Month: October 2009

Social Media: Living In Cultural Lethargy

Posted by Rich Harris – October 31, 2009

Forgive the Easy Rider Fonda era tone/vibe to this post. I typed the initial bulk of this post at 3AM on my BlackBerry, Halloween morning.

It seems funny to me that Social Media is considered this new thing to everyone. It actually seems kinda sad. A natural behavior that sites like Twitter and Facebook just happen to catalyze, has a *special new name, if not only for the reason that apparently we repressed a natural aspect of who we really are. Since we are not repressing it anymore, something that was always there inside us is now considered some new way of thinking, the brilliant new marketing method and approach that everyone is hyping and talking about. Why do we find it so surprising and fresh human beings actually want to engage other human beings directly in business? Are we using the fact that there was no Twitter or Facebook or MySpace before as an excuse to not directly engage customers? Are we somehow ready to come out of our little anti-social hovels and holes and cubicles that we essentially put ourselves in as a standard for the last bunch of decades?

It’s funny to me that we have ads and TV commercials whose attempt to yield a return were created with a “personal touch” by our usually overpaid agencies of record to be successful…yet they were all one way communications, directly engaging no one. It’s like a mother trying to nurture her new baby and raising her child through a glass window. The child never gets to actually be touched but the mother is there talking him/her through life without ever truly bonding or connecting with it. This is how marketing has always been so we never questioned the morbidity of it as a standard. We needed the internet, a bunch of computers (in essence a robot network), to teach us that what we needed all along was inside us already but that we were too caught up in corporate insecurity to realize the natural importance of engaging other humans directly as a standard in business.

Social Media to me, I’m starting to discover, does not currently exist as this great new idea. It is just filling a gap in business of sociological depravity that we have created for ourselves emotionally in our culture. Think about the family-owned bakery in a small village in Greece somewhere, 10 generations deep. All they know is consistent sales, happy loyal customers, and real relationships with those customers. Take a look at all the cultures that don’t have big business but still consistently make money because of a human touch that they just executed on naturally. Social marketers could learn a thing or two from these people. Yet, here in big business, while billions of dollars have been made, billions have also been lost because we struggled to have that winning marketing campaign in Q1 of nineteen eighty whatever when the culture-created consumer zombies stared at the TV, watched our commercials that didn’t quite stimulate them enough to get that false sense of “I need this to truly be alive inside” that we were hoping.

Are we finally ready to stop being in denial that being social is necessary for the survival of business? Did we just need the information age and networked computers and the chat rooms AOL introduced us to in the 90′s as an excuse break down walls so that we could learn this new fascinating discovery about being alive called “talking directly with other people?”

Don’t get me wrong, I love social marketing but Social Media and it’s current success as “the new thing” is kind of a big slap in the face reminder that we’ve kind of lost ourselves, as a standard. Maybe it won’t just help our companies. Maybe it will have cultural healing properties and help us exploit human qualities that currently STILL work to bond indigenous tribes in remote parts of the world with their families and communities.

Social Media is about the basics.

Pseudo hippie rant done.

Onward.

Social Media: Some Low Hanging Fruit For Newbies

Posted by Rich Harris – October 26, 2009

323436829_f6afb5c48eMany large corporations are still new to social media and are trying to figure out how it works, their short term plan, their long term plan, etc. After setting up your Twitter account and a Facebook Fan page for your company, now what? A company CAN do a few things almost immediately to expand their presence in social media with little effort/cost. This list assumes you already have a Twitter account, Facebook/MySpace or other sites that are built and established.

1. Spread Your Tweets Like Butter: Make sure all tweets are either manually posted or automatically posted to your other social sites. There are tons of widgets out there and just about everything posted on Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr, etc. has a URL that can be crawled by search engines. That’s money in the bank.

2. Let Your Social Media Hitch A Ride: Talk to any and every internal team in your company that manages outbound communications. At the very least text links to your primary social media accounts/profiles should be on there. You’d be surprised how many of your customers and partners didn’t know you were in the social media space, especially if it’s new for your company. With tens of thousands of emails going out per blast to customers that trust you and have opted in, every email without a link to you on Twitter, is a lost opportunity.

