There are probably many different reasons for this – it is new, it is experiential, many marketers are not participants and it is free.  I’m going to focus on what I see as the two biggest problems.  It is new and it is free.

Social Media Marketing Problem #1 – It is new.

Social Media and social media marketing are relatively new fields.  Maybe 5 – 10 years old at best.  Most other forms of marketing are much, much older.  They have been refined over time to “best practices” that are now the standards of the industry.  The TV commercial below is a Cheer laundry detergent commercial from the 60’s.  It is a full minute long and features a man from space that kind of looks like Spock.  Creepy.

Over the last 50 years we have refined television commercials to know what works.  We know how to sell a product effectively in 15 or 30 second spots.  They are highly effective.  I bet that the ROI of early commercials was tough to measure, but after years of experimenting we can deliver pretty effective TV commercials.

As we gain more experience with social media and create new metrics we’ll have a better idea of the elements of success.  It just takes time.

Problem #2 – Social Media is “free”.

Sticking with the TV comparison, imagine if it was free to air TV commercials.  Anyone could air any commercial on TV just by sending it in. No costs except production.  What do you think would happen?  First there would be TONS of ads – probably almost every business would have a tv commercial.  Second, the quality level would be lower.  If there is no barrier to entry or cost to play, any business with a flipcam would create an ad.  Many of these ads would lack strategy or production quality.

Instead, it costs a lot of money to run a TV commercial, so brands invest a LOT in strategy and production to make sure that their commercials will deliver ROI.  They plan and test prior to running and campaign so that they don’t waste their money.  The content of the commercial is strategy and really well thought out.

Now, think about social media.  It is “free” to run a social media campaign.  So, there are TONS of social media campaigns out there, many of which are poorly thought out and don’t include any real strategy.  Hey, it costs nothing to run them, so why not just launch something?

This is why many businesses don’t get results from their social media efforts.  They don’t invest in the strategy and production of their social media efforts.  As a result they have a social media campaign that lacks strategy and production value.  If the same effort was put into social media as it was into paid media we would probably see more success.  Businesses would spend some time thinking about the strategy and the content prior to launching.

A “cost to play” increases the quality of the entrants.  Think about dating sites.  You get more serious daters on the sites that charge vs. the ones that are free.  If you have to pay for something you want to make sure that you will get what you need out of it – so you invest more in the strategy and planning.

What do you think?

Not enough brands put their marketing through this litmus test when creating marketing materials.  I ran a internet marketing training program for an advertising agency today and this was one of the key points that I stressed.

Attention is scarce – you have to earn it. And not by buying the ad space.

In a world where brands are fighting for attention this should be the first question that they ask.  Why should I read your content? Why should I look at your ad and give you my attention?  What is in it for me?  Media is cluttered.  Every day thousands of brands try to grab our attention.  There are over 30 million blogs in the US and only 67 million blog readers.  An average Facebooker is connected to 60 pages/groups/events.  Banner blindness studies show that consumers can identify and ignore ads from the corner of their eyes – they don’t even look at most ads.  You have to earn attention.

Many marketers and brand builders create content focused on what is in it for them.  They get to promote their products, try to get me to buy or tell me about their wonderful benefits and features.  That is what is in it for them.  Telling me about your product and the awesome stuff you are doing might be interesting, but really, what do I get out of it?  It is not inherently valuable for me to know about all of your charitable giving, or the great work that you produce.  MAYBE if I already like you I occasionally want to learn about these things, but it normally isn’t great marketing content.

Traditional marketing messaging tells us to focus on the product benefits not the features.  So instead of “my product does cleans teeth” say “My product gives you a beautiful smile and people will like you more”.  In today’s marketing that isn’t good enough.  Now you have to say “5 foods that ruin your teeth” or “what type of tooth brushes really clean best??”  Marketing messaging in a digital world should focus on real and valuable content.

Brands focus on what is in it for them. Not the consumer.  Brand-centric marketing doesn’t work well.

