Don’t be a failure at your social media marketing. Your message and how you distribute it is very important to your brand and future success. You’ve got on the cluetrain, and decided it’s time to start embracing social media as an important part of your marketing mix.
You’ve seen and heard the success stories, but you’ve been floundering with no traction for the last 6 months. You’ve figured out what social media is. Before you reappropriate that budget, take a look at what you’re doing wrong - or better yet, know the common problems and how to fix them from the start.
1. You Chose the Wrong Channels
You’ve seen the stats on facebook and myspace. They are HUGE. There is massive reach the size of google. This does not mean if you make a profile company for Chevy, everyone will be their friend and buy more cars. There is a HUGE disconnect between wanting to USE social media for marketing, and embracing it for better communication with customers.
How does a campaign that is on television only get a couple thousand friends on facebook? Improper distribution. I hope the *cough* branding was worth it.
Solution: You choose your social media channels by finding where the customers who want to talk about your company are talking. If they are NOT talking about your company anywhere, then you need to find common topics that a given community is interested in.
Example: If you have a site about young tech males - digg is definitely your place. If you have a site about cooking and gardening, you’re going to have to pander to young techie males on digg, or you’re going to need Kirtsy.com. Find the community that your customers are most likely to hang out in. Then maybe explore a few bigger ones, and try to find a few of your people out of a crowd.
2. You Used the Wrong People
Just because your web designer twittered once and had a myspace profile from day one, does not mean that he understands how to market on social media. Just because your advertising agency knows how to market in print, does not mean that they understand how digg, reddit, and stumbleupon work. Yes - your SEO got you some good rankings, but he’s only getting you 5 diggs on the content you’ve spent weeks preparing. Not exactly the big win you were hoping for.
If you’re using the wrong people you’re toast. We all figured out the hard way what the website looked like when the network admin created it, and how well it ranked when the print designer posted the all image version. Don’t let someone who plays on twitter while they’re at work try to run your viral marketing campaign.
Solution: Firstly, it helps to find someone who’s actually DONE what you’re trying to do. Yes, they may be more expensive, but you won’t pay for the service two or three times learning these same lessons in failure.
3. Your Content Sucked
You wrote a top 10 list. So did 3 million other sites. It wasn’t entertaining or resourceful, and you forgot to use even a single linkbaiting hook. Even the best social media promoters out there won’t be able to promote pure crap. Being one step better than crap is not remarkable either. Your content needs to be on another level to get referenced throughout the web these days. You’re not going to get buy with a $30 article from elance, and expect it to get 1,000 backlinks.
Solution: Spend some time and research. Run some of your keywords on Aaron’s awesome keyword tool, and see what was successful. Take that idea, and make it three times better. Then edit the hell out of that idea, and improve it another couple times. Then cut out all the garbage you added as filler, and add one more round of good stuff. Be sure that you don’t use words like "good stuff".
- Edit yourself mercilessly.
- Be succinct.
- Be entertaining
- Research and list better (and more) resources.
- Have a hook (or two or three)
4. Your Team Didn’t Believe in the Project
You had the right people internally, but they didn’t think it would work. They’d rather be playing guitar hero and ping pong instead of helping the project succeed. Social media isn’t quite as measurable as other methods, and the sales pitch really wasn’t all that convincing.
Solutions: You have to sell the project better internally. You need to convince your team that this is how you increase revenue from their efforts, and it is directly attributable to them. Beat "through the fire and flames" on medium mode (or watch a bot do it on expert), and put guitar hero down, and don’t pick it up again.
Explain to your team why this is the difference between success and failure of the company. This is important to the bottom line, and even though it seems like fun and games - it’s the driving force behind successful marketing right now. Everyone needs to be on board, and pushing in the same direction to execute effectively.
5. You Didn’t Execute
The number one problem that social media campaigns don’t succeed: POOR EXECUTION.
The site imploded when you hit the homepage of digg. Because you didn’t test all of your scripts under high volume duress, your webserver nearly melted, and wouldn’t serve pages. Half of the people trying to access your site had ridiculous load times, or never saw the content at all. Needless to say, those visitors didn’t subscribe for anything, or check out additional pages on the site.
