Social Media is the new journal of personal history

Every historic movie about an individual begins with a diary. That written record of the person's life, challenges, and perspectives. Before paper, we had cave drawings, and tales written in pottery. Somewhere in the 20th century we seemed to lose this tradition of story-telling and leaving a legacy for the next generations. Very few people saw the passing of their grandparents and great-grandparents followed by a discovery of a journal that gave more insight into who they were and what they thought about.

With the loss of that written word, I feel we lose a bit of where we came from, and who we can be. The fast-paced consumerism lifestyle prevents us from stepping back from the world and writing down our perspectives. Even when we find the time, we worry if something is politically correct to say, and we keep that thought to ourselves where it will die. Sure, some thoughts should be kept to oneself and be forgotten.

Social networks can be that written and visual history of your life, which can be shared and remembered. Let your innermost thoughts spread for everyone to enjoy and get to know you better. Show the younger generations to come that our challenges are nothing new, and that they can learn from what was done before them to make the world better. Don't fear what you post will be read by your family, embrace the fact that they can get to know you better and be part of your life.

And perhaps, one day in the future a movie will be made about you which begins with the reading of a Twitter stream. Be immortal.

Twitter: value or wasteful?

You've heard the research, 40% of all tweets are useless babble, and social networks are being blamed for school-age kids' poor use of grammar. It is the constant joke in the media that all tweets must include "LOL" & "OMG." But is Twitter really useless?

Do you measure your television viewing because of the crap on TV, or never listen to the radio because there is a station you don't like? Writing off Twitter because of some people's updates makes as much sense as not using television advertising because of a program you don't like. I'm currently looking through the DirecTV guide, and out of the hundreds of channels to choose from, there may be 4-5 that I will ever select to watch. Meanwhile, I have run across hundreds of people on Twitter that are worth following. So which one is really the useless medium?

Just like any form of media, there are many different users, messages, and audiences. The key is to measure every media by the value it provides, not the irrelevant noise.

Losing control in the social media jungle

For any company who resists getting involved in social media, because they don't want to lost control of their brand, you should know that you are likely being talked about out there already.

If you don't establish your own presence, that doesn't shield you from being on the internet. It only means you have no idea what is being said about you. People have always talked to each other about brands, but now we can monitor much of that conversation. Jacob Morgan has a great post titled Do companies have control over their brands that you should read.

Get criticized, respond correctly to your critics, and use that exchange to make a better business. It's another tool in your toolbox, you may as well use it to build something great. I'm not telling everyone to start a Twitter account, or a Facebook fan page, those are not for everyone. But there are many other directories, user review sites, and other ways to connect with your customers. Google yourself, see what happens.

Keep your fans & subscribers

Every day we see or hear ads from companies that want us to sign up to receive emails, SMS alerts, facebook updates, tweets, and more. But what does the consumer get in return? Sales pitches, irrelevant updates, and repeated messages from their many methods of advertising.

The value exchange is out of balance. The advertisers get what they want, but too often the consumers don't often get anything of significant value in exchange for the opt-in. Companies assume that when people opt-in, that they want to hear everything from that brand. This may not always be the case, which results in unsubscribes and consumers who just ignore and delete.

When a customer opts-in, this is not traditional advertising where you broadcast the same message everywhere and hope for a small percentage to act on it. This is your time to show these customers you truly value them. Offer your text-message subscribers something more than the general public will receive. Give your "fans" a reason to follow your facebook updates. Most importantly, encourage these opt-in customers to talk about you and share with their friends.

It's about building business, right? So make these fans of your business fanatics. Don't just buy your time with them until they give up on you.

Social is the key word in "social media"

You go to a party and there is someone you haven't met before. This guy spends hours talking about how great he is, putting others down when their opinion is different than his, and even outright lying to make himself look better. I think we would all agree this is antisocial behavior, and this is exactly how many individuals and organizations handle their social media strategy.

