Social Media Is Not A Revolution…It’s Still About Dollars

Social media: influence or revenue? A question of growing popularity and heated debate, with compelling arguments for both sides.

This particular post is part of a coordinated blogosphere debate between myself, Mike Abrams, Cindy Kim and Amanda Vega.

For me, social media success, as a component of a marketing strategy, is best measured by its ability to generate revenue.

I know…it sounds a bit cold…maybe I’ve been lapping up a little too much of the ‘ROMI’ Kool-aid. I once thought, however, that social media was different. I thought social media had a ‘higher purpose’; to enlighten each and every one of us in marketing to create something better and to triumphantly carry forth a new era of a ’softer sell’…making the world a better place.

The reality is however, that our marketing efforts carry a serious responsibility to generate real results. We are accountable to our Board, boss, teams, and colleagues; that responsibility becomes even more serious for small businesses and individuals when those key stakeholders are ourselves and our families.

The key to generating direct revenue is relevance and value; social media is another tool for us to take the right message and bring it to the right audience.

Almost every message has a relevant audience. This is especially true in our highly customizable, highly portable digital word; a trend Chris Anderson highlighted in his book The Long Tail. Do you find those multi-level marketing Tweets annoying; blocking and ignoring the follows from Twitter users that can make you $300 a day for doing nothing? Well it’s not that their message is wrong…it’s just that they reached the wrong audience.

This is why social media is such a powerful tool for generating revenue; people have segmented themselves. It is now our responsibility to reach them with the right message, offer, etc. and constructively engage them in dialog. There is no reason why we cannot tie our efforts directly to revenue generation.

Additionally, we have to consider the fact that ’social media’, as an Internet marketing strategy, is in its infancy. And while many of us social media ‘insiders’ are being to ask hard questions about sustainability and business value, the vast majority of the population is still wondering how these tools, this whole concept, really applies to their life/job/goal. As a result, it’s easy to lean on metrics like ‘influence’.

A little bit of an industry secret ‘return on influence’ is the kind of nebulous metric that we, as marketers, cozy up to at night; our comfortable, loving teddy bear that lets us know we returned value today. Me? Sure I have a Teddy. Hey, don’t judge, the late 90s were especially rough…I may have wound up on a few email ‘blacklists’, angered email recipients around the word, and generated little to no direct revenue, but Teddy and I always shared in the success of our ‘impressions’ and ‘open rates’.

All stuffed animal metaphors aside, ‘influence’ is a valid measurement of marketing activity…and, in certain circumstances, success. I believe, however, that the actionable nature of social media requires us to apply hard metrics to our efforts and track them back to dollars. We can’t accurately track the influence of a well planned and authentic charity event on an organization’s revenue. We can, however, track our links, activity, referrers, etc. in our social media efforts.

So yes, for now, focus hard on using social media to drive revenue. Let’s get back to our roots of sales and marketing; create dialog with your message and leverage social media to find the appropriate audience. Track your efforts (‘cash for clicks’ and ‘clicks to cash’), continue to enhance your message, and return value. In doing so, maybe you will use social media to make the world a better place…well…maybe for your happy, newly acquired customers anyway.

How Wrong am I? Give Us Your Opinion.
In the spirit of promoting open discussion, the members of this coordinated debate have created a community to discuss this, and other, social media throwdown topics: socialmediadebate.ning.com. Amanda, Cindy, Mike and I welcome your thoughts comments and ideas (and, I’m sure, criticism)…join in on the conversation.

Professional Networking – Well Connected But Not Well Respected

For many of us, our professional networks are an integral component in our past, current, and future success.  As a result, we vigilantly watch over those relationships and selectively grow our networks with the right blend of new connections.  We carefully invest the time in building mutually beneficial relationships and enriching the connections of people in our network.

In fact, I highly doubt that there is a person engaged in networking that would disagree.  However in my networking activities, I have noticed an alarming trend that seems to directly challenge that concept.

