social media Archives - Page 10 of 44 by Mark Murnahan

The Biggest Blog Failure Ever

You may be thinking I am going to write about some huge blog scandal that embarrassed a CEO, relieved somebody of their U.S. Senate seat, or made somebody in Hollywood look like a complete loser in some way. Those stories are abundant, and even quite popular, but they bore me. I’ll save that for the day when I crash my head into a speeding train and decide that there is value in luring brainless zombies to read my blog.

For the time being, I still plan to write for you business brainiacs who care more about building a business than the latest juicy gossip or fad-of-the-day.

Today, I want to discuss an even far more punishing type of blog failure that comes with either having a blog without a strategy, or not having a blog at all. First, for anybody muttering some nonsense like “Pffftt … Blogs, schmogs … who needs ’em?” you may be wise to read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog“. In any case, just hold your seat and pay attention for some eye-opening considerations.

Maybe you think a blog is just for making an online diary or to directly promote something, but take a breath and give me your attention. I want to start by pointing out some different types of blogs and their respective social media strategy.

Types of Blogs and Blog Strategies

There are obviously many different types of blogs, and each has its own strategy. I cannot list them all here, but I want to give you examples. Some of them are just for the purpose of bringing squillions of people to click on something brain-numbingly stupid to waste their time. Other blogs are designed to help brain-numbed people to believe that the Internet will give them “easy money”. We all love these blogs. I say “we all”, but the ridiculous numbers don’t lie. In fact, check this out … I brought some numbers!

Brain-Numbing (but Hilarious) Blogs

These are some very successful blogs, but many people do not even comprehend where the success is. They are ad-supported, and some sell shirts, hats, and other stuff, which is fine, but it takes a lot of visitors to make money this way. I mean a lot! If I had to guess their revenues, I would bet most of these earn their company a lot more money than your company blog. They are spending a lot more on personnel, too, because that is often what it takes when a strategy requires huge traffic numbers.

icanhascheezburger.com: As the home of “lolcats”, the “I Can Has Cheezburger” blog appeals to people’s love of cats, and it brings people back frequently to look for the latest funny stuff cats are doing. It is working like a charm, too. The website is ranked in the top 1,000 websites visited by Internet users in USA and in the top 3,000 in the world, according to alexa.com. The Internet collectively says “we love this stuff!”

failblog.org: “Fail Blog” fascinates readers around the world with the astonishing stupidity of people. General “run-of-the-mill” stupid people doing stupid things is a sure bet to help otherwise productive people to melt brain cells and burn hours. Fail Blog is ranked very similar to icanhascheezburger.com, and is a part of the same extensive network that reports more than 20 million website visitors per month. Cheezburger Network takes about 65 people and a lot of money to manage it well. If you don’t have that kind of manpower, creativity, and dollars, this strategy probably won’t work for you.

peopleofwalmart.com: How could this one possibly fail? “People of Wal Mart” lures people in by the nose and helps them stick it high in the air. Even a brief look at the People of Wal Mart website will show you how much better you are than those horrid looking creatures cruising the aisles of Wal Mart stores. This website is roughly in the top 2,000 most visited websites in USA and in the top 10,000 in the world. Yes, we really love to make fun of people … especially when we can see how clearly “better” we are than them.

It May Be Funny to You ... But Just Keep Laughing, Sucker. I Can Has Money!

Socially Numbing Blogs

People love to read about social media. Although there is no obvious correlation between wasting time reading everything you can about the latest iPhone apps or social media corporate buyouts, these blogs are taking it all the way to the bank! Don’t take this all wrong, they have some reasonably good information sometimes, but between the overt brand bias and repetitive drivel, I feel compelled to announce these with a bit of a snide slant. In any case, they are about as popular as bacon.

mashable.com: This social media giant is astonishing! Mashable is a time-sucking cult favorite of glassy-eyed people hoping to be on top of a social media wave. It commonly ranks in the top 200 most popular websites in the world. Why? Perhaps it is because the whole world wants to become a social media expert by reciting what they read at Mashable. As long as this is the case, it will be wildly popular. If you want to know which technology company is doing what, or which iPhone app is better, it is fine. Click on an advertisement while you are there … they love that!

techcrunch.com: Tech Crunch is kind of like Mashable with a bad toupee. They have a couple reasonably decent writers with good intentions of reporting on technology issues, but let’s be serious … will that make you an expert? I guess it is great if you want to know which online game company was just purchased for a billion dollars, or the new fads in cell phones. Will you really do more business if you read everything Tech Crunch reports? The answer is “probably not”, but if you want to sound impressive to a non-paying audience, you may want to retweet everything you see there, and expand upon it in your own blog. Just don’t plan on getting rich that way.

