All "LIKES" Are NOT Created Equal

I was speaking to a friend who has recently resigned from a well known PR firm here in Toronto. They feel that their industry is being transformed by Social Media but not necessarily in the best way. It's become a tactical world of promo driven conversations that are selling snake oil to clients who are only too willing to buy it. Ultimately, we were talking about the marketing crisis of "LIKE".

What does that mean?

You know what I'm talking about.

Build my Social Media [fill in the blank] presence.
We need conversation generation about [really anything].
We need more .... dare we say it -- "LIKES"!

I get it.

-Lots of companies are not using their own URLs anymore and instead have Facebook URLs.
-Traditional advertising is loosing its affect with some key demographics.
-Marketers are being judged by their peers as to their KLOUT score or Facebook Fans.
-The few successful Social Campaigns are consistently paraded out by everyone at the strategy meetings as what we "must do" to be successful in the coming calendar year

The list of reasons are plenty.

But see here's the problem. Let's take Faceobok as the example.

Facebook is not traditional media.

It's actually a social network.
It's my network.
In fact, it's my media.

So what does that mean for marketers?
I think it means many "important ignore at your own peril" things.

You have to understand the underlying dynamics of networks.
You have to consider why people are spending their time there in the first place.
You have to understand the difference between PAID media and EARNED media.
You have to consider that those who feel that this is their media don't want YOU to co-opt it for marketing purposes.

Buying LIKES through contests, coupons, promos is not the same as building community.

It's not the same as having passionate advocates.
It's not building engagement with your brand.
It doesn't create a shared belief system between you and your customers.

There is no smart marketer in the world who i know who would put an entire marketing plan around how to get people to join a contest or use their coupons. So people, if that's what your Facebook plan looks like, I say it's time to get a new approach.

The dynamics of this new era of social enabled networks presents a world of opportunity to become meaningful to the culture, the people and the world around you. Don't waste it on buying yourself some Facebook LIKES.

You will find very shortly that all LIKES are simply not created equal.

Social Meania - In Defense of Kenneth Cole

Whenever someone uses the term #boycott I pay pretty close attention. So when I saw the #boycottkennethcole hashtag the other day I immediate wondered what was going on and clicked through.

What was I going to find? What kind of tweet could get people’s ire up so dramatically? I clicked through to see this:

Millions are in an uproar in Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at x URL

hum. Ok. A silly comment about a very serious issue….yes. Weird for the Kenneth Cole brand…yes . Inappropriate? Sure. But they posted an apology only 23 min later both on their Twitter and Facebook account and seemed genuinely regretful (As I am sure they are) about the misstep.

Having been a watcher of the tech sector for a while now, I’m used to seeing blogosphere pile ons. People get their ire up and next thing you know, it’s flame posts all over the place. It’s just that it’s usually the angry mean boy tech bloggers and honestly I have no patience with it.

Why?

As marketers we tell brands to risk being in Social Spaces. Be more current.

BE HUMAN.

Well guess what. When you are twittering every day all day long, at some point you are going to make a HUMAN mistake.

If we want an environment of experimentation to exist, we have to have compassion when a mistake is made verses being a pack of wild vicious dogs really to pounce.

Maybe it’s because we don’t have to have the poor community manager right there in front of us teary eyed and apologetic. Maybe it’s the protective cloak of technology that allows us to throw rocks from behind a wall with a group of our friends.

Maybe that is the mean of Social Media where we bring out the worst in ourselves – if it is I say, shame on us.

And Kenneth Cole ….about your apology… I for one accept it.

update: one thing i will say - smarter posts are criticizing KC for the #hashtag and trying to join the #Egypt conversation from a reach perspective. Let's hope more than not saying something stupid in future, that KC never does that again bc that is far more unforgivable

The Case For Simplicity

Great comment on Quora as to why dropbox beat out its competitors by Issac Hull who co-founded a competitor product called Synchplicity.

"After I left Syncplicity, I ran into the CEO of Dropbox and asked him my burning question: "Why don't you support multi-folder synchronization?" His answer was classic Dropbox. They built multi-folder support early on and did limited beta testing with it, but they couldn't get the UI right. It confused people and created too many questions. It was too hard for the average consumer to setup. So it got shelved."

Hull suggests that no matter how loudly your users may want functionality, if it doesn't work for at least 80% of your users then it isn't worth it.

