In this brief year end podcast I reflect on our 2008 podcasts and look ahead to 2009.
In 2008 Chuck Palm and I have brought you podcasts on SEO, paid search marketing and social media marketing trends. We always strive to bring you web marketing content that helps marketers create actionable strategies for measurable results.
When you hear the word promiscuity, what image does that conjure up for you? Don’t worry, this blog isn’t going there…I’m inspired to write about the concept of social media promiscuity because my brain works best with metaphoric references.
Anyone who is actively involved in social media knows that it’s all about what you give to your online community. You can give ideas, thoughts, tips, opinions and of course you can give links to content.
The best of the best in social media do a great job of sharing good content with their community. Links to news, events, interesting articles as well as new survey results, trends and anything the giver feels is interesting to their community.
Many who are active in social media often share their own content with their community. People often share links to their blog posts, podcasts, videos, samples of their work, etc. People also encourage their friends to share those links of their content with their friends on the web.
Essentially, we are promoting our own content on the social web, hence my metaphor of social media promiscuity. I’ve also heard the half-joking reference to “pimping content.”
How do you feel about that?
One attribute of the social web is we are free to follow whomever we want. And, we are free to “unfollow” anyone we want. In the vast majority of the cases when people I follow through Twitter or Facebook send me links to their own content I’m way okay with that. The primary reason I’m okay with is because I follow interesting people. Their content is usually pretty interesting and relevant to me.
The social web is “social.” If being social on the web is sometimes a little promiscuous with content, I’m okay with that as long as the promiscuity isn’t offensive. If I receive content that either isn’t interesting or from someone that I don’t find interesting I have two choices. I can not consume their content, and/or I can choose to no longer follow this person.
The essence of social media marketing is to share good content with your community. If the content you share with me is someone else’s or yours, that doesn’t matter as long as it’s interesting to me.
So, go ahead and share your content with me. If I like it, I’ll share it with others. If I don’t I won’t. Either way, I may still learn something. And, if you find my content interesting go ahead and share it with others. if you don’t find it interesting, don’t share it. Either way, feel free to comment.
How you do you feel about social media promiscuity?
My Tampa Bay Rays have won the American League Championship! The ALC series was a nail-baiting battle that went to the last out in the seventh game. The Rays defeated the formidable defending champs - Boston Red Sox - to earn their first ever trip to the World Series! Way to go Rays!!!
While watching the series on television, I was actively Tweeting during game 6 and game 7 on two Twitter sessions for #redsox and #rays. The hash mark preceding each team name indicates a dedicated Twitter feed for each. Anyone Tweeting using either of these two identifiers were displayed on the feed.
The result is an ongoing conversation among hundreds of people actively Tweeting commentary throughout the game.
I noticed there is an official Raysbaseball Twitter account called @raysbaseball but it was not active during any of the playoffs. I suppose the Rays’ front office staff had their hands full managing the unexpected race through the post season. They apparently didn’t plan to staff social media marketing activities like Twitter. But, it’s a missed opportunity to spread the viral brand of the Rays during a time when they’ve never been hotter.
The Rays have become popular in a short time this season. Everyone loves a success story. But, the viral opportunity for the Rays organization to expand the Rays brand is huge, especially during the playoffs.
The Facebook Group for Rays Baseball is a closed group. I requested to join it. I will monitor how quickly they respond to my request.
My family and I have been huge Rays fans for years (long before they dropped “Devil” from their name). This year has been unbelievably exciting.
But, I am disappointed the Rays haven’t once promoted their online presence in Facebook, Twitter or their fan forum on their website. I’ve never heard any of the television or radio announcers mention any of these fan web destinations. Isn’t offline marketing supposed to coexist with online marketing?
With so many Rays fans coming on board around the U.S. the Rays marketing department should be actively promoting their online community during this time as they enter the World Series.
During each upcoming World Series game, @raysbaseball should actively participate in the #rays Twitter discussions. I estimate there were several hundred people Sunday night during game 7 Tweeting with #rays. During the World Series there will no doubt be more.
Congratulations Rays for American League East and American League Champion titles!
This past weekend I did a session at Barcamp Tampa Bay. My session was titled “Marketing 2.0.” I covered the outline of my forthcoming book on social media marketing for small and mid size businesses.
