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Merovingian Knot (video)

Notes from the Field: Made Up Words; Digital Jargonisms

making claims and alienating people

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What is the ROI (define) for social media? It’s zero. That’s because there’s no such thing as “social media.”

People’s conversations are not media; they can’t be purchased as such by advertisers. In other words, people don’t talk whenever advertisers want them to and they won’t say whatever advertisers tell them to — so it isn’t “media” like TV, print, and radio.

If you treat people’s conversations as media, you’d be doing it wrong. Social marketing done right means asking for and respecting people’s conversations and giving them a public place to talk so others can hear. If the advertiser’s product is already great, much of the conversation will be positive. But even if it isn’t the advertiser will have the benefit of free “product research” because people will give them ideas for improvement. 

Untargetables are hard to reach. Unreachables are not reachable by traditional advertising media or channels. 

read more about the ROI of social media on ClickZ … http://www.clickz.com/3633341

if you had a dollar to spend today, where would you spend it? on paid advertising or on social marketing? why?

Paid advertising – it’s over once it’s aired

Social Marketing
1. peers telling peers – a lot more effective and trusted by modern consumers than a paid ad
2. archived conversations – when people take social actions like rate, review, comment, recommend, and share, these actions are archived for everyone to see online (valuable to future users doing research)
3. it yields a continuously increasing stream of free traffic (enhances SEO efforts)

So whatcha gonna do?

2009 is the year of the “open agency model.” Many of the largest brands have declared that they are going “open agency mode” in search of lower cost, greater efficiency, and possibly better work. But while this idea may be good in theory, it is very difficult in practice. Having run a “virtual company” since 1996, I know of the challenges, as well as the upside. And the conventional wisdom of “you get what you pay for” holds very true here. I’ve outsourced to China and India to varying degrees of success and usually it took more time to communicate and re-communicate, do and re-do to get things right. And it ended up costing more overall, despite lower unit costs. Furthermore, most clients are brand experts of their own brand, but may not have the depth of experience in managing complex, global deployments … or perhaps even experience in managing photo shoots. Although it may be fun to go on photo shoots, but that doesn’t mean clients can manage that themselves. And having an inexperienced, small agency do it may not be that much more efficient either.

Anheuser-Busch Whacks Retainers for Its Agencies

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=134630

2009 has also been declared the year of search and social marketing. Many of the biggest brands now realize they must do something in search in order to be found when users are out looking for something. Knowing that 80% of online journeys begin with search (Forrester April 2008), it is more important than ever to be “findable” — after all, if they can’t find you, you don’t exist. Companies are also looking for efficiencies in social marketing — literally having people carry forth their message or amplify it for free. This is a good move because most modern users trust their peers far more than they trust an advertiser’s ad message anyway, according to countless studies.

many clients ask what is the value of a Facebook fanpage. The answer can go one of 2 ways — 1) a lot, or 2) absolutely nothing.

It’s all in the execution. Most brands have a Facebook fan page which they put up with just a logo slapped on the page. Others, like Netflix, use it as a vibrant community of users and enthusiasts, who ask questions, make complaints, provide suggestions and new ideas, etc. Netflix has employees dedicated to listening and interacting with their fans. They even thank fans for their new ideas! imagine that!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Netflix/6275848869?ref=ts

Beyond the good Netflix example, when people become fans on the fan page, they also give permission to the owner of the page to send them updates. More brands should take this “permission given” to continue to earn loyalty and advocacy through well-thought-out CRM program — Facebook CRM. It’s like email marketing, except it’s free!

in a budget-constrained environment, the best thing an advertiser can do is shift more attention (notice, I didn’t say money) to social marketing and stimulate social actions among target users and customers. While paid media used to just get people to some place (like a website), social marketing is about stimulating social actions — so the people actually do something — share, rate, comment, recommend, etc. These actions lead to an accumulation of value over time such that future visitors will get the benefit of all of the actions that went before (e.g. I only watch the highest rated or most viewed videos on YouTube; I don’t have to wade through and find the good stuff myself). Furthermore, social actions are free to the advertiser — think “advocacy.” When real people carry the message forward to their friends, it is free amplification for the advertiser — social amplification.