Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 383

The Business Of Content

Content is King. It's a saying you've heard countless times... long before Social Media empowered individuals to create and distribute their own content.

Content is the new marketing. Whether Marketers are thinking like publishers or whether brands are hiring/working with community managers to help them get results. If you can think about consumer engagement at that level, things begin to become slightly less foggy. The idea that you don't have to wrap your messages and blast them out around the original content, but instead you can create and produce the actual content and keep people engaged and connected as you see fit is - in a way - a whole new dimension to the media and marketing business.

It's something that the traditional media people are still tinkering with as well.

While attending this year's Google Zeitgeist conference this past September in Phoenix, I had the pleasure of watching Ari Emanuel (fans of the TV show, Entourage, should know that the character, Ari Gold - played by Jeremy Piven - is based on Emanuel) and Patrick Whitesell, the co-CEOs of WME Entertainment, discuss the state of the entertainment business. It's fascinating to hear from these super-agents to the stars (movie, TV, books and beyond). There is a truly amazing subtext to the conversation (which you don't really have to read too deep between the lines to uncover) in this presentation, as they discuss the value of content and the distribution channels around them... and how they are changing.

This is 27 minutes well-worth your time...

Tags:

advertising

ari emanuel

ari gold

business

business model

community manager

consumer engagement

content

entertainment business

entourage

google zeitgeist

jeremy piven

marketer

mass media

movie business

new marketing

patrick whitesell

publishing

social media

traditional media

william morris endevour

wme entertainment

An "A" For Effort

There are no shortcuts.

You know this. You've been told this a million times. Digital Marketing and Social Media are not cheap, free and easy. That's not true. A lot of the platforms and channels are free and some are relatively cheap. Most of them are easy to join and get engaged with. So, then, what is the challenge and why can't everybody make it work best for them?

It takes a lot of effort.

Just because the ability to connect is free, just because you can do so with a very limited budget (re: cheap), and just because the technology has advanced to the point where anyone from a young child to a senior citizen can figure it out, that doesn't mean that everybody is going to take the time and put the effort into really making both the content and connections come to life and be effective for them.

Don't hate the player... hate the game.

I always hated that line. It is the textual version of sticking your tongue out at someone, but - in the case of success in the online channels - it is true. The ones who are successful are not (necessarily) better than you, more experienced than you or smarter than you (no offense to those who are considered successful). More often than not, they're simply putting in a ton of effort and the effects of that effort are more connections and content that is shared more. Take a look at Chris Brogan, Amber Naslund, Gary Vaynerchuk, Julien Smith, Kneale Mann or many others. Look at their output. Not just on their own spaces but their activity in other spaces. Look at what they're doing when they're not online. Look at how they network, organize, think and build. Now, look in the mirror and ask yourself this: are you putting in the same amount of effort? If you're putting in the same amount of effort - at this point - ask yourself what level of effort might be needed to surpass them?

Now, ask yourself these really tough questions:

Do you really want to put that kind of effort into anything? Why? What outcome do you hope to achieve? The truth is that it's easier to throw stones or to say "I could do that too," or even to be critical of the things these people are doing. The harder part is to rise above that and actually prove it. See, in the past, you might be able to say that your written words are better than most of the articles you can find in Rolling Stone magazine. It would be hard to prove you wrong, as it was hard to get any kind of article into a magazine of that caliber, but that's not the case any more. Now you (or anyone) can have a thought and publish it for free (and fast) in text, audio, images or video, instantly to the world. You can have all of the excuses in the world, but none of them can be related to the actual publishing and distribution.

Back to Chris Brogan...

He posts twice a day. He has a company called New Marketing Labs. He has another company called Human Business Works. Along with his main Blog, he's also got another one called Man On The Go and recently launched another one called, Escape Velocity. He's written two books (Trust Agents with Julien Smith and Social Media 101) and is in the middle of writing his third. He helped launch a membership-based marketing forum called, Third Tribe Marketing. He frequently puts out an e-newsletter and he manages to speak all over the world, contribute to other people's blogs in the comment section, maintain a 150,000+ person community on Twitter, a Facebook presence and still has time for a young family. That, my dear friends, is effort.

Amber too...