I discussed how for decades marketers have shouted their message to customers. But, the availability of RSS technology, high speed internet access, social media platforms and a social culture that has shifted all the power back to the consumer, marketing 1.0 has been replaced by marketing 2.0.
Marketing 2.0 is about human voice communication, relationship building with anyone remotely connected to your company who cares and has an opion to share online, listening to those voices and responding to them in online communities.
Marketing 2.0 is about embracing the new media platforms and giving your customers (community) access to your content and any other content that makes their life better, whether it’s your content or not.
Check out this video to see first hand a parody on the customer revolution in progress. Any marketers ignoring this revolution may soon be unemployed.
Social media is made up of online communities where people collaborate with each other, share content and in general they are a collective influence or a collective wisdom. Let’s examine the lifecycle of interaction in social media from a marketer’s perspective. In general it is comprised of these four components: Engage
Listen
Interact
Measure
Engage
When embarking on a social media marketing strategy the first place to start is to identify the communities that are meaningful to your business (fish where the fish are). Once you find them, you must engage them. You visit social media sites and you find people with common interests and you connect with them. The social media sites you use may vary according to your industry and geographic location.
Once you engage people, then you must give to them. This is a concept that I have found many marketers don’t get. The reason is that marketing 1.0 is about pushing your message out and asking for something in the form of a lead or some other conversion we can measure. In social media marketing we must first give to get. When you give of yourself you are getting engaged in your community…Remember, social media marketing is a natural extension of our desire as humans to be social creatures. You offer your opinions and your thoughts wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself. But, you always do it in a giving way. Do not – I repeat – do not ask for something in return. You would not do that at a cocktail party, so don’t dig yourself a hole and do that in a social media situation. People online can be very unforgiving.
In summary, just have a giving attitude in social media and you’ll find many friends and you’ll build a good reputation for yourself and your company if your online identity is tied to your company.
Listen
Engaging and listening are very closely tied to each other but there is a distinction. I argue that one of the things you can measure most in social media is that which you learn when you listen online. Listening can be incredibly informative. Listening to your community is part of the wisdom of the community. Often there are thought leaders in your community who have good insights to offer. Your online friends will send you links to articles, blog posts, videos, photos and generally content which can give you valuable insights which you may not have otherwise found. Listening also lets you tap into market intelligence. Listening can also result in some of the most measurable assets in social media marketing.
Interact
When we engage our community we give of our insights, we listen to their insights, ideas and opinions. When we engage with our community we interact with them. In your career you’ve earned the right to (finish this sentence). Earning the right to do something in any business circumstance means you have the authority, credibility or know-how. When you interact with your audience you should have some credibility. You may be building your credibility with your community. Or, you may have it from day one based on your recognized accomplishments in your industry. Interacting with your community can take several forms.
First I’ll touch on personal interaction. We are not robots. We are people with interests and personalities. In social media it is very common for people to let their hair down and share things about themselves or their personality. I personally enjoy seeing comments from people I follow online about the photos they’ve taken, their daughter’s wedding, or whatever personal tidbit it may be. If you’re wondering what this has to do with marketing – everything! Opening discussions in business settings often are about something other than business. Social media affords us the opportunity to be ourselves and gain insights into people in our communities. Don’t be all work and no play or you’ll be perceived as boring and only interested in advancing your business cause.
Marketing interaction in social media can be very effective but it must be approached carefully. Posting links to blog posts or articles and asking for reaction is an effective way to interact. Even if people don’t respond, you’re still interacting with your community by sharing content. Responding to other people’s comments or content they share is another effective way to interact.
Measure
Measuring results is one of my favorite topics in marketing. The reality is that in recent years, measuring results has become increasingly sophisticated at a quantitative level. And, there is also an element of qualitative measurement that is somewhat more difficult to measure, though very possible. As David Meerman Scott tells us in his book The New Rules of Marketing & PR, not everything is measurable in social media marketing. But measuring results can be achieved in a combination of qualitative and quantitative ways.
You may know that I am writing a book on social media marketing. I am planning to complete it by end of year and publish it around March 2009.
The purpose of my book is to explain in plain English what social media marketing is. My target readers are small and medium size businesses. The people I am writing for are mostly marketing managers and executives. As I travel and speak at conferences most business people I meet still do not understand social media marketing (SMM) basics and how to develop winning SMM strategies that deliver ROI ($$$). My book will explain how SMM has evolved, basic SMM concepts, and provide guidelines to develop SMM strategies. It will also cover the risks and benefits of implementing SMM strategies. The book is especially targeting people who don’t have Fortune 1000 budgets.
