During this interview, you’ll learn about his latest book, his views on the state of the publishing industry and about his new venture The Domino Project.

Mike: Let’s start with Poke the Box. What exactly does “poke the box” mean?

Seth: If you’re a computer programmer and you want to figure out how something works, the way you do it is not by reading a manual or following a map. You do it by trying something, seeing what happens, learning from it and then trying something else. That’s how we figured out how the world worked when we were 5 years old, and it’s the way we figure out how to do something new in a changing world.

The reason that I wrote the book is that somehow we’ve lulled ourselves into this feeling that we need to wait for someone else to tell us what to do and give us permission to do it, as opposed to taking action and doing it ourselves.

Mike: You mentioned in the book it was your uncle who designed the “box” and put it in the crib of one of your cousins?

Seth: My uncle has a PhD from MIT. We call him “the admiral” because he was in the Navy ROTC program. He worked with lasers and all sorts of technology.

I have this vivid memory of when I was just 10 or 12 years old. My cousin was born and my uncle built a box—it must have weighed three pounds—in gray steel with one of those big, thick, black electrical cords. It had on it three or four switches and dials, and when you flipped a switch, something happened. A buzzer would go off or a light would flash. You’d turn a dial and something else would change. He plugged this thing in and threw it in the crib.

His thinking was that it’s natural for a kid to play with things, to figure out how they work. In a stable world, we don’t necessarily want people to do that because we want them to work on the assembly line and do what they’re told. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t a stable world anymore.

Mike: Let’s talk about your new book and how it’s different from all the other books you’ve written.

Seth: Well, it’s like The Dip, in that it’s very short. I’ve started a new publishing company called The Domino Project and the book was written with that in mind.

The Domino Project is trying to make ideas easier to spread. I think books are important and book publishers are basically trying to kill books. They’re making them too expensive, too long, too slow, too hard to spread and too hard to find. So the public is just ignoring them and moving on to the next thing.

I wanted to make it easy for someone, if they’re moved by the idea in a book, to hand it to someone else or to hand it to five other people or 50 other people, and say, “This is the way we’re going to do things around here from now on.” That’s what books are great at, and I want to optimize for that kind of conversation.

Mike: I also notice the book doesn’t actually have a cover title on it. It’s just this cool icon of a guy leaping forward. There were no chapters in the book either, so I guess it’s designed to be just one continuous read?

Seth: Sure. Because our publishing company is powered by Amazon, our main source of interaction is going to be online. If a book is shown online, it doesn’t need to have words on the cover because right next to the cover are all the things you need to know if you want to buy it. That wasn’t true in the bookstore, but it’s certainly true online.

Once you get it, if it’s sitting on your desk and it has words on the cover, then everyone knows what it is. But if it doesn’t and someone sees it, they’re going to say, “What’s that?”

Mike: That’s exactly what happened, Seth. Someone was in my office and they picked it up and started reading it because it just grabbed them.

Seth: We looked at every convention of publishing that’s out there and asked, “Why does this convention exist? Should we throw it out? Should we start over or should we do it differently?”

Last week we did a promotion to ask people to sign up for our newsletter.  As a result of the promotion, we ended up lowering the preorder price of this book to $1 on the Kindle. Why would we do that? Well, anyone who preorders it is already a fan because why would anyone spend $1 for something if they don’t know what it is? If you preorder it, and I can sell you the electronic version for $1, I’m not losing any money doing that, certainly. Now what I’ve done is seeded the book to my best customers—to the people most likely to talk about it.

Sure, I’ve lost the opportunity to charge those people a lot because they would have paid a lot, but on the other hand, what I’ve done is used that as my marketing effort. My marketing effort is if I can get 10,000 people in the world excited about the book and talking about it, then in March, I’ll sell another 50,000 or 100,000 copies because those 10,000 people spread the word.

Mike: In your book, you say, “When the cost of poking the box is less than the cost of doing nothing, then you should poke.” What does that mean?

Seth: When I started out in business on my own, I had to walk down the block to buy laser printing output because I couldn’t afford a laser printer. The world wasn’t filled with Kinko’s and it wasn’t filled with WordPress, and it didn’t have Google driving traffic to somebody who didn’t have a storefront. It wasn’t organized around individuals finding out how things worked.

That has shifted. If you want to do recombinant DNA research now, for $500 you can buy a kit and do it in your kitchen. You don’t need a whole lab. If you want to design a car, you can design a car using all sorts of off-the-shelf components. You don’t need a factory in Detroit. For that reason, the cost of finding out is much, much lower.

On the other hand, the cost of doing nothing is going through the roof because people who do nothing end up with “cog jobs.” They end up being told what to do and getting paid less and less.

We’re seeing this in our economy. If a job can be done cheaper somewhere else, it will be. As a result, you have to be the only person who can do it, and the asset that’s almost impossible to take from you is initiation—the idea that “I’m the guy who pokes and comes up with the next thing.”

Watch this video from Seth.

Mike: You talk about Google in your book. What can Google teach businesses about innovation?

Seth: Google is such a special case, like Apple in so many ways. Google has a fountain of money. Since we started having this conversation, Google made more than $1 million in profit, and they do that over and over and over again.

Most public companies just take the money and the problem is that three years from now, the money stops coming in. So Google takes a significant portion of the money and they do things they think will fail.

That’s the secret to initiation. Even if you’re not making $1 million every 10 minutes, the secret of initiation is simple. If you’re only willing to do things that will succeed, then you will fail. But if you’re willing to do things that might fail, you have a shot at succeeding. That’s the magic of Google.

Mike: Where do you think ideas come from and how should we act on them?

Seth: Everybody has ideas all the time. That’s part of being human. But the real question is where do they go? My answer is we have conditioned people to hide them or discard them or ignore them, and winning is in acting on them.

Steve Jobs didn’t really invent any of the products that Apple sells. Other people had all of those ideas first. It’s that Apple acts on stuff.

Mike: What do you mean when you say, “The person who fails the most wins”?

Seth: The statement doesn’t mean that you fail so badly you’re out of the game. What’s implied is you have to keep playing the game. The person who gets to keep playing the game and has the most failures has the better life, and likely has created the most value.

Take the guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper. Who knows how many times he failed? He hit a jackpot in the end. Congratulations. But in general, what we see is that if you have this mantra, “I’m going to keep failing my way up,” it’s what we were born to do, and we’re great at it.

Mike: You talk about success being tied to defeating the fear that holds us back. How do we defeat the fear that holds us back?

Seth: By not being held back, everybody has a different way to defeat his resistance. Steve Pressfield’s brilliant book, The War of Art, talks about this in detail. I can’t tell you how to do it. Everyone does it differently. Picasso did it differently than Dali who did it differently than Jackson Pollock.

I don’t know anyone’s answer. I just know it’s the problem. Once you acknowledge that it’s the problem, it’s much more likely that you’ll seek out and find the answer.

Mike: What’s wrong with traditional book publishing? Can you elaborate a little bit more?

Seth: It’s filled with really smart people whom I like, who don’t get paid enough and do good work. The problem is that they think their customer is the bookstore.

The other problem is that bookstores demand a very slow cycle of a year to bring a book out, demand books that meet a certain expectation and demand full return privileges on those books. At the same time, that industry is stuck paying big advances to big-name authors, most of which lose money.

When you add all these together, you end up with an industry that has a lot less flexibility and doesn’t realize that its real job is bringing ideas that spread to people who want to hear them. If they embraced that as their job, I think the industry would do far better and the readers would benefit as well.

I’m not going to be able to change the industry all by myself and I have no illusions that we’re going to dominate anything. But I think that a lot of people are going to copy some of the notions that we’re trying to lay out here, and if they do that, I’ll be really pleased.

Mike: Let’s talk about The Domino Project. It’s a publishing company, correct? How do you describe what it is exactly?

Seth: Yes it is. The goal is to reinvent the way publishers think about authors and readers and distribution and pricing and packaging, and the very notion of the relationship between the author and the reader.

We have a really wide mission. We’re starting with Amazon as our backend, which gives us an enormous amount of leverage (Amazon hasn’t done this arrangement with anyone else) that lets us understand who’s buying what and how they’re buying it, and play with different formats.

We’re starting with a series of short books we call manifestos, which are about 100 pages long. There are five or six in the pipeline already. This is an experiment and I have no idea exactly what’s going to come next.

Mike: When you say Amazon is your backend, do you mean as far as distribution and that’s where people buy the book?

Seth: Yes, and they can buy it at a bookstore. Amazon owns a company called Brilliance that makes audio books, and they have a salesforce that regularly sells to bookstores.

