Scenario #1 MegaCo.

An international consumer goods company is looking to explore new ways to market it’s product in a tough economy. They learn about this new social media/Wed 2.0 thing and, even though the people in legal are massively freaked out about employees running around, talking smack and causing potential PR debacles, they give the okay for marketing to “explore” social media.

So, MegaCo goes out to it’s ad agencies and even a few “specialists” to get the 411. And, of course, the big questions they keep circling back to is the very same question nobody who wants to take their money can answer in a remotely convincing way…”what’s the ROI on social media?”

The agency and other consultants come up with all sorts of valid points about building community, opening lines of communication, improving customer feedback and even mining social media for product research. All good stuff, but still, MegaCo is having a tough time biting the social media bullet. So, rather than ramp up something real, they allocate a teensy bit of money to play around because who knows, maybe it’ll work. And, besides, GiantMegaCo is doing it, so they don’t want to be late to the party…if there is a party.

Maybe someday there’ll be an ROI connection, but as of right now everyone’s telling them, “you just can’t measure it like that.”

Scenario #2 – Mountainbike Madness

Mountabike Madness is a local bike shop run by two college friends, Mario and Eva. It’s a real business with a great product and it’s growing nicely. But they’re always interested in finding new ways to get customers to the shop. Along with trying out street teams, the local pennysaver, mailings, sandwich boards and a bunch of other marketing ideas. Eva gets the idea to start to play around with twitter.

Actually, she already has a personal account. So does Mario, so they’re familiar with the nature of conversation in the communities, because they’re already regular users. So, they set up a Mountainbike Madness account and use Mario as the name associated with the account.

They use twitter’s search function and a number of other tools twice a day to find people in their neighborhood who either have some variation of the word bike in their profile or their tweets. They broaden it out to various forms of outdoor activities, too. They see what these potentially likeminded folks talking about, then follow them and join in the conversations they are having.

They also start to share all sorts of funny, quirky, edgy quotes, ideas, and stories. And, here and there, they throw out tweets about instant giveaways for the first person to tweet their favorite rider, grip or trail. They do daily or weekly specials on bikes, parts, clothing and other schwag. They share cool tips and riding strategies and aren’t afraid to show their personalities. They announce weekly Rave Rides where everyone has 4 hours to show at a particular trailhead for an epic group ride. And, once a month, they do a one-day 20% off twitter-only sale from the back of a truck and you have to be following them to know where it will be.

After 3 months, they can track twitter related sales to an average of 30% of daily sales and total sales have gone up 20% since starting on twitter. Not only is it great for the community, for customer service…they’re using social media to put money in the bank.

That all elusive ROI that MegaCo will likely never be able to quantify is trackable income for Mountainbike Madness.

The truth about social media and ROI…

Right now, small businesses have a huge advantage over big business in actually being able to convert social media conversations into dollars and cents. Here’s why:

Small business:

• Can be less censored – They don’t have to wade through layers of social media do/don’t policy and legal sign-off on every tweet, update, post or comment. And, in social media, people respond to real and spontaneous. So, it’s much easier to build the conversation
• Can have a personality – All too often, the voice of the company that filters through to social media is almost entirely devoid of personality. People connect with color, not gray (unless you live in NYC).
• Only needs to connect with hundreds or a few thousand, not hundreds of thousands or millions – If a small business connects with a few thousand people, that could make a huge dent in it’s business, making it worth the effort. A large business may need to connect with millions to feel the same impact and that may well not be worth the effort from an ROI standpoint
• Can tap into local energy, events, traditions – By having a shared experience based on the local community, it’s a lot easier for people to bond with the voice of that business
• Can implement instantly and tailor highly relevant offers – When it’s one person behind the mic, it’s way easier to carry on a real, spontaneous conversation and also create an ongoing series of highly local, highly-relevant and time-sensitive offers that will convert followers into customers.

So, if you’re a small business or solopreneur Career Renegade and you’ve been wondering about the value of this wacky thing called social media, fact is you’ve got a huge advantage over large corporations right now. You have the ability to actually convert time spent on social media into money in the bank. And, have a lot of fun doing it.

So, what do YOU think?

