Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Stop Pissing In The Social Media Pool

October 18th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

Imagine my surprise this morning when I found this shocking headline in my feed reader, “Traffic Bait Doesn’t Bring Ad Clicks.” Apparently, after extensive study, researchers found that “advertising is more effective when it is paired with news content that is relevant to the product, especially when the subject of the news is something in which readers have a personal interest.”

Sorry for the tone, but that just seems ridiculously obvious to me.

So I read the article, then posted a tweet with as much sarcasm as I could fit into 140 characters, and headed to the gym. Since I’ve been trying to give Foursquare another shot (blame Brian Copeland), I dutifully checked in to my LA Fitness and noticed that there were three tips for that venue. I had never bothered to check them out before.

Imagine how thrilled I was to see the second tip from a local loan officer. “Almost 50% of the Santa Clarita Valley is upside down on their mortgage. Go to www.blahblahblah.com for more information.” Apparently he thought the name of the place was LA Financial Fitness.

Things that are “ridiculously obvious” to me seem to elude some people. Clearly this well-intentioned guy thinks dropping his ads all over Foursquare is a perfectly good way to use social media. Or perhaps he realized it was silly and tried to cover it up by posting the incredibly helpful, “Guys, rack your weights when you’re done.” Thanks. Good tip.

My reaction to this is the same one I’d have to someone pissing in my pool: You picked the wrong place and the wrong time. And now you’ve ruined the water for everyone.

I showed this to a friend a bit later, someone who is not a Foursquare user, and they had a similar reaction. Their immediate comment was something to the effect of, “That would turn me off to the whole service.” I think that’s a fair reaction.

Context. Context. Context.

Had this tip been on a bank, or his office, or a house with a foreclosure sign in the front yard, then I might have had a different reaction. The context would have been more appropriate. Heck, I might have actually clicked on his link. Context matters. Always has. Always will.

Tags: advertising, context, foursquare, Social Media
Posted in Blog, Commentary | 14 Comments »

Gurus, Pretenders And Inspirations

September 13th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I tried to ignore the bullhorn in the black “trainer” shirt this morning. It was hard, but I was managing. I was managing until my wife forced me to focus on him. Rocky said, “If I were the person that guy was supposed to be training, I’d be pissed.” Over the course of the next 45 minutes, it occurred to me that there were three distinct kinds of people in the small side room, which, in that moment, had just magically transformed into a social networking lab.

The “Guru”

Turns out this “guru” trainer was not even paying attention to his client. He was having a ridiculous, loud conversation with someone else while his client was busy acting like she was working out. He was paying only casual attention to his client and when he did, his instructions were cliche, at best. None of his instructions were specific to his clients needs. Not a single one. He was loud, exuded cockiness and was doing absolutely nothing to help his client.

The Pretender

The client’s form was horrid and her level of intensity was below average at best. But there she was, paying a trainer to get her in shape. She wasn’t saying much. She wasn’t working hard. She was just going through the motions. I’m sure she left feeling like she had accomplished something. Perhaps she did, but not nearly what she could have. The same was true of the lady holding the attention of the “guru.” She was there, but her mouth was moving more than any other part of her body. They will probably both tell people they had a “great” workout today. They didn’t.

The Inspiration

To our left was a woman singularly focused on one of the most amazing yoga/gymnastics/core strength workouts I’ve ever witnessed. And I’m not overstating this. I wish I could have videotaped it. She was working out in a way that made me feel honored to be in the same room with her. Both Rocky and I engaged her and she politely engaged us back, never once breaking form or altering her workout. It was a thing of beauty. Her actions and her polite engagement around her workout inspired me to work harder.

Universal Social Truth: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

The small, glass room we were working out in this morning contained about 15 people. We were, in that moment, a very small, very open social network. People from outside our network could see us and choose to come in, or not. Inside the room, everyone could hear everyone else. We were free to engage or not engage as we saw fit. In that setting, I desperately wanted to mute the “guru” and his chatty pretender. I desperately wanted to go save his client. I couldn’t do either in a socially acceptable way.

I also desperately wanted to be better as a result of watching this one woman display a level of commitment to her workout that was truly amazing. I know many who passed by outside the room felt the same way. I would have gladly paid her to be MY trainer. I would seek her out, without her having to ask. Her public actions were harder to ignore than the loud banter of the the “guru” and the pretenders. And they spoke volumes about her knowledge and her character.

As you move through your social networks, which person are you?

Tags: action, doing, guru, inspiration, Social Media, Social Networking
Posted in Blog, Social Networks | 2 Comments »

Signal VS Noise: A Look At The REBCNASH Twitter Stream

April 30th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I wasn’t going to write this post. I obviously changed my mind.

This is a post about REBarcamp Nashville, but it’s not really about REBarcamp Nashville. Nothing I’m about to say has anything to do with the quality of the 51 sessions that took place during the day at REBCNASH. From everything that I’ve heard from people who were actually in attendance, Brian Copeland ran an excellent REBarcamp, filled with great information and attended by many who were new to the Web 2.0 space. One of the speakers I spoke with mentioned that he was pleasantly surprised by how attentive the audience was. He said that many were taking notes on actual paper, with actual pens.

Signal vs. Noise

I decided to monitor the Twitter Stream for REBCNASH based on a conversation I had the previous day about the volume of noise that was coming from conferences and how hard it was to find valuable content in what was being shared via Twitter. The claim was that these conferences were becoming polluted with noise. They were echoing the feelings Matt Stigliano had while trying to listen to the content being generated on Twitter at SXSW. And I remembered clearly watching his cry for people at SXSW to do more than just broadcast their Foursquare data. You can read about it here: Two Weeks of Social Media Hell.