Here are how brands get it wrong.

A social media consultant told me that he worked with an auto body shop client and they were tweeting about all of the cars they fixed.  Unless every now and again they do something really remarkable why would I care?  What is in it for me?  It is obvious what is in it for them – they get to showcase their work, but what is in it for me?  Give me tips on car care or maintenance, tell me about deals and discounts or show me how to do something cool with my car.

Here is another example.  Many companies (big companies) have started blogs about what they are doing in the community.  They post a few times a week about their charitable efforts.  Don’t get me wrong, it is great that they are doing charitable work, but the entire blog premise is about them promoting their nice charity work.  What does a reader get out of it?  Probably nothing, which is why the 5 of these types of blogs that I looked at had 0 comments.  They are really just PR machines.

When creating marketing ask yourself what someone you are trying to reach gets out of it.  Do they really get any value?  Or is it really you getting the value.

The fix is usually small.

I recently switched my office supply company.  Some sales people stopped into my office while they were visiting other customers in the building.  I actually needed a new printer and they were able to give me a great deal, so I signed up with them.  A few days later I got a phone call from the sales training manager.  She asked me how the sales person was (apparently they are evaluating him) and I answered a few questions about him.  I got off the phone and was kind of annoyed.  They didn’t really care if I was satisfied with their product or service or if I was having problems, they interrupted my busy day to get information for themselves.  Hmmm.

Here is how the experience could have been better.  She could have opened by asking me if my order arrived on time and if I was happy with it.  Then, she could ask about how my experience was with the sales staff.  Did they answer all of my questions?  Did I have any additional ones?  By repositioning the questions to focus on my experience she could have got what she needed while making me feel like they really cared about me.

Anybody else have examples?

The News Feed is the first thing that a Facebook user sees when they log on to the site.  For businesses and individuals looking to generate attention or awareness through Facebook pages or profiles getting on the News Feed is important.  Not every update that a page or person makes on Facebook is displayed on the News Feed.  The News Feed is customized for each individual person and includes the content or updates that are most relevant to that individual based on a mathematical formula (or algorithm).  According to Facebook an average person on Facebook is connected to 130 people and 80 pages, groups and events.  An average person posts on Facebook 3 times a day, which means that you would be inundated with 390 posts per day, just from friends.

So the Facebook News Feed does not display everything posted by all of your friends.  It is optimized by something called EdgeRank, which is a mathematical formula that determines the most relevant posts for your individual news feed.

The Facebook News Feed Formula

According to TechCrunch the Facebook News Feed is based off a formula based on three factors:

First, there’s an affinity score between the viewing user and the item’s creator — if you send your friend a lot of Facebook messages and check their profile often, then you’ll have a higher affinity score for that user than you would, say, an old acquaintance you haven’t spoken to in years.

Second, there’s a weight given to each type of Edge. A comment probably has more importance than a Like, for example.

And finally there’s the most obvious factor — time. The older an Edge is, the less important it becomes.

Multiply these factors for each Edge then add the Edge scores up and you have an Object’s EdgeRank. And the higher that is, the more likely your Object is to appear in the user’s feed.

Essentially, an Object or post is more likely to show up in your News Feed if people you know have recently interacted with it.  This probably isn’t very surprising.

Implication: Post Content People Interact With

The key then, for brands and individuals hoping to generate awareness on Facebook is to create posts that people interact with.  If all of your posts have 0 interactions, it is likely that nobody is even seeing them in their News Feed.  To get real marketing value from Facebook you have to post content that gets interactions.