3. Welcome Aboard, Follow Us: Most established companies have an HR dept of some sort and those departments have a process for onboarding new employees. Your company’s social media info should be included in the welcome packet (whether virtual or paper). Most people are using the popular sites for personal reasons so they most likely don’t need to be recruited to use Facebook or Twitter. As long as employees aren’t a disgruntled loose canon, you almost get an extension of your marketing efforts when they can see stuff and contribute to it, even if it’s just ‘liking’ something on Facebook.

4. Let Search Do The Work: This one sounds obvious but even some of the biggest companies do not do this, at all. Some of the mainstay companies that have some of the strongest online consumer brands in the world, like Apple, usually don’t have to link to their social profiles as people will seek them out. However, if you are not Apple, it’s helpful to have text links to social media profiles somewhere as part of the standard footer or navigation on any of your web properties. I’m not saying plaster huge Twitter icons and logos everywhere, but just a text link can do you some good. Also make sure you have some kind of landing page or provision on your site’s contact page with all of your social media links. If you get decent traffic on your site from search engine referrals, there’s some easy intrinsic opportunity to show up in more search results that you are not currently in without those links.

5. C’mon, Everyone Is Doing It: Social media may not be for everyone. I still have friends who even barely have an email account. However, if you have a company that is marketing itself online and you have employees that are online, send out company-wide emails reminding them to join your company on Facebook, Twitter, or whichever sites you have made to be your social marketing avenues. If they are not on Facebook or Twitter yet, they may actually want to check it out and sign up. Your employees are part of your army, make sure they feel like it.

Primer Over Sushi: The Impact Media Group

Posted by Rich Harris – October 23, 2009

Picture 4The Company

Today I had the pleasure of meeting with David Sieburg, Production Manager, at the Impact Media Group, based out of Santa Cruz, CA. I’ve been down to their offices before so I was already familiar with some of the amazing stuff they do. What sets these guys apart from many small video/production houses is that they don’t see themselves as a video production company. They don’t meet with a client, find out the client’s name, get the client’s logo, and slap it on some generic backdrop in HD and call it a day. The priority of their approach is not just your story, but more importantly, how to visually and creatively tell your company’s story in a way that is powerful enough to be done without words if given the option. Their goal is to visualize your company’s message in a way that is unlike any of your most aggressive competitors. Some of their work is surreal.

We’ve all seen amazing ideas on TV created by multimillion dollar Hollywood studios and pricey over-hyped agencies in San Francisco. The beauty and uniqueness of Impact is that they can accomplish the same quality, professionalism, creativity, and delivery of any high-end agency that I’ve seen but with a fraction of the crew and overhead.

The Next Steps

They are about to embark on their initial planning stages of their social media push and I’m excited to see what they do. We talked quite extensively about some of this stuff and the challenges of social media for a small B2B company that is the genius behind video creative used by big names we all know like Apple, Starbucks, HP, NBC, Discovery Channel, and Adobe…just to name a few. I look forward to seeing this small company, capable of creating bigger than life video, effectively populate the social media landscape within their respective industry against their competitors. They got the talent and big brand client base to do it quickly. It’s hard to believe a company this small has done things so big.

Thanks for the sushi David!

October 2009 Music

Posted by Rich Harris – October 23, 2009

So every payday I make it a point to purchase a couple new releases that I haven’t heard or owned before. Some are from artists that I already know, some are new to me. To ensure that I don’t end up being a corporate social media robot on this blog (as much as I love my job), I’m going to start balancing out my blogging with some of the music I’ve been listening to. I’d love to hear what you are listening to as well so comments are encouraged. Alright, enough of the intro paragraph. Below are a couple recent purchases I’ve made that I’d recommend.

61+EWht+ZUL._SL500_AA280_Artist: Mastodon

Release: Crack The Skye

Track Listing:

  1. Oblivion
  2. Divinations
  3. Quintessence
  4. The Czar: Usurper/Escape/Martyr/Spiral
  5. Ghost of Karelia
  6. Crack The Skye
  7. The Last Baron

Sound: Hard Rock/Metal

51PNTehUSpL._SL500_AA280_Artist: Grizzly Bear

Release: Vekatimest

Track Listing:

  1. Southern Point
  2. Two Weeks
  3. All We Ask
  4. Fine For Now
  5. Cheerleader
  6. Dory
  7. Ready, Able
  8. About Face
  9. Hold Still
  10. While You Wait for the Others
  11. I Live With You
  12. Foreground

