I am going to be presenting tonight at Ignite Phoenix, the nerd prom of the Phoenix tech crowd.
I have to be at the venue in exactly 3 hours now.
My jitters abound.
More than that, I cannot say. I’ll share more when it’s all over. If nothing else, being part of an Ignite showcase is an original experience. It’s been about 8 years since I was on a stage, and even then I had lines to memorize.
Not so with Ignite. I have an idea of what I need to say, and slides to guide me along. But there is no hard script, nothing to memorize, and if I choke on something I have mere nanoseconds to recover.
If I ever agree to do something like this again, you have my permission to slap me. Whoever you are.
But for tonight, wish me luck! Thank God I’m at least really good looking.
If you want to get to Tuesday’s Ignite Phoenix #6 but you’re short one ticket, then this is for you! It’s the:
Ciaoenrico Validate my Desperation for an Ignite Phoenix #6 Ticket Contest!
All you need to do is tell me why you need a ticket to Ignite Phoenix so badly. Submissions – in the form of comments to this post – must be creative, funny, and desperate.
Bribes are totally acceptable. Remember, you’re desperate.
Since I am presenting that night, I get two tickets for the event. I am required to use one ticket for myself, so I can have a place to sit when I’m done.
But my Girlfriend isn’t interested, so I’ve got this extra to give. Since I don’t want to be “that guy” who sells it on Craigslist, I’m instead parlaying it for some comments!
I’ll pick a winner Monday night, and e-mail that person with the details.
I feel a lot of the time I need to defend my opinions because I can be so contrary. I work in new media, and then I’m fast to bust on it.
Understand this about new media, if you understand nothing else: There are the geeks who adore new media and not coincidentally work inside of it, and there are normal people who could care less.
When you read a blog like this, it is almost always written by someone on the inside of the industry – either as a marketer, a manufacturer, a publisher, or some other “er” I can’t think of that makes money from technology. We tend to have very insulated opinions, and sometimes they bear little resemblance to the “outside” world.
So when I post an opinion that’s contrary to dogma, it isn’t because I’m trying to pull a Glenn Beck and piss people off for it’s own sake. I’m just more interested in what I can prove than what I can feel.
For example, this week, I got a post published on Agencyside.net about how mobile marketing isn’t necessarily worth worrying about. Why would I say something like that? Because, as I’ve said since before this blog started, we still aren’t there yet with mobile. Phone apps haven’t proved they make boatloads of money for the companies that sponsor them. My argument – just for right now – remains the same:
The number of people with a phone is expected to increase dramatically, but hasn’t yet.
People still complete more purchases on their home computer. A lot more.
With several phone operating systems to create apps for, it becomes prohibitively expensive to target them all.
If you only target the iPhone, you’re still only potentially reaching some 0.5% of the consumer market.
And on and on. Phones definitely have potential to be as important as everyone says they already are, but they aren’t yet. The people who say they are that important already have an iPhone themselves, and are exposed to all sorts of new information about what is on the horizon for mobile.
The average user, however, has a flip phone that barely does SMS messages. They’ve heard phones can go online, and while that sounds neat, it also doesn’t sound necessary. They text their friends often enough, but hate SMS ads. They might respond to a giveaway that requires them to send a text, though.
These are the kinds of things you need to look into before you get serious about mobile, or e-mail, or radio, or any marketing tactic. Coming at the problem emotionally, because you love your own phone so EVERYONE must love phones, isn’t rational. Your own company or clients don’t need to be steered around by your own phone fetish. If you’re in love with mobile technology, great – but do some research on your market and how they use them before you start investing in a campaign.
If you’re new to Twitter, you may be doing what most people do when they realize they need to put together their own network by hand: Follow a lot of people, and hope some of them follow you back. If this is where you are, here’s a suggestion that will help you get more followers.
First, every time you go out to follow more people, first write five incredible tweets. They should be about you, but interesting. They can be links to funny videos, news stories, some outlandish opinion, or a RT of something great you found from some one else. Just make sure there’s five, and that they come close to defining who you are.
You want to do this because, when you follow someone, they will see this and look at your Twitter page in response. If they like what they see, they’ll follow you – which is the whole point of all this work you’ve been doing.
When they get to your Twitter page, if all they see are links to your blog, or posts submitted automatically by a feed or API, they will think, “this person is not interesting enough to follow. I’m moving on.” After that, you’re likely to never see them again.
You could unfollow them, and then refollow them so they get another notification and come look at you, but that’s obnoxious. It’s also likely to get this person to block you permanently from their account. They won’t see or hear from you on Twitter, and if you get enough of these Twitter will suspend your account.
So instead, just write funny, interesting, engaging, sticky posts, then go to Twellow.com or other Twitter users’ followers to find people. When they see that you post often, and that what you post is worth reading, you stand a much better chance of adding them to your little circle.
Here’s a great example of how social media has permeated search listings:
I just did a search for “new Digg” on Google, looking for information on what they’re planning to unveil.
