Category Archives: digital media

July 31, 2013 · 8:34 am

Why You Suck At Social

I’m feeling a little snarky this morning so I’ll apologize in advance if this comes across as yet another bitter old guy (all you kids get off the lawn!).

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

I ran into yet another so-called “social media guru” the other day.  OK, I ran into the chaos they left but felt as if I’d been smacked across the face by their incompetence in person.   Oh, they market themselves far better than I do – that’s how someone of their abilities manages to get nice gigs with otherwise smart clients – brilliant marketing.  They excel at leveraging themselves online.  Bringing those tactics to bear for clients in a manner that grows the client’s business?  Not so much.  Let me explain.

Even as we’re five years into the age of social media marketing (I hate that term), many clients aren’t told the truth about it by those of us they employ to bring them up to speed.  Some of my so “peers” don’t explain that social is hard work and it’s not a place to stash the interns (since they’ll be on Facebook and Twitter all day anyway).  Make a page and magic will happen!

That’s an apt analogy except very few of us point out that when “magic” happens as we watch a performer do a trick, hundreds or thousands of hours of prep and practice have gone into making it seem seamless.  There are often specialized boxes or mirrors involved and one false move brings disaster.  Of course, “smoke and mirrors” is not exactly the type of reputation I think we’d want for our brands but I could be wrong.  Magicians put in the work and have the right tools.

So let’s try this one more time.  To do social well, companies have to blow up a very fundamental part of their thinking.  While most marketing is all about the product or brand, social is not.  It’s about your audience, and you need to focus squarely on them with the odd brand message here or there.  What’s helpful to them?  If you’re not willing to make that investment as well, maybe think about print or TV or some other medium where you can just barf out messages about how great you are.  You need to have a plan and tools and people with enough business acumen to assure all the stakeholder interests are aligned, including those of your customers.

And you “gurus?”  Get off my lawn…

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July 24, 2013 · 8:45 am

Clients And Clarity

A couple of conversations over the last few days provided today’s inspiration.  The chats were with two folks who are smart, good at what they do, and completely lost when it comes to technology.  That’s really not a big deal for either them given that they’re not tech professionals.

Chat bubbles

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They do know as much as the typical “civilian” and they spend time on the web and using digital tech in their non-work lives.  In fact, they know quite a bit more than the average person since both have web sites for their respective businesses and were involved in those sites’ creation.  Each is also working on making improvements – new designs, better SEO, a smoother social integration.  That’s where things have gone awry and what provides a good business thought today.

The design and coding firms with which they’re working are typical of a number of folks working in the field.  Their work is fine but their interaction with their clients sucks.  They build up barriers of bullcrap instead of providing clear explanations of not just what they’re doing but why they’re doing it.  They are incapable of translating what can be baffling vernacular into terms that their clients can grasp. This frustrates (and I expect frightens) their clients, who are smart business people used to making informed decisions.

Keeping them in the dark by speaking to them in a language they don’t speak is harmful to everyone involved.  The client can’t be sure they’re making the right choices and, frankly, neither can you since you haven’t provided clarity.  If it’s NOT the right decision, would your expectation be that the client will immediately re-engage you to fix it?  Maybe so, but it won’t be at additional cost to them.  All it does it eat into your margins by your having to perform more work for no more money.

My rule of thumb is this:  I channel my mom.  My mom is TOTALLY technically illiterate (she’d be the first to tell you that) but smart about a lot of other stuff. If I feel as if the explanation I’m giving a client  would be good enough for my mom to explain it back to me after I say it, I’m probably on solid ground.

Like any business, the business I’m in – tech and consulting –  has a lot of moving pieces and tons of jargon, but the concepts aren’t dissimilar to other things.  As professionals, part of  our job to be translators for those folks who touch our business even if they don’t speak its language.  What do you think?

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July 18, 2013 · 8:15 am

Meet HAL, Our CMO

Anyone remember HAL? Or more specifically, the HAL 9000, one of the great screen villains of all time? Sure you do – it’s the computer in 2001. Throughout the course of the film the computer runs almost everything, including the humans. When the humans rebel, it murders them (trust me, that’s not a spoiler and you MUST see the film if you haven’t).

Hal 9000 D - Chrome

(Photo credit: K!T)

HAL is on my mind this morning because of something I read in Media Post:

Adobe Systems released an updated version of its social media platform Thursday allowing marketers to predict the effectiveness of posts before they are published.  Using predictive analytics, the feature in Adobe Social learns as it goes, refining recommendations and increasing intelligence with each action. The platform pulls in historic data from similar posts and integrates it with image data on Flickr, check-ins on Foursquare and videos from Instagram, to determine the outcome for sharing, comments, and likes.

I’m well aware that many companies use testing to plan advertising.  Focus groups are a tried and true method and I’ve used them myself.  Copy testing is part of that.  What I find creepy, however, is when this moves over to social media and it points out a flaw in many companies’ thinking.  Part of using social is being real.  It’s why I have an issue with any sort of programmatic content in general.  There needs to be a human on the other end, and not just a human running an algorithm.

Another problem is in the last sentence, above.  Programming to generate likes and sharing is specious reasoning.  That’s the sort of goal that someone looking to impress a boss who has no understanding of social media would have.  After all – things can go “viral” and generate a ton of comments when they’re used as the butt of a joke or as something negative.  Nice metrics, horrible outcome.

I don’t know about you but I can feel when it’s a computer on the other end.  It’s the digital equivalent of those nested phone menus where you type or say a response to a series of questions.  Those infuriate me .  Maybe they do you as well.  As marketers we need to have the courage to be human in social media.  Auto responders aren’t as good as human responders (properly trained, of course).  Letting a computer dictate what does or doesn’t get posted over the nuanced judgement of humans is not going to be as effective in the long run.

What do you think?

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