We’re also going to sell our books around the world because what we’re discovering is bookselling isn’t local. It’s worldwide and it’s not right to tell someone in Hong Kong they have to pay $85 to get a copy of something.

Mike: So you simultaneously release a print book, an ebook and an audio book every time you do one of these, or at least that’s what you’re doing with Poke the Box, right?

Seth: Right, and a collectible. The collectible is because sometimes you want to treasure the book and touch the book and know that you have a special one. The collectible for Poke the Box costs $75 and is hand-signed with a bookplate. The cover is hand-printed on a letterpress and it comes with a hand-printed letterpress poster as well. We only made 400 of them and they’re on their way to selling out.

Mike: If people want to learn more about your book and The Domino Project, where do they go?

Seth: Just Google “The Domino Project” and there we are.

Mike: Seth, I really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy day to talk to me, and I wish you the absolute best with your new book and your project.

Seth: It’s absolutely a pleasure to talk to you, Michael. Keep up the great work.

Listen to the complete interview below…

Click here to download MP3.

What do you think about Seth’s ideas? How have you poked the box? Leave your comments in the box below.

Keep reading to discover how.

Should Your Site Be Social-Enabled?

There’s no doubt that social media is a powerful marketing and communication tool for businesses and non-profits that have embraced it.

Yet, for most of us, our websites are still where the rubber meets the road. It’s where you turn visitors into leads and prospects into customers. It’s where you build your lists and sell your goods.

Can you inject some of the “humanness” of social media into your website without compromising its ability to sell? Can you use social media to drive traffic to your website for conversion without alienating your community?

More and more businesses are showing us that this is an achievable and worthwhile goal; that the two together can foster improved communication, build brand loyalty and create a better, more responsive, more profitable company.

Here are nine examples of how you can integrate your social media activity into your website for maximum results.

#1: Add social media buttons to your home page

A few years ago, the idea of sending people to another site from your home page after you had worked so hard to get them there in the first place seemed boneheaded. However, many companies now see the long-term benefits of gaining a follower, fan or subscriber on a social media platform, even weighed against the short-term risk of sending them away from the website.

Businesses commonly link to their social media profiles, even from their home pages.

By getting someone to follow you on Twitter, become LinkedIn with you or subscribe to your YouTube channel, you have the opportunity to keep the lines of communication open long after they’ve left your website.

Unsolicited Advice: If you’re concerned about losing that prospect, consider having the site open in a new tab or window, keeping your own website available for later viewing.

Also, make sure you have a social media profile that will engage your audience. You can borrow ideas from these 10 top Facebook pages, read up on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile and put into practice Darren Rowse’s tips for improving your Twitter profile.

#2: Connect your blog with your website

The line between blog and website has never been blurrier, with many businesses choosing to build their entire site on platforms that were traditionally meant for blogging, such as WordPress.

Whether your blog shares a domain with your website or not, you can improve the interactivity of your website by teasing your blog posts from your home page.

For example, Harold Night, an improv show out of Boston, uses the Posterous platform to blog, and has successfully integrated the blog into their website, both in the navigation and by pulling the recent posts as links onto their home page.

Harold Night connects its Posterous blog with its website.

Unsolicited Advice: Although services like Posterous and Tumblr are great and their prices can’t be beat, I prefer to have my blog under a domain I control. That way you can move from one platform to another without hurting your search engine visibility, and you’re more insulated against a third-party blogging platform going out of business.

#3: Embed videos on your website

There are few things as engaging as a well put-together video. Imagine adding a how-to or explanatory video to your product or services pages… How much more compelling would they be? How much could you increase your conversion rates by showing examples of other customers finding success by using your products?

Embed a video on your website to bring your offerings to life.

#4: Make your website shareable

Retweet buttons and Facebook Like buttons aren’t just for blogs. You can add them to any page of your website to get visitors to share the content more easily with their networks.

#5: Add your presentations to your website

If you market your business through public speaking, you can maximize your results by putting your presentations on your site.

The best way to do this is to set up a free account at SlideShare (think YouTube for PowerPoint). Once you’ve uploaded your slides, SlideShare will allow you to embed that presentation back into your website or blog. This creates an interactive experience for visitors who can now click through your slides.

Maximize the reach of your presentations by embedding SlideShare into your site.

#6: Socially bookmark new content

As you add new articles or archive your email newsletters to your site, make sure that you add them to appropriate social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit and Delicious. These popular sites can drive huge amounts of traffic to your website in a short period of time.

Unsolicited Advice: It’s always best when someone else bookmarks your content, so it might make sense to have a small “bookmarking club” with friends where you promote each other’s work. This “seeding” will often encourage others to bookmark your content.

#7: Add a Facebook Like box to your website

It's easy to like I Love to Gossip with a Like box on their page.

We’re all influenced by other people, a concept often referred to as “social proof.” When we see our friends or people we respect liking, supporting or promoting something, we’re more open to liking it ourselves.

Adding a Facebook Like box to your site adds accelerant to the idea of social proof. Visitors can quickly see how many people have liked your business on Facebook, get a sense of your level of commitment to social media (by the posts you’ve added to your wall), and may even spy some of their friends and connections through the Like box.

Further, you make it easy for your site visitors to like your business without having to leave your site.

For more on Facebook and social proof, be sure to check out Are You Using Social Media as Social Proof?

#8: Feed your website

Websites tend not to get updated as often as they should be… something that has probably been exacerbated by the rise of blogging and social media.

If the framework of your website is fairly static, you can still keep it fresh by adding feeds from your blog, Facebook, Twitter and just about every social media platform that generates an RSS feed.

Unsolicited Advice: Not all of your feeds may be website-appropriate. Your tweets about American Idol, your love of bacon or thoughts on Sarah Palin may not be appropriate for first-time visitors to your website who are just looking for a reliable plumber or a trustworthy veterinarian (or whatever you may happen to be).

#9: Use QR codes to drive traffic

QR codes like this one can drive traffic to your website.

QR codes are two-dimensional bar codes that can be scanned by smartphones with cameras. Once scanned, they can redirect people to a website (among other tricks). Check out QR Code Marketing for Small Business and How QR Codes Can Grow Your Business.

Whether you post QR codes on one of your social media profiles or in the real world (i.e., direct mail, a business card or poster) you can use them to drive people to your website.

Unsolicited Advice: To maximize the impact of a QR code, consider sending people to a special landing page or a mobile version of your site, rather than just the home page. This will improve your conversion rates and help build your lists.

Now let’s hear about your ideas. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Let us know how you’ve integrated your social media activity into your website. Feel free to include links so we can see how you’ve done it. Leave your comments and suggestions in the box below.

But the owners balked at giving away free food, which they estimated would cost them several thousand dollars. Yet they had spent $5,000 on a magazine ad!

“How many customers did it bring in?” Stratten asked. “We don’t know,” they replied.

Does this sound familiar? Stratten calls this the “push and pray” marketing strategy. You push your ad out to thousands and even millions of people, and pray that some respond.

“The food cost and my fee would have been less than the amount they paid for that ad,” Stratten writes in his book, UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging. And in just two days, the restaurant owners potentially would have created 150 satisfied customers to spread the word about their restaurant.

But the owners just didn’t get it. They refused to implement the strategy, and eventually they went out of business.

Stratten believes business is about creating and managing relationships with current and potential customers. Find people who are already talking about you, engage them and give them something of value. He calls this marketing strategy “pull and stay.” Pull potential customers to your business by engaging them, trade something they value for their name and contact information and stay in touch with them.

“If you believe business is built on relationships,” Stratten writes, “make building them your business. UnMarketing is all about engagement at every point of contact with your market.”

Use Social Media to Enter the Conversation

Stratten believes social media is the best way to find and engage potential customers. “If I told you that I had a room full of current potential customers all talking about your products and your competitors, would you not show up?”

If you’ve read our articles, you already know how to do this. Download TweetDeck and set one of the columns to monitor tweets containing keywords related to your business or your company name. When you see such a tweet, respond. Try to provide value in every tweet.

A self-described Twitter fanatic, Stratten decided in March 2009 to ask his 16,000 Twitter followers to help him raise money for a charity that focuses on child hunger. Together they raised $12,000 in just 5.5 hours.

Facebook and LinkedIn are permission-based, but there’s no barrier to communicating with anyone on Twitter. So he recommends starting on Twitter and using Facebook and LinkedIn to “go to the next level.”

He even uses Twitter to find out more about local businesspeople before he goes to a networking event.