Amber Naslund hasn't been Blogging forever, but she does it so well (check out Brass Tack Thinking). See how active Amber is in the comments. See how active Amber is on other people's Blogs. Check out what she's about on Twitter. Beyond that, she's also frequently speaking around the world. She was recently named, VP Social Strategy for the social media monitoring company, Radian6 and her first book, co-written with Jay Baer called, The Now Revolution, comes out soon. Did I mention she is a single mom?

It's about the effort.

A great body? Put in the effort to diet and exercise more. A smarter mind? Put in the effort to read and learn more. A better job? Put in the effort to make your current job better or increase your skill set so that you can move forward. The people that are successful know the one trick: it's not about luck... it's about effort.

I know you can do it. Put the effort into it. The results will blow your mind.

Tags:

amber naslund

brass tack thinking

chris brogan

content

digital marketing

effort

escape velocity

facebook

gary vaynerchuk

human business works

jay baer

julien smith

kneale mann

man on the go

networking

new marketing labs

online social networking

publishing

radian6

rolling stone

social media

social media 101

social media monitoring

the now revolution

third tribe marketing

trust agents

twitter

What You Tell A Search Box

There is no doubt that as the Internet evolves, so too must the search engines.

As someone who was there when the first search engines came online (in fact, I helped launch one of them), it's no surprise that we've evolved from basic search to search integrated with relevant advertising, to search beyond text (you can now search images, audio and video). It's also no surprise that search powers some of the biggest online platforms we have (from YouTube and Facebook to Twitter and Flickr). Without search, the Web isn't all that useful.

As the Web becomes more social, so too much the search engines.

As we move away from static web pages and indexed content to a world of shares, likes and following of the people we know and are connected to, it should come as no shock that search engines must begin to integrate this type of content into their indexing and results to stay relevant and useful. In the past little while, we've seen indications of what this looks like (Google now displays "real-time" results for searches that are pulling content from places like Twitter), etc... Just yesterday, Microsoft's Bing announced a partnership with Facebook to make their search results more "social." MSNBC posted a news item titled, Facebook and Bing team-up for social search, yesterday that explains this evolution in search engine results:

"Today, Facebook dips its social-media chocolate into Microsoft Bing's peanut butter, introducing a 'social search' engine where Facebook friends and their 'likes' are factored into search results. The end product is what it sounds like: If you search for movies and restaurants, some of the results represent what your friends have selected. If you search for people, those with more connections to you pop up first."

Be careful of social search.

If you've been playing along at home, you may be surprised to hear me say the words, "be careful" of anything that has to do with search engines and social media (considering what I do for a living and considering that those two areas are personal passions of mine), but yes... be careful. Searching for information is not the same as connecting to people.

We tell things to a search engine that we wouldn't even tell our families and closest friends.

Would I mind if everything I've done on Facebook were made public? No. Not all. Would I mind if every search I had ever done were made public. Yes. Very much so. While these recent announcements from Bing, Facebook, Google and Twitter are fairly innocuous (and I'm the last person to put on a tinfoil hat and dive into the ocean of conspiracy theory), stop to think about what the business behind this about. The idea here is simple: the more of the Web that is indexed, edited and aggregated for all consumers, the easier it is to use, and the more people use it. The company that figures out this magic formula wins. They get the traffic, usage, attention and engagement. It's in their best interest to make everything online findable and connectable (and this includes the content you are creating and/or requesting).

Here's a simple exercise:

Write down everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) you search for online in one week. Save it in a document. After that week, go and take a look at that list. Now ask yourself the question again: do you want all of this public?

It's the little big things.

Who cares if people know you like a local pizza joint, or that you recommend a certain coffee house? That's fine and that's the majority of searches, but dig a little deeper. Imagine you have just been diagnosed with MS. You haven't told your family or boss yet. You're looking for support, trying to figure stuff out. You definitely don't want the insurance companies to know just yet. Would you like that public? How about this: your child is acting up in school (in this instance, your kid is the bully). You start looking online for resources and information, would you like people to know that your kid is acting up? Take any addiction (drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc...), medical issue or any other personal issue (like the odd time you watch some adult content online), and keep asking yourself if you would like all of this made public?

It won't happen. We're not there.

