Feb
3
Neglected Stepchild of Social Media Marketing
Filed Under Best Practices, Blogging, Facebook, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Outside the Box, Twitter, Web Marketing | 11 Comments
You want to market on the web and take advantage of the vast potential of social media. You start your blog, create your Twitter account, launch your Facebook fan page, and you’re ready to go.
Or are you? Have you missed any crucial first steps?
Sandy Abrams, begins her new book, Your Idea, Inc., with words that have been attributed to Mark Twain:
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking down your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
This quotation presents three problems, which I believe ought to have troubled Samuel Clemens:
- Isn’t “breaking down your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks” itself a step in the process?
- Aren’t understanding your needs and clearly defining your objectives vital preparatory steps as well?
- How do we determine the optimal sequence in which to execute all the small manageable tasks?
These are three aspects of planning.
Planning is not popular, which explains the all too common lack of direction and focus in social media work.
Lack of direction and focus impedes progress and can cause frustration.
Your Social Media Plan
Before you jump into social media, devise your social media marketing and PR plan. Here are 16 key areas that might factor into your social media plan:
- Understand your business and objectives.
- Think about your products and services, what makes each special and their respective market segments.
- Develop positioning strategies for each market or program.
- Compile a list of your online competitors for each market.
- Identify suitable social media, such as social networking sites and social bookmarking sites, for both your vertical and horizontal campaigns.
- Identify desirable directories and other sites that might link to your content.
- Research and evaluate the extent and quality of industry-specific online content.
- Devise strategies and techniques for developing and promoting your content.
- Define a policy for governing your employees’ interactions with the public through social media.
- Study the online methodology of competitors and identify their search engine keywords.
- Analyze and critique your existing web presence.
- Gauge your competitors’ online success based upon their standing in search engines, the number and quality of links to their site, and estimated traffic.
- Identify opportunities to outmaneuver your competitors.
- Use a process called keyword discovery to develop a potentially useful vocabulary that will attract targeted search engine traffic to your content through SEO.
- Analyze keywords to determine which ones ought to be emphasized, based on the frequency of search and the amount of competition for each keyword phrase.
- Create a lexicon as an output of your keyword research and as an aid to your content development.
Action is Everything
You need not be concerned about every one of these areas. Use your judgment, since these are more suggestions than requirements. Certainly, do not use the length of my list as an excuse not to take action.
Action is everything. However, action begins with planning.
What are your thoughts?
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Feb
1
5 Top List Building Destinations
Filed Under Blogging, Facebook, List Building, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Ning Sites, Public Relations, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Twitter, Web Marketing | 10 Comments
I’ve written about list building extensively in connection with social media.
It’s time to revisit social media list building once again. In this article, however, I focus more on where to build lists than how to build them. In other words, I focus on social media list building destinations.
A few remarks are in order before I address the where-to of list building.
Importance of List Building
In List Building Using Twitter, I discuss the importance of list building in marketing. List building is equally important in PR, CRM and other types of communication.
Reach is the quantity of people your message reaches, while frequency is the average number of times each person is reached.
Frequency builds trust and drives your message home. Advertising without frequency is rarely effective. Marketers rely on list building to repeatedly reach their audience and achieve their target frequency levels.
New List Building Paradigm
In List Building Paradigm Shift, I discard the stereotype of list building as “a well-written lead capture page linked by a web form to an auto- responder” and redefine it as the process of acquiring and nurturing followers.
More precisely:
List building is the process of subscribing members of your target audience, in order to engage and nurture them and brand yourself and that which you represent.
This definition leaves plenty of room for creativity and customization of the list building process, yet it defines our objectives: engaging, nurturing and branding. Prescribing our objectives enables you to gauge the relative merits of each list building venue at your disposal.
List Building Destinations
These are my five favorite venues for list building. They are just as useful to owners of static websites as they are to bloggers.
I use all of them and let people choose for themselves which they prefer.
- Autoresponders - Reports of the death of email have been greatly exaggerated. Everybody receives email and knows how email works. Every website should provide email subscription. Emails sent to opt-in subscribers will have an open rate of about 30% and a click through rate of approximately 10%, which is excellent. The downside of email subscription in general is anonymity, lack of interactivity and changes of address. I use an autoresponder service to maintain my database and deliver my email. My service has a high delivery rate, many important features, good customer service, and it integrates with Google’s FeedBurner RSS if you have a blog.