This is no scientific study, but I did want to be as accurate as possible. So, I cross referenced my main monitoring, using Tweetgrid.com/irc, with Twazzup and Twitter Search,. Luckily, the Twitter gods were kind and the search stream was consistent between the three tools. In total, there were 184 tweets that used the hashtag #rebcnash that day. Those tweets were generated by 77 different people. I don’t know how many were in attendance. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that 77 people decided that they wanted to use the hashtag on Twitter to share something about the event with the rest of the world.

So what did they share?

To analyze the content, I brought the tweet stream for REBCNASH into a spreadsheet and categorized each broadly. A tweet was either “signal” or “noise.” Since REBarcamps are learning conferences, I defined signal as any tweet that gave a piece of information that contributed to learning, or a provided a link to something that might. Everything else was considered noise.

Out of the 184 tweets, I only considered 8 to be signal. And when you see the 8, I think you’ll agree that I’m being generous. Here are the 8 “signal” tweets:

8:10:49 am MauraNeill: Google loves WordPress (via @kdrewien) #rebcnash
8:16:30 am MauraNeill: WordPress is industry standard – @kdrewien #rebcnash
“8:27:04 am DawnGrizzell: “”love is a killer app”" with @RealEstateZebra. Learn to be a better agent. I’ll be reading the book! #rebcnash http://twitpic.com/1j4e64“
“8:42:26 am shabsxu: @serkes you can add “”/rss”" to any WP url and it will give u a feed! #rebcnash”
12:50:01 pm JeremyHelton: #rebcnash social fusion autofeeds, interesting stuff.
12:55:23 pm MauraNeill: Facebook ads – for the first time we can create laser-focused ads that pinpoint a very specific group of people. #rebcnash
1:03:28 pm MauraNeill: Good read 4 REALTORS-check it out! RT @kleighcreative: BLOG POST: If You Bum Rush Me, We’ll NEVER Do Business http://bit.ly/aBPbRQ #rebcnash

Again, I think I am being VERY generous here. Example, I included Jeremy Helton’s tweet because it might cause me to go take a look at Social Fusion. So, I counted it as signal. I could debate the “signal worthiness” of several of the others, but this should give you a sense of how low I set the signal bar. Retweets of these signal tweets (only a few) were not counted as signal.

A Closer Look At The Noise

So, the math is pretty simple. If only 8 tweets were signal, 176 were noise. Example: “no sweet tea here at #rebcnash yet but always hope. Had some awesome sweet tea the other day though. Must have more ” Which is a perfectly fine tweet, (I’ve said similar things on twitter while at a barcamp) just not signal by my definition. There were, in fact, almost as many tweets about tea, 6, as there were tweets that contained any real content.

My next step was to categorize the noise. I wanted to get a feel for the kinds of things people felt were important to throw out into the twitter stream. So I put the noise into one of five categories; praise, questions, statements, location, and photos.

Praise: these were tweets that simply praised some aspect of the conference without really providing any insight. An example of a praise tweet: “Can’t wait to line up the rest of the afternoon at #rebcnash.” These tweets contained the most used word at REBCNASH, which was “great.”

Questions: these were tweets that were predominantly coming in from outside of the barcamp itself. There were 17 questions asked. Only two of them were answered using the hashtag, one of them by me. An example of a question tweet: “Which is the best Twitter app for a Palm Pre? #rebcnash.” This was never answered.

Statements: these were tweets that simply made a statement, often seemingly random. An example of a statement tweet: “Learning more about twitter at #rebcnash” and “Is hanging and sponsoring #rebcnash today. Loving ‘Love is the Killer Ap dude’s jacket!” The last one could easily have been put into praise or even location as well.

Location: these were tweets that simply let people know where someone was while they were at REBCNASH. An example of a location tweet: “Second half of #rebcnash has started! (@ REBarCamp Nashville w/ 10 others) http://4sq.com/ai3HWT” The majority of these were not Foursquare posts, however, just people letting us know what session they were in.

Photos: these were tweets that contained photos. An example of a photo tweet: “#REBCNASH Schedule is Revealed! http://post.ly/dmq4″ Many of these also contained praise or a location or both, but were only counted in the photo category.

How Do We Increase The Signal To Noise Ratio?

I’m not here to debate why so little content was placed into the Twitter stream during this REBarcamp. There was no WiFi at the event, so a livestream was not possible and computer access was limited. I get it. And once again, just to be clear, those who actually attended are saying emphatically that the information shared in the sessions was excellent. Clearly, however, desire plays a role. First and foremost, you have to want to create valuable content or want to consume valuable content to make any of this work. And you certainly have to be able to identify what valuable content looks like in either case.

Personally, I’d like to do a better job of sharing valuable information. So, for those who have the desire and the ability to recognize or create good content, how do we make it easier to get more signal into the stream and get more signal out of it as well. @jazzychad has done a good job with Tweetgrid.com/irc and an even better job with Madch.at, but even those miss the mark on many levels. In this specific case, if you were interested in gleaning some knowledge from the REBCNASH stream, having the very best listening tool in the world would still have only netted you, at best, 8 potential nuggets.