True enough. We're not there with social search yet, and this probably won't happen (people will revolt!), but we do have to be vigilant. We do have to able to acknowledge that even these first strikes at figuring out what social search is and what it means is a step closer in the direction I outlined in the paragraph above, and further away from the point we were at a few moments ago when search was (fairly) anonymous and private.

It's exciting to get all excited about social search. It's a little scary too... isn't it?

Tags:

bing

facebook

facebook like

flickr

google

internet

microsoft

msnbc

real-time search

recommendation engine

search box

search engine

search engine advertising

search engine marketing

social media

social search

twitter

youtube

Social Media Is A Big Waste Of Time

You know the drill, the minute something becomes popular, some report comes out making claims about how much money is being pulled out of the economy because we're wasting our time on it.

Social media is no different. In fact, it's not even social media as entirety. We've seen instances where Facebook has been accused of wasting millions of dollars on being a time suck. The same has happened with YouTube and Twitter (more on that here: Gigaom - News Flash: Your Employees are Wasting Time on the Internet). We're always quick to blame the technology and not the people. I always argue that those who are not wasting their time on YouTube (because a company has blocked it) have probably figured out something else to do to waste their time (hint: they're not happy and energized to be doing their jobs ... it's not YouTube).

Social media is a big-time time sucker.

That was the news last week in the AdWeek news item, Social Networking: A Waste of Time? (Oct. 7, 2010). "Here's a sign of social networking's growing presence in modern life: It has surpassed TV viewing as the preeminent waster of people's time," stated the news item. "At any rate, it tops the waste-of-time standings in a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll released this week. Respondents were given a list of six activities and asked to pick the one they regard as 'your biggest waste of time.' A plurality (36 per cent) chose 'social networking,' putting it easily ahead of runner-up 'fantasy sports' (25 per cent) and third-place 'watching television' (23 per cent). Few votes went to 'shopping' (nine per cent), 'reading' (two per cent) or 'your job' (two per cent)."

Social media is only a waste of time if you're using it to waste your time.

It's not because it's a slight against online social networks that I'm upset (or because I base part of my business livelihood on the success of social media as a marketing channel), but we have to meet the people who lump "reading" and their "jobs" as their "biggest waste of time." Wasting your time should probably be defined as an activity that requires nothing proactive, while utilizing minimal effort and with even less of a valued outcome in terms of overall life benefit. But, if you look at social media like that, you're missing the point entirely.

Social media is the fabric that binds our culture together.

Maybe not our current, entire culture but the shift is happening in a very non-subtle way. Contrast the news above with this blog post last week from MediaPost's Engage - GenY titled, Social Network Disconnect, which looks at GenY (those born between 1982 and 2004). Prior to looking at the stats presented below, you should know that Gen Y is (according to the Blog post), "the first generation in U.S. history to exceed 100,000,000 members is typified as multi-cultural, multi-racial, multilingual, multimedia and multi-tasking. Most importantly, Gen Y is the first generation in human history to, as children, be more technologically advanced than their parents."

Are you ready to have your mind blown?...

"Their use of technology is pervasive and sophisticated. You can pretty much count on the totality of Gen Y to be online and connected. Research conducted by the Insights division of Ypulse in September 2010 94 percent of GenY to be on Facebook, spending 11.4 hours a week within its pearly blue gates. This connectivity is nearly ubiquitous, with more than three quarters (78 per cent) of high school and college students connecting to their preferred social network via their mobile phone. Mobile devices and the Facebook platform are the glue that keeps this generation connected. When Gen Y communicates with each other, their preferred tool is a text message (55 per cent state texting as the primary means of communicating with their friends), followed by Facebook (24 per cent). Voice-based communications (land line, VOIP and mobile voice calls) among Gen Y represents only 10 per cent of communications, IM is the primary communications tool for seven per cent and email is dominant among a meager one per cent of Gen Y when communicating peer to peer."

It's not just because it's cool to be on Facebook.

