Archive for April, 2008

Yes, that is a lion. In a sidecar. Pulling G’s with some real entertainers. Not a warning sign in sight. Now that’s entertainment. Line forms to the left.

Actually, the setup was a wooden barrel board wall of the “Thrillarena” or “Wall of Death” It’s called Motor Drome Riding and it was popular in the 20s and 30s. Someone along the way said “Hey, let’s put lions in the drome” uhhhh kay… sure, that’ll bring ‘em in. And it did.

Jason Falls had me thinking about this post after I wrote it so I updated it. When you use Gimmicks, you must just keep cranking them out. You must start out with a dog in the sidecar, then a goat, then a friggin’ lion. But what do you do when the lion gets boring?

So if you’re dependent on gimmicks - keep your foot in it - cause if you slow down, you’ll be lunch.

images from thrillarena.com

Heidi Adams Cool at Case Western produced a terrific introduction to the world of social media.  Written with clarity for the beginner,  I highly recommend checking it out no matter what your level of experience.

Insight:

“Of course the trick with this is the same as it always has been; word-of-mouth referrals are driven by satisfied customers, not marketers. We can pave the way and create opportunities to make this happen more easily, but we can’t put words in people’s mouths or on their social networks.”

Seth Godin recently wrote about how Digg and StumbleUpon can send (boatloads of) unfocused visitors to a site, and how people should probably focus on other things rather than trying to maximize this number.

My feelings are that the number of visits (and votes) you obtain from a strong social media presence have long-term benefits that transcend the spikes and that these deserve a discussion.

Authority Influences Search Influences Increasingly Targeted Traffic Over Time.

People use search to find what they’re after 85% of the time and top search results are obtained through authority and trust. Google ranks things based on its best guess of trust and authority, as does Yahoo!, Live.com, Technorati, and del.icio.us. We want links and votes from important groups of people for their click-traffic, but also so that we rank better in the search engines.

Social media opens doors that other forms of marketing cannot.

Godin may not be considering that this unfocused traffic is just the frothy, chaotic front of a wave after which important, difficult-to-acquire links follow. To use Godin’s terminology, it’s then the “sneezers” who use social media’s ability to sift out important stuff using crowd wisdom (votes in this case.) If you have remarkable stuff, social media can float you through “the dip” of today’s river of news in a way you’d never achieve otherwise.

In Purple Cow, Godin wrote:

• Sell what people are buying
• Focus on the early adopters and sneezers
• Make it remarkable enough for them to pay attention
• Make it easy for them to spread
• Let it work its own way to the mass market.

Sneezers have established trust in their community online - at varying levels - in sort of a steep tail. They resist marketing efforts to influence their words and protect their reputations. Words and Links from these people usually cannot be bought at any price, and they’ve probably forgotten what a press release looks like. They have earned, through authority granted by others, a place in the search engines’ hearts.

So take a fictional moderately popular Digg post that brings traffic to your site…

• Short term Digg Visits: 5000
• Short Term Exit Rate: 90%
• Short term Conversions: 0 (dry those tears, it gets better)
• Rank for your favored keyword on Google before: 40
• Short term Influencer Visits: 200
• Influencer links: 5
• Subsequent sub-influencer links: 50
• Visits (over time) via the influencer links: 5000 targeted visitors.
• Visits (over time) via increased search rank: 5000 somewhat targeted visitors.
• Digg who?

Okay, you can beat up my numbers but the point I want to make is that this traffic is a means to an end, not the end itself. By the time you’re seeing the effects of your work on social media, you have long fallen off of the front page of Digg, and your Stumbleupon traffic may be in the dumpster. The beat goes on.

To sum up…A popular Digg/Stumble/Reddit post has these effects:

• A often dramatic spike in traffic - with a high bounce rate. Noisy.
• Attention granted by influencers who use Digg/Stumble votes as a filter on what’s important.
• Improved search rank due to persistent authority linkages from relevant conversations elsewhere.
• A sustained increase in relevant, high quality traffic through the direct-click traffic of the new links found in the long-tail of referrals from influencers.
• A slow increase in trust for your site as an authority by the influencers (they may look more closely at your next post / product / idea. Darren Rowse calls this a “Digging Culture”
• Increased attention via RSS and newsletter subscriptions.