- Ning Social Networks - You can connect with members of a Ning network, interact with them and broadcast messages to them as the site creator, as an administrator, as a group creator and as a friend. They all work. However, only as the site creator do you actually own their data. My primary Ning sites are Beyond Business Coaching and Let’s Follow Each Other. Subscription through Ning can be powerful, but it takes much more work to join a Ning site than to opt into an email list. A big problem with Ning is that if somebody joins more than one site or group of yours, they can receive duplicate mail from you. If you’re already established on Ning, incorporate it in your list building strategy. If not, to Ning or not to Ning will not be an easy question to answer.
- Facebook - A Facebook fan page widget lets Facebook members register for your page with one click. Based on my experience, response to posts runs at around 5%, about half the rate of email, which is good. The quality of traffic is superb with high average time spent on site. Your posts on Facebook can promote interaction and draw comments themselves from the members of your page, which helps you brand yourself. The potential also exists with Facebook pages to benefit from viral effects.
- Twitter - Posts on Twitter, or tweets as they’re called, can easily be retweeted and spread virally throughout the site. In a future post, I might list the reasons why, not withstanding the viral effect, I like Twitter much less than I like Facebook for list building. Nevertheless, I’m very happy to make Twitter subscription available, and I love all the traffic it brings me. (I’m @larrybrauner.)
- Google Friend Connect - This is Google’s attempt to add a social element to every website. I doubt that it’s very successful from a social perspective, but it’s from Google, so I’m in. If Google uses or will use GFC membership to assess the relevance of websites, I’m covered. One nice feature of GFC is its newsletters. Make sure you enable them and use them to email your GFC subscribers.
I also use RSS subscription for my blog, but it doesn’t support interaction, and I believe that the response rate from RSS is very low.
If you’re not yet a subscriber, please choose a destination and subscribe.
Your comments about list building or social media list building destinations are welcome. 
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Jan
20
Critique of Social Media and Online Social Networking on Commercial Radio
Filed Under Announcements, Facebook, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 3 Comments
I spoke on December 9 with Rohn Robbins, Vail, Colorado attorney and the host of Community Focus on The Zephyr, True Local Radio, KZYR 97.7FM.
During the hour-long radio show, Rohn and I discussed social media, online social networking and the most popular social networking sites from social, cultural, political, security and privacy perspectives.
While I continue to analyze the sites posted on my Facebook page during our website promotion event and social media party, pour yourself a drink and listen to the podcast online or download it to your iPod or MP3 player for offline listening.
You can find additional interviews and press coverage on my Media Buzz page.
Please share your thoughts about the world of social media and social networking sites, using the handy comment space provided below for your convenience. 
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Jan
18
8 Reasons Why You Might NOT Be Promoting Yourself Enough
Filed Under Announcements, Facebook, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Promoting Yourself, Public Relations | 26 Comments
Our website promotion event and social media party was an enormous success. Hundreds actively participated, introducing their web sites, engaging in dialog and making new connections.
Fortunately, the time frame for the networking phase of the event is open-ended, so drop by my Facebook page any time to meet some new people and check out what they’re up to. I’ll be busy working on the page for a few more days, reviewing web sites I haven’t yet visited.
Our four-day event was in part an experiment, as Tom Woolf pointed out. A key takeaway for me is that many people are promoting their products, services, companies interests and causes but not sufficiently promoting them- selves.
Keeping a low profile may occasionally be appropriate. However, in general, self-promotion is integral to social media marketing and public relations.
These are eight reasons why self-promotion and injecting yourself into your content are very important:
- You transcend your interests. No interest or group of interests, no matter how passionate you are about them, can fully define you as a person. Admittedly, this point is too existential, so…
- Your subject matter might lose relevance. For example, your product can be discontinued or your company can go out of business. Your content will become irrelevant with no residual benefit from the effort you put into creating and promoting it. However…
- You’re always relevant as a person. You have inherent value, and you’re completely portable from one venue to another.
- You and I are unique. People aren’t interchangeable, but products, services and organizations tend to be.
- You and I are memorable. People will come to remember us and our faces once they see us a few times.
- People prefer to do business with people they know, like and trust. It has always been that way, even before Al Gore allegedly invented the Internet. You and I can relate to people and build solid social capital.
- Synergy. Our diverse interests and content work to build a bigger and more insightful picture of us.
- Social media is uhh, social. You and I are social. Our jewelry and weight loss products merely facilitate social interaction. People relate to people, and their relationships are ongoing.