Solutions: Fire your network adminstrator, because there’s no excuse for downtime. Find someone who understands apache a bit better. Cache your site, make sure all cylinders are a go, and PRACTICE. Release some b-material first to see how smoothly things go.
Start small and test. Increase your success through understanding and improvements of the larger social media sites by using the smaller ones to channel success and vice versa. If you can get to the digg homepage, you should probably be able to get a good amount of delicious bookmarks.
6. No one Trusted You
Your site is plastered with ads. You’re selling get rich quick schemes. Your web host went down. Your design sucks. There’s no contact information. There’s no pictures of real people. Everyone has seen your stock photos before. There’s no address. There are plenty of reasons people won’t trust your website. Social media transparency will magnify trust issues, and people will really take swings at your potential flaws. Don’t set yourself up for failure by having people not trust you.
Solution: Read Matt McGee’s great article about building trust, and improve your credibility. Take down your advertising for social visitors, and give them a single call to action that is simple and not asking much.
7. You Forgot about Search
You built a site for social media. You pander to the audience, and gave the fickle crowd what they want. You forgot to create sustainable content around topics that are of interest to someone selling something. You brought in a bunch of WEB GRAZING SHEEPLE who don’t actually consume anything except media. Your users spend all day on stumbleupon, because they can barely afford more than their rent, an high speed internet connection, and a laptop with the meager salary they are able to earn working throughfeeding their need to be entertained 23 second attention span.
You didn’t realize the main goal of your social media marketing was to help ultimately rank high for a high volume, high converting competitive phrase that drove your revenues through the rough for the next two years of sustaining the result.
Solution: Here’s the shameless plug. You need someone who understands social media marketing and other forms of search engine marketing to develop a comprehensive strategy for your online marketing efforts. You need a SMOSEO (social media marketing search engine optimizer).
Better yet - you need to learn about becoming a online media marketer yourself and understand how all forms of marketing can affect social media, search engine rankings, converting traffic, and what these services are worth. Educate yourself on becoming a better online marketer if you want to succeed yourself working on the web.
Resources I found while writing this:
12 Tips on Creating Content for Social Media
Top 10 Reasons Great Content Fails
Tools for Social Media
Ultimate Social Media Resource List
Social media predictions for 2009
Social media gut check
Filed under: Buzz Marketing by Stuntdubl SEO at 10:45 am, 4/2/2007
A buddy of mine (and fellow seo’r) Dan, aka Danny Funk has had me cracking up, and singing the hook of his great entry into the turbo tax rap contest on youtube for several days now. I promise it is worth the 2:00 for this one. He missed his calling as the 4th Beastie boy. Throw some thumbs up and stars his way if you think it’s as good as I did. I’d embed it here, but I imagine the views, votes, and such probably help out for the contest. Check out the video here. You can give it some love on Digg here too. If you’d like to download this video, you can use the download youtube videos firefox plugin Great job by turbo tax as well - I doubt there is any other way they would have got me (or many other folks) to talk about them, so they deserve some kudos for some out of the ordinary experimental marketing (hey, I had to have the post be SOMEWHAT on topic). Just for good karma, here’s a link for tax software with no affiliate link.
Filed under: Buzz Marketing by Stuntdubl SEO at 7:45 pm, 1/2/2007
This is a very worthwhile cause, if you’re in the SEM community - I’m sure JP will be appreciative of some link love, and a story mention to all you bloggin’ folks out there. This will 1. Improve the visibility of SEO 2. Make some cool guy’s girlfriend VERY happy (hopefully) 3. Help to raise a bunch of money for Vanderbilt hospital. It would be very cool if the search community can help this go viral to the “traditional media” world. It’s already been listed on AdAge where Joe says he has: “met J.P. and claims he’s real — and, more importantly, marketable — “an all-American, baseball-cap-wearing guy with a cute-as-a-button girlfriend,”. *Cough* I BELIEVE Joe knows who it is - and again - it’s a legit cause. From Joe Morin’s site who is helping to push the story to the mainstream (and you should too):
I ran across the most interesting blog a little while back, MySuperProposal.com - there is this blogger – ‘JP’ who is attempting to raise money via his blog in order to buy a 30 second commercial spot during next year’s Superbowl on February 4th. He doesn’t stop there, if by chance he goes over in his fund raising efforts or is picked up by an existing Superbowl advertiser – anything beyond his goal or 100% of the money raised not used for the commercial – will go to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital - one of the top rated children’s hospitals in the nation. While at first I thought “Wow, that’s really neat, I hope this guy makes it and pulls it off”, I began to mull over the possibilities and how I would promote this because granted, this is an amazingly large project and in order for him to be successful, he would have to raise $2.5 million or generate enough buzz in both the blogosphere as well as through traditional channels.
