I recently attended a school field trip with my second grade son, and I heard social media on the school bus. As the kids boarded the bus, the sound of 40 kids filled the air. The driver gave them some “noisy time” before we hit the road, and they took full advantage of it.
Each kid had something to say, and when they felt they were not being heard, they each became louder. It really was a lot like social media in this respect. Nobody was being heard any clearer at a higher volume than when they were quiet, and the distractions made communication even less effective.
Once we were on the road, the kids screamed with excitement with each bump in the street. It was social media’s equivalent of Apple launching a new iPhone that could make an endless supply of bacon magically materialize.
Mooooooo Said the Baby CalfThe parallels between the sound of kids and social media were numerous, but one that stood out was the kid who quietly raised his hand and asked for a teacher’s attention. He was the first to get the attention.
A few of the other kids learned that simply leaning close and speaking quietly was the best way to reach their intended audience. Then, if it was something really important or interesting, the message would spread across the bus, from one row of seats to the next. It actually worked as easy as that, and it formed a great picture of how social media works.
When everybody is making noise, sometimes all it takes is a well-placed whisper to make a greater impact than screaming into the masses.
The field trip was to a farm expo, where the kids learned about where their food comes from, and the many important tasks of farming. There were hundreds of kids attending from schools all across town. It was the responsibility of the volunteers and teachers to help them enjoy the trip, learn, and then deliver each of them back to the correct school.
Kids are very social creatures, and they love to mingle. Keeping our school’s group where they belonged, and holding their attention on the course was a bit like herding cats. The best way to reach them was often just as we had seen on the bus. Simply tapping them on the shoulder, giving them a bit of friendly instruction, and encouraging others to follow their example worked exceptionally well. The Field Trip Was Fun and Educational for All
By the time we returned to the school and disembarked, I realized that even as they grow up, some of them will understand the value of a well-placed whisper, and others will just keep trying to scream across the bus.
Some of the kids joined in with existing conversations, and added to them productively. They were given opportunities to communicate and share their perspectives. Sometimes the conversation even went right where they wanted it to.
Other kids screamed to create their own conversations, but a frequent outcome was that they only added to the noise. They were not talking about things the other kids wanted, and they were a distraction to the others as they tried to force their topic.
I hope you can see the similarities, and that you will be encouraged by the lessons of these second graders. For me, it emphasized that one is never too old to learn, nor too young to teach.
What do you think? Do you see how we can all learn from a second grader?
I find that a lot of people are curious about breaking down marketing services like social media and search engine optimization to an hourly rate. I know this, because a lot of people search the Internet for pricing information and find me.
Silly me, I don’t have a standard rate sheet, but I will tell you why. I don’t know how much it will cost to perform SEO or social media marketing until I know what a company wants and needs from the services.
I understand the concern of marketing cost. After all, the reason for a company to spend money on marketing is to achieve a higher profit. This means the cost of marketing will be a factor. However, it is too common that the only set of numbers a client will clearly understand is the outgoing money, while they ignore the more important numbers such as accurate projections, goals, and increased profit.
The cost of marketing is not the same for any two projects, because the associated tasks are as different as the company itself. More importantly, marketing is something which spans the life of a company, and not just a set of tasks that are finished in a set number of hours. If you shop for marketing by seeking to buy a set of tasks, then you are essentially dictating a job, rather than letting the professional do the work they are trained to perform.
Reasons Marketing Cost Varies, and Menu Pricing Fails
Menu style pricing works great for some marketers, but it can create a huge disaster for the client. I don’t have time to list all the reasons the cost of marketing can vary widely, and you don’t have the time to read that list. I’ll give you a few points to consider.
Some companies will have well-formed projections of their market potential, and some will have already done the research to know how many people they must reach to achieve their goals. Some will have a targeted marketing strategy already prepared, and most will need help improving it. Some will have already performed A/B testing to determine their optimal conversion rate. Some will have creative ideas for their marketing, and even have talented people to help implement it.
