social media

Hey Early Adopters, Stop Trying To “M-A-S-H” The Future!

May 12th, 2011

Do you remember the game, MASH? If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, you probably know the mansion-apartment-shack-house (MASH) game. Well, I used to play this game all the time with my friends back in the good ole days of elementary school. Essentially, the whole point of the game was to come up with a set of lists, each with four-five choices, and then you and your friend would randomly go through the lists until you had one left for each category. It was a way to “pretend-pick” your future.

Usually since this was a game of chance, you would wind up with some hilarious combos, such as, “you would end marrying your “pretend elementary school husband,” drive a beat-up 1977 sedan and live in a mansion in rural Kentucky.” That sort of thing.

As absurd as this game is to us now, we play “these types of mind games” all the time as grown-ups trying to figure out the future. While we aren’t creating lists with categories like car, apartment, mate, location, (hopefully!) as adults, we are certainly doing it in other aspects of our professional lives.

For example as a society, we are obsessed with the “what’s next?” or the “this will be the next big gamechanger moment.” We create lists, blog posts, news articles and even books, which are essentially nothing more than educated guesses and blind predictions about future developments.

Early adopters do this all the time. How many times have we heard about the “next big social media site?” (Called it the “social media shiny object syndrome”) In December and January, Quora was that shiny object. You couldn’t find an A or B-list PR/Marketing blogger that didn’t write a post or several about Quora and how it was going to revolutionize the industry. It’s now May, and Quora hasn’t exactly lived up to its early adopter predictions.

Fast forward until today, you see these whole predictions starting out all over again for the two latest shiny social media objects- Empire Avenue and Pinterest. More bold predictions.

This fascination with trying to predict what sites take off and what doesn’t is a bit of a time-suck, if you ask me. All the early adopters spend their time on these sites trying to figure them out and essentially make projections about sites that in most cases will top out a few thousand or (if you are lucky) a few hundred thousands users. That’s a pin in the bucket compared to sites like Facebook.

Instead of always focusing on what will be the next big thing and trying to come up with all these predictions based essentially on chance and semi-eduational guesses, why don’t we spend more time living and understanding the NOW. The stuff that is happening in the present is what really matters. Instead of trying to understand what the future holds all the time (and playing mind games), focus on really grasping and understanding the present. Because, that’s the only way to understand what the future holds.

Finally, if you want to have a little fun or just kill a little time, you can now play the M-A-S-H game online here.

21 Social Media Truths

May 6th, 2011

by admin.

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1. Social media gives you the opportunity to be the best YOU possible. This applies to you and your brand.
2. There is no “one-size fits all” social media strategy.
3. Diving into social media without a strategy is like being on whitewater raft without a paddle. It’s probably not going to end well.
4. Crises happen everyday. Expect it will happen to you and your brand. Plan accordingly.
5. Social media doesn’t clock in at 9 a.m. and clock out at 5 p.m. It’s a 24/7 affair.
6. Social media success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of hard work, time and effort before you see any real noticeable gains.
7. Anyone who tells you that managing a social media account is going to be easy is lying. Run as far away from them as possible.
8. Yes, you can calculate the ROI of your social media efforts. Yes, you need to.
9. Numbers matter. Anyone, who tells you otherwise, just hasn’t found the right ones to measure yet.
10. There’s only so much you can learn from case studies. At some point, you just have to take the plunge and start applying what you learn.
11. Creativity is what separates the good social media pros from the bad ones.
12. Avoid the social media shiny object syndrome. New sites are created everyday. You don’t need to be on every site. Focus on the ones that add value for either you or your brand.
13. Social media burnout is real. Make sure to unplug every now and then. (such as when you are on vacation).
14. The best social media work is usually done in a team setting. Don’t try and be a one-man or one-woman show.
15. Social media is NOT a popularity contest. Being popular just means that you have lots of friends.
16. Instead, strive to be influential. Influence means you can persuade people to do something. That’s hundred times more meaningful than being popular.
17. There’s a big difference between being authentic and personable and being personal on social media sites. Know the difference.
18. Be true to yourself and/or your brand. You can’t fake an authentic dialogue.
19. Every post, tweet, status update, video, etc, should add some sort of value or contribute to your overall goals. If they don’t, it is time to rethink you strategy.
20. Just because it’s on Twitter trending topics, doesn’t mean it’s true. I’ve lost count of the number of celebrities that have allegedly died on Twitter that are still alive and thriving.
21. It’s crucial to think two steps ahead. Are you building a strong enough presence from the get-go? Would you lose everything if Facebook were to disappear tomorrow?