This book essentially contains 55 ideas for “unmarketing” your business. Each chapter is one idea. And they’re in no particular order. So you can read the chapters in whatever order you want.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn:

• Trade shows – “pull and stay” works extremely well.
• Tele-seminars and tele-summits – how to do them right.
• Social media – the pros and cons of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Websites – they shouldn’t just be an online brochure.
• Content is king – how to create and deliver valuable content.
• Viral marketing – Stratten made many mistakes and you can learn from them!

In fact, “IMHO,” the chapter on viral marketing (at 26 pages, the longest chapter in the book), is the best part of the book. Stratten is humble enough to describe in detail all the mistakes he made. Essentially, he wasn’t ready when views of his video took off and people started subscribing to his newsletter.

That’s why he says, “Not being prepared for success in viral marketing is worse than never having success at all.” Because, “once it goes, it goes” and there’s no stopping it.

Stratten also writes about companies that really care about their customers, like:

• Zappos, which once let a customer return nine pairs of unused shoes even though the return period had long since expired
• FreshBooks, which once sent a couple of boxes of Triscuits to a current customer in Fiji
• McDonald’s, whose coffee lured Stratten away from Tim Horton’s coffee after 20 years of patronage
• Lush, a soap store whose saleswoman treated Stratten so well that he bought $65 worth of soap

Customers Are Not an Interruption

If you’re in retail sales, are your salespeople that enthusiastic about your products? Instead of thinking of customers as an interruption, think of them as “a word-of-mouth machine that can spread the word, good or bad,” Stratten writes. “Do anything to show that you are interested in my potential business with you rather than treating me as an interruption to your busy day.”

Do you spend most of your time trying to get new customers? Do you treat new customers better than regular customers? If you know that it takes five to ten times the amount of effort to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one, why would you do this?

Creating current satisfied customers is your highest priority. And why would you risk losing a current customer? It just doesn’t make sense.

Stratten uses coffee as an example. After drinking Tim Horton’s coffee for 20 years, he switched to McDonald’s coffee. They had solved some problems that Tim Horton was ignoring. Dissatisfied customers won’t necessarily complain, they’ll just go somewhere else.

Stratten also recommends surveying your current customers periodically. If you’re thinking of offering a new product or service, consider creating what he calls a “Stop Start Continue” campaign. Send all current customers an email with a link to an online survey. Let them answer anonymously. Ask your customers:

• What should we stop doing?
• What should we start doing?
• What should we continue doing to meet or exceed your expectations?

Most people would be thrilled to know that a company cares so much about them, it values their advice. Another benefit of doing a customer survey: “Every point of contact is an opportunity to engage with your market,” writes Stratten.

Social Media Examiner gives this book 4 stars.

We have written so much about the new way of marketing, and now we’d like to hear from you! Have you implemented any of these ideas? Are they working? Please add your comments below.

Both social media marketing and direct response marketing place a focused pitch on the right list (prospects) and understanding what they want in order to engage them with relevant information that will get them to buy from you.

So why are social media and direct response considered mutually exclusive?

Jonathan Fields, author of Career Renegade, put a stake into the hearts of social media “purists” when he said, “Those making the most money with social media marketing today are doing so by turning it into direct-response 2.0.”

Is Revenue the Light at the End of Your Funnel?

Why is it considered crazy to link social media to direct marketing success metrics that tie your efforts to revenue? Cinderella stories of benefiting from word of mouth aren’t just urban legend. But going viral is a lightning strike, not a strategy—you can’t bank on it.

If the success or failure of a direct marketing mail campaign depends 40% on a targeted list, 40% on a compelling offer and 20% on the format and design, then is the winning recipe for a successful social media campaign so different?

Consider:

• The list is your audience (fans, followers, emails, subscribers).
• The offer is your brand service or product combined with copy you use to promote it.
• The format is the medium used in your message (video, blog post, eBook, etc.)

Fans Are Vanity. Revenue Is Sanity.

Smart marketers tie their social media efforts to a direct marketing methodology to strategically drive traffic into their sales funnel, giving them the Holy Grail, (gasp)… ROI!

Unfortunately, many social marketers have illusions that their social network connections are “their” audience. The harsh reality is that if they don’t visit you outside the network, they’re only friends you enjoy at Facebook’s “party.”

Converting connections from social networks to paying customers should be a critical focus of any social media campaign. Otherwise you’re only improving the experience for the social networks.

How to Convince and Convert Your Audience

A direct marketing campaign done right involves identifying your target audience, creating compelling one-on-one communications, and having a clear call to action laser-focused on “What’s in it for ME?”

The problem is some marketers don’t understand that “ME” is the customer! This fatal flaw causes them to shout, stalk, push and prod until the brand value is diminished and sales are meager.

Image source: http://gapingvoid.com/2006/05/09/if-you-talked-to-people/

#1: Define your target audience

Send a survey. It’s easy to send your audience a survey when you have an email list. Simply offer something in return, perhaps an opportunity for them to be put into a drawing to win $50.00 (this invariably leads to a much higher response).

Ask for comments or feedback. Offer a free report asking for feedback. Pay attention to the language used. You will gather invaluable insights that will help you create or refine your offer.

Run analytics. Use a tool from sites like Compete or Quantcast to analyze the traffic at your site (and your competitors’) to gather a robust audience profile.

Determine the size of the crowd.

Who are they, where do they come from and what is the keyword bait? – Social Media Examiner

#2: Define what your target audience desires

Before you craft your marketing message or initiate conversation, you must know what your audience wants. What they want is more valuable than what they need. You need toilet paper, you want a nice purse—which would you buy on a whim?

Google’s Keyword Tool is a terrific, free way to get started finding out the words someone might use to solve their “pain.”

Sorting keywords that tie to your topic by amount of traffic.

If you’re struggling for ideas, try the Google Wonder Wheel to find additional terms related to your main search term.

Where in the world is the Google Wonder Wheel?

Example of Google Wonder Wheel data output for the phrase tax attorney.

Paid tools like Keyword Spy or SpyFu find keywords people are buying (PPC). The rule of thumb—if they’re making money on them, you can too!

Traffic is vanity, sales are sanity: find "buyer" keywords.

Research Best Practices Marketing Messages Using Keywords

Amazon is the king of reviews and “other related products.” Use your keyword list to find relevant books. Read the customer reviews and recommendations. This data is priceless because it has your target market using their own words to tell you exactly what they loved and hated!

Say you’re selling a weight loss product, for example. If the reviewers say “Great concept but I’m starving and have no energy!” You could use it for a tweet, “The Top 10 Ways You Can Lose Weight and Have More Energy Than Ever Before.”

Google. Find conversations using “I hate” or “I love” and your keyword. What forum, social network or other places online are they having these conversations? Social Mention is a terrific tool for this, and it’s free.

Use Google Search to find "hot buttons" around your keywords.

Use Social Mention to find the who, what and where around your keyword.

Google Trends gives you insight into where the people discussing your potential product or service are located. Are they college-educated? Do they live in small towns? Look for insights to help you geotarget your market with precision.

Geotarget conversations around your keywords to build better user data.

Social networks are one of the best sources for finding data about your audience’s loves and hates, as well as neutral conversations. Use your keywords to find people discussing their pain or desire, then head to their profiles to discover more about who they are.

Tie conversations to types of users using Twitter search. Who seems to be saying what and why: search Twitter with keywords.

#3: Create a “Home-Style” Digital Persona

Try creating some faux social profiles for your ideal target consumer.

Remember you’re most likely NOT your customer. Your marketing message must be crafted using their words in a language that resonates with them.

Tina Calabria at Step Two Designs gives a well done, in-depth explanation of personas.

WRAP UP!

Do you still think direct marketing is the polar opposite of social media marketing? By keeping your eye on your targeted goals like a seasoned direct marketer, you’ll build the bridge between vanity and sanity.

Start implementing the same fundamental principles of direct marketing to your social media campaign and you might just set the world on fire!

What do you think? Leave your answers and comments in the box below.

After all, would YOU do business (knowingly) with a sketchy person?

But with the rise of social media comes new challenges for businesses of all shapes and sizes, especially when it comes to reputation: Who knows you and what do they know you for?

Are you helpful? Are you a great person to do business with? Are you a trusted resource or a product pusher?

More importantly, in the transparent business world we now live in, are you AWARE of your reputation… and are you doing something about it?

Which One Are You?

There’s good news and bad news. The bad news is if you ARE Sketchy Sam and don’t want to change, there’s nowhere to hide and social media might end up being a big nightmare. The good news is you have the power to control your reputation through taking action, and this is how you do it.

Imagine that you’re interested in buying an exotic car but know very little about the industry. You decide to go online, Google around, kick out questions about exotic cars on social media sites and two names pop up:

Sketchy Sam

Sam says he’s the best in the world at what he does on his website—which is basically a brochure trying to get you to buy or go away. Sam is always selling and doesn’t see the point in delivering value. There are no interesting articles, advice or videos on his site—unless you pay him first! He’s always wearing a neat suit and acting “nice” in public.