On the first page of results was my own blog post on the new Digg, with my cartoon avatar. But that placement wasn’t there when I looked it up on another browser. Thing is, I wasn’t signed into my Google account on either browser.
I was, however, signed into Twitter on the first browser. When I logged out, the listing was gone.
Understand – this was NOT Google simply displaying one of my Tweets in the search results page. This was Google posting my own content on Digg, from my blog, and they knew it was me because I was signed into Twitter.
The first browser in this set-up was Google Chrome, and I wasn’t able to reproduce this on Firefox. So this may be something that only happens with their own browser so far. I can’t imagine why. I’ll have to experiment a bit more with it to be sure.
If this is the new way they’re including social media, getting retweets will be a lot more important than it has been. It may not create a wealth of new traffic, but it will help you keep all that “mindshare” when people go to Google to do their own searches.
Let’s all just face it: Social media makes weird things happen.
Betty White is set to host Saturday Night Live this week. Why? A Facebook Page titled, “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!” The page now has over half a million fans now, most of whom got on board before she was announced to host. The show’s producer – knowingly or unknowingly – called the surge of interest in her hosting a “groundswell,” which is the title of the Josh Bernoff book about just this sort of thing happening with social media.
The thing is, it’s an awfully odd thing for there to be a groundswell around. The same, I think, is true of the “Leave Brittney Alone” video, the Shibu Ibu Puppy Cam Show, and just all of Ron Paul’s presidential run. These things that gain all our attention, and make us giggle as we become participants, all feel like some bizarre practical joke on the world.
“What’s the weirdest thing we can possibly do with all this media?” someone asks.
“I know,” someone says, “we’ll take pictures of cats doing strange things, then insert what they’d say in strange syntax! And they’ll all think in Bold Impact font!”
When people start talking about how to make viral content or something like that for their company, you know they’re hoping for a similar mad craze over their car insurance or cell phones or whatever. I think that’s the first mistake. Why?
Viral Content is Anti-Establishment
All of these examples are big because they are decidedly not mass media or helpful to anyone’s brand. People don’t sit down and thing, “boy it sure would be fun to help out Samsung’s North American Division!” No! At best, they’ll think, “how can I make a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company really uncomfortable?” Which leads to the second mistake of industry,
Viral Content cannot be controlled
People think they want to be mentioned in something hip and widespread, so their brand can become famous. What they really want is for everyone to spread the word that their company and product is great. (They don’t say that, though. Not even to themselves. When you admit that out loud you can hear how silly it sounds.)
What’s more likely to happen is someone videotaping one of your employees doing something… just bad.
I’d post for you the original video, but Domino’s had the video banned from everywhere.
Why, Domino’s!?! It made you guys famous! Why wouldn’t you want something all viral like that making the rounds?
Because they learned the hard way that average people don’t CARE about pieces that are complimentary and nice. Just the helpful nature of a viral “campaign” is enough to turn people off. If people wanted safe and nice, Howard Stern would have never happened. (In fact, Howard Stern pulled off one of the early social media pranks, before there was any social media. If you know anything about Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf being voted People Magazine’s, “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1998, you know what I mean.)
Betty White got a nice surprise out of the Facebook campaign, but ultimately the joke was on Saturday Night Live. (Though they’re smart to play along.)
When you try to get people to do the same thing for you, remember that you are The Man simply because you’re not creating content to be odd or entertaining, but for promotion. Creating “messaging” to be used on Facebook or YouTube won’t do you anywhere near as much good as allowing others to make funny videos about you, and having a sense of humor about it.
You know what marketers who come to social media always get wrong? They think the message is the message.
In fact, the content is the message.
Marketers bring their bad habits to social media when they try to use it to sell their wares. Old media – TV, radio, newspaper ads – are all one way. They are built for blasting messaging at people, with the hope that at least a fraction of them will ultimately buy something as a result.
On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., people don’t have to listen to this. In fact, they rarely do. Here’s an example of a YouTube video I helped to produce that utterly failed:
The original idea had been to make something funny, something people would want to watch. Instead of making something that was all about ad copy, it would be, in and of itself, entertaining.
What we got wrong was that ultimately, the whole thing was still constructed to make you think about the company and their product. The fun stuff is diluted with messages about RVs and the company that rents them out.
Also, to be fair, it isn’t that funny either. The production value is pretty low, but that wouldn’t matter if it was laugh-out-loud hilarious. (And I freely admit it would have looked better if it had been built on a Mac.)
With this piece, we strayed from the thesis of creating content and instead created advertising. It is difficult to explain to a paying client why there’s a difference and how the former is far more important. This is also why so many companies get Facebook and Twitter wrong. Rather than share something people will be interested in and react to, they continue to post as if they’re making a classified ad:
Here you see the company name, you get a link to what they’re all about, and who the hell cares? It doesn’t help that this was posted using the Twitter API – a delivery method of Tweets that screams, “I don’t care enough to write something on my own.”
I’d like to show you an example of a motor home seller that does Twitter right, but a quick search shows nothing but posts like this – self-promotion with no care for what people might actually retweet or even read.