Socially Engaging Blogs

It is a very popular myth that “engagement” in a community is a key to online success. It has its high points, but it also has some pretty big downsides. Note that I did call it a myth.

Being engaging and engaged can provide amazing benefits, but without an appropriate strategy, engagement still fails miserably from a business standpoint. If you are just engaging an audience because you think it will bring success, think again. You can have a squillion buddies, but if it has no relevance to your business strategy, you can spend a lot of time being unproductive with those buddies. You may not like it, but that is the harsh truth. I can be your friend, and I may even help you to spread the word about those awesome knitting needles you are trying so hard to sell, but I only have so many friends interested in knitting.

I wrote about some engaging bloggers recently, and they provide great examples of reader engagement. These bloggers are hard-workers with a lot of talent, and they can show you some fine points. Here is the list of “9 Bloggers Who Teach the Value of a Strong Blog Community“. These blogs generally don’t need huge numbers of readers, and are often very targeted toward specific topics that attract specific readers. This is commonly a much more readily achievable type of blog strategy for individual bloggers or small companies.

Building relationships and engaging with others is very important in building an online success, but it is still not a magic success potion. Sorry pals … but somebody had to say it.

Commonalities of Failed Blogs

Back to the story line, I want to submit that there is not just one single thing that will make a blog successful. The biggest missing piece I see among unsuccessful blogs is a strategy. Popularity is great, but it takes a lot of work, and usually a lot of money to make a blog popular enough to succeed on traffic volume alone. Carefully curated content geared toward a popular topic is a way to become popular, but that can still fail if there is not a targeted and well-defined expected outcome.

I see it all the time that the first reaction of companies who don’t see great results from their blog is to give up. Instead of making the needed strategic adjustments, they assume it was a bad idea that just doesn’t work.

A truth that most people are slow to accept is that if the blog isn’t paying the bills, it is not the Internet public’s fault … it is their own. In the case of most blogs, and statistically, probably even yours, the results are a bit less than hoped for. So, do you give up, or do you shift gears?

It is easy to see common factors of successful blogs. Some of the blogs I mentioned have a sizable staff that work hard every day, others have a small staff of one. They are diverse, but each of them have some things in common. They each have a strategy, and they each understand that nothing comes from nothing. Doing “nothing” is popular, too, but that is probably not a good strategy for you.

A Competitive Strategy

A strategy that is extremely popular and competitive is to rub a genie’s lamp, keep your fingers crossed, knock on wood, pray like a nun in a whorehouse, and hope that your blog will somehow become a huge success without hard work. That is just dandy, but it is a pretty weak attempt that usually yields even weaker results.

So, in case you may wonder, what is my strategy? After all, it would be silly to write about it if I didn’t have one. I cannot tell you the whole thing, but I can at least give you enough to help get some thoughts flowing. Maybe you can pick up some ideas about your own strategy if I share some key points of my own.

Blogging is Competitive and Requires Strategy

Is it the ads? No, they barely pay for my coffee and cigarette bill. Is it the cozy notion of having a squillion friends who will send flowers when I die of starvation from blogging instead of working for a living? Well, not exactly, but you are certainly welcome to send donations to The Murnahan Memorial Fund, c/o Widow Murnahan, PO Box 4426, Topeka, KS, 66604. Widow Peggy thanks you in advance.

I take a mix of each of the above approaches, plus some other special considerations. I discovered, long ago, that when I write things that people find useful mixed with amusing (or at least not dreadfully boring), and I make good connections with people, they share it with others in their social circles. That helps me to achieve my objectives of tens of thousands of incoming website links to my work, high website traffic, and ability to rank extremely well in search engines for darn near anything I choose to target. This also helps me to establish credibility as an authority in my industry and provide irrefutable proof that I am very good at my job. This is a pretty sound strategy, overall, and it can apply to many other types of industries.

Each of these things help more people know to my work. Some of them will realize that this Murnahan character has uncommon talent and is quite good at creative marketing. A tiny few of my readers will realize they could do even better with additional professional help, and they contact me to develop their marketing strategy, and to execute the plan. That is how I get paid. That is my success. You didn’t actually think I do all of this because I’m bored, did you? Most bloggers don’t work so hard just because they have nothing to do.

The Worst Blog Failure in Summary

In concert with a previous article about reasons to blog, I also explained reasons blogs fail. I may be the only person that this amuses, but if you search Google for either of the terms I just linked to (reasons to blog and reasons blogs fail), you will find my work quite readily. That would never have happened if I didn’t write something about it, implement my strategy, and execute it better than others.

Doing nothing, or doing something without conviction is an easy path to giving up. The same holds true for anything from talking your first love out of their pants to talking your next customer out of their money.

