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social media

Social media asks: Who do you want to be?

by Ian Greenleigh on November 21, 2010 · 2 comments

The barriers have been smashed. Start acting like it. (Flickr photo credit: sheeshoo)

Let me share something with you. The biggest difference between those that are finding social media success and those that aren’t is that the latter see traditional barriers where they no longer exist. In the world before social media, barriers were everywhere. They took the form of gatekeepers and rules of conduct that blocked access to those who, at least in part, held the power to change things for us. They were erected by people who could not be bothered, and it was normally only those with an almost absurd amount of drive or the means to pull strings that could shatter them.

Of course you have to work your ass off to be successful in your social media efforts, but hard work alone won’t cut it. Start acting like you’re already there.

Don’t be afraid to write about subjects you’re still learning. What matters is that you’re adding to the conversation when others are holding back and adding nothing.
Read what those you admire read. You’ll start understanding how they think, and you’ll be able to engage with them about things you know they find interesting.
Disagree openly with them when they give you reason to. Understand that 99% of the people trying to get in front of them do so by publicly agreeing with everything they utter, retweeting everything and sucking up in general. Be part of the 1% that tells them the truth when they’re wrong, and you’ll earn their attention and respect.
Click send. The worst thing you can do is ask yourself, “Who am I kidding?” It’s strange as hell seeing my writing on blogs like Convince and Convert and MarketingProfs, but if I didn’t stop worrying about whether it was really good enough, if I didn’t click send, it wouldn’t have happened at all.

The delta between our aspirations and our reality might be wide, but we have more ways than ever to navigate it. Write about what you want to become known for and it will begin to read like the writing of someone who’s already recognized. Engage with those you admire without worrying about if they’ll pay attention, and eventually they will. The barriers are in your head.

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Confessions of a social media manager

by Ian Greenleigh on October 21, 2010 · 5 comments

Flickr photo credit: Ela2007

Imagine, if you will, the following scene. Forget for a second that I’m not Catholic.

Me: “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been since…well, I’ve never confessed.”

Priest: “What is it my child?”

Me: “Well, a long time ago, way back in 2008, I doubted the power of…of…I can’t say it.”

Priest: “You’ve come this far. Now tell me.”

Me: “I doubted the power of social media.”

I instantly burst into flames. Fade out.

I wasn’t a true believer from the beginning. True belief tends to freak me out a bit. I saw a lot of people making a lot of money on something they were claiming was the next big thing—and oh, by the way, they can teach you about it for a price. Looking at it that way, I’m not so embarrassed that I wasn’t fully convinced of the power of social.

Gradually, however, I learned to ignore the affiliate-types, the self-proclaimed gurus and the rest of the loudmouths. I focused on the true value of the conversations people were having online. I focused on the access social media afforded, in a completely unprecedented, almost shocking way, to individuals of every stripe. I maintained what I thought was an appropriate amount of realism regarding the effectiveness of social marketing in the form of skepticism. I still do.

But here’s what changed. Until roughly two years ago, I was convinced there were still some business that could not benefit from a well-executed social media strategy. Some companies, I thought, still can’t get anything out of social. I would play a fun little game in my head, wherein I would try to imagine a business that had little to no chance with social, and then I would try to make up a strategy—playing devil’s advocate to myself (I know this sounds entirely schizophrenic). And, until about a year ago, my favorite scenario to ruminate on involved the tack and feed shop near my childhood home. That, boys and girls, was the business for which I would always come up empty. More on this after I acknowledge the inspiration for this post.

Scott Stratten

UnMarketing, by Scott Stratten, is the first official selection of the Bazaarvoice Marketing Book Club, and I’m loving it so far. Chapter 19 deals with localized Twitter marketing, something I’ve had a fair amount of experience with. Stratten conducts a thought exercise, almost eerily similar to mine, to demonstrate how a fictional Toronto pizza place might profit from going social. Here’s a killer example of how he’s able to distill core concepts into tangible steps (and he’s funny, to boot!):

By putting “near: Toronto” beside your keyword, you will see all the tweets from people who listed in their profile location that they are in Toronto. So now the person who tweets “I want pizza” can now be found geographically.

(…)

This isn’t an excuse to start replying to everyone on this list to say “Come use us! We rulez teh universe! LOLZ!” Reply to some people, say something like, “Heya, we could help you out! Let us know, hope you feel better soon!”