13 Signs You’re Not Cut Out To Be A Community Manager

Apr 27th, 2011

by admin.

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Here’s 13 warning signs that you may NOT be cut out to be a community manager.

1. You think ROI stands for, “Really Overrated Idea.”

2. You are #winning at social media, but you only have 5 “likes” on your Facebook page. Four of which are your mom, Aunt Sally, Cousin Billy and your BFF. The last one is that creepy guy from junior high that stalks you obsessively online and just can’t shake that crush he’s had on you for the past 15 years.

3. You missed the memo that all tweets need to be 140 characters or less.

4. Your entire Twitter strategy consists of writing three shameless self-promotional tweets, such as “Check out my awesome new product. It’s $199.99. Buy it now.” And, then alternating them every hour on the hour for an entire month. Then, repeat this every month.

5. You go on a defensive tirade blocking and deleting any Facebook comment or tweet that calls into question your “spectacular social media skills.”

6. You think your day starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 4:30 p.m. All comments that occur during your “off-hours” can wait until after you get to work and have your cup of joe.

7. You think social media crises only happen to airlines that deny a seat to a semi-famous, obese actor/director. And, it’s just too much work to come up with a crisis plan just in case.

8. You have no idea what the difference between @ and DM are. You constantly confuse the two, which often leads to some comical and slightly horrifying TMI tweets.

9. You laugh at your supervisor when he asks for a quarterly evaluation of your social media work. You proceed to print out the last three tweets and Facebook posts that you sent, and say, “How’s this for ROI?”

10. You bring new meaning to the “shiny object syndrome.” Empire Avenue, Quora, GetGlue, Foursquare, you joined ‘em all, “Texas Hold’em Style.” It’s all in with no strategy or research whatsoever.

11. You see a website advertising “25,000 Twitter Followers for $25,” and simply can’t resist this great deal. You wonder why this site hasn’t done a Groupon yet. Then, you are absolutely elated when you see 25,000 Hungarian porn stars (all with 0-2 tweets) are now following you.

12. You think blogs are a dying medium, and insist that it’s a waste of time for you to write and moderate one. In the off chance, you read and heaven forbid, comment on someone else’s post, the comment resembles this trainwreck.

13. Lastly, your title on your business card reads, “The World’s Greatest Social Media Guru.”

Am I missing anything? Feel free to add your own community manager no-nos in the comment section below.

(*Sidenote: This post is a very loosely inspired response to Blogger Lauren Fernandez’s spectacular and witty post, “11 Signs You’re A PR Professional” If you haven’t read her post yet, read it now! You won’t be sorry. )

How A St. Louis TV Station Used Facebook To Cover The Good Friday Tornado

Apr 25th, 2011

by admin.

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As many of you know, an EF3 tornado tore a path of destruction through portions of north St. Louis county, including a direct hit on the Lambert St. Louis International Airport. Through all the breaking news on social media channels, I noticed one TV news station, KMOV, that truly understood how to use social media, in this case Facebook, in a breaking news situation. Within minutes of the tornado touching down, their Facebook page, which at the time had more than 39,000 “likes,” turned into a hub for information- both from KMOV news staff and the community.

Know where your audience is online. Make that your top priority.