Some companies have all of these things in place, but this is often not the case. Instead, I find that they come to me asking me to do whatever it is I do, without really even knowing what needs to be done. Then, without understanding the tasks, or reasons for them, they want a shortcut answer to “How much does it cost?“
The question of how much it will cost, without a clear idea of what is needed, or what will actually improve your return on investment is an easy way to waste money and time doing the wrong things. It is like shopping for a dentist by seeking the cheapest price for a filling while what you really need is a root canal. Worse yet, it is like telling the dentist how to perform the filling, and asking for a discount because you used less Novocaine. With that kind of thinking, should there really be any wonder why most marketing fails? Dictating Social Media Tasks is Like Telling Your Cab Driver to Swerve for Giraffes
Would You Buy a Cab Ride Priced by the Pothole?
It makes me wonder how many companies pay their building lease by the hour. What if they booked flights by the mile? Would you pay extra to fly around a storm? Would you tell the pilot which way to fly, or would you rely on the professional?
Some things just don’t sensibly calculate in the terms we think they should, or wish they would. It is not always because somebody is trying to hide an obscene profit. Many times, it is because the cost would be outrageously high to account for each item granularly. Imagine trying to account for a cab ride that includes a charge for every time the cab hits a pothole and gets a little closer to needing a new set of tires or shocks. Should stopping for traffic signals cost more to account for the brake wear, or should we burn more gas and take the longer route to avoid them?
The challenge for a lot of people to realize is that the cost of any product or service will be built into the price. The cab driver will need to receive more money for his job than what it cost him, so he sets his pricing and maintains his car to optimize his earnings. If you asked him to itemize each thing, you would have to pay him for that extra time he is doing accounting instead of driving his cab. If your driver lets you blindfold him and direct him how to drive, you are both foolish.
My point here is to express how easy it is to make mistakes when shopping for and comparing services in an unfamiliar industry. In the industry of online marketing, if you pay for somebody to account for every hour, you will likely pay a lot more for the extra accounting.
Then again, I guess I shouldn’t complain if somebody wants to pay me for the hours I lie in bed at night staring at the ceiling as I ponder how I can make them more successful tomorrow than yesterday.
Social Media is Not a Field of Dreams
My blog is often inspired by things that happen in my real life. It is easier to tell something from experience than to make things up. Sometimes those things which happen in real life make me want to scream! I am going to share a good example.
I received a call from a friend yesterday. My friend was seeking some advice about social media, so I was delighted to provide my assistance. The question created one of those moments when I want to scream, pull my hair out, and choke people. My friend wanted to know how to set an hourly price to set up social media profiles for companies.
The question was important to her, because an advertising agency she works with had come to her asking for an hourly rate to help set up client’s accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and etcetera. She was caught off guard by their request, and so she asked me for an opinion of what it is worth.
My friend is a relatively popular blogger, and avid user of social media, but she is not really in the business of social media marketing. Strangely enough, they thought she could help. Since she does not want to turn away business, I feel for her dilemma. In this case, I suggested that providing a service that creates a zero net gain, or even a loss to the client is a good reason to either further educate the client, if they are open to learning, or to walk away from the offer.
I suggested that an hourly rate for setting up social media profiles, as with any other marketing or public relations service, should have a basis in the value to the client. In this case, the value would be minuscule, if not negative, and I explained some reasons this is the case. Of course, it began with the logic that any company who needs somebody just to set up their profiles is not likely to use those profiles for any significant benefit.
Creating social media profiles has extremely low value without a strategy, and without the manpower and mindpower to use them well. If they had that manpower, and more importantly, the mindpower, they wouldn’t need my friend at all. It all got me to thinking that it is like a dog chasing a train. What will the dog do if he catches it? The dog doesn’t know, and so the dog will not get much benefit from the chase.
I want to tell you a couple reasons this is a formula for failure.