From Ad Age:
He’s at only $100,000, so he’s all but ditched that plan, instead trying to find a marketer who will put him in an ad. (He’s donating any money he raises to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., he said.)
Filed under: Buzz Marketing by Stuntdubl SEO at 1:57 pm, 11/21/2006
I really needed some new business cards for pubcon - but I wanted something creative. I’ve always been impressed by Hugh MacLeod’s theory of marketing - so I thought I’d take it for a spin. Hugh allows folks to use is art work so long as it is not for profit, and credit is given. This increases his exposure, and makes everyone happy.
These business cards were actually a combination of theories - 1. Hugh and 2. Aaron Wall - who doesn’t carry cards. I give Aaron a bad time for this - but his logic is sound - mainly that if people don’t remember him it wasn’t a very good, worthwhile conversation - and not worth pursuing (or something to this affect).
I figured “snake oil 2.0″ had made me laugh out loud - most people who “get” SEO have heard it called snake oil - and hey, we’re all about 2.0. Yes - it would be easy to take the joke the wrong way - but those that got a chuckle are most likely people I’d prefer to work with.
So most of this post is tripe - but I just wanted to make sure I gave the proper credit - Hugh’s site is freakin’ hilarious, and now you have absolutely no good reason not to be subscribed to it, and I really doubt you’d be at my site if you haven’t been to Aaron’s (you should still buy the book).
Filed under: Blogger Theory, Buzz Marketing by Stuntdubl SEO at 3:59 am, 11/10/2006
I’ve really liked the idea of “Review Me” since I first heard about it. It’s kind of like “hot or not” for smarter people. It will allow immediate feedback on a variety of new ideas by paying for the valuable asset of people’s time to think. The success of the idea will depend on the willingness of intelligent people to accept a new ad model, and keep the network quality high. If everybody writes positive reviews of CRAP - it’s a surefire way for the whole idea to suck. It’s not a surprise that people will accept money to write reviews or analysis - the big question will be HOW MUCH it costs for a review. Pay to blog is a great topic that will always be worthwhile - in the same way that questioning how a journalist is paid is. I didn’t follow much of the pay per post debate prior to this, but I’m sure it will get nice and interesting with a bigger fish in the pond. I hope it will make Doc Searls smile - when he realizes the people who got on the cluetrain can finally make good money while they review products and services like actual human beings without a “professional voice”. It’s cool to see the dialogue can still be PAID for - but not forced to be ROBOTIC.
Disclosure:
I was paid $125 for this article by ReviewMe.com - I probably would have written it for free since I consider the folks behind it friends - You can see that this nice little blog transaction definitely had a positive ROI for me personally. Honestly - I doubt that I’d review people I didn’t know personally for that price, since I value my credibility quite high most the time - though if I truly thought something was a good service, I’d gladly take a few hundred bucks to tell about how I thought it was worth while. Want to pay me $100 to tell people about something I think is cool? If I think others would like it - I would certainly consider it.
Since I know the people behind this project, and think they are a good group, I was willing to review their site for that amount. It reminds me a bit of the “ebay of online advertising”. I am able to sell “ad space” with very little friction - and I still maintain my editorial control. In the case of Reviewme - I’m looking forward to testing other GOOD ideas and/ or products for the right price. If the product SUCKS and I accepted it - I would probably write the bare minimum 200 words and not lambaste it too badly (no swears about it anyhow) - or I can choose not to do it altogether. I could also choose to just offer an analysis and feedback while giving my honest opinion.
