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As social media becomes more robust and more people adopt various platforms, brands appear to be increasingly interested in taking previously real-world activities and turning them into social media activities. Why talk to your customer on the phone when you can chat with them on a social platform? Why have an in-store event at only one location when you can have a virtual gathering? Why have an in-person meeting when you can solicit responses via some antiseptic community platform?

I’ll tell you why.

Because the REAL WORLD is important. Humans have evolved over a significant period of time to interact socially in certain ways. Our brains crave (and indeed grow from) interpersonal experiences. As much as we like to think that digital replications of those real world experiences are just as good (or better), they are not. Edward M. Hallowell talks about the importance of the “Human Moment.” He defines the “Human Moment” as “an authentic psychological encounter that can happen only when two people share the same physical space.”

The Human Moment is critical, and you can’t have one via Facebook.

Now, I am, of course, a huge proponent of the power of social media. The point of this little dish is not to bash social media and suggest a return to a pre-agrarian society. My point is simply that brands (and, indeed, all of us) should not lose site of the fact that adopting digital experiences at the expense of real world experiences is probably not in anyone’s best interest.

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Video is one of the most powerful media available to the modern marketer. Never before has it been so cheap and easy to put video content in front of billions of consumers. YouTube just celebrated its sixth birthday and released some (quite frankly) ludicrous stats:

• More than 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• YouTube serves more than 3 billion views-per-day

In the face of easy video production and uncanny levels of video consumption, I find myself pondering one question: why do marketers still make shitty videos?

I’ll probably write a few posts on this topic, but for now I want to leave everyone with some food for thought when considering video as a medium for your marketing efforts.

Before you make the video, do this little thought exercise:

Imagine it’s a rainy, cold Saturday afternoon and there is a marathon of your favorite TV show (Lost, House, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) You are more than happy to curl up and watch. In the middle of one of the episodes, you hear about a video online. If you wouldn’t stop watching a rerun of a show you enjoy to check out the video, THEN DON’T BOTHER MAKING IT.

99.9% of all brand videos fail this test.

Save yourself time and money. Don’t make videos that suck.

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This post has been rattling around in my brain for many months now, never quite finding its true form. It was not until yesterday that I realized my frustration in finding the appropriate expression was not due to my own cerebral impotence, but because the question posed in the title is, in fact, one of the most difficult marketing questions of our time.

If we are more connected than ever before, why has it become more difficult than ever to make a connection?

Please note that I am making use of the varied definitions of “connected.” We are more connected, in that we are more “joined”, or “linked,” but a true connection (“association; relationship”) is harder than ever to establish and maintain.

Thinking about this in the abstract is, admittedly, daunting. Can any one of us really distill the truth and patterns behind the modes, methods, and meaning of modern human communication? I don’t think so. So I focused only on myself; I took my own life and broke it into its component communicational parts.

First there are Pipes. These are the ways that messages can travel (phone, email, etc.) Second, there are Devices, the platforms that form the end of a pipe. So, phone (or voice) is a Pipe because it is a method of information transfer that can be utilized on a cell phone, landline, or computer (Skype). These days, almost every Pipe is accessible on more than one Device.

First I looked at the Pipes that bring me my information:

• Phone (“Voice” is maybe a more appropriate term)
• SMS
• IM
• Email
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• RSS Reader
• Internet Protocol (websites and such)

Then I looked at the platforms (or Devices) onto which those Pipes empty their information (three, in my case):

• Computer
• iPhone
• iPad

The results actually surprised me a bit. I am a freakishly connected person. A person wanting to contact me, send me a message, or expose me to content has nine ways to do so in near-real-time and at any given point in the day (24/7/365) I have at least one device on or near me that can receive most (if not all) of the information from those pipes.

My average day is filled with phone calls, text messages, emails, tweets, messages on social networks, and information I consume via my RSS reader. In the 18th century a message could be delivered from Paris to Antwerp (188 miles) in roughly three days. By my count, I receive roughly 900 individual messages per day (in the various forms listed above) from all over the world. The sheer magnitude of modern connectivity and communication is barely comparable to times past.

