Blinders

January 14, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes 1 Comment

I don’t normally write my blog entries aimed for other social media professionals. After all, there’s a lot of knowledge out there – I aim to distill things to my audience, which I know is more executive and marketing related but not necessarily in the digital space. If a fellow SMP gets value, awesome, and I welcome you – but my reader base generally isn’t you.

But this post, I’m going to address you, fellow Social Media Professionals, and hopefully give value to my typical reader.

Take Off The Blinders.

horseblinders

I’m noticing some things falling through the cracks – people hyping different things as if it were the second coming of Steve Jobs, but at the end of the day, not producing desired results. It’s almost as if many SMPs out there have decided that social media can do no wrong, and that THE way to do it is the way they and their techno-elite friends do it (by the way, I’m one of those technophiles, for sure).

But your target market, unless you’re selling tech to early adopters, probably has no idea what FriendFeed is. I explain Foursquare at least once a week. The value isn’t evident. There’s a reason way more people use Farmville than Twitter.

Non-techies get the point of Farmville, even though it’s much more complicated of an interface.

Because it’s not about the interface, it’s about the value proposition.

More people see value in having a fake farm than Tweeting.

Think about this.

Done? Next.

It Seems The Internet and Social Marketing Pros Have A Problem.

I recently saw a post that was all about how “Lands’ End isn’t visible.” Blinders completely. As of this writing Land’s End has 250,000+ Facebook fans and quite honestly a different demographic than Zappos, with 29k or so. Yah. 29k. On Facebook, at least, Lands’ End has almost NINE TIMES more fans than Zappos.

It just isn’t the social media elite demographic, highlighted out of the valley, so it was missed. But it was still in the minds of people. It’s humming along selling stuff. It’s popular. Obviously, raw fan numbers are not your only metric of success, but a lot of people have been missing the boat.

Seem as if we as a group don’t use it or it’s not OUR work flow or in our frame of “cool” visibility, we (royal we) denigrate and talk about how others “don’t get it” or it’s a “poor choice.”

You know what? I know success on the oft-maligned MySpace in certain situations.

I’ve worked with blogs who get tens of thousands of unique visitors but few comments – but high conversions. Most of the time, readers in non-SM circles call blog posts “articles.” I’ve seen it time and time and time again.

I know people who get 5,000+ word diatribes from other “experts,” but, although their blog isn’t designed to my aesthetic taste, it works for them apparently and gets them business. Bravo to her. I’m not her target market anyway. If I were, it’d be designed differently.

One of the biggest indie musicians’ sites is the definition of basic – but because he covers so many bases contentwise that countless zoom-bang flash sites do not, including showcasing his awesome – it helped him get relatively huge and make a real career sans label.

Or the pervasive myth that content has to be short at all times – sure, short content is great – but why are the biggest podcasts around long-form, sometimes easily exceeding an hour long? Because they’re good. It takes skill to be good for a whole hour or longer, regularly. And that’s why the previous example is making millions of dollars and in this next linked case have plenty of listeners and a loyal following.

A Parting Thought

I’ve always been fascinated behind the real reasons and incentives why things happen, as opposed to the hype of them. Many times, while one hand is dealing the cards, the other is distracting you from the real “magic” that’s happening.

What are the non-sexy methods that you find that work? What about newer tools and techniques that you’ve found make it happen for your strategy?

Filed Under: Advertising, blogging, Business, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Rant, Social Media, Tips, Web Sites Tagged With: blinders, facebook, farmville, land's end, myspace, rss, rss is dead, Social Media, social media professionals, Twitter, zappos

One click, Two clicks, Three clicks, Foursquare!

January 8, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

fswebsotTwo musings or tips for today. Some others have mentioned them as rules very kindly online, others have said they like’em – I don’t like to say “rules” but here’s how I operate.

Foursquare is a social tool.

It’s a social tool. I know I’ve violated this rule of thumb, but I don’t check in unless I want you to know I’m there. That means I don’t check in at gas stations, I’m not gonna check in at the shopping market, unless of course, I’m open to you meeting me there. The other night, multiple people lit up my foursquare with notifications all night long – with mom’s house. Gas stations. Everything. I realized that if MY notifications went that crazy and got annoying, it must be for other people. It’s actually not the post to Twitter that’s overwhelming for me, as it’s a flood of things anyway. But notifications, they interrupt. And thing is, I don’t want to turn them off because sometimes it’s useful.