How is your strategy coming along?

Photo Credits:
Cat in a big box by CelloPics via Flickr
Shaved Cat by Jamie (ajmexico) via Flickr
Cat on bird house by Josh (joshme17) via Flickr
Roslyn_cat by Joshin Yamada (ocean yamaha) via Flickr
Fail Cat by Tara Hunt (miss_rogue) via Flickr
Doomed by Robin Corps (robad0b) via Flickr

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Social Media Emphasizes “Pay Now, Play Later” Mentality

Have you ever heard the term “Pay now, play later”? Sure, it probably sounds familiar, right? It means that you pay your dues, and then, cash in your rewards later. Just ask a successful business person about this, or ask a parent. Most parents try to instill this mentality in their kids with something like “Do your chores, and then collect your allowance.”

This old school work ethic is a popular way that success is taught, even at the lowest levels of education, but we have a new school, now. We have a school that teaches success in overtly misleading ways.

It is astonishing how many people approach me with their marketing concerns and have this all backward, so I decided to share some thoughts with you. Not just thoughts, but experience … earned experience. I see it a lot more in small companies, but no size of company is immune, and we can witness this in Wall Street news stories every day. It is the needle that makes economic bubbles of all sizes burst.

Is Your Company a Job, a Career, or a Slush Fund?

Let’s have a glimpse at reality. You are probably not wealthy. Oh, you may even be “rich”, but I am a numbers guy, and I’m betting that you didn’t just send your butler, Charles, to bring you another chilled bottle of Dom Peringnon and a dish of beluga caviar.

The fact that you have read this far should perhaps tell us both that you have some serious moments of introspection, trying to figure out why all of the purchasing public does not understand the things you see so clearly. Your stuff is the best on the market, but yet, Charles is still just bringing you another Bud Light and some pretzels.

What in the heck is wrong with this picture? Well, here’s a tip: Charles isn’t messing it up … you are!

Yes, I know How Easy it Can Be

I am amazed and amused by how often I see business leaders rip off their own future to have some of that fun right now. They are playing now, and paying later. It is a lazy formula for disaster, but very popular.

I’m not going to claim that I am innocent. I have wasted more money than some small countries, so I know how easy it can be to rob yourself. I am trying to warn you and encourage you, so I hope you take this seriously.

People who treat their company this way are often paying quite dearly for it, with “opportunity cost“. It is worth being conscious of this, whether you are that business leader, or just a random employee behind the scenes. Either way, it can significantly screw up your future to ignore this behavior in a company.

Let’s Think About Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is the cost of all the missed opportunities that companies endure, and the examples are abundant. In simple terms, just try to add up the lost potential for referral business for every customer that goes elsewhere. Then, imagine the loss of market share over time, as their referred business sends referrals to the competition … and so on.

I see a lot of people damn near stroke out and die right in front of me when I tell them how much money they should logically be investing in their marketing. It really scares the heck out of a lot of people. Why does it scare them? Probably because, based on their limited experience, they imagine a marketing budget as risk capitol, rather than understand it as the most mathematically and scientifically sound thing they can do for their company. Many people are fantastic at their job, but if you throw them into marketing, they get ripped to pieces. They already saw failure, and they don’t need another financial bloodbath like that!

In case you missed that link I offered up a moment ago, let me tell you what Wikipedia says about opportunity cost. If you think about it, this should be what really scares companies. Brain-up for a bit … here you go:

Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the best alternative forgone. It is the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices. It is a key concept in economics. (more about opportunity cost)

When you look at it this way, it really sounds expensive to ignore the best possible alternatives, right? You bet it is! It is money that is flowing right on by and floating somebody else’s yacht while Charles gets your canoe ready for you.

How Does Social Media Add Emphasis?

Social media marketing is so frightening to some businesses that they are afraid to invest in it. Others are taking great advantage of the medium. If you look at the vast difference in potential opportunity cost between the two options, you can see how it emphasizes the loss or gain at both ends of the spectrum.

I want to be fair here, and give you an upside and a downside look at this. There is an amazing assortment of people to meet, interact with, and socialize with in the realm of social media. There are a lot of creative ways to gather market data and promote products and services using social media, as well. It can lead a company to great opportunities of all sorts. It can land you a great new customer, employee, or even a wife, three kids, and a corporation.

Social media is also very misunderstood by many, and from a marketing standpoint, a lot of people would like to imagine it as “free marketing”. Even just today, I was introduced to somebody, and I couldn’t make this up if I had just dosed myself like an under-aged hooker in a war zone … an exact quote was “The beauty of Mark is that he is the best and he’s free!”