Marin Tack and Feed, in Fairfax, CA, was (unfairly) made a victim of this mental exercise again and again because it was a challenge—the challenge, because I couldn’t answer the question people in our business hear on an almost daily basis: “What’s the social media play?” In 2008, I answered the question. Here’s the quick, updated version:

Twitter searches will be slim pickins’ but you should still set up columns in Tweetdeck for things like:
- “horseback near: ‘fairfax, ca’”
- Ranch* near:”fairfax, ca” within:50km
- “party ideas” near:”fairfax, ca” within:50km
Encourage your customers to follow you on Twitter, but don’t leave them hanging—make sure that once they do, you start talking with them, helping to promote their content, being a good social media citizen in general. They’ll return the favor.
Start a blog (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?). You already go to equestrian events, so start blogging about them. The owners are all competitive riders, so they have a depth of expertise that would work perfectly on a blog. Write about horseback riding in general, so that you rank well on Google for terms like “horseback riding Marin”.
Create a Facebook page, and again, make sure you keep it lively. Post 3^rd party content about horseback riding, maintain an event calendar, do whatever it takes to keep it from being a ghost town.

I’m just scratching the surface above, but my point is that I’ve seen the light, so to speak. Most businesses will still fail with social media due to poor planning, lack of measurement, lack of commitment and a host of other reasons. But I no longer believe that there are certain categories, verticals or specialties that can’t find value from well-orchestrated efforts.

What are some of the social media revelations that you’ve had?

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Should social media marketing expertise be certified?

by Ian Greenleigh on October 13, 2010 · 4 comments

Is this the next class of social media experts? (Flickr credit: Herkie)

A few nights ago, I stumbled upon a profile of Josh Kaufman, founder of PersonalMBA.com. I wasn’t familiar with his story or work, but I was intrigued by his assertion that business schools, “”teach many worthless, outdated, even outright damaging concepts and practices.” MBA programs, it seems, are largely unable (or unwilling) to keep up with our ever-shifting business climate. These supposedly bad teachings are too firmly entrenched and prevalent to merit the tuitions students now pay for them, and anything of value that does get taught can just as easily be learned outside of the lecture halls. Formal education, as the argument goes, has nothing on relevant experience.

I’m in no place to confirm or refute this claim, but I can see why it has legs. And as I’m prone to comparing apples to oranges, I began thinking about the legitimacy and value of a formal social media education.

First, yes they exist. I saw an ad the other day for an Advanced Social Media Certificate from the University of San Francisco. A quick search revealed several other such programs, including…

…an MA in Social Media from Birmingham City University in the UK

…a four year degree in Interactive Web Technology Management from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

…a Social Media and Web 2.0 program at UC Irvine

…a Social Media Marketing Certificate from the University of Nevada, Reno

Are we seeing something akin to the anti-MBA movement, but for the opposite reasons? In other words:

(Flickr photos credit: mringlein)

People are speaking out against traditional MBA programs because they’re, well, too traditional, lack modern currency, built on long-abandoned premises, etc.
Are people speaking out against social media programs at otherwise-traditional schools because the space is simply too new, lacking in universal standards, not studied in an academically-rigorous way, etc. ?

I think so. And I understand the sentiment. But I’d ask opponents of formalized social media education:

At what point does a field become program-worthy?
At what point does knowledge of a subject merit certification, whether by diploma or official certification?

In Exploring the 4 Eras of Thought Development, Wilkie and Moore point out that the establishment of Marketing as a distinct academic discipline occurred during the “Founding the Field Era,” from 1900-1920. This is the first time we saw “courses with marketing in the title”. But traditional marketing had existed since at least 60 years before its academic recognition. Key excerpts from the Wikipedia marketing timeline:

1836: first paid advertising in a newspaper (in France)
1864: earliest recorded use of the telegraph for mass unsolicited spam
1867: earliest recorded billboard rentals
1880s: early examples of trademarks as branding
1905: the University of Pennsylvania offered a course in “The Marketing of Products”
1908: Harvard Business School opens
1922: radio advertising commences

(Flickr credit: Max Sparber)

To say that ideas develop faster these days is an almost-comical understatement. We no longer need to wait 60 years before we can study something. Just think of the body of literature out there on social media already—I’ll venture a guess that within a few years or less, the total amount written about social media will exceed the total amount ever written about marketing. We have access, for free, to nearly all of it. But that doesn’t mean we can possibly process it, or even a fraction of it, in a meaningful, productive way. Remember, we’re also living in the era of the Exaflood.

I think there’s a space to be filled with a formalized social media education. Just like all education, there will be terrible programs, excellent programs and everything in between. The quality of the educators will also vary wildly. Even the best institutions have the occasional bad professor.

Yes, there will also be the equivalent of diploma mills. Just as surely, there will also be trusted industry experts like Olivier Blanchard to expose them. As with all education, the ability to make informed choices will fundamentally determine what a student gets out of it—“buyer beware” will still be the name of the game.

What do you think? Are we ready for social media degrees and official certification? If not, when will we be ready?