Now, I didn’t live in the 18th century, but I would venture a guess that were I to live in Antwerp and receive a letter from you (sent from Paris), I would almost certainly read it and give it my full attention. Today, however, you are lucky if your message to me gets seen, much less digested, much less appreciated.

Despite all of our fantastic methods of communication and connectivity, I am less likely to consume any individual piece of information/content than my 18th century counterpart. More to the point, it is because of our myriad methods of communication that I simply cannot consume everything. It is a paradox of our own devising. The very tools we build to facilitate human connection, in fact, make true connection all the more rare (and, I’d assert, more meaningful).

I cannot help but think of the Ouroboros, the ancient symbol of the snake eating its own tail. The snake’s head in this case is the ceaseless progress of technology that has given us all of these communication platforms. But the snake doesn’t move forward. Progress is paid for by sacrificing part of ourselves. Eventually will the loop not close completely? Will we not be so connected that we can’t connect at all? If this is the case, then I question my own use of the word “progress” in an earlier sentence.

What does this have to do with marketing (social media or otherwise)? Excellent question.

I have a theory: our race for greater and greater connection with consumers is actually having the opposite effect. Consumers are saturated. I am saturated. You are saturated. We are plugged in, connected with and without wires to the fastest, vastest, and most complete collection of information in human history. To simply maintain our sanity, we have no choice but to block out a large part of the signal. Our brains have not evolved to effectively handle the number of emails that a high-level executive receives in a given day.

The modern marketer’s solution to reaching their consumer is to employ every possible way to connect. If one Pipe is good than ten is better, right? Wrong. If you cannot make a meaningful connection with me on one medium, then trying the same failed tactic on ten media will serve only to trip my signal vs. noise filter. Henceforth, I will subconsciously file your messages/content as noise.

To give a concrete example: I was contacted earlier this year by a potential partner on LinkedIn. They did not have what I needed; they were not able to make a meaningful connection with me. Having failed on LinkedIn, they proceeded to try on other channels. Twitter was next, followed soon by phone calls and emails. Their message was the same, their value proposition unchanged. But now, instead of interacting with me in one Pipe, they were bothering me in all Pipes. They were causing a plumbing problem. So what happened? They got filtered out. Their signal no longer has any chance of reaching me. Much as Cypher in The Matrix “doesn’t even see the code anymore,” these messages pass by me without even being registered by my conscious mind.

It comes down to this—as a marketer, you must deal with two very important things:

• Connecting with your consumers
• Making a connection with your consumers

If you’ve gotten this far in the article and you think those are the same thing, then you might as well stop reading.

Making a connection has a business impact, but it is not achieved by connecting in as many ways as possible. In fact, connecting in as many ways as you can will likely preclude meaningful connection.

You must first know your consumer. Where does that consumer spend their time? From which Pipe are they most likely to receive your message/content? Once you have identified the Pipe to use, approach with your message and value proposition. If that works, then you continue to use that method of connection to deepen the relationship, always letting the consumer choose if he/she wants to expand to another Pipe. At that point, you have made a connection, perhaps one of the most rare and valuable of human interactions in our hyper-connected world. If the consumer doesn’t engage with you on the first Pipe, do not spam all their other Pipes with the same approach. You will only harm your cause.

Just because you can connect with me multiple ways doesn’t mean you should. Respect the saturated state in which we all exist and do your part to remove the snake’s tail from its mouth. Make the question posed in the title of this post a non-issue for you and your consumers and you will find yourself poised to capitalize on greater customer engagement and loyalty than has ever been seen before.

Image by NickNguyen

In business, I hear a lot of talk about “touch points.” Consumer touch points, customer touch points, even employee touch points.

Touch points are important. The more you “touch” a consumer, the deeper your brand gets embedded into them. This, however, works with both good touch points and bad ones. A bad customer service experience is still a touch point, and will leave a lasting mark in the mind of the consumer.

But I think we need to also talk about “trust points.” Rather than looking at how many opportunities we have to touch a consumer (i.e. engage with them somehow), let’s look at how many opportunities we have to deepen a consumer’s trust in us (a “trust point”).

This is something I have been thinking about lately with our own clients, but I urge you to munch on this morsel as well. In a typical week, how many trust points do you have with an average consumer? With all of the social media tools available, brands have more opportunities than ever to gain trust and keep it. Unfortunately that means brand also have more opportunities than ever to mess up and lose a consumer’s trust. But that’s for another post.