Tornadoes and severe weather aren’t uncommon in the Midwest. Most TV stations do a pretty good job of updating their websites and on-air broadcasts when bad weather hits. But, KMOV clearly knew the vast majority of their “audience” was active on Facebook. They made that their priority. Instead of just reading off tweets and Facebook updates on-air, which is where most news stations stop, they went and step further and joined the conversation. They answered viewers’ questions in real-time and also asked questions to get more information about the latest conditions and damage reports.

Never underestimate the power of real-time response

Whether you are a brand dealing with a crisis or a TV news station covering a tornado outbreak, the power of real-time monitoring and response is huge. It can separate you from your competitors. In KMOV’s case, they gained about 2,000 likes in about 24 hours and significantly out-covered the other St. Louis news outlets. They also received tons of praise from their community, who openly thanked them on their Facebook page for their up-to-minute coverage.

The power of an online community

Probably, the most profound, long-standing effect is the fact that KMOV has built a true online community via their Facebook page. The community did most of the work during the storm- with fans updating their photos, providing neighborhood updates, downed power lines, funnel cloud spottings, which left KMOV to crowdsource the best information and respond to viewers’ questions.

Looking to help?

If you are interested in donating money to help the St. Louis recovery efforts, Justin Goldsborough created a CauseVox campaign to raise money. All proceeds go to St. Louis Red Cross.

7 Deadly Blogging Sins

Apr 1st, 2011

by admin.

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It’s been awhile since I did one of my 7 deadly sins post, so I’m bringing it back now to talk about the seven deadly blogging sins. This is a follow-up post to the Seven Deadly Twitter Sins, Seven Deadly Facebook Sins, Seven Deadly Linkedin Sins, Seven Deadly Email Sins and Seven Deadly Foursquare Sins.

7. Posting Infrequent, Unfocused Content

If you are a casual blogger, it’s quite alright to post once a month or once every two to three months. But, if you are serious about growing your readership, it’s best to blog weekly if not more. Also, don’t just blog willy-nilly. Find a niche to write about and stick to topics in that general range.

6. Grammar and Spelling Matter

Just like any written work, good grammar matters. Spell check is your friend. If your blog posts consistently have misspelled words, run-on sentences and basic punctuation errors, people won’t take your posts seriously. Having good grammar isn’t the secret to building success, but it can go a long way in proving that the blogger is intelligent and knows how to write a coherent post.

5. The “I-Will-Review-Anything” For A Freebie

With the exception of book reviews, I’m not a huge fan of product reviews on blogs. This is in large part due to how poorly used they are. This is especially true back in the 2006-2008 era, but it’s still far too prevalent today. It’s fairly easy to spot the free product reviewers since the posts are usually on a wide range of topics and usually involve very vague descriptions since they have no flippin’ clue what the product even does.

4. Treating Your Blog As A “Get-Rich-Quick Scheme”

I sure hope you enjoy Ramen Noodles and Easy Mac, because you will be eating it for a long, long time. Blogging is hard work and can be very time-consuming. Not to mention, the vast majority of bloggers do not make a dime from their blogs.

3. Advertisement Overload

I understand why some people place ads on their blogs. But, there’s a point where the content to ad ratio gets skewed. For instance, if I see 20 giant banner ads (extra points: if any are flashing or for “online Viagra”) and then one tiny blog post, then you have lost the point of having a blog. Blogs are about creating content. They are not an ad farm.

2. Cluttered, Hard-To-Navigate Site Design

It’s 2011. There’s no reason to have a cluttered website design, that is reminiscent of the Y2K era. I shouldn’t have to go on a scavenger hunt to find your latest blog post. At the very least, develop an archive system and search function.

If you are feeling more ambitious, use a free template from WordPress. Or, if you have a few extra bucks, have someone design a custom website design for you.

1. The Comment Section Trainwreck

This can involve two things: a.) not responding to comments at all b.) being overly defensive to your commenters. Both of these can wreck havoc on your blog. The fact that people are reading your blog and commenting is a privilege not a right. Please treat these people with the respect and attention they deserve.

For an example of the worst possible thing to do in the comment section, check out this blog post fiasco here.