There are many involved in antisocial media, they may even offer a few shallow incentives to get more friends, fans, and followers. But they never listen to those people who have agreed to be part of the conversation with them.

A couple tips to stay out of antisocial media:

• - Offer your fans something without worrying what you are going to get in return. Whether it be advice, a discount, anything to be a resource. People know when they're being sold to, and would rather have someone being a resource than a salesperson.
• - Be a part of the conversation, don't just use social media to advertise to everyone, it is a medium that requires being a part of the party.
• - Know that you will be criticized, and train employees and other customers how to react to criticism. Never allow an employee to criticize those who comment on your blog or other pages. You cannot put out a fire with more fire. Reach out to the upset customer, and if there is no pleasing them, just let it go.
• - Be human, a business is made up of people. Your customers are people. Everyone should be on the same level, rather than a hierarchy that puts the business on top. We rely on customers for our living, so they are just as much a part of the party as those who are hosting.

Think about others, and truly be their friend.

No such thing as bad publicity?

I have sat in many meetings, having laughs about ideas that seem hysterical when proposed. These times are great for building teams, generating ideas, and loosening up everyone's stress levels. However, the ideas that have everyone laughing often need to die in the meeting.

We want our customers to be entertained, but we don't want them to be offended.

Now I am not one to avoid all risks, and there are situations when reaching your target audience may result in upsetting people outside of your target. Not in a blatant way, but messages cannot be perfectly safe for everyone. What I am talking about is sending out a message to customers that will back-fire. The old adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity" is a lie. Bad publicity can destroy a business.

Today's example comes from the Utah Flash, a professional development league basketball team who has a very enthusiastic owner. Looking at some of the activity he has been up to shows someone who is willing to take some risks and think outside of the box. More sports teams need to be like this. It is not a great time to be a sports-owner, as many markets simply cannot afford the big dollars to sell out stadiums at premium prices. I am not poking fun at the situation, rather showing how good intentions and enthusiastic marketing can lead us to bad decisions.

It all started with Bryon Russell calling out Michael Jordan, challenging him to a one-on-one match to show who was the better player. Sports commentators have been mocking this suggestion for months, but Utah Flash owner Brandt Anderson decided to capitalize on this media spectacle. They put a challenge to the hall of fame basketball player, and told fans of the plan to have a Jordan vs. Russell half-time show at the season opener.

While there were no definitive promises that Mr. Jordan would be there, the game sold out. There was also a staged "sighting" of the legendary player in the Provo area, where a look-a-like was dining with Men-In-Black security entourage by his side. At half-time it became obvious that there was to be no real Michael Jordan appearance, and many fans walked out.

Mr. Anderson posted an apology on his blog that evening, stating that the "challenge didn't go like any of us hoped." By Tuesday morning, there were 55 comments to the post, most critical of the stunt, and many demanding refunds. In reading the comments, it is apparent that many negative comments were deleted. Likely profanity-laden, and I do not condone Mr. Anderson for deleting that type of content from his blog, I would likely do the same in his position. The point is, this upset people. It did exactly the opposite of what a marketing person is responsible for doing. Just because something was risky, does not make it brilliant.

Scorecard:

Great idea to propose the challenge. Get your name out there, participate in the world of sports entertainment. Had you approached Michael and he turned you down, you're not out anything for trying.

Great job of posting your blog apology. You didn't want thousands of angry fans. As you said, you wanted a season of fun. It was a bold move, that could have worked had there not been the outright deception.

Bad ideas: getting peoples' hopes up. You knew there would be no MJ, which is evident by the phony sighting. Think of this like any product, you can tell people about the attributes of your product, how it tastes, what it contains, what it can really do for customers. You cannot and should not imply something that is not going to happen. It is illegal. While there was not implicit promises that MJ would be there, and therefore you're not likely to be fined, sued, or otherwise punished, it is a bad road to walk along using deception.

Another bad idea: calling this "viral" marketing. Rather than the positive buzz-word that viral has become, people will be talking about this like it is a virus no one wants. You do not just want people talking about your product, you want to connect good-feelings with your product. No one ever got rich by selling the product no one wants.

