Bad Marketing

Can you have too many followers?

The "Bad" - having so many social followers that conversation becomes impossible

I just read another great article by Clive Thompson in this month's Wired Magazine.  "In Praise of Obscurity" points out that socializing doesn't scale.  This seems like a "duh" observation in the real world since we all know that its impossible to chat with everyone at a large party (40-50+ people). 

But online it's a bit easier to "converse" with lots of people since they all aren't "there" at the same time.  That said, once you get more than a few hundred followers social stops being social according to Thompson. "It's no longer a bantering process of thinking and living out loud.  It becomes old-fashioned broadcasting."  And further, "when the conversation gets big enough, it shuts down.  Not only do audiences feel estranged, the participants also start self-censoring.  There's no pretense of intimacy with the audience, so there's no conversation to spoil." 

The lesson for businesses is that while it may seem cool to have many thousands of followers, it makes it impossible to realize the value of the relationship and conversation with each person.  Why use social media if you're just going to blast messages like an email newsletter.  Wouldn't you rather use social tools to have relevant and timely conversations with your best customers?  And if so, are Facebook and Twitter the right tools?  I don't think so.  Business conversations seem out of place on Facebook where I go to check in with my friends, and Twitter is really better for short frequent broadcasts than long/deep conversations.  There is clearly the need for a better tool for businesses to connect with their customers. 

Ignore Everybody and Crush It!

The "Good" - knowing that there is no such thing as overnight success

Over the holidays I read two good books :  Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk of winelibrarytv.com fame, and Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh McLeod of gapingvoid.com fame. 

I’m not going to do a full reviews here, since honestly I’ve hated book reports ever since 5^th grade.  That said, I recommend both books as they are quick reads with wisdom on how to turn your unique talent/passion into a business that provides happiness and hopefully some income.   While chock full of lessons on how build your personal brand via social media, the key message I took away is an old fashioned one that is lost on most people today….work hard! 

McLeod’s third chapter is titled “Put the hours in” and Vaynerchuk devotes a section to “Hustle.” 

Per McLeod:  “Doing anything worthwhile takes forever.  Ninety percent of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort and stamina.”

Per Vaynerchuk:  “Too many people don’t want to swallow the pill of working hard every day….if you’re making money through social media, you don’t get to work for three hours and then play Nintendo….That’s lip service to hard work.  No one makes a million dollars with minimal effort unless they win the lottery.”

I know this isn’t exactly a new/original concept, but as a marketer I see a lot of business/creative people who think they can come up with a great idea and that is will take off virally via social media.  Overnight success is a myth and I like that these authors don’t go there just to sell more books (see all the authors of day-trading and real-estate investing books for that). 

Check out the books for loads of useful marketing strategies/tactics for harnessing the power of the social web to build your brand.   While it doesn’t fit into the theme of this post, I absolutely loved Vaynerchuk’s ninth chapter entitled “the best marketing strategy ever.”  It’s one word long:  CARE!  It’s so damn simple but so powerful.  I need to give it more thought and bake it into my 2010 marketing plan for my company, then I’ll write another post.

Online Reputation Damage Control

The "Good" - having a well-thought out plan for when your reputation is damaged online

I saw the article 5 Steps for Successful Social Media Damage Control by Sharlyn Lauby on Mashable the day after I posted my last entry on Managing Your Online Reputation.  She covered what I forgot in my post, that managing reputation online is just like managing reputation offline...

"Our goal, of course, hasn’t changed – work to increase the number of positive comments written about your company, product, or service and take care of those who have negative experiences. But, how do you make that happen in the social media world? What steps to you take to keep negative social media damage to a minimum?"

Here is the abbreviated list she recommends for addressing any reputation crisis.  Of course they key to have a well thought out plan/process developed and employees trained well in advance of any issue that occurs. 

1. Monitor social media sites 24/7.  My take:  you should be doing this already or you've already missed some issues/product/service reviews which might not be crises warranting damage control but are negatively impacting your brand none-the-less.
2. Respond quickly with a consistent message.  My take: just like the offline world, even if you don't have the answer yet at least let me know you care and are working on it.
3. Reply to the social media world.  My take:  It's not enough to just address the impacted person(s), you have address the whole community since often people on the sidelines jump into the fray and the last thing you want is a bench-clearing brawl ;)
4. Educate employees on proper messaging.  My take: you need to quickly develop and communicate incident specific messaging to all employees since even though they aren't on the damage control team you need to keep them informed and calm just like customers, and on the chance that they get asked you want them to deliver a consistent message.
5. Develop a crisis strategy.   My take: actually this should be #2 on the list.  I suggest you have a pre-identified damage control team that meets immediately once the issue is raised.  If necessary, they can then pull in the appropriate experts to better understand the problem and craft the response strategy...what will we say, who will say it, where and when...

Managing Your Online Reputation

The "Ugly" - not realizing that consumers now control your reputation

United Airlines is the latest in a string of corporations who have found out the hard way that the web has shifted power to the consumer. Businesses, large and small, no longer unilaterally control their reputation.  Consumers post comments and reviews online about every interaction with a company and typically they are about negative experiences...probably because they only get motivated enough to post when they are really ticked off.  Unfortunately for United Airlines, the Sons of Maxwell band had the skill and platform to make this music video about their bad experience that has spread virally. While this one and been written about all over the web, most businesses (especially small businesses) are ignorant of the fact that there are dozens/hundreds of online comments and reviews that comprise their online reputation. 

I see this all the time with the small business customers of my company.  They spend their precious few marketing dollars on a search or display advertising campaign and wonder why the results weren't as strong as they expected.  We advise them to "Google" their business name and sure enough they see some negative comments/reviews that turned off potential customers who researched them before buying.  While the consumer now has control, businesses can take steps to manage their reputation online.

1.  They can directly address negative reviewers by politely replying online and offering to rectify the issue.  This can be dangerous so the reply must be a sincere, well-written apology and offer (never argue with or flame the reviewer - it just looks like sour grapes).

2.  They can offset the negative reviews by getting lots of positive reviews from their happy/loyal customers.  It's pretty simple to hand customers a flyer or send them an email that says "If you had a good experience with our company please share it on x, y, and z review sites."

3.  They can try to push negative reviews down to the 2nd or 3rd page of search results by creating and posting more of their own content (blog, syndicated videos, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) such that it gets indexed on page one by the search engine.  Research says that most people don't look past the first page of search results so if they can own the content on that page then consumers might not get down to the negative stuff.