Anyone have a story like Mountainbike Madness to share?

Let’s discuss…

The dreaded “SEO,” a/k/a Search Engine Optimization.

It’s the stuff of legends, secret tactics that make google want to round home with your blog every time you publish a post. Words, phrases and settings that send you barreling to the top of the first page on google for every keyword you want to be associated with and direct a mad torrent of organic traffic your way. Black hat, white hat, pink hat, bling cat. It’s hugely powerful…but so damn confusing.

That is, until now. Remarkablogger to the rescue!

Last week, my friend and colleague in blogging, Michael Martine released his WordPress SEO Secrets program. As the title implies, it’s for bloggers who use the WordPress platform, largely because that platform supports one of the most powerful and popular SEO plug-ins, All-in-One SEO.

Now I’ve had that plug-in installed for quite some time, but never used it, because I never really got how it works. And also, because I love creating headline and content for humans, not for SEO bots. Which is why Martine’s training is so cool. It actually showed me how to be able to keep cool, people-power headlines and content, while making straightforward tweaks “behind the scenes” and finally using the All-in-One SEO plug-in to turbocharge my SEO efforts at the same time. And, that’s pretty sweet.

SEO and human interest can finally live in harmony!

The other thing I like about WordPress SEO Secrets is that it’s highly focused on a limited number of tactics, kind of taking the Pareto’s law approach by giving the 20% of the stuff that yields 80% of the results. And, because a ton of people are visual learner, Michael’s included a series of videos that literally walk you through how to set up the major things he talks about in the book.

It’s simple SEO for WordPress and simple makes me happy.

There’s a bunch of other stuff thrown in, mp3s, other ebooks and stuff, but I got what I needed from the core of the training.

So, is this for you?

If you already have every post on your WordPress blog nailing front page positions on google for your keywords, it’s probably not for you. It’ll be too basic. And, if you’re an absolute newbie to SEO and barely know what WordPress is, it’s great info, but you may need to stop here and there to look up a few definitions. There is a fair bit of jargon in the written materials.

Still that should not dissuade you, because within Martine’s course, you’ll discover user-friendly and highly specific WordPress SEO information that, implemented religiously, could have a huge impact on your blog’s organic search traffic. I’ll be going back through my archives to do what he says and reporting back in a month or two on the results for both blogs.

In the end, WordPress SEO Secrets gets a solid thumbs up from me…

Now, who wants to help me go back through every post in my archives and tweak them to quadruple my traffic, lol!

[PS - I am not an affiliate for this program]

The first is from New orleans’ Naked Pizza, a neighborhood pizza place that reported 20% of revenue coming directly from twitter with spikes as high as 69% on days where they hit twitter with a serious campaign. Here’s a sample from their tweet-stream…

Notice a few things:

• One, it’s a person, not a robot.
• Two, that person is ENGAGING in conversations nonstop.
• Three, they’re not just pimping pizza.
• Four, they have a personality.
• Five, every once in a while, they sneak in a playful promo that revolved around the community.

Fun stuff. Then, when you click on over to their website, one of the first things you notice is it’s built to proactively built community through social media, with Facebook and twitter buttons and the Share This app above the fold.

Next up, Rascal House Pizza. Dunno what their percentage of pizza sales from twitter is, but I’m guessing it’s not even enough to measure.

Here’s a sampling from their twitter stream…

This same stream is repeated with little variation all day, every day. It’s about as spammy as it gets. It’s using its twitter accounts not to build community, but to hock what appear to be completely unrelated affiliate products (FYI – the iPhone offer they promote all day doesn’t even connect to a live link). And, scrolling back 10 days, there was way not a single “@.” Translation – All spam, no engagement!

And, everyone knows spam doesn’t taste good on pizza.

Similarly, when you click on over to their website, it’s devoid of any type of social media driven community building efforts.

Funny thing is, Rascal House is actually a much larger franchise operation that can afford to invest way more in doing it right in 2.o. And, they make in fact make great pizza and have great service. But, if that’s true, then there’s a massive disconnect between the message they’re sending through social media and the product or service they’re giving customers, face to face.

Where does this leave us?