Don’t just increase touch points, increase trust points.

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If I had a nickel for every time someone brought up “brand voice” in a marketing meeting over the past year, I honestly think I’d be a millionaire. “Brand voice” is one of those concepts that’s easy to say, but hard to correctly put into practice. Over the past few months, however, it has occurred to me that a discussion about “brand voice” isn’t even the right discussion to have. We need to be talking about “brand voices”

Oh…that’s right…plural!

There has been (and still is) entirely too much emphasis on creating a massive, omnipresent Voice with which a brand communicates to all consumers at all times; as if consumers would rebel and lose faith in the absence of this Arch-Voice to guide them along the dark paths of the modern world. This is absurd, and its silliness has become even more apparent as conversational mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, Quora, YouTube, and blogs increase in importance in a brand’s communication plan.

“Why is it absurd?” You ask. It is absurd because people do not speak with one Voice. I do not speak to my family the same way I speak to my coworkers. I do not speak to my clients the way I speak to either my family or coworkers. Furthermore, I speak to my close friends in an entirely different fashion than I do to any of the aforementioned groups. I am, of course, the same person with the same accent and same linguistic substrata regardless of who I speak to, but as I speak to different groups of people, I most certainly dress-up, or dress-down, or dress-sideways my Voice by altering my argot, rate of speech, use of idioms and/or profanity, and overall tone.

You all do the same thing. Everyone does. It’s not a linguistic accident, or evidence of underlying schizophrenic tendencies, but a necessity of human communication. As Stephen Fry says in his Language Podcast (which every person on this planet should listen to), “You slip into a suit for an interview, and you dress your language up too. You can wear what you like linguistically or sartorially when you’re at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances.”

At no point in my life has this shifting of my Voice been held against me as an indication that I am somehow insincere or of flimsy character. I very much doubt that a close friend even thinks about the very different way I communicate when hanging out with him versus when we are at a dinner with a larger group of people.

This shifting of one’s voice is not a new phenomenon. I’m talking about changing our styles based on our audience, but linguists often talk about a process referred to as “code-switching,” which is the concurrent use of more than one language or language variety in conversation. Not only do people change they way they speak depending on the situation, but sometimes may even change their register, tone, lexicon, and argot in the middle of a conversation.

I bring this to your attention because this type of voice-shifting is a common occurrence in human communication. It therefore stands to reason that a similar shifting would occur in a brand’s communication. Why would a brand speak the same way on Twitter that it does on the customer service section of its website? Why would a hotel feel the need to speak the same way on its Facebook Wall as its front desk manager speaks to a guest at check in? These are fundamentally different situations with different contextual requirements and expectations.

When a brand knows who they are, they don’t have to worry so much about an Arch-Voice. Instead, they should focus on developing contextually relevant brand voices for their various communications channels. You can dress down on Facebook. You can dress down even further on Twitter. Your voice can be more refined and polished on your website where it’s a publication mechanism, not a conversational one. The number and style of your brand voices (sort of like linguistic dress codes) will be up to you, and, most likely, based on your consumers, communication channels, and product/service offerings.

If you take this approach of situation-relevant brand voices, you will make better connections with your consumers on each communication channel, and, I would bet, you will run no risk of sounding fragmented or inconsistent.

I think it’s probably safe to say that the rise of Twitter has had a direct relationship to the rise of short- (even micro-)form content. There was even a fantastic spoof video a while back about “Flutter: The New Twitter”. But the existence of Twitter didn’t create the long vs. short discussion, it merely altered our definitions of long and short. There is certainly a part of me that agrees with Tris Hussey that it is “kinda ironic that blog posts are now considered ‘long form’ content.”

But the fact of the matter is this: people should spend less time discussing which is better, and more time figuring out how to use them together to create the best possible messaging results.

The Library

When considering the use of long- and short-form content for a client, I like to think about everything in the context of the libraries of my youth (pre-internet). A library was full of books (long-form content), but there was no way to find what you were looking for without the card catalog (short-form content). Sure, you can argue that the books are more important than the card catalog because the books contain the information, but if I imagine the library at Emory University without a computerized index, then the books really aren’t very valuable because I would have no effective way to navigate the 3.4 million volumes.