My review of reviewme:
I felt kinda like I had mission impossible thing going on with having to blog within 48 hours (I was really hoping my site wouldn’t “self destruct”). I am kind of lazy and scatterbrained so writing an entry under a time constraint can sometimes be a challenge. Seems like good motivation from the advertisers side though. For this particular review - I was given 48 hours to write. It lit a fire under my butt - and I got it done at about 2:30 a.m. (I wonder if they’ll dock dollars for poor spelling?).
In the reviewme control panel - you can choose your sites and tags. This is a pretty handy feature for deciding the types of projects you will want to review. I initially added myself under the “business” tag - and I still might go that route - but the point is - that the choice for what to publish still remains my own. This should be very empowering to micro-publishers.
Will it scale?
Will traditional media be willing to have the transparency to disclose exactly WHO the hand that feeds them is? If anyone can reach the critical mass this idea needs, it’s the guys reviewme.
There are certainly going to be some discrepancies that arise when people start writing negative reviews that don’t get accepted. Fortunately, I think the dimwits that start these inevitable skirmishes will be ignored from the “conversations” ultimately.
Editorial integrity vs. disclosure
I myself am usually paid the form of consulting work from my clients - I will gladly write about clients for money if I believe in their product. I will gladly tell people who read my site about things I would like that are related to what I normally discuss. I’m nearly certain that ReviewMe will succeed because of the thinking that went into the issues of editorial integrity vs. disclosure. I would not sacrifice credibility to potential consulting clients just to make a quick buck on a blog post - blogging is far too much work.
There are times when I discuss products on my site from people that I have confidence in. Normally, I politely decline to post about things from people I don’t know - the same will probably hold true even if they offer to pay me - perhaps RM will just reveal what a person’s (or site’s) true price is.
David vs. Goliath
The really interesting thing here is that smaller bloggers will be behind this 110% because it’s a decent way to make some money - and you can still choose what you write about something. It will be even more interesting to see the defense that the increasing supporters will mount for such a fascinating and controversial new concept of revenue model monetization. I think this monetization strategy will only help to multiply the creation of useful micro content. I’ll be excited to see the first few big advertisers that are willing to put their brand up to the scrutiny of micropublishers and PAY for it - those that come out with good strong reviews (that they PAID for) will certainly achieve some greater levels of success.
Conclusion:A review can be a very valuable asset. Good reviews and feedback from people who use your product is a good thing if you have the determination to build a GREAT product or service. It will take BALLS for an advertiser to use this new model - and put good products and services out on the block for reviews from anyone willing to try it. For those companies with the BALLS to try it, it’s going to pay off well I’m sure.
There will definitely be haters to the paid review model - but I think this is going to be a pretty amazing opportunity for many advertisers and publishers. It will be interesting to watch the inventory gain traction - and see how willing publishers will be to accept this level of honesty to disclose in their advertising. It is definitely going to blend the “church and state” that we normally assign to advertising and content in a more creative way than normal contextual advertising (even with the “blend” technique).
I really can’t wait when bigger bloggers start to admit that we all, in fact, have a price for our time and opinions. Because I think this is a very cool product based on who uses it - I’ll post links to my favorite reviews of Reviewme.com
I enoyed werty’s fine Reviewme analysis:
Screenshot from the simple interface of Reviewme:
Filed under: Blogger Theory, Buzz Marketing by Stuntdubl SEO at 3:52 pm, 10/12/2006
I’ve talked to Andy, and Aaron about this project extensively, and it’s definitely one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard. Get on the list for Reviewme - this one is gonna be cool. I can’t wait for it to stir the pot a bit.
What does ReviewMe do?
(Minus the buzzwords) Advertisers, you pay to get your stuff reviewed by bloggers. Bloggers, you get paid to review their stuff.
It’s not payola: bloggers are required to disclose that reviews are paid, and they are not pressured to make the reviews positive.
(Oh, and one other thing: the payouts will be fat.)
So what now?
Even after ReviewMe launches, I’ll still be occasionally contributing here, but you’ll also be able to read my writing over at the ReviewMe Blog.