Social Media Profiles Do Not Provide Value!
I understand that this may not make perfect sense to everybody, but I am going to try to make this easy. Sure, there are a lot of people who do not know how to get their name on Facebook, or how to create a Twitter username. My mother would not have a Facebook account if I had not set it up for her. My mother is not running a business and trying to promote her name, either.
Think for a moment … If my mother was in business, would it make sense to have somebody set up her account just so she could say “I’m on Facebook and Twitter”? What good is that? Is it so that people who already know who she is could magically flood her with new business? Why would they do that? Let me tell you the truth about this … They won’t!
The value of social media comes when you actually give people a reason to chose your company over the squillion other options out there in the marketplace. If you don’t have a clear reason for people to choose you over a competitor, or to recommend you to their friends because your company is awesome, what is the point? Is it the visibility that is so enticing? I want to assure you that there are millions of visible people who are failing in business. Having a social media profile is not going to make you more successful, and is very unlikely, in itself, to make you more visible.
A lot of people obviously do not yet understand that social media profiles are not going to spew crude oil or reveal a hidden gold mine. Perhaps everybody around you says “You have to be on Facebook” or “There are people making tons of money on Twitter.” The thing they don’t tell you, and probably do not realize, is that social media is not like a Hollywood “Field of Dreams” method for easy success.
This mentality is something I really try hard to understand, and I even try to be compassionate and patient about. The challenge is that when I explain it to people with solid proof, but they still have to learn things the hard way, I end up feeling bad for not having the strength to help them. That is crazy, right? I should not feel guilty for other people’s unwillingness to believe the truth, but I still do.
What About the SEO Value of Social Media Profiles
A lot of people seem to be convinced that there will be a big SEO (search engine optimization) benefit by having a lot of social media profiles. Social media can have an amazing impact on search engine rankings, but it is not why some people think, or hope, or would ask you to believe. The benefit comes when social media is used well, and more of the right people learn about your offerings and share it across their networks and link to your website from other places, such as their blogs and websites.
I understand how the false notion can seem almost logical, because each of those social media profiles will have a link to their website, and more links are a good thing.
There really is a lot of SEO value in social media, but it takes more than just setting up unused profiles. Otherwise we would all be in a race to have the most social media accounts. Some people are, but not the wise ones … not the informed ones. If you ever actually thought that the SEO comes from unused and unknown profiles, think again! Of course, most of the people seeking to pay for such a service would never take the time to read and learn about this, but for your amusement, I offer you some articles on the matter as follows:
100 Social Media Profiles or 1,000 … How Much Do You Want to Waste?
There is a constant pipeline filled with desperate companies hoping and begging for a quick and easy fix to increasing their business’ profit. However, with each company that sets up their social media profiles and endures the failure of short-sighted thinking, comes dozens of their friends and colleagues who will learn from their failure. This means that the pipeline will eventually slow down, and people will have to start thinking before they earn.
When Marketers Sell Negative Value, They Destroy Their Own Market
There is a rule in marketing that a lot of people try to overlook, but it is to their eventual regret. Regardless of the client’s request, it is the duty of a marketing professional to be sure that the client receives more value from the relationship than its cost. This goes for advertising agencies, independent marketing consultants, and in-house marketing departments.
The rule works like this: If the client / company receives less value, in the way of increased business, than the cost of the marketing efforts, it is not sustainable! Trying to work around this rule is like rubbing a lamp and hoping that a money genie will somehow magically come and make up for the screwups.
I realize that the conventional thinking is to give the client what they ask for, and to take their money. I see that as a huge mistake, and proof of a marketer who does not adhere to the same standards they expect of their clients. Good marketing consultants help clients to maintain their marketability and to avoid taking hazardous shortcuts. If the consultant just takes the money and gives a client what they ask for without questioning it, they are not doing their job.
As long as people are set on believing the myths of social media rather than the truth, they may as well say a toast to their own failure.