More about promoting yourself and personal branding in upcoming articles.
At this time, you can probably suggest additional reasons for keeping it social, and I expect that you will.
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Jan
3
Why Blogs Make More Sense
Filed Under Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Public Relations, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 23 Comments
As we begin 2010, I wish you real success, both online and off, in the year ahead.
In a video I’ve already already shown you, marketing expert Darren Rouse, author of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, explains in detail his blog-centric approach to building a web presence, in which his blogs are his home base, and social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube are his outposts.
Some readers have questioned the necessity of starting a blog, since a blog can consume more time than a business might be prepared to invest in their social media initiative.
I agree that starting a blog is not absolutely necessary.
Businesses can choose among various alternatives when establishing their social media home bases. However, these alternatives are less ideal than a blog for one or more of the following reasons:
- Inadequate Control - When a site is owned by someone else, they modify the terms or remove users arbitrarily, not caring at all that it’s your home base.
- Inadequate Communication - The site’s features don’t sufficiently enable two-way communication between you and your community members.
- Inadequate Flexibility - The structure, linking or other features of the site are too rigid.
- Too Resource Intensive - The expense far exceeds the alternative cost of starting and maintaining a blog.
These are some major alternatives to the blog-centric approach and the reasons they are problematic:
- Static Website -Inadequate communication and flexibility.
- Your Own Ning Network or Facebook Page - Inadequate control and flexibility.
- LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Squidoo etc. - Inadequate control, communication and flexibility.
- Self-Hosted Social Networking Site - Too resource intensive.
Note also that search engines are consistently receptive to blogs, and that some social media sites and Facebook apps cater to blogs and bloggers.
If I couldn’t use a blog for whatever reason, a static website (equipped for lead capture) coupled with a Facebook Page or perhaps my own Ning (or SocialGO) social networking sites might be workable, but…
There ain’t nothing like a blog!
Start 2010 off right: Subscribe and leave a comment.
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Dec
30
Real Social Media Success in 2010
Filed Under Blogging, Facebook, Outside the Box, Personal Development and Success | 23 Comments
As the year and the decade draw to an end, success is a topic on most people’s minds.
In 1,000 True Fans, Kevin Kelly develops a marketing paradigm for artists of all types, including musicians.
A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version.
Focus on connecting with people. Convert 1,000 lesser fans into true fans, which is all you need to earn a living.
In First, organize 1,000, Seth Godin generalizes the model and applies it to politics and business, “1,000 people voting as a bloc can change local politics forever. 1,000 people willing to try a new restaurant you find for them gives you the ability to make an entrepreneur successful and change the landscape of your town.”
Again, the focus is on connecting with people, “You don’t find customers for your products. You find products for your customers.”
Connecting with People through Social Media
What I really love about social media, in particular, blogging and social networking sites such as Facebook, is the facility with which they enable me to connect with people.
I can write an article or post a link that sparks a public conversation. Some remarks can then lead to private discussions via direct messages, email or telephone. If I help somebody or solve a problem, I now have a true fan.
Why 1,000 True Fans?
Don’t attach importance to one thousand. 1,000 is a round number, chosen arbitrarily, to take the number of fans or customers needed to earn a good living — which is fairly abstract — and make it more concrete.
Unfortunately, the emphasis on 1,000 true fans might lead us to “see the forest for the trees” but to lose sight of each individual tree. However, each individual we touch is, somewhat paradoxically, as important as the overall group.
Impact the life of even one true fan, and you have achieved a measure of success.
Real Social Media Success
The changes made possible by technology and social media in the ways we communicate and conduct business have been phenomenal. How glorious it would be if we could witness corresponding improvements in the human condition.
Sadly, the opposite is true. Technology and social media are used for evil as well as good, and our world and its peoples continue to have little respite from their fear, pain and suffering.
Our world is made up of individuals. We, as individuals, must seek ways to bridge our differences, to heal our conflicts, and to ameliorate our Planet Earth. We, as individuals, must connect with other individuals, through our businesses and otherwise, and help them improve their lives.
It would be super if, in our businesses, we could look beyond the bottom line and use social media to make the globe not only smaller, but kinder, saner and safer as well.
That would be real social media success.
May we all achieve success in 2010. Have a happy new year!
