social networking Archives - Page 20 of 22 by Mark Murnahan

Polarize Your Audience and Stop Making Everybody Happy

Polarizing an audience does not mean that you are telling them to go away or that you do not appreciate them. When you polarize your audience, you set yourself apart from the crowd and you often gain respect. If somebody does not respect you for who you are, you probably did not need that respect anyway.

I am first going to explain what I mean by polarizing an audience, and then give you my recent example that happened with an article I wrote titled “Era of The Social Media Dubeshag”.

Stop Trying to Make Everybody Happy!

Sure, you are in business, and you want to be certain that anybody and everybody will want to buy your products or service. You want everybody to love you, I get it. Have you ever considered the downsides? Yes, the downsides can be that your biggest fans are indifferent. They are not the kind who will drag their friends, family, and complete strangers kicking and screaming to buy your brand.

Looking around the business world, you can see many very successful instances of polarizing an audience. A good example may be in Apple Computer’s decision to not support Adobe Flash Player in their iPhone and iPad products. Other examples are available in the soft drink market with Coke and Pepsi, and extreme examples occur in politics. Who wants a wishy-washy politician, anyway?

Do Facebook and Google Polarize Their Audience?

Once you know your brand, stand strong to it. I don’t mean going around and intentionally making people mad at you, but don’t be a chicken either. Just look to Facebook for an example. Facebook is not at all afraid to polarize their audience. They are in the news for it every time they make a big change, but you don’t hear them apologize for how they run their business, or the culture of their brand. Does it work for Facebook? Consider this: If Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest in the world with over 500,000,000 (yes, five hundred million) users.

Google battles against whole countries, like China and recently Italy. I don’t think I need to go into a lengthy argument of how Google polarizes their audience. They are famously polarizing, just as most massively successful brands are.

Sure, you can say that Facebook and Google do not have any real competition, but they do, and in huge order. Many people just don’t look at them as having competition because they are so extremely large and tower over their competitors. In any case, consider who you hear more polarizing stories from … Google or Dogpile?

Today’s Murnahanism: Being famous often requires the guts to be infamous. If you just want to please everybody, give up now, before you get hurt!

Pleasing Everybody Satisfies Nobody

I have said it many times that “I do not try to please everybody, and that pleases some people very much.” I strongly believe in this statement and it is with me at all times. What it means to me is that I will not waiver from who I am just to make people like me. It seems that if they do not like me, they dislike me with emphasis. Conversely, if they like me, they like me very much and they are brand-loyal. I try to leave very little room for indifference.

So What About This Dubeshag Article?

I created a new word for our chubby or less-than-Clark-Gable friends in the social media world. I called them “dubeshags”. The genesis of the word was in good humor, and there is what some would call a very funny back-story. You can read the article and judge for yourself.

It polarized an audience in a pretty big way. I was accused of all kinds of crimes of social media for writing it, such as using popular names to build popularity. I explained my reason for writing it in an addendum to the article and it included the statement as follows:

If you think I wrote it for attention, I would have left it as a draft if I didn’t want people to read it. Sure, I want it to be read. Maybe you just blog for the entertainment of your cats, but I do it for public consumption.

The moral of the story is this: Whether people loved it or hated it, the word “dubeshag” is no longer a secret. In roughly 36 hours, dubeshag went from zero listings in Google and no recognition at all to over 500 listings in Google (and later over 25,000); over 120 Digg.com diggs; a handful of votes on Mixx.com, Reddit.com, and StumbleUpon.com; was re-blogged on many blogs; has been tweeted to hundreds of thousands of Twitter users; created an interview on Social Blade; and has flattered a few of the dubeshags who were mentioned.

Who cares if it made a few people pout? Certainly not this author.

Author’s Addendum: This was a strange example, but it does show a few key things pretty clearly. It shows that original content can spread fast. It shows that with a little know-how, you can build a lot of incoming links. It shows that even if you step on a couple toes, you can still be very well branded and have an audience like the kind I mentioned … the ones who will tell a lot of people.

It is funny that since I wrote this and was away for an event at my son’s school for a couple hours, the number of listings for dubeshag on Google keeps going up. In a short time it increased to tens of thousands of pages talking about dubeshag, and linking to the article. So it should kind of make a person wonder what happens when you do that several times per day? What happens if you do it for six months, a year, or longer?

It amazes me how some people still wonder if this whole SEO and social media thing is really worth looking into or not. To those in doubt, I hope I have given you some food for thought, and I hope you will investigate further. Stick around and read some more. You may find that there is a lot more to it than you think.

