PR, Where did you go?
Is it me or is PR not actually evolving and instead completely disappearing? It’s safe to say that you can start calling all PR people “marketers”. Why? We’re all about marketing strategy now; we’re not just relating to publics but trying to learn how people tick, how they’ll be moved to purchase or pass along something – based on research and continuous analysis found in deep dives into social networks and by reading a vast amount of blog posts on the topic. The practice of PR has traditionally been built upon persuasion, but persuasion isn’t accurate. Real-life interaction is, so us “marketers” are now talking to consumers in efforts to better understand consumption of content. We are both drivers and creators of content, not crafters of company-favored news releases with a lot of fluff. We can’t do this anymore because it’s not authentic, and because it’s not authentic, it’s not interesting. That’s the cycle of a harsh reality hitting all of us.
More evidence for PRs falling off the map: take a look at events and seminars being favored by PRs. You won’t see PRs in high attendance at PRSA (I wish it weren’t so); instead you will see the most interesting blur if you attend an event like MIMA – it’s where PR meets interactive meets ultra geeky in Minneapolis. And you know what, we’re starting to get all of this geek stuff in our new roles as marketers. No longer are our days spent pitching media over the phone or e-mail. Instead, we are reading and aggregating posts that give us glimpses into the lay of the land, and we’re building media lists that feature news outlets with blogs, because otherwise, we’ll have to buy an ad – either in the paper or digitally-speaking. But wait, what about the traffic figures? Is this media outlet not worth it because of the uniques, or should we flock to something that contains more of an exponential-reaching audience? What are people’s behaviors on this specific page of our client’s website? Do they stay or is the bounceback percentage something to take note of? How can we keep consumers intrigued by what our clients are doing? I know! Let’s send a MNR (multimedia news release)! That will drive them to our site, plus it ranks pretty high in Google. That’s how us marketers are talking now.
And oh those titles… “brand public relations director”, “digital PR specialist”, “conversation igniter”, “emerging media expert”… Really, we’re just hiding behind the realization that we’ve become marketers. Content marketers.
Why are we so ashamed of being a marketer? It’s a good title, honest. Your spell check won’t redline you, claiming an “s” doesn’t make sense. And you can avoid the possibility of misspelling “public” on a resume. It’s a win-win situation. PRs, wear your new title proudly.
Agree or disagree?
What I don’t understand about “Lists”
Is anyone else confused by Lists, the action of grouping people into certain categories, the ones most applicable to this conversation being Facebook and Google Plus? It’s the “Smart Lists” vs. “Circles” battle, and ya know what — Facebook wins based on ease alone. But what I’ve never understood about lists is the fact that human behavior doesn’t scale, and because human behavior is immeasurable, that means we’ll never know if a certain piece of content would appeal if a person isn’t listed into a certain category. Take for example if you group all your “social media pals” into a list and share social media blog posts, but don’t include your “Family” members, who, may be curious about social media for the first time in their lives. But you’d never know this because we can’t read people’s minds. And thus lies the very difficult challenge of trying to better understand people. This is in fact the challenge for all marketers, advertisers, and developers these days and will continue to be a dead horse that resurrects and you have to beat it all over again. Again, humans don’t scale so why are we assuming people wouldn’t be interested in all of what we have to say? Sure, a “Family” list would be great to discuss who’s in for a “Secret Santa” approach to Christmas this year because the economy has kept family pockets lean, but that’s pretty much it.
Overall, I think lists contradict the whole purpose of social media: to connect and share in a multitude of ways AND situations.
Thoughts?
How far is too far?
I had a brief discussion with someone in my office who shared a concern about people in social media being too voyeuristic (not exactly the right word here, but I think you’ll get it once I explain), in wanting to get involved in people’s personal lives. This past weekend’s suicide of Trey Pennington is a perfect example. I won’t link to this name because I don’t think that’s appropriate. You can do that if you want.
Why am I saying this? As my co-worker pointed out, let’s treat death more fragile. Let’s be more respectful of the deceased. I wish I would’ve heard these words earlier on Sunday before I decided to snoop around Trey’s Facebook Page and Twitter account. It was eerie to see past-tense photo captions. It was eerie to see people posting photos and blog posts, most of them talking about preventing suicide or dealing with depression issues. There were also some posts that revealed some personal details about people who I know in this industry that have an ongoing struggle with depression — even one commenter saying that it wouldn’t be long before they too would commit suicide! That was definitely the most frightening thing I read.