But when you Google him, the only thing that comes up is “Sam’s blog” which was last updated on January 9, 2007 with the title “Buy A Car!!! Now!” and recent information on a lawsuit where he sued his mom for the family cat.

When you search social networking sites, you see that all he’s doing is shouting at people about how awesome and amazing his products are. Anytime someone mentions Sam or his products (positively or negatively), Sam is nowhere to be found. He isn’t a part of the conversation. Plus, when asking around, you quickly find out that not only is he a jerk but he doesn’t follow through on promises.

OR

Likable Laura

Laura doesn’t need to brag about how amazing she is. Others are doing it for her. When you Google her, you find a smattering of interesting information. Links to her web show where she offers tips, interviews she has done with major media sources on- and offline on the car industry, guest articles she has written for other blogs about exotic cars and other great stuff.

On her site, you find all kinds of free amazing content, including the “exotic car race off” with videos of cars racing and “pimp my car” articles on customizing exotic cars. On social networking sites you find her to be helpful, sharing interesting links and content, interacting and (ahem) being a human. Anytime she’s mentioned online (either herself or her products), she jumps into the conversation. If you ask around about Laura, you’ll hear about how she’s “great to work with,” “very authentic” and “recommended.”

Dan Schawbel always jumps into the conversation.

Who Would You Rather Do Business With?

The better question is, of course, how do YOU become Likeable Laura? How do you manage your reputation in the transparent business world?

After all, reputation is everything (well, almost everything). When it comes to marketing, your reputation can either be your champion or your worst enemy. Why? Because it matters. It used to be someone with a big mouth could tell…

…10 people about you?
…100 people about you?

Now an individual can tell thousands of people by using social media, blogs and more simply with a click.

Reputation isn’t just ONE static thing, but a sum of many things, including:

• Being likeable, friendly and kind
• Being known for delivering great service and taking care of clients
• Being a trusted content source; i.e., offering relevant and valuable content
• Being active and engaged—joining in the conversation vs. one-way communication

Plus, when it comes to reputation, search engines have big transparent mouths.

Think about someone telling all of your dirty online secrets (hopefully you don’t have any) to ANYONE who asks. Now that’s something to think about, especially because search engines spill the beans on pretty much everything you’ve been doing online.

When you hear someone’s name for the first time, what’s your natural instinct? In many cases, we rush to our computers or phones and type that person’s name into a search engine.

Is there something you can do about your online reputation? You betcha. Here are five tips for managing your online reputation:

#1: Get Busy Creating Relevant and Valuable Content

Everywhere—on your website, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Every piece of content including photos (and even videos now) is crawled by search engines.

When you create educational or inspiring content (and mention your name or your company’s name somewhere within), you’re essentially controlling your own destiny when people search for you.

Here’s the secret (come a little closer). The content can’t be ABOUT you. Helpful content wins. Think about the interests/passions/needs of your target community as opposed to your own.

Who does this extremely well? HubSpot. To put it nicely, HubSpot isn’t in the sexiest of industries. They create lead generation software, but they’re a content machine. Their Internet marketing blog is extremely popular with millions of page views per month. They even have their own online web show where they go over marketing news and opinions each week.

Go ahead and search for HubSpot. Not only will you find a link to their website, but you’ll find delicious content, links to social media sites, upcoming webinars, YouTube videos and more.

Check out HubsSpot's Internet Marketing Blog.

#2: Alert Yourself and Then Join the Conversation

Set up a Google Alert for your business, your name, other key people’s names, your competitors and any key phrases. I add my Google Alerts to Google Reader so I can check them out at my leisure as opposed to getting an email anytime my Alerts are mentioned.

Setting up an alert is one thing; RESPONDING is the key. If you see something, good or bad, jump in and comment on the blog or source. Become a part of the conversation.

Responding to good comments doesn’t have to be rocket science. At the very least, a simple thank you goes a long way if someone mentions you on their blog or website. Negative comments of course can be a little trickier and emotional, but don’t shy away from them. Participate. Take the higher road. Address the concerns. Don’t ignore.

Plus, every little comment you leave is a chance to do good and build your brand. It is also a chance to be a jerk and hurt your reputation.

#3: Watch and Listen From Every Angle

That’s another way of saying that Google isn’t the only answer when it comes to managing your online presence. In fact, there are many other places worth checking out, including:

Google Blogsearch: Blogs move quicker than Google (Google is trying to catch up with Real-Time Search), but to check what is going on with you, your business, competitors, etc., check out Google Blogsearch.

Search.Twitter.com: The hub of the real-time web. Nothing gets closer than up-to-the-literal-second updates. You can also take an RSS feed for keywords, your business, your name, people you want to stalk, etc., and put them into Google Reader (similar to the Google Alerts example), making even more info available to you on ONE screen.

Advanced Twitter Search: That little button on Search.Twitter.com. Allows for better geotargeting and a host of options you’d expect with the word “advanced.”

Ice Rocket: Well-designed search site to help track blogs, the web in general, Twitter, news, etc.

Backtype: Lets you track comments left on blogs and forums as well as on social sites. This is often overlooked, yet extremely important.

Video search: Videos are important and YouTube is the second-largest search engine to Google. Search there for videos about you and the competition. Other video search engines include Google’s Video Search, Yahoo’s Video Search, Blinkx and my new favorite: Truveo (very slick).

#4: Be nice: Taking the High Road vs. Negabots

I know this seems a little ridiculous, but it is so true. Negative people online are annoying—I get it. And most negative people fall into two categories:

• People with legitimate concerns/opposing views (we can all respect that, right?)
• Negabots. You know the type of person. It is 85° and sunny out and he’s complaining it isn’t 86°. Give him $100 and he’ll complain it isn’t $101.

Kill with kindness. Confrontational and overly sensitive are two qualities that often lose online. If you’re nice to people, people will be nice to you. Sure, it’s common, and yet it can be difficult to do.

The master of this is Gary Vaynerchuk, the outspoken creator of Wine Library TV and author of Crush It! Gary has lots of fans and friends, but of course some of those people wake up and drink a cold glass of hatred. Does Gary ignore them? Nope. On any given day, you can find him responding kindly to negative criticism on his blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts and even his Amazon book page where the occasional negative review pops up. Gary responds once nicely and then it’s done. He told me an in interview, “taking the high road is undefeated.” Very true.

Gary Vaynerchuk takes the high road when it comes to dealing with negative people.

#5: Build Relationships With the Likeable Lauras of the World

We become like the company we keep, right? Are there other people in your niche who:

• Have influential blogs (or up-and-coming blogs) that allow for guest posting?
• Have an interview series you can be a guest on?

Remember these delicious pieces of content will do all kinds of good for you, including:

• More traffic to your site (and really… who wants less traffic?). Even if it is just a few people, it’s a win.
• More content created that search engines can index with your name (especially if it’s an interview).
• Association/relationship with other trusted people online.
• A great marketing/promotional opportunity to share this content with your networks.

But here’s an interesting challenge: What can you do to offer them value? This isn’t just about taking. This is about giving value first. This is about building LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIPS.

Start digging around. Search Alltop.com, Google Blogsearch and Twitter. Ask around and start identifying media sources in your niche. Start small with perhaps a few passionate up-and-comers who are more easily accessible than the really big guys and gals.

Start helping them by tweeting about them and sharing their content on Facebook. Leave thoughtful non-promotional comments on their posts that resonate with them. Be helpful as opposed to pushy.

A perfect example is Elena Verlee, a PR specialist, entrepreneur and creator of PR In Your Pajamas. I met Elena because she relentlessly helped me without asking for anything. She offered me an interview on her blog. She consistently tweets my shows and content. She has personally introduced me to lots of great people who were guests on my show.

And guess what happened? I invited her to be a guest and we had a great interview that was seen by thousands of people. She got on my radar screen by being helpful.

Whose radar screen would you like to be on?

At the end of the day, managing your online reputation is really just being you—your best you. You can’t fake being nice to people. There are no “tricks” to make sure you’re seen as the best person/company in the history of mankind. But by working on your likeability, making an effort to engage and offering valuable content, you can certainly stack the odds in your favor.

Take a moment and Google your company. Do you like what you see? What strategies have worked for you? What have we missed? Give us your comments and feedback in the box below.

Consumers have developed extremely sophisticated filters. As a marketer, you’re fighting that filter every day.

