Social Media Posts That Are Igniting- 8/29
August 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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These are some of our top picks for social media related blog posts this week. Enjoy! 
How to Build a Community of Twitter Followers for Your Company
Ellie Mirman gives some great advice on how corporations and employees can jump into the world of Twitter.
How to Find Statistics on Social Media
In this post, Aaron Uhrmacher has created a post chock full of our favorite studies and statistics on social media. In our opinion, this post has all the right information to make the case for social media marketing (with very little effort on your end )
12 Tips To SNAP Readers Out of Passivity with Calls to Action
Darren Rowse gives us practical ways to drive reader involvement. These are simple, yet often forgotten tips into creating simple and acheivable “call to actions” that drive, rather discourage engagement.
50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence on
I love this list. Most people are interested about social media, but need a starting point when it comes to the social media sphere. This list details what social media tools can accomplish what goals and it gives not-so-social-media-savvy people a way to get their feet wet in social media. It also lists great new networking sites for the social media enthusiast.
Common Social Networking Mistakes
What is funny about this post by Rebecca Beasley is that I first found it on The Wall Street Journal Blog. The full post on her site, however, is much more beneficial. I would point someone to the Wall Street Journal for great comments though.
Social Media Marketing Posts that are Igniting- 7/18
July 18, 2008 | 2 Comments
Here is some of the best stuff coming out of the social media sphere this week. Enjoy!
Warning: Do Not Hire Sam’s Club for Search Marketing
This post by Ian Lurie was not written this week, but it’s the great comments (particularly a really ridiculous one posted this week) that pointed me to the post recently. This is a GREAT review that supports so many social media marketing mistakes. (And I’m completely prepared for user “Oh Wow” to comment on this post because I truly believe Lurie’s post is so great).
The Social Platform Race to My Contact List
We all (at least my generation who has been on Facebook a while) have seen the groups or events on Facebook that are labeled “LOST MY PHONE! NEED NUMBERS!!” This is because Facebook is the one place where most people feel the majority of their contacts “live”. We participate in online social networks because it keeps us up to date with our contacts, and Nick brings up some great points about how Facebook is doing this best.
The Hierarchy of Social Marketing
This post by John Jantsch is great. I think lots of business professionals think social media means Facebook, YouTube, etc. right away. But it is imperative that you get your feet wet before moving onto such ideas like spending all day Digging articles you read. I love that Jantsch compares this to Maslow’s Heiarchy. Some people may argue where these categories really fit, but I think for small businesses this is a perfect pyramid. This really also fits most corporate models as well. By the way, I also think that Jantsch makes a great point about why Twitter is at the top- not because Twitter is difficult, but because small business owners (or most business professionals for that matter) have so much to do that Twitter can take up a lot of time.
How to Develop a Social Media Plan for Your Business in 5 Steps
This is much like Jantsch’s post, but it gives professionals 5 simple steps to social media development. My only comments are that in giving employees “rules of engagement” don’t give people manuals or restrict what they can say to the point that you are only pushing the company and not really stimulating real communication. Also, defining your strategy is really important. Social Media is very time consuming, and if you don’t define exactly what your strategy is and what you want to accomplish, it will be difficult to see results. I’m also very happy that Aaron Uhrmacher tailored “Step 5: Measuring Success” as measurement that involves asking what you’ve learned. More often than not social media is about building your brand and having two way conversation. Those people obsessed with immediate ROI fulfillment need not apply.
Social Media Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (6 of 6): Thinking anyone cares about your brand
June 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
I promised you 5 social media marketing mistakes and how to avoid them, but today, at no extra charge, is a bonus sixth mistake. And this one is a biggie. The sixth and potentially most problematic social media marketing mistake is:
Thinking anyone cares about your brand.
The Allstate Community Forums is a perfect example of this. It doesn’t have a chance to succeed as it is today because it is fundamentally flawed in concept. Allstate dramatically overreached in their efforts and assumed that people would want “a place to speak your mind on the things you care about and exchange ideas, information and experiences with other folks like you.” It was nice that they didn’t try to focus on selling Allstate insurance, but still they had a couple problems with the direction they did choose:
- The topic matter was so broad that they opened themselves up to competing with the very largest social networks out there, and they didn’t carve out a niche for conversations around a particular subset of topics; and
- Even if people wanted a place to discuss absolutely anything, would they want to do that with Allstate branding wrapped around it? Um. No.
Allstate might have done better by adapting their strategy this way:
- Focus on discussion around life-changing events (because those are when you consider your insurance needs);
- Understand that a forum like this is going to grow somewhat slowly and you’re going to have to invest heavily in great content around life-changing events to pull people in.
- Alternatively, they could have decided that what people really want to discuss on this sort of site is their insurance needs, their problems with Allstate customer service, etc. Because that’s how the few people using it today are using it.
- In that case, analyze the top 25 or so types of phone calls that customer service is getting and build forums around those issues, with meaningful info.
In some ways, Allstate is trying to do the right thing. They’ve left up a forum where they are called “theifs” (yes, spelled exactly like that) and the moderator didn’t jump in right way to deal with it. Instead, their customers have largely stepped up to tell the poster that he’s a fool.
Nevertheless, the concept they went with is too big, and it looks like their investment in it in terms of sharing their expertise is too low. They should redirect it now.
