, the larger the silos are and the amount or number of silos. I see it everyday in organizations with employees that number in the tens of thousands.

Don’t focus on something that you can’t bring down. You can either go around them or last time I checked-there is an opening somewhere. What goes in must come out right? It’s up to you to devise a way to work with the immovable object.

Is social media territorial? Should it be?

Posted on April 22, 2011 by marc meyer

I was walking the dog the other night and watched as he “marked” his territory and naturally I thought about the natural Tug-o-War that occurs with social. The desire for different departments wanting to own the “rights” to social media. Why do you think that is? Look at how strongly some people feel about the subject!

Danny Wong, the co-founder and Lead Evangelist for Blank Label says that PR should own social media because that department knows “what the appropriate messages are for the company’s followers.”

According to Chris Koch’s B2B Marketing Blog He just comes right out and states, It’s official: Marketing owns social media management, in which I agree with his next question, Now what?

Chris Kieff strongly believes, as usual, that it’s the bailiwick of the HR department and that HR should own social media; and if you don’t think there’s an opinion on that, look at the responses he got to his post

Lastly, Steve Radick thinks we all own social media. Wait cancel that, he thinks no one owns social media.

Now I’m confused.

But let’s think about this for a second. A dog marks his territory every day. The same territory every day. Why does he do that? Because another dog came along and marked the exact same territory as his own as well. This happens every day without fail. So the dog marking dance happens every day without fail. Sniff, then mark. Over and over and over again.

It’s simple really, it’s not about ownership, it’s about establishing that you as an organization, are consistently there every day, and making sure others know that you were there…every day, and that you are going to be there…every day. That’s all consumers want.

What Can P90X Teach Us About Social Digital Principles?

Posted on April 19, 2011 by marc meyer

In case you may be living under a rock and do not know what P90X is, it’s currently the media darling of the fitness world. It’s a fitness program encapsulated on DVD in which it stresses 3 simple core principles into it’s workout regime. The core principles are grounded in intensity, variety and consistency.

So I thought, can we make a correlation between P90X and social? Or marketing either online or offline?

The answer is absolutely. Let’s take a quick look.

First, I did a search on Intensity and pulled these colloquial terms:

All of them make sense, but when I think of intensity in digital/social media marketing, I think of focus.

Next up is Variety, which would seemingly fly in the face of focus, but not necessarily. To me, variety means keeping things fresh, not only from a marketing standpoint but also from the standpoint of giving you and your employees and your customers, a reason to come to work, do the work and buy the work. Variety is a two way street.

Lastly we have one of the four pillars of life in my opinion. Consistency. Do you want to succeed? Do you want to win? Do you want to overcome? It’s all about reps. Being consistent with your routine, with your messaging, with your offers, with your conversations, with your content, with your employees and most importantly with your customers. In sports, we marvel at how good it appears that some athletes are-we don’t realize how hard they practiced and worked in order to be consistent.