What if you could take the filter out of play altogether? You can. Here’s how:

Shifting to Earned Attention

The problem with most marketing and promotional efforts is that they demand attention from people who are very stingy about giving it. With social media tools, we have an opportunity to take the filter out of play altogether by playing a different attention-getting game: we can earn attention rather than demand it.

You have a chance to earn attention from the right people—those with whom we most want to connect because they’re our most desirable audience. A shift from demanding attention toward earning attention seems subtle but it changes everything because you start operating differently.

We all pay attention to the things we find valuable, so as marketers we have to figure out how to provide something of value to the people we’re trying to reach. Once we do, we have their attention, and once we have their attention, we’ve gained that very thing we were so hungry for all along.

Five Ways to Earn Attention With Valuable Content

You can apply a simple concept that grounds you to create content that people will value. It’s the Old McDonald method of creating content:

E – Entertain
I – Inspire
E – Educate
I – Inform
O – Outrage

#1: Entertain

We’ve all received our fair share of funny videos. People send these to us because they found them funny and thought we would too. The Double Rainbow guy or Antoine Dodson of “Bed Intruder” fame wouldn’t be known if it weren’t for entertaining video. Entertainment is already something people are inclined to give their attention to, so why wouldn’t you seek to use that when it’s appropriate?

Content that’s genuinely funny, playful or dramatic earns attention for its entertainment value. There’s no reason why your content can’t entertain. Don’t force it if it’s not natural, but don’t hide it either. Perhaps you’re not terribly entertaining, but someone else in your organization is. What would it take to get her or him involved in creating content with you?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw

#2: Inspire

An emotional connection makes people love everything from Oprah to Hallmark commercials. A few years ago, Kleenex launched a great campaign called “Let It Out,” which immediately earned attention for its emotional connection with people. Social media inherently inserts a more human element into business if done well, so seeking to make an emotional connection using your content is a way to deepen that human connection.

When starting to think along these lines, consider capturing great testimonials from customers, sharing touching stories from employees, a heart-to-heart message from your CEO or featuring a cause that your organization supports. Your customers know people work for your company. Sometimes you just have to remind them.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRZri7jrX6g

#3: Educate

Another value that earns attention is education. Social Media Examiner has great instructional content that you find valuable. That’s why this is probably not your first time here and why you’re going to be back again. Here are some categories for you to consider as you create good educational content:

• What to do
• What not to do
• When to do something
• When not to do something
• How to do something
• Why to do something
• Why not to do something

#4: Inform

Passing along information to people can also be highly valuable. When you share news, stats or even humorous updates on your Twitter account, you’re simply informing the people who see it. The difference between this category of sharing versus the educate category is that the focus isn’t on the “what to” or “how to” types of information, it’s focused on the “what is,” “who is” and “how is” of information.

#5: Outrage

Controversy is not always a bad thing. In fact, controversy can often earn attention for an issue that would otherwise go unknown. When considering controversy from a content development standpoint, you need to choose your battles wisely, but the idea here is that if you’re really focused on earning attention from the right people, there are some controversial issues that may endear you further to that group.

For instance, I have a friend who is a Microsoft product guy through and through. You might imagine what his feelings are for Apple products despite all the positive perception Apple has today. My friend isn’t interested in appealing to the Apple crowd on his blog, so he says things about Apple products that would make an Apple lover’s blood boil. He doesn’t care, though. His readers are like him and his views endear him further to the people he’s really interested in talking to anyway. He may be going against the tide of mainstream perception but he’s right in stride with the people he’s trying to reach.

Putting It Together

The EIEIO method of creating content should serve you well as you think about creating your own content. If all of your content can be placed in at least one of the five categories, you’re on the right track. If your content can land in multiple categories, even better! Remember that content for social media is not just text. It’s audio, video, images and text. Mix up your content delivery but always keep it focused on earning attention from the people you want to reach.

What are some of the difficulties you’ve had creating content? Do you find it’s a lack of ideas, time, permission or ability? How are you succeeding with your own content efforts? Share your comments in the box below.

So he set up a Facebook fan page with the help of his parents. In just one week, he got more than 1,200 fans and raised $400!

“I can understand using Facebook for a fifth-grade science project,” I hear you saying. “But how do I use Facebook to market my business? I keep hearing that I should include social media in my marketing campaigns, but I don’t have a clue how to do that.”

You’ll be happy to hear that your clueless days are over.

A recent Nielsen report showed people spend 7 hours a month on Facebook, but only 2 hours a month on Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN.  That’s a huge opportunity.

One of the biggest names in Facebook marketing has written a Facebook marketing textbook just for you. Mari Smith partnered with Chris Treadaway to write Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

Yes! It’s another “Hour a Day” book. So you know you’ll be getting the equivalent of a college semester’s training in the privacy of your own home, at your own pace.

Facebook is every marketer’s dream, because in no other medium can you:

• Show your ad to 1,000 people for only 20 cents. Not 20 cents apiece, 20 cents total.
• Create lifelong fans of your business for only 27 cents per fan.
• Target divorced male executives between the ages of 40 and 55 who have an MBA from Harvard Business School and work at specific companies in Chicago.

Targeting Customers With Surgical Precision

You can target Facebook members by location, age, sex, education, language and even by their workplace. So you could target your ad to married men over 40 with a college degree who work for a particular company. You can throw in a couple of keywords that members list in their profiles to get even more specific.

And Facebook asks its members for a LOT of information! Not only gender, birth date and location, but also favorite TV shows, college major and even religious and political views!

“Facebook advertising is perhaps one of the most effective and inexpensive ways available to target specific people based on profile data that they have entered voluntarily,” write Smith and Treadaway.

But Facebook isn’t just about ads. And that’s just as well, because Facebook ads are the same, interruptive, “in-your-face” form of traditional advertising in a new medium. Many Facebook members may just ignore them.

“Although Facebook’s pay-per-click model of advertising offers competitive rates… Facebook users have been consistently obstinate when it comes to responding to advertising on its profile pages,” write Smith and Treadaway. “As an advertiser/marketer, Facebook has an extremely large, desirable audience that [has] refused to click ads.”

“Facebook members are typically not in the habit of clicking on ads,” say Paul Dunay and Richard Krueger in Facebook Marketing for Dummies. “They are on Facebook for social purposes, as opposed to browsing and discovery.”

Facebook Is More Than Just Ads

Fortunately, there’s a lot more you can do on Facebook than just running ad campaigns. But only if you follow the primary rule of social media marketing: Find your evangelists and then give them everything they need to help you market your business for free.

Before you even begin a social media marketing campaign, you need to answer the following questions:

• What is the goal of your social media campaign? Increased sales? Better customer service?
• How will you measure success? What metrics will you use?
• Do company executives view social media as a risk or an opportunity?
• Do you have employees who are interested in helping with the campaign?
• Can you provide enough interesting content on a regular basis to attract potential customers and keep them engaged?

And your company executives will have to answer the following questions:

• Should you promote your brand, your company or your products/services?
• Will you need a policy governing what information can be shared on social media?
• Will every update have to be approved in advance? By whom?
• Will you communicate directly with customers via social media?
• Will you manage the project internally or outsource it?

And this will be a team effort. No single person has all the skills necessary to run a large corporate social media marketing campaign. And the leader of the team has to be “one part visionary, one part marketer, and one part politician,” according to Smith and Treadaway.

Here are some Facebook metrics you can track:

• Number of new Facebook fans
• Number of wall updates/posts
• Number of likes and comments
• Number of customer interactions
• Amount of money spent on advertising
• Advertising cost per fan

This is just a taste of what you will find in Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day. The authors cover the gamut of Facebook marketing, beginning with Facebook basics and working through to Facebook analytics, Facebook Connect, and Facebook apps. They end the book with interviews from six industry experts who predict how Facebook may evolve.

If your prospective customers are spending more time on Facebook than any other site, shouldn’t you be there too?

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 5-star rating. Be sure to grab a copy if you want to master Facebook with only an hour a day.

Have you read the book?  Do you think Facebook will change the way businesses connect with customers? Please leave your comment in the box below.

Andy is also author of the book Word of Mouth Marketing and founder of GasPedal, a group that advises big brands such as TiVo, Dell, Sprint and Kimberly-Clark.

During this interview, you’ll gain insight into how large corporations are employing social media and you’ll also gain Andy’s insight into word-of-mouth marketing.

Word of Mouth Marketing & Social Media

Mike: Let’s go ahead and start with the first question.  What exactly is word of mouth marketing, and how, if at all, is it any different than social media marketing?

Andy: Word of mouth marketing is the art of getting people to fall in love with your brand. Getting them to be so thrilled and so turned on by what you do that they’ve got to tell people how awesome you are.