My message to Brandt, please keep taking risks, be bold, and put the fun into sports. But get someone on your team who is a seasoned veteran at making people happy. My offer stands, I will take on the Utah Flash as a pro-bono client. No bait & switch, no strings, no hoax, and no imitators.

Are consumers gaining power?

A report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council states that out of the 91% of consumers who opt-out or unsubscribe from email marketing, 46% are driven to brand defection because the messages simply are not relevant. Don't worry about those who unsubscribe? Perhaps you should be a bit concerned about those people who hit the unsubscribe button. They may be opting-in to your competition permanently.

A blog post from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, provides additional interesting insight into the future if you read between the lines. Facebook originally created networks by region and school. While the community was small, this worked to achieve what people wanted. It connected those students who wanted a way to connect and communicate to others around them. Now that seemingly everyone is on Facebook, people do not necessarily want to share their information with their bosses, family, and advertisers. The connection of living in the same region is not necessarily relevant to all consumers.

What do these things have in common? Consumers exercising their voice to make real changes in new media. This is not a new concept, it is likely that consumers have been defecting due to irrelevant messages since the first time a cobbler hammered an advertisement on a lamp post. This puts some information in our hands that we need to use in communicating.

Traditional wisdom was to create a message and broadcast it to the largest number of people possible. It was known that not every person would react positively (make a purchase) to the communication, and only in the event of accidentally insulting people would that communication result in negative reactions. What this information shows is that a very large number of consumers may actually gain a preference for the competing brand if they feel your communications are irrelevant.

Putting it all together now. Facebook is an example that shows people want to communicate and belong to a community. They are willing to become "fans" of their favorite brands, join in discussion groups about products and services, but that does not mean they want to connect to everything. Consumers who actually opt-in to communications from a brand they use, then defect to a competitor because of irrelevant communications shows that what we say and do can have positive and negative effects. Even if the communication was simply an offer that was not relevant to that consumer.

What you say matters. A lot. It is not safe to assume that you can bombard people's inboxes, television sets, Facebook pages, Twitter streams, etc. with any message, as often as you want. People watching may not just unsubscribe or change the channel. You may be sending them right into the arms of your competition.

Every time you communicate with your customers, think carefully about what you want to say. Make an offer that people will appreciate. Be relevant.

We don't want to hear from you

Companies have been communicating via e-mail for over a decade, so why do customers get so excited when they are contacted via twitter? Why do we crave companies with a social media presence? Because we are not used to getting a response, and we have been trained to believe email is a one-way street from companies.

One simple mistake: Do-not-reply@CompanyWhoWillNotAnswer.com

First things first, if you email customers you need to dump the "Do not reply" addresses. Also, you must make it easy for customers to contact you, and you need to reply to them.

When a company has an active Twitter account or Facebook fan page, it makes them approachable and customers like to feel like they are on even ground with the company they do business with. When they see Do Not Reply in every email, the message they receive is "we want to talk at you, but will not listen if you have anything to say."

With that said, if your social media plan is just to "build a Facebook fan page" or get on twitter, please don't. Your plan should be how you plan to communicate with your customers. Not just set a page, and forget it. Customers will either learn that you don't listen there either, or they will just forget you are there.

Just like with all advertising and marketing, why spend money telling people about your company if your potential customers will just feel disappointed once they find you.

Shhh, we're trying to get publicity

If you want people to talk about your business, you need to give them something to talk about. Seems pretty simple. However, some do not seem to understand this.

A recent example of this was seen on Twitter when Steve Murphy began his @Twakeup_Now campaign. On October 23 we began seeing tweets telling us to get ready to Twakeup on October 27. The tweets were coming from users around the country who were asked to help lead their community to this event. However, they were sworn to secrecy as to what the event was. Of course, this led to followers of these individuals to comment that they are tired of being spammed with Twakeup tweets.

