Category: Social Media

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Experts & Gurus No, Professionals Yes

When I first opened Shankmann’s rant entitled “Why I Will Never, Ever Hire a ‘Social Media Expert,’” I vowed not to dignify it with a response or a link…. D’oh!

I’m no social media expert, but as an SEO professional I know what is like to work ethnically and methodically in an industry with a sometimes-shoddy reputation. Like social media, SEO has its fly-by-nights and pretenders, but it also has experienced professionals with real results to boast. Instead of tearing down an industry, we need to educate businesses on what constitutes expertise in an industry.

Hint: It’s not calling yourself an “expert.” On that point I agree with Shankmann. You would never expect to make a friend by walking up and saying that you’re super cool, because friendship is in the actions you take. You have to prove you’re super cool and friend-worthy. It’s the same with social media, SEO and every other profession. Prove your expertise, don’t claim it on a business card. Ick.

So what constitutes proof? Results. Period. We’re talking results that matter, here. Not the creation of a Twitter account or acquisition of x number of Facebook friends. Those are nifty, but they don’t pay the bills. Show me results in engagement, brand recognition, traffic generation, sales, referrals — whatever the true goal of the campaign was, the goal that contributes to the business’ bottom line.

The true value a social media professional brings to the table is found in his creativity, his network, and his ability to plan and execute all the details of the campaign to contribute actual business value in the business’ marketing mix.

Which brings me to the second point on which I agree with Shankmann: Social media is not a stand-alone, bolt-on project to mark of your list. Like all marketing channels it has to be integrated with the overall marketing strategies and plans to be successful.

Social media is like every other marketing discipline — anyone can do it, but few do it really well. I can send out emails to a list, but that does not make me an email marketing expert. I can dump keywords into AdWords, but that doesn’t make me a paid search expert. I can whip up a nifty banner in Photoshop but that doesn’t make me a graphic designer. Seriously, people, only proven results would convince you of expertise in any of these areas, not a business card merrily proclaiming “Expert.” If you don’t apply that same common sense to working with social media consultants… Well, that’s just a bad business decision.

Do I cringe when I see the title of guru or expert? You bet. Do I wish “experts” would stop overpromising and underdelivering because it tarnishes our industries and makes it harder for true professionals to do what they do best? Absolutely. But if businesses continue to hire on hype rather than meaningful expertise and demonstrated results, who’s really to blame?

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

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WordPress Decides to Share with the Hosted Masses

Folks with WordPress-hosted blogs now get to share with the big boys. Yesterday, WordPress announced the ability to include a selection of popular sharing icons in their hosted blogs.

wordpress sharing icons

Previously this was only easily done with JavaScript applications on blogs hosted on other servers. I for one had a superkludgy Word Doc saved that included a snippet of HTML in which I would search-and-replaced URL & post title and then paste the resulting mess into each post by hand. How very 1996. Let’s forget for a moment that I’m foolish for not hosting my blog on my own server for various reasons of SEO goodness and control, and think about the positive impact on the multitudes of bloggers out there hosted at WordPress.

The Good:

  • Add other sharing icons: I added Sphinn. As long as you can figure out the URL required to trigger a post, you can add a link, the anchor text and the 16×16 icon of your choice. Very cool.

Could Be Better:

  • Header styling: I added a header in my blog’s style above the icons: “Share Web PieRat, Matey.” I could have used the tool to add this text, but there’s no control of the styling. It’s inline with the icons, plain old bolded black. Boring! I’ll have to do that manually in each post, but I like the look of it much better.
  • Positioning: Only at the bottom of the post/page? I’d love the ability to have a ribbon at the top of the post as well for folks who don’t make it all the way to the bottom. Sharing is sometimes done before full digestion, as much as we’d like to think that readers are absorbing our every word.

I’m sure you can do both of these with the custom CSS upgrade, but I haven’t played with that yet. Seriously, though, how many folks who host a blog on WordPress’s servers are well versed in CSS? I’d bet that default hosting and less familiarity with HTML/CSS go hand in hand. Anyway. Offering the icons to folks of lesser technical experience (or time to manage our own hostings and technology) is a great step for WordPress. Thanks guys.

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

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My Geeky Valentine: Candy Heart Link Bait

The folks at Necco developed a sweet link bait campaign for Valentine’s Day to celebrate the introduction of new social messages like “TWEET ME” and “TEXT ME” — design your own Sweethearts conversation hearts.