Regardless of what the platform is, there's something bigger brewing beneath the surface here. The massive speed of change and adoption of new media among this huge generation is changing our society (they're not just idly sitting by watching TV, flipping through magazines or playing video games). From whom they trust and rely on to how they perceive privacy and relationships. These youngish people are doing things in a more open and sharing environment (and, yes some of it is not in a positive way - look no further than the tragedy that took place at Rutgers University a few weeks back when a young person committed suicide after a video was posted on YouTube without their consent), and this is having current implications on how society evolves... and we haven't even begun to look at the long-term society impact of this change in terms of business, education, privacy, communications and connectivity. What we do know is that you can hardly dismiss this massive shift as a waste of time (unless all you're doing is watching YouTube videos of people falling off of treadmills - which, admittedly, never gets tiring).

Is this causing such a huge societal change that we can't even begin to imagine the implications, so we have decide to ignore it or pass it off as a time waster, or is the reality something much bigger that we - as the business leaders of today - must begin to grasp and embrace?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

Montreal Gazette - You can't dismiss shift to social media as a massive time-waste.

Vancouver Sun - not yet published.

Tags:

60 minutes

adweek

business section

canwest

communications

connectivity

economy

education

engage gen y

facebook

fantasy sports

gigaom

hr

human resources

im

marketing

mediapost

mobile

montreal gazette

new media

newspaper

newspaper column

online social network

postmedia

privacy

reading

rutgers university

shopping

social media

social network disconnect

social networking

societal change

technology

television

text message

tv

twitter

vancouver sun

vanity fair

youtube

ypulse

The Time Is Ripe For A Chief Marketing Technologist

Think about where the world of business is. Think about how much Marketing has changed. Think about how much of that change is due to technology.

When my agency, Twist Image, got started in 2000, there was an issue in the Marketing world: more often than not the website and whatever remedial online marketing initiatives a brand was engaged with were housed within the IT (or technology) department. More often than not, the Marketers of the time were not all that tech savvy and - to be blunt - were terrified of the technology. If the IT department said something was not possible, they simply took that direction as law. Marketers didn't have the knowledge base or experience to debate it.

That's where the opportunity was/is.

Our little agency quickly realized that the true Marketing agency of the future would be one that could both work with the technology department by helping them to understand how to best deliver powerful online initiatives, while also working with Marketers to help them be less afraid of the IT department. I jokingly say that "not much has changed in the past decade," but that is just a joke. Sort of. The truth is that the digital divide gap has shrunk, but it's still far from where it should be.

The technology has advanced. The Marketing has advanced.

Who amongst us is not using technology (on many levels) more and more every day to deliver more Marketing efficiencies to the brands we represent? I've been in corporate boardrooms where the online marketing department is tethered into the general marketing department while the online channel of the organization (the website, etc...) is tethered into the IT department. I've also seen instances where the online channel stands alone while the online marketing is tethered into Marketing. Confused? You should be? Departmental divisions like this seem logical on an org chart and in planning, but rarely act that way out in the wild.

Bring forth the Chief Marketing Technologist.

While helping to organize a Marketing conference next year, I came across this notion of a Chief Marketing Technologist and it made my ears perk up. In researching the concept further (thank you, Google), I came across the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog by Scott Brinker (by the looks of it, he's been using the term since 2008 or so). Brinker recently published an article in Advertising Age titled, The Case for a Chief Marketing Technologist (September 29th, 2010), where he states:

"Marketing has become deeply entwined with technology. This didn't happen overnight; it's been sneaking up on us for a while. But because technology had been so tangential to marketing management for most of our history, the organizational structure of marketing has been slow to adjust to this new technology-centric reality. But we've clearly reached a tipping point. To fully reap the benefits of this Golden Age, marketing must officially take ownership of its technology platforms and strategies. And the first step of such ownership is to appoint someone to lead it. Enter the chief marketing technologist."

It makes perfect sense.

We can no longer continue down a road where IT, Technology and Marketing are not at the table together. We can no longer continue down a road where Marketing is not held to full accountability based on metrics, analytics and results. We can no longer continue down a road where this is not a critical part of the c-suite and how the overall brand and organization operates. We can longer continue down a road where this isn't a corporate imperative. While the idea of a Chief Marketing Technologist probably didn't make sense for any organization five years ago, it's hard to imagine that all of the Fortune 1000 companies are operating without one today.

You have to stop and wonder, why don't most organizations of size and substance have a Chief Marketing Technologist?