No details and no hints as to the topic. When visiting the website www.twakeup.com only revealed a list of the people tweeting about Twakeup, called pod leaders. It may have created interest among some people, but many of the replies I saw were just of annoyance and questioning the "pod leader" what they were talking about.

Remember, spam is something unwanted by the reader. Twitter followers will always find topics they know nothing about to be spam, especially if there is no method to find out what is being talked about.

Four days later, it is revealed that Twakeup is a fundraiser for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Great cause, but a few fatal flaws in this campaign. The biggest, if your intent is to raise money for a charitable cause, why not just reveal that on October 23 when the Twitter account is created and website put up? Even if the infrastructure had not been created to accept donation on the website, you will get more attention if you tell people what to expect.

Most would not call a awareness to support cancer research spam, but when they do not know what @Twakeup_Now is, it is just spam.

Keeping the intent quiet for four days simply does the opposite of what is desired. Instead of getting people excited for the event and making the general public want to be a part of it, these individuals frustrated their followers and failed to capitalize on building word of mouth. People will talk about your product, if you tell them what it is. Keeping secrets from the public will not help build momentum.

By the end of the first day, they tweeted that they were almost to $1000. Four days later, the tweets revealed that bigger donations were coming in and they were up to $5000. Had Mr. Murphy been up-front to the public about the intentions of Twakeup_Now, that first day may have brought in bigger donations and they would not have had to wait for four days to get to $5000. The potential was there, but he stunted the potential to make Twakeup even more effective. Lesson here, if you want people to be aware of your product, get it out there as soon as possible. Don't keep it a secret and hope people will become interested in mystery meat.

The bigger the company, the bigger the blunder

Toyota stumbled into a mess with a launch of their new 4-Runner website. (I imagine this site link will soon be broken, since they're going to need to rectify the situation). To set the mood of wildlife for their SUV brand, they looked to photographers on Flickr to provide photography for the microsite. They found several great photographs which were used, unfortunately they never asked the photographers for permission.

Michael Calanan (a talented photographer & friend) posted his concern on Twitter the evening of Tuesday, November 3. The conversation towards @Toyota must have got their attention, as they promptly tweeted Wednesday morning to the photographers involved.

This is why your company needs an experienced marketer on staff. Real marketing directors have an understanding of intellectual property laws. Photographs, fonts, illustrations, and other design elements found online are not free for you to use, especially for commercial purposes. Further, marketing personnel are meant to understand consumers. First and foremost, the responsibility of marketing is to know what motivates people, and how they will react. Not knowing that professional photographers would certainly notice the increased traffic on their Flickr pages, and be upset about someone using their work without contacting them is a fatal mistake. If they fail to understand this, do they understand what Toyota customers actually want from their vehicle? There may not be a correlation, but it begs to be asked.

If I was to guess, I would say it was not malicious intent of Toyota to steal these photographer's work, but was a lack of intellectual property understanding. That does not excuse what they have done. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense. Whether you are a multi-billion dollar company, or a small boutique, you need to respect the property rights of others. If you are unsure of what you can or cannot do, ask for help from a real expert.

Does the type matter?

Typophiles have been up in arms over a furniture retailer and its choice of typeface. If you're missing the controversy, type "verdana" into Google to see how much talk is circulating about Ikea's choice of fonts for their new catalog and in-store signs.

If you're not familiar with the typeface, Verdana is a font developed for easy on-screen reading at very small size. It's not an attractive typeface, and immediately drew massive criticism by designers, marketers, and type developers.

Ikea, please get rid of Verdana.

But according to Ikea spokesperson Camilla Meiby, "We're surprised. But I think it's mainly experts who have expressed their views, people who are interested in fonts. I don't think the broad public is that interested."

True, designers, typophiles, and marketing experts will know why they do not like this move, but just because the general public does not know what the typeface is does not mean their opinion does not matter. By the end of the week I began seeing comments on Twitter from people who visited Ikea and mentioned the signs in the store were unpleasant.