If you’re a local biz, before writing off social media as just another time-wasting fad, you might be better advised to embrace it and figure out how to turn engagement into income. And, when you do, take a bit of time to learn how to do it right. Because if you don’t…your competition will.

Thoughts?

As has been the case with other recent questions like this, the answers were enlightening, especially, because the question was posed via social media, but a number of folks didn’t choose social media as their marketing tool of choice, especially those who answered on Facebook.

So, without further ado, here’s a sampling of the answers…

Always interesting! Now, I’m curious. What about you?

What single marketing channel would you choose if you you could only use ONE to market yourself or your business for the next 12 months?

Share your thoughts and choices in the comments…

Nothing too serious, but it’s a still a serious part of the body to be operating on (and, yes, I’m still weaning myself off the air-cast on my leg, it’s been a hell of a few months). So, I did my research and found the biggest, best, fanciest specialist in NYC. And, by the way, just like every other big, bad, best specialist in NYC, he doesn’t take insurance and my insurance doesn’t cover out of network. Translation, I ended up paying many thousands of dollars out of my own pocket for a 1-hour operation.

I shared this with a friend who responded, “man, that’s a nice hourly rate.”

But, here’s the thing. The reason I was happy to pay every cent of it was because I wasn’t paying for his “time in the O.R.” I was paying to be as far as possible away from the guy who went first. I was paying for his 25 years perfecting his skills, thousands of patients, tens of thousands of hours and tons of newbie mistakes avoided.

I was, quite simply, paying not to be first.

And, there’s a lesson in that. It applies to pretty much every solo practice Career Renegade. All too often, people are tempted to charge an “hourly” rate for their services, because that’s what the rest of the market does.

I never charge an hourly rate.

Every once in a while, though, someone tries to reverse engineer it out of my project fees or retainer and remarks about what it breaks down to on an hourly basis. But, just like my super-hero doc, you’re not paying me for my time talking, writing or strategizing. That’s only a piece of the puzzle.

Let’s say I charge $10,000 to write a sales letter. Maybe it takes me anywhere from 5 to 25 hours to write. Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of money if you base it purely on “writing time.”

But, you’re not paying for the time it takes me to write it.

You’re paying for the thousands of hours I’ve spent studying the top copywriters, working with them, diving deep into the psychology and linguistics of persuasion. You’re paying to be as far away from the inevitable early disasters as possible. You’re paying the value of the revenue generating asset I am creating for your business. But, most of all…

You’re paying not to be first.

And, at least when I’m the client, the customer…or the patient, I’m going to pay to be as far away from first as my bank account can get me.

As always, just thinking out loud. What do you think?

Sometime last year, a friend, established author but newbie blogger, handed me a book and said, “hey, read this and, if you dig it, write about it.” The book was on topic, I liked it and, shortly after it’s release, I posted about it.

The next day, I got an e-mail. It was from the “blog tour consultant” my friend’s publisher paid many thousands of dollars to run her blog tour (I always hated that phrase).

“Dear Blogger” it began. And, that was the most compelling line. There was no rapport building, no interest in me or what I write about, no evidence that she’d ever read a word I’d written. In fact, I’d never heard of her before and the “to” field in the e-mail showed a group name.

Then, this wonderfully cozy e-mail asked me to post a review of the book…that I’d just reviewed on my blog the day before!

So, I called my friend, peeved at the breach of respect and blogosphere etiquette on the part of the “trained professional” that was pushing the book and concerned about the reputation of my friend. I told her this person was breaking pretty much every rule in the “how to pitch bloggers” manual and I’ve seen other bloggers publicly trash people for less. She freaked out and called the publisher asking to see who’d been solicited, got a list and passed it on to me.

The good news was that there was probably not much damage done.

The bad news was that the damage was easily containable because besides me (who was apparently added to the list last minute because I was “friends & family”) the 200 or so blogs on the consultant’s broadcast list collectively had about 1,000 visits a month…together

And, this is what the publisher was paying thousands of dollars for?

As I’ve tweeted recently, the smartest people I know in social media readily admit they’re making it up as they go 90% of the time. And, they’re the ones who are leading the pack, pushing paradigms, testing ideas and reporting results.