Are you kidding me? I don’t even begin to market a company without a bare minimum … and I mean an “I owe you big time for saving my life from that charging grizzly bear” retainer fee of $5,000. It is usually a boot full of bear piss and swollen underpants full of “oh crap” more than that.

Now, although I would argue that she may have meant “free”, in the sense that I will not take money from a company unless I am confident that we can work well together and that I can provide them a huge return on investment … I’ll give her that. If she meant that somebody can get a lot of value by sucking up some of my experience like drinking free grape soda through a garden hose, that’s cool by me. She means well, and she knows that I do, too!

The cost of business is frightening and often frustrating, but only until you understand that a business is an investment. It requires tough decisions, and a good investment and reinvestment strategy. Making money takes money, and continuing to miss opportunities by seeking a cheap solution is like trying to dig your way out of a hole.

Social Media Can Destroy a Company

There, I said it … social media can destroy a company. It may not hit all the major news outlets, but I would put a good bet that it has helped more than a few into an earlier bankruptcy, or a complete failure.

It sounds crazy, right? This amazing saving grace we call the Internet could actually do harm to a company? It is very true, and it really happens. It is often a last refuge of absurd hope that setting up social media profiles will help a company out of trouble, or that this magnificent Internet can absolve a company from making good business decisions.

When I see people with starry eyes about the easy money online, it really brings back days in the early 2000’s when I was marketing for an Internet services company. It sounds a lot easier than it really was. I was marketing wholesale services to Internet access providers and web hosting companies. In the instance of my most satisfying online success story, I frequently had to lift the CEO by the ankles and shake him for every coin in his pockets to get the investment money needed to ensure his success.

A few years into the project, he could actually make better decisions about the corporation. He eventually even set his sails toward a young retirement, and after many years of paying heavily, he started playing (like a rock star). He paid himself handsomely. The corporation allocated $250,000 per year to fund his race team, $50,000 per month for “other miscellaneous business expenses”, and set him up pretty nicely. When he decided to buy a new home and asked the banker and accountant if he was spending more than he should, they literally said “If you want to buy every house on both sides the street, we will be happy to finance it for you.”

So, surely with an income in the top fraction of a percent of money earners in USA, and worldwide, that is a reasonably sensible time to stop investing in your company and soak in some significant leisure. A leader must eventually enjoy the lion’s share of the rewards someday, after all.

Oh, but there is still an “Unless Clause”, which explains that unless you are zombie-stupid, or high on arrogance, you must keep investing it well.

Damn it like mad, but the worst scenario still happened to my client. Corporate suppliers started laying off, killing services, and slaughtering his customers. He ended up losing millions in corporate equity, going back to working hard to earn a living, and teaching people like you to invest well in your company … even until the point when it nearly breaks you.

If you wonder how important it is to invest wisely today, to see a good future tomorrow, just ask that CEO about it. He has built many companies into huge successes. Best of all … well, aside from the fact that he is absolutely not free, you can reach him right here.

If you want to know how much it really takes to be successful, or how much it can hurt to stop looking ahead, you need to read the book “Living in the Storm“. If you were paying any attention at all, you will recognize the author. 😉

Photo Credit:
Playing in the Fountain by Tim Schapker via Flickr

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Is Social Media Marketing the Hardest Job?

Is Social Media Harder Than Ditch Digging?

When you think of the hardest jobs ever, you probably don’t think of social media marketing. Maybe you think that digging ditches would be harder. Maybe you will even think it through a bit more and imagine that working with terminal patients in a children’s cancer ward, or hunkering down in a fox hole and hearing enemy troops coming close would rank right up there as the hardest jobs. Oh yeah? Well, let me tell you about the job of a social media marketing consultant and strategist.

People are very selfish by nature. They don’t always think about the others around them. It is ingrained in each of us, from the very beginning, to preserve ourselves and to do what we can, to get the things we need. By default, we think of ourselves, and our own preservation, above that of others. After all, we are less equipped to help others if we cannot help ourselves first. Acting otherwise is a learned trait, and still must come with oneself in mind. Unchecked altruism would actually have devastating consequences.

This selfishness often has skepticism closely in tow. Worse yet, it is common that once people have just enough of those things they need, or fail at something enough times, a mechanism of apathy kicks in, and they stop caring. They stop seeking more for themselves, and they become complacent.

If you mix the naturally occurring selfishness, apathy, and complacence all together, you have a recipe for some really dreadful results. These results are so common that it often takes someone with specialized training and experience to clean up the mess. The best social media consultants have this training and experience.

The job of social media marketing is to crack the human code, discover human emotion, and move it!

