Tag Archives: Twitter

3 signs your social media shout is a socmed wimper

(Via Biznology) Every other week I like to remind you that you’re being a social media wuss. And, by wuss, I mean you’re being too much of a social media “nice guy.”

And by “nice guy” I mean you’re spending too much time worrying about what others think to the point of turning your entire social media marketing campaign into a milquetoast and pablum sandwich. You spend too much time trying to get everyone to like you.

You’re always afraid of stepping on toes or offending anyone. You’re especially afraid of getting fired. If you’re honest with yourself, that’s your biggest fear: losing your job if you’re an employee or losing (or alienating) your clients (or prospects) by doing something as revolutionary as having a voice, an opinion, an agenda, or a point-of-view.

Heaven forbid.

If you don’t have any champions…

You as a brand shouldn’t be a one-man-band. The online world is (and has always been) a conversation. The Internet is a collaboration. The social mediasphere is a two-way-street. And if you’re speaking to yourself alone in your social media room, you’re doing something wrong.

What are you doing wrong? Are you boring? Are you afraid? Are you insecure? Are you derivative? Do you create unique and compelling content or do you just repeat, retweet, and reshare the hard work of others? Are you a unique source or are you a repeater? Are you a soloist or just another face in the choir?

Cowboy up and audition for the solo!

Even better, why don’t you write your own music? Become a social media composer? Well, at the very least, learn how to project your voice to the back of the hall! Learn to use your diaphragm and get some volume.

Even if you have nothing to actually say, say it loudly and with confidence. Loud and proud always wins if you never leave the choir. Not everyone’s meant to become a soloist, a composer, or a conductor.

If you don’t have any enemies…

If you’re willing to compel the attention of the spotlight, you’re going to have critics. If you don’t, you’re not saying anything. You may not actually be dull but you’re being a dullard online. You’re not even being a dullard worthy of bullying or mocking, you’re being a Gray Man.

“A gray man?” you ask: “The gray man is someone who can walk through a crowd, be seen by everyone, but remembered by nobody because nothing about them stands out.”

The gray man is a concept taken from survivalism. The belief states that being invisible is better for survival than running around brandishing assault rifles and a big fancy 4X4. Cool, right?

Being a gray man may well be dandy for keeping alive in a post-apocalyptic deathscape, but being an invisible wallflower is antithetical to what you’re supposed to be doing on behalf of your brand, your company, your boss, your products, and your services.

Yes, I know you love social media because you’re naturally bookish, introverted, and a little anti-social (which is why you’re so good at social) but you’re now in content marketing, social media marketing, and digital marketing — and marketing is a subset of selling and sales requires that you beat the band, get out there, and break through the chaff, the ack ack — that you’re able to go from your librarian’s whisper to Whitman’s “barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world!”

Repeat after me: “Yawp!” Ok, once again, “YAWP!” Much better.

If at least a few people a month don’t even care enough to slag, slander, hate on, or flame you enough to make you a little nervous, then you’re not yawping very well, you’re not being authentic enough.

The reason why everyone hates a nice guy is because the nice guy is often kind of a jerk. He spends so much time doing things he hopes and prays you’ll find appealing that he’s essentially a liar.

He’s a liar because he’s fine being “just friends” even though he’s in love with you; he’s inauthentic because he’s not being himself and he’s got one hell of an unfulfilled agenda that moves further and further away; and the nice guy’s even dangerous because the rift between what he wants and who he is and how he’s acting, behaving, and being is infused with frustration and disappointment — and that can be volatile.

People really do want to know you better — stop being such a bifurcated putz.

If nobody unfollows you…

We keep on talking about acquiring followers, Likes, friends, and fans. We’re obsessed with it. We’re also super-afraid of being unfollowed. If you’re never being unfollowed, unliked, bozo-filtered, banned, blacklisted, spam-boxed, or tarred-and-feathered, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. I don’t mean you need to bash people over the head — you can win with charm, playfulness, smarts, humor, entertainment, or even je ne sais quoi.