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On sucking it up for social media success

by Ian Greenleigh on September 30, 2010 · 4 comments

Social snobbery is lame. (Flickr credit: illuminaut)

Every so often, you hear something that is just so contrarian—so radically counterintuitive—you assume it must be true without really weighing its veracity against the alternative you once took for granted. Sometime last year, I started believing, if only for an instant, that work and passion were somehow mutually exclusive in the “real world”. Yeah, I was wrong (see: dream job). But I think I know now the tiny sliver of truth I was picking up on then.

The way people talk about social media, you’d think they took public speaking lessons from Double Rainbow Guy. The language we use is often vague, but just as often it seems almost freakishly optimistic. Others notice this, too. There are even scripts to remove “excessive exclamation points” from your web experience (!!!). So when I first heard people discussing how one could earn a healthy income for their work in something as cool as social, the skeptic in me stirred to life. Turns out it was a false alarm, but an appropriate reaction. Over that last year, I’ve realized that anyone that tells you real work can’t possibly be fun, that the work that matters is boring, chose the wrong career.

At the same time, I’ve become annoyed by people that idealize work in social media as something sacred or fulfilling in a way other professions aren’t. Awesome jobs are still jobs. Go to any social media conference filled with people like me, and you’ll hear things like:

Don’t publish any content you wouldn’t read yourself!
The best content wins in the end!
Just be yourself!

I won’t dismiss any of these guidelines outright. Each has its own wisdom, and I almost always side with those who preach quality over quantity. But most of us in social media aren’t in it strictly as a matter of self-fulfillment—we work for someone else, whether it’s our boss or our clients. And as such, we have our orders. We’re to generate leads. We’re to bolster customer loyalty. We’re to meet our deadlines.

Any one of these orders may require that we do things that conflict with our social media “values,” the best practices we accept, or even the things we preach as speakers. You might think list posts are gimmicky, for instance, but if that’s what’s getting qualified prospects to enter your company’s pipeline, you’d better write them. You might not personally like what your coworker handed you for editing, but if it’s the kind of content that helps your company meet its social goals, you’ll need to hit that publish button eventually.

If you’re lucky enough to work in social media, don’t turn your nose up at those that “don’t get it”. You have an awesome job (remember how bad you wanted it?) and you need to perform, not worry about the artistic purity of your work. Let passion fuel excellence, not elitism.

Suck it up!

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Blogging in the dark: The vital data no one has (or talks about)

by Ian Greenleigh on August 31, 2010 · 10 comments

Blindly searching for the data we don't have. (Flickr photo credit: Pranav Singh)

There’s something that’s been bugging me lately, big time. It’s not your average annoyance, or mild setback. It’s a huge problem for all of us in social media marketing, but no one seems to say much of anything about it.

Let me illustrate the issue with a real-life scenario, though there are countless others:

You’re hired as a social media manager or consultant to a company that sells something, B2B or B2C—whichever. Dreaming up a social strategy to generate conversions from qualified prospects (email subscriptions, webinar registrations, contact form submits, etc.) to fill the pipeline for your company’s overall sales and marketing efforts is central to your job description.

Because you’re smart, you know that simply creating and distributing content on your own blog is only half the story when it comes to blogs. Outreach in the form of blogger relationship building, commenting and guest posting form the other half. Of course there’s more, but let’s keep it simple and continue…

So, which bloggers do you engage with, and where do you comment? You can find blogs that other bloggers say are the best in your industry. You can look at lists like The Power 150 that are informed by a mix of data, including traffic and external links. You can piece together which others think are the most important in just about any niche you’re trying to market to, but you’ll be comparing apples and oranges.

The truth is, no matter what numbers you look at, the numbers that should really matter to you simply aren’t there. Anywhere. Because you want to be on the blogs your prospects are on.

Who reads these blogs?

I don’t mean how many people. I don’t mean from where their IP addresses originate. I mean:

What industries do they work in?
What are their job titles and/or roles?
How often to they read this blog?
How influential is this blog to them, and how much do they trust what’s on it?
What other blogs do they read?

Try finding that information. It’s simply not there. So how do I back my decisions, as relate to external blogs, with data? I don’t.

If you were a media buyer for television campaigns, you would know where to place your ads. All the data would be there—who watches what programs at what times on what channels. It’s why you see ads for for-profit colleges on daytime TV.

Lots of other web marketing strategies can be backed by data. Search ads can be informed by myriad useful numbers. The decision to purchase banner or interactive ads on 3^rd party websites is usually based on data provided by the site owner on audience.

So why not blogs?

We need a Nielsen of blog audiences.

I’ve tried in vain for months to locate a single useful source for blog readership demographics.Yes, it would be difficult to create. But it would also be insanely lucrative, and incredibly helpful to those of us in the industry (and the DIYers).

Until then, we’re just blogging in the dark.

Why don’t you think we have this tool and/or service? Am I missing something? Or is this data far less important than I believe it to be?

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