And having the best tool for sharing great content only works if people actually share. From my own experience, I know I am more diligent to present quality information if I know it has some legs. It’s one of the reasons why we’re creating the Live Blog app. When I know the information I’m tweeting at an event is going to live as content on my blog, I’m more careful to make sure it’s good content.

Some Questions

When you listen in on a conference via the “official” hashtag, what are you hoping to find?
Do we have any obligation at all to share the quality content at free conferences with the community at large?
Should conference organizers play a larger role in the distribution of the targeted content coming out of their events?
Is Twitter even the best place to share that content? If not, what is?
What tools are needed to make relevant content easier to create and consume?

I’m not sure I have the right answers for most of those questions, but one thing I do know for sure is this - I’m personally going to give more thought to the content I’m sharing at the next event I attend. I’m going to shoot for more signal and less noise. I think everyone will benefit. Including me.

Tags: noise, rebcnash, signal, Social Media, tools, Twitter
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Social Media | 47 Comments »

Gist Nails The Gist Of A Simple Training Game

March 17th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

We love games here at Zeek Interactive. We play them. We make them.

And we’ve felt for a long, long time that games and learning were meant for each other. Our first training games were launched back in 1998 as part of a collaboration with AdOut. They were called “Monster Commands” and “Key Commando” and they taught the important key commands that made the AdOut production artists some of the most productive in the industry. They were a huge success. The employees loved them and within an hour, they had mastered key commands for programs like Photoshop, Quark and Illustrator that would otherwise have taken weeks or months to learn.

In 2003, we attempted to turn our game creation experience into a training solution for corporations. We created Motus Learning Systems with a couple of other partners to give it a focus. Motus built several demo games for different companies, and we even created a kids game to teach mousing skills. The initial illustrations for that kids game are shown above. And although this proved to be a short-lived venture for many reasons, it didn’t alter our belief that games are simply the best way to learn things that require repetition to master.

This past week, Gist launched their own training game. And I really like it.

Stated very clearly on the front page of their site, “Gist helps you build stronger relationships by connecting the inbox to the web to provide business-critical information about the people and companies that matter most.” Others, like Dustin Luther, have written about how Gist is helping them manage the many online relationships they’ve fostered. I like it too, but I really like their newest feature, a game called, “Learn That Name.” And it does exactly what the name implies… it helps you learn the names and companies of the people you follow on social networks.

It’s a simple game, as most good training games are. You’re presented with a person’s avatar and you get points for guessing their name correctly. The faster you guess, the more points you get. Get it wrong and you lose 50 points. Each round is five people. For my taste, it’s just the right number. In my first round I achieved the “Super Socialite” level, though I was lucky to get five people I know pretty well. The second round labeled me a “Casual Networker.” I think the game could do a better job of sensing the sex of a contact. If I didn’t know that was Geoff Livingston, it would be a lot harder to figure out if all four names were male oriented.

The game strips off choices as the time clicks by and the points drop. So, if you don’t know who someone is, it helps you. If you don’t get the name right, you don’t get the option of the bonus question, which is “Where does <first name> work?” I wasn’t sure who this next guy was, so the game gave me some help.

I haven’t used Gist much since I loaded it, but I’ll be using it more now. I think they did a great job with the game. I can see lots of potential for categorizing contacts based on upcoming events, recent additions, high school classmates, etc. In fact, I’d download this app JUST to play this game. After just a few rounds, I’ve already become more familiar with some folks I’ve been trying to get to know over the past year. And I was surprised by some of the faces I recognized and how hard it was to place their name.

Kudos to Gist. Well done.

Tags: adout, fun, Games, gist, learning, motus, Social Media, training
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Games, Site Reviews | 12 Comments »

The Lo-So Hurdle – Getting The Average Jane To Check In

March 16th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I would put my current opinion of the popular and public use of “lo-so” (location-based social networks) somewhere between silly and dangerous.

When I take myself out of my tech lover mindset, I’m just not sure what the point of all of this public “checking in” really is. My general feeling is this – If you want someone specific to know where you are, just tell them? And if you’re not a social media fan boy, or someone enjoying their 15 minutes of technorati fame, or a Realtor trying to turn every mundane daily activity into a sphere-of-influence-building mission, then you probably couldn’t care less if your entire network knows you’re at your local Chevron. I have to believe that if you’re just an average Joe or Jane, telling the whole world where you are at every turn just seems kind of silly.

I’m not alone in my house. In fact, my wife, Rocky, has heavily influenced my opinion. She is not anti-social media by any stretch. She has witnessed the value of Twitter and Facebook in encouraging public conversation. It has helped her charity, MFFO.ORG, raise thousands and thousands of dollars for an extremely worthy cause. But she falls squarely into the “average Jane” description above. It would be accurate to say she thinks all of the public Foursquare announcements are stupid in most cases and dangerous in others. She’s was not a happy camper when I was using Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla in real time to broadcast where I was to my Twitter stream. She was less considerably less happy if I checked in when we were all together as a family. She wouldn’t even consider doing it herself.

If I’m a business, I’m hoping guys like me and gals like my wife change their mind fast. Why? Because these services represent a major opportunity to influence our buying decisions. And the new Foursquare analytic tools for business being tested offer a good look at the wealth of data that could be available if the consumer begins to see a benefit in using the services ubiquitously. But what is it going to take to get people like my wife to use them? It’s going to take more than cool tech to sway them. She has no idea I’m writing this post right now, so I’m going to go ask her and then come back.

I’m back. And I’m a bit surprised.