But one thing you need to do is maybe message a little more than you do. Or choose a side. Or have an opinion that is a little more controversial and risky than glib beauty pageant aspirations for world peace.

(Ok, I thought I should mention just about now that I am being a little extreme.)

I want you to increase your volume: frequency-of-tweets, boldness of voice, directness-of-intent, and something even scarier and more intimidating: what do you want from your followers? What do you need from them?

How would you like them to help you?

In a perfect world where you actually got your heart’s intent, what would all your social media profiles, handles, Walls, channels, etc., be doing for you? Would they be adding bottom line to your revenue? Would they result in more donations to your cause? Would they be buying, buying, buying from your awesome eCommerce site?

Remember this: you’re allowed to give your followers a big kiss on the lips! They’ve already admitting to having a crush on you. Come on!

There’s no reason in God’s green earth why they would be following, liking, and subscribing to you otherwise, right? You’re not going to lean over, your eyes closed, and get a cheek. Come on, you’re already an item!

And really, the only reason why anyone would unfollow you is because they just don’t think that this is the right relationship. That this match wasn’t made in heaven and they’re going to look some more. It’s not you, it’s me; it’s not me, it’s you — whatever.

Churn’s a good thing. I mean it. If your followership is stagnant, it’s because so are you.

So, you’re really not even risking anything, are you? If they’re already into you, you can come from a place of power, of leadership, and of control — but in a good, supportive way.

You don’t need to fear rejection because your friends, followers, and subscribers have already made the first move.

Yes, I know that doesn’t make it any easier, but you’ll never make it around all the bases and get a home run if you don’t start with a first kiss. (Ok, that analogy has more than played out — I can just hear all of the unfollows, dislikes, unsubscribes that I am getting right now as we spiel.)

But, at the end of the day, the reason why everyone likes bad boys is because they take what they want, they speak their mind, they don’t apologize, and they stand their ground!

While I don’t necessarily recommend that much aggression be dumped into your social media platforms, I do agree with one thing: the stereotypical bad boy certainly gets what he wants because he knows what he wants and he lets people know in a very clear, easy-to-parse and easy-to-understand way.

Even though he may well be bad, he’s not duplicitous and you never (ever) need to read his mind to know what he’s after. He’s willing to raise his voice and become the center of attention — he’s even willing to make a scene when there’s no other choice — and so should you.

Never has the mediasphere been more noisy, competitive, or easy-to-access in the history of mankind — you’re going to need to be willing to shamelessly and fearlessly draw some attention to yourself to draw attention to your brand or corporate mission.

Good luck, knight — I wish you good luck on your quest.

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People don’t like being collected on social media

You know how much I am obsessed with “long-tail blogger outreach,” right? I am a man possessed! That said, I really don’t collect people. People don’t like being collected. They — we — don’t like being part of a ménagerie de personnes (people also don’t like folks who drop French for no good reason at all, by-the-way). While it’s really too easy to collect people, it’s even easier to take them for granted — and maybe there’s a tipping point. I have been consulting some bouncing social media babies recently and they’re doing it right. They’re each running a couple-hundred followers and friends and they know every one — they’re aware of exactly who they’re following and get really excited whenever anyone follows them back.

I mean, really excited! It’s very charming.

But please forgive me, I felt the same way too — and I must tell you that I really needed the reminder. I mean, not to brag, but I have been 500+ on LinkedIn since before many of you were born. And with 43,571 followers on Twitter and 4,777 friends on Facebook, maybe I am “that guy.”

And with such a torrent of conversation splashing and sloshing at me all the time, manifesting in an endless din, I of course am just about always overwhelmed.

It’s almost impossible to both maintain the cultivated intimacy of those very first days of exploration when you knew the name of everyone you followed and, especially, everyone who followed you.

And, in order for your good words, your good message, your brilliance and genius to make its mark is to have built an audience.

There’s the rub. If you’re unable to remember that each thousand followers you accumulate will widen the gap between you and your followers. While your followers and friends will probably may not lose their attachment to you — in fact, their attachment might grow as they spend more time with your voice, your words, your wit, and your wisdom, you’ll get overwhelmed, too — just like I did.