It’s a series of tactical things that I teach in my book. It’s a philosophy that says if we earn the respect and the recommendation of our customers, they’ll do all of our advertising for free.

Mike: Because they become advocates for you, right?

Andy: Because they love you. This is the Southwest and the Starbucks and the Zappos. When people love a brand, they love to talk about those brands.

Social media is a subset of that. It is one tool you can use to make it easier for your fans to talk about you.

These days, we’re really hot on social media. Everyone is saying, “Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.” We love the stuff, but we’re starting to let the tool take over the purpose.

Mike: Just so I understand what you’re saying, word-of-mouth marketing is about getting your customers, followers, or fans—whatever you want to call them—to love your brand so much that they’re going to ultimately advocate for it and spread the word on your behalf, so you don’t have to invest a lot of money.

And social media marketing is just a subset of that, which is leveraging these social media tools to do the exact same thing. Is that what I hear you saying?

Andy: Exactly. Social media is a great tool. I’m a huge user and fan, but it only applies to the online half of word of mouth. Even if you look at the online half, there are probably more recommendations happening by email than Twitter or all the other social media put together.

Word of Mouth Marketing Story

Mike: That transitions really well into my next question.  How has word of mouth marketing evolved, in your opinion, over the last decade? What do you think the catalysts have been?

Andy: We used to think word of mouth was luck. You did a good campaign, you did a good press release and it got buzzed—this magical word buzzed—and everyone was talking about you.

What’s happened is we figured out that it isn’t luck. It’s a planned series of things that you do to get people talking. It’s this idea that word-of-mouth marketing is similar to any other kind of marketing.

I guess what’s new is the “marketing” part. “Word of mouth” is old. “Word of mouth marketing” is new.

Then we layered social media on that. Now we’ve got this big tool to take word of mouth that might have been one-to-one or one-to-two, and suddenly it’s one-to-1,000 or one-to-50,000.

Mike: What did a typical word of mouth campaign look like a decade ago?

Andy: I don’t think the word campaign would have been there. It wasn’t word of mouth marketing yet. We didn’t understand it’s something that you can earn, that you can accelerate or that you can enhance. It just sort of happened.

Mike: The medium was probably email back then, right?

Andy: It was then, and probably is still today, more offline than anything.

If a friend tells you about a restaurant, you tell another friend about the restaurant. You go there for lunch with the office. Now everybody knows about it. Somebody emails a friend, somebody else posts a review, somebody else tweets it and somebody else puts it on Facebook. Then you read it on Facebook and you tell your spouse. Then you tell your coworkers.

The conversations weave in and out online and offline. None of these tools are the sole channel for one particular conversation. Your recommendations are flowing in and out of whatever format makes the most sense.

Word of Mouth Marketing Steps

Mike: What might be some of the word of mouth marketing steps at a very basic level?

Andy: I like to talk about the five Ts. If you go to my blog, there’s a download where you can get all of these written up, which is the framework for any kind of word-of-mouth campaign.

1. Finding the Talkers

Who is going to spread the word about you? They might be fans, customers, just people thrilled by who you or are maybe neighbors. There are all those people who could speak for you.

2. Giving Them a Topic

What are they going to say? That’s unique to the product and the talker who’s spreading the message.

Customers are saying something different than fans. Fans are saying something different than particular user groups. You have to find the topic that people love to repeat, that’s easy to repeat, and that travels.

3. Tools

Tools are all these things we use to accelerate and extend the scale of the conversation.

Mike: Like Twitter, for example.

Andy: Everything social media falls in that tool bucket. But it’s also something like the stickers that come with every Apple product. It’s classic offline word of mouth. Everybody shares those stickers.

The tool can be a T-shirt. If your customers really want to put your logo all over their chest and run around and advertise you for free, they should have a T-shirt!

The tools are all the stuff of this. The tools are things that real estate agents love to do—the refrigerator magnets and the calendars and the rulers and all the other doodads. It’s the stuff that lets the conversation travel.

4. Taking Part

Once people start talking about you, you need to respond, participate and become part of that conversation.

If you don’t join the conversation, either the conversation ends or it goes negative because people think you’re a snob.

5. Tracking

How do you measure this conversation, how do you measure the results and how do you drive through to your business objectives?

Mike: That’s some brilliant simplicity to describe the components of what makes word-of-mouth marketing work.

Andy’s Story

At what point in your career or in the last few years did you decide to focus on social media? What was the turning point for you that made you decide to focus on that?

Andy: There are two. Of the two brands that are part of my company, one is the GasPedal side, but we teach word-of-mouth marketing. It’s the word-of-mouth marketing company.

Then on the SocialMedia.org side, we run the Social Media Business Council.

I think what happened is about 3 years ago, we realized that social media is something that anyone can get up and do. If you’re a small business or an individual, it has that simplicity.

But when you’re a big company, it gets so much harder. It requires significant philosophical, behavioral and operational changes. It’s just not the same inside a major enterprise.

We started this group to be the home base and the peer group for people at big companies who are using social media and want to learn how to adopt it and learn from each other and share. That’s where this started.

Mike: Was this just about when Twitter was exploding in popularity or was it actually even a little bit before then?

Andy: Twitter had just begun. We started in the summer of ’08.

Mike: I think it was really about 18 months ago when Twitter started exploding in a massive way. Then Facebook, of course, just a few months behind, started exploding as well. It seems like you were a bit ahead of the curve.

Did you get there because you started to hear some of your clients on the GasPedal side saying, “We’re starting to hear a lot from our customers about this social media stuff, and we need to get onboard” or had you seen this coming for a while?

Andy: It’s interesting. Our name used to be the “Blog Council” because blogs were the only thing. Social media hadn’t really become part of the mix yet.

We were at Dell headquarters and Dell was doing what they then called a “buzz marketing” conference. Dell had been inviting other companies over to learn how they ran their blogging, social media and conversations department.

I was at lunch with some folks from Dell, Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft and Intuit. We had been sharing our unique challenges with this stuff. We had been talking to each other informally, ending up with “Why don’t we start a group that lets us formalize the sharing, scale it up, and bring a whole lot of companies together?” That was the formation.

Social Media in Business

Mike: That’s incredible. I’m imagining social media has grown into a very popular tool for a lot of these huge corporations now.  Do you agree with that?

Andy: I think every company is using it. What’s most interesting is that the marketing side is such a small part of where social media adds value. It’s really becoming transformative across the entire enterprise. HR is using it, customer service is using it, research is using it and internal communications is using it.

Mike: Do you find it’s often starting from marketing and then spreading to other parts of the organization?

Andy: I would say with 50% of the companies, it starts in PR, which actually makes a lot of sense when you think about PR being much more structured for conversation. You build relationships with reporters, you tell stories and you build long-term dialogues. It’s about words, whereas marketing is about numbers and campaigns.

Mike: You’ve spoken to a lot of big brands when it comes to social media. What are some of the important challenges today that many of these big brands are facing and how are you suggesting they deal with those challenges?

Andy: Probably the biggest challenge is what we call “Guffman,” as in the movie Waiting for Guffman. Everyone is waiting for this special person to show up and be in charge.

In a big company, every department gets it. They know what to do and they want to start using it, but then, “Is the Twitter account for the PR department or should HR use it or are the marketing guys going to use it? Is our Facebook page going to be for campaigns for marketing or customer service?”

You get all of these people moving around in the company trying to figure out who runs it and owns it.

Mike: How do you recommend they deal with this issue?

Andy: It really depends on the nature of the business. A lot of really big companies have a center for excellence, which is a centralized council of folks from all different departments who become the governing or guiding voice of social media across the enterprise.

I think, less formally, it’s about locking into wins. When it’s working over here in this department, you do more of that. They tell the department next to them and they tell the department next to them. It’s a series of small growing successes.

Dark Side of Social Media

Mike: Let’s talk about the dark side of social media. There’s a lot of hype around the phrase social media. Are there certain misconceptions, do you think, among businesses? Do they think it’s the Holy Grail and can solve all their problems? Does it fall short in any particular areas? What are the downsides to social media, in your opinion?

Andy: People think it’s an advertising technique and that it’s about campaigns. If your ad guys take over your social media voice, you’re in trouble. It’s not a customer acquisition tool like, “What’s our ROI?” It’s a conversation tool.

If you start jamming what are really TV ads onto YouTube and calling it social media, it’s not going to work. Equally important, you’re going to miss the point.

Search has made us completely addicted to the numbers. We know to the 800th decimal point our search engine lead generation costs every second of every day. But we don’t know if someone posted an Amazon review about our product that is going to sit right next to the Buy button forever.

Thinking about social media as advertising is really where the danger is.