I have recently come across a number of highly connected people that, while engaging, visible, and well-liked, are not professionally respected.  I know…it doesn’t make sense…but I have found myself in the following types of conversations with troubling regularity:

• I have to connect you with [name], you’ll really like them!  Just one word of caution (usually as a whispered aside); [name] isn’t that reliable of a business person…be careful of what they tell you or promise.
• Have you met [name]?  I’ll connect you.  There’s one thing about [name] that you need to watch out for…
• Ooow, you know who you HAVE to meet? [Name].  They’re awesome…well awesome in this one area…ignore all of the other stuff – you’ll know what I’m talking about – but listen to them about xyz.

So what is going on?  People I respect are suggesting that I invest my time in connecting to people that are not respected.  Have we attended too many empty networking events?  Has networking become a numbers game? (Quick: how many connections do you have in LinkedIn?) Are we losing our way?

I don’t think we have a pervasive problem.  While I know there are some people that talk a good game but can’t deliver on their promises, I think that we are honestly and authentically engaging one another.

I believe this problem of ‘well connected but not well respected’ is simply due to a lack of focus and action.

Perspective | My Take On Networking

I consider myself to be a relative novice in professional networking.  My real education began just three short years ago when I happened to hear Keith Ferrazzi speak at a ‘new media’ conference.  A uniquely authentic speaker among a group of narcissistic Internet marketers, I was driven to pick up his book Never Eat Alone.

As I read through Never Eat Alone my eyes were pulled wide open by the possibilities of networking…and all of the opportunities I had let pass me by in my career.  Prior to this epiphany I was an accidental  networker , waiting for opportunities to find me; all too casually floating in and out of business relationships.  So I began taking responsibility for creating and maintaining my professional network through value-added connections.

Over the last few years, especially in my days of small business entrepreneurship, I came to find the value of committed, responsible networking by:

• Connecting with great people.
• Sharing experience, knowledge, and perspective.
• Extending networks by facilitating thoughtful, relevant connections.

I certainly made some mistakes as I explored the professional wilderness of networking.  Learning from my experiences (and mistakes) I have created the following personal philosophy for networking:

• Return Value – Equal To Or Greater Than The Value I Take (more on this in a few paragraphs)
• Help Create Meaningful Connections
• Follow Up
• Deliver
• Listen (even when I think I have a better story, idea, or anecdote)
• Stay True to My Personal Brand
• Engage Authentically
• Apologize (see previous statement on mistakes)

I am still continuing to improve and grow my networking philosophy.  With each new connection I try and build on my approach.  For example, I have recently been learning a great deal about personal branding through the unique professional experience of Cindy Kim.  Cindy’s perspective on personal branding blends traditional PR with Social Media and journalism, which has led me to focus on building a message that can be distributed beyond my comfort zone of Internet mediums.

By adhering to my philosophy, I am able to explore and integrate new concepts into my networking approach.

Back To The Problem | Connected But Not Respected

To me professional networking, at its core, is simply creating personal relationships that are motivated and measured by business objectives and goals.  Most of those relationships are initially built on personal rapport and shared interests.

As a result, there is a personal bias that understandably creeps into our networking engagements.  Generally, we like the people that we choose to bring into our networks.  And so we afford these people generous professional allowances because we like them as individuals.

As business people, however, we ultimately demand results; at some point a professional relationship has to be challenged by its ability to concretely return value.

Timing now becomes a key determiner of success.  The more time interacting on a basis of rapport (lunches, coffees, meet-ups, emails, conversations, Retweets, blog comments, links shared, etc.) before a real challenge, the greater the likelihood we will introduce personal bias.

So, to me, the general root of the problem is that we invest too much time in building personal relationships without a true professional challenge.  Consequently, we create incredibly high professional expectations based solely on personal interactions; unrealistic expectations that simply cannot be met by that individual’s professional ability.