According to the AP, Ikea said that in order to reach many people in many different ways, it needed a font that works in both digital and print media. Read between the lines and we see the novice brand management mistake that nearly every marketing firm makes. The belief that design consistency is brand management. While it is important to have consistent elements to your brand design, it is your product (which includes customer experience) that matters most. Put another way, Ikea was more concerned with a consistent use of a typeface rather than asking their customers what they like.

Does typeface matter? Yes. Your printed materials need to be pleasant to the consumer. First & foremost, your customers need to be happy. There are elements of your design that should be consistent so that customers make the connection and feel the trust you have established with your brand. But getting wrapped up about the ease of website text and trying to make it consistent across all mediums is ignoring aesthetics.

Just because your customers are not graphic designers, does not mean their tastes don't matter. Never underestimate your customers.

In your face...book!

Can Facebook be the Twitter killer? Recent changes have suggested that is the new direction for the popular social networking site. Tweetdeck users can even combine their friend's status updates with their twitter stream. But is this a good thing? Is Twitter being killed?

Doubtful.

First, they are different products. Facebook grew as the safer, cleaner alternative to MySpace. It started slow, with an emphasis on privacy. Originally restricted to college students, it still maintains more privacy as you have to be a member of Facebook to browse the users. Advertisements are minimal, and the primary use of the service was communicating to your friends. 

Along came "social media marketers" who embraced the platform, speak loudly, and gather thousands of "friends." This is not inherently a bad thing, as people are still opting in who they consider to be a "friend" and has access to their family pictures and conversations on the wall. The downside to this, is the death of what a friend is on Facebook, which slowly whithers away the engagement that people have with the service. When they are no longer communicating with their close friends, Facebook is losing that valuable data they can mine.

But recent months have shown that Facebook is more concerned with making a more public service, and reaching out for devices that investors and advertisers love, yet users do not. There was the change in the Terms of Service which ignited outrage among users who spoke loud and clear "change this back, or delete my account!" Rest assured that they have only reversed that policy to think of an easier way to introduce it so people will not resist.

Now, the most recent change was not just a design change, but an entire usability and focus change which makes Facebook look more like... Twitter. Also, speculations of search tools and other "enhancements" meant to more closely mimic Twitter are showing the likely future. Add to that, the overwhelming noise going on with the countless apps and you see this:

The Social Media experts are quick to point out that users can block apps, and customize the information that comes through your news feed, but the point is that people used Facebook because it was easier than e-mailing and keeping a personal web page. They do not want work.

The outrage is sure to keep stirring as Facebook plans more monetization, and less user enhancements. Is Mark Zuckerberg concerned with the customer base being unhappy? No, he has actually said that companies who listen to their customers are stupid. 

So what's the score? Privacy: disappearing. User base: increasingly upset. CEO: doesn't care.

That doesn't sound like an up-and-coming market leader.

Facebook sold itself to the 185+ million users as one thing, and is now trying to convert those people over to something else. Good luck. This brings us to what Facebook seems to want to be: Twitter.

Twitter has never sold itself as a place for privacy. It is near digital anarchy. But that is exactly what their user base seems to want. It is helpful to many because of the engaged real-time user base is always talking. Simply, they are different products. Facebook is still growing subscribers, but users are tending to be less engaged with the service. In the meantime, Twitter is growing quickly, and their users simply do not shut up. Twitter has a very high engagement. One of the best comparisons I have seen about these two services:

Am I saying that Facebook will fail soon, and Twitter will take over? No. Facebook will continue to exist in some form or fashion, but what will be missing as they continue down their current path will be the engagement of the users. They will survive, but they will never be Twitter.

Twitter, providing they can maintain funding, will continue to grow and evolve. The future is wide open to them because they have never claimed to be something they are not. The user base is highly engaged, and has been guiding them to be the service they want it to be. 

If you call yourself a marketer, you must remember first and foremost: It's all about the brand/customer relationship.