Maybe you thought the job was to just tweet some stuff on Twitter, put your ads on Facebook, or set up your social media profiles the right way, but that is not how successful marketing is done. It is not even close.

The Job of Social Media Strategist Gets Messy

To perform the job successfully means we have to reach into the messy inside of human nature and human desires. The job includes studying how to bring others to a desired action based on an emotional response, and not just on an individual basis, but as a pack. A well targeted pack, at that.

Without defining who the customers are, understanding what they will respond to, and getting their emotions on board with your plan, it is like herding cats. You will never get what you want that way. Well, maybe what you want, if complacence has already set in, but certainly not what you could have. That brings up perhaps the worst challenge between a marketing consultant and their client, to instill the mindset that is required to want more. It means helping clients to remove their own barriers of apathy, skepticism, complacence, and the fears they create. It is especially frustrating when you know damn well they can have it, and you can deliver it, if they will just heed good advice.

I have studied a lot of psychology, and my studies have left me with little wonder why there are so many psychiatrists who are totally bonkers. Getting inside the mess that is the human mind can be very rewarding, but also very punishing. When you gain insights about why people work the way they do, it is easy to over-analyze everything from why people riot over a hockey game in Vancouver, to why apathy is easier than giving a damn. This is an arduous line of work for anybody!

Social Media Consultants Are Apathy Slayers

The job of successful social media marketing is a lot more than what people imagine it to be. It is not just the simple tasks that it may appear on the surface. It is a deeper look into apathy, and how to bring people to overcome it. This is an important part of how we deliver more happy customers to our client’s businesses.

In the job role of a social media marketing consultant, we must overcome apathy from our client’s customers, but that is the easy part. From the perspective of selling this as a service to clients, their apathy is enhanced by their skepticism, and solidified by fear. It becomes bolstered by their confusion of the difference between implementing a strategy versus wasteful tactics. That is where the line is drawn between the average social media marketing and the marketing that builds true success.

The point when you understand a market is when it can become a quest to “heal them all”, and to help them understand the little ways they are broken. It also must be done without them even realizing you are doing it. If they realize it, their skepticism may kick in and ruin even your best intentions.

Is Social Media Marketing Really So Hard?

So, how in the heck can this job of social media marketing consultant and strategist be worse than that nurse holding the dying child’s hand as she desperately wants the child to eat another bite of Jell-O? How can it be worse than the soldier with every nerve on end as his friend’s miserable body gives up the fight, right beside him? That must seem ridiculous, right?

It isn’t harder. I made that up. It does not even compare. I love my work, and I find it extremely rewarding. I must say, however, that helping people to feel something, and bringing them beyond their own apathy and skepticism is a challenge most people are thoroughly unprepared for. That is why I am hired to do the work I do.

Once you reach inside the messy mind of your market, you will find it much easier to ask them to donate to cancer research, provide support to hard working soldiers, or in this case, gain control of their own apathy and take the next step to improve their marketing efforts.

A truth that I have realized over more than two successful decades in business, performing every role from a sole proprietor, to a corporate CEO, is that success is something we demand for ourselves. I quit rubbing lamps, knocking on wood, and wishing on lucky stars many years ago when I noticed that successful business comes with mathematical projections, and also overcoming psychological obstacles. That means the ones our market imposes, but even more profoundly, the ones we place upon ourselves. That means getting to the messy insides, and that may not be the hardest job, but it is one that crushes a whole lot of dreams.

Most people who read my blog want better results for their business. It would not make much sense to be here otherwise. That is why I brought you here for this discussion. I can provide you with a lot of great free tools and thoughts to help grow your business. If you really believe in your company strongly enough, and you can put aside apathy, skepticism, and complacence, you will do much better. If you are having trouble with that, I welcome you to contact me to show what you can achieve with professional help. (Yes, even if you think you are my direct competitor.)

Until then, be sure to subscribe and keep picking up useful tips that can help you to help yourself.

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Social Media History Shows What Success is Really Made Of

History provides some excellent lessons. It frequently tells us what works, and what does not work. This goes for aircraft engineering, brain surgery, particle physics, and social media, too!

Don’t tease me for my aging view of this topic, because sometimes an old-timer may just have something useful to offer. I have been sitting here at my computer for many years longer than your average social media expert, guru, maven, evangelist, or whatever the kids are calling them these days.

I watched Yahoo rise straight out of the dirt where we planted our fax machines and ARPANET, and I used it. I used it a lot, and my friends did, too. We told people about it. Yahoo grew, and relationships flourished.

I remember the days shortly after some bright Stanford University students named Larry Page and Sergey Brinn launched a new website to help make better sense of the growing Internet. It used a sophisticated democratic process to reflect what people like. The voting happened when other people linked to your website, and that process is still used today.