Rapport + Shared Interests = Personal ‘Like’ Bias
Personal ‘Like’ Bias x Time Without Challenge = Expectations
Expectations > Actual Ability = Connected But Not Respected

Right, so I explained professional networking with an equation…moving on.

The Solution | My 1:1:1 Theory For Productive Professional Networking

I believe we can help solve a majority of the ‘Connected But Not Respected’ problems by quickly assessing and creating honest, realistic expectations for our new connections.

Generally we make new connections through large meet-and-greet events or initial, casual conversation made through introduction (phone, email, etc.).  From there we usually find ourselves in the one-one-one ‘meet up’ scenario where we look to personalize a connection over lunch, coffee, cocktails, etc.  While there is usually a great deal to talk about (we’re all exciting, interesting people right) there is little sustainable value.

Enter My 1:1:1 Concept

My 1:1:1 Concept is a networking practice that I recently created and have been field testing in my new connections.  Inspired by David Allen’s philosophy of ‘next actions’, the 1:1:1 is a framework for creating value-added actions that will follow a networking ‘meet up’.

Breaking Down the 1:1:1

Each person in a networking meeting has a 1:1:1 responsibility:

• 1 shared, collaborative action
• 1 individual action
• 1 week; both the shared and individual action can be, and must be, completed within one week of the meeting

The Collaborative Action

• This is an after-meeting action that require a reciprocal or collaborative effort by members of the meeting.
• The collaborative action can be as simple or as complex as you agree to – provided that action can be completed in one week…no exceptions.
• Simple Action Examples:
  • Both active Twitterheads?  Agree to actively follow each other on Twitter and respond to at least one post during the week.
  • Connect via LinkedIn.

• Complex Action Examples:
  • Create a new online networking community via Ning based on organizing like-minded professionals around [shared interested].
  • Collaboratively write/record an article/blog/vblog.

The Individual Actions

• An after-meeting action that represents an item of unique value that you can return to your new connection
• Here again, the individual action can be as simple or as complex as you agree to – provided that action can be completed in one week…no exceptions.
• Simple Action Examples:
  • Sending a link/information on a relevant topic that was discussed.
  • Facilitate a connection within your network.
• Complex Action Examples:
  • Review and provide your feedback on a developing initiative where your expertise/experience/skill can provide unique perspective (e.g. email campaign, financial plan, sales operations process, etc.).
  • Provide some direct insight into a business (e.g. analyzing website analytics, competitive analysis, etc.).

How The 1:1:1 Can Help

Through the early introduction of actionable follow up in our networking efforts, we quickly have an idea of:

• A new connection’s ability to deliver on their agreements.
• The level of quality in a new connection’s work.
• A sense of how well we collaborate with a new connection.

With this framework we are balancing personal rapport with measurable results; creating expectations built on experience rather than promise.

There will always be those networkers that cannot ‘walk the walk’ and will need to be cast out of our sacred circles.  However, I believe we can positively affect the trend of ‘Connected But Not Respected’ by recognizing our responsibility to maintain a strong network and challenge one another to create results rather than just rapport.

Does Your Organization Need Glasses?

How To Approach Corporate Prioritization Like An Optometrist

You have an idea…no, wait…you have a great idea!  An idea that will revolutionize your industry/fix a customer’s problem/solve a major business need.  Yes!  This is the type of idea that forms the foundation of a best selling business book.  Career made.  Success assured.  

There’s only one small, tiny hurdle…your idea requires other resources, most likely cross-functional resources that you don’t directly manage.  Your idea needs to be rationalized against other corporate priorities.  Ugh.

From large enterprise to small business, we all have some derivative of the corporate prioritization meeting; where projects are reviewed and resourced.  Euphemize it any way we like:  ‘steering committee’, ‘strategic board’, ‘operational excellence’, etc. the meeting is usually a poorly structured debate with participants focused on promoting the merits of individual ideas and lobbying for resources.

 

So What’s This About Corporate Optometry?