Sound: Mellow Indie Rock/Experimental

613S9LKu4bL._SL500_AA280_Artist: The Kills

Release: Midnight Boom

Track Listing:

  1. U.R.A. Fever
  2. Cheap And Cheerful
  3. Tape Song
  4. Getting Down
  5. Last Day of Magic
  6. Hook and Line
  7. Black Balloon
  8. M.E.X.I.C.O.C.U.
  9. Sour Cherry
  10. Alphabet Pony
  11. What New York Used To Be
  12. Goodnight Bad Morning

Sound: Moody Indie Rock/Experimental

Social Media: Join The Convo or Instigate & Observe?

Posted by Rich Harris – October 22, 2009

talking-headsAn Interesting Question

I recently was sent a really interesting article posted at Adweek.com titled “When Silence Can Be Golden” written by Benjamin Palmer, co-founder and CEO of The Barbarian Group. It was an interesting commentary and perspective on how brands should consider utilizing social media. We’ve all heard everyone say stuff like “get your brand to ‘join the conversation‘ or ‘build a real direct relationship with your customers‘”.

That’s all fine and dandy and of course as a social media guy, I can’t disagree with that statement. However, the article I mentioned above discusses the potential absurdity behind having a static or inanimate brand engage customers directly or attempting to build a relationship with them. A couple lines from the article that I really liked and hadn’t thought about before were:

“Maybe some brands shouldn’t be conversational. Maybe most shouldn’t.

Social media was not made for brands. Lots of other stuff on the Internet was, but not Facebook and not Twitter.”

I mostly agree with the above, with some exceptions. I agree that some brands maybe shouldn’t be conversational but I also think we need to remember that business IS people. People make products and then people pay for those products. ‘Tis life. Later on in the article he talks about how a company should probably evaluate their approach with social media. Your evaluation does not mean that you should wonder if your company should even get into social media at all (of course it should). The real question is: Does it make sense for you to promote your brand having the conversation with your customers OR does it make more sense for your brand to promote the environments where your customers have conversations with each other about your brand and it’s products/services?

What Are Your Options?

So based on what I’ve said above, you basically have a couple concrete options that could be considered a best fit for your company. You ALSO have a massive grey area that may need to be explored, demanding that you get creatively amorphous and nimble with your approach.

Join The Conversation:

This is the old adage, the trendy social media goto defacto standard tagline that any marketer uses to bring his/her newly discovered career path to the customers. It still has value and substance and has a proven track record for success when done right. Industry types where I think this would be most appropriate are ones whose business is serving human beings and their experiences, where tangible goods are just a facet of the overall experience. These would be anything like hotels (as mentioned in the article by Palmer), restaurants, airlines, general product support services like Geek Squad, etc. People pay for a good experience from other humans that represent or are employed by these industries so direct engagement with them via social media would most likely feel more natural.

Instigate, Observe, Tweak, Observe, Repeat.

Next up is the other concrete option that Palmer spoke of which is: create an environment, or mechanism, or medium, for your customers and target audience to hang out and discuss your brand with each other while you watch and learn and strategize your next moves. In many cases, you can learn how to humanize your non-human products. You can learn much more by listening to your customers as a fly on the wall of your company’s Facebook Fan Page, the stream of tweets containing your brand name (or your competitor’s for that matter), and so on. The industries or companies where this applies are pretty much any company where a tangible product represents their brand. A hard drive, a pack of gum, a bottle of water that supposedly has vitamins in it. :-)

Meet Me In The Middle

The third option is that your real triumph may require you to do a combination of both. You may have a static tangible product that you will sell the most of if you create environments for your customers to talk with each other about their experiences while also conversing with them directly in the same environment so they feel like the brand is their for them, backing it’s product(s). It all depends. Every company and audience is different and complex in it’s own way. It’s all doable but the intuition of your social media/marketing team is crucial to find that balance yielding the best return so that your compay’s foray into social media is worth the hype behind the lengthy social media pitch you just gave to your execs.

Onward.