I won’t beat around the bush. She agreed with my descriptions above. She feels all of the public check in activity is dangerous, especially for women. And said, “Unless I was at a social media conference, trying to keep up with where my friends were, I just can’t see myself using it.”

Then I said, “OK, but let’s pretend you’re Julie in Illinois or Kim in West Virginia. You’re never going to go to a social media conference and you rarely, if ever, travel without your family. You’re you as you are in your day-to-day life here in Santa Clarita.” She put herself in that place and I asked, “What would it take for you to use it if you could keep your check in activity completely private?”

That spurred some thought. And I was surprised by her answer.

“You mean if I could limit who saw my check in to just my small local sphere of friends, the people I interact with face-t0-face, people who live nearby?” Yes. “Then I could see a real value in getting an alert if Alana or Susan were at Whole Foods, for example. I could ask them to pick something up for me. It would be a benefit for them to know if I was at a store as well. That would have REAL value to me.”

I would never have gone there. I can see real value in that as well.

Encouraged, I pushed on and asked, “What if when you checked into Whole Foods, the Pei Wei across the parking lot could push a message to you that offered a discount if you showed them them your iPhone screen, or if a new organic cereal company offered you a free sample as you were in the store shopping, would that encourage you to check in more often and at more places?” She paused a second and said, “Yes, that would make me check in more often. No question. But I still wouldn’t care if I were the Mayor of Whole Foods.” (That’s my girl!)

What’s interesting is that she could use Foursquare as she envisions it right this very second. She was totally unaware that her check in activity could be kept private and limited to just a few people. Her understanding of Foursqure and other “lo-so” services was solely based on the public behavior being displayed by the technorati on a daily basis and at conferences like SXSW.

I’m going to help my wife use it as she described above. I want to see if it provides value for her. But I’m left wondering how many other average Janes and average Joes are being negatively influenced by the popular uses of these services? It may be time to take a step back and ask the question, “is the popular public use of location-based social networking attracting people or driving them away?”

Photo credit: Bits

Tags: brightkite, foursquare, geolocation, gowalla, lo so, location, Social Media
Posted in Blog, Social Media | 7 Comments »

HAR Digital Media Spring Training – A Live Blog Experiment

March 12th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

This is a test of a live blogging iPhone app and accompanying WordPress plugin at the HAR Digital Media Spring Training 2010 Major League Sessions. If it is working properly today, I should be able to selectively tweet the updates and have each link back to this post, where everything will be aggregated.

6:15 am: I’ll be using a Live Blog app all day today to post updates from #harsmp.

7:12 am: Todd Carpenter – @tcar is up first… talking about “Brand You”

7:18 am: Todd is doing an excellent job of using transparency in the way it should be used. Illustrations of the various “names” people have called him on the Internet, both good and bad.

7:21 am: “How are people branding you?” – @tcar #harsmp analyzing social media will tell you.

7:21 am: Google alerts and vanity searches are reactive, not proactive.

7:22 am: “Dont tell me your a big deal. Be a big deal.” – @tcar #harsmp

7:25 am: Todd is really highlighting the fact that actions speak louder than words. His illustrations, although just words, are very visual. Like the way he’s managing his presentation. It’s true to HIS brand.

7:29 am: Yelp.com – @tcar is extolling the potential virtue of Yelp for REALTORS. I agree. #harsmp

7:32 am: He said “Yelp Strategery” for the Texas crowd.

7:33 am: “Think about how you can help other local businesses.” – @tcar #harsmp

7:34 am: “I’m kind of a big deal.” – @tcar #harsmp (excellent presentation)

7:51 am: Up next: Paul Chaney @pchaney “The Digital Handshake” focused on Facebook and Twitter.

8:01 am: What should you do about it? Paul says, “Start a conversation.”

8:03 am: “In social media, the mindset is more important than the toolset.” – @pchaney #harsmp (truth)

8:07 am: “Information has to be findable and shareable.” – @pchaney #harsmp

8:09 am: Paul is preaching today. He’s really “on” this morning. Enjoying it.

8:16 am: There’s a business profit benefit to creating a viral conversation. But you have to be willing to work the way the web works today. Staying entrenched in old marketing styles, to the exclusion of conversation media, is a mistake.

8:17 am: “Listen. Engage. Measure.” – @pchaney #harsmp

8:21 am: “Twitter is kind of the new email”

8:24 am: “BLOG = Better Listings On Google.”

8:28 am: “If this is JUST about ROI for you. You’re missing the point.” – @pchaney #harsmp

8:30 am: Paul’s tears at the end of his presentation over the human element of social media were real. Quite a touching moment. “it really is a matter of the heart.”

8:31 am: Paul’s presentation is at slideshare.net/pchaney

8:41 am: Up next: Ines Hegedus-Garcia from miamism.com talking about “Blogging On Steroids.”

9:03 am: “You need a plan.” – @Ines #harsmp re: blogging

9:07 am: Your blog should be a direct reflection of who you are and how you speak. If you’re casual, be casual. If you’re formal, be formal.

9:11 am: Pay attention to your demographics. Who have you sold to in the past? Are they similar? Can you identify a “type” that you can blog directly to?

9:14 am: “I try things on my blog for at least six months. If they aren’t converting, I stop.” – @Ines #harsmp

9:17 am: “The top right corner of your blog is you’re most valuable space. Make good use of it. Don’t waste it.”

9:30 am: “Marketing reports are universally the most clicked on posts.”