My Answer to This Question
My answer, if somebody asked me how much it would cost to set up their social media profiles would be something like this:
It will cost a bare minimum of $5,000 per month, and quite easily over $25,000. It will come with a whole lot of market research, strategy, implementation, and a well-forecasted return on investment. That means it will pay you a lot more than you pay me, but that is only if I believe in your company enough to hang my reputation on it. That does not happen with companies who are resigned to believing that simply “being on social media” will increase their profit. Thank you, but no thank you.
If you run your business by placing cost above value, you are making a big mistake. Instead of pouting about how much a successful marketing campaign will cost, it is better to focus on how much it pays. Then the more important factor is how to get your hands on the money it will take to achieve the results you are after.
Related Articles:
Yes, I put these here for you to read. I think they can help to emphasize why simply setting up social media profiles without a good strategy is a waste of time and money. You already have an idea whether you can afford me or not, so don’t worry … I am not selling you anything, and my prices will not go down just because you read more of my blog. Enjoy!
I am relating this to blogs, but it can apply to many other things in life, and in business. In fact, the more I think of it, this really isn’t just about blogs at all. I hope that you can relate to this, and begin to uncover more of your bright ideas.
Do you ever have a great idea that you just have to share with the world … or at least the people who read your blog? I do, and I find myself jotting down a note about it. I am old school, so I end up with a squillion pages of notes stacked on my desk. Some of them make it to my handy dandy little notebook, and a decent number even make it to my list of draft copies here on my blog.
It is great to have a list of ideas for future articles to present to the world … or at least the people who read my blog. So, in those moments of inspiration, it is best to take some notes and remember to get back to it later. After all, it is often hard to be astonishingly brilliant on cue, and who wants to publish something that is less than “astonishingly brilliant”? Not this guy, but I still do it anyway.
Here comes the challenging part. Getting back on task with a particular topic can feel just a bit like hopping on a little pink bicycle to run to the grocery store … in your bath robe! Sure, maybe it is something different for you, but to me, it feels awkward. It is a huge challenge to resume astonishing brilliance after the initial spark fades away.
It is sometimes easy to wonder “Was that idea really all that great?” But you know, I sometimes question the same things while looking back at my blog archive. What I realized is that those sparks of inspiration add up to become the whole blog over time. The things we share in blogs, and in other areas of life and business cannot all be brilliant … Not for you, not for me, or anybody else!
This was inspired by the long list of blog article drafts stacking up in my list, but I think it can be applied to any other sort of great ideas that stack up on us. I still opt for quality over quantity, because volume of ideas is not impressive in itself. However, everybody has a different view of what is a “worthy idea”.
If you share more of your ideas, something amazing could happen. Somebody could be inspired or otherwise benefit just from the little bits of non-astonishing brilliance that you left in a pile on the corner of your desk. We are not all quite the same, and some of the stuff that you relegate to the “less-than-awesome” stack could just be worth “publishing” after all.
So then the challenge is to stop letting those semi-brilliant notes sitting in the draft phase from collecting dust. It makes me wonder how many brilliant ideas you have that are lying around collecting dust and getting shuffled out of your busy schedule?
Do you ever feel the same challenge, or is it just me?
Have you heard the latest message of doom? Did you listen to it and soak it all in? The recession we have all talked about is not over, and there are a lot of very bright people saying that it is about to get a whole lot worse. Of course, bad news travels a lot faster than good news. So we must ask, what is the good news?
If you own, manage, or work for a company with under 500 employees, please pay attention. If you want to avoid economic apocalypse, I welcome you, too.
I have some words for you that I believe you really need to hear. I may not tell it just right, but I believe very strongly in what I am going to share with you. If you are too busy to read this, my blog has a “play” button, so at least listen to the audio version.
