Maybe Social Media Is Not For You

(editors note: This is not my story, but a combined story of a few friends with a common thread).

You go to your favorite blogs and forums.  You post, helping people, relating your stories.  You’re a member of the community.

And over time, you notice.  You notice there is this douche who’s posting right after you on almost every comment or discussion you start or create.  Even more douchey, he/she is in your field, posting the equivalent of a press release in the comments above every comment you have, joining every group you join - even though that person knows no one in the group.

Now, I’d like to think that the people reading, in fact, I know the people reading the comments or blog posts or discussion threads realize it’s PR, and badly executed PR at that.  It’s PR with a side helping of douchebag.  My PR friends and acquaintances, for the most part, would cringe at how poorly executed the multiple instances I’ve seen for this are.  I’ve saved them as case studies for clients for what NOT to do, but I won’t post them publicly.

It’s interesting that the more successful one is in social media (or anything), the more people try to poorly imitate it; and although imitation is the greatest form of flattery, it’s also dead-nuts proof that you don’t have a unique value proposition.

So here’s the lesson - have your own voice (link to awesome presentation on where this idea comes from). It’s worth something.  And if you don’t think your own voice is worth something, and you have to hide your messages behind press release copy all the time, maybe you should take your ball and go home.  Social media is not for you as you’re only hurting your credibility being a copycat.  And that’s okay.

I’m becoming an avid devotee of Merlin Mann’s reformation around his work habits and “being better.” Although I don’t have a child that radically changed my view on life, I realized we all have priorities in our lives and we need to focus on that.  I’ve whole-heartedly swiped some of his ideas for my life, and they’ll ooze onto this blog when pertinent because after all, interactive media, social media - it’s about people and their stories and sharing the stuff that matters.

iTunes Genius’s Possible Impact on New Media

With the release of iTunes Genius in iTunes 8 (which I’ve been playing with for a day or so now), I realized that there is a metric that they’re not capturing that they could capture that would revolutionize podcast reporting (for good or bad, I’m not sure).

The number one question corporate types ask me about podcasting is if they can track how many plays their podcast has on devices, because with DRM’d (Digital Rights Management, or protected files) files you can do such things (which is one of the big reasons so many people like DRM - p.s., I loathe it) if the device plays along.  I’ve always bristled against such things, especially the level of tracking that’s available on email newsletters (tracking exactly who read what and clicked on what, and tying it to personal information).  I’ve always bristled against such non-anonymous targeting and don’t allow my company to participate in it (and I’ve lost accounts because I won’t do it).

However, I was thinking about it, and realizing that iTunes Genius could be the bridge that those customers want who want specific tracking - and Apple could make a pretty penny licensing the information in aggregate if they tied it to podcasts.  Sure, it’d be an aggregate number, but good enough for our purposes and more information that we had before.  And no nasty DRM software.  Everyone wins, except again, it’s only a snapshot because you still need the opt-in of iTunes Genius.  But better than what we have.

After all, once the podcast is on the iPod, except for little bursts found on sites like Last.FM you don’t know a layer of statistics (time played, number of plays, if it was just marked “played” but never played).

Your thoughts?  Or is this more data you don’t want captured, even if it’s “anonymous?”  Are downloads and methods enough for advertisers to make decisions?

Too Much Video? Maybe, Depending On Your Audience

We were talking with a client about a site they visited and came across something very interesting.

So many folks want to add all kinds of video, bells and whistles, and more to their site - because it’s “cool.”  And I agree, strategic implementation of multimedia can really make a site go “wow!”

This client made the mention that they were completely lost on the site they visited - they didn’t get the message, and it was just too much.

Just like other forms of design, sometimes too much is too much.  Not only is that video close to invisible to search engines (and search is a critical part of getting traffic to your site); but it can overwhelm and confuse your core message.

After all, as a business site, you’re there to communicate a message and enable others to get things done and buy from you (in one form or another).  I’m not saying we need to go back to 1998; but sometimes, the best decision is NOT to do something.

Found Online: “The Problem With Being Free”

I don’t just like to post links without editorial, but I don’t have time right now - may write more later, but this was found on Chris Brogan’s Twitter, about the problem with being free in social media and web work.

After all, having been in this game for a decade in both “traditional” and “online” media, I totally get where Justin’s coming from.

Love Your User #1: Keep Friction Low

I twittered on this earlier today, and thought it good enough for a blog post to share with the rest of you.

I saw a cool campaign for some pretty valuable B2B information - sounds snore-o-riffic, but it was some pretty cool stuff for business nerds.

However, when I got the link from a friend, I got a note that “the form was too long and they want too much information, but it sounds interesting.”  Well, I went over there - and lo and behold, 20 fields of information that they need.  Obviously, they are qualifying people for follow-up; however, don’t you just basically need a name, an email and (maybe) a phone number?  After all, there is nothing stopping someone from entering 20 fake fields of information instead of just say 4 or 5.  The term in the industry is to aim to have “low friction.”

The lead-generation CRM nerds might dislike me for this - but we’ve seen consistently that more fields = less participation = less reach.

One of the reasons I like to “put things out there” and make sure podcasts are in big directories like iTunes and the blog that’s attached to the podcast is in Technorati and other high-profile places is that you want content to be sharable for this whole “viral” thing to work.  Yes, metrics suffers a little, I know - but the goal is to sell stuff, or influence minds, isn’t it?

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