9:33 am: Wow. @Ines just mentioned twext.me #harsmp

9:38 am: I’m up next, so I won’t be live blogging it.

10:48 am: Max Pigman @maxpigman is up next talking about mobile technology.

10:56 am: “Mobile data will eclipse voice by 2011″ – @maxpigman #harsmp

11:00 am: “even if you don’t want or own an iPhone you need to know what your site looks like when viewed from an iPhone or iPod Touch. It represents 65% of mobile traffic”

11:06 am: The document camera @maxpigman uses to show his iPhone sceens rocks hard! #harsmp

11:15 am: Max does a great job of demoing the apps he recommends for the iPhone. Demoing Red Laser now.

11:18 am: Crowd is laughing at Max’s demo of an app that let’s you text and walk and see where you’re going.

11:21 am: .@maxhigman is demoing the Top Producer iPhone app. #harsmp

11:26 am: “they just developed a 2 TB SD card” – that’s a lot of photos

11:31 am: Glad he’s demoing how to use Windows on a Mac. The compatability myth needs to be busted.

11:32 am: Ines and I are talking about Flickr next.

12:27 pm: Ginger Wilcox @gingerw from smminstitute.com is up next to talk about video.

12:39 pm: “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in your first videos. Everyone does” – @gingerw #harsmp

12:44 pm: Ginger is showing off her MANY video camera she uses. She may have a camera buying addiction.

12:49 pm: Make sure viewers can rate your “YouTube videos or they won’t be found and add text to them so Google can index them.”

12:51 pm: “Publish regularly, publish to more than one location, be human, listen” – good advice.

12:56 pm: I kinda liked the “tv show” feel of the video Ginger show of her property listing. Perhaps she’ll come link to it in the comments.

1:00 pm: “Take videos of local business owners talking about why their business is unique and what they love about their community.”

Tags: digital media, har, HARSMP, iphone, live blog, Social Media, wordpress
Posted in HARSMP | 4 Comments »

A Hub-Focused Approach To Evaluating Tools (Part 1)

March 11th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

The concept of the “site-less web” has become a popular topic of late. From a business standpoint, what the advocates say is that your website/blog is no longer as important as it used to be and that information no longer needs a specific source to gain wide distribution. People can and will be able to find you in many places, most of which you will not own.

I buy large portions of that logic and have experienced some of the benefit of that thinking myself. And I also believe this concept may work better for large organizations than it does for personal brands, at least for the near future. For example, as I look around the web at REALTORS© who are and have been successful in the social media space, they have one thing is common. They may have strong positions in numerous social media sites, but they have one or a small number of hubs around which all of their social media efforts revolve. It might look something like this.

Typically the hub is their blog, though some are moving their focus to Facebook Fan pages. And the tools they choose to use all work to support their hub-focused approach. A tool like Posterous, for example, is a form of a blog/social media site, but it also gives the user the ability to skin their Posterous blog with their own branding and “park” it at a subdomain of their main site, like blog.miamism.com. This appears to the viewer as just a section of the main Miamism site, and in effect it is, even though it’s hosted on a different service/server. The benefit of a site like Posterous is that when you create mobile content using the tools Posterous provides, and set up the automatic distribution options, it leads the viewers at the various distribution points, Twitter, Facebook, etc., directly back to your hub. SEO value, links, eyeballs, they’re all focused back on the hub.

Some tools don’t provide this opportunity. We’ll take a closer look in Part 2.

(This post is part of a presentation experiment at HAR Digital Media Spring Training for rookies.)

Tags: har, HARSMP, hub, Social Media, tools
Posted in HARSMP | 1 Comment »

Stop Calling Me A Social Media Marketing Expert

March 8th, 2010 - Jeff Turner

I’ve tried hard to not call myself a social media marketing expert or guru or master or rock star. What I haven’t done is correct others when they have. And I haven’t done a very good job of letting people know what I really am or what I’m really good at.

That’s all about to change.

I’ve spent at least a year in a complete blogging funk. And it’s not because I don’t have things I’d like to say. I most certainly do. The reason for the funk is that I’ve been having an internal battle between “what I should be doing” and “what I really love to do.” Luckily for me, what I really love to do is also what I’m really good at. And it’s not creating and defining marketing strategies.

First, some commentary. A troubling trend has emerged from the chaos of the social media boom. People who have no real marketing skills or training or any experience with business strategy are becoming “social media marketing” consultants, strategists and coaches based on a few factors that have nothing to do with successful marketing strategy. These new marketing “experts” fall into one of three categories.

The Cheerleader
The Successful Fool
The Opportunist

The Cheerleader

You all know this social media marketing expert. He or she is the person who has no proven track record for building ANYTHING other than followers on a few popular social media sites. They equate this popularity with business success and can even teach others how to recreate their “success” in these online venues. They use anecdote and analogy to answer questions of ROI and they universally fail to be able to point to any quantifiable measures of business progress that contribute substantially to a company’s bottom line.

The Successful Fool

This social media marketing expert has a proven track record of past business success, but it has nothing to do with any marketing experience, least of which social media marketing. There is no proof that their journey is repeatable. They use an unintentional slight of hand to direct our attention to their past exploits as proof positive of future benefit. And they make the foolish mistake of thinking their personal ability to grow a business can be transferred to others on a large scale.

The Opportunist

This is my least favorite form of new age social media marketing expert. They promise big results with almost no effort. They are the social media marketing snake oil salesmen. They’re the ones telling you that if you don’t do x and y you will be extinct in 2 years. Their success is measured in the number of people they dupe into buying their placebos. They’re not marketing strategists, they’re carnival barkers.