How to Drive Interactions with Facebook Content

The key to success is driving interactions with Facebook content, but how can companies do this?  Here are some ideas:

• Ask Questions – Posing questions that your fans/friends will have a quick and simple answer to is a great way to encourage interaction.  Get the ball rolling by specifically asking a few of your friends to respond.
• Run a Contest – You can use a free plug-in on your Facebook Fan Page like PollDaddy to easily run polls on your fan pages.
• Share Ideas – Today I discovered BulbStorm, an application that is specifically designed to drive interactions and engagement on Facebook Fan Pages through idea sharing.
• Tag People – If you reference specific people in your content tag them!  This will draw their attention to your content and increase the probability that they will comment or interact with it.
• Be Interesting.  Really Interesting. – Some of the most commented on things that I see on Facebook are interesting or funny videos, quotes or articles.  Look for opportunities to post content that your friends/fans will really be interested in.

Any other tips on driving interactions?

Does anyone else have tips/ideas/thoughts on how to drive interactions on a Facebook Fan Page?  What kind of content or posts do you interact with on Facebook?

Note that these are just my personal observations on the campaign – I haven’t talked to anyone at Best Buy or their agencies

About the Twelp Force Campaign

Best Buy’s key point of difference vs. online competitors is the people in the Blue Shirts who are working in the stores.  The Best Buy sales staff helps to educate consumers on electronics purchases and provides a valuable service.  The consumer insight is that customers find the staff to be helpful which is one of the key reasons that they choose Best Buy.

The TwelpForce campaigned attempted to leverage this insight and provide the service offered by their in-store staff online via twitter.  The “TwelpForce” is comprised of a number of Best Buy Employees (apparently there are over 2,500 employees participating) who answer questions related to technology.  The twelpforce was promoted via traditional marketing and the twitter account was displayed at the bottom of a TV campaign.

Twitter Effectiveness?

According to Ad Age, Mr. Judge, CMO for Best Buy said the retailer would focus on the Twelpforce because it reinforces the retailer’s service focus and garners interest from media outlets. Since launching the Twitter group in July, it has answered 20,000 questions. “We’ve found it to be an incredibly powerful idea,” Mr. Judge said. “We don’t send any promotion out through Twelpforce. It’s all about reinforcing our helpfulness.”  (as a side note, this isn’t entirely true – A current tweet on the page “Did you know select @bestbuys offer engraving, including @BestbuyMOA_1935 For as little as $19.99! http://ow.ly/i/1KGU via @jhart9″ sounds pretty promotional).

Almost a full year after the launch last July the Best Buy Twelpforce twitter account has about 26,000 followers – which may seem like a lot, but for a national brand running TV spots to promote the account it seems like a pretty poor showing.  Many national brands on twitter have hundreds of thousands of followers without spending on media to promote the account.

A quick look at the Twelpforce account might show why – the content of the account seems to be a little all over the place.  The replies appear to be very helpful, but some of the posts don’t really have much to do with the intended purpose of providing support.

Another issue with a twitter execution is that it can be difficult to ask and answer technology related questions in only 140 characters.

What About Facebook?

I went on to take a look at the twelpforce Facebook page and found it to be bustling with activity.  First, the page has almost 1.2 million fans – that is more like what I would expect from a national company like Best Buy.

On the Facebook page fans are actively asking questions and Best Buy is providing helpful answers.  This makes more sense vs. the twitter approach for a number of reasons.  First, Facebook has a broader audience than twitter.  The portion of the population regularly using twitter is still relatively small, however the % using Facebook is high.  Due to the broader appeal of Facebook it seems like promoting the Q&A service on Facebook may have produced better results.  In addition to broader adoption, Facebook allows for longer postings and isn’t limited to 140 char.  This is probably a better fit for posting and answering technology related questions.

Finally, Facebookers are a more natural fit with Best Buy vs. Tweeters.  Twitter is still in the early adoption phase vs. mass population.  Twitter users are typically more tech savvy than average and more likely to shop and search for information online.  The Best Buy work force is probably targeting a more average group of the population who wants a person to inform their decisions, after all, you could use google, review sites and discussion forums to answer most of these questions.  Since Facebook has such mass adoption the user base is likely to be more in line with the average people asking questions to the Best Buy TwelpForce.

What do you Think?

This was obviously a good experiment…. what could they have done better?  Would you classify this as a success or failure?