Just remember, people don’t like being collected.

Honestly, I don’t know if I have done a very good job of it myself. I have tried to create Twitter lists and keep connected, but it’s not easy. It’s also not easy when people, over time, know you more than you can know them — even on Facebook.

Always remember, people don’t like being collected.

Do your best to not allow your burgeoning social media empire to go on autopilot. While it’s virtually impossible to keep up with so many people (unless you keep the number of people you follow to a severe minimum or limit your engagement with people you don’t personally know on Facebook to just followers and not friends), that doesn’t mean you can’t keep up with any of them.

At the very minimum, you’ll need to pay attention. You’ll need to listen. You’ll need to participate with everyone, at the very least.

At-replies (@replies), direct messages (DMs), and third-party mentions. At the very least. And you need to engage with generosity of spirit and patience. You’ll need to engage with everyone who engages with you with as much personal touch and attention as you would someone you already know — with the understanding that you’re only being damned with your success.

That were it not for your success building your brand and reputation online, you wouldn’t have this problem, would you?

There’s an amazing book by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird. It’s a book about writing that suggests that no matter how overwhelming the Herculean task before you — the overwhelming wall of tasks that keeps you from writing that great American novel — you can reduce it to simple steps. In the case of the book, a ten-year-old boy was freaking out about a book report about birds:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Bird-by-bird, follower-by-follower, friend-by-friend.

People don’t like being collected but people hate being dismissed.

The beautiful secret about being present, being well-engaged with your followership as you develop the sort of followership that extends into the thousands and tens of thousands — hundreds of thousands, potentially — is that, outside of private messages, engaging openly, honestly, presently, and sincerely with people publicly and before others is an outstanding way of shaking hands and kissing babies while the cameras are on.

However, that’s just a parlor trick. It’s a way of expanding and deepening perceived intimacy online, a way of spending quality time with one person publicly so as to show humor, humility, kindness, and attention to everyone else — sort of like how CEOs like to profess how the door to their office is always open.

What happens, then, when people your work with take you up on your offer to come visit them in the corner office?

Well, you sit there and thank God that you’re trusted and respected enough by each and every one of your employees that they’re actually willing to take you up on it (because, generally-speaking, the sort of CEO who does something like this is the sort of CEO who is pretty sure that his minions are too intimidated to ever cast a shadow on his door).

But you, you’re different.

Because you know, now or even before, that people don’t like being collected, people hate being dismissed, and people resent being trifled with, you’ll make a business of engaging pleasantly with everyone who comes to your door, no matter how casual the encounter, no matter how modest their pedigree, or no matter how non-existent their Klout.

Remember, every day, that you don’t have to do any of this. You need to neither collect thousands of people nor do you need to maintain a simple cadre of real people you’ve met in real life. It depends on what you want. Do you want access and influence or do you want relationship, intimacy?

Either way, it doesn’t matter. People aren’t stupid. If you’re rocking forty-plus-thousand followers like me or 38,356,230 like Justin Bieber, people know that.

They understand you’re busy. They know you’re probably torn in two by your schedule. That said, remember that this relationship must be a relationship of mutual respect: do you thank people for their retweets? For being mentioned in a #FollowFriday?

Are you responsive enough to take the time to brandish your virtual Sharpie to sign autographs? To smile sweetly as you’re immortalized in a virtual mugshot-with-a-star.

You don’t need to engage every day with every one of your 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 100,000 followers: remember, bird by bird, friend by friend.

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Blogger outreach is digital Public Relations

The current catch-all these days for what I do is social media; unfortunately, when what you do is described as social media, people tend to think Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and maybe Google+. My expertise, however, is online community outreach and engagement. Back in 2006 I developed a strategy of blogger outreach that allowed my to reach out to more than just 25 top-tier bloggers by hand over time but to 2,500-5,000 bloggers.

I have always called this long-tail blogger outreach (though I would love your help with choosing a new name for it) because it focuses on the B-Z-list bloggers, the online influencers who are often overlooked by most social media teams at digital agencies.