Tags:

advertising age

business

chief marketing officer

chief marketing technologist

cmo

digital divide

digital marketing agency

fortune 1000

google

it department

management

marketer

marketing

marketing agency

marketing conference

online channel

online marketing

scott brinker

technology

technology department

twist image

website

Media Hacks Audio Podcast #36 Is Now Live

Episode #223 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to. This is also episode #36 of Media Hacks.

We're finally back with a new episode of Media Hacks. Chris Brogan and Hugh McGuire join me for our semi-regular chat about all things media. In this conversation, we look at everything from AOL's acquisition of TechCrunch to the value of data and web analytics. In the mix of that, we hit on the usual topics of publishing, marketing, advertising, mobile, tablets and more. We also have a chat about Yahoo and why they now consider Facebook such a huge competitor. Things are moving fast and faster. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes ): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #223 .

Tags:

advertising

android

aol

apple

bite size edits

blog

blogging

blue sky factory

book oven

cast of dads

cc chapman

chris brogan

christopher s penn

crowdsource

david usher

demand media

digital dads

digital marketing

escape velocity

facebook

facebook group

google

hugh mcguire

human business works

iambik

in over your head

itunes

julien smith

librivox

man on the go

managing the gray

marie mai

marketing

marketing over coffee

media hacks

new marketing labs

online social network

podcast

podcasting

six pixels of separation

social media 101

social media marketing

strategy

tablet

techcrunch

the gap

third tribe marketing

trust agents

twist image

we live in public

yahoo

Take Notes

How do you remember everything? Where do you keep those great ideas that pop into your brain at random moments?

Capturing ideas or bursts of genius is not as easy and/or obvious as one might think. Someone asked me where my ideas come from. It's hard not to laugh at a question like that (unless you take yourself too seriously). Like you, everything comes from my brain (be it conscience or unconscious). The challenge is in capturing and understanding (or deciphering) what it means and what it can be. Some stuff becomes a Blog post that you'll read here, other stuff is tweetable. Some things are perfect for clients, other ideas will be a part of my next business book. So, beyond the capturing and deciphering it's also about the final destination.

Capture your thoughts. Take notes.

Too many people think of taking notes... and they immediately think of school. They think of note taking as some kind of linear, clean and formulated process. It doesn't have to be. In fact, some of the best notes are the ones that would never make sense to anybody else, and they are the ones that you never look at again either. For years, I've taken notes in meetings. I hardly ever go back to them. In those instances, it's the act of writing them down that helps me to remember and focus. In other instances, I'll take notes to refer back to once (like ideas for a Blog post), but then there's no more need for them.

It's about how you capture them.

Here are my note taking tools...

Moleskine. I use two types of Moleskine notebooks. I use a super tiny one that fits in my back pocket and I use a soft-cover larger one for business meetings. Both of them are plain paper (no lines), have a black cover (the thin one). I don't get hung up on cleanliness... I get hung up on scribbling down the ideas.

iPhone. I use both the notebook application and Evernote. Admittedly, I am in purgatory here as I keep switching back and forth (not sure why, but it depends on my mood).

Text editor. If something requires more than a few lines, I'll use a simple text editor to let the ideas flow.

Windows Livewriter. I've tried them all and Windows Livewriter is the best Blog writing software. There are many times when I have ideas and I'm using the platform to just take notes. Sometimes it winds up as Blog content, but sometimes it doesn't.

Do you notice a trend?

My note taking is a mess (some trend!). It's all over the place. It's not simple. It's definitely not organized. No, that doesn't mean that I know where everything is (I don't). I'm looking for a better (more organized) system, but I know that when it comes down to it, it will have to be something that can be consistent and easy for me to adopt as a new habit. I am one of those people who can empty their pockets with napkins, business cards and random pieces of papers with ideas all over them (don't even open my briefcase where books, magazines and more random sheets of paper are all marked up). While you may see this as an unorganized nightmare, I'm fine with it. Why? Because I'm taking notes. I'm capturing everything. That's a whole lot better than most people, who don't capture anything because they see note taking as a task. It's a bad memory from school. It's a bad way to be if you really want to bring new ideas to life.

What's your take on taking notes?

