• Client: We want to do social media.  Let’s put a banner on Facebook.
• Me: That’s not really social media marketing.  Social media is participatory, you can’t take old advertising models and try to apply them to social media.  It won’t work.
• Client: Ok, then.  Let’s make a viral Facebook application.

Whereas before, the client was tried to transpose traditional advertising to the social media realm, now they are trying to do so with non-traditional, guerilla methods.  I’m not sure I would call that much of an improvement.

Social media marketing is much more than marketing on a social venue.  Even if a viral campaign on a social venue were to be successful, that would only serve one possible purpose of a social media campaign, building awareness.

An all-encompassing social media campaign should also involve branding, brand monitoring, connecting and engaging with customers, providing support, etc.

Let’s not confuse viral with social media marketing.  Likewise, let’s not confuse tactics with strategy.

By trade, I specialize in search engine marketing.  About four years ago, when I entered the field, search engine optimization was the marketing buzzphrase.  If you were good enough at it, you could get paid thousands of dollars for very little work.  I know because I did.

Below are the searches for “search engine optimization” (red line) from 2004-2008.  As you can see, interest in the subject has fallen year over year.

But for every marketing buzzword that dies a slow death, there are a dozen more ready to take its place.  At the moment, that seems to be “social media marketing” (blue line).

As someone recently told me, internet years are like dog years.  Online display advertising is on its last legs, search engine optimization, in demand only four years ago, is now a commodity, and not far behind it’s display cousin.

It took roughly two decades for the internet to kill newspapers.  How long before new delivery mechanisms kill old models and leave all of those unwilling to adapt out in the rain?

Photo credit: renatotarga

There is no wrong way to use Twitter.

For that matter, there is no wrong way to use a telephone.  You could make long calls, short calls, make a crank call, call to tell someone you love them, call and only talk about yourself.  Whatever.

So when I hear that people don’t “get” Twitter, I’m tempted to ask them if they “get” a telephone.

For me, Twitter is a professional tool.  I am not on Twitter to keep my friends updated on what I am up to Facebook-status style.  I am attempting to build professional connections with people that can help me and whom, in turn, I will help.

In short, what Twitter is to me can best be described by Zig Ziglar:

“You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.”**

Twitter enables a barter economy like no other online tool.  My trade is marketing.  But I am not on Twitter to sell my marketing services, I already get paid for doing that.

I am on Twitter for two reasons:

1. I’m pretty good at what I do.  I am using Twitter because I want you to know that so you’ll reach out to me when you need marketing help.  What do I hope to receive in return?  Maybe you’re good at something I’m not.  Maybe you can design a better logo.   Note that I’m not expecting the favor to be returned.
2. nikkoSHOPS.com is a furniture retailer.  Everyone needs furniture.  My hope is that if you know me from Twitter, you know more or less what type of person I am and that I am part of a trustworthy business.  So when you need a couch, let me know.  I may not have what you want but I may know who will.  (Why would I tell you to go shop somewhere else?  See bullet #1.)

How are you using Twitter?  What do you hope to gain?

**Thanks to Darren Rowse over at Problogger for reminding me of the quote.

Photo credit: lepiaf.geo

Let me start off by saying that I am not one of those people who gets a cheap thrill by writing about the next Google-killer, or iPhone-killer, or Twitter-killer, for that matter.  Google is not going  anywhere anytime soon.  Yahoo and MSN have a very long way to go before they’ll catch up.

But those services aren’t Google’s greatest competition.  I reserve that title for services like Delicious, Yahoo’s social bookmarking service.

Years ago, when I began researching search engine optimization, I went to Google and did a couple of searches.  The results were mainly SEO companies who did a good job using the tactics they were selling.  But I didn’t find a lot in terms of information about how to “do” SEO.  (For those unfamiliar with SEO, it used to be a lot more of a black (box) art than it is today.)

The few sites I did manage to find of real value were the likes of SEOBook and SEOMoz.  From there, I visited every single resource that Aaron Wall and Rand Fishkin proposed.

So, even then, I depended more on trusted referrals than on search engine results.

That is exactly the role that Delicious fills for me today.

The problem with Google is that, for a lot of major terms, the results aren’t a list of the “best” resources, but a list of the best SEO’d sites or the ones with the most purchased links.  (Can anyone think of another reason why TheGeneral.com appears on the first page of Google results for an ultra-competitive term like “auto insurance”?)

Today, when I am researching a topic, I head straight to Delicious.com.  There I am able to find what the “crowd” deems to be the best resources.

This is not to say that Google’s results aren’t up to par in some cases.  But even in such cases, Google cannot compete on the timeliness of the results.  When I go to Google, I am liable to see the same results for at least three months, if not more.

On Delicious.com, the crowd is always voting, ensuring that I have a combination of the most important and most recent resources available.

Google uses a complex algorithm to determine the importance of a web page.  Delicious uses the most complex computing mechanism of all, the human brain, to make the same determination.

Search engines killed the directory model, in which users had to scour the web and “index” (in the librarian sense) dozens of web sites, by automating it.

Social bookmarking sites are nothing more than the web 2.0 directories.  The major difference is that each user is “tagging” web sites out of self interest, which, unlike with directories, makes the process scalable and self-perpetuating.

Search engines are here to stay.  But could social bookmarking sites be the next evolution in the quest to index all of the net’s data?  Could a combination of the two models make today’s search engine results pages look quaint by comparison?

And finally, is Yahoo, as a result of its ownership of Delicious, indeed the best poised to dethrone the giant?

Photo credit: Bruce Turner

The internet did a lot to even the playing field between giant corporations and small businesses. Both could register a domain name, put up a website and, at least early on, compete for traffic on search engines.

If you’ve been a netizen for any significant period of time, you’ve probably come by a web site or two that clearly is a one-man operation but where every reference to the business is first-person plural: “we, us, our company.”

That was clearly an attempt to make a small company seem big. The issue, of course, is one of trust. If you knew that online vendor you were considering was run by a guy out of his parent’s basement, you’d be less likely to provide that web site your credit card information.

Social media has turned that on its head.

Today, large corporations are doing the exact opposite, struggling to appear like mom-and-pop shops with personal connections to individual customers. Take, for example, Dell’s Twitter presence or Zappos.com’s blogs.

The goal is to create more than a business relationship. In business, only one thing matters, and if I can get shoes at a cheaper price from another online vendor and have no personal connection to Zappos, Zappos will likely not get my sale.

By telling me about what is going on in the company, introducing me to the people that power the company, and allowing me to have a conversation with those people, Zappos is creating an invaluable personal relationship with the brand. It’s the equivalent of my choosing the local, family-owned coffee shop over the Starbucks because I know the owner and have a chat with her every time I walk in, even though she has to charge higher prices to stay afloat.

It’s the age-old question. If you sell a commodity, how do you convince the shopper to spend more money on your product than she otherwise would at another vendor? The answer is the brand association.

The lesson for small businesses: Open up your gates. Tell the world you’re a three-person company with big dreams. At the very least, don’t be afraid to act like a three-person company with big dreams. It’s all the rage.

Photo credit: Carl Mikoy