I took part in an online group discussion yesterday on LinkedIn that started from a business owner posing the question:

“Can anyone suggest the best areas to spend marketing budgets in difficult times such as these?”

The floodgates immediately opened, and asking that question resulted in quick machine gun responses from numerous marketing types all mapping out in a few sentences how this man should spend his marketing budget. The funny thing about the responses is that with the exception of mine and about five other people, they all had two things in common:

My solution is your solution

The first thing was, not surprisingly, they all said the best use of this man’s marketing budget was to use their services, which included: SEO, taking clients out to fancy restaurants for lunch for some one on one, writing a white paper, reading someone else’s white paper, adding a blog to his site, engaging in social media marketing, purchasing lists of sales leads, producing videos of customer testimonials, and on and on.

Who are you and what do you want?

The second thing that they had in common was that none of these people offering up their services to this man had anywhere near enough information to even begin to guess what would work for this company. There was no indication of what kind of business he had, who his customers were, what his budget was, or what his marketing goals were. In other words, there was no information to build a marketing PLAN.

All of the suggestions that people made to this man could potentially be valid and useful, but how could anyone possibly know that they had THE solution for him? Without more information it really was an impossible question that could not and should not have been answered in that forum. This man believed that he could pose the question and get a marketing plan for himself for free, but all he got instead was a bunch of sales pitches from people playing out their own marketing strategy of pitching their services in LinkedIn discussion groups.

Get to know yourself

Businesses need to do some of their own homework first before they can reach out and expect to get a valid marketing strategy in place. Seeking assistance with marketing is absolutely a fine thing to do, but first you have to know at least the basics of who you are, what you are trying to achieve, who your customers are and what your budget is. Then, go to a creative marketing strategist that can build a working marketing plan with you to reach your goals. In business (and in life for that matter) the answers are usually not that easy to attain.

There are two camps that seem to be fighting each other these days. One is the old school camp of marketing and promotion and one is the new school. Paper and phones vs. digital and blogs. The conflict comes from the pure traditionalists that are closed to and a little fearful of the new and the cutting edge youngsters hooked up to their laptops and other devises who haven’t been around long enough to have ever seen the effectiveness of the old.

A friend of mine, who runs a pretty successful product design consultancy, is purely old school. I’d link to her site here, but she doesn’t have one. She isn’t on LinkedIn, has no idea what Twitter or Facebook is, only uses email to send files, yet she is a sought after designer. She uses pencil and paper and a telephone to do business. How does she get clients? The old fashioned way. By sending a beautifully designed direct mail piece and following up with a phone call. Remember mail, with stamps and envelopes? It works for her and she has no shortage of clients.

There are those that would be screaming that, in order to be competitive, you have got to get out there in the social media world. You have to have a blog, you have to be on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, comment on other blogs, rub elbows with the who’s who in the digital world. In a lot of cases this is absolutely true. I’ve said that myself, but I’m seeing a trend of everyone telling everyone else how to run their businesses, old and new alike.

My argument in support of old is that there is so much information and non-stop talk going on out there in the digital world that people find themselves yelling or talking more and more thinking that will get more attention. It starts to get so noisy out there that it’s really hard to stand out as an individual. Because of this, the old school approach starts to seem new again. Getting a beautiful or interesting promotional piece in the mail is a special thing again, and ironically is something that can have the power to make a business stand out from the crowd of the electronic images and messages that bombarded us on a daily basis. It’s like hanging onto that halter top for so long, that it came back in style, and actually looks pretty good with those new pants.

My argument for new school is that it is so quick and so vast, that it opens up a whole new opportunity for people to access your business and for your business to access people. It’s engaging, dynamic, and if used creatively, has the potential to grow your business beyond your wildest dreams. I just think there needs to be a balance. Every business, every person has their own philosophy and methods of reaching their market. Assumptions can’t be made that old is dead and new is it (or vice versa). I’ve been around long enough to have witnessed the success from using both methods. I was college educated during old school times and self educated on the job during new school times. It’s not an either/or scenario. I think both schools still have some learning to do.