So when you’re working on your social media marketing strategy, remember that nobody outside of your organization really cares about your brand. Think a bit bigger and you’ll find what they really care about. Engage in efforts around that and you’ll be one step closer to success.
~Jim
Note: I said in the video that nothing had been posted to the forums in six months. That was incorrect. I was reading the join date of the moderator. There is activity on the site still. Not much, but some. My apologies for the error.
Social Media Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (5 of 6)
June 19, 2008 | 1 Comment
Ok, we’re in the home stretch. Today we’ll talk about the fifth mistake in our top 5 mistakes in social media marketing series. And, you might think that would be the last one, right? But wait, there’s more! We’ll close the series shortly with a special 6th mistake–at no extra charge. I know… Right?
Today’s mistake is trying to apply traditional marketing tactics to social media marketing. This is probably THE most frequent mistake we see. Marketers are trained to control the message, to boil things down to the 3 talking points we want stressed and to answer every question with one of those three. (Trust me, I did it for years when I did political PR work.)
Social media is about facilitating a conversation within a community versus controlling a conversation to a community. Big difference.
It’s natural to start with what you know, which is “We’d like to do a campaign that conveys X and Y.” Good start. To make it work in social media marketing, you have to flip that around. Ask instead:
- “Who cares about X and Y?”,
- “What conversations are already taking place about X and Y?”, and
- “How can we contribute to that conversation in a way that adds value and builds our brand in this space?”
If you get the paradigm shift, you’re on your way to succeeding in social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (4 of 6)
June 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Our continuing series on social media marketing mistakes moves onto “mistake #4″ today. Today’s mistake is using social media as a channel instead of a conversation.
Since social media tools give us the power to publish, and social networks give us more places to publish, some folks believe that pushing their content all over the web is the secret of success. “I’m using some of that thar social media…” While content distribution in and of itself is a good idea, pushing out your same old content is not.
If you really want to get into social media marketing, rethink how you communicate and what you communicate about. Otherwise, you’ll be disappointed in the results.
More to come. ~Jim
Social Media Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (3 of 6)
June 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Continuing on the series of social media marketing mistakes we started recently, here’s the third in a series. This one talks about two very common buzzwords in social media: transparency and authenticity.
In my experience working with numerous clients, this one is more difficult for everyone to wrap their arms around then you’d expect. As marketers, we’re used to creating “campaigns” that put the best foot forward. But in social media, part of the trick is being transparent while putting your best foot forward. Here’s some things not to do:
I once spent two days figuring out how to get past some problems I was having with transparency and a campaign. We brainstormed all sorts of ways to deal with it. The answer was to just disclose the issues we were wrestling with and get on with the campaign. And nobody ever raised those things again. We’d acknowledged them, they were true, they were no big deal, and they weren’t the main point. Now, if we had tried to dodge them or hide them and someone discovered those issues, then they would have raised them and they would have become the main point.
When you engage in social media marketing, force yourself to pay attention to authenticity. Don’t just pay it lip service. Your efforts will be better.
Social Media Marketing Mistakes And How to Avoid Them (2 of 6)
June 2, 2008 | 1 Comment
Continuing the series on social media marketing mistakes from last week, today’s mistake is about “schmoozing instead of connecting.” I talk a lot about social media being a cocktail party. And behavior that would be OK at a cocktail party will likely be OK in social media marketing.
Marketers are conditioned to look at tactics in terms of “what can I get from X?” And that’s fine, because ROI is important. But social media marketing is different. You need to give before you can hope to get, because the power isn’t with the marketer, it’s with the recipient. You need people to choose to engage with you.
Watch this short (2:03) video for more on this topic:
So remember, don’t “be that guy.” Forget that it’s embarrassing to be that guy. Perhaps more importantly, that guy doesn’t have “followers” and that’s exactly what you need to be successful in social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing Mistakes And How to Avoid Them (1 of 6)
May 28, 2008 | 4 Comments
Earlier this month, I ran a daylong seminar on social media marketing, which was sponsored by the Triangle chapter of the American Marketing Association. It was sort of a “101″ class. We started at the basics and moved through it to best practices. About 75 people were there, and we had some fun, so I thought it might be fun to share a little of the content with you. One of the sections was “The Top 5 Most Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes.” This post focuses on mistake #1: “Not Listening. Not Responding. Not Good.”
The two examples in the class, Kryptonite lock and Dell Hell, are really old, almost to the point of being hackneyed. Despite that, they remain highly relevant examples in May 2008 for two different reasons.
Kryptonite lock is a good example because a post about them written in September 2004 still comes up in the top 5 searches for their brand almost 4 years later! Is ANYONE at Kryptonite working on this? I know that chasing an Engadget post off page one ain’t easy, but if my brand were at stake, I’d find a way. I’d call someone like my boy Andy Beal and pay him whatever he wants.
Dell is a good example precisely because of what they learned from being crushed in the blogosphere beginning June 21, 2005, they really have turned things around. It’s now being reported that Dell has sold $500,000 worth of product through Twitter. I believe it, as the 22″ wide screen monitor hooked up to my MacBook came directly through finding a deal on Twitter. That’s just one of the things they are doing right.
Over the next few posts, I’ll share the other five most common social media marketing mistakes (and a BONUS 6th mistake FREE). In the meantime, what examples do you have of brands not listening to social media conversations? I’d love to hear them.