Social Media Outsourcing

Mike: Let’s talk about outsourcing. Do you think big businesses can outsource their social media activities? If so, what kind of transparency needs to be in place? What are your thoughts on outsourcing social media?

Andy: It’s hard to do a lot of it outsourced. There’s a reason why our group is a ‘brands only’ group. We can talk about these things without the agencies in the room.

The mechanics, you can outsource.

Mike: The Twitter background or something like that.

Andy: Yes, setting it up and doing the creative, some of the heavy lifting on the execution, the analytics and all of that kind of stuff.

But what we’re talking about is fundamentally your customer voice, your brand voice, and your personality. The whole point of this is to connect with people and talk to people. How do you outsource being friends with someone?

And if you think you went bad with all of the tech support that went overseas where everyone just tried to save a buck and it was a disaster for any brand who did it, imagine when your brand is being represented by somebody who’s only in it as long as their agency has the account.

There are exceptions. There are great agencies and PR firms that have long-standing customer relationships with their clients, where the agency is speaking with the customer voice and has been doing it for years and knows how to do it.

Mike: Do you think there needs to be any kind of transparency or do you think that’s not necessary when it comes to this kind of outsourcing if a big company does choose to outsource some aspects of this?

Andy: I am the single biggest advocate and maniac when it comes to absolute transparency all of the time. You’ll see me running all around the country pounding the podiums screaming about ethics because this is what it all comes down to. You can’t build a trust-based relationship that starts with lying to somebody about who you are.

Mike: How would you go about doing this then? If big brands are outsourcing certain aspects—let’s say they have a bunch of Twitter accounts and one of them is maintained by an outsourced agency—how would they disclose that kind of detail?

Andy: It’s surprisingly simple. You say, “Hey, I’m working at so-and-so helping out with branding.”

Everyone thinks this transparency thing is hard. It’s really easy. “Hi, I’m on Brand Company’s team over at the such-and-such agency. How can I help?”

It’s a phrase that goes from total lack of disclosure to complete transparency.

Social Media Success Story

Mike: Let’s talk about a company that’s doing social media marketing. Is there any one particular standout story or company you think is doing it really well? Who are they and what are they doing right?

Andy: I think Starbucks is doing a fantastic job right now.

Mike: What do you think they’re doing right? They’ve been getting an enormous amount of press regarding their Facebook content. I’m trying to figure out if it’s because they’re a big brand. Is it the “Ford” effect? Ford was one of the first big brands to get on Twitter, thus they got all the focus of the press. Is it the same deal with Starbucks and Facebook, or is there something more going on here?

Andy: Starbucks uses social media like it’s supposed to be used. They have a big team of smart people who are out there every day talking to folks. Their followers are earned because they love the brand, they love the products and they love the people they talk to.

When you become a friend of Starbucks on Facebook or you follow them on Twitter and start having conversations, it’s really awesome. That begets more which begets more and that’s how this stuff happens.

Mike: Do you think part of the reason they’re so successful is because they already had a loyal, crazed fan base to begin with, and Facebook and Twitter just allowed them to come together?

Andy: Yes, this goes back to the sort of framework for word of mouth.

People love Starbucks, but it’s hard to have six people in Seattle talk to 150,000 friends every day until you add the social media tools. Suddenly, you can have relationships with lots of people—meaningful relationships—and you can do it with science.

It’s interesting. They presented a case study at our last conference. They did a new Facebook page and Twitter accounts for Frappuccino®, which is a very new brand, separate from the Starbucks Facebook and Twitter pages. Millions of people went from being fans of Starbucks to fans of Frappuccino. That kind of transition doesn’t happen unless people were enjoying the first relationship and they found it beneficial and meaningful, or they wouldn’t have bothered to friend a sub-product.

Mike: Do you know whether Starbucks is actually encouraging people to participate by putting on the cups “Join us on Facebook” or that kind of stuff?

Andy: I don’t know.

Mike: It may just be that their brand was so great to begin with, and then they applied a really great strategy to it that has exploded. It certainly seems as though it follows the five Ts that you’re talking about.

Are there any B2B brands you can think of that are doing social media well?

Andy: There are a lot of good brands. Some of the big ones, some of the pure-plays are Intel, Cisco, SAP and a lot of those tech brands. I forget the exact number, but SAP is picking up something like 20,000 new members of their communities per month. That’s a lot of people.

Future of Social Media

Mike: Let’s look to the future. Where do you see this whole social media thing going in the next couple of years? Do you think the words social media are going to be obsolete? Do you think there’s some new stuff coming on the horizon?

Andy: I think it will get normal. We’ll stop thinking of it as “media.” That’s a bad word. It implies it’s something you buy to get your message out.

Mike: It will be another channel as ubiquitous as email or the fax machine.

Andy: Yes.

Mike: For those businesses that are just now getting started with social media, what would be the single piece of advice you would give them, even if they are a mid-sized or small corporation?

Andy: It’s the same advice for everybody, which is to just do the little stuff. Pick one thing you can do—whether it’s a Facebook page or a Twitter account or one particular product—and keep it really simple. Don’t spend any money. You’ll find it’s surprisingly easy and you’ll have some nice overall results. All of the politics and the fears and the objections that are getting in the way, they all go away because you can prove that it worked.

More Word of Mouth Marketing

Mike: Andy, this has been a really exciting and interesting conversation. If folks want to learn more about you and your organization, where might they go?

Andy: If you want to learn word of mouth marketing, go to GasPedal and check out our Word of Mouth Supergenius conference, our blogs, newsletters and the like.

If you want to learn about social media for big business, go to SocialMedia.org.

Mike: Andy, I really appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule today and I wish you the best.

Andy: Thanks for having me.

Listen to the full interview below to hear more from Andy.

What do you think about this interview?  Do you agree with Andy? Leave your comments in the box below.

The trick is to know which social media tools to use and when to use them.  This article contains 12 useful social media tips designed to help your events shine.

Before Your Event

The first step is to make people aware of your event, to mark it on their calendar, and to

register. Here’s the game plan:

#1: Market Your Event Through Twitter

There are many ways in which you can use Twitter to raise awareness. Many conferences and events have their own hashtags, such as #smss10 or #metweetup. There’s no magic to creating one—just start using a hashtag in all your related tweets and encourage other people to do the same when talking about your event.

To encourage people to tweet out your hashtag and spread the word, sweeten the deal with a free pass, door prize or other giveaway for one lucky hashtag-er.

If your event is large enough, give it its own Twitter account such as @Blogworld or @socialmediaFTW, which serves as a customer service “hotline” and adds credibility to the event.

Mix up your event tweets by varying the message.

Mix up your event tweets by varying the message.

Constantly tweeting that your event is coming will annoy some of your followers, so mix it up: use tweets to announce new sponsors, speakers, an open bar, or to ask questions that might help shape the event.

Finally, ask for people to share your event with the simple phrase, “Please RT!” You’ll be amazed at the results. Just don’t overdo it; you don’t want to look desperate, do you?

Be sure to check out Cindy King’s post How to Use Twitter Events to Grow Your Network for more ideas.

#2: Market Your Event Through Facebook

Certainly you can update your status with news of your event, but don’t overlook Facebook Events, which Facebook guru Mari Smith calls “one of the most powerful tools on the platform.”

A page for your event attracts fans.

I’ve found success by first creating a page for the event, and then creating a “Facebook Event” from that. This is especially helpful if you have a recurring event, such as an annual conference or a tweetup, as it helps build a fan base over time.

A page for your event attracts fans.

Other benefits of creating a Facebook page include:

• You can add a “Like Box” to your website, blog or other web presence to promote your clambake.
• You can invite fans as well as friends to the March on Washington.
• You can take out targeted Facebook ads to reach people outside your network who would be interested in your Save the Whales Sit-In.

Mari Smith delves deeper in her post, 10 Tips for Creating Buzz with Facebook Events.

#3: Market Your Event Through LinkedIn

Promote business functions with LinkedIn Events to reach your professional network. As Lewis Howes points out in his excellent post, Top 5 Ways to Market Your Business with LinkedIn, “once someone RSVPs to your event, it shows up on the home profile of everyone that person is connected to, spreading the message for you.”

It’s simple and straightforward to create an event on LinkedIn. Once you’ve completed that task, it’s just as easy to invite up to 50 people from your LinkedIn network. It also shows up in the events search.

#4: Market Your Event Through Your Blog

Whether through an existing blog or a blog created specifically for your gathering, be sure to create posts announcing the event, calls for presenters, and sponsorship opportunities. Follow up with guest posts from presenters who should welcome the opportunity to reach a wider audience (and steal people who might have attended competing events!).