While I agree that the top-25-50 bloggers do deserve deep, long-term, and personal engagement, spending that sort of time, over time, on “everyone else” would take all the time in the universe. So, what my team and I developed is the equivalent of blogger-brand speed dating. According to Wikipedia:

“Speed dating is a formalized matchmaking process or dating system whose purpose is to encourage people to meet a large number of new people” . . . “Men and women are rotated to meet each other over a series of short “dates” usually lasting from 3 to 8 minutes depending on the organization running the event. At the end of each interval, the organizer rings a bell, clinks a glass, or blows a whistle to signal the participants to move on to the next date. At the end of the event participants submit to the organizers a list of who they would like to provide their contact information to. If there is a match, contact information is forwarded to both parties. Contact information cannot be traded during the initial meeting, in order to reduce pressure to accept or reject a suitor to his or her face.”

After collecting between 2,000-4,000 blogs that are topically-, geographically-, or demographically-appropriate, preparing a content-laden microsite and penning a very short-and-sweet email message pitch, then I send out those 2K-4K emails, each and every one a speed-date, and wait, real-time, at the Inbox.

Before long, hundreds of email replies stream in. Some aren’t interested, some are game, and others are curious but need more information. Like speed-dating, we’re not interested in the no’s but we’re interested in the yes’s.

Of course we’re courteous and we’re present and we’re always kind — “hugs not horns” I always remind my team — and we’re never anything but earnest and polite — “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” — but if they’re not interested, we don’t contact them again. And if they’re very unhappy, we’ll beg their pardon and put them into a Do Not Contact list; otherwise, everyone who replies is taken off the campaign list.

The secret sauce, however, is that this form of speed dating requires email — and email is unreliable. And people are suspicious and busy. And email sometimes doesn’t quite make its way to the Inbox.

So, a week after the initial email outreach, I send a reminder email, but only to those bloggers who didn’t reply at all. No reply results in a follow-up email.

And it works. Too many practitioners of blogger outreach, email marketing, email outreaches, or even triple-, double-, and single-opt-in mailing lists are just too shy, too feeble in their messaging, for fear that they’ll get hundreds or thousands drinks-in-the-face. Nope, not if you do it right.

If you do it right, you’ll get twice the response you did from your first email. So, for instance, let’s say we emailed 4,000 bloggers and a 1,000 bloggers responded. 250 would have responded to the first email outreach, 500 would have responded to the second outreach, and then 250 would have responded to the final outreach.

Yes, a week after we mail the first follow-up email, we send out a final follow-up and thank you, thanking the blogger (who has yet to email us or reply at all — pretty much radio-silent) for his or her time, for the inconvenience, and also to let the blogger know that he or she is welcome to take advantage of the opportunity when and if he or she gets around to reading and responding to the campaign pitch.

Our rule is to always be friendly, loving, generous, happy, kind, and even respectfully playful with each and every blogger, even the Grumpy Cats. Never rise to the bait, never fight fire with fire, never engage in snark/irony/sarcasm because the only person who is allowed to be anything but completely charming and gracious is the blogger.

Again, “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” — our corporate mantra.

And you know what? If we do everything right, we’ll generally earn a couple-hundred earned media mentions directly shared on the bloggers’ blogs, we’ll also earn secondary mentions through Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, digg, and even, if we’re lucky, reddit.

If you want to learn more, feel free to take a look at this blogger outreach deck I created for my friends at Sage over on Slideshare.

And here are some links to additional posts I have made about blogger outreach in the past:

Blogger outreach and engagement is much more than social media. It could be seen as content marketing, yes, but it could and should be a communications strategy toward discovering and prospecting new and future influencers.

If you can identify a passion player, someone who is already talking about you, your products and services, or products and services you, too, offer, and you can woo them into becoming citizen brand ambassadors, and if you are their “first kiss,” then you’ll be able to develop a very large pack of proponents and passion-players who will be loyal and will have safely imprinted on your attention, your acknowledgement, and your generosity. To be sure, it’s much easier to prospect for new fans when these fans haven’t been wooed by another than it is to woo them away from a secure brand-attachment.