I think one of the spookiest things some companies could imagine knocking on their door this Halloween is a social media specialist: Standing there at a company’s door, laptop in hand, surrounded by an army of Twitter followers and blog subscribers with their goody bags open,  asking for engagement, community, transparency and humanness. The company thinks: Trick or Treat? This image is more frightening to some companies than a vampire lunging in for a bite. There are many companies that want to be involved with social media, or think they should be involved, but at the same time they are deathly afraid of it.

I was contacted the other day by a children’s product company interested in engaging my services to “legitimately” (their quotes) populate their company’s website with positive reviews and photos of people using their products by tapping into my network of bloggers, providing them with free products and asking them to post accolades.  Apparently the company feels they don’t have enough reviews for their products on their site and many of them that have been posted legitimately (no quotes) have turned out to be negative because of ongoing QC problems that the company has been having. Her response was that “there are always QC problems in manufacturing, that’s just how it is.” She also wanted me to screen the product reviews before they were posted and intervene if anything negative arose. I explained the new FTC regulations  and that I thought this method of “legitimate” population might be considered questionable without a disclosure. I also offered other methods that could authentically populate their site’s reviews, but the conversation ended and I haven’t heard from them since.

I think in this case, there were missed opportunities. Instead of trying to drown out the bad reviews with manufactured good reviews, they could have embraced them, thanking the consumer for pointing out a problem and actually addressing the problem in a public way with a vow to fix it at the source and follow up with proof that it was fixed, instead of saying, well everyone has QC problems, that’s just how it is. That’s not how you engage your consumers. I know nothing is perfect in business, but when you put product out there to consumers, especially if you are inviting them to respond publicly on your company site, then you better make darn sure the product is as good as it can be, and if it isn’t and your consumers care enough to let you know, then you should respond with thankfulness, action and implementation to make sure it never happens again. To try to drown out negative comments with crafted positives just defeats the whole purpose of engaging people. It’s like inviting consumers to offer their opinions, and when they open their mouths occasionally saying something you don’t like, you cover your ears and say: “I’m not listening, LA, LA, LA.” This is what is meant by companies being human. To acknowledge mistakes or problems, apologize, promise to fix them and then actually fix them is the kind of thing that will gain a company respect in the marketplace with their consumers.

The thing about social media is that it can’t be completely controlled the way that advertising can. That is a very spooky thing for many companies.  There is some control, like determining the right person to manage your social media strategy and what to put out there to the public, but as far as trying to control what the public will perceive and say and do and manipulating things to look legitimate when really they aren’t, that is not what social media is all about.  That’s what advertising is about.

Here lies the problem for a lot of companies.  They know all this social media stuff is important, but don’t fully understand how to use it or why and how it’s different from advertising. They try hard to turn social media into just another controlled venue for advertising, and in my opinion, that is simply a waste.  Use your advertising for the crafted, controlled message, and use your social media for really listening to and engaging with real people.  If you are not ready for what may happen when you let go and start talking publicly with your customers, then maybe stay out of it for a while until you feel confident that what your company offers will be well received, or until known problems are fixed, or until you can respond to negative feedback with positive action. It can also be started in small ways. Start with a blog, talk about new products coming up or things in the industry. You don’t have to do a full-blown blitz to be involved in social media.  Start where you are comfortable, but understand that there is a certain amount of letting go of fear that needs to happen.

So if a social media specialist comes knocking at your door this Halloween, don’t be afraid, just drop a little humanness in his or her goody bag.

I’ve been noticing a bit of a trend lately with building community in the online world. It seems that some people believe that community is something that can be attained though purchase, either by cash, free merchandise or other means of artificial manufacturing. Whether it’s T.G.I. Friday’s recent free burger campaign or brands creating their name as a trending topic on Twitter by offering free merchandise, these methods may gain temporary attention, but most likely won’t create lasting loyalty, relationships or community.