The book will also provide select case studies. I am in search of small and medium size businesses who have been using social media marketing strategies with any measure of success. If you fit this description and you are willing to participate, I would ask your permission to use your company as a case study assuming that I am comfortable it will serve the purpose of the book as outlined above.
Below are a series of questions I would review with you. If you prefer to respond to the questions in email, that is fine or we can arrange a phone conversation at your convenience.
Short description of your business including relative size of your company for frame of reference for my readers. Include the types of companies you compete against.
What is your social media marketing strategy?
How did you develop your social media marketing strategy?
How much time, effort and resources (people and budget) do you apply to your social media strategy?
Did you test any portion of your SMM strategy?
What have you learned?
What failures and successes (ROI) have you realized?
Have you made any changes to your SMM strategy?
What’s next in your SMM strategy?
What would you do differently if you were starting from scratch with your SMM strategy?
If this isn’t a fit for you, but you know of a business that may be a good case study for my book, please feel free to pass this along or send me the referral.
This blog post is an excerpt from my forthcoming book on social media marketing…This chapter discusses the risk factors in social media marketing. The book’s version is considerably more detailed.
No Strategy Perhaps the biggest risk in social media marketing is diving in without a strategy. Too often, companies jump on the bandwagon without first developing a plan. The second worse risk is having the wrong strategy. A social media marketing strategy requires research, observing and planning in order to develop a plan which can succeed and can be measured.
Another risk marketers run is to ignore social media. I often hear from marketers “we plan to get into social media somewhere down the road.” That’s not a bad strategy if they are listeners in social media. But, if they are totally ignoring the existing communities and conversations already taking place, they are potentially ignoring threats and opportunities TODAY.
Lack of Understanding I believe the biggest risk any organization faces when considering using social media is a lack of understanding its potential and the (mostly) unwritten rules of social media marketing. The interesting thing about this comment is that social media is an evolving platform, yet there are fundamental components and characteristics in place which are very black and white (with a few shades of gray). Organizations who come to understand the social, viral and technological characteristics of social media have the greatest potential to achieve positive experiences.
Lack of Top Down Support Understanding social media starts at the top of any organization. Isn’t that usually true of most new business ventures? For a large corporation with thousands of employees, it’s not totally necessary for the CEO to understand social media for successful experiences. Staffers can experiment with social media, but they risk getting embarrassed if something goes awry and the CEO learns of it. In fact, the possibility of the CEO learning about a negative experience from social media is extremely high due to its pervasive nature. So, while I believe the CEO doesn’t necessarily need to be on board with a social media experiment in large corporations, I strongly advise it.
Abandonment Throughout the course of history, there are countless failed marketing experiments. As consumers we have been witness to some failed marketing experiments – remember the DeLorean car? How many Super Bowl commercials can you remember from companies still in business (other than Budweiser)? And, of course, there are gazillions of failed marketing experiments we’ve never heard of in market niches with no consumer exposure. So, it behooves most organizations to venture into social media conservatively. I’m talking about the proverbial dipping your toe in the social media waters.
Poor Allocation of Time and Resources Another risk is not spending enough time at it. Organizations that choose to embark in a social media strategy must allocate time to it. When it is considered additive, the risk of abandonment is high.
Poor Definition of Roles A related risk is not redefining job roles to reflect a commitment to using social media. If you consider social media marketing additive, then who do you add it to? Once a social media plan has been developed, or a successful trial has been completed and you’re ready to commit more to a social media plan, I recommend a formal review of people’s job description and in most cases revising job descriptions.
Not Having the Right People on the Bus Once the roles have been defined, documented, discussed and everyone is on board, the heavy lifting begins. In most cases, some heavy lifting has been in place for some time, but now you are in a better position to turn it up a notch. But, what if you realize you don’t have the right staff for social media marketing? The fact is some people just don’t understand social media. Sometimes the barrier is demographic, but most often it’s just a “don’t get it” mentality. Or, worse yet, some may just resist it for any number of reasons. There are still many people who are stuck in a paradigm, and they are not ready to shift to the social media paradigm.
It’s your job to recognize who may embrace using social media and who may shun it. If you are not the manager and you want to convince management to begin using social media, you may have a tall task ahead of you. But, you should look for the same openings I’m describing here.