#5: Other Places to Market Online

There are plenty of online calendars, and you should list your event in any that seem appropriate.

Local papers, TV channels and radio stations’ websites often host a calendar of events that offer free postings. Tweetvite is a site for promoting and learning about tweetups, and Eventful is one of many sites where you can list all types of gatherings.

#6: Event Marketing and Registration Tools

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when handling online registration for your event. Eventbrite is a highly popular tool for the social media crowd, and Constant Contact, the popular email marketing company, has recently entered the market with their own competing product.

With these tools you can create and market your event, and even collect payments with registration. Registration forms appear on the event marketing company’s site and can be embedded into your website or blog.

Sharing tools let attendees post to Facebook and Twitter, which builds buzz and generates more registrations.

During Your Event

Just because your event has started doesn’t mean the marketing has ended! If you’re promoting an all-day affair like a boat show or arts in the park, people will be milling in and out all day. Keep the excitement and foot traffic high by leveraging social media well into the night.

#7: Foursquare and Gowalla

Events on Foursquare will encourage attendees to share.

It costs nothing to create an event in Foursquare or Gowalla, and attendees who are hip to location-based apps will want to check in to your event for the extra points!

Since many people link their Foursquare and Gowalla activity to Twitter and Facebook, check-ins reach well beyond early adopters of location-based apps.

Events on Foursquare will encourage attendees to share.

You can greatly increase the number of check-ins by adding signs and table-top displays reminding people to check in, and even sweeten the deal with a giveaway or random drawing.

#8: Use Those Hashtags!

Hashtags make your event more findable, searchable and memorable.

People will tweet out memorable lines from your event, so make sure everyone knows the Twitter hashtag: put it in your literature, on name tags, and announce it during your keynote.

Hashtags make your event more findable, searchable and memorable.

For more on how to leverage hashtags, be sure to read Adam Vincenzini’s post Live Events Need Twitter #Hashtags ‘Built-In’ Not ‘Bolted-On’.

#9: Live Blogging

If you’re putting on a conference, it might be worthwhile to have someone “live blog” the sessions. Instead of just taking notes, have them take notes straight into a blog post and publish it as soon as the session ends.

#10: A Picture Says a Thousand Words

Although Twitpics and iPhone photos are great and shareable, hire a photographer for the day. If you can’t afford one, consider an in-kind trade of a free pass. Make sure you come to an agreement on who owns the photos and how they can be used online to promote this and future events.

#11: Thoughts on Video

There are so many ways to use video at your event: quick interviews with attendees and speakers on Flip cams, recorded sessions, or live streaming the event with UStream.tv.

#12: After Your Event

After the glow of a successful comic book convention, bean supper or Tri for a Cure fades, it’s time to get back to work.

Create a blog post of your reflections on how the event went, what you learned, and even how the next one could rock even harder.  Ask for feedback and suggestions in the comments field. Post something similar to your Facebook page and encourage fans and friends to leave comments there as well.

Upload your photos to Flickr and other photo sharing sites and be sure to give them appropriate titles, descriptions and tags. Use the Creative Commons license to let them be shared as far and wide as possible.

After you’ve finished uploading your photos to Facebook be sure to tag everyone you know and ask them to “fill in the blanks” by tagging anyone else. This can have a viral effect as people love seeing photos of themselves and their friends, driving them all back to your Facebook page.

Post video to YouTube, Facebook and other video sharing sites. Ask your presenters to share their slides on Slideshare, again with appropriate tags, titles and links.

Wrapping Up

Undoubtedly, there are more sites and techniques to promote your event through social media. What platforms do you use, what techniques have proven especially effective, and how did you generate excitement and fill the seats at your last event?

And he used social media to do it.

His YouTube videos got 110 million views, estimated to be 14.5 million hours of viewing. Mass media advertising to reach that many viewers would have cost $47 million.

A famous rapper made a promotional video that gave him even more free publicity.

At the time of the election, he had five million fans on Facebook — over four million more than his opponent. On MySpace, the numbers were approximately 800,000 and 200,000, respectively. On Twitter, he had over 100,000 followers and his opponent had about 5,000.

And he rode that social media train all the way to the White House.

“If not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president or even the democratic nominee,” said Arianna Huffington.

Specifically, if not for social media, Barack Obama would not have become the 44th president of the United States.

And that is how social media is changing the world as we know it.

Social Media Is Changing the World

Erik Qualman wrote a book on this topic called Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business. Its tagline is “It’s a people-driven economy, stupid!”

And he says that’s a good thing. He believes social media will save billions of hours of productivity, make companies more accountable and efficient, and make products and services better.

It could even make your own life more fulfilling and productive.

Here’s an example:

Sally is in a supermarket checkout line on the Fourth of July weekend. She thinks it will take 10 minutes to reach the cashier. But instead of wasting that time, she uses her mobile phone to check her social media updates:

• She posts a message that the store is out of an ingredient she needs.
• Within minutes, a friend recommends an alternative.
• She learns that her daughter just aced an exam.
• Another friend announces she’s pregnant.
• She notices a Starbucks gift card at the checkout stand and buys it for her daughter.

“This is a simple example of why social media isn’t just for teenagers with too much idle time on their hands,” Qualman says.

It’s Not Just for Kids Anymore

It’s also for the new father who wants to find a good child safety seat. Instead of searching the Internet, he searches his social media sites. Within minutes, he sees that 14 of his friends bought the same child safety seat and they all recommend it highly.

And it’s for the woman planning a trip to South America. Instead of scrolling through 400 reviews by people she doesn’t know on a travel review site, she checks her social media sites. She sees that two of her friends went to Chile and rave about it. It’s within her budget, so she makes a reservation.

“One of the key maxims of this book is that wasting time on Facebook and social media actually makes you more productive,” says Qualman.

That’s why he believes social media will save billions of hours of collective personal productivity. “Social media eliminates millions of people performing the same tasks over and over. This recaptures billions of hours that can be redistributed toward the betterment of society.”

He claims online voting alone would save $6.7 billion in lost productivity during a presidential election because people won’t have to travel back and forth to the polling place.

And companies that monitor social media sites could quickly find out about problems that can easily be fixed. They can ask their followers to recommend product enhancements and even new products.

Who needs expensive focus groups and questionnaires when you have tens of thousands of Twitter followers? “The days of advertising executives sitting behind two-way mirrors munching on stale chips and M&Ms will become a distant memory,” says Qualman.

Socialnomics in Action

Qualman’s book has dozens of examples of Socialnomics in action:

• Two football podcasters saved money by letting their fans do much of the work.
• A comedy skit on Hulu.com drew more viewers than the same skit on TV.
• A human-lion encounter filmed in 1969 went viral on YouTube 40 years later.
• Barack Obama’s “micropayments” from supporters raised almost $700 million.

And many more.

Read about the 83-year-old man and the young mother of three who both say using social media has led to happier, more productive lives.

And the 22-year-old man hired by Apple who had never sent an email in his entire life. He preferred IM, texting, calling using his cell phone and communicating on Facebook.

In fact, as of 2013, Boston College will no longer give incoming freshman an email account.

Qualman doesn’t even think much of the Internet. “Search engine results and the traditional Internet advertising model are antiquated. Social media will push both of these to revolutionize, otherwise they will see a dramatic decrease in market share.”

Yes, you read that right. Erik Qualman thinks Internet advertising is “antiquated.” Internet advertising is the same old interruptive advertising applied to a new medium.

But spam filters and popup blockers do the same thing for Internet advertising as TiVo, mute buttons, and digital video recorders do for TV commercials. Consumers have made it crystal-clear that they do not like traditional interruptive advertising. Will advertisers ever listen?

And if Internet advertising is antiquated, traditional mass media advertising may soon be prehistoric. Qualman says the famous “Dancing Matt” YouTube videos have been watched by more than 33 million people as of April 2009. They were even shown on one of the large video screens in Times Square!

“The best part is the video is still being viewed by millions, which is completely different from a one and done television commercial.”

So once again, Social Media Examiner asks: Are you still sitting on the fence when it comes to social media?

If so, download and read your FREE copy of 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses. “If you’re still unsure about social media marketing,” report author and Social Media Examiner founder Mike Stelzner says, “I hope that these findings will help push you over the edge.”

Or maybe just push you off the fence. You may not be ready to jump off a cliff just yet.

We’ll let Erik Qualman have the last word: “Companies can elect to do business as usual at their own peril. We are at the start of a newer and brighter world for consumers and businesses; this is the world of Socialnomics.”

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 4-star rating.

Have any of you read Socialnomics? If so, what do you think? Feel free to comment below.