This fun little bit of link bait gives you the power to say whatever you want in your candy heart conversation! Feeling romantic? Bitter? Sad? Witty? Sweet? No problem, say it with digital candy in public on Twitter or in private via e-mail.

Dear search geeks, here’s a sample Valentine for you and our favorite search engines. Try it yourself; the app is available free for the iPhone as well as at the campaign’s microsite.

From a link building standpoint, Sweethearts is putting a lot of effort into generating buzz for the app and the launch of the new candy messages on their Sweethearts Twitter profile and their Sweethearts Facebook profile. Nicely done, Sweethearts — good interaction with fans and frequent but not overly repetitive tweets and posts about the app and the launch.

The piece I see missing is consistent cross channel promotion. There’s a blog / Twitter contest that doesn’t mention the app and some strong news articles focused on the new candy messages that may or may not mention the app but don’t include links to it. So there’s a some promotion of the candy and the new messages happening, but it’s not being tied consistently together to also promote the link bait outside of Twitter and Facebook. In addition, there’s no mention of the app on the official Necco Sweethearts product page, or the games page, or the news page. The Necco homepage does have a large image feature and link, but that’s the sole mention as far as I can see.

The app is one piece of the launch’s promotional campaign, but it’s an inconsistently mentioned piece. From a link building standpoint, the app represents sweet link bait. But it needs promotion to succeed as link bait. Without promotion, link bait is like a tree falling in the woods. If no one sees it fall or stumbles over it later, it may as well not exist. Which means it won’t drive the quantity of links that it could with stronger promotion. Stronger ties with press relations, online marketing for the necco.com site, e-mail campaigns and other marketing channels would strengthen consistency of promotion for the app and naturally generate more links.

I only stumbled over the app as I was tweeting something else. I happened to notice the small suggested app link on my Twitter homepage and clicked it because I love Sweethearts. They were my favorite Valentine’s candy as a kid. The Twitter link is a boon, but it rotates with 15-20 other links. It’s not a persistent, visible presence to drive eyeballs or link juice to the app’s microsite.

Maybe the app wasn’t designed as a link building tactic. That seems likely since it has no links to pass link popularity in to any other Necco or Sweethearts web content or social profiles. I find that extremely surprising. The app developer gets a link, iTunes gets a link for the iPhone app store, but Sweethearts doesn’t link to its own site or profiles. OK, perhaps SEO and link building weren’t taken into account at the beginning. But since Necco has already spent the resources to dream up and develop the app, why not link back to the primary Necco site, promote the app more strongly with the promotion they’re already doing for the new messages launch, and get more buzz and link popularity for the campaign’s cost?

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

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Cars vs Greeting Cards: Critique of Social Media Campaigns

I’m really looking forward to tracking the progress of two social media campaigns currently in progress, one complex and one simple.

Smart & Simple
American Greetings has launched a fun and easy Twitter Valentine’s Day campaign that asks followers to tweet a response to 14 daily questions and tag them with #LoveAG. Each day one winner will be chosen to receive $350 in gift cards.

Today’s question: “You’re a Grammy Award winner (like our beloved Taylor Swift) & you’re writing a love song-what’s the chorus?” Horrifying, humiliating, horrendous … but I admit I did submit my own awful chorus. Yesterday was “What does it feel like to fall in love?” Who knows what tomorrow will be, but I’ll be checking in to see.

 

That’s the entire campaign! Simple, engaging, brilliant! No content creation, no media development, no promotional costs. Just a good idea, $4,900 in gift cards, and the daily discipline and creativity for 14 days to tweet like crazy on the same topic without sounding bored or repetitive.

Could it be better? Even the best campaigns can be better in hindsight. The contest comes from the corporate branch of American Greetings (http://corporate.americangreetings.com, http://twitter.com/amgreetings). The consumer ecards and interactive site has a separate site and Twitter account (http://www.americangreetings.com, http://twitter.com/ag_ecards), which sadly is not participating in its corporate sister’s Valentine’s fun. In addition, I see no mention of the contest on either the corporate or www site, though there are plenty of other Valentine’s promotions. Why not include a homepage link with a fun visual, a blurb in the e-mail newsletter, a press release, shout it across affiliated Twitter profiles and the forgotten Facebook profile? Use the channels the company controls to get more impact for the campaign’s effort.

 

Going for the Gusto
On the other side of the spectrum, Volkswagen pulls out all the stops for their “Punch Dub” campaign that spans TV advertising, Twitter, Facebook, a YouTube Channel, a Posterous blog and their primary vw.com site. They’ve created a personality (Sluggy Patterson), an online game, video content, and more, all leading up to their spot on the Super Bowl. That’s a whole lot of promotion, friends. It’s sparkly, it’s now, it’s what cool is supposed to be.