We know that people search for things.  A lot.  Especially when making a purchase.  This isn’t a surprise (or new).  This is why companies have websites.

Social Integration is New

What is new is social integration in search results.  Social media is ranking higher and becoming more closely integrated into search results than ever before.  Things like videos, photos, wikis, blogs, discussion forums and now even twitter are showing up with top results on search engines.

The screen shot below shows search results for “gulf oil”.  You can see that social media sources accounted for 4 of the top search results.  A blog listing from the Huffington Post ranked 4th, user generated images were 6th, twitter results were shown 7th and user generated wiki results from wikipedia came up 9th.  40% of the top 10 search results were user generated.  This means that when people are searching for information about your product, category or brand they are more likely to find content generated by other people vs.  your carefully crafted brand message.

Key Implications of Search Results and Social Media

There are a number of implications for marketers:

1. You have even less control – The integration and high ranking of social media means that you have even less control over how your brand in perceived in the social space.  User content and opinions will continue to dominate on the web.
2. Twitter May Be Uninformed – During the swine flu outbreak the NYTimes ran an article pointing out that twitter was a source of mis-information about the outbreak.  Of course it was.  Average people usually are a source of misinformation.  My mom is a source of misinformation (sorry mom if you read this).  Social Media search results may not have the right information, but people are eager to trust what they hear from friends, family and people like them.
3. Listening is More Important than Ever – Given the prominence of user generated and social media results in search engines it is important that brands at least understand what people are saying about them and what may show up in search engine results.  Knowing is half the battle.  Know where there is misinformation or perception issues.
4. Inform the Conversation – If there is misinformation about your product you need to develop an action plan to share the right information and help inform the conversation.  Building relationships in advance is key to this (as you’ll need friends and advocates to help share information).
5. Create Your Own Content – Since video, wikipedia, photos, blog posts and social networks are all showing up in search results, why not participate in them?  Create your own branded assets and syndicate on social sites to increase your visibility both on those sites and in search engine results.

Any Other Thoughts?  What Else Can Companies Do?

While all forms of traditional media – from print to radio to tv news – seem to be struggling, the key question that needs to be asked is How do we reinvent ourselves to stay relevant?

Here are a few examples of how new and old paradigms of business have co-existed by adapting.

Blogs are like WalMart

Remember when WalMart started to grow and how communities reacted? Some communities tried to keep WalMart out, for fear that their local businesses would be destroyed.  The reality is that WalMart did put a lot of companies out of business – both retailers and suppliers.  Businesses that survived adapted their model and built their business around a strong value proposition.  They provided something that was more important than just price, or they died.  Despite the success of WalMart there are still new retail businesses starting every day.  They differentiate themselves on quality, selection, location, convenience, etc and thrive and grow despite WalMart.

Blogs are the WalMart of the media world.  They create content that people like for a lower price.  Most bloggers publish as a labor of love – they don’t need a huge paycheck.  Big blog publications have a different cost structure than traditional media, so they can generate profits from online display ads (a cost structure that won’t work for most traditional media).

In order for traditional media to survive the content revolution (where everyone is a content creator), they have to adapt their strategy to focus on their core value proposition – investigative journalism.

Most bloggers (not all) don’t do a lot of primary research.  They actually build their stories on stats, facts and research from traditional media and use it as a source for their articles.  Traditional media should be The Resource for investigative journalism – a service that is needed for bloggers to exist.

I have a friend who is a TV news producer.  To “create” the news producers do research.  They check facts.  They look up stats.  They get multi-media from different sources, or create it themselves.  They go out and interview a variety of people.  They investigate and report. These core competencies of traditional media must be heightened to create a clear value proposition.

Video Killed the Radio Star

Actually, it didn’t.  When TV and video came along, radio didn’t die – it adapted.  Now I wasn’t around at the time, but if you look at the evolution of radio, prior to mass adoption of TV radio was a platform for both music and story-telling entertainment. Families would gather around the radio and listen to stories for entertainment.

Then TV came along.  Radio wasn’t really the best medium for story-telling type entertainment – TV was.  So, TV focused on fictional story-telling entertainment and radio focused on music.  Radio adapted the content to focus on content areas where it could win – music, call-in talk shows, etc.

Both TV and radio continue to exist but with different content and in different use cases.

So What Now?

There are some traditional media sites that have innovative views about how they can adapt.

Chris Graves at the Cincinnati Enquirer launched a program called LOL: Locals on Living .  LOL creates content for both the web and print editions, and it clearly changes the cost structure for the enquirer (no full time writers creating content). Clicking on the blogs opened 2 highly annoying ad pop-up windows, however as the model evolves perhaps there will be opportunities to find different revenue streams.  It launched last July and has expanded to integrate local bloggers from lifestyle content to Sports Content (see SportsTalkCentral).  The program is beginning to dip into news/business with the integration of BuildingCincinnati, which is featured both on our business and news page. They currently integrate 17 bloggers on the site.

At ad:tech Chris Anderson, EIC of Wired shared information about how Tablets can provide new opportunities for publishers.  By leveraging interactivity and the tablet technology, publishers may have the opportunity to charge for content vs. the current web model where everything is free.  It will be interesting to see if this plays out.

What do you think?

How can news sites continue to thrive?  Quality investigative journalism is important for our society, but traditional media outlets are struggling with their business models.  How can they reinvent themselves?  Have you seen other examples of this?

1. Digital Marketers are Like 5 Year Olds Playing Soccer – In the opening Keynote Jaime Cohen Szult, CMO of Levi used this analogy.  Marketers act like kids – they want to run to where the ball is, but we know that a successful soccer strategy is to play your position and be strategic.  That is what marketers need to do.  Play your position and avoid chasing the ball.
2. Tablets (like the ipad) are HAWT and can Create new Opportunities for Business Models – Everyone seems to agree that Tablets like the ipad will significantly change the way we consume content.  The key question is how and when.  A number of companies (like Wired magazine) have super-secret iPad apps under development.  I think that until we see some really robust game-changing apps this might be tough to grasp.  Two of the keynotes today – Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer and Chris Anderson of Wired – both see the Tablets as a transformational technology.  I have an iPad mini, also known as my iphone.
3. The Impression Model of Marketing is Dead – Bob Gilbreath, CEO of Bridge WorldWide talked about measuring success in digital through influence in 2 key ways – Engagement and Sharing.  An impression in social media is more powerful vs. traditional media because the consumer is chosing to interact with your content vs being forced to.  Geoff Ramsey also mentioned in his keynote that the old model of disruption and interruption marketing will continue to erode.
4. All Sharing is NOT Created Equal – Tim Schigel, CEO of ShareThis talked about sharing as a key concept in tracking influence.  Influence is a function of Sharing (how is the content shared and by which mediums) x Clicks (how many people are clicking on the content) x Engagement (how much time do they spend with the content) x Spread (are they inspired to further spread and share the content).  This is definitely a more comprehensive way of looking at influencers.
5. Getting to the Sharers (influencers) gets Results – A case study shared by Jim Price of Empower Media Marketing showed that targeting ads specifically at influencers (defined as sharers) leads to higher engagement and ultimately results and ROI.  Sharers had a 55% intent to redeem a coupon on contextually relevant content vs. 30% for search and 8% for display.  More details can be found in this article on Media Post.
6. Measurement – Stop Focusing on ClickThrough and think ViewThrough – This isn’t really “new” to many in the digital space, but it highlights the importance of taking a holistic approach to measurement.  An impression is still an impression – even if there is no click. Invest in measurement early so you can track and improve.
7. 78% of all Statistics are Made Up – In the closing keynote with Geoff Ramsey from emarketer he highlighted a number of times that there are MANY different statistics out there for almost anything that you want to measure.  “There is no sense in being precise when you have no idea what you are talking about“.
8. The Bar is Higher for Marketers – Consumers Have to Choose your Marketing – This isn’t really news, but it is a concept that is picking up momentum.  All of the keynotes mentioned it – consumers are getting better at ignoring ads and successful marketers are creating ads that consumers want to engage with.  This is a concept that Bob Gilbreath talks about in Marketing With Meaning and one that Seth Godin brought up years ago in his discussion of interruption marketing vs. permission marketing.
9. Marketers Need to Think Like Game Creators vs. Reality Show Hosts – Joel from Moxie shared some great thoughts on how marketers can benefit by building gaming mechanics into their marketing.  Foursquare is a great example – a lot of the excitement of Foursquare is collecting badges, completing tasks, competing on the leaderboard, and earning Mayorships.  Three ways to build gaming into your marketing: 1) Customize content with public achievements among friends, 2) Recognize leaders and promote their stats, 3) Create missions, not campaigns.
10. Affiliate Marketers make the Coolest TShirts – I’ll share more photos to support this theory tomorrow, but affiliate marketers seem to have a gift for creating T-shirts that actually look cool (I am actually wearing an Affiliate.com t-shirt pictured below right now and I would TOTALLY wear it out in public).  Looking around the exhibit hall the affiliate marketing companies had the coolest shirts (although some looked a little too Affliction-like for my tastes) – probably because they are cooler than other marketers.