To talk about whether long-form or short-form content is better is like considering the merits of a library with millions of books and no card catalog, or one with a card catalog and no books. Neither library in that case would provide value to a seeker of specific information.

The Match Made in Heaven

To create truly valuable content and messaging for your customers/consumers, you must have both forms of content. This allows discovery to take place in easily digestible ways, and true research and connection to take place in more robust environments. The nature of your company, your product/service, and your customers will inform the ratio of long- to short-form content that is most effective for you. There is no magical equation that will tell you how much to tweet, blog, make videos, etc. Regardless of your industry, though, it is important to realize that your consumers will naturally want to consume different messages in different ways and that this does not make one more or less important than the others. It all works together.

Personal Example #1:

Last week I was looking for a netbook. I wanted a quick way to narrow down my search. I needed the equivalent of a card catalog. So I went to Newegg.com (which is an amazing company, btw), pulled up the netbooks and sorted by highest rating. My experience has taught me that the Newegg community’s judgments on products can most often be taken as the word of God.

But I’ve never owned a netbook, so I wanted to dig deeper. In 15 seconds I had the #1 & #2 highest-rated netbooks on Newegg…I’d instantly narrowed my search. I then went to CNET to read in-depth reviews of each of the two netbooks and made my final decision. I used short-form content to point me to the right long-form content in order to make a decision.

Personal Example #2:

I “Like” Sony on Facebook. They are pretty heavy on the whole “talking about themselves” thing (you need to work on that, Sony), but every so often something of theirs pops up in my news feed and catches my eye.

This happened on January 13th when I saw a post by Sony that said, “Think the PlayStation Move is just for gaming? Check out the video — See what other cool things you could do with this device!” That post is 24 words—pretty damn short-form by any definition. But when I saw it in my feed, I knew I wanted to watch the video. The video itself is just over five minutes long, which I think in today’s faced-paced world counts as somewhat long-form. I could burn through 2-3 blog posts in the time I spent watching that video. So Sony used a 24-word message to get me to consume a five-minute video and together those things have piqued my interest enough that I continued on to read some long-form posts on PlayStation Move. Indeed a great example of using the forms together and not worrying about which one is more important.

In conclusion, think of the library. Look at everything from the point of view of your consumer. Provide them quick ways to focus their attention, then in-depth information and value. Realize that when short- and long-form work together, everyone wins.

In honor of ushering in another year that is sure to be bursting with technological advancements, I want to humbly submit four tips that are important–nay crucial–to success in social media marketing. My mind is filled with that scene from Varsity Blues where Jon Voight repeatedly bangs his whistle against James Van Der Beek’s helmet, intoning, “Stick to the basics, stick to the basics, stick to the basics.”

And so, some basics. But do not for one second think that because these tips are “basic” that they are not important. That is a mistake too often made by the arrogant. Is breathing (certainly one of the most basic functions of our living bodies) not important? Are the basic impulses sent from your brain telling your heart to beat not, in some ways, among the most important functions of your body?

The tips commence.

Beware of Shiny Objects:

We’ve all sat around laughing at the microsecond attention spans of our pets. There are few things as amusing as watching a dog or cat try to stay focused on one thing when you jingle a toy across the room. External stimuli appear to be the bane of any canine or feline mission.

I doubt it’s understood (or perhaps it is simply ignored) that humans often exhibit just the same manner of ADD in our own endeavors. I see this most often in the archetypal marketing executive. For an entire month, they are focused on the creation and launch of, say, the official company blog. Then, right before that project is complete, they read an article in AdAge or the Wall Street Journal about Foursquare and by Monday morning it is nearly impossible to convince said executive that they were ever even thinking about a blog.

We, like our quadrapedal counterparts, are just as susceptible to new, shiny objects that distract us from our best-laid plans. Digital marketing these days is as much an exercise in discipline as in creativity. I am reminded here of the famous English figure of speech, “Jack of all trades, master of none,” and perhaps the more fitting Spanish expression, “A todo le tiras, y a nada le pegas” (“You aim for everything, you hit nothing.”)