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Dec
28
8 Social Media Basics for 2010
Filed Under Best of 2009, Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, List Building, Ning Sites, Personal Development and Success, Public Relations, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Targeting, Twitter | 16 Comments
I’ve bookmarked and skimmed a dozen or more articles that project the path of social media in 2010. Collectively these articles represent many days of researching and writing.
Search Social Media 2010 on Google, and you’ll be able to compile your own social media 2010 reading list. If the information in all the articles isn’t sufficiently comprehensive, a list of 44+ social media books to buy and read can help fill the gaps.
Not that I don’t like reading about trends and innovations — I do. However, I learned long ago that the bleeding edge cuts both ways, and there’s merit in waiting until the timing is right.
Blogs and Facebook have been around for years, yet only recently have they emerged as key tools for main- stream businesses.
I suggest that we watch and see how social media and technology play out in 2010, but that we focus on the basics and build our web presences right now using techniques and resources at our fingertips.
Here are my eight social media basics for building a web presence 2010:
- Core Marketing and PR Competencies - Analytics, branding, communication, competitive intelligence, design, list building, market segmentation, marketing research, targeting, etc.
- High-Quality Relevant Content - Producing and sharing articles, videos, podcasts, pictures, conference calls and talk shows.
- Search Engine Optimization - Social media and SEO complement each other. Read Social Media vs. Search Engine Optimization and Website vs. Web Presence.
- Blogging - Also in Website vs. Web Presence, Darren Rouse, author of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, shares in a video his blog-centric approach to social media marketing, an approach to which I subscribe.
- Social Networking Sites - Nearly any social media site can present opportunities to network. By social networking sites, I mean sites that exist primarily for networking rather than content sharing.The principal social networking sites for business are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. You can also throw into the mix Ning and other niche social networking sites.
- Content Sharing Sites - Two of the most popular content sharing sites are YouTube and Flickr, but there are many more.
- Social Bookmarking Sites - There are hundreds of business and social bookmarking sites. Two of my favorite sites are Business Exchange and StumbleUpon.
- Blog and Web Site Networks - There are many blog and website networks. My favorites include Entrecard, NetworkedBlogs, Technorati, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog and Google Friend Connect.
With these social media basics, you can build a huge web presence in 2010. It’s not possession of the latest technology or an inside scoop on a new FB app that’ll enable you to soar in 2010. Your success will depend largely upon your own creativity, skills, efficiency and inner motivation.
I hope you have already mastered the all-important skills of subscribing to blogs and commenting on blog posts.
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Dec
23
10 Team Collaboration Strategies for 2010
Filed Under Best Practices, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Outside the Box | 18 Comments
Ivana Taylor, consultant and author of the marketing blog, Strategy Stew, presented 10 Must-Do Marketing Tips for 2010 in the OPEN Forum Idea Hub for Innovation.
Reading through Ivana’s tips, I stopped at “Productize Your Services: It’s much easier to understand and purchase something that looks like a product.” This task has been on my list for a while, but now I feel compelled to tackle it sooner rather than later.
During 2009, I focused on researching, analyzing and blogging about social networking sites and social media paradigms. However, I’ve already formulated some key objectives for 2010, which include closer collaboration with peers.
Here are ten of the many ways we might be able to collaborate in the year to come:
- Brainstorming - Teaching each other and working together to find creative solutions to problems. I currently brainstorm a lot with close friends.
- Masterminding - Forming mastermind groups to help each other reach our goals by overcoming obstacles and remaining accountable.
- Networking - Sharing contacts, either directly, through new social networking sites or via other business networking groups.
- Lead Sharing - Providing each other with business or job leads.
- Blogging - Group blogging is a proven concept.
- Strategic Alliances - Combining our skills and resources to create synergies.
- Team Projects - Pure team collaboration, i.e., working together on projects together as a group.
- Blog Promotion - Using our influence to promote each other’s blogs and other content.
- Fan Page Promotion - Inviting our Facebook friends to join each other’s Facebook fan pages.
- Content Promotion - Bookmarking, linking to, commenting on, and retweeting each other’s content.
I can envision collaboration strategies such as these benefiting teams in a corporate setting as well.
Please share your ideas below before you go.
If you’d like to collaborate, send an email with “Collaborate” in the subject to collaborate at braunersolutions dot com. I look forward to hearing from you.
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Dec
21
12 Tips for Using Business Week’s Social Bookmarking Site
Filed Under LinkedIn, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 18 Comments
Looking over my traffic stats several weeks ago, I was very surprised to notice that a single visitor had been referred to my blog by Business Week.