So instead, let’s look at Dell. I love Dell for the way they use Twitter. They have multiple accounts, each with a different focus. Look at what they post on their Dell Lounge profile. They talk to people, they retweet articles NOT about them they find interesting, and they do not post links to pages with stuff they want people to buy.They provide QUALITY CONTENT.
That is what you need to give people if you want to make an impact in social media. Links to your page and self-aggrandizing stories don’t sway or interest anyone. If instead you want a win you can brag to your client or boss about, stop posting messages and start posting content.
If you’re still fretting over how to get some of that juicy Bing search traffic, stop.
Above is a comparison of unique visitors (individuals visiting each site) for Google, Bing, Myspace and Facebook. When Bing launched, they had a massive jump in traffic – in large part because of all their television advertising. Still, they’ve yet to get much more traffic than Myspace. Myspace, as you remember, is the social networking site everyone has decided is done and no longer worth worrying about.
Instead we are all concentrating on Facebook, and with good reason – their traffic is fast approaching Google’s. It’s pretty obvious that Facebook should be of greater concern to you than Bing. Google and Facebook have completely different kinds of traffic, granted. But if sheer numbers are important to you, Bing doesn’t have them.
Now look at the comparison between Bing and Microsoft’s other search platforms – the ones they wish you’d stop using now that “Bing” is here:
While all three use Bing results, their numbers still don’t measure up to the collective traffic of Facebook or Google. More importantly, Bing itself is not popular. If Microsoft’s search engine were really impacting the search market, it would have overtaken these older properties of Microsoft’s. Bing had the same leap in visitors at launch, again because of all the television advertising and people’s love of something new.
I still maintain Bing will not rise anywhere near to being a Google competitor until they do something massively right, or Google does something massively wrong. When Yahoo! starts showing Bing search results at the end of the year, Microsoft’s paid search revenue will increase, but it remains to be seen if any of Yahoo!’s traffic comes over to Bing.com proper. Yahoo! will still have all of their other cool properties that people use – Yahoo Mail, Answers, Delicious, Flickr, Messenger – and Bing will still be… well, whatever it is now.
And don’t get me started on how little traffic there is for mobile!
It’s a pretty standard afair after that, you give them your e-mail, they send you a confirmation, they’ll let you know when they’re up and running, blah blah blah. But what can they be up to?
They need to be up to something, that’s for sure. Digg has become all but unusable in the last couple of years, unless you like posting links that no one will ever see. There is a tiny percentage of users who get stories viewed widely, and this happens through a very tedious gaming of the Digg system.
The reward for doing this is that their stories appear on the front page of the site, which itself has millions of passive visitors. So if you can get enough “diggs” of your post to get placed here, you can get a wealth of traffic. The problem here is that none of this traffic is terribly good for anything. You get a view, and if the user doesn’t bounce right out, it stays just long enough to read what you read and leave anyway.
So either you get no views of your post, or you get views from people who don’t care. So it’s a great site for 100 or so people who’ve spent their lives cultivating Digg-power. The rest of us are left cold. It’s become the perfect place for the on-line voyeur, who wants to see neat stuff and add nothing to it.
Doesn’t all that sound GREAT!?! You can’t take part, people who read don’t take part, and the top users, while they get a lot of traffic, don’t get quality traffic and have to sacrifice dating and showers to get there.
So you’re damn right if you think I’m interested in what they’re changing! If they’re accepting that the way the site’s been running is slowly killing it, and they’re going to work to change it, this could be a very good thing.
Or not. If they have all this traffic and they’re going to change the way they do business, they could cut their own throats. If they’re only being coy about a simple site or usability redesign, they don’t recognize their central problem and it won’t help them.
I burn with curiosity to see what they have up their sleeves.
The more I write about social media, the more I come to realize most of the appeal is in being a rock star.
See, I meet a lot of people in this industry – if you can honestly call it that – who’s main ambition is to be “famous.” I met one woman this week who said she wanted to be, “the face of social media” for her company. I’ve heard other people moan with despair when the news talks of some YouTube video getting millions of views – because theirs didn’t get millions of views.
I think our appetite for fame is what drives too many of us to jump into social media. It brings with it the promise that anyone can become something of a star, just by sharing. And of course we all think we are individually so entertaining, funny, witty… special that of course if we get a Flip Video camera and shoot some of our musings, we’ll eventually end up on TV, exchanging witty barbs with Dave or Jay.
If anything threatens to kill social media, it’s our own need for attention and approval. Wanting to be famous for one’s music or writing or comedy or photography makes sense to me. But being famous for the sake of being famous smacks of low self esteem.
If you come to social media, you need something to say. If you’re only blogging or tweeting or whatevering on Facebook to become “known,” good luck with that. It’s a bumper crop for attention whores these days. Look at iJustine. Or that “leave Brittney alone!” guy. Whole lotta fame there, if that’s what you really want.
If you want to get to Tuesday’s Ignite Phoenix #6 but you’re short one ticket, then this is for you! It’s the:
