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    Cheesing the Social Web.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Dan Zarrella, who has a neat person brand in social media, posted an interview with rap blogger Eskay providing a smart take on social media. Check it out here. In a nutshell it suggests social media is a good music marketing tool but not nearly as important as the music.  The artist who sits around focusing on his/her Twitter or Facebook metrics is not focused on the art. Not really feeling the audience. Certainly not the way they can by performing.

    Most musicians do care more about their art than the buzz, that’s why they are more effective in social.  They post things that fans care about.  The word “fans” is the operative word.  Bands, performers, artists have fans. Cooking oils don’t.

    Community building and social media is about fulfilling a need. Filtering and organizing a need. It’s not about selling. It’s okay to make your product or service available or one click away in an online community, but stop hawking.  Facebook knows that too much selling on the site will be its downfall. And it hasn’t yet figured out how to deal with that truism as it adds tens of thousands of users each day. Google learned this early, and smartly sequestered the sell from its Adwords program.

    Selling is crawling into social media at a higher and higher pace. And it’s coming to a mobile device near you very soon.

    So what do smart marketers do? Focus on their art. On their product. Use social media for sure…it’s an amazing tool. Enagage. Learn. Most importantly enable.  But stop cheesing the social web. Peace!

    Social Media. Quiet is the new black.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I was watching an NCAA Tournament game the other day and with 13 minutes to go in an Sweet 16 game, the announcer was apoplectic. He announced each pass as if it would be the game’s last.  I can understand if we were in the finals and it was under 2 minutes, but phewwww. It seems the game for some announcers isn’t enough, it’s the delivery that creates excitement.  Like a laugh track on a sitcom. If everything is screamed and hyper- exciting, how are we to know when the truly amazing happens?  It’s like reading a two paragraph email typed in all caps.

    One of the reasons social media has taken off so nicely, in this world of many product choices, is because friends and members of your social graph tend not to sell when they are talking up a product.  Well they sell, but from the gut and heart, not from the wallet. Paid marketing agents, on the other hand, are compensated to make you buy. 

    Metaphorically, paid marketing agents shout while friends quietly discuss. Friends modulate. Friends offer no agenda.  I think it was Benjamin Palmer of the Barbarian Group who said at Social Media Week this February that commercial social media is most effective when it is “brands letting their hair down.” And he’s right.   When a brand is not in billboard mode, or advertising or coupon mode – not shouting every possible user benefit like the NCAA announcer – it has a chance to quietly and meaningfully build a case in a unique, human way.  Social is a new channel. Not an old channel repurposed. Peace.

    Staples on Twitter.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     staples logo

    A “social” friend of mine, Julie, turned me on to a Twitter site today that kinda follows one of my best practices for commercial tweeting. It’s Staples.  I preach to clients and friends that corporate users shouldn’t just broadcast promotional info and/or respond to help questions on Twitter. Rather, they should create a persona for their Twitter presence that embodies the brand and inspires positive thought and action. Think of it as a role in a movie with a motivation. The motivation should track to the brand plan and push the brand planks.

    In the case of Staples, the “tweet team” consists of five people, each with their own tag. Michelle is MO, Kevin AB, etc. This allows them to be identified and personalized, plus it shares the workload. At this point, I’m not yet sure if these people are SMEs (subject matter experts) or generalists.  It would be a smart if they had discrete areas of expertise and personalities to fit. 

    Buy and Multiply.

    More and more companies are hiring people to handle social media.  Some are outsourcing (stopgap), others using interns (big gap), the smart ones employ senior management who get the brand strategy.  The big promise of Twitter is not to make customers happy – one at a time – but to inspire customers to buy, share and multiply.  The key word here is inspire. Tweeters have to be engaging individuals…with personalities.  And just like in a retail setting they can’t be shills. They must be sensitive, funny and friend-like.  If you are on the receiving end of a commercial tweet you need to “feel” the company tweeter – and like her/him. The persona is key.

    Staples has made a good start here, let’s see hat they do with it. Peace on Haiti.

    Coach Does Social Media Right.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    A lot of people ask “Who is doing social media right?”  Tough question. What they’re really saying is “Who is using Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare effectively?”  