So what am I?

I have been very successful in my business life. Let me be clear, by “very successful” I mean that my companies have made solid profits for many years. But they have not been successful because I am a marketing strategy expert. Quite to the contrary.

What has helped make them successful is hiring great strategy consultants and partnering with great strategic thinkers, like Bill Leider. I’ve have also tried to align myself with others who are great marketing and brand strategists in specific market segments, like Marc Davison in real estate. But I am NOT a marketing strategist. What I do is work WITH and BESIDE marketing strategists to develop tools, tactics and technology paths that make executing those strategies simpler and easier. I look at a company’s objectives and devise ways to use technology to make executing those strategies more efficient and effective. I am a tactical strategist and a technology strategist. I am not a marketing strategist – social media or otherwise.

The mistake I’ve made over the past year is thinking that I needed to be something else. I don’t.

When Hal Lublin related the story of how, while playing poker, Chris Brogan helped him understand that he shouldn’t hold back, I wondered why I was holding back. I wondered what was keeping me from writing. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no one good reason. There is just one bad reason – I’ve been resisting being seen as a social media MARKETING expert.

My Master’s degree is in School Psychology with a focus on behavior modification. I spent several years creating behavior modification plans for severely mentally handicapped and criminally insane patients. So, if sometimes I want to write about behavior, I should. I have a passion for science, so sometimes I want to write about technology, the Internet and social media as it relates to quantum mechanics and complex adaptive systems. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. I’ve also spent a great deal of time dissecting, with the help of some great thinkers, the role of vision and values in building and managing a business and solidifying a brand. I should write about that too. I will.

But what I will not do is continue to allow my resistance to being lumped into the category of “social media marketing expert” keep me from writing about areas in which I excel. I’m going to write about emerging digital tools and how to make them work to the benefit of strategy – personal, brand, marketing or otherwise. I’m going to write about what I love – technology.

Taking the experts’ advice.

The social media marketing experts I admire tell me that if I want to increase engagement, I should ask a question at the end of each blog post. Let’s see if they’re right. What barriers are holding you back from being more effective in using social media?

Tags: behavior, execution, expert, guru, Social Media, strategy, success, technology
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Social Media | 38 Comments »

My Y2K Story Would Be Better With A Few Photos

December 30th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

“Share your Y2K story” jumped out at me as I panned through one of my Twitter lists this morning. Jeremiah Owyang wrote a great post asking his readers to share their personal memories of the Y2K scare. Ten years later, I remember it like it was yesterday.

At that time I was CEO of a company called AdOut. AdOut was responsible for 100% of the ads created by the Los Angeles Times, LA Daily News, and the Torrance Daily Breeze. Thousands of ads per night were created by our dedicated team of graphic designers. And those three newspapers depended on us, exclusively, to meet their deadlines each and every day. It was a truly a nightly miracle.

So, although we were running a 100% Macintosh office and had no worries at all about our systems being impacted by Y2K, the newspapers were very concerned about the power company and required that we rent a LARGE generator to kick in when the lights went out at 12:01 am on January 1, 2000. Of course, that never happened. And, truth be told, none of us at AdOut ever thought it would.

Insert Nostalgic Y2K Photos Here

So, we laughed about it at our offices. We all took photos by the generator, which was the size of a semi truck. I’m sure I have those photos stored somewhere, but I’m not about to try to find them this morning. And that’s what strikes me most about what has transpired in the last 10 years.

If Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube had existed in 1999, I’d have those photos available for this post right now. I’d know exactly where to find them. This post would be filled with images, and embedded videos. The story would contain links to tweets that illustrated perfectly how silly we all were. We could laugh as we read the archived posts from the onslaught of Y2K consultants that surfaced in the months leading up the the new millenium. This post would be so much better if the social media tools available to us now were available to us then.

Boy has the world has changed in ten years.

Tags: daily breeze, daily news, facebook, flickr, los angeles times, newspapers, Social Media, Twitter, y2k, youtube
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Plancast.com Is Pure Of Marketers? That’s Funny.

December 17th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Yesterday, Jeremiah Owyang made the following comment on Twitter, “For now, Plancast.com is pure of marketers and brands, just the early adopters. I’m sure they will sign up soon.” I had to laugh when I read it. Of course I knew what he meant, but “pure” is a relative term. And while the real “marketers and brands” may not be there, the marketing and sales behavior began only minutes after I signed up.

Plancast is built around a simple concept – tell the world what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Others who subscribe to your Plancast feed can see your plans decide to let the world know they’re joining you. Owyang calls this “The Intention Web.” A typical update looks like this.

Screen shot 2009-12-17 at 6.21.33 AM

That’s great. I imagine this is the perfect example of how the creators of Plancast.com intended it to be used. However, within moments of signing up on the site back on December 4, I received this plancast:

featured

Last time I checked a blog post that didn’t qualify as a plan to do something, somewhere. My first reaction was a silent giggle. “Typical” was my thought. That update is an obvious attempt to force a sales message into a platform that wasn’t designed for that kind of message. So, “for now Plancast.com is pure of marketers” made me giggle a little bit too. The marketers may not be there, Jeremiah, but the marketing behaviors are.

That said, I’m not at all worried that this kind of behavior will pollute the Plancast.com community, whatever that ends up looking like. The “force my sales message” way of using the site will either be rewarded or punished. Our cumulative reactions will determine whether it is accepted or rejected. No one person gets to decide. That’s the beauty of social networks. They are self organizing. It will be interesting to see which behaviors become accepted and which do not.