And, to be honest, every single blogger anywhere close to the top-50 has already been spoken for in a big way; and, generally-speaking, their brand sugardaddies probably have deeper-pockets and are internationally more prestigious that you may well be — so it behooves you to play blogger moneyball: find a large number of very talented bloggers who can personally assist you in your branding goals and bottom-line rather than spending your time and money on a few outrageously-compensated stars, most of whom are too busy and too distracted by an embarrassment of riches to actually give you all the time, attention, and coverage that you, your brand, your products, and your services deserve.

And remember, if you do all of this right, it’ll all be an earned media campaign, meaning you won’t have to pay each and every one of these bloggers to post, to cover, to review, or to promote. That’s not to say this’ll all be free to you — all of this can be expensive, both in terms of client service agency hours as well as in terms of the give, the gift, you pitch the blogger with, be it informational, a product, or a service. And you need to make it good. Unless it’s an offer that can’t be refused — give ’til it hurts — and you just expect a blogger to blog about you “just because” then you’ll always be disappointed.

As you can tell from my mantra, the blogger is always right. I have had clients get all diva about drop shipping the number of review copies of products in the past, telling me that they’ll go bankrupt because they’d need to drop ship 200 books or 39 pairs of glasses, asking me to pick and choose which of the bloggers should receive the gift. It doesn’t work that way. The bloggers have all the leverage. If you don’t make good on your generous offer, each and every blogger has recourse — and we knew they did — and it’s their blog! And their tweets and Facebook posts and their Tumblr and Pinterest and reddit and everywhere else.

But that never happens. Give ’til it hurts, understanding that better I do my job and the better and more generous my pitch is, the more bloggers will want to engage, thereby resulting in possibly hundreds and hundreds of requests, based on an outreach of 4,000 blogs — it’s only math. I would hate to hit the jackpot on behalf of a client only to find out that I have “bankrupted” them with my success success (and the client is never bankrupt, the client is generally just cheap with a tendency to exaggerate, though this had only happened a couple times in the last 7 years).

So, long-tail blogger outreach is an amazing platform to both discover and engage with a multitude of natural allies and the people who are already talking about you, and giving them all the tools, the copy, the content, the gifts, and the impetus to share stuff about you, as earned media mentions, in very short-order, all over the Internet (an entire campaign only takes around six-weeks, total). It also allows you to harvest all of the bloggers game enough to mention you and your goodies into your inner-most, inner-most, your sanctum sanctorum, where you can personally grow your relationship with them now and groom them into the future — build up your own Guy Kawasaki, Om Malik, and Robert Scoble prospected and recruited and from the bush leagues or from “high school.”

I didn’t expect this post to be so long, but I guess I had a lot to share. Do you consider what I am doing with blogger outreach to be “social media?” What do you think about the discipline? The theory of “everyone”? The concept of flirting with bloggers en masse and engaging with them in a very quick “yes/no” speed-dating scenario? Do you think it is worthwhile to reach out to thousands of bloggers — all the way down to “nobody” — instead or in addition to the top blogger celebrities? Let me know what you think in the comments. I am very curious as to what you think and would love to tweak my methods, evolving it over time. Thanks in advance!

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Kiss your social media shame smack on its lips!

If you want to build your brand online circa 2013 from scratch, you need to kiss your own personal shame on the lips through the protective glass that is the line in the sand that you and your employer have decided are grounds for termination. What do I mean? “Goose, it’s time to buzz the tower.” And if you’re not willing to publically buzz the tower — to really set the windows rattling and maybe put some coffee down the captain’s shirtfront — you’ll never be able to differentiate yourself from all the other people who are hitting all the same points with the same tone.

You don’t have to be outrageous to kiss your shame on the lips — you can surely be the talk of the dinner party without showing up drunk and creating a scene — you just need to be a little more honest, a little more forthcoming, and a lot more human than you’ve probably been commanded by too many broadcast journalism classes, by too many media training courses, or simply by your very own concept of self, decorum, and shyness.