What drew me to want to find out about Trey? I wanted context. I wanted answers. I wanted to know why someone would do this. I was certainly not alone, but still, after talking to my co-worker this morning, I just feel odd about wanting to do this. I didn’t know Trey — at all. So why would I try to participate in this conversation? I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t my place. It’s not my place to say “Godspeed, Trey” after knowing about his suicide and why he committed suicide. I should leave that up to Trey’s real friends and respect Trey by giving him his privacy online.
Should we really try to connect with/talk about people we really don’t know?
Trust and Triggers
This post originally appeared on my new social media for business blog:
There are two ways for a brand to reach a consumer via social network: trust and triggers. These are mutually exclusive of one another, because in many cases, a trigger precedes trust.
While trust is certainly a loaded word, let’s break it down into terms everyone can understand. To trust someone, you must strike up commonalities. Through those commonalities you build the context for discussion, whether that discussion pertains to last night’s baseball game, what you ate for dinner the other night, or how much you can’t stand PCs. One thing you know from these conversations is that the person you engaged in dialogue with either loved or hated the results of last night’s baseball game just like you did, had stuffed chicken breast for dinner the other night just like you did, and loves Macs just like you do. Initial agreement helps set the stage for a relationship. By recognizing agreement you can build trust, which, in the case of social networks, is precisely how relationships are first and foremost created.
Then there’s the trigger. This is a total whim type of engagement. With a trigger, you don’t need to trust the person to engage. It just so happens that you can relate to what that person just posted about it. Sometimes you don’t even know the context. A trigger is most oftentimes displayed in in-and-out communities, like Twitter. How this platform is organized forces it to be non-committal. Triggers are non-committal too. They don’t require one to stick around.
Most brands practice trigger engagement in social networks but never enter into building trust. And to make one thing clear, I’m not talking about a consumer interacting with a brand and how that brand responds; instead, how a brand engages with a consumer or a fan in their community. An “active” fan is the next step, and in that layer of engagement, it’s all about maintaining trust. Your best friends are the ones you’re in touch with the most, right? The same thought applies to engaging with consumers. Triggers can be a thought, a question, a just discovery. No matter what they’re composed of, they catch a consumer’s attention.
It seems brands get tripped up when it comes to keeping the consumer dialogue active and basically cyclical — meaning the consumer stays within the circle of trust. From that point, we hope to move the consumer to a loyal brand fan, but it takes time. As long as the brand-to-consumer interactions never fall back into triggers (short-lived touchpoints), then the brand can keep the consumer around for a long time. And in doing so, add the other piece — the furthest part into the engagement layer: advocacy.
Here’s what the trust and trigger construct looks like:
Remembering both trust and triggers will set the stage for the social momentum that will sure follow.
Social Science Webinar notes
I had the privilege of attending this webinar that set a new world record for # of attendees. Thanks for making it free too, @danzarrella. Here are my notes from it…
The Science of Social Media
Meme: Ideas can spread and evolve just like genes can
Memetics: contagious ideas
Reproductive strategies
Fecundity (quick) (retweets are like fruit flies; they spawn very quickly but die just as fast
Longevity (long-term)
Dan Zarrella’s hierarchy:
Exposure – increase amount of reach; increase likelihood of people getting exposed to idea
People who have a lot of followers tend to be less conversational; instead they are tweeting a lot of links – they’re broadcasting content. For blogs, there is no relationship between having a lot of comments and have a lot of views/links. More Facebook conversation does not mean more views. On the social Web, stop talking about yourself.
If you’re negative on Twitter, you’ll lose followers.
Influence is built on context.
Attention – the human brain is selective. Filtering out what’s not important and only letting in what is important
As Twitter activity slows down, there is more attention on stuff that would have otherwise been overlooked. End of week is a good time to share Twitter content. (Contra-competitive timing – when things get quieter, it gets easier to be heard).
Motivation – Average Facebook Page has 130 fans.
-Performance
-Reputation (social exchange- every interaction needs to give off value).
-Scarcity/novelty – not everyone knows this!
Go into search.twitter.com and look for “information voids”
As we see someone take that action, we believe that action is correct. (Information cascade)
Trial and error vs. following
When it comes to writing, use nouns and verbs. (Simply and plainly). It does not mean writing dumb.
Also, utilize combined relevance.
Don’t forget social calls-to-action.
Steak Dinner for Shankman? Lucky guy.
A co-worker forwarded the story of Peter Shankman’s steak tweet on to me, and at first I thought “how ridiculous!”, but then I kept thinking and thinking and thinking — moving from quite critical of the tactic (that’s me vying for the little people) to a “brilliant” position. In the past I’ve had my disagreements with Peter Shankman, specifically about his business model for HARO (using the top of his newsletter for brand advertising). Yes, I’m pretty much a nobody compared to him, and that’s cool with me. Here, I must give credit where credit is due.
I love the power of connectivity and the accessibility peer-to-peer interactions afford us. And I further love when our posts, tweets, and updates are nothing but a natural move. I bet Shankman was hungry for a steak dinner, and specifically one from Morton’s — so the natural tendency was to share it with the world. It wasn’t contrived, it wasn’t a test, it was just natural human hunger pains being broadcast via Twitter. That is after all the best type of social share, and it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than I’m eating a _______. Good thing Morton’s was listening!
And anyone who is involved in the social Web knows how hard it is to build a following. It’s labor-intensive and it means many hours of sacrificing other things in order to gain traction and build relationships. Shankman has worked his tail off, building not only a folllowing but also a good tribe of enthusiasts who will jump in a conversation and come to his defense if anyone takes issue or disagrees with him (I know this from personal experience :) Shankman is a social media celebrity, so really, on the social Web, he’s equivalent to an @aplusk — and if @aplusk requested a Morton’s steak, boom! He’d have one too.
What is interesting about this whole thing is the company claims that anyone would get a steak no matter how many followers they have if they were to request it. Do you buy this? I suppose I could test it, but then again, as of right now, I’m more sleepy than hungry. But if you’re hungry, go for it!
What do you make of the steak tweet?
Building a Blog: Why it’s So Difficult
Over the course of two months, I have been planning a new blog that focuses on discussing the business side of social media. And let me tell you – coming up with a theme for my new blog has been an intensive labor of love. I truly have to hand it to bloggers who have maintained a blog for more than two years. Actually, I have to hand it to those who have started a blog. Building a blog is difficult. Here’s why I think that is:
Social networks are built through building relationships, right? The same goes for a blog, only a blog is really about building a community. (Blogs are much more participatory than a social network ever will be, unless your family and friends are your only fans). You build this community by engaging with your readers. This sequence goes through your head when you’re thinking about starting a blog…
What can I write about?
How can I tell things from a different perspective so I pull in people who aren’t getting this perspective in another blogger’s community?
How can I get people to comment?
For those that comment, how can I turn them into a connection/follower/friend of mine?
How can I get them to tell their friends about this blog?
How can I tag and link words and phrases within the post copy to boost my rank in search engines?
Okay, maybe it’s not in this order, but I bet these are questions all bloggers hope to answer by asking themselves in the initial stages of setting up a blog strategy. Again, I’ve been asking myself for two months. I’m sure others have been asking themselves even longer, and because of that, their blog will be all the more successful. Planning is key to building a successful blog. Blogs fall or stay unnoticed when they are created on a whim. But here is where I think it gets the trickiest:
Will your blog theme outlast your lack of creativity and due diligence? Will you always have things to say, and if not, what’s your back-up plan? A guest post seems to be many people’s back-ups, which in many cases might be a cop-out for trying to keep up unless you’re on vacation. Though, some would challenge this by saying that guest blogs build their community all the more.
I digress a bit and would like to clearly drive this point home: it’s important to choose a theme that just works. How will you know that? Write down your proposed theme and then list all the things that you can blog about. If your list falls short of 10 topics around the theme, you might want to consider something you truly want to discover or learn, or already know about and therefore can position yourself as savvy on the topic. Basically what I’m saying is your blog theme should be general and concrete while at the same time not being too general and not too concrete. A challenge? You betcha.
Lastly, let’s briefly talk about your audience and how your audience matters in how you name your blog or give it a theme. Consider a target prospect’s browsing behaviors and how you think they’ll be able to find your blog. If your objective is to use your blog to drive new business, then your target is businesses. What do businesses like to see/read about? “Results”, “Solutions”, “Saving Money”, “Workplace Efficiency”. While these keywords seem to be a shoe-in for spam-like activity or snake oil salesmen, they’ll go a lot farther than “Discovering the Wonderful World of Business”. (Yes, some blogs are cute like that, but cute doesn’t aid search results). This may work for your friends and family to whom you’ve just announced that you started a blog, but it doesn’t work for your target. If you’re not reaching your target, your objective fails. Look at that – your blog is actually a marketing platform. Please view it this way.
These are just some observations and headaches I’ve undergone as I’ve been planning my new blog. I’ve made countless revisions after devising a strategy outline and most of that has been focused on the theme, because the theme is the most important part. It drives everything else your blog will do and is going to be to the community that reads it.
What’s been your experience in planning or building a blog?
How to Avoid Social Media Burnout
With all the content — all the posts, status updates, and new stories being pushed out every millisecond — you have to wonder if there will come a day when every social media marketer will simultaneously wave a white flag and say “I quit” because the thought of staring one second more at their computer or mobile screen is to going to make them “explode.” (Watch the Visioneers and you’ll get why I put that in quotes).
It’s a known fact that us social media geeks who are ball-and-chain with our geek devices are despised by our spouses, unless our spouses have geek devices too. Or at the very least, we’ll hear about it: “Please put down your phone while I’m talking to you.” Our spouses may be unknowingly rescuing us from the impending burnout that will come if we linger 365/24/7. Are we obsessed, or is this really part of the job description as a social media strategist or community manager?
I think a lot of us in this industry are severely lacking engagement efficiency, meaning we’d prefer the several times back-and-forth approach — or what we’d call a “conversation” — over just one tweet, one reply and no more than that. Are we then compromising sound communication should we decide enough is enough, time’s up, I’m leaving the space now? I guess it really depends on how sensitive or demanding the receiver of your message is. And that’s the thing, we can’t change how someone will react to something we say if we don’t engage enough to convince them otherwise. And, where our traditional methods of communication have a boundary in place (Oh, it’s been an hour. I have to jet back to the office), social communications don’t. This, my friends, is how the vicious cycle of social media smiles (enter emoticon :), likes, and positive comments continue cycling: we are far too worried about what others think should we decide it’s time to go.
Add the need to stay connected or “always-on” and you have the perfect recipe for burnout. It’s all built on emotions, followed by the physical fatigue and energy it takes to tweet, Facebook, and comment for hours on end. And then there’s another thing that contributes to the impending burnout: the quantity of your connections. How many people do you know professionally in social networks? My guess is not many. Now, how many people do you know personally in social networks? My guess is a ton. It’s far more likely that you’ll now know more about your friend’s dog and how disobedient the dog is than you’ll know about your friend. Yes, social media has blurred the lines entirely and you’re now acquainted with all the quirks, interests, and Foursquare escapades of your connections. Still, you continue to follow/like them because every now and then they’ll offer some value, or something that will trigger you to comment because you just did that same thing yesterday! Or you agree with them and want to “like” what they say. Yes, this is the stuff that addictive social networks are made of — elements of trust and triggers. Throw in the task to monitor networks like these and you’re reaching your pique because you’re seeing stuff that goes way beyond your connections now. The entire world is talking and you must represent. Three billion tweets are being sent out and you’re missing 90% of them, those 90% that could have been your followers if you only got on the feed quicker that morning. Ahhh! Are you exhausted yet?
I decided to paint this very vivid picture of what goes on in the life of a community manager or one who is tied to social media by title default because, behind the story, there’s one important variable to all of this: choice. It’s our choice to linger for seconds, minutes, or hours. It’s our choice to respond or not to respond. It’s our choice to upload pictures of our trip to Paris via Instagram in hopes of generating some views, likes, and comments instead of just enjoying the Eiffel Tower in all its beauty. It’s all a matter of choice.
That’s why it’s never too late to just walk away, go outside — or go on a date with that angry spouse or girlfriend/boyfriend of yours to bring resolve. If your job description says you must stay connected, then think about being more efficient in your communications. Stop doing 3-hour long conversations at a coffee shop on social media. Stop spending hours crafting a comment for a blog post or monitoring a Twitter hashtag and reviewing all those irrelevant mentions to give yourself a laugh for the day. All of this community activity is unnecessary and a waste of company dollars. Be efficient. Sure, there are tools for being efficient but you’re the one talking via those tools.
How you choose to spend your time in social networks engaging with the masses either on behalf of a brand/company you represent or for your own personal entertainment entirely depends on you. No one else. Just remember, pro-longing your connectivity could mean the difference between maintaining your sanity, or as Zach Galifianakis would say, exploding.
How do you avoid social media burnout?
Why Google Plus Won’t Succeed: The Name
I am right now dabbling with Google Plus…
There are many posts out there about Google Plus, each with differing points of view – calling out the advantages (Facebook killer), or the disadvantages (Facebook will be here forever) of the platform’s many offerings such as Circles, Hangouts, and Sparks. Some even calling it a “social layer” – the first to introduce something new and truly exciting to the never-ending weave of crazy-named networks. Which is precisely why I think Google Plus will be another Wave: the name.
“Google Plus” isn’t memorable. In fact, it reminds me of a game I might play as a fourth-grader trying to become better at arithmetic. And this is what Google is known for – bad names, with the exception of Gmail, which introduced us to an entirely new e-mail address book and made it so obvious that there was indeed a new message in our inbox. It also rides on the coattails of its own product, +1, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand why they launched that first. If it was to compete with Klout’s content endorsement mechanism +K, it just doesn’t make sense to me. As far as I know, only the really big geeks and geek blogs are using +1 and the even bigger geeks are using +K to label friends as experts and experts you must know.
Think about the social networks and sharing platforms currently out there with memorable names:
- Spotify. It’s not called Listen-To-It.
- Foursquare. It’s not called CheckedIn (If it were, you know who’d be pissed off about that)
- Twitter. It’s not called ShareFastandFrequently.
You get the picture.
Now let’s examine Google’s great names track record:
- Google Docs. Sounds like exactly what it is, but that’s really no fun now, is it? (And to this day, I don’t hear of many people who use it).
- Google Wave. Definitely a maneuver I’d do at half-time
- Google Buzz. Reminds me of a PR tactic I once tried, to no avail. (This one is still in need of some serious help)
- Google Plus. Darn, I lost the game because I ran out of aliens to shoot the minuses.
Call Google Plus great, exciting, the next best thing. But in short, it’s just not memorable.
Agree or disagree?
Data and Ads: That’s All There Is to it
Google Plus has entered the social Web discussion. A shiny new toy that’s caught the eye of many already, but….
Has anyone stopped tweeting or Facebooking for a second — long enough to think about the real purpose of social media? Why do we spend countless hours building our followers/friends base only to return to spend another countless amount of hours building the base even more? From our perspective, it’s fun and it’s really exciting when we see people comment on our stuff. It makes us feel good. From the perspective of the owners of these social networks as well as the VC’s that back them, they’re laughing all the way to the bank.
Data and ads. That’s all there is to it. These social networks (and by social networks I mean Facebook) are here for the purpose of developers and advertisers to make money off of our interactions and play time. How does it work? Facebook’s got the Open Graph platform built in, which allows for our social graphs (our data) to be disseminated and dissected among advertisers. We’re then better marketed to and thus we’ll have a larger likelihood of clicking on an ad because it matches us pretty solidly. The “like” button, strewn across thousands of websites, is an advertiser’s best friend. Developers come into the picture by creating these fantastically addictive games, and Facebook then sets up a business model comprised of “Credits” to keep the good times rolling. What’s more, addictive gamers can take these credits to a local convenient store and use them to purchase items off the shelf. After all — they’ve earned it, haven’t they?
Being very much amidst all the craze of social media content and how that plays a larger role in companies/brands administering better business and promotional practices to consumers, I oftentimes find myself in a love/hate relationship with social media. At times, I’m giddy over the shiny new objects and the ways I can advise clients to use them to market a service or product. Then at other times, I want to take my phone and throw it in the deepest part of the lake where upon hitting the water, it will fry and then quickly sink to the bottom in a bunch of muck. Social media can be incredibly addictive, and it’s really up to the individual to decide whether or not to share something in that exact moment and time.
We all know human behavior isn’t scalable; it’s frankly unpredictable. And really, when it boils down to it, that’s what makes social media so exciting that I stay tuned in, plugged in, logged in.
How about you- Do you care about the real purpose of social media or are you a “value” optimist?