[ Talking Heads image courtesy of, and borrowed from, 8ninths ]

Social Media: The Next Heroin Soaked Band-Aid

Posted by Rich Harris – October 16, 2009

bandaidsGood Stuff

Recently on Twitter a tweet from @AdamCohen to @RobertCollins said: “More evidence social media is just a part of the overall marketing toolbox. Love it.”. This was in response to something Robert had tweeted: “Research found a 19-percentage-point lift in searches on brand among users who also saw them on social media http://bit.ly/YxoMb“. Both of these guys are refreshing to follow for their insight into the big picture. Check ‘em out.

The Tried And True Is Still King

After following the convo between and Adam and Robert above, I was finally able to put something together that has been bothering me for so long about Social Media: Social Media is not a replacement for an organized, well run company or quality products/services (Hence, the somewhat wonky title of this blog post).

It doesn’t matter how many times you tweet a promo, post a link to your Facebook wall, send out an email blast, fax a flyer, chisel an advertisement into stone with jurassic era hand tools…Successful stable companies that stick around and grow are only able to do so because of their functional healthy internal organs, not because they have a great tan.

Some Things To Think About, No More Band-Aids

Having worked for quite a few startups and large companies, I understand the pressure felt when money is tight, triumphs and successes are less than recent failures, etc. If your company is struggling, social media (or any marketing medium for that matter) won’t “fix” it on the mere fact that it’s currently popular among other companies and marketers. ANY marketing budget is wasted if your company isn’t solid on the inside, speaking with “one voice”, with all organizations in alignment with each other from the top down. If you have that cohesiveness and solidarity within your company, then and only then is it time to market it.

I’m the millionth person to say this in the history of marketing and business but seeing the activity going on with social media, it’s existence is becoming more present as a buzz word and a shallow sales pitch than it is as a practical and useful tool for companies. I felt that I had to put out a reminder for my own sanity so I don’t start getting annoyed with my own line of work. :-)

Onward.

Social Media: Meaning & Purpose Are In Our DNA.

Posted by Rich Harris – October 14, 2009

Photo Credit: User "Scoobay" on FlickrControlled Capitalism is Changing

The problem with one-way communication and some of the old way of doing marketing is that for years, in an effort to solidify and meet our revenue forecasts, we have trained human beings to be the type of consumer that doesn’t think for themselves. They’ve been rolling with the consumer herd so that large corporations with nebulous names can spoon feed them what they need to like, and pay for, next week, next month, next year.

In this awesome age of information that we are swimming in, people are now learning from a young age to think for themselves when it comes to consumables and how they have the power to choose the next trend and influence others, even people they don’t know (customer reviews for example). This power has also made them hungrier and less patient when it comes to the ROI attached to something they read, eat, drink, smell, etc….people expect a return now when you engage them and frankly, I don’t blame them.

Think about how much time and money is wasted marketing something in a way that creates no return or meaning for the customer. Think about the thousands of banner ads that were designed by pricey agencies that were ignored and never clicked, the print ads were never read or that never drove one direct sale or word of mouth reference. It’s mind blowing to think about all the money spent on that with nothing to show for it.

Legos Are Deep, Man

A nice write up entitled, “Finding Purpose in Labor (and Labor Economics)” was posted by Daniel R. Hawes where he posts some thoughts and opinions regarding a study that was done and documented called “Man’s search for meaning: The case of Legos”

Here’s a quote from Daniel’s write up about the experiment talking about it’s premise:

“Meaning, or purpose, in the task was manipulated by what the MIT and University of Chicago experimenters did with Lego toys after a participant had put them together. For one group of participants – the group with the meaningful task – the constructed Lego toys were piled up on a table for the participant to see, and new Lego pieces were provided to build further toys. For the meaning-deprived group, each constructed toy was immediately disassembled (for the participant to see), and the parts given back to be reused for subsequent building efforts.
Maybe not surprisingly to you, but possibly surprising for economic theorists, the average amount of toys each person was willing to build significantly differed between the two groups.”

……and here is a quote from the researchers doing the study:

“Despite the fact that the physical task requirements and the wage schedule were identical in the two conditions, the subjects in the Meaningful condition built significantly more [Lego toys] than those in the Sisyphus condition. In the Meaningful condition, subjects built an average of 10.6 [Lego toys]  and received an average of $14.40, while those in the Sisyphus condition built an average of 7.2 [Lego toys] and earned an average of $11.52.”

After reading I was reminded of one of the most simple rules to good marketing, and more importantly in this day and age, surefire tactics for upping the statistical odds of you getting a return for your social media campaign initiatives: Meaning & Purpose.