Corporate prioritization is extremely difficult; there are usually a number of good ideas (well sure…there are some head-shakers) all competing for the same, limited resources.  In order to achieve productive agreement, we need collective focus.  Following that concept, I believe that corporate prioritization should be like a trip to the optometrist.  I know…an optometry analogy…but stay with me on this one.

The Patient

The usual suspects – key stakeholders of any prioritization meeting (department heads, executive leadership, management teams, board, etc.).

The Optometrist

Key operational leaders; the people that manage and drive the execution of projects.

The Prioritization Process

In order to bring collective focus to resource allocation, I believe that corporate prioritization should follow an optometry-like process of assessment and prescription.

 

Assessment

I believe that productive, effective prioritization starts with a foundational understanding and focus on a core set of corporate objectives and goals.  These are the high-level concepts that strategically drive decisions within the organization: Revenue and profit growth, customer satisfaction, employee retention and growth, operational efficiency, thought leadership, shareholder value, etc.

Each targeted outcome (persistent or time-based) has a weighted measure of importance and, as a collection, forms the measurement of success for an organization; much like an optometrist uses an eye chart to measure the relative health of our vision.

Conceptually, we introduce new projects into our organizations in order to create, sustain, or correct success.  However, we sometimes forget what truly defines success for our organization…our vision is a little out of focus. 

In my own career a have lead executive-sanctioned, heavily resources projects that were highly innovative or technically ‘cool’ but were not actually aligned to corporate objectives (surprisingly the board believed ‘revenue and profit’ was more important than ‘technically cool’).  Success in those projects was narrow and its measurement would later need to be defended (never a strong indication of return on investment).  Those projects needed glasses.

A new way to look at the problem of corporate prioritization.

In the paradigm of prioritization, a ‘corporate eye chart’ would replace letters with a core set of objectives and goals, segmented into levels, which define success for an organization.  Just like vision, an organization has a relative measure of health; in this case success can be hierarchically quantified from 20/200 to 20/10.  Corporate prioritization should always begin with a success assessment; qualitative and quantitative measurements of an organization’s current position against its ‘corporate eye chart’.  How is the organization performing?  And what areas can be impacted or influenced by resourced projects?

Prescription

Following an assessment of an organizations health, areas of opportunity would surface that need to be supported by projects and tactics.  Collectively, a prioritization team would bring focus to these strategic objectives by resourcing the projects that support those goals.

So, at this point, we have:

1. A corporate eye chart that outlines the success of an organization
2. An assessment of the success of an organization in achieving the ‘eye chart’ goals
3. A list of projects

Here is where the operational leaders – our optometrists – play an important role in the prioritization process.  These are the people that know what can get done with the resources that are available. 

Using the knowledge of what work is in progress, what is available to be resourced, and what, operationally, needs to be done to support continued work, the operational leaders can create strategic project scenarios.  So, in a sense, a prioritization team would sit down in that comfy optometrist’s chair and peer at their ‘corporate eye chart’ through a refractor.

As the prioritization team collectively views their organizational goals, the operational leaders can use strategic project scenarios to illustrate the outcome of possible combinations of work. 

In an example, the following outcomes might be available given the current operational landscape of IT:

Organizational Care and Feeding

Option A:

• Install server security patches
• Email server maintenance
• Complete project documentation
• Change management process implementation

Option B:

 

• Install server security patches
• Optimize website server and database performance
• Implement new data recovery process

 

Remaining Operational Availability

Development Scenario One:

• Implement new procurement system
• Develop custom sales process in CRM
• Create new transactional eCommerce functionality

Development Scenario Two:

• Implement marketing automation software
• Develop web services to talk with customer procurement systems
• Develop custom sales screens in CRM system
• Implement customer support ticketing system

The prescription process for corporate priorities should sound quite familiar to many of us; a standard optometry cadence of: “one or two”, “two or one”, “a or b”.  With each combination, the view of the ‘corporate eye chart’, as a whole, changes.  As a result, the group is focused on the overall success of the organization versus independently viewing success at a project level.

