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.

Interview on Internet and Online Marketing

Thanks Rob McNealy (@RobMcNealy on Twitter) and the folks at StartupStoryRadio.com for interviewing me on internet marketing and how to find a good firm for your business.

Take a listen and enjoy!

Host Your Own Wordpress Blog To Get Maximum Benefit

Let me preface this by saying that I live and swear by Wordpress.  It’s useful and reliable.

That said, a lot of people who are unfamiliar with blogging give it a bad rap, because they don’t realize it’s power and how to utilize it.  Maybe they’re too cheap to spend some money on a decent host, or they just don’t know any better.  I’ve had quite a few twitter conversations with folks who look at the wordpress.com options and think that’s as far as it goes, and dismiss it at their own loss.

Wordpress by far, in my opinion, is the most powerful and customizable blogging platform today, used by CNN and other major outlets.  In fact, quite a few sites for large companies are actually modified Wordpress under the hood.

However, if you use wordpress.com, you are severely limited in your choices because with power comes responsibility.  It’s mostly for people just starting out, but if you’re serious about getting the benefits of blogging, read on.

If you want your blog to look like a big boy, you need to host it yourself.  That alone will open you to a host of options; a big part of our business is installing, customizing, and consulting around blogs.  So many look like junk or miss large, important parts because the people setting them up have great ideas but little knowledge on how to implement them.

Here are three of the many benefits of hosting your own install:

You get maximum SEO benefit. If you host the site connected to your domain, so for instance, blog.yoursite.com or yoursite.com/blog, you will be more search engine friendly with all the tags, etc.  If you do a separate site, whether it’s vox.com, typepad, wordpress, etc. you leak that pagerank and value.

You get the ability to maximize monetization. Adding advertisements from any network, selling them, putting in rotations with timing and percentages, links in RSS feeds - all possible with your own install.

Exact brand matching. With a skilled programmer/designer, your blog can match your site, be your site, and reinforce your brand.  If you’re an advertising or marketing pro, you know the value of this.

Blog Posts Aren’t Press Releases

Recently, I had a difficult conversation (well maybe for me).

I was talking on the topic of an upcoming event, and the organizers were upset someone had blogged that the event was happening sooner than they had the press release ready.  The blog post wasn’t incorrect; but it was limited in information.

Google news went ahead and picked this up in the way it does, and all of a sudden there are calls and traffic.  However, the organizer was still unhappy.

Why? Well first, they had it in their head that a blog was a press release and that Google would NEVER pick up a blog entry or rank it highly, so it must of been a press release, because blogs aren’t real news.  Then, they got indignant that information got out about an event no one has ever heard of ahead of time.

Further investigation revealed that the organizer was flummoxed that they couldn’t control the release themselves.  Mind you, this is a professional business event, not like some secret flash mob party.  People talking about you is GOOD.

And trying to explain that good blogs don’t repost press releases was a whole ‘nother deal, but they also will - gasp - add their own opinion and content.

Either businesses get on the clue train or they get left behind.  I sense someone being left behind - there is a lot distruction in that realm here in our region.  Leaves more for those who get it, though.

Metallica’s Management Blogger Fail

Let’s tell a little story.

According to Ars Technica, Metallica’s management Q Prime decided to “outreach” to the blogging community by inviting some bloggers to listen to a pre-release version of their upcoming album.

Bestill the heart, bloggers do what bloggers do - and blog about the album and the experience.  And the band management decided it shouldn’t of been released, and then threatened access to the bloggers and whined about it greatly.  Ironically, the reviews were quite positive.

Although the band has come back and issued a statement where they say it was their management and that they have asked that the items get reposted at the various blogs, the damage is done - and a great example of what not to do.

So let’s repeat it for the social media impaired - if you invite bloggers, expect they will blog, and don’t try to take down or control what they write, especially if you don’t make them sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

This is total example of old-school folks trying to apply the old conventions to today’s reality.  Maybe take the Jonathan Coulton route and self-publish; unless you’re already established, you’re probably going to make more money yourself.

Why (Some, Mostly Big) Businesses Don’t Get New Media

Saw a report today from the USC School of Business around social media and online initiatives - and the information was great.

All in all, the biggest reason why there isn’t an embrace of new media yet is that they don’t understand it… not to mention new media is still levels the playing field because the level of adoption of companies under 100 employees is higher than any other segment.

Following those reasons, we also see cost/staff issues (funny, as it’s usually cheaper and there are some great vendors out there to make it happen) as well as network security (seems like not a well-asked question; is it a concern of leaks or a technical concern?).

Big business in general didn’t always correlate new media to a competitive advantage; this tells me that this is the greatest opportunity for the small (Tier 5, Tier 4, etc) companies to use new media to establish beachheads and superiority in the online space before the big guys catch on.

That said, the three things that they saw most useful across the board was online video, RSS, and podcasting. (Editor’s note: glad we picked those areas to focus on) and blogs were near the bottom of perceived usefulness (Editor’s note: can’t pick’em all).

I’m sure, since it’s lack of understanding as the lead cause, since these decision makers don’t always use these tools themselves they fail to see how their employees and customers can benefit.  This USC information basically backs up what a pseudo-competitor (and overall good guy) said:

“They either get it or they don’t.”