Think of all of the amusing — saucy even — stories you could tell at a dinner party, even if your mum, dad, Priest, Rabbi, boss, inlaws, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, and even kids were in attendance — if you had the courage!

The reason why you come off as so tone-deaf online might even be because you aren’t much of an exhibitionist at all! Maybe “I can’t say that” is more of an excuse you use so that you don’t have to become the center of attention in the fist place. Maybe you’re too shy for this? Maybe you’re not the sort of person who would even get up at a dinner party with all of your family and friends to even tell a story in such a public, out there, sort of way.

I mean, if I’m being honest, online people want to see you in your knickers humping a giant stuffed bear as much as you want to do it yourself. This has been proven again and again by the hundred of Harlem Shake videos published by just about every company — and not just the Playboy Mansion and a bunch of college kids.

Sadly, since there were so many Harlem Shake videos, only the really raunchy, sexy, bombastic videos ever made the light of day (very smart, you introverted social media manager — you were able to hide in plain sight!)

Nothing you will do in your blog posts will ever be as humpy or as nast or as raunchy as all the people in your office have already possibly been when they clicked upload and your Harlem Shake video went live and possibly went quasi-viral. Be honest, you’ve probably kissed shame on the lips at a few holiday parties in your time — don’t worry, what I am suggesting is really up to you.

If it helps you out at all, consider all of this to be part of your job; if it helps you out at all, workshop some of the scenarios you’re considering and pass them by the most creative people in your office. Explain to them what you’re up to and let them know that they shouldn’t be surprised when the walls shake, the coffee flies, and you break some sound on behalf of the company and brand.

First caveat, however: do not script it, do not read it, do not practice it, and do not make it perfect. People hate reluctant roleplay — it’s no fun if it’s forced!

Ask TMZ: there’s only one thing more shameful than a sex tape popping up: a sex tape that was produced for publicity reasons.

No, I am not suggesting a sex tape, but I am suggesting getting as close to your shame as possible, making it close enough to make you a little nervous — maybe a lot nervous. If you’re not challenging yourself as much as you do when you prepare and perform a public speech, I think you may well be calling it in.

Why in the world was I inspired to write such a post? Well, I reconnected with Jason Konopinski at SXSW and started to listen to his podcast, Riffing on Writing. His latest episode features Julien Smith and this blog post is going to be completely derivative.

This entire post was a riff on something Julien said — and something I think I need to remind myself of today: “people don’t get close enough to their line when they write.” While that may not be a direct quote, it’s what I heard and this is what I made of it:

You may well have a line when it comes to what you will and won’t say on social media, on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, et al — and that line might really and truly be right on the edge of propriety, too!

However, I bet you’ve never even remotely come close to your very own line — and that’s indeed safe but it doesn’t help when it comes to making a name for yourself or standing out from the crowd, especially — and this is another paraphrase from Riffing on Writing from Julien — since we’re currently living through the most competitive media age in history.

Strangely enough, I am now listening to The Engaging Brand podcast with Anna Farmery and her guests Stephen Voltz & Fritz Grobe — gurus in the art of creating viral videos — and they’re echoing what Julien and Jason talked about except in this case they’re talking about what makes a viral video hot: and it’s not narrative, it’s not story, it’s not inner-most-innermost, it’s more side show, dunk tank, shot in the groin!

OK, now that we know what the people want, they also echoed what I said earlier on, too, which is: you need to be honestly bombastic, you need to be earnest about that groin shot — you need to make sure that all the viewers of America’s Funniest Home Video don’t call bullshit on your doggie video unless there’s a very big wink and a large nod.

When it comes to embracing our own personal Idiocracy, we don’t want to feel like we’re being spoken down to, for goodness’ sake, we want to feel like we’re all on the same level — that we’re sharing a bit of a giggle, a bit of a blush, together. That, as we laugh and our shoulders relax and we let some of our daily stress disperse into the Interwebs, we also click Share To: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Reddit, Digg, Vine, StumbleUpon, Tumblr and everywhere else.