As a Social Media Marketer, It’s Already In Your Bag of Tricks

Something as simple as Legos remind us of one of the low-hanging fruits of social media. The study above reminds us of something very simple and fundamental.To me, the above data states something that should be obvious to any social marketer.

When you run a campaign, is there a meaning or purpose for the user when they arrive at your campaign landing page, click on your shortened URL, follow you on Twitter, etc.? Do they feel that when you engage them does your promotional delivery wreak more of the ‘take’ than the more important scent of ‘give’?

If you build your social media efforts on a foundation of meaning for your audience, the revenue and brand awareness will come naturally. Even something as simple as Legos prove it.

Onward.

[lego photo credit: Scoobay on Flickr]

Stats from The Solis

Posted by Rich Harris – October 13, 2009

Brian’s recent blog post: “The Great Social Divide: Twitter, Facebook Traffic Surges, Myspace Fades“, was chock full of some really great social media nuggets. The behemoth that is Facebook, the rise of Twitter, the process of the fall of MySpace. I highly recommend checking this post out. It’s always nice for us social media guys when someone else goes out there and pulls and the information we really care about into one location instead of the 8 different ones we have to go. The best quote by far from the post at the bottom that is in sync with the rest of the better known social media/marketers was this:

“This is why, in social media, digital anthropology, sociology, ethnography, and psychology prevail…”

Amen to that.

The Obama Factor: Ridiculousness at a new level.

Posted by Rich Harris – October 9, 2009

obamaThe Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize is for those that earned it. The announcement today that Obama was awarded this prize is a joke. It’s not a joke because Obama did anything wrong, nor do I believe he is involved in any shananigans to win it. The problem is bigger than him. The problem is with the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Check out these quotes from recent articles on CNN:

Article: Obama’s win unique among presidents

Quote: “The committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons…”

Quote: “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

———————-

Article: Obama: Nobel Peace Prize is ‘call to action’

Quote: “Some analysts have speculated that the prize could give Obama additional clout as he forms a strategy for the war in Afghanistan and attempts to engage Iran and North Korea. Another senior administration official told CNN he hopes the White House can ‘use it for the positive.’”

———————-

My Gripe.

I dig Obama. I voted for Obama. I still like him. I love what he has done for our diplomacy internationally. I believe he would be an amazing candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize depending on what he does over his first term (and possibly a second term?). All the cards are there for him to be the next person to have earned the prize.

However, if you look at the quotes I posted from CNN above, it’s clear to me that this prize was given to him based on what we hope he’ll do, what we hope he can pull off, what we hope our future will be like. His prize is based on hope and hope is not tangible, it’s an idea. In the past, this prize was always awarded to people because of their selfless vision that they executed into tangible accomplishments; visible and on record. If this is the new allowable premise to award something so prestigious then we should start handing these things out like candy to all the every day people that make huge waves in their communities, in other countries, etc. These are the ones that should be considered. Obama doesn’t have that track record (yet).

Even though Obama did not choose this outcome or most likely didn’t even plan for it, the Nobel committee has taken huge risk in setting back Obama’s progress in diplomacy by ‘handing’ it to him, and spurring more controversy, the same kind of controversy that sparked all of our protests against Bush’s krony-riddled administration. It’s carelessness and recklessness by the Nobel committee in my opinion and does Obama’s vision and effort a disservice at this point in time. Other countries that have historically hated us and are now open to at least reconsidering talking to us, could possibly now be thinking, “See! I knew something was up with Obama. Too good to be true!”. Lame.

My Hope.

It’s no surprise that Obama was humble about this and immediately reminded us that it’s not about him almost to the point of questioning it himself. That attitude is a major reason why I voted for him. I hope his vision for global peace and diplomacy is accomplished some day. I hope he makes waves when it comes to nuclear disarmament, bringing tensions and disagreements to a conversational level amongst world leaders to resolve peacefully. I believe that’s what he wants, I believe he can accomplish great things and I believe he should be recognized for it when it happens. My hopes though are just thoughts, untangible. Hopefully one day they are actual memories of things he has actually done and accomplished backed by real data and stories to support it.

I support Obama in his continued efforts but damn I hate the bullshit.

Onward.

Funny Video for Social Media “Gurus”

Posted by Rich Harris – October 5, 2009