Tags:

blog

blog writing software

briefcase

business book

business card

business meeting

creativity

education

evernote

ideation

iphone

magazine

moleskine

note

note taking

notebook

text editor

tweet

twitter

windows livewriter

word processor

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Rednod, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, Bite-Sized Edits, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for each other (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

ACell - Wikipedia . " ACell is a company in Maryland that seems to have figured out how to regrow things. I didn't know this stuff was possible, and it's a compelling possibility: a scaffold for cells to regrow. This Wikipedia article  is pretty short, but the things it links to are fascinating... and a bit scary. Are we really patenting the ability to regenerate?" (Alistair for Hugh).

Think Tank: Flip-thinking - the new buzz word sweeping the US - Telegraph . "Flipping. I liked the creativity of this brief article by Daniel Pink on how to turn things around and find a new angle. I particularly liked the fact that it emphasized a major change in education, from teacher-centric to learner-centric. Why do we listen to a lecturer in the day and do homework at night, anyway?" (Alistair for Mitch).

Why Wesabe Lost to Mint - Marc Hedlund's blog . " Marc Hedlund is the (former) CEO of the (former) personal finance start-up, Wesabe . Here's his debrief on why his competitor, Mint , won. Worthwhile for anyone who is starting a business. (Hint: the answer is: Mint made it easy for its users)." (Hugh for Alistair).

Why sports has taken the lead in newsroom innovation - Mark Coddington . "When I was in high school, I remember my English teacher asking what was the last magazine we read. A bit sheepishly I said: Sports  Illustrated. But my English teacher said: 'Excellent, sports writers are usually some of the best writers in any newsroom.' Which my father - an ex-sportswriter - agreed with. Anyway, turns out they're also the most innovative in this shifting world of media, according to Mark Coddington, anyway." (Hugh for Mitch).

Some Thoughts on Burning Man: To Be Creative or Not To Be - dalepd | Dale Dougherty . "Burning Man is an amazing project. It's a community, a vision for the future, an art experiment, a party and oh, so much more. In this Blog post on Dale Dougherty 's Posterous feed, you get a good idea - from a first person's perspective - about the event/project. It sounds like something Alistair would do. In fact, it must have been part of the inspiration behind his BitNorth experience." (Mitch for Alistair).

Author Paulo Coelho Talks eBooks - CNN . "We expect the more cutting-edge and younger generation of authors to embrace these digital channels. You may be surprised to see what best-selling author, Paulo Coelho , thinks of technology, ebooks and the future of publishing. Here's a hint: from his website you can download his iPhone app, grab some wallpapers, discuss his books, grab some postcards and more. The subtle message? Digital is not going away. Embrace and deal with it or you won't exist." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now, it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

acell

alistair croll

author

bitcurrent

bite-sized edits

bitnorth

book publishing

burning man

cnn

complete web monitoring

creativity

dale dougherty

dan pink

daniel pink

ebook

education

gigaom

great links

hugh mcguire

human 20

innovation

iphone app

librivox

link

linkbait

magazine

managing bandwidth

marc hedlund

mark coddington

media

media hacks

mint

newsroom

paulo coelho

posterous

rednod

regeneration

sports illustrated

sports writer

technology

telegraph

the book oven

think tank

wesabe

wikipedia

A Living Organism

Part of the reason that automated tools pose a challenge to Social Media is because it removes that live feeling.

I've been thinking about this Blog a lot lately. When I'm thinking about this Blog, I'm also thinking about Social Media - what it means and why it's so dramatically different than any of the other media channel. Once I am doing that kind of media hacking, I start thinking about what we can expect and/or do with these many new channels when it comes to business, Marketing, Advertising and Communications.

That usually leads to the struggle.

It's the eternal struggle between young and old. New and antiquated. Traditional and modern. What was and what will be. This Blog and many of the other Social Media platforms - like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube - are living organisms. Remember that. Think about that. Not everything can be planned and there won't be an obvious beginning, middle and end (like traditional Marketing has). If this is your first time on this Blog, the story is very different from those who started playing along at home a couple of years back. It flows and changes based on mood, my availability to deliberate on a specific topic,  how many people comment and even how I respond. It's not planned. It's not perfect. It's human. It's a living organism.

Think about Twitter and Facebook.