The fact of the matter is this: you cannot successfully execute every possible social media marketing strategy you think of. You must look at your customers, your needs, your strengths, your budget. From these data points you and your agency create the optimum social media strategy. Then you must be disciplined. Don’t throw a wrench in everything if your competitor launches a Gowalla initiative. In the immortal words of my old swim coach, “Race your own race.” To do otherwise will not result in success.

Your Greatest Asset:

You may not realize it, but your greatest social media asset is buy-in from key members of your C-suite. In my experience, nothing has such effect on the power and success of your social media strategy as the true buy-in of your company’s decision makers.

Christopher Nadherny and Dana Wade address this point well in their article on AdAge.com:

Only executive-level sponsorship will break down organizational silos, secure the appropriate resources for digital initiatives and attract experienced, digitally adept leaders in key roles, including the CMO, head of media, brand leader, chief digital officer and head of e-commerce.

Respect the Mobile Device:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely heard various “rumors” that this whole mobile phone thing is catching on. I’m betting it’ll be as big as MC Hammer. The straight dope is that consumers are walking around with devices in their pockets that are multiple orders of magnitude more powerful than all the computing power used to put a man on the freakin’ moon.

Everything about mobile devices is improving. Better battery life, improved user interface, faster data transfer speeds, slicker web browsing.

I daresay that in 2011 we will be likely to see the mobile device become the dominant computing device (by time used) for many key demographics in the U.S.A. It may be a bit overzealous to think that mobile devices will become the dominant platform for transactions, but I do not think it is a stretch that by the end of 2011, mobile devices will be the dominant platform of discovery for many Americans.

Bottom Line: if you don’t reach your consumers on the devices they use when they are discovering and making decisions, then you’re fighting an uphill battle for their attention when they’re buying.

Fear Not Your Data:

I am perpetually perplexed at peoples’ various attitudes and approaches towards analytics in social media marketing. After six months in the African bush studying this behavior, I have come to note that these attitudes all have the same prime emotional manifestation: fear/anxiety. This prime emotion stems from two roots:

1. Fear of what the analytics will show
2. Fear that the analytics aren’t perfect and therefore invalid

Neither of these fears should impede the correct and effective usage of analytics to refine your social media marketing endeavors. No analytics are perfect (in the cosmological/divine sense), but to ignore potentially useful data for fear of what it might say is absolutely asinine. Yes, you may in fact find that your “awesome twitter promotion” did not work. That may make you look bad…temporarily. But you will more than make up for it when you return to the table with analytics and data from which you have distilled key learnings that will allow your company/brand to be more effective in the future. I think that in-house marketing/PR people are too often guilty of setting aside the scientific method when it is not convenient for their egos and/or final reports.

And so ends my four tips for social media success in 2011. Basic? Perhaps. Crucial? Absolutely. Please feel free to share your tips for the upcoming year in the comments.

The background to the question is simple. We all know that the social media landscape is changing faster than most can keep up with. For the most part, early-adopting consumers tend to be the first to jump cannon-ball style into any new technological pool. Once the waters are proven safe and comfortable, other consumers join in, all eventually followed by large, lumbering brands that want to join the party. We’ve seen this with Facebook, Twitter, mobile applications, etc.

The sheer size and labyrinthine organizational structure of most large brands has pretty much prevented them from being the first to splash into any new pool. Lately, however, I have noticed a distinct increase in the speed with which many brands are jumping on various new media bandwagons.

Foursquare is one of social media platforms where I have noticed this. It seems to me that there have been brands spending significant energy on Foursquare for many months now; even though Foursquare boasts a relatively small user base compared to many other social networks.

So, again, I pose my question: Can brands adopt a new platform too early? In our personal lives we don’t really need to run a cost-benefit analysis of messing about on Gowalla. We try it and we like it or we don’t. But when companies and brands begin to “mess about” on a new platform, it costs them money (either directly or in the opportunity costs of where else that time could have been spent).

For a few months now, I have been leaning back and watching some brands enter new social spaces with no apparent plan. I want to know if this strategy is working for them. Is there significant value to being one of the first kids in the pool? Or, are these brands suffering from premature adoption (is there a pill for that?)