Anytime someone mentions “Digg” and “Conversions” in the same paragraph, I get nervous. So let me know what you think about this explanation.

So Seth, from a big fan, I say to you that silly traffic might not be that silly after all.

Illustration by geishaboy500 used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

Ok, it’s the middle of the night and I’m sitting in a rock hard airport chair, but my mind is on the takeaways that I have from the SMX Social Media conference. Much of this I knew, but it was heavily re-enforced.

The bigest benefit, as with most of these small shows, is the contacts and friendships I have started or continued. I think the best in the world were at the show, and for clients who seek out these people, huge success awaits.

While I think the overall presentation quality was high, my favorites were Randy Woods‘ well-grounded discussion and Rob Key’s insightful discussion about tribal culture and Second Life. I was also impressed by Brent Csutoras’ discussion about link building.

But the client-marketer relationship was the one thing that bugged me most. Nobody seemed keen on sharing information about this essential element of the SMM profession, yet I could definitely sense lots of folks were seeking it. I often wonder if conference organizers should think more about the harsh, real-world realities of getting programs like these in place. Or perhaps there’s just no way to wrap that up into a single presentation.

20 Take-Aways:

1. Social Media Marketing (SMM) is terrific for link building, not for conversions. This is a major change for many marketers to internalize and incorporate into their offering.
2. It takes a special kind of client/consultant relationship to make SMM work. It’s closer to organic SEO work than any other web marketing in the “grind-it-out” nature.
3. SMM cannot be sold as a one-off service or “by the campaign.” Too many external variables mean you have to execute many campaigns over time to hedge your bets. To sell as a one-off service is to invite failure and client ill-will.
4. SMM requires incredible organization on the part of the marketer. Both to keep track of a campaign and to make sure not to break out of acceptable tribal ‘participation.’
5. SMM link building requires a keen eye for linkbait that relates to your marketing goals and finesse to make sure it’s not overtly sales-like in presentation.
6. Vertical social networks should be an important part of any campaign. Smaller numbers of highly enthusiastic players are using these sites.
7. Explaining SMM to clients is going to be very, very difficult. But those who have an inherent curiosity and willingness to participate will earn a strong competitive advantage.
8. Having a strong network of friends is essential to SMM, and that network requires daily nurturing.
9. Wikipedia makes Digg look like a baby traffic wise, and there are opportunities…but…
10. Wikipedia sessions feel a lot like COBOL classes. Even if the people are smart, that whole thing requires a really strong level of patience and persistence. But 5m+ page views daily makes marketers salivate.
11. People need to create policies to outline who owns SMM profiles, what happens when there is a change of hands.
12. To succeed in social network marketing, plugged-in individuals who know the “tribe’s habits” will win. 20-year PR veterans need not apply if they are still in the mindset of the press release or are unwilling to spend time participating before promoting. Plenty of people have got in trouble.
13. There are a lot of really smart people in SMM. Compared to other forms of marketing, the growth and opportunity aligns with trends towards authenticity, word-of-mouth, and making up for short consumer attention spans.
14. One of my greatest worries is that clients will write off SMM while their competition runs with it. I worry because catch-up is a tough game to play in SMM and you can’t rush it.
15. Even one SPAM slip-up in a social network can ruin an entire branding or SMM effort. Social networks have zero tolerance for screw-ups. Re-building a profile can take 6 months or more of hard work.
16. SMM is risky if your brand is fragile or an easy target - putting your brand out in the public eye requires awareness of the cost-benefits. Almost always it’s worth it - that is if you sell a decent product, but you will need to weather the storm of negatives that will come your way with skill.
17. Advertising agencies don’t get it, for the most part.
18. SEO/SMM are joined at the hip for many things and a link building effort can stack up dozens if not hundreds of authority links…but direct-click traffic itself, independent of the SEO/link advantages, can be significant.
19. Participation in social networks - real participation - is a requirement, and is very time consuming. I left wondering who will pay for this time.
20. Red-eyes suck.

A few other places to get SMX social-media related information. Add more to comments and I’ll add to this list with ‘follow’

Coverage of the Jason Calacanis and Jimmy Wales panel
More coverage of the Social Search: The Human Challengers
Social Media Marketing Essentials
Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites
Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites
A Marketer’s Guide to Social Bookmarking

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• Allow at least 3 days for approval.
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If you have questions regarding the status of your application, call VR at (866) 683-7842 6am-6pm PST. Don’t call/email me about it, because I won’t know.