Photo Courtesy of Heather in BC

Overall: Great book, strong examples and really useful concepts.

Read this if: You want to build your brand online.  Even if you know how to use social media and social sites – this is a great resource for actual marketing and brand building.

Categories: Marketing, Social Media, PR

Key Take Aways:

• Build a Strong Web Presence – More than ever people are searching and research information about purchases online.  At the same time many web sites are full of ads instead of clearly providing the information that people are looking for.  Make your website usable and fill it with great content.
• Social Media and PR are Linked – Reporters increasingly search for topics and companies to discuss online vs. waiting for your press release.  Make your site searchable and have a great press page.  That being said, traditional press might not be the best way to reach your audience.  Consider niche blogs and try to build relationships.  Lots of reporters get their ideas from these sites already.  This allows you to have a pull PR strategy (reporters contact you because you are the expert) vs. a Push strategy (you send reporters your press release and they usually ignore it).
• Build PR for the Consumer Market – Rather than going after a few big publications (which are really hard to get anyways) write press releases that are consumer friendly.  Remove the jargon and formality and make them easy to understand so that bloggers get excited and will write about you.
• Content is King – Content is the key to your social media strategy.  Great Content = you are a trusted resource = call to action.  View social marketing as creating a relationship vs. a one night stand.  Don’t think of social marketing as a transaction.
• Deliver Content When & Where it is Needed – This serves to brand your organization as a thought leader.  The content that you syndicate online (through blogs, podcasts, twitter, etc) should be inherently valuable to your target audience.  To do this you need to know: Where is your audience? How do you reach them? What are their motivations? What problems can I help them solve? What content will compel them to trust me and buy from me?  Know your goal and let your content drive the action.
• Using Blogs, Podcasts, Chat Rooms, Message Boards, Wikis and Listserves – When getting started, first monitor and listen, then participate and get known, and then create your own content.  You need to understand the community and audience before you participate.  Keys to success: React quickly, provide useful content regularly, be open and honest, show your personality, apologize when you need to.  Build an editorial calendar to keep your content fresh and on topic.
• Integrate your Social Media Around a Hub (your website) – Your website should be the hub of your social media activity, and all of your assets (on your site and in social media) should support telling a consistent story about your company or brand.  Pay attention to how your content is organized and how it will ultimately drive action.  Talk like “one of them”.
• Develop Thought Leadership – Position yourself of your organization as thought leaders.  Don’t talk about your company but showcase your expertise by talking about the category, industry or trends.  Be a unique resource for people.  You can also achieve this with ebooks, newsletters, webinars, wikis, research reports, whitepapers, podcasts and videos.
• Tips for getting started in social networks: 1) Target a specific audience 2) Be a thought leader 3) be authentic and transparent 4) Creates links 5) Encourage contact 6) Participate 7) Be easy to find 8 ) Experiment

This is just an overview of the book – definitely worth the read.  I’ll also have to check out the new book and let you know what I think about it.