    Social media is complicated and often convoluted. It is actually many media types: blogs, simple messages, texts, video, audio, pictures, email, etc. They are all social because they are shared.

    So who is doing social well? Coach. They have a good mix of media and are using the right tools for the right part of the sales cycles: Awareness – Interest – Desire – Action.  Of course there’s some cross over, but the people pushing and pulling the buttons at Coach are leading the way and have a plan.

    Motivation in Social Media

    Readers know I advocate that brands using social have a motivation, kind of like actors in a movie. Each person at the controls of their social media channel needs to understand their role and stick to it. Understanding which social media type is used for which purpose is a start and Coach’s people are pretty close to delivering on that.  Twitter is for building real time, meaningful communal discourse.  Facebook is for selling so long as it’s not too smarmy or heavy handed. YouTube is where Coach creates desire and loyalty, though this is one area still under development.  Coach also gets it’s brand motivations: “fashion”, “NYC-culture” and “lifestyle” which are all clean and discreet.  They just need to continue to live and breathe the motivations and innovate with them. Get the motivations right and the media delivery will follow.

    Good job Coach! Peace.

    Direct and Participatory (Tee-shirt Saying?)

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    1

    I attended a really great event in NYC yesterday put on by the Direct Marketing Association and Participatory Marketing Network (shout out to Curley, the DMA’s receptionist of 26 years).  Called Social Media Spotlight, it really exceeded expectations. Steve Rubel of Edelman Digital got things started.  Steve is the Obama of the social media space.  Unlike most speakers about social media, if Steve trots out a statistic, it’s a good one. “More digital information was created last year than in all of history combined.”   Steve, thanks to his PR training, talks in tee-shirts. About the growth of Tweeting vs. blogging he said “A lot more snacking, a lot less meals.” He’s memorable and inspiring.

    Rob Krin, a digital dude from Castrol, showed great élan and marketing smarts by suggesting a strategy to “Be everywhere his customers are.” Is that a strategy?  Oh yeah.  A media strategy – but a strategy nonetheless. Castrol has an on-staff photographer who takes awesome action shots at car races and posts them to Flickr.  That’s what car heads want, that’s what Castrol gives them.

    Involver

    But one of the biggest surprises of the day was @rahimthedream. I’m not going to undignify my send-up by talking about his age—but Rahim Fazal, CEO of Involver, is da monies. I walked into the meeting not getting Facebook Fan Pages, thinking they were a time kill where people went to build their friend lists (which is still partially true), but I left eating some serious crow. Involver is the “app store” for Facebook marketing tools. Think of Facebook as television and there is only one ad agency.  That’s Involver. It’s pronounced Rah-Heem.  Peace!

    Mobile. Search. Ads.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I grew up watching advertising on television. Part of life.  Direct mail pisses me off due to all the wasted paper and atmospheric warming.  Dinnertime telemarketing annoys me but it’s hard to be mean to humans. Spam in the email box irritates. Telemarketing to my mobile though, oh that one drives me insane.

    Google is about to launch a mobile phone handset business, using a Taiwanese manufacturer (“Do no evil” apparently doesn’t extend to domestic job creation) and the exciting, free Android operating system. The phone will not be free and sold “unlocked” — meaning buyers can choose their own compatible (GSM) carriers.  With most cell phones subsidized by carriers in the U.S. it will be hard for Google to make money on the hardware so what’s their play?  The answer is search ads.

     If you think search is big from your chair at work or your couch at home, wait until you see the power of search for those on the go.  People en route are way more likely to want to search for something than people in a chair – and Google knows this, hence the mobile computing effort. Google’s OS is a critical component to mobile search and by owning the phone they keep control. But toes will be stepped on. What sets my hair on fire is the thought that all mobile searches in couple of years will be wrapped in a big fat advertising wrapper. I smell an opportunity.  Peace!

    Claim and Proof.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Last week at the DMA/PMN social media conference, Steve Rubel, a digital honcho at Edelman, said “information scales, attention is finite.” He couldn’t be more right.  As social media adds more and more conversation to what is already being said about brands in the marketplace, the cacophony grows louder.  It is in this environment that brand planners become even more important.