Do you want more tips on the social media and blogging dos and don’ts? Sign up for my free monthly email newsletter: Social Media: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly here. (No SPAM guaranteed!)

Why You Shouldn’t Be Like Old Spice?

Mar 27th, 2011

by admin.

4 comments

Oh Old Spice Campaign, how I have a love-hate relationship with you. I love the initial videos and how you leveraged social media in a new and innovative way. It’s not every day that an ad campaign for a deodorant can garner 30 million views on Youtube. But, lately you’ve grown stagnant. You don’t engage with your fans and followers and now all you are doing is “push marketing.”

The Old Spice campaign has turned into a case study for what not to do in social media.

PR/Marketing professionals, like myself, rely heavily on these case studies to stay on top of the latest and greatest social media/viral video campaigns. We watch them, read about them and pretty much analyze them to death. That’s fine. That’s part of the learning process.

But lately I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. People are growing lazy. Instead of learning from them, people are just trying to mimic these “successful campaigns.” That’s a real problem.

Even Sesame Street tried to put their own spin on the Old Spice Smell Like Your Man campaign. While their Smell Like a Monster video has 6 million views, that’s not even close to the level of impressions that the first Old Spice video got.

For starters, many of these campaigns have some real flaws. Take the Old Spice campaign. This campaign started out great on Youtube, but now the big-time advertisers are riding the wave of success and growing stagnant. They haven’t replied to any viewers’ comments. Worse, they haven’t stepped up their game since the launch of this campaign back after the Superbowl in 2010.

Second, each social media campaign is narrowly targeted to a specific audience and set of goals. The goals for your company aren’t going to be the same as the ones for the Old Spice campaign. Therefore, you will not get the same results.

The third and most important reason is that this campaign went viral because it had awesome content and was innovative. To quote Scott Stratten, “people share AWESOME.” And, there’s nothing awesome about mimicing someone’s else success.

Final Thought:

Instead of wasting our time mimicing the Old Spice campaign, let’s start challenging ourselves to be more creative and come up with our own new and innovative campaigns. Let’s come up with our own awesome content. That’s how we can create the next big social media success story.

Final Thoughts From A SXSW Newbie

Mar 22nd, 2011

by admin.

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Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas with thousands of other tech and social media geeks.

I admit I did a lot of planning before I hopped on my Austin-bound plane. I knew what panels I wanted to see and I had a good idea about the most anticipated parties. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t go in completely unprepared. I might have had a mini panic attack walking into the Convention Center for the first time on Friday if I didn’t do this. Let’s just say no amount of planning can prepare you for the amount of geeks on iphones, QR codes and general awesomeness that you will see in Downtown Austin.

There were several great panels. For me, the absolute highlights were Gary Vaynerchuk’s absolutely epic presentation and Pete Cashmore, Mashable founder, interviewing Dennis Crowley, the founder of Foursquare. These two panels alone made it worth paying $500 for my interactive badge.

That being said, my most memorable experiences didn’t come from my planned events or panels. They came from unplanned activities like grabbing a cocktail with a Twitter buddy, that I have talked to for over a year but never met until now, (shoutout to Aurora Meyer) or having a Mexican lunch and Margaritas with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met (big shoutouts to David Spinks, Teresa Cantwell, Mike Schaffer, Jenna Langer, Jeremy Hicks and Jackie Lampugnano) or just hanging out in the Blogger’s Lounge in between panels. Or, exploring Sixth Street with your Twitter chat co-moderator, who you have only talked to via Skype chats until now. Kudos to Julia Prior. (Somebody, please #hirejulia! She’s uber-talented).

All these events, and many more, weren’t planned, but it’s where I met some of the smartest people and had amazing conversations.

With that, I think the real power of SXSW lies in the connections that you make while you are there. There is simply no other place like Austin in the middle of March.

I would highly recommend attending a SXSW conference. It’s an incredible experience. I know I definitely have plans on coming back.

7 Surefire Ways To Destroy Your Company’s Social Media Presence

Mar 7th, 2011

by admin.

