Connection Can't Be Detached

We are all faced with clients that want to know ROI, that don't "get it" and I know that when I'm looking to educate these types of clients, every piece of data and every quote that supports my point of view comes in handy. So, here are the pieces I think will help me, and hopefully you in future decks and meetings:

• Simply put, digital brand experiences create customers.
• Our findings lead us to believe that marketers need to be dramatic...and not simply settle for awareness or impressions: engagement = affinity

(from she dorks out). Off the cuff, by the way, and without fully thinking it through I'll say this: "engagement" is often another word for connecting with an audience, and "affinity" is a way to keep at arms length the idea of people liking you (or your brand). In both cases they seem to be accepted ways to gloss the audience's desire for human connection, and intimacy. While I understand the corporate reluctance to embrace things like intimacy, moving people emotionally can't really be done from a distance. Someone must take that risk, and if companies aren't willing to, perhaps they just choose to hire someone who will and hope it will still work.

19% of US Internet Users Tweet

Twitter and Facebook have been to big too ignore for sometime now. While estimating pageviews of sites is inexact, some numbers help reveal just how big these 2 sites have become.

The army of Twitterers is growing quickly, per the Pew Internet Project report released today. The report found that 19 percent of all U.S. Internet users now use either Twitter or smaller services, such as Yammer, to share social updates. This was up 8 percent from the 11 percent who used such services in April 2009

(from Adweek). Things change quickly, and twitter is a big part of the audience, as is Facebook:

In the US Facebook accounts for, now get this, 1 in every 4 or 25% of our total pageviews

(from Drake Direct). Drake bases his numbers on compete.com data, which can be imperfect. Alexa estimates Facebook got about 4.5% of global pageviews in the last month. Suffice to say, big enough to be important to anyone doing anything online.

Hollywood's Present is Online

Many talk of online video as a wave of the future; they are flat wrong. It is now, right now. I know a government employee that 4 months ago discarded their TV and now watches only online. I know a lawyer that uses Tivo as an on-demand that in combination with online TV and DVDs doesn't watch broadcast, cable or satelite live, ever. I have never owned a television, yet I watched three shows tonight and also appear on TV from time to time. Anyone who thinks online entertainment is a future, and denies it is a growing present tense event, is either not paying attention, about to lose their job or both. All things are more online and mobile than ever before and they are right now (I write this post on my phone; please forgive any spelling mistakes ;-).

"Hollywood's future is in Bannen's hands" by Lisa Marks may be over selling a single show as some sort of vangard. I love that this show is being made and am excited to see it, but Sony is not first with web content that costs more than $1 million (Seth MacFarlane, Burger King and YouTube did that over a year ago) and the CEO of Sony Pictures (parent of Crackle) said he "...doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet... Period." This show may be Sony's late, half-supported-by-the-studio attempt to be in the now.

A month online is equal to a year offline, and to not learn from history a from a year ago (like 12 years online) is to retrace steps taken by many before, and risk being obselete before you've begun. In 3 months, the generation referred to as digital natives will be the largest and most important demographic for entertainment. This demographic is already watching, listening and experiencing their entertainment where and when they want to and media companies are only just now pretending this will happen? That is like acting as if the wheel or fire might catch on when it's already the year 1500. People's careers and livelyhoods as employees and stockholders are suffering because of antiquated thinking (yes, 3 month old is antiquated). Get present or be irrelevant; there is no half way.

Signal to Noise Ratio for Social Networks and Social Media

The more the recipient wants the message you are sending, the better. As with all online communications, it is more important to send what they want to read/view/hear than to send what you want them to read/view/hear. This is by and large what being a good producer is in the offline world as well.

Typically a email list with a growing subscriber base only sends messages that make people want to subscribe and/or stay subscribers. It is the same with social network profiles. A social networking profile only communicates with its friends/connections/people-who-opted-in-and-gave-you-permission-to-communicate-with-them when the communication will make them want to remain your friend/connection or become your friend/connection.

I've heard people refer to doing an "email blast" to get the word out about something, or to try to connect with key bloggers or online influencers.

As Seth Godin said:

Don't bother engaging with customers unless you are prepared to invest enough to exceed expectations and delight them. It's better to do nothing at all.

In social networking, your friends/connections/anyone you communicate with are your customers.