There are a few people who will read this and nod with amusement and agreement, but a lot who will never imagine a scratched MP3, or their mix tape being eaten by a cassette player. If you mention 8 Track or Quadraphonic sound systems, they are lost without those clever Stanford students who had a googol-dollar idea and named it Google.

Old-timers used Google, too, and even long before “google” became a verb, we told people about it.

Whether you consider the examples of explosive growth of social networks themselves, or anything else that becomes successful online, there are some principles which always hold true. Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and even cupcakes in Topeka, Kansas all have some things in common. They have each produced something that made people want to tell others about them!

“Webmasters” and Early Online Social Media

In those early days of social media, there was actually a job status of “Webmaster”. It described somebody who had a “mastery” level understanding of the Web, including hardware, network architecture, software, programming, design, data integrity/security, and website promotion. It eventually became too much for an individual human to withstand, and those Webmasters’ duties were appropriately divided into multiple departments, and job descriptions became more specialized.

The early days of “easy online success” faded fast, and before very long, anybody with a Yahoo Geocities account or a pre-installed copy of Microsoft FrontPage Express could tag themselves as the “Webmaster”. The first generations are the people who used to actually spell things without spell check, saw programming code when they closed their eyes, and who stuck their geeky necks out to create and share the Internet as we know it.

Even back then, we had people with exceptional social media talent. They told people about great new things, they shared useful information, and they used each of the things I am about to describe. We just didn’t call it social media, yet.

The Success Tools Changed … The Rules Didn’t

Maybe you don’t think of Yahoo or Google as social networks, now that you have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Gowalla, and a squillion others, plus a squillion-squillion blogs, and an app for everything.

The way I remember it is that I met some of my best friends in Yahoo Chat Clubs, Yahoo Groups, and AOL. Yes … America Online. I met people from all around the world since back in the 1990’s, and we are still communicating on Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the evolved social networks.

Relationships Thrived When AOL Launched AOL Instant Messenger

Meeting most of my closest friends online sounded crazy to a lot of people back then. It was crazy enough that when I started dating my wife in 2000, we were afraid to tell her parents how we had met. Eleven years, three kids, and a lot of computer upgrades later, we still marvel at the community we built using social media.

If you don’t already know my online career history, my résumé certainly shows that I go way back as a “geek”. During that time, I have witnessed many online success stories. I have been very fortunate to participate in many, as well. So, let’s look at what has been historically successful, and why?

Each of the online successes you have heard of, including Amazon, eBay, YouTube, Google, Yahoo, and etcetera, each had some things in common. The same things that made them successful are the things that create success today … every day. Allow me to share these observations.

Social Media Success Factor One: Usefulness With Convenience

Usefulness and convenience have a huge place in the history of social media success.

Back in the old days, and even more profoundly today, Internet users show a very finicky nature. As the Internet grew bigger, users realized that if they don’t find exactly what they want, immediately, they can find it in just a couple clicks. So being useful, convenient, and worthy of their attention has always been critical to success.

Imagine if Google required you to jump through hoops to get to what you are looking for. They knew better, so they made it as convenient as possible to enjoy their usefulness.

It really doesn’t matter what industry you are in, or what cause you are promoting. Whether you are selling cars, cigars, or surgical supplies, you must find ways to become useful. Being useful can mean that you are helping somebody learn about a topic, learn what they need to know in order to buy something, or just helping them with a hearty laugh to get through the day.

Being useful and convenient are imperative. I often watch whole industries miss this point.

Social Media Success Factor Two: Creativity

Creativity is natural for some people, but it can also be learned and cultivated.

In each of these historic instances of success, there was somebody … one person, who had an idea. They shared the idea with somebody else. Some encountered luck that they shared their idea with the right person with the right talent, but they all started with a single spark of creativity.

The people around the initial spark put fuel on it and blew it into a flame. The importance of creativity, and cultivating your creativity, should never be underestimated.

Talent is something that grows when you express it, and talent can have a huge cost. It is not easy, but if it was easy, everybody would do it. It is worth the effort if you are committed.

There are bright ideas sparking up around the world, every day. If your spark is not the brightest, it will be much harder to build a flame around it. When that is the case, the next step becomes even more important than ever.

Creativity Has Changed Since The Hampster Dance Debut

Do you remember Hampton and The Hampsters back in the 1990’s? They grew up and became more sophisticated!

Social Media Success Factor Three: Relationships

Relationships make or break social media success. The people truly are the most important piece of the big picture. Just as it happened in the days long before our exploration into Facebook Likes and Twitter retweets, people spread things they like and believe in. It happened this way with everything from religious and political beliefs to pet rocks and friendship pins.