Measuring Results Poorly As your social media strategy progresses, you want to measure progress or results. A big risk is measuring the wrong metrics or not measuring at all. The key is to develop a strategy that allows you to measure something that is meaningful. Measuring the wrong metrics that don’t correlate to your strategy is potentially dangerous. Likewise, attempting to measure prematurely is potentially dangerous. Depending on your social media strategy, results can take months to develop and to blossom. Measuring results over a sustained period of time is the key to measurement that matters.
There are risks in using social media, but the potential benefits are outstanding. The risks outlined here should not dissuade any marketer from harnessing the collective power of social media.
There are several tools available to help marketers measure the effectiveness of their social media marketing efforts. Some of them include free tools like, Blogpulse, Trendpedia, Trendrr, Google Blogsearch and other vote-centric sites such as DIGG, StumbleUpon and Reddit. These tools are some of the most popular and readily available tools used to track, measure and monitor social media content. They are all free to the user community.
In the spirit of sharing good content, Nathan Gilliatt, Principal at Social Target, LLC has published an impressive list of tools to monitor social media results which include commercial tools which have a cost. The list of tools is growing every day.
But, how do you measure brand equity? Admittedly, measuring brand equity is somewhat intangible. But, that depends on your perspective (is the glass half full or half empty?). Large companies place a lot of importance in measuring brand equity. But, most companies are not Nike. So, how do the rest of us measure brand equity?
In social media marketing there exist new opportunities to positively affect your brand equity. It all starts with the people in your company who are active in social media marketing. Previously, I’ve used the example of Matt Cutts from Google. When someone from your company takes a visible position in a social media community, and they effectively communicate meaningful stuff that the community truly appreciates, you are positively affecting your brand. How do you measure this?
If you hire a PR agency with good social media skills, that’s one way to measure it. If you use some of the tools described above including some of the commercial tools, that’s another way to measure your brand equity. But, here is a simple tip that takes ten minutes and doesn’t cost a dime. Go to your Google Analytics account or equivalent website traffic analytics program. Assuming you have had your analytics in place for more than one year (which you should have), look at the traffic that came to your website from the keyword “your company name” (insert the name of your company). Study the traffic coming to your website from your company name over different periods of time starting with a period of time before you became active in social media marketing. If you are actively engaging, listening and interacting with your community in social media, you will see an upward trend in traffic to your website coming from some combination of your company name or the name of the person (or people) who are actively involved in your social media strategy. I’ve experienced this firsthand as both “find and convert” and “bernie borges” are two of the top five keyword phrases driving visitors to our website. Likewise, the Find and Convert blog home page is in the top three most frequently visited pages in our Google Analytics account. These two data points alone tell me that my efforts in social media are positively affecting our brand.
The lifecycle of social media is a continuous loop. The good news is that when you apply the simple principles discussed here, good things can happen. But, the flip side is that the “continuous” part of it is such that if you discontinue participation you can lose all the benefits.
Matt Cutts is considered the face of Google which I think is brilliant because he is such a regular, unassuming guy and gives Google the persona of an approachable person. Just brilliant!
In the video interview below with Jefferson Graham from USA Today, Matt Cutts answers questions about the “common sense” things you can do to have your website found in Google.
Below is a summary of Matt’s responses to Jefferson’s questions and my commentary:
Matt Cutts: In response to what is the #1 thing you can do to be found in Google: Use keywords in your website content which are actually being searched by people.
Bernie Borges: Duh…Absolutely! But, this is a bit oversimplified. First you must research keywords. You shouldn’t assume your keywords are good. You may be too close to your business to know which keywords are searched most frequently. Additionally, some keywords are very competitive. Keyword research will tell you which keywords are more and less competitive. Often, the Long Tail keywords are the most effective.
Matt Cutts: Title Tags Matter. Users see the Title tags first in the search results. But, the description tag actually describes your web page listing in Google. The description tag should be short but very well written about your web page.
Bernie Borges: Absolutely! But, many marketers make the mistake of using the same Title tags on each page. Each page should have a unique Title tag and a unique description tag. Optimizing many web pages will increase your chances of being found by Google.
Matt Cutts: Links are Important: There are many ways to get legitimate links. One of the best is to start a blog and participate in the conversations on the web. A blog doesn’t have to be fancy. You can talk about your customers, why you started your business, things about your business. People will learn more about your business. Give people compelling ideas from your blog and you will get links. Also, participate in other social media sites.