The problem is (cringe) I just don’t care. This campaign feels like it’s talking at me, not engaging with me.

OK, so maybe I’m not the target demographic for VW’s Punch Dub. I’m female, I drive a Prius, I live in a rural town in Wisconsin, I probably won’t watch the Super Bowl. Sure, I like crotchety old guys with grizzled senses of humor as much as the next gal. And it’s neato that VW created this character around Slug Bug, a cherished childhood game that admittedly still creeps into my mind as I drive. But I don’t feel compelled to log in today to see what Sluggy has to say on his blog, or video, or tweets.

That said, I’m not exactly American Greetings’ target audience either. I might buy 6 traditional greeting cards a year and I hate ecards. Sorry, AG, I’m a Snapfish photo card girl.

So why does American Greetings’ simple campaign speak to me and VW’s fancy multi-channel campaign not? For me it’s the engaging factor. It’s the invitation to participate in the fun rather than sit at a brand’s feet and wait for it to speak at me. What do you think?

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

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Social Promotion: Brands Hide Their Lights under Bushels

Once upon a time Jesus is said to have proclaimed that his followers shouldn’t “hide their light under a bushel.” Actually, I didn’t know Jesus coined the phrase until I looked it up. But 2,000 years later, in the same spirit, I proclaim that you shouldn’t hide your social networks under a bushel.

An incredible number of brands maintain profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks. Why, oh why wouldn’t they promote participation in those networks on their sites and blogs?

Let’s pick on a couple of big brands:

Old Navy: The only place on their site where they promote their Twitter and Facebook profiles is below the fold on their stores & events page. Why not as a standard part of their template near the e-mail sign up form?

Banana Republic: Old Navy’s big sister similarly hides their social profiles away on the mysteriously named Style Download page. Again, its below the fold, even though they participate in 3 networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube). Who would think of looking for Banana Republic on YouTube? If they promoted it, even passively, on their site’s template and as a standard inclusion in their e-mail marketing template think how much more exposure they would gain. The sad part is that in a couple of months they’ll likely decide that this social media thing just doesn’t work, when part of the problem could be their own lack of promotion of these channels.

DSW Shoe Warehouse: They actually have an active Twitter presence, with tweets to the media that cover them, tweets to customers and tweets to other shoe lovers. But not a single mention of their Twitter life on their ecommerce site.

It’s as if some ecommerce sites don’t want to come out of the closet on social media. They want the benefits, sure, but they don’t want to rick losing their shoppers to a medium where customers can’t directly convert. Guess what, when a customer follows your brand on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or another social network, they’re actually volunteering — opting in — to receive your message. These are your brand loyalists. What do you gain by making it harder for them to follow you on the network of their choice?

Social media promotion has upside, folks. When that brand loyalist fans you on Facebook or follows you on Twitter, she’s saying “YES tell me more.” And when you follow up on that request to tell her more with intelligent tweets about your products, charitable initiatives, industry insight into coming trends, product intelligence tidbits, as well as sales and promotions, you’re helping her feel in the know. And she’s going to crow about that to her friends and fans. As your fans and followers spread your brand’s messages to their networks, it widens your brand’s reach for at least that single communication. As others in her network like what your brand has to say they too may opt in to be in the know. And now your brand’s sphere of influence has increased as well.

Let’s look at a couple of brands who do this well:

Kansas City Steak Co: Persistent Twitter & Facebook icons in the left navigation, on every page. They’re a nice size to draw attention but not dominate, and they may even be in the first page view on some screens.

Eastbay: Persistent Twitter and Facebook icons in with the footer with their e-mail sign up on every page. I could wish they were more prominent and perhaps a bit larger, but they’re there on every page at least.

Sure, critics may say something you’d rather they didn’t on your Facebook wall or in a Twitter mention, but a brand’s visible response to that individual in a caring and professional manner reflects well on your brand. Trust me, if they’re going to say bad things on your profile, they’re saying them anyway. Your management just doesn’t know it yet. Owning your brand and promoting it via social media just gives brands the chance to respond and turn something unpleasant at least into a neutral in the eyes of the fans following the brand.

You’re spending the resources to create and maintain social profiles. Claim them loud and proud to get the benefit from them, before upper management decides that social media doesn’t work for your brand.

Image source: Poeticpixel

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.