Has anyone else read this great book on social media marketing and PR?  What did you think?  Are there other books you would recommend?

Note: The links in this post are amazon affiliate links.

Hmmm – perhaps there is something important going on in my community that I need to know about.

Maybe there is something important from a neighborhood group, local chamber of commerce or the city.

Sadly that was not the case.  It was a piece of junk mail from Time Warner Cable (note that they excluded their name from the front of the envelope).

Hmmm.

Dear Neighbor? I am not your neighbor.  Do you live here?  Are you a resident of my neighborhood?  Actually, Time Warner, you aren’t.  According to the dictionary a neighbor is “a person who lives near another”.  You are not a person and you don’t live near me.  Don’t try to trick me with false terminology to earn my trust and ultimately waste my time.

Important Information Enclosed. There is no important information.  Although it does say that I have been “pre-approved” to get cable through them.  How nice.  A personal letter to let me know that they are willing to take my money and allow me to be a customer.  The headline says “Three Innovative Services, One Good:time.”  That isn’t important to me.  It probably isn’t important to anyone.  If you did have important information for me you probably could have used my name.  My bank sends me stuff that says “Important Notice” and it usually is – changes to the terms and services of my bank or something relevant.  Maybe I am more aware of how lame this is because I just finished reading Trust Agents.

The Immediate Results of Deception: Higher Open Rate

I would suspect that by writing misleading things on the envelope they probably get higher open rates (I opened it after all).  I bet that Time Warner had tested a variety of different headings on their mailers and found that this got the highest open rates.  You know what would have made it even higher?  Subjects like “Someone in your family died” or  “Audit notice from IRS”.  Neither of these would be accurate either, but I bet the open rates are great. (OK, maybe I am being a little dramatic, but you get the point).

Social Media Application

It reminds me of things that you are seeing in social media (especially recently on twitter).  I get a DM that says “click here to learn more about me” and it is an affiliate link to some MLM scheme or a get rich quick site.  When you can effectively lie to people about what they are clicking on you can sometimes get more clicks.  That is what those phishing scams do when they say “lol – is this you in the video?” and you click to a link that gets your twitter password and hacks your account.  Misleading headlines can get clicks.  That is for sure.

The Medium Term Results of Deception: Nothing

The problem with these types of bait and switch marketing tactics is that they don’t produce real results.  So, I opened the “important information” from “my neighbor”.  It was something from Time Warner.  I didn’t even read it (except for the purposes of throwing it away).  If I was interested in cable or changing internet I would have opened it with the correct label on the front.  The fact that you tricked me to open it doesn’t make me more interested.

At the same time, I bet that some people who open it (even out of deception) do end up responding.  I would assume this is the case, otherwise they probably wouldn’t do it.  The question is “are those extra sales worth your reputation?”

Social Media Application

When you click on a link that wasn’t what it said it was, what is the impact?  You probably navigate away pretty quickly.  Sure, they stole a few seconds of your life, but after your confusion settled you probably didn’t stick around to check out their service.  In fact, you were probably annoyed and unfollowed the person who sent you the stupid link.

The Long Term Results of Deception: Lack of Trust

The problem with these tactics is that they generate a lack of trust.  The worst case scenario is that someone I me gets it and is annoyed enough to take some sort of action (blog post, emailing the company, etc).  More likely is that it creates a lack of trust with the company.  It makes the company look weak – they have to trick me to get me to read their stupid ad.  It violates my trust since they lied to me.  It makes me question their integrity.  It is also disrespectful and insulting to me.  It also has the impact of the boy who cried wolf – if they ever really try to send me something of value I probably won’t believe them.