This does not mean you need to make pals with everybody on the Internet. Social media marketing success is not just about making friends, but relationships are extremely important. When you communicate and get to know a few people who know a few people, it adds up. Those people who build good relationships often have things in common, including common interests and common thoughts.

If people like you, over time, they may begin to trust you. That can mean they trust your advice, your insights, and your motivations.

Relationships with people dictate a lot about the success or failure of anything in social media … on line, or the old school kind that happens around boardrooms, schools, churches, and elsewhere. The people are who decide if your spark will be fed, or die out in a flash. There are a lot of great ideas which meet the burdens of usefulness and creativity, but without good relationships, they usually don’t make it very far.

Sometimes the relationship is very loose and simple. For example, I wrote this, you read it, and maybe that is as far as our relationship has come so far. Over time, that may change. Maybe you will eventually feel comfortable to share this with others with your tweet, Facebook like, or reference it in your own blog.

The best relationships are a building process that happens over time … often many years. Trust can be improved upon and implied by longevity, but nothing really trumps good direct communications. Each relationship must start somewhere, so it is worth extending your hand. As relationships evolve, treating them like the treasure they really are is hugely important if you ever hope to encounter success.

By the way … if we have a good relationship, could you please tell somebody about me? I am currently looking for a new project to use my useful, creative, and relationship building abilities. If we don’t already have this level of relationship, my hand is extended. Please introduce yourself so we can get started.

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DIY Marketing: Who is Huffing Detergent at Ichabod LaundraBar?

Ichabod Laundry Marketing Hair and Drool

I don’t mind do-it-yourself (DIY) marketing efforts when the do-it-yourselfer is earnestly trying to make an impact. I sincerely try to help them with good tips and ideas. Let’s face it, though, it is easy to laugh at the majority of novice marketing efforts.

I can drone on about terrible marketing, but so much of it has already been said. I mean, I already tried to warn people with “7 Reasons Your Marketing Sucks“, and there are many really useful articles in my blog archive.

For some people, there is simply little future of a marketing career. Reading about it, talking about it, Facebooking about it, tweeting about it, and trying their very best will simply reflect the long-standing rules of survival of the fittest.

These are the creators of marketing efforts that make room for a new spot on Darwin’s evolutionary chart. You can call me a jerk for pointing them out, but pointing out weakness and explaining a better way ultimately serves a greater purpose. Besides just that, the marketing hall of shame is often good for a laugh. I find a lot of laughable examples online, and I will share some of them again, in case you missed these earlier articles. Each of them make good points about bad marketing.

Bloomingdale’s department stores: Will Bloomingdale’s Sue Over Meta Tags and a Link?
NASCAR race teams: NASCAR Start and Park Sponsorship is Marketing Absurdity
Fisker Automotive: Fisker Automotive Fisker Karma vs. Social Media Karma
The Wizard: Hiring SEO Tip: The Wizard Mutual Fund Management Cannot Bullshit Me!
Ray Skillman: Ray Skillman, Indianapolis Car Dealer Review: Bad Social Media and SEO
Suture Express: Suture Express Executives Scramble to Fix Lies
US Airways: Is US Airways Listening to Social Media? Are You Listening?.

Today, I submit Ichabod LaundraBar.

I respect the value of polarizing an audience and not trying to make everybody happy, but apparently some people think it means to just randomly turn away business without forethought or purpose.

Enter a Dog Infested “Ichabod LaundraBar”

What do you picture when you think about your laundry? Maybe a summer breeze blowing as your clothes hang on the line at the edge of a grassy meadow? Maybe nicely folded fluffy towels dropping one upon another in a perfectly lit studio re-enactment of your laundry day bliss? I guess some laundry detergent corporations try to promote that, but let’s use some brain cells, and let’s begin today!

Those paint a beautiful picture, but can you imagine all of those nasty bugs you will find in your pockets and the airborne dirt and pollen making your shirts look like crap? As for the glamor of those fluffy towels, if that looks so compelling, I welcome you to come and fold my laundry.

Let me tell you, we have a laundry company in my town that can take those bugs and airborne filth to a whole new level! They can make the vision of clean and fluffy towels and turn them into sour and musty rags that you found crumpled up behind a washing machine.

Branding Tip: Public Does Not See it Like You Do!

Really? Can the marketing of a company truly make that significant of a difference in consumer impression? Yes, my friends, it can … and it hit me with a nasty whiff of mildew and dog poo just moments ago when I witnessed the profile photo of a laundry bar Facebook Page that I would describe as a really nasty looking mouth-breathing hell hound.