Final caveat: please go as far as your line in the sand — but no further. For most companies I have seen on YouTube doing the Harlem Shake, I don’t even know where that line is anymore. Even if your line is very out there, make sure you have your boss and legal define a line for you — and stick behind it; also, consider the family friendliness of your content, too. If Bob Saget wouldn’t show it on AFV then you might have gone too far.

You really don’t want to get flagged as family unfriendly. Think about your content as a submission to StumbleUpon, “Is this page safe for work? [Yes] [No, it contains nudity or adult content]” — try to avoid nudity or adult content. Remember, America was founded by prudes. Violence is OK, sexual content is not.

Good luck and I want you to know that no matter how bold you are, no matter how brave you fancy yourself after all of this, you’ll still get nowhere close to your real line — unless you’re a sociopath or Louis CK — so don’t be too concerned.

Some bad news: you’ll soon realize you’ll become way more popular online if you get and keep super close to your line of shame than you will ever get from being smart, being a good writer, or having actually original insight. I am sorry but it’s true. You’re already an amazing writer, right? Imaging the new heights you’ll reach if you come out from the shadows, come in from the cold, and allow your freak flag to fly!

Let me know how it goes.

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Treat social like the media empire it is

If you read your local newspaper or a typical magazine, you’ll realize that most journalism is specialized. You have your columns, reporting, reviews, editorials, letters to the editor, and ombudsman; however, most companies don’t have the volume, diversity, or constancy of news required to need such staffing.

That said, enough does go on each and every day in your office, amongst your staff, in your business, in your industry, with you and your very own personal brand that you need to cover the entire newsroom on your own, including the advertising and publicity (because like the news, everything comes down to driving revenue, and if you can’t prove that all the time, energy, and resources you’re spending online aren’t feeding sales, your one-man-social-media-band is not long for this world.)

Let me break it down.

I would start by saying tone down the shameless self-promotion that you’re incessantly dropping into your streams and onto your walls, but I have a feeling you’re not being aggressive enough. Why? Because I don’t think that most social media experts, consultants, and gurus recommend being aggressive enough.

At the end of the day, you need to become a reporter of your own facts. You need to lead your followers deep into who you are, what you do, what products and services you can, have, and do offer. You need to make sure you use your platform — your own personal newsroom, your own personal media empire.

It’s OK because that’s part of what makes you interesting: what you do, what you can do, and who you are.

The content on your web site — about us, who we are, what we do, products, services, case studies, client lists — can be woven into what you discuss on a daily basis, interspersed with other news and content that come from other departments of your newsroom.

How would I write that stuff up so I don’t sound like a self-promotional, self-loving douchebag? Be objective. What I would say is that you should report the facts, ma’am, only the facts, even of the facts reflect the work, experience, products, services, staff, and culture of you and your company.

It’s amazing how much time and energy is spent developing witty commentary and narrative outside of what you, your brand, and your company actually do, spending much too much time being cute, coy, playful, and timely — riding the meme-wave, if you will (actually, in many ways, dancing around the subject of what people come to your branded properties for anyway) — instead of getting down to business and giving the people what they want.

People are tired of just playing peekaboo; people are a lot more earnest and hungry for real news, worthwhile content, and a spirited conversation that just razzle dazzle or the dance of the seven veils that you may think. Bombast and titilation have their place, but people grow tired of the same old tricks and eventually want something more, especially if you’re not actually TMZ or Rush.

In addition to wanting to know more about what you do, who you are, what you know, and how you can help, people following you on social media in order to engage with you. They have questions, queries, concerns, issues, and problems. People also come to you to find out what you think. They come by to see if you have an opinion or analysis of what’s going on in your space.

And it is your opportunity, every day, to offer your unique insight into what’s going on in the news. Sadly, most people spend more time sharing other peoples’ news, analysis, critiques, and insights hoping that the quality of news that they curate from others into their own social media stream says a lot about them. Sometimes that’s indeed true; however, the real value-add in this scenario is when the reshare, reblog, and retweet isn’t just a carbon copy but offers additional commentary, analysis, or personal color-commentary.

