Getting excited about the Super Bowl? So am I.
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With two daughters under the age of four, I don’t get a lot of time to watch football. But I’m going to make some time this Sunday for some football – and for the ads, of course. More on the Kilganon blog.
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Social media and search. They go together like hot dogs and buns.
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Lets face it not everybody likes hot dogs or buns but it doesn’t mean you can ignore either if you’re trying to have a party. This is something I’ve been noticing gets messed up enough that it was worth writing about. The article is posted on the agency blog.
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Today is an off day
This was 7:30 AM. Just dropped off the girls and went for a short hike. Had nowhere to be for the rest of the day really. Taking a deep breath today. Hope you have a chance for one too. Have a great weekend.
Are you just glad to have a job?
Well, that blows. Really, it does.
I know a lot of people just like you. After all, the economy is awful, so who would quit any job? Even if you’re severely overworked.
There have been days, where I’ve felt just like you. Thankfully, it’s not persistent.
Fortunately, my job is pretty diverse. Wasn’t always that way. But possibly becuase I demonstrate to the people that I work for I have a passion for more than just my core competency, they let me do more. That means that yesterday I was a photographer and today I’ll be a social media strategist and copywriter.
So maybe my passion for copywriting is running a little low. So what, I’ve got plenty of social media stuff to do to. Just power through the writing and get to the juicy stuff.
Extra hats around the office are often viewed as a problem. But they’re not if you can find a passion for them. Like I have for this blog or say my photography.
When employees tweet their mouth off
You knew it would happen. An employee was gonna blow a gasket on Twitter.
So now you’re thinking maybe this social media thing needs to be clamped down on. And just when it was starting to pay off too.
Well did you plan for when the implosion happens? You’ve got a plan for workplace accidents, legal issues, and even bad PR.
Did you have a clear set of guidelines for your employees before they started talking?
Your employees will make you look dumb and like you’re not in control. But they used to do it with friends, coworkers, and sometimes customers over drinks. But they do say 100 times more positive things online. And now you it’s all on their permanent record and they should have a clear idea of the consequences of their actions.
So you may as well keep it out in open rather than drive it underground. Because they’ve always been talking about you and the company anyway. Only now that word of mouth can be Googgled.
10.26.09Some connections are just better
The interwebs got me in touch with an old friend last week I had not talked to since I moved east. I picked up the phone and we picked up where we had left off – it was a great conversation. It was also connection worth renewing. But there are some people I see every week where the connection isn’t as valuable to me.
In social media, connections are the same way. Most will read this post and never think to comment on it. Some may comment but never think to connect personally. Some will connect personally but never choose to do business. This is all great. Because some will.
How many followers/friends/fans does it take to make a million dollars? Well, that depends on what you’re selling and even if you’re selling. This website has only been at it’s current address for a month, doesn’t have a lot of readers yet, isn’t overtly selling anything, but it has gotten me back in touch with an old colleague who needs some help. No, not a million dollars worth of help. But help.
Focusing on the value of connections is not really new thinking in marketing. Direct marketers have always focused on the quality of their lists – it can cost a lot to mail a compelling direct mail piece.
Social media practitioners should think about their target too when they’re planning a social media effort. If you’re trying to sell a enterprise software, a select group of fans, followers, or readers may be a lot more valuable than 100,000 fans on Facebook. But if you’re selling potato chips, heck, just about everyone buys those occasionally – by all means, talk to everyone.
10.16.09Nobody Knows Everything
I was talking with a group of social media folks about metrics the other day and it made me think of a famous quote by William Goldman, the Hollywood screenwriter “Nobody knows anything.”
Goldman was talking about how nobody in Hollywood knows if a movie is going to do well. There are just so many variables that go into a production that it’s nearly impossible to predict how a movie will fare on opening day and beyond. No one has a clue, no matter how much they protest, how a movie will do creatively or at the box office until it hits theaters.
Tracking the effectiveness of social media is much the same way. It’s incredibly difficult to track spending to actual return on investment. Especially for brands that aren’t selling their products online. I won’t bore you with the analytics problems involved in even measuring links coming to your site from say Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube. The problem is most brands don’t actually sell their products or a majority of their products on their own online store. How do you measure if Tweet influenced the purchase of chewing gum at the 7-11?
Chris Brogan says it’s all about the dollars. Meaning how much money is coming in currently vs before. He’s right that it’s about the money but how do you connect the purchase to the tweet when you’re selling insurance? Or if you’re selling potato chips, was it the POP or the sale price that moved the product in the aisle?
In advertising, we’ve been working with this kind of fuzzy math for years with television, radio, and brand advertising. But social media is on the Internet where people have been using Google Analytics and Omniture for years so it’s held up to a higher standard, even though it’s the shiny new toy. So what do we do?
We do what we did with TV. Look and see if our investment correlates with growth. But since the spending won’t necessarily create as immediate an impact, we also have to look at activity over time – examining trends in both purchases and brand mentions. If these things correlate, then you can begin to estimate a ROI. That said, it’s still very difficult to factor out other variables.
We’re fortunate people can’t say nobody know anything about social media ROI. But we should be honest and say, nobody know everything.
10.8.09How much should you have to give to get?
Like all parents of young children, I hate, hate, hate how much it costs to keep my kids in diapers. So when I opened a new pack of Huggies® I was happy to be notified I possibly had won a lifetime supply. All I had to do was fill out an online form. OK.
But the form kept going and I got to feeling they wanted more information than was appropriate. (Full disclosure, I’ve been a victim of identity theft.) Like my kids’ ages, birthdays, and names. Come on Huggies®, you’re kidding me. Right?
So I poked around for an email address. Fail again. But there’s a form, so I fill it out only to get a “do not reply”, canned email from a Huggie®. No, not Sue at Huggie®. But from a registerd trademark. Wow, I have confidence now. Let me send you my social security number too.
I’m bashing a little on Kimberly Clarke, but, really, a whole lot of companies are guilty of this kind of lack of respect for the individual. Hey, they’re giving something of value away, so they should get something, right? Some marketing data that can be used for the next direct mail piece and research for the next ad campaign or product line.
But actually they could have gotten similar data and much cheaper and frequent reach just by requiring I fan them on Facebook. And I would be using them as positive example right now. But as annoyed as I am about this, my wife will still buy those diapers. At least for another year.