The economy is what you make of it. I mean “you” as an individual, and I also mean “you” collectively. I know that it may seem awkward for me to call intelligent humans “pack animals”, but let’s face it … we live, work, and operate as a herd of sorts. We make good decisions in groups, and we make bad decisions in groups. Not so differently than a herd of gazelle, when we sense danger, we run. We run far, and we run fast.
The things we envision, whether it is greener pastures on the horizon, or a pride of lions sneaking up on us, each lead us to take actions as a group. Some of us lead, and some of us follow, but when the herd makes a move, it affects us all. When we adapt a defeatist mentality as a group, we quickly create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Today, we see the lions in a large scale in the stock market, and we see them on a smaller scale in our cities and small towns. It makes me question who is standing up for our herd, and to our herd, with a voice of reason, and possibility? I mean the possibility to stop running and resume peaceful grazing, even in our somewhat wilted and dangerous prairie.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Observed
Whether you like this example or you despise it, it is relevant to today’s market condition in America. An example of a self-fulfilling prophecy that recently occurred was in the ammunitions market. Americans heard a rumor that due to political unrest, potential legislative changes, and supply prices, that the cost of bullets would rise during the months of April and May 2011. What did gun owners do? We flocked to stores and bought up every bullet for every gun we own, and even guns we don’t own.
We heard the same things about gold and silver. The rush on silver has skyrocketed the price of silver to astronomical highs, while gold has become precious enough that if you have any gold fillings in your teeth, you had better sleep with your mouth closed.
These are not good signs. They are signs of people collectively fearing economic collapse, and chaos. Is this ridiculous or just nature? Actually it is a good mix of both. It is what happens when nature becomes ridiculous, but yet, it is nature, after all. So it is actually very “normal”. When it becomes completely ridiculous and out of control is when a big enough section of the human herd runs scared, and scares the whole bunch of us to run off a cliff.
Politics Schmolitics … Who Cares?
I don’t want to introduce formal political ideology here, because it is far beyond “who did this”, or “who said that”. If I talk politics, a whole lot of you will love what I have to say. A whole lot of you will hate what I have to say. Many of you will hate me just for the country I live in, or the style of my hair. Let’s face it, we each have a lot at stake, and we each have something to gain by working together.
This running of the human herd, not just in my country, but worldwide, has come to a point of complete turmoil. It is like an economic terrorism with every participant being a little bit of a terrorist in their own way.
The big question today is about how to calm the herd. How do we put things back in a comfortable place where we are not all scattering every time we hear another potential cause for alarm? This should matter above all others, because it ultimately relates to our survival, and the future of our society. That is not an alarmist speaking, but rather a number-analyzing businessman with a very good view of the business environment.
Sure, maybe some things are messed up. Maybe things will be different for a while. Should we really let speculation destroy us, or should we collectively change the speculation? I welcome your words, but don’t answer with words alone. Learn to embrace the control you have, and use it for action.
Maybe the Mayans, Hopi, I Ching, Nostradamus, and other predictions and promotions of the “2012 phenomenon” forecasting the end of humanity are spot on. If the end of the world is coming, wouldn’t it be be worse if it came and went, and the only result we saw was the loss of trust and friendship of every person around us, because we were the gazelle who didn’t stop the one beside us and say “Stop! Snap out of it! You’re scarier to the herd than the lions!” Will You Speak to the Herd, Please?
Precautions Are Fine, but Paranoia Grows Exponentially
Go ahead and buy a few non-perishable foods, buy some more gold, silver, and ammunition. Heck, these are good things to have, anyway. I have enough guns and ammunition to start my own war, and I don’t have plans to stop eating anytime soon. Everybody has a certain level of security that makes things feel “right” for them. I have been just a touch on the extreme side of caution all of my life, so that is just “normal” for me.