People come to you not for your curation and aggregation skills but for your take on things. Many people criticize newspapers circa 2013 because they’ve become news aggregators for nationally-syndicated content, AP wire news, and barely-doctored press releases. Spending a little time taking the news that’s coming across your news desk and putting your own personal spin on it is essential to your success and the value of your voice in a very noisy social mediasphere.

This is indeed less possible on Twitter where we’re only offered a paltry 140 characters but blogs, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, and even Pinterest allow hundreds of characters, plenty of room to go into quite a sophisticated analysis.

And finally, there’s the role of editor, teacher and ombudsman. After you’ve spent some serious time out there producing opinionated, brave, smart, and insightful content, you’re likely to get questions, queries, concerns, misunderstandings, and request for more, specific, content.

It’s time to listen, now — and listen carefully. Your followers will not only tell you what they need, want, and dislike, but they’ll also give you many opportunities to expand upon your ideas, to refine your thoughts and insights, and to learn more about your current clients and brand fans but you’ll have an opportunity to listen to what your natural business prospects are interested in and be able to sell towards that.

No matter how much social media experts and gurus talk about the traditional media as being broadcast-only, newsrooms have always depended upon their community to provide them news, traffic reports, leads, human interest stories, letters to the editors, and local community news.

In many case, at a macro scale, you’re now a publisher. You are your own personal newsroom and while you might want to keep the reins in and keep your own media empire relatively modest for now, you still need to think more in terms of engaging with your community in a real way instead if just entertaining and amusing them.

And that’s the way it is.

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In praise of social media mediocrity

My advice for blogging and social media marketing alike is as follows: 20-minutes-a-day with an hour once-a-week. If you spend any less time than that, you’re really not a content marketer; however, spending this amount of time on social media brand promotion and protection is really just barely enough time to keep things moving forward. Continue reading →

Google+ for Brands Best in Show Webinar

Today I did a webinar for Bulldog Reporter PR University titled “Google+ for PR: Mastering Google+ Pages and Hangouts—Best Bets for Brands in 2013” and while I was indeed sharing the stage with the amazing Stephanie Scott, Katie Morse, Danielle Brigida, and Brian Pittman, this is just my part of the presentation without any edits or changes or cuts — so you’re welcome to enjoy just my part of it, wherein I talk about the three types of Google+ for Brands adopters: Hot & Heavies, Afterthoughts, and Zombie Ghost Towns. I hope you enjoy this, learn loads, and ask me tons of questions. Via Google+ for Brands Best in Show Webinar from Chris Abraham.

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Happy 7th anniversary Twitter!

Channel your exceptional SXSW social mojo all year long

Most agencies identify with the saying, “the cobbler’s children always go barefoot” — except during SXSW when even the most frugal practitioner doffs their sack cloth and dons their dancing shoes and party hats — and I love it! During the second week of March, agencies go hog-wild: exuberant live-tweeting; passionate Facebooking; a river of well-posed Instagrams of people, places, and parties; a Photostream of digitari; a Channel’s worth of spicy video; and a blogful of insights, learnings, and experiences. It’s generally a thing of ephemeral beauty — every single agency doing in one week the best creative and inspired work of their entire life, for anyone! And then it’s over — until next year! Continue reading →

Social media maven Shashi Bellamkonda moves on

Good luck to Shashi Bellamkonda in his new role over at Bozzuto Group, via the WaPo yesterday:

Uber-social media networker Shashi Bellamkonda is leaving his longtime post at Herndon’s Network Solutions and joining Greenbelt-based Bozzuto Group as vice president of digital marketing.
“I was writing a blog post on CEO blogs to follow in the D.C. region and Tom Bozzuto’s blog came up in the search, and while checking out the Bozzuto Group Web site, I saw that they had a position in digital media open,” Bellamkonda said. “I connected with the recruiter on Linkedin. I had met Jamie Gorski [who is the senior vice president for marketing] at a social media conference where she attended my talk, and so I reconnected with her and that led to getting this job. It’s a social media connection success story.”

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