I think this is a lesson in marketing that can never be stated too often - fewer, smarter, better. Middle gray or just being good is a sure path to failure. No matter how big or small your budget is, be brilliant or be gone.

At the end of the day, it's the business case for simplicity.

That Screen Formally Known As The TV

"Sure my kid watches primetime TV. Only he doesn't watch it in prime time and he doesn't watch it on his TV"

When my daughter was five, we walked by a house on garbage day with an electric typewriter on the lawn ready to be thrown to the trash. She walked right up to it with a quizzical look on her face and turned to me with one hand in mine - and simply asked - what's that mommy?

Boy did i feel old.

And I guess that's how people feel when they start to debate about if people want Internet on their TV.

TV? What's that? Oh you mean that flat panel screen on our living room wall?

Richard Bullwinkle, chief evangelist at Rovi, says that an entire generation is going to have to stop watching TV before app enabled TV's cross the chasm. It's true that most people haven't really figured out how to get the wireless in their devices to synch and up and running.

But this isn't going to be a ten year proposition.

With the ubiquity of smartphones finally becoming a reality (more kids own a cell phone than a book), the always on pervasiveness of the network will finally have people realizing that their focus should no longer be device specific - because there won't be three screen strategies over at the cellular and cable companies anymore -

There is only one strategy:

- the single screen strategy -

Meaning whatever screen i happen to be looking at in any given moment - be it my cell phone, my book reader, my ipad, or that thing formerally known as the TV screen on my living room wall.

Pardon The Disruption

Sorry to interrupt your conversations.....but..........

I'm so tired of hearing about the reinvention of advertising.

I'm bored of listening to you talk about your new business model, way of thinking, and the revolutionary new stuff that you are ...going... to create - you swear - one day really really soon.

I don't care you fired half your staff and filled a room with UX designers and social media strategists.

And I don't understand why so many people seem to be missing the point about the dramatic impact technologies have had on the way we now communicate.

Stop talking about it. Stop talking about YOURSELVES. No one cares. Stop with all the mass media and PR promises and start demonstrating that you are doing something different.

Change your process. Change your product. Change your results. And the rest will come.

Ok, now back to your previously scheduled programming.

Failure 101

Great quote I had to share from this article over at the99percent

The creative process for James Dyson was filled with an exceptional number of failures. His quote:

"I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That's how I came up with a solution. So I don't mind failure. I've always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they've had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative."

What an incredible concept. Grading kids by their number of failures. This reminds me of a recent meeting where I met with a 20 something year old about his start up. He said he wanted to meet with me because of my super successful career in marketing i just laughed.

You don't want to meet with me because of that, I told him. You want to meet with me because of my completely unsuccessful start-up. It's my failures and the decisions I wish I could change looking back you are going to learn the most from - not the things that I did right.

The lesson here?

Failure 101- it's by far one of the most important courses you'll ever take.


note: Nicole noted on FB that she loved the concept of grading kids on their creativity (note she said creativity and not failures). Couldn't agree more.

Time To Evolve The Mommy Blogger

A couple people in my FB or Twitter stream have launched Blogs recently and have almost instantly become "Mommy Bloggers". They get linked to on Yummy Mommy, they get invited to speak at conferences, they get shout outs on Twitter. New Mommy Blogger! Welcome!

Got me thinking. Why aren't I considered a Mommy blogger? I blog. I'm a Mommy of two kids who I occasionally mention. But the truth is, similar to why i never bonded with the Mommy's who played in the park where I used to take Cee that was right across the street from my house, I don't really relate the a lot of the content i see on their blogs.

Some will say that there are a bunch of misconceptions about Mommy Bloggers and maybe there are and maybe I'm just contributing to them by writing this post. People will say Mommy Bloggers are lawyers, writers, engineers but all i can see from most of the blogs that self-describe as MB's is cute brand promotions, pictures of babies, puppies, healthy eating articles and of course, articles about being a Mommy. (come to think of it, this is why i don't buy women's magazines like Cosmo either).....

And there may be some great Mommy bloggers that I'm just don't know about. But i think there are huge amount of women out there who blog and are Moms discussing and speaking on a wide range of topics and issues affecting the world. I would love to have a list that I can add at the end of this post because I think it's time to evolve (at least the perception of) the Mommy Blogger so people like me (mom's who blog) can be added to the list.

:) leigh
mom. writer. worker

photocredit: Wifemomblogger