Living organisms that change, evolve and adapt based on who is putting what into it and how the content is being collaborated on and extrapolated. You can plan to be a part of it every day at 7 p.m., but you'll never get the same or a similar result... the living organism will do what it does (selfish gene and all). You can walk away from it all... it keeps on going. Every day that passes, individuals (like you) leave comments and ask questions about Blog posts that were written well into the past. Those older posts don't wind up on a pile with newspapers getting yellow and crusty from the sun. They stay where they are... there are breathing, being found in search engines or being resurrected in online social networks.

You can see why a business might struggle with it.

The hardest part of being a living organism (especially one with conscience) is knowing that everything is actually not in our control. It is chaos theory on a good day. How it lives and how it dies is usually not a defined decision... stuff happens (as they say). The ones who succeed with these living organisms are the ones who are comfortable with this. This always on platform that evolves and tweaks is not for the brands that feel the need to control everything from the colors to the commentary.

When you think about getting really active in Social Media, it might be wise to think about whether or not you're capable of dealing with the living organism of it all.

Tags:

advertising

blog

business

chaos theory

communication

facebook

living organism

marketing

media channel

media hack

media hacker

media hacking

newspaper

online social network

search engine

selfish gene

social media

social media automation

social media platform

twitter

youtube

Advertisers Are Doing It Wrong

Don't get too caught up in the extravagance of brilliant creative and leading edge advertising. It turns out consumers have no idea what we're talking about.

Marketing professionals often forget what we really do: our main focus it to sell a product, brand or service. It begins and ends right there. Well, according to a recent study from the Council for Research Excellence, we're not doing a very good job at it. The news item, It's Not Just Age; ¾ of Americans Have Found TV Commercials Confusing, from MediaPost's Research Brief came out a couple of hours ago and the results should surprise (no, shock!) you:

"75% of Americans have found a commercial on TV confusing. 21% often find commercials on television confusing, while 55% say that TV commercials are not very often confusing. Just 14% say they never find commercials on television confusing, and 11% do not watch commercials on TV."

How can they buy from you if they don't understand what you're selling?

Run some quick math here: 21% find the commercials often confusing and 11% do not watch commercials. That's 32%. That makes the classic John Wanamaker line, "half of my advertising works, I just don't know which half," more scientific fact than comical turn of the phrase. You may also think that because there are so many new media choices that perhaps the relevance of television advertising is not as important as it once was.

You would be wrong.

Here's another staggering stat from the Research Brief news item: "TV advertising and program promotions reach 85% of adults daily. Viewers typically see 26 advertising or promotional breaks, at an average of two minutes and 46 seconds per break, accounting for 73 minutes each day." While it's easy to get lured into the frequency of messages that people see, take a re-read of that stat: 85% of adults daily are reached through TV advertising and program promotions. While we should never compare online advertising to TV advertising (they are two very different and distinct media), think about how far and deep TV advertising still burrows.

Why can't we get it right?

What are we doing so wrong with advertising? Hasn't it evolved? Some of it could be considered art (some of it has even been made into coffee books and some of it is highlighted in the same way the Nobel Peace Prize is through major award ceremonies). We celebrate our creative prowess and we raise a glass to increased sales and growing corporate margins, but what's happening beneath the surface? While there are minimal differences when you look at the age or level of education, the problem still seems systematic. Advertisers are not being clear in what they want consumers to do.

Don't forget the role of advertising in your marketing mix.

Marketers don't like doing simple things because they feel like a simple message may mean that the work they do is simple or easy. That's not the case. Never forget that if you have an opportunity to be on someone's mind, you must clearly and definitively let them know why you are there. It reminds me of the classic Jeffrey Gitomer (author of The Sales Bible) line: "I put myself in front of people who can say 'yes' to me." Brands often forget that when they are in front of people, the idea is to get them to say "yes" to them... quickly and effectively.

What's your take? Why are consumers so confused by advertising?

Tags:

advertising

advertising awards

advertising creative

advertising frequency

advertising reach

brand

consumer

council for research excellence

jeffrey gitomer

john wanamaker

marketing

marketing mix

marketing professional

mass media

media choice

mediapost

nobel peace prize

online advertising

program promotion

research brief

television advertising

the sales bible

tv commercial