3 comments

Your company’s social media presence is a precious thing. It can be a valuable customer service tool, generate leads and even increase sales. But often times, what we are doing on these sites is hurting our brand’s reputation. Here are seven surefire ways to completely destroy your company’s social media presence.

7. Sync All Your Social Media Accounts Together

It may be a tempting option to blast out one message to all your sites at once, but resist the urge. Each site has it’s own unique (unspoken) protocols and by blasting out one message everywhere, it’s going to show a lack of personalization and that you don’t care about your followers/fans/subscribers.

6. Make sure every tweet and Facebook page update includes these words, “easy ways to make money online.”

This should be a no brainer. If I ever see these six words, or some variation of it, I will block you and report you as spam. Period.

5. Send out auto-DMs asking everyone, who follows you, to also “like” you on Facebook, add you on Linkedin and subscribe to your blog.

Auto-DMs, how I hate thee. Auto-DMs are annoying and have no personal touch. Instead of sending out, “Thanks for the follow” updates to every single person, why not just retweet something the new follower has posted or leave a comment on their blog about why you loved their new blog post. That stands out a lot more than an annoying automated message.

4. Be Overly Defensive

Social media, at its root, is just talking. People will inevitably say things about your brand that you don’t like. There is no need to start an overly defensive rant and go after the person. Instead, stay calm and listen to what they have to say. Then, come up with an appropriate response.

3. Dive into every social media channel all at once with no strategy

This isn’t Texas Hold ‘Em. There is no reason to “go all in.” This is setting yourself up for failure. It’s crucial to develop a social media strategy with clear-cut goals before you actively start engaging on these channels.

2. Ignore all replies and comments

This is one of the dumbest things you can do. If someone takes the time to write about how much they love your product, then please take the time to write a thank you reply. The same goes for negative comments. If someone adamantly doesn’t like something, then try to understand why they don’t like it and/or what you could do to fix it. This shows that you are listening and being SOCIAL. This is after all “social” media.

1. Have Charlie Sheen be your community manager

This may be an extreme example, but it illustrates a critical point. Your community manager must be someone, who you can trust to channel the brand’s reputation across all online platforms.

Are Community Managers Becoming Obsolete?

Feb 27th, 2011

by admin.

9 comments

Social media is now firmly rooted in the PR/marketing worlds of a majority of businesses. With that, the roles are beginning to evolve. The hard sell approach that the old-time social media consultants (By old time, I mean 2006-2009) used to get people on Facebook and Twitter is no longer relevant. Most people know they need to be on social media sites. Now, it’s about figuring out exactly what they need to be doing to develop their company’s brand online.

For a lot of companies, that means hiring a “community manager” internally or perhaps externally to manage the overall social media strategy and execution. A community manager is a catchy job title right now, but in reality it’s a very new job title. The job descriptions and salary range for community managers vary drastically.

As social media begins to enter the “awkward teenage years,” it will be interesting to see how the roles of community managers change with the times. Personally, I think the role will shift more heavily into the content curation side.

I recently read two blog posts that dealt with this topic. One is from Stephanie Schwab, over at Social Media Explorer, and the other is from Adam Vincenzini at his blog, The Comms Corner. While the posts approach it from different angles, Schwab and Vincenzini both sum it up by saying the future lies in content curation and counseling.

These two smarties have a great point. Content curators or counselors could be a more prominent job title in the coming years. These content curators would ideally serve as the front-line community managers for the brand as well as being the curators of valuable industry news, both internally and externally.

With the lifespan of a tweet being a matter of hours and a Facebook status update being less than a day, it can be hard to break through all the noise.

So, how do you break through all the marketing clutter?

The secret could very well lie in spreading valuable content that goes beyond your company’s press releases, blog posts and special offers. It’s all about spreading value. That could be stuff written at your company or agency, or it may be curated from around the Web. A content curator’s job would be deciphering valuable content and the “junk.”

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What do you think? Do you think content curation will become the next big focus?

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