The debate among members of a prioritization team should then focus on how the various choices best meet the strategic vision for the organization as a whole.  The team must be committed to this collective review to remove the common – albeit understandable – self-serving bias that often plagues our reasoning and project justification.

Can It Work?

Putting aside the enthralling analogy (biased commentary); the most important concept for us to critically review is the focus we bring to corporate prioritization. 

I think we can make subtle, yet highly impactful improvements to our prioritization processes by:

1. Collectively defining a core set of organizational goals and objectives
2. Including that set of organizational goals and objectives in the prioritization process
3. Allow key operational leaders to build project scenarios
4. Collectively review and rationalize scenarios against core organizational goals and objectives
5. Decide which scenarios best define overall success for the organization
6. Allow operational leaders to execute to that vision

Ultimately, that ‘great idea’ must not only contain tremendous promise, but it must equally and measurable contribute to the overall success vision for the organization.  

In your next prioritization meeting, ask the question: by resourcing this project, does our organizational vision improve or do we lose some clarity on success?

Twitter: Your Forgotten Wedding Guest

Last weekend I attended a wedding and rather than getting lost in the radiant joy of new love, I began wondering how this age-old tradition could be evolved by social media.  These thoughts stayed with me long after catchy melodies of the macarena, Bee Gees, and Dexys Midnight Runners had faded.  Therefore I knew these concepts were worthy of formal exploration (certainly a troubling litmus test).  So let’s discuss…

I noticed, during this grandest of traditions, that weddings – for all their detailed planning and coordination – are wildly organic and rapidly evolving events.  Subject to the moods and emotions of the participants, weddings truly shift and morph within the context of its own social ecosystem.  Therefore, the nature of weddings is a perfect match to the dynamic medium of social media.

To explore a little further, we can use Twitter to apply some real-world examples of how we could, and possibly should, be introducing social media into a traditional event like weddings.

Currently we use micro-blogging to provide real-time feedback, perceptions, and threaded dialog in a number of professional situations.  For example,  Twitter is widely used to comment on keynote presentations at conferences, the direction and content of webinars, live television programs, and other events.  I think we could take the same concept and apply it to other, more traditional, social events.

Back to this weekend.  

The wedding ceremony and cocktail hour were executed perfectly; guests were happy and spirits were high.  At the reception, however, a misinformed DJ began to repeatedly clear the dance floor with mix of music that was not relevant to his audience.  Working feverishly behind his table, he failed to notice that while ‘Yeah’ by Usher filled the dance floor ‘Achfy Breaky Heart’ cleared the dance floor.  

This cycle repeated itself for quite some time.  Consequently, due to poor song choice, the reception could not gain the proper ‘party’ momentum that the couple especially wanted to create.  Finally, a brave guest overcame the awkwardness of walking across an empty dance floor to get the DJ on the right path.

Enter social media.  

What if the wedding guests had been instructed to use a special wedding hash (e.g. #SmithWedding) to share their experience in real-time via Twitter?  The relative face-to-face anonymity of Twitter and its accessibility would have quickly provided feedback from guests…all without forcing the bride to watch a guest openly work to save the spirit of their reception.  

Imagine walking into a reception site where the greeting poster not only listed seating assignments but a hash for sharing feedback and experiences.  The wedding couple believes you are a valued guest; so much so that they have invited you to be an active participant in their special day!  Talk about capturing the true spirit of social media!

Social media would also work well to chronicle the events of a wedding from a number of different perspectives.  Not limited to just 140 characters of text alone, guests could share their images through services like Twitpic and visually document the spirit of the event.  What if an out of town loved one was unable to make the trip to the wedding?  Rather then wait weeks or months for pictures and stories, a person unable to attend could simply follow and even engage that twit feed to share in the joyous day.

Why Not?