Yah, I’ve been an offender. My bad. Will try to do better next time. I just don’t think you should get a “crunked” badge for checking in at the coffeeshop. Or for buying eggs. I’ve not ever gotten smashed on eggs.

Three clicks, and you’re out.

Part deux of my missive is websites who feel they need to bury their stuff down a rathole 4, 5, or 8 clicks down. The most excellent Bobby Mercader had a tweet pointing to SEO roundtable – for SEO, don’t make users go more than 5 clicks down. Well, SEO is nice, but frankly, I’m very concerned with the user experience.

Three clicks is the charm – One click, two click, BUY (or take desired action).

If you don’t know what desired action you want people to do on your site, then let’s not even talk about social media and review your conversion process. It’s a real shame when someone’s built thousands of fans and not one buys because your basics aren’t covered. I see it every single week, it’s a real problem and businesses, get your fundamentals down. I know social media is new and shiny and important, but fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals, or the rest won’t work. Did I say fundamentals? Yah, I’ll say it again. Fundamentals.

Filed Under: Business, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Social Media, Tips, Web Sites

The Problem With Making Money Online Is Perception

September 21, 2009 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

There’s tons of talk about Hulu going paid or subscription of some sort.

Also, talk of how journalists are worried about how they’re going to get paid.

Well, it’s for a simple reason – it’s because, for instance, a Hulu viewer is worth $920 less than a broadcast viewer. Nevermind the ads could stick better, stand out from the flotsam, and can’t be easily skipped. There’s no financial choice to keep things the way they are – either programming or costs need to be cut drastically, or revenues increase. Either way, in a few years if trends continue, TV could be the next financial victim of the digital age.

The common saying is, “Trading traditional dollars for digital cents.” It’s so far proven mostly true – but why?

Perception.

I’ve learned, from personal experience, people are willing to pay more for a physical product even if the content is the same. I also know that ad buyers still “feel” like they don’t get as much benefit from online, and in some ways it’s because of the exact metrics they get (we only could guess if real TV metrics were rolled out how much damage that would do – yes, there’s Nielsen, but those ratings are nothing more than educated guesses and miss all kinds of niche audiences).

As long as ad buyers and media folks continually feel that digital is worth less than traditional, it will be. The real question is – how to change that perception? Why is digital so darn cheap, even though real numbers and even actions can be counted? Is the future in the affiliate marketing world, where there’s lots of folks making handy profits – of course, that limits you to certain kinds of products.

I know that in business, once you start out at a price, it’s easy to cut but very hard to increase – which is always a model that befuddled me. But that’s the past – what to do now to move the bar? If you buy media, what are the things you’re looking for that would warrant higher rates? Or, are we just going to have to adjust to this new reality that viewers or audience are only worth so much?

Filed Under: Advertising, Business, Industry News, Social Media, Web Sites Tagged With: dollars for digital cents, Hulu, Making money online, psychology, revenue

Multichannel Social Media Overload And The Hard Truth

May 5, 2009 By Jeremiah Staes 2 Comments

First, read this on how social media really works.

Back?  Okay.  Taken a Tums if you’re a shill?  Good.  Hope you feel better now.

I preface my post with that link because I think there’s a cadre of people who need to calm the &^*$ down and stop the noise.  It’s not the number of Twitter status updates that’s going to get your company or product noticed.  It’s if your product/service rocks and is compelling, and then being willing to be part (not try to own) the conversation.

The Hard Truth

There’s quite a few people now – in fact, the majority in number but not in weight of so-called experts – who are going down this path of being constant interference.  Whether it’s constantly 8 or 10 Tweets in a row, or the only Facebook status updates someone does are “come to my seminar and you’ll be *insert betterment here*” it’s just too much.

I fully believe those folks that turn up the pitch level are sacrificing making something great… something that they’re passionate about – for a get-rich scheme, or a multi-level marketing pyramid.  People are generally afraid to be themselves, and feel like this is some sort of pitch arena.  Like Facebook was made for people to stuff their sales down your throat, and it wasn’t.  It was meant to connect people, and hold people together.

Let’s remember that the next time (whomever you are) hits the tweet or status button four times in a row for your *insert betterment here* package.  And remember this is a community, and what normally happens to the guy who goes door to door in your community?  Uh huh.  Unless you’ve converted to four religions in the past five years and bought two sets of Encyclopedia Britannicas, you’ve probably ignored them.