Eureka Springs Tourism = Fail Arkansas Style

Eureka Springs, Arkansas is a lovely little tourist destination … blah blah FAIL!

Do they wonder why people make fun of Arkansas, or do they even hear it? Maybe they just figure people make fun of every state that way. You know, like the way people make fun of all those barefoot inbred hillbillies playing the banjo and smoking corn cob pipes over in Colorado’s tourist destinations.

Sure, for all the jokes, there is charm in Eureka Springs. Sometimes it is the kind of charm of looking at an ugly baby. You get a good laugh after the parents are out of earshot and wonder how you held it together without spewing your drink out of your nose. There is still charm to that ugly baby.

Enough Eureka Springs Jokes, This is Business

Seriously though, there really is some charm to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and I am not just saying that to avoid being buried out by the woodshed or cut up for catfish bait. I said I would stop joking, so here you have it … the real deal.

Eureka Springs, Arkansas has been a nice little tourist destination, and perhaps still even has much of its original charm … for now. Sadly, it seems that they slipped behind the eight ball as other communities have embraced their would-be tourists and are poised to take Eureka Springs right off the map given time. It appears as if this little town has elected to roll over and die instead of taking steps to regain their reputation as a tourist destination that wants visitors. It is a case of survival of the fittest, and this tired old animal seems to have given up.

To show how serious their problem is, just have a look at this Eureka Springs social media analytics report. If this was funny it would be a great submission to Fail Blog. Instead, it is a sad fact of utter social media failure and business failure. It is something I see often, and worth a good strong warning to anybody who thinks an empty Facebook Page or following a bunch of people on Twitter without any interaction is how to see benefit from social media. It is also a warning to anybody who still doubts social media’s importance to a business or to a community.

It really does matter, and it really does drive real business. Otherwise, why in the heck did Pepsi spend $20,000,000 (yes, twenty million dollars) in social media outreach instead of Super Bowl commercials? Sure, you can say that is crazy, but it was a huge success for Pepsi. Read “Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right“.

How Eureka Springs, Arkansas Tourism Failed

Is it really a failure? Yes! When you lose market share you fail, and when social media barely even knows you exist, it is a pretty good picture of your business health. This is especially true of a geographically-bound institution such as a city. They cannot just move to a better location, so instead, they count on people to come to them. This does not mean waiting for people to search Google for things to do in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It means telling people about its charm and cultivating a market of potential visitors. It means creating an awareness of the community instead of just rolling over to die. It means having the highest waving arm and saying “pick me” when somebody is looking for a nice day trip or a romantic getaway. It means generating a fan base of people who will tell all their friends how incredible the place is and that everything from the food, the people, the scenery, the shopping, and even the bed sheets at the bed and breakfast were amazing. Yes, it is just like old fashioned word of mouth, except that it spreads further, farther, faster, and with much greater longevity than the blurb from somebody at the water cooler of days past.

Here is a video I was presented with that illustrates a very troubling fact that some people seem to believe just putting something on the Internet will make people come begging to do business. It is worth a laugh.

Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism

I will tell you how Eureka Springs was recently brought to my attention. What prompted me to write this was not a recent trip or a good experience. It was a message on Facebook about a blog post. The blog addressed Eureka Springs’ failure to make people aware of an upcoming event that is important to the community. Ironically, it is the “Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism“. Yes, seriously … Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism is coming, and if left to the Internet to discover it, you might think it would be hosted by their new Governor Bill Clinton.

Do you see how nicely that spreads? A friend told some friends, who told some friends … and the story goes on. This is how social media works. This is the power of people communicating with people. This is what Eureka Springs and a sad too many hard luck stories out there wondering why all the customers disappeared should know.

I think it is both funny and sad that a word I made up only yesterday on another blog where I write has more presence in social media than an entire town that relies on tourism to pay the bills. It is sad indeed! I think Eureka Springs may need a “social media dubeshag“.

Man in Box Social Media Marketing Genius or Insanity?

A man locked in a steel box for 30 days with cameras showing his every move to the Internet public will give away 30k GBP / 50k USD if you can find him. He does not even know where he is, but he is given periodic clues to help you determine his location.

The appeal seems massive so far. Viral, even! What do you think? Is it total madness or is it creative social media marketing genius?

A part of me wants to say that he is totally nuts, but that is coming from the guy who Webcasted a live stream crossing 6,000 miles in nine days during the 25th Cannonball One Lap of America from the confines of a Corvette with huge stickers that said CopMagnet.com all over it.