But, while these social media visionaries don’t yet know exactly what does and doesn’t “work,” they have been in the game long enough to (a) know the ethic, hidden rules and culture and (b) have developed credibility, strong relationships and (c) become known as people who are genuinely invested in their communities and who give way more than they get.

They also know that, even though brands are flooding onto twitter and the blogosphere, conversations still happen on a person to person basis. So, I know, for example, that when I tweet with @JetBlue, I’m really talking to Morgan Johnston, whose day job happens to be Community Manager for JetBlue (FYI – Here’s the now epic post that led to that discovery). And, even if I didn’t know that, I do know it’s a person, talking like a person, helping people out.

Why does all this matter?

Because, social media is vastly more effective as a business tool when you focus on the humanity behind the brand and allow others to identify with that humanity then let the good will inure to the broader brand.

Which creates a problem when companies try to outsource social media “marketing” to people and companies who not only don’t get social media…but are largely outside the brand.

Sure, my friend’s publisher was smart enough to know they needed help sharing her book across social media, but not well versed enough to get the rules of the game or the lack of qualifications of the person suited to not only accomplish the marketing objective…but do no harm as well.

And, even if they had known the rules, the question remains…

Is it even possible to hire a blog/social media tour consultant or agency to do the job that some 400 crazed tweeting employees at Zappos, including CEO, Tony Hsieh himself, do so well in-house?

My gut says…probably not. Because social media just doesn’t work that way.

It’s about developing relationships around shared interests and values over time.

Think about it. If a blog tour or social media book marketing consultant represents books across all genres, that’d mean they’d have to spend time establishing relationships with tens of thousands of bloggers, twitter users and Facebook friends across hundreds of genres in order to earn the respect, eyeballs and eardrums needed to comfortably reach out to the right people at the right time to help promote a client’s book.

And, the way you do that is by joining in the conversations being had by those thousands of bloggers and twitter followers in a meaningful way and add value to the hundreds of topics that are most relevant to them.

That’s an impossible task. Can’t be done by one person.

In fact, the only way I can think of pulling this off, as a consultant or agency, is to either:

• Only represent books limited to a small number of genres you have a sincere interest in and spend your time developing real relationships in social media around those topic, so that you build credibility, respect and relationships with a highly targeted group of people. Then, if you reach out to them with a book you think they’d like, you can do it the right way…and they’ll be far more open to it. Or…
• Assemble a team of people devoted to different genres and niches and have each person on the team handle only books and clients that revolve around that genre.

Outsourced social media book marketing is just one example, but it leaves me with this nagging question…

While it may be possible to hire really smart, insanely innovative people like Chris Brogan, Laura Fitton, Joel Comm, Jim Kukral, Mari Smith, Liz Strauss, Shama Hyder or any number of agencies to help develop your social media strategy, can you also outsource the execution side of the equation without:

1. Getting royally burned or
2. Significantly gutting what makes social media so powerful in the first place?

Put another way…

Is it possible to effectively outsource, leverage and scale “Other Peoples’ Social Media Juice?”

Or, is the medium so fundamentally different from traditional channels that the conversation, relationship and value-building effort needs to originate and be sustained from within the company or person?

Because, if the latter is true, this presents two huge challenges. One, for companies looking to largely hand over their social media efforts to agencies the way they’ve done with their traditional marketing and advertising. And, two, for agencies and consultants who would kill to be able to say “sure, just pay us and we’ll run with it,” but, in truth, can’t deliver the same comprehensive solution they’ve served up to date.

I honestly don’t know the answer right now.

But, my my instincts are leaning me heavily toward the need to keep it real and personal when it comes to execution.

As always, just thinking out loud?

What do you think?

Let’s discuss…

Here’s how it starts out…

Yes, social media calls for “SEO, PR and content worth remembering,” as Edward wrote here yesterday.  But in social media, content worth remembering may only get you to second base.  And clients aren’t paying for doubles.  Instead, if you really want effective marketing and ROI, social media content needs to be worthy of evangelizing.  And that’s a whole different threshold.

Click here to read the rest over on his blog and, if your into marketing, advertising and social media, poke around a bit, too.