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.

Don’t let your marketing hit the BSometer

This possibly NSFW link talks about press releases, but I think it’s really true for content across sites and other materials, too.

It is a little brutal about what are items that journalists review and base their decisions on - but, from my experience dealing with journalists, completely true.  I think clients/customers do, too.

The Company Newsletter Sent Multiple Times - AKA Email Chinese Water Torture

A little tip.

If you’re a company providing turnkey email newsletter services, don’t solicit me with three identical emails in four minutes that annoy me and motivate me against you so much that I feel compelled to blog how much of an error you’ve made.

Obviously, the folks at Proven Systems have made an error already - they haven’t de-duped (removed the duplicate entries) of their email list they must of bought from someone. Anyone who does a pro communications campaign knows you need to take out all the duplicates so you don’t annoy people.

Secondly, they bought a list. I don’t remember signing up for this - it’s not Bac’n (company newsletters and things that you want from sellers) but it’s spam. Buying a list is useless in email marketing, unless you’re selling something where you’re trying to con people into clicking to buy on the spot. I consider pretty much any email list that is not organically grown from direct-opt in spam.

So there. I was motivated enough to say something about it. Most people won’t be, and they’ll never do business with you and just say nothing.

Reminds me of when I was talking with a prospect who thought that since no one was complaining about their site, nothing was wrong - even though they were literally selling less than $100 in product to 10,000 visitors.

The reality is people, if they don’t like a site, just leave. They won’t tell you why as you’ve already wasted their time, they just won’t buy.

p.s.- I just got FIVE more indentical emails from these folks today (1/23).  They’ve got them multiplying now.

Technorati Tags:
Email marketing, Proven Systems

When functionality and SEO collide

I was thinking about this problem earlier today - so many “SEO optimized” sites are ugly, not functional, or link spam.

What gets me is people focus so heavily on “engineered” SEO, and trying to work the system.

I’m wondering about this. This hype around SEO - is it because people want a magic elixir to have their site rank without having to create relevant content all the time?

Isn’t it about fresh content more than keywords, content that people find valuable? Every conversation I’ve had with people who actually create search engine algorithms (they never talked in more than generalities - they can’t) has focused on to keep the design solid, follow basic conventions, keep it updated, make it relevant, useful information, and don’t try to game the system and you’ll do well, regardless of the technical implementation.

Many SEO firms have you do completely dysfunctional things like not use a content management system (yes, some CMS systems seem to be better than others) or create sites that are just plain ugly and unfriendly to users.

Check out what Calacanis says on his blog - as much as I have friends in the SEO business too, I gotta agree. I went and took a look at their various optimized code in various implementations - and it’s just well tagged or files labeled well (and sometimes, not so well). An excerpt from Jason:

Note: There are some whitehat SEO firms out there I know, but frankly the whitehat SEO companies are simply doing solid web design so I don’t consider them SEO at all. SEO is a tainted term and it means “gaming the system” to 90% of us.

Now, if you make great content, keep your page design clean, and stick with it you’re gonna do just fine in the rankings. Don’t smoke the SEO-crack… you’ll just wind up chasing your tail as digg and Google closes the tiny SEO loopholes and put your domain on the black list.

In short - SEO / SEM looks like, at it’s best, just over-hyped solid web design that people buy because they think it’ll be a magic bullet.

Thing I’m wrong? Fire back in the comment session. Just beware - I might return volley

Technorati Tags:
Interactive, Web, SEO, SEO doesn’t work, Create great content

It’s Podcast. Not Pod-cast or Pod cast.

Mini-rants and tip for all the folks trying to be hip and in with Web 2.0…