My Summer School On Social Media

After weighing my options following the demise of my recently canceled bootcamp, I decided to do a completely different thing on my own.

Now I'm will be teaching The BeanCast 2013 Social Basics Class this coming July 18th and 19th in The Horizon Room at 350 West 42nd Street. 

But wait! There's more! 

This all new curriculum will feature a keynote and Q&A with famed author and speaker, Peter Shankman. Attendees will not only get an overview on maximizing shareability of content and creating more effective social campaigns, they will also get a chance to hear one of today's most dynamic speakers. 

I've also managed to reduce the fees. Now if you register by July 1, 2013 you pay only $999 ($1,299 after July 1, 2013).

So please check out the link and sign up for the class. I hope to see you there! 

Sign up for the class by clicking here. 

I Guess Blogging Ethics Don’t Matter After All

Remember when we were all worried about what blogger and Twitter endorsements would do to the reputations of those individuals who participated? Many social media and regular media and media media experts were fretting that selling your blogging soul to a brand would reduce your credibility to your audience.

Well, holy crap, we couldn’t have been more wrong.

Not only are bloggers more influential than ever, it seems that the more they whore themselves out to brands, the greater their influence becomes. It’s as if their communities are actually rooting them on as they get on the “take.” It’s like a great big, “Stick-it-to-the-man” thing, where all the readers are cheering that their favorite living-room, pseudo journalist is finally getting her due.

And the agencies and PR shops and brands and media buyers could not be happier about all this. They crow and crow about their “earned media,” which is really “paid media.” But why split hairs here? They’re getting those coveted endorsements from the average mom who just happened to be sitting on top of a media empire, all for a fraction of the cost that real media empires cost. Hell, sometimes all it takes it shipping free product and they are getting thousands of impressions.

Of course, there is the question of whether this is really moving the needle on sales. As with all things social, we are loathe to discuss the troubling ROI question. But no one is looking too closely at this because we are earning...I mean buying...I mean earning...I mean buying...cheap awareness for our products and no one is getting hurt. But still, you gotta wonder if it’s doing anything to get a “almost-earned” endorsement from a blogger, when the audience listens with equal rapt attention to the average Today show product placement, which let me tell you, is still reaching far more of America that Bobby-Sue’s living-room blog.

But back to the point. We were wrong in thinking that a blogger’s audience was any different from a loved celebrity’s audience. That’s why books fly off the shelf when Oprah recommends them, even though we know Oprah’s on the take. It doesn’t matter to us. We like Oprah anyway. The same is true of bloggers on the take. Their audiences think of them as celebrities. So an endorsement has the same effect. It’s just cheaper.

So have at it, you willing product Johns, looking for a good blogger wench to bed. We need no longer fear a venereal backlash of audience outrage. And while you’re at it, I run a popular podcast and also love to accept free merchandise. Call me! 336-549-0938. 

Get-Off-My-Lawn Social Media

I know brands are stupid on social platforms. 

No, no. Don’t protest. You know it’s true. After all, brands on social platforms rely on phenomenally expensive “social command centers” to monitor news and commentary all so they can say such amazingly clever things like, “It’s Christmas, so we hope everyone is drinking Zoom Zoom cola. It’s what Jesus would do.”

Whatever.

But what I’m concerned about is the rut that the rest of us have fallen into. Because while I know social media is the “consumer’s voice” and all the rest of that horse poo-cock-ka about the “power of conversation,” we’ve gone off the deep end with complaining.

You know it’s gotten bad when people are complaining about the complaining regarding the complaints about the complaint. It’s like someone has transported me back into a virtual living room with my dad grousing about the TV announcers who are grumbling about the player who is yelling at the referee.

We’ve taken the most incredible leap forward in community conversation and worldwide connectivity and are using it like a cranky old man sitting on a lawn chair in his front yard. I’m guilty of it. You are too.

There are two kinds of meetings. One is the kind where everybody points fingers at problems and self-importantly deflects criticisms. The other is where people come together collaboratively with their best ideas to solve the problem.

I don’t care who was tweeting marketing links relentlessly during the Boston bombings. And I shouldn’t be telling people how they should not be complaining about people who were tweeting when they shouldn’t be.

It’s time we bring our best selves to the table. Just do what you think you should be doing and stop worrying about everyone else. Because old guys in shorts, black socks and flip-flops telling you to get off their lawn are still just as annoying online as they are in real life.

​And yes, I know how incredibly meta I'm being, complaining about the need to not complain. So I've included a comment box for you to complain at me. I'm nothing if not a giver.

Making Selling Social

The following appeared first in the April 8, 2013 issue of Ad Age​:

​Some say we can’t value social marketing efforts directly. Others claim that if we can’t attribute a return on investment, we shouldn’t be doing it. But maybe we’re all missing the point. Maybe the problem is not whether social value can be measured in dollars. Perhaps the issue is we can’t measure in dollars objectives that weren’t intended to be profitable in the first place. 

Most CEOs and CMOs have a clearly defined objective to make money for their organization. Yet most social marketing programs are still designed to create engagement, gain followers or generate Facebook Likes. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there’s a disconnect there. Getting to an ROI figure from most social efforts doesn’t take better analysis tools — it simply takes the inclusion of objectives that are centered on generating profit.

Customer loyalty, advocacy, engagement, interest and awareness are all important in the marketing funnel, but the assumption that they supersede the “baser” activity of selling is pure hubris. If customers don’t also desire “buying” relationships with us, then we have no business being in business.

We need to get to a better balance with our social marketing efforts and speak to the entirety of the customer permission set, including how they want to buy from us. Only then can we form measurable profit objectives that intersect with these permissions. Because, the object of social marketing is not simply to collect audience appreciation, but to make every customer experience shareable — including the purchase.

For example, Zappos has been heralded as a “social brand.” But that’s not entirely true. Zappos is a “customer service” brand. The majority of their “social marketing” investment actually goes into hiring the right people and creating amazing customer experiences. I still share about the time I sent an anonymous gift with Zappos. During the transaction the operator fawned over me repeatedly for making such a wonderful gesture. It was a little embarrassing, but I was gratified. Then came the surprise, because over the next two weeks this operator shipped to me gift package after gift package of cookies, socks, books and even a messenger bag in appreciation of my act of kindness. It was amazing! 

Sure, Zappos still collects likes for posts about new articles of clothing or holiday well-wishes. But they have a broader mission of making the sales experience personal, meaningful and ultimately shareable.

In a nutshell, Zappos doesn’t do social to generate sales. Zappos makes selling social.

Further, the assumption that the spectrum of social media is being ruined by the “old” tactics of push selling is disingenuous. Push and pull always need to work together. We can say that Louis C.K. or Radiohead have proved that fan-led pull efforts are the new way to market. But have you noticed that nearly all of these “fan-led” successes are built on the backs of years and sometimes millions of dollars in old-school push promotions? 

Going back to the Zappos example, they may use social to generate pleasant relationships, but they also buy a boatload of social ads that push product. What’s more, they are one of those vendors who use “stalking” ads that display the products you last looked at on their site. And frankly, despite the creepy factor, customers don’t mind for the most part, because the relationship they’ve built is centered on us buying stuff from them.

If we want to look for the real value of social to an organization, it’s that it shreds the veil between marketing and operations. It puts on public display every customer touchpoint within the company. So, we need to stop creating passive programs that simply use social media, and start thinking of social marketing as a discipline of doing business in a manner customers want to share. Selling must be social. Because only then are we able to measure the profitability of social marketing.