Numbers and the Net

But the great thing about the internet is that it allows every minor interest, every academic specialism, every rare and refined hobby a place, so the numbers really don't matter in the same way as the old media

(Emphasis added, from Codecs and Capability).

Never 'Sorry for the Mass Email...'

If you begin with "I'm sorry for the mass email, but..." you clearly aren't and everything said after should not be trusted. Don't say that.

Once It's Live, Leave It Live

About a year ago a highly rated TV show built a fictional company's web site to tie in to real life events at Comic-Con, the convention in San Diego. The finale of the newest season was this week. Just a few minutes ago a friend on Twitter and Facebook changed their status to say he wanted to work for that fictional company, and I wanted to comment/reply to my friend's status with the link to the fictional site. The site is down, offline, 404.

I wanted to share a part of the show with a friend, and they won't let me. I wanted to promote their product for free, and they stopped me. Instead of allowing all the money spent on the site and its very good videos and promotions pay off forever, they took it down. Estimated annual savings in taking down the site: $2000 (which ought to be lower, but for various reasons in this case is not lower). Estimated loss of audience engagement, good-will and ability for the franchise's value to increase over many decades: infinite.

The stock of the parent company that owns the network that carries the show has lost about $20,300,000,000 of market value since mid September (admittedly this may not only result from company wide failure to understand or capitalize on the internet).

Don't Say 'Feel Free' If You Mean 'Please Do'

Many people have begun to use phrases like:

• "feel free to tell your friends/retweet/share this video/post/site"
• "feel free to comment/rate/favorite this video"
• "feel free to ask a question"

Online and in emails when they really mean:

• "Please tell your friends about this video/post/site"
• "Please comment/rate/favorite this video (because I really want it to be on the most discussed/highest highest rated/most favorite lists so that more people will see it)"
• "Please ask a question (because this podcast/channel/site only has content if the audience participates)"

Are people allergic to "please"? No. But many seem to have forgotten the simple, honest power of saying please and asking for what they want.

People seem to think concealing what they want is better than coming out and saying it. They are wrong. Of course people will feel free to do all of the things mentioned; the internet is one of the most sophisticated and far reaching communication and distribution systems ever and everyone using it will share and access information as they see fit. To tell your audience they can "feel free to" do what they are already doing is to be redundant at least, and often conveys a simultaneous air of superiority and lack of understanding of the medium; it suggests you are giving permission to people already empowered. Coating a request in a foolish condescension helps no one.

While being as specific/pedantic as the parenthetical phrases in the examples above isn't necessary, be honest and say what you mean. Many already do this with the simple convention of "please retweet" on twitter. Using "feel free to" as wrapping makes the call-to-action marketers love so much a dishonest attempt to be polite; it actually erodes trust, candor and transparency. It's like our mothers told us: don't lie.

"Be sure to check back..." is the illegitimate cousin of "feel free to..." online. There are many ways to let visitors opt-in to more communication from you: email lists, feeds, follows, friending, etc. If you are mentioning something that does not exist yet, but will in the future, help your audience chose to opt-in to be informed when this event-in-the-future happens. If you can't be bothered to use such common methods for communicating with your potential future audience, do not expect your audience to be bother to care about your future creations.

We all make mistakes (myself included) but being as clear and honest as possible makes the many messages we all encounter everyday more useful. And now, just for fun, I ask you to please share this post with everyone who asks you to "feel free" to use the internet ;-).

Viral Video Best Practices

Viral-ness cannot be bought into or out of any more than gravity can. Like gravity, viral-ness is not strictly in your control. Unlike gravity, viral-ness is not a law of nature, but more a tendency.

You can't pay a fee and know your video will draw millions of viewers in the way you can buy a plane ticket and fly. You can buy your way to tipping the odds in your favor, to weighting the dice, if you will, encouraging it to catch on and lead people to spread your content.

Content is viral if upon viewing it, the viewer encourages other people to view it (to become viewers), who then encourage others to view it and so on. What happens when the user presses play is still the most important part the viral equation, but best practices can help get users to press play and then tell others about it after they've watched.

Social Media is Not Broadcast

Many companies want to use social media as a channel to push marketing messages at customers, while those customers are using social media as tools to connect with and communicate with others. They have almost zero interest in receiving marketing messages via social media, so predictably, companies that try to do just that, see their efforts falter.

If you want to use social media, consider why and how your customers use social media, and align your goals for your efforts accordingly.