Even Though You Didn’t Tell Me, I Know You Faked It

The other side of this issue is the passion equation.  Is it your true passion – or is it just your job?  You can tell the people who are on social media to be on it – they figure they HAVE to be.  There’s a great post by Stacy Lukas (Her snark/sass is on Twitter too) that touches on this.

For the “jobbers,” who do the Holy Trinity and say their social media Hail Marys, you can see the lack of passion, the weaving of the press release, into their posts.  They live in the shadow of the real deal, attempting to fill niches already filled.

It’s not a part of their life, it’s a check box ticked.

So the next time you put together something for social media – think about if you’re being authentic, if you’re doing it right.

I leave you with a thought from Merlin Mann:

Zappos is on Twitter, but they also put millions of dollars on awesome service before then.  Having a twitter account does not make you Zappos.  Having the resources to serve your audience makes you Zappos. Registering and responding to an email does not make you Zappos.

p.s. – Yep, just looked at the posts, this is officially the start of my fourth year on this blog.  More on that next time.  But thank you all.

Filed Under: Business, Social Media, Social Media Fundamentals, Tips, Web Sites Tagged With: best practices, hard truth of social media, how social media works

Why Marketers Are So Desperate For Trust

March 3, 2009 By Jeremiah Staes 1 Comment

Having read the RWW article on paying bloggers after Jeremiah Owyang making the statement that paying bloggers should be “part of a toolkit,” it jogged my memory.

Here’s a study from 2008 from Gallup.  What it shows is that the perceived ethics and honesty of advertising practitioners is less than congresspeople, lawyers, building contractors – in short, the very bottom of the list only to be rated as “more honest” or “more ethical” than telemarketers, lobbyists, and car salesman.  Around 10% of people think that advertising practitioners are very honest or ethical.

So news flash – there’s not very much trust from the public there with marketers.  Hard to build a “trust economy” (brilliant term by Chris Brogan) when there’s little trust to start with (not a reflection on individuals, but the industry).  There’s a reason why Leo Laporte does not allow marketers on his “This Week In Tech” or “MacBreak Weekly” shows.  The audience, and he, does not trust that there will be honest opinion.

In short, with the influx of all of these already not-trusted by the public marketing and advertising professionals, the “run” on social media is in many ways all about people wanting to “create” trust in a field where the public does not trust advertising professionals.  You can’t create trust – you build trust.  And turning bloggers into salespeople isn’t the way to do it.

Some of the new folks on the scene may not remember this, but why did/do advertisers pay premiums for news content?  Because it was perceived as trusted information.  That seemed to transfer to the companies and brands that advertise during the news (not saying news reporting was perfect in every instance – but rarely, and never where I worked, were stories traded for monetary compensation).

By doing pay-for-post campaigns, as marketers, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot as one will erode the initial trust that social media has built up mainly because it’s up until now not as touched by marketing (or perceived to be).  Sure, everyone needs to eat, there needs to be money made, short term gain will be had, but I think it’ll cannibalize the long-term possibilities of the space (and possibly, just for the properties that partake in this trust auction).

If the social web continues to move down this path, that trust factor that’s been built up is going to flip, and flip hard.  Google knows this and I can surmise that’s why they’re having such hard and fast rules around not allowing page rank to be passed on through sponsored links or posts.  It’s their job to provide the best results, not the bought results on organic search.

A good sign of someone who I know what they’re doing is if I see them cringe around promising a “viral” video. Viral video promises are bull, plain and simple.  We’re not interested in lying to our client’s customers, and I’d rather make a little less money but say we had honest conversations, and created compelling content directed at people that they enjoy and get value from.  It’s about giving value to get value, and this axiom is decades old, if you look back on Jeffrey Gitomer and his predecessors, Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightengale… the list goes on.

Although it will work in the short term, selling away trust in increments will eventually bankrupt the relationships built with people.  We should take a lesson from mortgage/financial disaster hit that all of our stocks have taken after people figured out the truth, and tread carefully.

Filed Under: Advertising, blogging, Business, Industry News, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Rant, Social Media, Web Sites Tagged With: forrester, jeremiah owyang, pay-per-post, read write web, trust economies
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