Admittedly there are some draw backs to leveraging social media; namely the devices used to contribute/read can be an inconsiderate distraction to many guests.  I am sure that many couples would not find it amusing if their guests were laying down tweets in the middle of the ceremony.  Also, like any good social media strategy, we need to begin with our target audience to understand their motivations, needs, and social media aptitude.  Not all wedding guests are created technically equal.

Innovative Wedding Professionals

I believe wedding vendors (planners, DJs, florists, photographers, videographers, etc.), could be monitoring wedding hashes for feedback/trends to positively shape the course of a wedding.  This could be especially valuable to wedding planners/coordinators that could quickly take broad, authoritative action based on the feedback of the guests.  An enterprising wedding planner might use social media as a method of differentiating their services from that of their laggard competitors.  For example, the ‘new media’ wedding planner may update their services to include this micro social media campaign for their clients.  

Final Thoughts

I have a number of random notes about the new, must-have wedding activity but this was a first pass.  There have been a few actual recorded marriages on Twitter so I think we are ready to blaze this trail.  Will you extend an invite to Twitter for your next major social event?

Starting This Blog

Welcome,        

It has been some time since I devoted the time to sharing my thoughts in my own, personal blog.  

Sure, I’ve ’sold out’ and invested my writing time to support the blogging/social media efforts of my clients and various companies, but my own thoughts and opinions have been held professionally hostage for a number of years.  Truly a sad story I know…your overwhelming sympathy is appreciated.  But no more ‘victim’ speeches here…it’s time I reinvested in my own collection of misfit ideas and shared them with my eager audiences (well, at least I hope someone reads this blog).

Why ’What Does Marketing Really Do’, Aren’t You A Marketing Guy?

Throughout my career I have found a consistent and pervasive misunderstanding between the Marketing team/department and the rest of an organization.  Most commonly this misunderstanding manifests itself in the organization as hushed comment of, “what do all of those people in Marketing do?”  From Finance to IT, people within an organization quietly question what their marketing colleagues “do”.

Sure those other departments recognize that marketing creates “pretty pictures” (if you’re in IT don’t even try to tell me you haven’t used that phase before…na, don’t…ugh, admit it…you have), but the true, sustained value the Marketing team is often reduced down to “pretty pictures”.

Why?  Well…we’ll explore that together (hopefully you keep reading) but through my various experiences I believe there are four main reasons.  We, as marketers,:

1. Often bring a pretty strong and pungent professional bravado to our work that can alienate our colleagues in other disciplines (c’mon…we’re Marketing).
2. Generally worry about returning hard, measurable value to our organization (e.g. how to you quantify the value of MarComm or branding) and that worry can turn into defensiveness/aggression and lead to conflict.
3. Structure our organizations much differently than the typical hierarchal structure common to other departments, this leads to our teams having higher percentages of managers/executives/specialists/etc. (i.e. “all those people”).
4. Our work is often highly creative and wildly nebulous; where other disciplines demand structure and process, we create ‘concepts’ and unleash them upon the organization.

In my mind, it is these, and other, factors that create the “do” question.

Over the life of this blog I hope to critically examine the world of marketing and provide some insight into just what we “do” as marketers.  

Personally, I believe the critic examination component is key to overcoming these perceptions.  I want to objectively examine why we do the things we do as marketers; a process that many marketers go through but is not visible to others in the organization.  So just as I hope to explore the ‘cool’ new concepts in marketing together, I also want to question our motivations and intentions.

My goal then, after objective review and overcoming perceptions, is to showcase the power of marketing and its ability to drive organizational success through the influence of brand, customer perception, pricing, market segmentation, promotion, Internet/Social Media, communications, and other strategies.

Now if you’re questioning, “after all these years this is all he has?” Well…yes…and you know what, I’m in Marketing and clearly this visionary concept is just too much for you to comprehend (see what I mean about the marketing bravado).

Thanks for reading…looking forward to our future discussions.