I traced the visit back to Business Exchange, Bloomberg Business Week’s social bookmarking site “that helps professionals discover and organize information from across the Web… a great way to share content and find the most relevant news on business topics.”
Anita Campbell, a Twitter friend and CEO of Small Business Trends, “an online small biz community reaching over 250,000 each month,” had saved my blog post, The Social Media ROI Obsession, on the Business Exchange site. Somebody evidently clicked through to my blog to read the article.
Once I arrived at Business Exchange, I quickly realized that this social media site was much more upscale and business-like than the social bookmarking sites with which I was familiar, and I saw BX as a potential venue for sharing content and networking up with corporate executives and media elite.
On Friday, Business Exchange notified me that I will be the featured user starting Tuesday, December 22nd at approximately 9:15am ET and lasting for 24 hours. I thought therefore that this would be an opportune moment to write about the Business Exchange site.
Business Exchange Site Basics
These are the principal ways you interact with the Business Exchange site. You can:
- join and set up your account
- search topics and people (note that the search box is tucked away at the bottom, way below the fold)
- bookmark articles you discover into one or more topics
- browse articles that have previously been bookmarked
- react to articles that you or others have bookmarked
- save topics and articles of interest for easy future access
- follow other users
- explore users’ links
- subscribe to other users’ activity
Here are 12 easy ways that you can benefit from the Business Exchange site:
- When you join, choose the option to link your Business Exchange and LinkedIn profiles. Your LinkedIn information will automatically be filled in on your Business Exchange profile page, and you will be able to easily send invitations to your LinkedIn connections.
- You can let Business Exchange automatically post your reactions to LinkedIn and Twitter. I checked off the box for LinkedIn but not for Twitter. It’s your decision.
- Bookmark only high quality business articles that fit into existing topics. Add each article to as many topics as apply, up to five, the maximum. You’ll receive contribution points, one for each topic.
- You may bookmark your own high quality business articles, but if you bookmark only your content, you’re likely to be labeled a spammer, and your standing on Business Exchange will be jeopardized.
- You don’t have to bookmark articles to participate actively. You can react to articles bookmarked by others and receive a contribution point for each reaction.
- Other users will likely “size you up” based on your your contribution points, the quality of your contributions and reactions, the number of users following you, your profile and your links.
- Follow users who interest you. Don’t expect them to follow back automatically, and don’t automatically follow users who follow you.
- Explore other users’ links. You might discover a blog or other website that you’ll like. You may also find a way to connect up with them at another site and network together. Let them know that you’re both Business Exchange users.
- On LinkedIn, if you and another member belong to a common group, you can send an invitation without knowing that member’s email. If that person just followed you on Business Exchange or is a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION), extend an invitation and mention Business Exchange.
- Use the Business Exchange home page interface to invite LinkedIn connections. X-out people you don’t really know, so that you don’t risk spamming them. Customize your invitation message. Those who join will be added as mutual followers automatically.
- When telling friends about Business Exchange or promoting the site, link directly to your profile. You want that they should get the idea to follow you if they join.
- The Business Exchange site tends to be slow. Be patient. It’s worth waiting. Business Exchange is in beta, and hopefully Business Week is addressing the response time problem at this very moment.
Conclusion
I’ve been pleased with the articles bookmarked at Business Exchange and the quality of traffic my blog has received from the site. I hope you’ll have a similar good experience with Business Exchange.
Before you go, please subscribe and leave me a comment. See you on Business Exchange.
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Dec
17
10 Tips for Choosing a Social Media Consultant
Filed Under Best Practices, Best of 2009, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Public Relations, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 27 Comments
I hesitate to write an article about choosing a social media consultant because of concerns about bias and my obvious conflict of interests.
After writing Social Media Carpetbaggers and Snake Oil Salesmen, readers remarked that they had heard enough about the kinds of social media consultants to avoid and were ready to learn how to choose a good social media consultant.
The ten guidelines I present below are best practices for choosing and hiring social media consultants but can be adapted for choosing an SEO consultant, an Internet marketing consultant, or another type of business consultant.
Oh by the way, when I say “he”, I mean “he, she or they.” Biased I may be, but that biased, I’m not.
#1 - Walking the Walk - Many businesses know little about social media. For such a business, choosing and hiring a social media consultant is on a par with choosing a brain surgeon or hiring a rocket scientist. If there’s no one in your business who knows about social media, enlist the help of an expert. Most high school or college kids can qualify. 