Where will the value lie? For me, Plancast.com has value only if it can help me easily and quickly understand where the people I want to connect with are going to be. It would certainly help me decide if a specific event is worth my time. That’s valuable. However, if it becomes a site peppered with links to blog posts, and messages about what people are doing at their desks, I have no use for it.

What are your thoughts?

Tags: behavior, community, plancast, Social Media
Posted in Blog, Social Networks | 5 Comments »

The Lure Of The Shiny Object

November 25th, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Some very well meaning, very smart people are being distracted by the lure of shiny objects. And they are distracting others in the process.

The sexiness of the social media space and the desire to see an immediate return on the time investment required to access it, has created an atmosphere ripe for solutions to problems that don’t really exist. Example: Tweetlister.

Tweetlister launched in May of 2009. It allows the “tweeting” of real estate listings into a user’s Twitter stream. It gives real estate agents the ability to “post and re-use as many listings as you want.”

Funny, I thought Twitter already gave them that ability.

My first response, six months ago, came in the form of a tweet. I said, “Here’s an example of a solution in search of a problem if I’ve ever seen one.” And this was all I intended to write about it. Besides, Nicole Nicolay had already done a good job of exposing the shiny object.

But it didn’t go away. This private twitter conversation, a few weeks later, should have given me a clue that this would be a very distracting shiny object. It was sent to me by an extremely bright executive from one of the largest real estate companies in America.

Them: “Good concept – I definitely see this tool being abused.”

Me: Why is it a good concept? Why would you want to push people to yet another 3rd party listing site? Why not your own?”

Them: “That was a duh moment when I read your response. I’m a twitter newbie. Still learning & having fun. Thanks for the schooling.”

That wasn’t schooling. I didn’t teach them anything they didn’t know already. I just wasn’t distracted by the shiny object and simply asked a few questions to make sure there was something worth biting on the hook. But several very smart people, people I resprect and also call friends, did bite. And then they told their friends to bite. They’re still biting.

I posed the following question on the post linked above; “Your listings are probably already on your site or your blog. If you really want to automate, you could use Tweetlater (or Hootsuite or Objective Marketer or CoTweet) and set up a similar kind of schedule. Then the links would come straight to you. This just gets in the way, IMHO.” Agents could be leading buyers to their site and to their IDX search, but instead they are tweeting away and leading them to a search site they have no control over, one that is not a destination search site and one that could easily lead the buyer to another agent. And they are paying $9.95 a month for that right. I still don’t get it.

I’ve been thinking about this for six months. Why do smart people spend so much time leading people away from the sites they own? Why aren’t people employing a more focused hub and spoke approach to how they use social media? Why aren’t brokers providing more intelligent tools to help their agents?

That thinking has lead me in several directions, one of them being how the real estate virtual tour business works and how we do things at Real Estate Shows. The result of my thinking? Real Estate Shows needs to get out of the middle of the real estate transaction to the greatest extent possible. When consumers search on sites like Trulia and Zillow and Realtor.com, if they click on a link to a virtual tour, it should lead to a site owned by the real estate agent, not to yet another third party site.

How do we do that? I have a few ideas, but this post is already too long. The answer lies in being more intelligent with how our links work and becoming invisible to the consumer. More to come.

Tags: cotweet, hootsuite, objective marketer, questions, Social Media, strategy, Twitter
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Consulting, Social Media | 5 Comments »

Are Your Ready For Social Media?

October 1st, 2009 - Jeff Turner

Last week I had the pleasure of moderating a panel at New Media Atlanta entitled, “Are You Ready For Social Media: Preparing Your Teams To Listen, Engage, Measure & Adapt.” The panel included Bert Dumars, VP E-Business & Interactive Marketing for Newell Rubbermade, Seth Miller, Director, Digital Marketing for Turner Entertainment Networks, and Peter Fasano, Founder of Mass+Logic.

The goal of the panel was to have a fairly high level conversation focused on what’s required to prepare an organization for social media, with a heavy emphasis on listening; how to listen, what to listen for, and what to do with what you hear. I think the session is worth the 40 minutes you’ll need to digest the entire video. Thanks to Bert, Seth and Peter for their willingness to come forward and share their knowledge and experience.

Tags: listening, new media, nmatl, Social Media, Social Networking, tools
Posted in Blog, Consulting, Social Media | No Comments »

Using Social Media To Strengthen Your Brand

August 17th, 2009 - Bill Leider

Ever since the word brand (a noun) was expanded to branding (a verb) interpretive misunderstandings about what “brand” and “branding” really are have multiplied. Various self-proclaimed gurus (consultants above criticism) have written about the sins of misguided “branding.” Unfortunately, too often, they themselves didn’t know what a brand or branding were either. So they just added to the confusion and the body of misconceptions masquerading as wisdom.

Simply stated, your “Brand” (the noun) can be defined as what you deliver and how you deliver it. The quality of your Brand is determined by how closely aligned the experiences of your customers are between what they expect vs. what they get.

Every single thing you, as an organization, do or don’t do factors into the equation of brand definition and brand strength. That goes way beyond advertising, marketing and sales.

Branding (the verb) is about two things:

Spreading the word about who and what you are; getting and keeping your name out there. It creates name recognition, top of mind and back of mind awareness; and
Making promises and creating expectations in the minds of your current and potential customers. It is supposed to increase sales (duh).