Note: The free offer is only for the excellent Vertical Response email marketing product, not for any consulting services.

Image by DryIcons used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

Are posted on flickr.  Enjoy

Where’s the Twitter-based event meetup application? I’ve not seen one, but until then here is a work-around that does some of the goodness. If you’re using Twitter on a mobile device and have a mobile feedreader, this is for you.

Even though many people I follow on twitter will be at the same events as me, there are always lots of folks who will be at conferences and meet ups I don’t know. I have found that Summize’s new Twitter search is a great way to get those folks into my Twitter stream - or at least follow them during the event using my mobile - provided they’ve tweeted at least once about the show or plans to attend.

The process couldn’t be easier.

1. Hit Summize.com and click on the “Twitter Search” link.

2. Add keywords related to your event. For SMX Social Media I added “SMX” because it was a nice short acronym I felt would capture most action related to this event. If anyone were tweeting about it, they’d include this. If you didn’t have such a convenient one, you may need to include the venue name, etc. (curious that there is no SMX Social twitter user we could all follow and send @’s to “where’s the party at?”. this would at least make backchatter more fun.)

3. After you search Summize, click on the upper-right side link for “Feed for this Query” link. For SMX Social Media I used this.

4. Drop that into your favorite mobile feedreader, such as google reader or newsgator go.

5. When you see people tweeting about the event, but haven’t yet met them, you can head over to twitter and follow them. This serves to get you into their Twitter stream and to let them know that you’re interested in meeting them.

Now, as event-related stuff happens, you’ll be in the loop and it’ll make socializing that much easier.

I will be heading out to SMX Social Media and SMX Advanced this year, and would love to catch up. I will not be liveblogging, rather will be hoping to gather ideas from those of you in the business.

I will not be waring my hat. But come shake my hand - meeting folks is the best part of the event.

If you’re going, fire over a Tweet [scottclark] or comment and be sure to say hi at the show.

Photo (me, Bruce and Cristine) from last year’s shows.

This was a lot of fun this week, and I was thrilled to be chatting (yelling - the bar was a bit noisy) with folks about blogging, social media and search at Social Media Club Louisville. This group was especially (and refreshingly) straightforward about what works - no bull. It gets tiresome hearing blog-cheerleaders go on all day without any real direction. Also some great advice about writing evergreen content versus news, about post frequency, and link building. Here are the best videos from the event, which you can hear just fine :-) On the video.  Also check out the photos from the gathering.

• Chris Pearson - Personified.com (Best Damn Blog On The Planet)
• Rob May - Coconut Headsets.com (formerly of BusinessPundit.com)
• Michelle Jones - ConsumingLouisville.com
• David Finch - DavidSFinch.com, BusinessPundit.com
• Moderated by - Jason Falls, SocialMediaExplorer.com

My email to the client representative for a $10k portal software said:

“The edit RSS page for the portal is giving a page not found error for [I entered url] - what do you think would cause that? Thanks, Scott”

The reply from their customer service email:

“We don’t answer questions like that here, and don’t forward things to the support team as a policy. You need to fill in a support ticket for this. [link]”

The link was to a form that had 54 fields. I felt compelled to let them know who the customer was and went on with my day, pissed. It was all I could think of when we had a budget meeting about whether we should continue using the portal.  We didn’t renew.

Was this kind of behavior the reason we cancelled a $12k/year support arrangement? Not sure, but I certainly wasn’t in the best mood when it came time for me to voice my recommendation for the renewal.

I know support ticket systems pretty well in the small-enterprise variety. I have had a few when I was doing hosting and have interacted with probably 20 different ones. My company has since moved to basecamp to give things a more human touch, and basecamp has recently followed some of the advice in this post. I am guilty of the things in the past. But to you, beloved reader, I will say I see the errors of my ways.

Let me be the first to say that if you have 100s of clients, selling a commodity item such as hosting, I recognize the workflow issues you’re facing. We all need to move support issues through the system as fast as possible when margins are razor thin. But if the support systems creators were a little more aware of the non-tech and/or busy customer community, perhaps things could improve.

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