    Creating a brand strategy that is easy for corporate officers and consumers to articulate is job one for today’s planners.  Once that strategy is in place, “proving” it and refreshing it is the real work.  Simply repeating the brand strategy — using words, pictures, speeches or song — is not marketing.  Proving it is marketing.  Proof through actions, deeds, and product innovation is what makes a brand strategy and what makes people pay attention…and remember.  If you have a great strategy and no proof, you fail.  Peace!

    Mobile Advertising For Everyone?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Quick, you want to buy some mobile ads for your soccer team’s fundraiser and you want them to run locally.  Oh, and you need to run before next weekend. To whom do you turn? Nice question, huh?

    I once tried to get a quote to run mobile ads in NY State, contacting Google’s AdMob group. There was no phone number so I had to send them an email.  They got back to me with a very underwhelming form letter months later. New school service.

    If you want to run mobile ads these days you need experts, like a digital agency. And then you had better have a half millions dollars or they won’t take your call. Let’s not even talk about ad serving technologies, reports, and optimization of the ads.

    Google.

    The one company equipped to do mobile advertising for the masses is Google, via AdWords. Search is an especially important consumer need while mobile, and search is what Google does best, so why are they not launching a mobile-only version of AdWords? A version with an easy-to-use interface, from a site with DIY instructions, and offers quick turnaround?

    As the mobile algorithms get smarter and more ads are served to phones unrequested, people are going to start to get mad.  And that’s a bad future for mobile advertising.  A good revenue future is for Google to own mobile search ads the way they do on laptops and desktops. Google needs to stop diddling around all the other stuff and open up this market. If they make it so that small businesses can buy mobile ads without needing a doctorate degree it will grow the overall market and give them an unfair share. Peace!

    Accelerator Pedals and Online Ads

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    There was an article today in the New York Times by Stephanie Clifford about new ad serving technology supported by real-time bidding, allowing ads to be served based on keywords and cookied behavior.  Supposedly everything takes place in milliseconds — before the page even load. (Is it me or are page loads getting slower and slower?  Thanks ads. Thanks beefy Web 2.0 apps.)

    It stands to reason that as this technology matures a good deal of these immediate, personalized ads will be price-based. And how do marketers lower prices?  By cutting margins elsewhere, meaning brand advertising budgets, etc.  Fast forward a year or two and think about all the low-cost, challenger brand/no brand, tailored ads filling up your screens. Likely, you will have bitten on a price ad or two and had a poor experience and now avoid these ads altogether. Your avoidance behavior may be similar to that toward telemarketers.  And it’s too bad because as the behavioral modeling grows it has an opportunity to be an important selling mechanism.

    But initially it will be price, price, price!  A word of caution marketers: Don’t fall into the price war — web ad bidding war.  It will be hard to get out of. And some of your accelerator pedals might stick. Peace!

    Trust. Search. And Ashton Kutcher.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Ashton Kutcher is quoted in the paper today about one of his venture capital investments. “Turning social trust into commerce” was the word string that caught my eye.  To me this is the essence of social computing for marketers. And, so you know,  the social web is not just about commerce and marketing.  Sometimes social is just social.  But we all have to eat and we all have to buy, so finding trusted sources of influence is a key.

    I met with an SEO marketing person yesterday about my blog.  It’s not really high on any organic search list.  Before the meeting I Googled “brand planning” and was at the top of page 5.  He wanted me to pay him a thousand a month but could do something for $500.  I needed to have more calls to action, more free offer boxes, more this, more that, meta flah flah flah.  He was right, but also wrong. Too much flah, flah, flah and I begin got lose that trust mantle Ashton talks about.  “But how many inquiries are you getting a day?” said he.  Not many. But that’s okay for now.  My approach trust building is not through the algorithm.  Not though black hat search or white hat search (Call too action: If you want to know what white hat search is, leave a comment or email me). I tend the garden every day.

    For me — and I’m in a funny business — I sell by not over-selling and then making it easy to contact me.  I think this is good advice for everyone on the web…with or without a commercial enterprise.  That’s why Ashton has over 6M followers. He’s easy to contact. Ish. Peace!

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