Here are ten ways to tell whether your candidate is walking the walk:
- Established Blog - He has a blog and has been posting consistently to it for at least a year, and all the recent blog posts have comments.
- Articulate - He writes and speaks well and will be able to help you develop and evaluate content.
- Blog Subscribers - The subscriber count widget on his blog shows the number of subscribed readers. The more, the merrier.
- Web Presence - Google him and his blog. Each search should return at least a few pages of relevant results.
- Linking Out - His blog ought to link out to other blogs and websites.
- Facebook - With everybody and his brother joining Facebook these days, I expect that you will find him on Facebook too. He’ll have many friends on his Facebook profile and fans on his page, if he has set one up.
- Twitter - While Twitter may not be a good fit for your business, each and every social media consultant has a profile on Twitter. More important than the number of people following him are the number of lists following him and how, judging by their names, the curators of those Twitter lists seem to characterize him.
- LinkedIn - Everybody in business is joining LinkedIn. There’s a good chance that he’ll be on LinkedIn and have more than 500 connections there.
- People Person - He needs to understand people. On his blog, Facebook and Twitter he interacts with people who respect him.
- Social Bookmarking - It’s probably too much for you to check whether he uses social bookmarking sites, but ask. If he’s puzzled, that’s a bad sign. Some popular social bookmarking and content sharing sites are Digg, Delicious, Propeller, Flickr, YouTube, Reddit, diigo, Jumptags, Business Exchange and Google.
#2 - Past Accomplishments - Past successes help predict future ones, even in an unrelated field. Ask for and check references. Past employers and clients aren’t likely to report any misgivings, but perhaps you can still learn something valuable. A lukewarm reference may signal dissatisfaction.
#3 - Questions Asked - Does he ask great questions about your business and what you want to accomplish, or is he selling to you like a used car salesman? Don’t choose a consultant who fails to ask meaningful questions.
#4 - Appreciating Your Business - The person who is meant to be your social media consultant will “get” what your business is all about and appreciate or even share some of your passion for it.
#5 - Chemistry - You and he will hopefully work together for a long time. Rapport, communication and comfort are essential for a good long-term fit.
#6 - Sharp Thinking - Your social media program will consist of planning, execution and analytics. Therefore, your ideal social media consultant should be strong strategically, tactically and quantitatively.
#7 - Breadth and Depth - In order to see the big picture and master the details, not only is sharp thinking a must, your social media consultant should know a whole lot about a whole lot of things. Sharp thinking and extensive knowledge combine to promote creativity and excellence.
#8 - Money Issues - You have budgetary considerations, but never choose a social media consultant just because he’s cheap. Don’t let money impair your judgment. Find the right person to help you build your web presence and negotiate the terms with him.
# 9 - Distance Matters - All other things being equal, it’s helpful if your social media consultant is local to you or within reasonable flying time and cost. However, don’t let distance stop you from choosing the best social media consultant for your business.
#10 - Small Assignments - Don’t make a long term commitment on Day 1. Hire your consultant for preliminary planning and competitive analysis. If he performs well, let him work to develop a more comprehensive plan, etc.
We’ve reached the point in the post where you usually comment. Make me look good.
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Dec
13
8 Simple Ways to Penetrate Social Media Clutter
Filed Under Best of 2009, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 17 Comments
The Global Map of the Social Web, newly published by Trendstream, illustrates country-by-country the already enormous Web 2.0 footprint.
Not surprisingly, the rapid increase in social media usage has generated a corresponding increase in blogs, videos, photos and other social media content.
For you and me as social media consumers, our choices seem endless. New content is created at a daunting rate. Conversely, as content producers, we find it more and more difficult to penetrate the growing social media clutter.
This competition among sites and content will further intensify over time. We therefore need to find ways to compensate and stay consistently in front of our intended audiences. Here are eight ideas that can help:
- Build a Large Web Presence - Search engines and plain old geometry will work on your behalf. The better you do in the search engines and the more social media territory you can effectively cover, the more exposure you will receive, both in reach and frequency.
- Leverage Multiple Traffic Sources - Using many traffic sources will help you create a large web presence, and you’ll benefit in other ways too. Read Looking for Traffic in All the Wrong Places.
- Develop Relationships - Engage with those who engage with you. Not only will they keep coming back, but so will the people who enjoy the conversation but remain silent. Focus on helping by letting people vent or by providing helpful information. Be social!