Remember that at the end of the day, you are wanting to reach people. Respect them and their time, and you'll be rewarded for your efforts

(emphasis added, from Why Your Community-Building and Social Media Efforts Aren't Working).

Every Audience Member/Visitor/Customer Counts

Let's suppose you own an online advertising platform and someone is running ads with a daily budget of $2.00. A week ago your systems showed this advertiser's ad to one of the advertiser's friends, even though that friend is not in the targeted group that is supposed to be shown the ad. Today your systems showed the ad to the advertiser themselves, despite both not being in the targeted group and being the person running the ad (which your systems are intimately aware of as they choose what ads to show).

Since your 'fictional' ad platform allows an advertiser to target only specific groups of people, showing the ad to people outside of the targeted group is a failure; you didn't do what you told your customer you would do, and you are charging them anyway.

What will you do to make things right with this $2-a-day customer? How quickly will you address their concerns? What's the return on investment in a quick and complete response to this customer?

You might think with the $2-a-day budget the advertiser doesn't matter to your bottom line. You would be wrong. The company the advertiser works for spends millions on online ads. Millions. Fail them, lose millions. Please them, and your return on investment is millions.

In fact the relatively small unit the advertiser works for alone spends around 3.6 million dollars a year on online ads, or about $10,000-a-day. The advertiser is evaluating your ad platform for possible future advertising for their business unit (that $3.6 million a year).

The $2-a-day spend is a test, a test you are failing since your systems aren't following the targeting rules the advertiser set up. If you don't explain yourself, and quickly, you lose not only the $2-a-day, but you'll likely see no part of the $3.6 million a year. Plus the advertiser will advise other business units in the company of your failure as well.

If you let your product look unreliable, or uncontrollable, an entire fortune 500's online ad spend is at risk. There are literally millions at risk if you fail to address why you showed ads to people this $2-a-day advertiser didn't target. Many think making your customer service effective even for the customers spending very little money with you isn't worth the money.

Turns out you can't afford not to delight every customer. Disappoint the customer who spends little with you, and best case they tell a friend, perhaps online on a blog or in a twitter for all to see when searching for you online. Worst case you lose millions.

As you may have guessed, this 'fictitious' ad platform example is not fictitious at all, it is very real and happening as I type this. Time will tell how it turns out for them.

When the Pope Twitters

The internet changes quickly. Last week I had in a conversation that created the title of this post as a possible title for a post discussing the future when the web becomes a reality for people not traditionally engaged online; they'll embrace the ubiquity of the internet as a communications tool (not merely information storage and retrieval). Today the Pope launched his own YouTube channel, and again we find that future = now.

Future = Now

I'm tweeting this from a MacBook Pro running Windows 7, talking to Gavin who's 30K in the air & downloading awesome web show. Future =now.

(from George Ruiz's Tweet).

Epic Fail: Lisa Caputo and Citibank Marketing Emails

Citibank sends many non-essential emails to their customers, and today sent this:

At Citibank, we make your e-mail security a top priority. We understand that your e-mail provider undoubtedly features a blocking or filtering system to help you cope with the problem of unwanted solicitations.

As a result, we are concerned that you may be missing your Citibank e-mails without even knowing it. If you think that might be the case, we urge you to 'whitelist' Citibank e-mails by adding us to your address book of trusted senders before delivery is interrupted

So I decided to reply, with this (please forgive my seething not-really-concealed anger):

When you send me far too many non-essential marketing messages, why would I add you to my address book? Spamy tactics on your part equal no-you-don't-get-on-my-white-list decisions on mine. If you'd like assistance with your email tactics, please let me know.

Best of luck, and thank you in advance for not "marketing" (read: email blasting like I'm a target in a war) to me just because loop-holes in the can-spam act seem to suggest you can with out prison or fines. If this email returns undeliverable, I'll blog about it.... and you. How many ads will you have to buy to undo the damage to your brand? Does Lisa Caputo, I believe the Chief Marketing Officer of Citigroup, want her name associated with such fail? Does she want it Googled, for the rest of her career? Do you? Bailouts aren't needed when companies treat customers as people. Please help me blog about your wins by giving me more.

I clearly like you, I chose to do business with you. Thank you,

David

And their systems sent this back:

You have responded to an email box that cannot accept replies.

If you require assistance, please contact us at www.citibank.com.