I say “Bravo!” to the Man in Box. I hope he survives the 30 days with his mind intact.

View the live video stream below. Just click the play button to see what he is up to now.

Man in Box Website

For more information, visit the Man in Box Website.

Social Media Transparency Meets Business Decorum

Decorum is defined by Wikipedia as “Appropriate social behavior; propriety” or “A convention of social behavior”. Since it is a social topic, the standards of decorum are different depending on the social group. Yes, the people count, and what may seem completely innocent to you could be a great offense to another person with a different imposed expectation of decorum. It is more important than ever to be aware of the standards of decorum as it applies to your business, particularly due to the vast mingling of social media in business.

A lot of people talk about transparency in business these days. It is a really fantastic thing, but it can also backfire. I don’t just mean “backfire” like clients finding pictures of the CEO passed out with a couple of strippers. It can be a lot more subtle at times. Transparency and decorum in business does not just have to do with hiding things you want to hide and letting fly with things you want people to see about you. Transparency and business decorum meet when you present the person or company you really are, while also actually being what people expect and deserve of you.

Transparency and Business Decorum

So what about transparency? Some people think that transparency is the latest and greatest new invention, but some of us have always known the importance. Making transparency and decorum play nicely together is even more important.

When you walk into a doctor’s office, you expect to see people in scrubs and suits, behaving “properly”, but if you go to Hooters, you expect to see people wearing tight shirts and helping people get drunk. The same people can be found in either place, but there is an accelerating shift in the sense of what is proper.

I am clearly not the only person who has noticed changes in our world. What defines decorum today is not what defined it in times past. We see examples of business decorum changing all around us. Some of it we like, and some of it we despise. I like wearing blue jeans, and I don’t give a damn what my clients or peers wear. You see, there goes my decorum in a big wreck, but it matches who I am and also my readers’ expectation, which shows transparency. I am a creative geek who thinks stuff up. I am not the guy greeting people at a grand ball.

Business Decorum and Attire Are Not the Same Thing!

Business decorum and attire are not entirely the same thing, although attire is a part of decorum. Since it is an easy way to visualize, I’ll go with it. I am reminded of a funny thing I saw while I was speaking to a group of marketers a couple months ago. It was a great event, with over twenty speakers on different marketing topics. At the speaker’s reception afterward, I visited with Jamie Turner of Bennett Kuhn Varner, Inc.

Jamie gave a great talk about marketing. While we bellied up to the bar and prepared to answer questions about our respective talks, I joked with him that it looked like we were at a coroner’s convention. Everybody was wearing a dark suit, while Jaime and I were the only guys with enough good reasons to come in blue jeans and sport coats. We were the best dressed guys in the whole place by a long shot! Everybody else looked like the guy you saw when your sweet aunt Crystal passed away. Did our blue jeans and more relaxed attire make us less desirable to clients? If so, I suspect either of us would thumb our nose at a pretentious client without ability or sense to read into the numbers anyway. The real mystery is in who could see the market, and who grasped the shift in expected decorum. My bet is that if you walked into the same group of people in another city, you would see a different outfit on both attendees and speakers. We were on the front of the shift for Midwest USA.

That same night, I also saw attendees doing things that were so entirely opposite of the propriety their business suits suggest that I went back to my room and called my wife to remind her how much I love her. OK, here goes my decorum flying off the hook again when I say “Who is proper now, bitches?”

Decorum Guidelines Are Blurry Lines

I work in a very diverse group, in many cultures, and with many varying expectations. So, in my case, my clients know that I can be as prepared in marketing a medical supply manufacturer to hospitals as I am marketing burritos and beer bongs. That is just me. I am a quintessential marketing guy. I do what is best for my clients, while maintaining their transparency and business decorum at the same time. It is like magic how it all comes together, and I love this about my job. I am expected to be a little quirky and occasionally pop off with something unexpected and sound like I suffer from Tourette syndrome (shit). Yes, I am expected to be unexpected, but for many people and companies I would suggest: “Do not follow my example!”

Something I find astonishing is how often a client will be just as quirky and unexpected as me and do something totally stupid in their marketing. I can do it … I am supposed to! Unrestrained expectations of what works for one company automatically working for your company is like testing cyanide to see if it works. It is best to send it to a lab.