When precautions become so extreme, and promoted widely, that it scares the herd, it is worse for each and every one of us! Sure, there are websites currently projecting a 4,000 point drop in the stock market by Summer 2011 when corporate reports come out. There are websites speculating that the U.S. Federal Reserve will collapse, USA will come under Martial Law, and banks, utilities, grocery stores, and all other businesses will cease operations while the U.S. dollar implodes. I would not even begin to start listing all of the doomsday projections I have seen lately promoting such a “flash point” in the world’s economy. Many of them are even quite persuasive and well-researched, but is that what you really want to believe, and hasten?
If you really want to start living under those conditions, just start believing it, acting like it, and then we can collectively make that happen, without fail.
How Can You Slow the Herd?
This is where you have a chance to stop your running and make a stand. If you own a company, work for a company, or buy from a company (and we all do), you have the power of choice.
Small business makes up the lion’s share of our economy. Small businesses, then, really do make up the herd (the masses), and the lions (the biggest segment of the economy) all at once. If you reach out to just one small business to make your purchases, and you spread the word to do the same, we can collectively stop the running. If you own or manage one of those small businesses, and you spread the word to other small business people and their employees to stand up and work together, we can make a monumental impact. When these things happen, we influence business and economy on all levels.
If we all stop spending, or keep spending fearfully, as if the economy is doomed to collapse, it really will. On the other hand, if we begin using our purchasing power wisely, and grow the strength of small businesses, we have the power to slow the herd before more of them run off the cliff.
Impending Economic Apocalypse in Summary
There is a whole lot of gloom and doom, but there are also websites and people who say that we can prevent complete chaos before it hits a flash point. Yes, I mean this website, and I mean this person, and I am not alone.
You can call me crazy, and you can keep stuffing your dollars into a coffee can buried in your back yard and see how well that will work for you. Maybe you will think that I am a radical on the side of positivity, and that you really don’t hold the power that I suggested above. The fact is that if you keep neglecting small business, and if small businesses keep rolling over and letting fear win, fears will come true.
You are right if you think that you, alone, do not have that power to slow the herd, and help small business stop operating from fear. I don’t either … no, I am just a small businessman who listens to small business people every day. I have over 20 years of marketing experience, and I know how to spread the word about growing a business, but this time, I am not just talking about a single company or a small handful of clients. I am talking about standing up as a complete herd to stop the stampede of failure.
I do not know it all, but what I know, without a doubt, is that if something important is promoted in a convincing way, to enough people, an exponential growth happens. That exponential growth can happen for our benefit, or for our demise. We are the ones, each of us, who choose to grow a more productive and peaceful herd. Do You Want a More Peaceful Time in Business?
The way I see it is that we each must choose one of two outcomes, but when we chose, we should be committed to that decision. The overall choices as I view them are as follows:
A.)We can all be cautious, keep running like gazelle from the lion in the prairie, and fulfill the prophecy of an economic doomsday. This is what you can expect when small businesses continue to operate with fear, and stop making smart decisions about their future growth.
B.) We can form a pact to stop running scared and remind the others to “Stop! Snap out of it! You’re scarier to the herd than the lions!”
I cannot slow a herd with a few words from just one guy at a computer in Topeka, Kansas, USA. For that, my fellow herdsmen, I rely on you. I hope that you will see the lions of economic failure as a real hazard, but that you will also see the value of not running from doom, and begin preventing it.
If you really want disaster, just for the drama, give yourself a moment of reflection about those who will be here, and who tried our best to benefit others. If you keep running and stop trying, we will no longer share in your misery, nor appreciate your words. We are the people who speak with our deeds, and listen to yours. Yes, we are the people
That is how I see it. My name is Mark Aaron Murnahan, and I am glad we had this chance to meet. I hope that you will share this with the herd beside you, and help stop the stampede. Please add your comments here and get to know me.
How many people are in your email address list? How many friends do you have on Facebook? How many people follow you on Twitter? Don’t you think that between the bunch of you, and their friends, that we could start fixing things for all our benefit?
You may share this with the short web address: http://wb.gy/fix or by using the sharing links below.