My take is that those who don’t see it need to get on the clue train at the next station as it’s already left this one, if they want to be relevant and make money in the future.

The reality is that this is the way a whole generation of people connect; the playing field has changed.  From here on out, there is a line in the sand; a top-down approach as the past has been is less and less effective.  Of course, it still blows my mind that in 2008 over 15% of businesses we talk to over 10 people don’t have a website yet and close to 70% haven’t updated theirs in the last year.  It’s just not seen as a vehicle; it’s many times seen as a static brochure… and then they wonder why they don’t get any results.

I remember vividly a meeting a couple years ago where the potential client (this is more of a Web 1.0 story, but applicable) who was convinced nothing was wrong with their e-commerce store, even though they were only getting a couple hundred dollars a month on their $100,000 investment (obviously denial is not just a river in Egypt).

Their premise was that since no one told them their store was bad (it was atrocious - no product descriptions, no pictures, no search) that it’s not the problem.  Of course, online customers don’t always tell you it’s bad - most times they just leave and tell their friends.

They had no statistics or tracking package, no way to see where people abandoned their carts, what people did.. but it was still fine.  They did it their way with no input from their vendor; they did the graphics, the text, everything themselves because they knew what customers wanted.

Suffice it to say, they’re still failing in ignorant bliss.  Sad to see, but it’s their choice.  Go take their business from them, as the great equalization is still in effect.

Upgrade Your Installations… now.

With the apparent hacking of the Applephoneshow.com blog and others floating around, it’s become known that there are various exploits in older version of the popular Wordpress blogging/CMS platform running anything that’s older than version 2.3.3.

Frankly, if you have a Wordpress blog or any site (there are vulnerabilities for basically everything out there) you have a responsibility to others viewing your site and yourself (to prevent things like Technorati and other search engine de-listing) to upgrade, since obsolete code could allow hackers to inject unwanted links as well as code that can execute download spyware on your visitors’ computers.

If your host for some reason can’t support it, you should go change hosts or upgrade (it won’t be much money). Code does become obsolete; so it’s important to keep on top of things for the sake of your site, your search ranking, and your brand.. you don’t want to be known as the company that gave people who visited your site viruses.

p.s. - Some people think that it’s an intentional un-ending cycle by developers to keep having holes. It’s really not. It’s a cat-and-mouse game because no code is infallible.

Special thanks to @johnfoster for picking up the source article from Geek Ramblings, with a very cool header image. Fighting robots rock.

Addendum: Big blog ZDnet was hacked as well, and the problem is pretty wide-spread among non-upgraded sites.  Not to mention, here’s confirmation Technorati is delisting non-upgraded blogs.

Camp Baby Johnson & Johnson Blogger Debacle Synopsis

I really can’t add anything to this… the link is pretty much perfect on it’s own.  Read and learn.

Many thanks to @shannonpaul for picking it out and @contactjeff for writing it (on Twitter).

Don’t update your software/services just to update

Last night, Wordpress 2.5 got released to the public, and although I’ve had a decent time with upgrading our internal mirror for testing purposes and a couple projects still in development, it’s fried a few people, especially with those with lots of plugins or plugins that are actually meant for a little bit older version but have skated by.

I don’t blame Wordpress for this at all… this is a good time for a lesson.

When it comes to any new software or service release, I think it’s wise on production systems that you’re counting on to wait until the bugs come out.   Whenever you have an environment (your setup of computers, servers, programs, etc) that you’re counting on, restraint should be shown unless it’s a critical security release.   There is no way to test everything in every configuration.  And of course, as always, make sure there is a backup of your site or materials before jumping into everything.

You could lose days when you monkey with things that are working.  Not a web site, but I know someone who lost two days because of inadvertently deleting a USB driver.  Now, if they had had a complete, bootable backup, they could of re-imaged his Windows (put the exact copy back… a great program on the mac is Carbon Copy Cloner, I’m not a Windows guy, so suggests are welcome) and be back in business.

Sometimes, when things are working, it’s really not a smooth move to start messing with stuff.  Have a second, non-crucial system if you’re going to do it.

p.s. - Go Tigers!

What if Bear Stearns Had A Blog?

With the purchase of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase for a fraction of it’s worth a year ago - my mind started working in the quirky way it does.

What if Bear Stearns had a blog? I mean a real, honest to goodness blog? And not a blog by an executive about movies.. that doesn’t count (and as far as I’m concerned, a non-story). A blog that let you ask questions, gave honest answers when possible; a two-way communication to say “wow, the way the entire mortgage industry does business has changed and we’re packaging this stuff up in a big ‘ol bundle.”

Publicly traded companies tend to, at times, eschew social and community media… when of all companies, they should be doing it the most because they have the most people with a stake in the business. From tens of thousands of employees to thousands (if not more) of shareholders, what better way to show transparency?

After all, one of the rules of PR is to control the story… and keep putting information out, otherwise rumour and speculation become rampant. A void is filled, regardless of what you do in the situation.

This works in the other way, too… if consumers would of been more educated instead of just grabbing the lowest rate at the time and/or buying too much house (evidenced by too high of a payment - the focus obviously moved away from the monthly financial reality of what can I actually afford?). Social media could of helped that to a degree, too.

Not to say that this credit catastrophe would of been avoided through transparency… but maybe caught earlier and the damage less.

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