Cash for Comments

One example of this trend recently came to my attention on the site Blogging for a Living. A post appeared there on Thursday that stated they are giving away cash as a reward to the person who leaves the most comments on their blog during the month of October, in an effort to rebuild a damaged community. Apparently, the blog used to have tremendous traffic, but a few bad apples with negative attitudes scared away the established community and hurt the reputation of the blog. Although I can sympathize, I don’t think a community can be bought back with the chance of winning a $50 prize for comments that are unlikely to have substance to them. After all, it’s clear that the motivating factor for the reader in this case would be the cash, not community building.

Focus on the Meaning of Community

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, community is: “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.” It’s important to keep that in mind when establishing a community. It’s the commonality, that sense of relating to what is being said, or an opportunity to express and share ideas or gain insight and opportunities that keeps people coming back.

Finding a Solution That’s Right for Your Community

If your blog’s focus is on finding and giving away great products or passing on savings, then material giveaways are relevant to your community, because your community would naturally consist of people who are looking for giveaways or savings. That is the common interest or goal.

If your blog, for example, is intended to serve as a community for freelance writers, then the “giveaway” should be information, resources, opportunities, advice and commentary relevant to your community of writers. Everyone needs money, that’s true. Everyone enjoys getting free stuff, that’s also true. But if you have lost your community, then you have to earn it back, not buy it back.

How to build or re-build community in a meaningful way is the challenge. Maybe re-branding is in order; starting fresh to show your community that things have changed or providing an opportunity to engage a new group of people. Maybe inviting and promoting well-respected guest bloggers who share in the same community could help both your audience and theirs. Maybe inviting your readers to comment with suggestions on what they want from your blog would demonstrate your commitment to serving them and that you want them to be part of the process. Ask them why they left and what can you do to bring them back. Taking a hard look at what you do, how it could improve and having the willingness to change is key to evolution and growth in community building as well as brand building.

What is your key to community building?

This has been brewing in my head for a while, and to be honest, I’ve been a little hesitant to write about it, but when I saw the description of the session that Chris Brogan is going to be leading at IZEAFEST, I decided (after some advice from a few folks at Copyblogger) to speak my mind. Now,  I have no idea who wrote the description, but regardless of whether Brogan wrote it himself or someone wrote it for him,  it really rubbed me the wrong way. I know Chris Brogan is a “Trust Agent” and all, and maybe it’s supposed to be funny or edgy or something, but I find it simply arrogant, complete with the intense close up photo of Brogan looking like an angry daddy about to tell the kids to go to their room.

Here’s the copy from the site:

“If you’re dipping your toe into social media, blogging, and all the other tools related to content marketing, either ‘jump in or get the Hell outta my water!’
Businesses are ready NOW, and they want professional treatment in bridging the gap between how they USED to do online marketing and advertising and how they will in the coming months.
Join Chris Brogan for a cuss-out, and a set of next steps to take home to your teams.”

This bothers me on multiple levels:

1. “If you’re dipping your toe into social media, blogging, and all the other tools related to content marketing, either ‘jump in or get the Hell outta my water!’”…Excuse me, but whose water is it that people are supposed to either jump into or get the hell out of?  The last time I checked, no one actually owned the vast ocean that we call social media.
2. “Businesses are ready NOW and they want professional treatment” …This implies that they are ready but everyone except for Chris Brogan is not prepared now to guide them or treat them professionally.
3. “Join Chris Brogan for a cuss-out” ….Hmm, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t spend a sizable chunk of change to attend a conference to be cussed out by a Trust Agent.
4. “a set of steps to take home to your teams” …. Let’s all hope that everyone there takes copious notes so that they can all follow Chris Brogan’s steps to success. Everyone has his or her own way of working and thinking. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for all.

I had been a subscriber to Brogan’s blog, but the straw that broke it for me was a recent post of his that detailed the minutiae of his day, right down to what he ate for breakfast. There are people who apparently care about that, because he got many comments and RTs for that post, exclaiming amazement at just how busy he is, but instead of impressing me or building trust in me, it had the opposite effect and I unsubscribed.