So here are some questions to ponder (and please discuss in the comments):

• Does a brand’s early adoption of a new technology provide the same status bump (in certain circles) as a consumer’s early adoption?
• If brands enter a new social space and don’t know what they are doing, does it hurt them, help them, or not affect them at all?
• What is the next platform/technology/network that you think brands are going to start using?

1. They get caught up in that “new car smell” and they try everything with no planning
2. They plan, but they bite off more than they can chew

Both of these issues lead to problems. At best, you find yourself with lackluster results. At worst, you fail miserably in your social media marketing endeavors.

We avoid this problem with a very simple solution: ADR. ADR stands for Awareness, Demand, and Revenue. Here’s a good ol’ fashioned Venn diagram to show you how it works.

This isn’t astrophysics, but I can tell you from experience that this diagram will help you reach greater success in your social media marketing efforts.

The Rules:

• Every social media initiative you undertake must fall into at least one of the circles
• When I say “fall into,” I don’t mean that you think your Facebook Page will drive demand, I mean that you have to be able to measure it and prove it. You have to be able to prove that your digital PR is driving awareness. You have to be able to prove that your iPhone app is driving revenue. “Thinking” that something is working doesn’t count.
• As you begin building your social media marketing campaign, you brainstorm. Every idea that comes up must be able to provably exist somewhere in the diagram.
  • If an idea falls into one circle, it’s good.
  • If an idea falls into two circles, it’s great.
  • If an idea falls into all three circles, it’s a bulls-eye
  • And if the idea doesn’t fall in any circles, IT DOESN’T GET DONE

The reason this very simple system works is that it ensures that the social media marketing campaign you undertake is made up of components that measurably affect at least one of those key marketing areas: awareness, demand, or revenue. This puts you in a fantastic position when it comes time to report on the success of your social media efforts to you client and/or boss.

Epilogue:

This past weekend I gave a talk at PodCamp Philly 2010 (#pcphilly2010), and I talked about the importance of ADR in campaign planning. I also spoke about the various metrics that can be used to measure the effect your efforts are having on awareness, demand, and revenue. The presentation led to a fantastic discussion and I want to thank all involved for making the session so interesting and dynamic. For those of you who requested the deck, I have uploaded it to Slideshare an embedded it here:

Like all social organizations, companies are full of members (departments) that take great care in marking their territory and making sure everyone knows what is their (and sometimes more importantly, not their) responsibility.

• PR departments handle the PR agency
• Marketing departments handle the Ad Agency
• E-commerce departments handle SEO/SEM

A few years ago, it was (relatively) nice and peaceful in the jungle. Then, along came this disruptive thing called social media. Social media didn’t neatly fall into anyone’s preconceived buckets, and whats more, no one had any idea whose responsibility it was to figure out if these new tools could be used for marketing.

I know firsthand that some very large companies grabbed the youngest person in their marketing department and said, “Get us on Facebook.” Think that is a tenable position in the ever-increasing field of the social web?

Now that social media marketing has settled in a little bit, a lot of the stories are coming to the surface about how social media was (and in many case still is) handled within companies. I have seen two distinct approaches:

1. New thing = scary: This approach has been the more common among larger companies. No one wants to even figure out what social media is, much less be burdened with responsibility to figure out how to make it work for marketing. Responsibility gets tossed around like a hand grenade. A few people do one thing over here, then some other people do something else over there. There is no plan, cohesion or vision of any kind. Then the company whines about how social media marketing is a bunch of fluff because they tried it and it failed.
2. Ooooooo shiny….It’s mine: In some companies, the exact opposite is true. Every department fights over who gets to “claim” social media. Everyone wants to this powerful new tool to be theirs so they can take credit for it when it works. Since no department will hand it over, a few people do one thing over here, then some other people do something else over there. There is no plan, cohesion or vision of any kind. Then the company whines about how social media marketing is a bunch of fluff because they tried it and it failed.

Did you notice that the ends of both situations were EXACTLY the same?

The fact of the matter is this. Social Media Marketing is an increasingly important component of any marketing strategy, and, just like all your other marketing elements, it needs to have a vision and strategy behind it for it to work.

Someone in your company needs to be responsible, and more likely than not, you need to hire an agency to develop the strategy that’s right for you and execute on that strategy based on trackable goals.

Without that, how can you expect to succeed?