Let me skip back a step. Have you heard of a laundry bar? It is the kind of place where college students can mingle in their worst laundry day attire, but they don’t mind, because they can also buy a cheap beer! I am sure that some of us who were around before the laundry bar concept can remember setting aside a cool pair of acid washed jeans and a nice Guess shirt before heading off for our laundry day humility, but there is no need for that today. At a laundry bar, the otherwise scrutinizing eyes of those sexy people around you will be blurred with suds of another sort. Beer!

What I just cannot wrap my mind around is how a dog logically fits into that picture. If it requires a story of how that dog safely landed an airliner full of laundry executives and saved hundreds of lives after the pilot died from ring around the collar, just to understand it, then it is not good branding.

Would You Market a Laundry Bar Like This?

In my opinion, they should be running some A/B comparison testing across various demographics between items such as follows:

A.) “Laundry Sucks: You may as well have a beer and shoot some pool.”

B.) “Hot Guys Do Laundry: This is where the ladies come to watch them do it!”

Then they could measure which ad achieved the greater response rate, and among which test demographic. Then they could begin to build a customer model to help guide their other marketing efforts more efficiently. No, that probably sounds too scientifickey and complex. That kind of thing is surely only useful for big Fortune 500 companies, right? That is not for this company, so they roll with the ghetto dog theme, instead.

I’m talking about a laundry bar. Better yet, a laundry bar across the street from a university. There is surely a better way to reach potential customers!

Finding your way in marketing and knowing how to rally the customers takes more than a quick moment at the computer. It should involve a lot of steps, including data collection, forecasting, psychographic modeling, and a lot more. The best results come with big portions of marketing talent and creativity.

Maybe they think their best target demographic places little value on cleanliness, or is at least very relaxed about it. Maybe they just didn’t think about it at all. As long as that is the case, they will probably do better to stick with the party crowd, and de-emphasize promoting their full-service laundry.

Ichabod LaundraBar Marketing Department Brilliance

This brings me to a point of how DIY marketing can take a huge fundamental turn toward failure. Many companies will see themselves in a totally blurred way. They think they know how others view their brand, but they screw it all up in their creatively destructive ways. In this case, it is a traditionally sacred space of college students … a laundry bar. They are pushing for a broadened market that has some money to spend. So, they seek busy people like me to drop off my clothes to be laundered, and then pick them up later. That is great, but we have about a squillion places in town that offer laundry services. This is the only one that gives me the strong impression that my laundry may come back with more filth than when I dropped it off.

Ichabod LaundraBar Wants to Wash Your Clothes ... Woof!

I may be the minority here. I have not done the market research for this company, and I don’t know them at all. I am just an outside observer, just like anybody else who encounters them. However, it seems pretty clear to me that a smiling bartender serving a box of detergent and a mug of beer is a whole lot more appealing than promoting clean laundry with a hairy, drooling, mouth-breathing hell hound. To me, that is extremely repulsive, regardless of how cuddly, loving, sweet smelling, clean, and obedient that dog is … it is a DOG! Even to dog lovers, it still surely feels a lot less clean than their own dog’s slobber, hair, dander, and poo.

In my opinion, putting a big hairy slobbering dog on a Facebook Page promoting clean laundry makes about as much sense as a Doberman having a love affair with a Chihuahua. It not only paints a picture of absurdity, it cannot be a very productive relationship.

A Better Approach to Facebook Marketing
I wrote a nice four step plan for Facebook marketing. It covered the steps of creating a Facebook Page, customer modeling, promoting, and growing awesomeness. It does not include random placement of dog photos. Here you go:

Facebook Marketing: Pages, Customer Modeling, Promoting, and Awesomeness

Effective DIY Marketing Requires Thinking Before Doing!

Why do companies still try to do their own marketing without at least thinking before they click? I may never understand it, but I welcome even the worst marketers to subscribe and learn, before they end up with people who are not as nice as me to explain things. People may call me a bastard, a jerk, a prick, or an ass for pointing things out this way. What they will likely never notice is that my saying it is a whole lot kinder than the way others point it out. They don’t say a word about it, and they simply take their money somewhere else. In this case, somewhere more hygienic.

People who believe that simply putting their company name on Facebook is a good idea, without any marketing strategy that is defined beyond “tell more people” or “make more money” are exactly why I very seldom work with small companies. Far too many small companies are doomed to remain small, simply because they are too impatient, apathetic, or their thinking is otherwise crippled.

OK, dog lovers … go ahead and tell me how brilliant it is and why you think the dog is so damn adorable. Your comments are welcome.

UPDATE: I heard form the owner of Ichabod LaundraBar and had a nice chat. She let me know that the dog is not a resident of the laundry bar, but just a mascot.

I wish them the best, and I hope they will feel free to reach out for some free ideas anytime.

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