Arrogance is very unappealing to me. I have never been one to blindly follow or believe everything I hear, even if it is from an expert. I don’t think anyone should. I listen to all kinds of people, all kinds of ideas and take a wide range of thinking into consideration when I form my opinions and methods of doing things. But in my opinion this time, arrogance does not build trust or respect. What do you think?

screen shot from izeafest.com

I was watching TV last night and saw this commercial for T.G.I. Friday’s announcing their new hamburger giveaway campaign:

In the commercial, Woody, a presumed faux customer and big time fan of the restaurant chain, announces a new Facebook campaign for Friday’s that pitches the viewer to become a Woody fan on Facebook and receive a free burger. Maybe Woody is the real #1 fan of Friday’s, but I’m not buying it, and even if I did, it doesn’t matter.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the whole point of a brand participating in social media to build brand awareness through a real engagement between a real person from a company and their real consumers? To me, this campaign crosses a line between social media and advertising. Advertising is a wide-open venue where a company can create characters to act like a customer. Consumers understand that. Social media is supposed to be real. You can’t buy customer loyalty by having a fake customer giving away free hamburgers.

Creating a character to give away hamburgers and build a following on Facebook is fine I guess, but what’s the point? After the hamburgers are given away, will anyone remain friends with Woody? What is Friday’s trying to do here, create a slacker version of Ronald McDonald? Dress a clown in a pair of jeans and a beanie cap, and he’s still a clown.

Like all companies, Friday’s must have a couple of real life characters wandering the hallways at their corporate headquarters that would perhaps be more effective in leading a social media campaign. Consumers don’t want a hired character to chat with about hamburgers. They’ll take his free hamburgers, but they don’t care about him. It comes off as having something to hide, an avoidance of letting down the guard and opening the door for a real conversation, which sometimes might not be positive. Consumers want to feel like their voice can be heard and that what they say matters to the brands that they are loyal to. Involve your customers, ask for their opinions and suggestions and if giving something away helps as a thank you, then go ahead, give something away. But that can’t be the only benefit. It needs to be an ongoing engagement.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that Woody will indeed get a huge following of “friends” simply to get their free burgers, but the friendship won’t last long. They’ll take the bait; they’ll eat it, and then abandon poor Woody after their bellies are full. If you offer a shallow campaign, then the response will be equally as shallow. Free stuff is great, but it’s not good enough to sustain a lasting relationship. I think Woody will be looking for a new job and new friends in no time.

Not to date myself here, but I started writing before SEO was part of modern vocabulary. I learned to write with conviction and clarity, to creatively communicate meaning, and to carefully choose words that would draw in a human reader rather than attract a robot. I learned the craft of writing as an art, not a science.

Writing has changed now with the desire to have a strong online presence and to show up first in a Google search or on Digg’s front page. Writing, at least the online sort, seems to have taken a turn for the science, often abandoning the art. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of SEO in online content, but it seems that SEO has become of primary concern in most online writing. There are an overabundance of SEO keyword dense headlines and articles floating around out there, and it always seems so obvious which are written with SEO as the primary goal.

Keyword driven headlines and content may be search friendly, but when they show up in a search, are they compelling enough for a human to respond, click and read? Or does that not matter anymore? Copyblogger recently posted an article by Dave Navarro about the importance of headlines. In the article, it was stated that, “it’s well known that many Digg users vote on articles based on article titles and descriptions without ever actually reading the stories.” I find it a little disheartening that people aren’t reading content anymore, just headlines. If this is true, does this mean that the written word, the actual meaning the words has taken a backseat to searchable terms?

The creative soul that I am can’t help but want to make a pretty sentence that a human might read and respond to. I admittedly spend way too much time crafting and editing everything that I write. I have to consciously force the science in once the art is done. In my book, art comes first and science comes second. Just the same, the scientists among us also have to try to remember to bring art into their writing. Take the SEO formula and add a few swipes of a paintbrush to it, so it is compelling and appealing to humans as well as robots. I guess the trick is for the artists and the scientists to begin to mingle and mix it up a bit. You know, like in the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial: you got peanut butter on my chocolate or you got chocolate in my peanut butter. Maybe art and science should rub up against each other a little bit more. When the two elements are put together in the right amounts, they can actually taste pretty good.