Social Media Application

When someone tricks you with their spam links it violates your trust.  You will probably stop following them and maybe even flag them as spam.  Over time, as this grows, we’ll invent technical solutions to punish these people – like spam filters or sites like twitter freezing accounts.  In the long run you lose out from this behavior.  People won’t trust any information from you and will be hesitant to click on your links.

If Your Message Doesn’t Suck you Don’t Need Deception

Here is the thing – if you really have a great message or an “important offer” you shouldn’t have to use tactics to deceive me to get my attention.  If the headline read “awesome deal to save you $$ on your cable and internet” I would have known what it was about and only opened it if I was interested.

What do you think?  Have examples of this?

Today, marketers and ad agencies don’t have to stay on top of dramatically changing mediums to be successful.  The key to success in most traditional advertising is understanding the consumer and having great creative based on meaningful insights.  Let’s face it – the formula for great TV hasn’t changed much in a long time.

In digital, the key to success is different.  It changes.  All the time.  What worked today might not work tomorrow.  Unless you are immersed in the medium you won’t be successful.  Reading a few trade publications won’t really help either.

Search Changed

Initially, you could easily game search by stuffing key words on your site and joining link exchanges or buying links.  If you use those tactics today, they just won’t work.  Google got smarter and changed it’s algorithms making them more complicated and harder to game.

Today, many search firms are relying on social (and creating great content) to drive links and long-tail search traffic to their sites.  Today, google is harder to game (although I’m sure some SEO types will disagree).  Even if you can game it, your success may be short lived once google catches on.

At Pubcon South Guy Kawasaki said in a keynote that SEO was witchcraft and the key to good search results is to create great content.

Twitter Changed

Two years ago, nobody was even talking about twitter.  In the early days of twitter, you could win by showing up, and contests from brands were embraced and rewarded (that is what Zappos did).  The rules were different.  Auto-follow and DM Spam didn’t exist, and there were relatively few players, so it was easy for brands to stand out.

Now, it is much more difficult for brands to connect on twitter.

FaceBook Changed (again and again and again)

It seems that every week Facebook is changing something.  They changed Groups vs. Fan Pages.  They change how your news updates and status feeds work.  They add new features all the time.  They made apps (when I first joined there were no FaceBook apps).  They changed privacy settings.  They change the rules for brands.  They added FaceBook ads.

MySpace Became Irrelevant Before Most Brands Got On-Board.

A few years ago EVERYONE was talking about MySpace… today nobody does.  Sites can rise and fall quicker than you can create accounts, making it more important to stay up to speed.  Remember a few years ago when people were investing in Second Life?

These are just a few examples of how digital quickly the rules and success criteria change in digital marketing.  If your organization is not continuously learning, you’ll quickly be out of the game.

The second major trend it that…

Feedback Cycles are Shorter with Digital

With digital marketing results are almost instant.  This means that marketers and agencies can get results from their campaigns relatively quickly.  For example, with paper coupons it takes almost a year from the time the coupon is created to when complete redemption data is available.  With Mobile Coupons the data is instant.  You can view and adjust in real time based on results.  When placing online display ads you can instantly see the clicks (and subsequent results) vs. waiting over a year to get (questionably accurate) marketing mix data back.

It isn’t just that the feedback cycles are shorter, but also that the ability to adjust is instant.  Bad TV copy may never go off the air – either you realize it is bad only after sales suffer, or it is too expensive to change.  Bad digital marketing has much lower production costs, and small changes can usually be made quickly.

Social Media (and digital marketing) Require Continuous Learning

It can be overwhelming, but the reality is that if you want to stay competitive in the digital environment you must have a continuous learning environment.  The rules for TV and Print and how they are consumed has been relatively static for decades.

Digital changes every day.  With this faster rate of change organizations must adopt a learning strategy.  Marketers and agencies will have to learn quicker to stay relevant.

How do you stay up to speed on changes?