Advertising and ad campaigns do not strengthen brands.

They build awareness, they communicate promises and create expectations. They can be clever, cute, creative, entertaining, informational, confrontational, sexy and more. But they do not strengthen Brands. Brands are strengthened when the promises are kept, when peoples’ expectations are met or exceeded. Brand strengthening is experiential. Advertising is informational.

Enter Social Media. It presents a powerful opportunity. If you develop and execute a sound Social Media strategy you can cost effectively strengthen and support your Brand and improve the effectiveness of your Branding.

Here are some things to consider.

Develop a comprehensive Social Media strategy. If you don’t have a well-thought out strategy, what you have is a hobby. The odds of achieving financial success with a hobby are similar to those for winning the lottery.
• Your strategy should be broad and deep. In other words it must encompass more than building name recognition and trying to increase sales. Think about how you can use Social Media to engage your customers and prospects in meaningful discussions about what they want from you: your products; your product support; new products/services and new features. Enable your customers to tell you about their experiences with your “Brand:” what they like and what they don’t like. Listen. Respond. Do it publicly. Transparency is the path to trust. Use the information you get to improve, to fix what is broken and to build on what works well.
• Determine whom you want to engage? What do you want to discuss and learn? What outcomes/results do you want to achieve?
Coordinate and integrate Social Media with all other forms of marketing going on in your organization. Take into account the behavioral/cultural changes that you must effect in this process.
Transition your culture to embrace transparency. This is much easier said than done. But consider that much of the information that for centuries was deemed confidential is now considered public. People want to be part of an ongoing dialog. They want to know what is happening. They want to participate in and help shape discussions, and more. If they don’t like where the conversation is going, they want the power to shift it. Let them – or they will leave. Social Media is not about pushing your message down the throats of your audience. It is about conversations. It is about you learning by listening.
Choose your Social Media platforms and your communication programs and processes with all of the above in mind. Technology just provides the tools. Knowing which tools to use should come as a result of first determining all of the elements above. Don’t be seduced by the buzz of tech toys. Letting the hype about any particular piece of technology make your decisions for you is orchestrating frustration at best and disaster at worst.

Social Media should not replace or compete with anything you currently do that works effectively and profitably. Done well, it should enrich everything.

Tags: brand, branding, Social Media, strategy
Posted in Blog, Consulting, Social Media | No Comments »

Being An Effective Writer In The Social Media Realm

August 1st, 2009 - Bill Leider

Multi-tasking makes contemplation impossible. In today’s world, people who don’t multi-task are deemed retarded. Taking the time to search for deeper meanings is becoming obsolete.

Peoples’ concentration levels leave no room for expansive exploration. Bullet point bluntness has replaced the expansive paragraph.

Social media readers like to absorb bits of data. The value of that data is determined by its relevance to the immediate needs and whims of its readers. A presentation longer than a page is the Social Media equivalent of War And Peace. This is the environment in which the Social Media participant must become effective, relevant and read.

Talent is not required.

The good news in all of this is that writing talent is not required for success. Authenticity, brevity and relevance rule. People do not use Social Media to have a literary experience. They use it to connect to others. Successful Social Media people are not judged by their writing skills. They are judged by their ability to connect with people.

If you are reluctant to engage in Social Media because you say you are not a good writer, you need to find a new excuse. That one is simply inaccurate.

Clear thinking is required.

So here’s a better reason. You might be a fuzzy thinker. You may find it difficult to write your thoughts clearly and concisely. That is not because you’re a bad writer. It’s because your thoughts are not well organized, they don’t flow logically and often they are not convincing.

Being a fuzzy thinker does NOT mean that you are not intelligent. You can be intelligent, capable, do a good job and still be a fuzzy thinker.

Being a fuzzy thinker simply means that you are not always able to clearly write what you really want to say. It means that you have some trouble putting on paper what you are thinking. You have a thought in your head and somehow you can’t get it from your head to the paper in a way that makes sense and that succinctly reflects what you want to say. That happens to many people.

For people who fit this description, there is another aspect to acknowledge. The fact that one cannot put certain thoughts into written words indicates that the thoughts themselves are not clear. In other words, you don’t really have a handle on your idea, or opinion, or thought. Don’t blame your writing skills.

If you are one of those people, chances are you have been that way for some time. And you probably find yourself in situations where you are required talk to others and you find yourself taking longer than needed to make your point or to be clearly understood. You might eventually say what you need to say, get everyone to understand and you accomplish your goal for the conversation. But it is not as crisp and dynamic as you might like.

If any of this describes you or even sometimes describes you, it is impeding your success. It is preventing you from achieving more. The good news is that there is a cure for this condition.

Write.

Do the very thing that you claim you cannot do. Write to yourself. You don’t have to publish everything you write. Just do it. If you don’t like it, throw it away. Write something every day. Even if you have nothing to say, write about the frustration of having nothing to say.

Over time, you will experience a stunning change. Your thoughts will become clearer. Your arguments will become more compelling. You will become a more successful oral presenter, not to mention a more easily understood writer.

Being understood, being authentic, writing something that brings value to your audience – these are the attributes that will make you successful in the Social Media realm. The only thing delaying you is finding your will to do it. I’ll be writing more on the process in future posts. Stay tuned.

In the meantime – write something.

Tags: authenticity, Social Media, thinking, writing
Posted in Blog, Consulting, Social Media | No Comments »

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