Citibank received $300,000,000,000 in bailout money from the US government (tax payers) 6 weeks ago. Citibank and Citigroup's failures are various and big. Treating customers better could help make bailout unnecessary in the future. Spending some of the money on retraining their marketing department could also be a wise choice.

Social Media Must Be Done by You

Having an actual personal connection with your audience means you have to be the one that responds to comments, emails, tweets, phone calls

(from tubefilter.tv).

Brands Engaging Directly with Consumers Win

A new online Word of Mouth Marketing research study conducted by OTX, a global consumer research and consulting firm, confirms the value of brands engaging directly with consumers online. The initial findings of the new study, "The Impact of Social Media on Purchase Behavior," revealed that 54% of consumers agree that information from a brand representative would be more valuable than what is typically found on a company website

(from Yahoo! Finance).

Epic Win: TSA blog

The Transportation Security Administration has a blog and a team behind it tasked with maintaining it. This is extraordinary: a government agency connecting with the public it serves in a direct way without the buffer of traditional media.

Yes, the TSA is being taken to task for various issues by various comments pointing out various issues, but the fact the communication channel has been opened is extraordinary in government in general, and even more so in the national security area.

It would be nice if the blog team responded to a few more comments directly, but the reality is that the complex world of a large organization, the law, politics, Congress and public opinion may mean that the blog team can not always post or reply candidly or quickly. There is still progress to be made.

This is a win because the TSA is doing something very American which few security forces of any nation in history have ever allowed: they are letting the public openly critique and complain on a forum they created and control.

These early efforts at transparency and public engagement can lead them to vast improvements, and I hope they continue in this direction. The efforts of the men and women of the TSA, a new agency, have been effectively guarding air traffic on both routine flights and special occasions (e.g., Katrina evacuation) for about seven years. With this social media dialog and other communication, perhaps the gulf between those securing the skies and the passengers flying them can be bridged leading to efficient, safe and convenient air travel.

Connecting to Friends is the Key of Web 2.0

Web2.0 reshaped the face of the Internet. The vast majority of people out there are driven by doing things with people that they know. They were using IM and email to talk to these people online, but they weren't participating in the public parts of the web which was primarily interest or information-driven. Web2.0 introduced a series of technologies that enabled friendship-driven public spaces

(from Understanding Socio-Technical Phenomena in a Web2.0 Era).

7 Books Secretly About People and Communication

Their insights echo in my mind, they have good perspectives, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on them (I haven't written any of these).

Virus of the Mind

An Appealing introduction to memetics, how ideas move through and between people. I once made a crib sheet synthesizing its ideas, which appears in my mind's eye when considering how to connect people and ideas.

Positioning

Naming matters. A rose by any other name wouldn't sell as much. Nor would it inspire as many emotions and cultural artifacts and antecedents. The ideas in this book may not be new, but they are surprisingly widely ignored.

Bang!

Part anecdotal "case studies" and part impressive recounting of the authors' accomplishments, this book illustrates what makes some ideas business as usual, and others transcendent this-idea-is-now-a-cultural-force-to-which-all-others-seem-to-react ideas.

The Experience Economy

You are what you're paid for is part of the thesis, and the idea that if you can charge admission at your "door" (physical door or otherwise) is a compelling one: American consumers now spend more money on entertainment than food.

The Attention Economy

Selling your time for money is very 20th Century (or perhaps industrial revolution). Attention, not time, is the scarcest and most precious commodity.

It's Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be

Predating the "The Secret" phenomena, it's partly about goals and communicating with yourself, and partly a guide to the advertising world written by an expert. It's helped me see the unseen.

The Change Monster

Bad change management ruins plans and misses opportunities and good change remakes the world and gives people purpose. A change consultant (I think that's what the author does) tells what makes change at work work. How organizations change, and don't, is about people.

Don't Ask 'How Does This Help Us?'

Many are looking for how social media, social networks and things like viral videos can help them and their business. Seth Godin points out that the internet doesn't rely on marketers, and doesn't need to help you, or bow to your business needs, like more traditional ad supported media does. Since things like radio, tv and newpapers are supported by advertisers they must serve advertisers and marketers, but:

...the Net is different.

It wasn't invented by business people, and it doesn't exist to help your company make money.

The question to ask is, "how are people (the people I need to reach, interact with and tell stories to) going to use this new power and how can I help them achieve their goals?"