- Offer Many Ways for Friends to Subscribe or Follow - People will naturally connect through more than one info stream. E.g., I’ve set up a blogcast, an RSS feed, a Twitter account, a Facebook page and profile, a NetworkedBlogs page, my own Ning site, a LinkedIn profile, a Business Exchange profile, a BlogCatalog group, and half a dozen other ways to keep in touch. Each one has throughput of one to ten percent, but collectively they all add up. That’s how social media list building needs to work. An RSS feed alone is insufficient.
- Be Reliable and Consistent - Do what you say you’re going to do, and publish new content as consistently as possible. Being somewhat predictable will help people get to know you and will build trust.
- Promote Others - Say good things about your readers, link to their content, and link to the content of others in your industry. Be a team player. Goodwill is an invaluable asset.
- Focus - Don’t spread yourself too thin by trying to be everything to everybody or by trying to be active on many social networking sites. Concentrate on communicating your brand and message to your intended audience. Get the most you can from the time and effort you invest.
- Collaborate - Strategic alliances and synergies are a big part of my plan for 2010, and perhaps they ought to be part of your plan too.
How do you penetrate social media clutter?
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Dec
10
Social Media Carpetbaggers and Snake Oil Salesmen
Filed Under Measurement and Tracking, Networking and Marketing Strategy, News, Public Relations, Web Marketing | 19 Comments
In the past week, social media hype and the competency of social media consultants have been analyzed from different vantage points by prominent writers.
ClickZ published an article, Here Come the Social Media Carpetbaggers by Rebecca Lieb.
Social Media Carpetbaggers
Rebecca pointed out that a combination of the recession, the decline of traditional media, and the nearly zero cost and barrier-to-entry into social media has spawned 21st century “social media carpetbaggers, in all flavors and colors of the rainbow.”
Which carpetbaggers?
It’s reputable marketers who have built deservedly strong reputations in other digital disciplines: branding, creative, strategy, search, media, and a host of other specialties, who are suddenly labeling themselves “social.”
These carpetbaggers are anxious to get their piece of social media marketing, and their dog-and-pony shows and social media clichés substitute for real experience, competence and substance.
Social Media Snake Oil
Business Week published Beware Social Media Snake Oil by Stephen Baker which portrayed social media consulting as sizzle more than steak.
Stephen criticized rigidity, conflicts of interest, reliance on soft metrics, and in the worst of cases, pure hype:
“It’s a bit of a Wild West scenario,” blogs David Armano, a consultant with the Dachis Group of Austin, Texas. Without naming names, he compares some consultants to “snake oil salesmen.”
Beyond Social Media Snake Oil
The David Armano just cited added to the discussion in a subsequent article on his blog, Life After Social Media Snake Oil. David made some astute comparisons between the social media “hype and fuzzy metrics” and the denial surrounding the dot com bubble.
David ended his article by connecting the past and the future:
The true believers who stuck with the Web even when the bubble burst became the people you wanted to work with. If there is a shakeout in the social space, the same will happen. The true believers will remain, while others flock to the next hot field.
Social Media in Perspective
Mark Evans also picked up on the Business Week piece. Mark concludes that we need more perspective:
All the hype surrounding social media and tools such as Twitter and Facebook overshadow the fact that effective marketing and communications will continue to include a variety of tools. To counter all the happy talk from social media consultants about what could be, the biggest thing needed right now is perspective.
My Comments on What I’ve Read
I have several comments to make on the articles I’ve read:
- Not only social media, but web development, and website, social media and search engine optimization all have more than enough carpetbaggers and snake oil salesmen. In all these areas, service providers, and even their completed work, are difficult to evaluate. Licensing isn’t required either, so they can easily hang up shingles and start practices. Sadly, they’re practicing on your company.
- In the case of Rebecca Lieb’s marketing firm turned social media carpetbagger, it’s unfortunate that they haven’t yet developed the strategic alliances they will need to compensate for a lack of experience that cannot be otherwise mitigated in the short run.
- Measuring ROI and developing other hard metrics was a concern shared by several authors. I protested already in my article, The Social Media ROI Obsession, that much of social media marketing is really public relations, and that the use of softer metrics may be appropriate in such a case.
- While the absence of clear financial justification may cause the social media marketing bubble to burst, I expect that public and customer relations, as well as B2B prospecting will continue to make good use of social media.
And now, it’s your turn to comment on another hot topic.
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