Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

And a happy new year: Torchwood returns in January

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As for this blog, I will try to wrap up my three-part series on customer service before Christmas. After that, here’s what’s on deck: a report on the Photographic Memories program I just completed for HP, interviews with bloggers & a Ford exec about Ford’s On the Lot blogger program last summer and  two new client projects with heavy social media elements.

And mark your calendars now for BlogHer Business April 3-4 in New York City, and New Comm Forum April 22-24 in Santa Rosa, California.

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Lame web celebrity lists and gender equality

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Yesterday, Forbes published its annual web celebrity list and last night, we had a bit of chatter on Twitter about it. I promised a post to further explain my thoughts on the list. Here goes.

There’s more than one problem here, so let’s start with the most obvious. Do we really need yet another web celebrity list?

If we truly believe what we say, that social media is about more than celebrity or rank, that it is about the democratization of media, that the long tail is just as important as the mass market, then we need to put our money where our mouths are.

We need to look deeper than the A-list. And not be fooled by lists like this one that merely scratch the surface of the richness of the blogosphere.

Now, I am not at all surprised that Forbes takes the easy way out by pandering to our culture of celebrity by creating a list that seems more appropriate to PEOPLE or the STAR. It’s a chance to show that they are more than just a stodgy mainstream business publication. Oooh Perez Hilton in Forbes… who would have thought….

Unfortunately, this perpetuates a misconception about what social media is, and what it can become. What we can become as a result.

Not only is that a real shame, but also it goes a long way to explaining why so many companies get it wrong when they engage. If we treat social media just like everything else, why should we expect that they’d "get it?" That they’d understand the fundamental differences between mass markets and the long tail, between bloggers and journalists. And so on.

The other problem is the gender imbalance. The Forbes list, like so many others, suffers from an over-representation of white middle class men. Only four women out of the 25. That’s 16%, for the math jocks out there. That doesn’t match the demographics of either the US population or Internet users.

The Forbes list is merely one among many that suffers from this problem. In the tweet-around last night, Chris Baskind forwarded me yet another recent  list that purported to summarize the definitive blog posts of 2007. Just as bad. I counted 38 different authors (many of the same ones as in the Forbes list by the way) and 5 women. That’s about 13%.

Quite often, these lists mention the same women. Not to take away from their work and significant contributions, but there truly are more than a handful of women engaged in social media.  And don’t get me started on the fact that the "definitive posts" post attributes CommonCraft’s great "RSS explained" video to Lee Lefever alone. No mention of business and life partner Sachi LeFever. 

Now, we could say that these are stupid, lame lists, and why would women and minorities want to be on them anyway?

Unfortunately, that would miss the point of true equality. 

True equality means that women and minorities should be adequately represented everywhere.

Certainly anything that claims to be a definitive summary of web influence.

And even lame web celebrity lists.

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Happy Holidays

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dougsanta07

Next week is shaping up to be pretty crazy — a new client, more bad
weather, I’m taking 3 kids to the Hannah Montana concert next Friday
and then we’re off to Vermont until the New Year — so let me take this
moment to wish you all a Merry Chrismakah and a Happy New Year.

I so appreciate that you continue to read Marketing Roadmaps and look forward to another year.

Peace.

Media Bullseye Link Bait

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Chip Griffin published some lovely link bait on Media Bullseye today, and since I think contrarians who have the guts to publish under their real names should be rewarded, I’m biting 🙂

Chip’s thesis is that there are a number of social media "rules" that just don’t make sense. For the most part, I agree.

As I’ve written here many times, to argue that there is only one right way to do something is silly. So while I personally prefer blogs that allow comments and publish RSS feeds, I understand why companies and individuals might choose another path (#1 & 2). Likewise, I’m not terribly fond of anonymous blogs, but realize that there are some situations where anonymity is necessary.

Press releases… Amen, Chip, amen. As I’ve said before, and will again, it isn’t the press release form on its own that engenders the negativity (die press release die.) It is bad, irrelevant pitching. That said, there is a lot of goodness in making the news release more social media friendly and the folks at SHIFT among others deserve kudos for pushing the envelope ( #3 & 4).

Messages. Conversation. Audience. And so on. Chip makes some very good points, and I urge you to read his post with an open mind.

The one point upon which I really disagree is ghostwriting. I do not believe in ghostwriting for blogs.  Sure we know that CEOs and celebrities don’t write their speeches. Talk show hosts don’t write all their own bits. And if you didn’t know this before the WGA strike, I hope you know it now.

If your CEO doesn’t want to blog, fine. There are other ways to bring his or her thoughts to the customers. And other ways for the company to engage. All of which are reasonable approaches.

Hiring someone to ghostwrite a CEO blog is not.

Other than that? Rules are made to be broken. Isn’t that what this social media stuff is all about anyway?

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The Four Ps of Social Media Engagement

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve done a number of new business calls (cross your fingers for me please). Naturally, social media comes up in pretty much every conversation, usually as a response to a request to explain blogging 🙂 so I recently came up with a very simple way to explain the phases of social media engagement. I tried it on a call last night, and it really resonated with the folks I was speaking with, so I thought I’d share it with you. 

Let’s call it the Four Ps of Social Media Engagement, with a nod to the good ole Four Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

First, PREPARE. Before you do anything, you have to listen to your customers, find out what they care about, what they may already be saying about your company, competitors and industry issues. How? Monitor blogs.Listen to podcasts. Join the relevant social networks and groups.

Next, PARTICIPATE. Leave comments on blogs.Share personal experiences. Start twittering. Get to know the people in the community, and give them a chance to know you — as individuals and as representatives of your firms.

Then and only then, should you PUBLISH (a blog, podcast etc.) or PITCH (a program, a product). And of course, all the usual rules still apply here: relevant, authentic, appropriate, honest, respect, etc. etc.

You can start participating simultaneously with publishing a blog or doing blogger outreach, but it’s always better if the first few times people "meet" you, you don’t have an immediate objective. Give first, ask much much much later.

Also, notice that in both Ps, promotion is last, preparation first. And now think about social media programs that have failed. Usually because the promotion preceded the other phases, isn’t it?

I recalled that somewhere, somewhen, I had seen others use the Four Ps metaphor, so to give credit where credit is due, I did an all-tweet to make sure I didn’t unintentionally plagiarize someone. Steve Rubel, Rick Short, and Toby Bloomberg have all used it to discuss the content of a blog, not the phases of engagement. Nathan Gilliat’s Four Ps is somewhat similar to mine and is most likely the one I remembered. His post also links to some other alphabet soup posts for those who like that sort of thing. In that vein, I must give a nod to PR blogger David Wescott’s Three Rs for Blogger Relations and my own Five Cs of Viral Marketing. If you’ve done something similar, please add it in the comments, email or tweet me and I’ll add it to the list.

One company that is doing an excellent job of listening and responding to its small business customers lately is Intuit. I helped out at its Just Start promotion in South Station last month (on a purely volunteer basis), and just wanted to remind my readers that entries for the company’s Just Start contest end this Friday December 15th. If you have a new business idea, it’s worth taking the few minutes to enter the contest for a chance at the $50K prize.

Finally, don’t miss Dilbert has The Knack. Especially if you are an engineer or married to one.

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