Bernie Borges: I generally agree, but Matt makes this sound easy and it’s not. Starting a blog requires development of a strategy, which requires research and planning. Once you start a blog, you must be committed to it, or you’ll lose credibility for starting and stopping a blog. Matt didn’t mention other link building strategies such as syndicating content, or SEO optimizing press releases. Social media marketing can be very effective in link building, but it requires strategy, commitment and resources. Not all businesses are able to make and follow through with this committment.
Matt Cutts: The most common misconception is that you have to pay Google to get listed in the organic listings. Not true. Google crawls web sites for free. Another misconception is that the PPC (pay per click) listings will help your organic search engine rankings. Not true. PPC has no affect on your “editorial search results.”
Bernie Borges: This is aka “separation of church and state.” Matt’s referall to organic listings as “editorial search results” is terrific. Media firms have always maintained separation between advertising and editorial. This is exactly the same principle. This is 100%, indisputably accurate!
Matt Cutts: In response to: Does it take 3 to 6 months to get your website crawled? No. Google updates their index monthly and crawls all websites it can find for free. Google also provides a free tool called Google Webmaster which allows you to list all your URLs to be found there in days, not months.
Bernie Borges: Absolutely! We use Google Webmaster with our SEO clients. It is a valuable tool which gives a lot of insight into how Google sees your website, including identifying broken links which you may not even know you had.
Bernie Borges Final Commentary:
While everything Matt Cutts said in this interview is 100% accurate, it is a bit oversimplified. It’s a little like saying if you want to compete in a marathon, all you have to do is train 5 miles a day for 3 months, then 11 miles a day for 1 month prior to the marathon event. The execution of such recommendations takes discipline, coaching and just plain hard work.
SEO is hard work! I’m sure this sounds a little self serving, given that we provide SEO services. My argument is that the details associated with these valid suggestions are plentiful. A successful Internet marketing strategy requires planning, execution and measurement by resources with the know how and availability to get the job done. Matt Cutts’ suggestions, while accurate, are also just a portion of an overall SEO strategy, for example, he made no mention of the importance of the technical architecture of your website, along with other important factors.
Oh, one more thing. I take exception with people who say that SEO is a one time process and once you’ve completed it you are done (Matt Cutts did not say this). Whoa! That is so far from the truth. That’s like saying today is sunny and therefore I assume everyday going forward will be sunny…Others are doing SEO in your keyword space and you will lose ground if you stop working at it. I will agree there is more effort required on the front end, but you should not just walk away from an SEO plan or you will see declining results, unless perhaps if you are a in very unique niche with little competition for your keywords.
The deeper we (Find and Convert) dive into social media marketing, the more convinced we are it is fast becoming mainstream. And, not participating is more dangerous than ever.
Social media isn’t just for early adopters anymore. Consider that most searches you do in Google return traditional results PLUS a list of blogs found by Google. What does this tell you? It means that the blogosphere has become a viable source of answers and resources for us when we search.
The other big thing this tells us (as marketers) is that traditional SEO isn’t enough any more. Our content must span various platforms to include blogs, social networking sites and content publishing sites.
Have you also noticed how some searches display video results too?
What if your competitors are being found by prospective clients searching in Google but being directed to other social media destinations? This is one reason why Google purchased YouTube (for video content) and Jaiku (for micro blogging content). Admittedly, Jaiku hasn’t materialized yet, but it will.
I’ve noticed that the third biggest source of referral traffic to Find and Convert is from the blogosphere. I’ve also noticed a growing trend of traffic coming to our site from Twitter, a mico blogging service.
The other big factor that we can’t overlook is the word of mouth factor that occurs in social media destinations. The power of word of mouth will never be diminished. When people develop trusting relationships online, products get recommended, brands get strengthened and business happens. The biggest risk is being absent from these conversations. That’s where opportunity costs happen.
Marketing Sherpa has conducted much research on social media. One of the studies they did in 2007 showed that B2B buyers seek out information on vendors in social media destination sites before making a purchase decision.
This really levels the playing field. It’s akin to the consumer who goes to buy a car armed with pricing details from the Internet. The B2B buyer is now armed with information about the vendors they evaluate from social media sites.
This reminds me of the commercial with the slogan: “What’s in your wallet? When it comes to social media marketing the question is: “Are you in the conversations?”