In reality, we are all collectively the ones who make decorum exactly what it is. It is a social standard that is bestowed upon us by those around us, and carried on by each of us. When there is a great disparity between your sense of decorum and that which people expect of you in business, you have the making of a marketing failure … or success. Knowing which way to go is where the lines are very blurry, and if you are not up to proper research, you could end up on the wrong side of the cyanide test.

Business Decorum Changes Over Time

Standards change, as they always have over time. It may happen too slowly to notice the change until you see extreme instances. The video below gives examples from a supreme court nomination floundering for smoking marijuana, President Clinton being teased, and then the rush for politicians to talk about their marijuana use. Today USA has a president who spoke to a group of high school kids about getting high and doing blow. That is change! It should also speak to the importance of transparency and decorum working together. Transparency for transparency alone can be very off-putting to many people.

The standards of decorum for one person may be completely repulsive to another. With enough exposure to a change of standards, the repulsion weakens, and we take a “since we can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach. Considering this from a business standpoint, it can take a whole lot of branding to overcome and win people over. Sometimes this works, but sometimes you are better off to stop trying to beat your market and join them. First, you should know who you are, who they are, and what is proper in your instance.

Tell me what you think about the marriage of transparency and business decorum. That is why my blog has a comments form.

Social People in an Anti-Social World

Should social media be renamed to “friendship media” or does that kill the business?

There is something really bitchy about social media. People tell people how to “do it right” and then a bunch of people hash it out and poke fun at the ones who “screw it up”. It is all just so confusing. Am I supposed to be social or not? What is social? Does social equal personal? Is business anti-personal? Get your thoughts moving and join this discussion of social media.

Here are three important questions to consider about business and personal interactions as they relate to social media.

Are you less likely to buy from somebody who is too personal? If this is the case, then why do so many businesses using social media keep believing it when others insist that social media is strictly friendship media?
Are you less likely to buy from somebody who is too “business”? If this is the case, then why do people feel awkward about doing business with friends?
What is the tipping point, and how do you view the balance?

Social Does Not Mean Anti-Business!

I hear a lot of people talk about social media as if “social” means that it should not include anything relating to business. That is quite laughable, really. If it has to do with how you achieve your food supply, I would say that it is pretty downright personal. Perhaps a few too many people do not understand the fact that social, although it applies in many ways, is not the opposite of business. Social means “relating to human society and its members” and that includes many things. That does not mean it is all a party and that we do it just for friendship. Yes, it even includes business. So how do we relate this?

Having something to offer in exchange for something is not a horrible thing. Kids in a lunchroom learn bartering early by trading a cookie for pudding or a ham sandwich for peanut butter and jelly. Sure, there may be conflict from time to time, but just because it includes items does not mean the interaction is less personal.

I witnessed an example of this in my own home just moments ago. We had a guest overnight. It was my son’s lifelong friend, Jacob. Our families are friends. At about 10:30 this morning when his mother was picking him up, she told my wife that she needs a birthday cake for Jacob’s brother, Caleb. Caleb is turning four. He wants a Star Wars cake.

What is the Relationship and Where Are the Boundaries?

My wife is a fantastic baker. I mean, her cakes are really something special, and I would put her up against any pastry chef for the best tasting and beautiful cakes. Our friends have known her talent for a long time, and always loved it when she brings a dish to the party.

When Rebecca asked her to make a cake for Caleb’s birthday party, does it seem odd that Peggy quoted her forty dollars? Does that seem impersonal? Does the tone change when I tell you that my wife and I own a cakes and confections company. Did something change here? Are we any less personal? Are we still friends, or did we just switch hats and become all-business?

Do We Change Hats to Do Business?

I guess for some people it can seem uncomfortable to do business with friends. The strange flip side of this is the fact people want to do business with people they like and trust. Where are the boundaries and how cynical is it to believe that we should not be friends because we do business or do business because we are friends?

Some people would see it that Rebecca should have gone to the grocery store for a cake. After all, if Peggy screws up the Star Wars cake, Rebecca will probably hate her forever. Strangely, Rebecca would probably not hate the grocery store for screwing up the cake, but with a friend, there is a different expectation.

Maybe she only came to Peggy because she feels obligated. Maybe not. Maybe she would have asked Peggy to do it even if she was not in the business.

The Relationship of Friends and Business

This is a question and not a dissertation. What do you believe about the boundaries of friendship and business? You want to know, like, and trust the people you do business with, right? Is there a level of closeness of the relationship that takes you out of the market for that person’s services?

Consider the three questions I posed earlier and tell me what you think.