With many bloggers feeling pressured to post something daily or multiple times daily to maintain their level of engagement, I think content can begin to suffer. No matter how much of an expert or guru someone is, the stuff can start to get recycled, irrelevant, tiresome or forced and often a bit too rich with keywords. Getting these posts in my inbox a couple of times a day, even from a “thought leader,” starts to feel a little spammy.

I do get the concepts of interruption and engagement, but being interrupted by the same person several times a day crosses the line for me. It has, for me, actually created the opposite effect. I am finding myself disengaging with some of the engagers, and have recently unsubscribed to several blogs for this reason. I have decided that since I now know that these blogs are there, I’ll choose when I want to be interrupted to read what they have to say. I’m taking control of my inbox back from the invaders.

I am a true believer in quality over quantity any day. A post for posting sake (and you can usually tell which ones those are) is a waste of both the writer’s and the reader’s time. There have been a couple of posts I’ve read recently that talk about the panic of writer’s block. These posts have given numerous suggestions on what to do and how to find something to say, including recycling older posts. My advice: don’t say anything. Wait a day (or even two) until you make an observation about something or read something, or see something or have a fresh idea worth sharing. Squeezing out the words like a stubborn pimple is painful for the writer and for the reader. Wait a little until the words flow more easily. It will lead to a more successful post that will truly offer something valuable, rather than simply supplying more verbiage to fill someone’s inbox.

What’s your take on this? Do you think it’s essential to post daily or multiple times daily, or are you inclined to be more conservative about it and post when you are driven to by a thought or idea that you need to share?

Are you overwhelmed by information, or is it just me? Tweets and links , RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, LinkedIn group discussions and news, email blasts: the never-ending flow of messages and information is, at times, pretty hard to manage. With bloggers compelled to post daily or multiple times daily, and everyone trying to bring attention to what they are doing and saying, and the infinite array of tweets and messages, I’m beginning to wonder if it is just contributing to information overload and internet pollution? It’s so noisy out there, that I sometimes find it hard to concentrate, wasting time just sorting through to find the useful stuff.

Because the pharmaceuticals have not yet been developed, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. (Although, apparently therapists are starting to jump on the internet addiction treatment bandwagon.) My simple solution: I’m going to sit down and really go through all my subscriptions and whittle it down to just a few core blogs, groups and newsletters that I really rely on for information, inspiration or entertainment. Others, I’ll check on periodically when I have time, but I’m finding it so distracting and difficult to be productive when I have so much information and messaging constantly bombarding me throughout my day. Tell me, how do you manage all of your incoming information? (And after you do that, make sure you retweet and subscribe to my blog ; )

I just read a post on Amber Naslund’s blog about her perspective on the ineffectiveness of pitching in corporate-speak language. It got me thinking about writing pitches in general and how a one-size-fits-all pitch never works. There is an art to pitching. The bottom line is that when you craft a pitch, it needs to speak to the person that you are targeting and/or to their audience. Naslund’s perspective is coming from the angle of social media. In that case, corporate speak is not effective, because that’s not how people in social media talk. In other instances, a more formal tone may be more appropriate. The key here is to know who you are pitching, know a bit about who they are, know their style, and know what it is that you want them to do and if that actually is something they can and may be willing to do. Do your homework and adjust the tone of your pitch depending on who you are approaching. Pitching a blogger is different than pitching a trade magazine. Pitching a consumer magazine is different than pitching a potential corporate sponsor. Speak their language. Put yourself in their position and try to understand how they will respond.

For example, I recently got a pitch from someone at a product company that, although his email started with “Hi Cheryl,” clearly he had never read my blog or taken the time to understand what I do. He went on to say (cut and pasted) that he really enjoyed my blog and all the great giveaways that I host. Um, folks, do you see any giveaways here? He wanted me to host a giveaway for his product even though that’s not what I do. Delete. No, actually, I first emailed him back and told him what I do, and that if he found his current email campaign to be ineffective, then he could hire me to help him craft a more effective one. Then I hit delete.

If you don’t take the time to try to know or understand the person or organization you are pitching, then why would they take the time to care or act upon what it is you are asking from them. Tailor your pitch to fit your mark and your successes will be greater.