Social media marketing: no fit for corporations
The guru’s and enthusiasts of Social Media Marketing have made us believe that it is the next Holy Grail. However it isn’t as it is a chaos.

The demise of social media marketing is probably due to social media itself as it is a chaos:
- Too complex to streamline
- Too complex to put into simple rules that can be executed by employees of a company
- Moreover it can’t be censored or controlled which will frighten management

Social Media Marketing just acts like an uncontrollable child in an office environment.

Social media is the marketing ADHD child
Social Media marketing can best be compared with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder):

- Impulsiveness
- Participants react quickly without thinking
- Hyperactivity
- Continuous activity
- Constantly in motion
-  Inattention: as the attention of the contributors can turn completely into another direction.
- Changing focus overnight
- Talk (communicating) nonstop
- Difficulty doing quiet tasks
- Not following instructions
- Blurt out inappropriate comments
- Show their emotions without restraint
- Act without regard for consequences
- Have difficulty waiting for things they want

All these characteristics are not fitting company structures and rules which makes Social Media Marketing hard to use under a corporate structure.
The reactions and rules imposed by corporate governance hinder the success, the flow, the uptake and the control of Social Media marketing even more.

No prescription pills for ADHD social media
If you still would consider creating, implementing and executing a Social Media marketing campaign then beware that there are no prescription pills to be taken to ease the problems.
You just have to swallow the problems caused by the clash of your company and the social media.

How’s your ADHD marketing child doing ?

Social media marketing has been praised and hyped as the new channel for communicating and interacting with your prospects and customers.

The marketer uses bots
On Twitter a large part of the activity is by bots.
On many social website comments are posted by bots.
Using automated distribution and replication services like Twitterfeed, TweetMeme or TweetAdder your content from your blog or press releases can be distributed to many of your accounts on Twitter and Facebook.
Other services exist to invade the social Internet media with lots of content which is in most cases duplicated content.

The leads and customers using bots
At the other side there are several auto following services like Twollow for Twitter or scripts or services (FriendAdder) for auto-adding Facebook friends are available. People don’t really follow or are related or involved with you, but they follow you or become your friend automatically.

Seems on both sides there are bots !

Social media marketing by bots to bots
So what’s the point or the benefit of investing time, effort and money in social media marketing as your bots are addressing an audience of bots?

Instead of having an open communication with leads and customers by reaching out to them, there are conversations from bots to bots.
There is a rise in automated conversations and connections through social network channels but these conversations don’t necessarily involve human beings.

These bots will not listen and will certainly not buy your products or services.

Is social media marketing doomed due to the bots ?

Facebook becomes mainstream

Facebook is the leader of social networking space in numbers and popularity as it just reached half a billion users according to Mark Zuckerberg.
However there is a first sign of decay: according to this report on the latest study from eMarketer many teens are moving on from Facebook as they have lost interest or find it boring.

Although Facebook has reached unprecedented highs in number of users the future could be under siege as their original population is starting to leave.
This seems somewhat logical: Facebook has become mainstream:
- Mentions on broadcast channels: TV and radio
- Their parents are on Facebook
- The movie The social network.
Hence Facebook is no longer cool.

If this decline of youngster proves to be true, then in the long run the popularity of Facebook will start to decrease.

The Innovation adoption curve

This has happened many times before with many products and services as defined by Everett M. Rogers in his innovation adoption curve.
Examples on the Internet: eBay, MySpace,…
Examples in real life: DVD players, iPod, Plasma TV sets,…
First the innovators (2.5% of the population) leave before the thing becomes widely used or spread leave as they are always moving on to the next thing searching new experiences at whatever risk or cost.
Then by the time a product or service becomes mainstream and commerce (advertising – merchandising) takes over from the original initiative the early adopters (13.5%) quit.

They are soon followed by the early majority (34%) as they have noticed the early adopters are already onto something new and different.

Of course it will take long before the late majority (34%) and the laggards (16%) will leave.

Will this happen with Facebook? Probably but it can take log as the Internet spans the entire world.
Can this happen with your products ? Probably but at a different (slower) pace as you are in business to business. Still monitor your early adopters as they will indicate the first sign of beginning of the end.

On the other hand there is the Valley of Mediocre between the Land of Free and Premium Highland which flips the Bell curve of Rogers.

Any idea where your products are on the innovation adoption curve ?

Product launch
If you launch a new product or service the conventional way using press releases, advertising and even post it on Twitter and Facebook your product will hardly get noticed as there are so many contenders in the attention competition. There is nothing to write about: your product just does what it promised to do in your launch campaign.
- A new faultless product or service is boring to write about.
Moreover praising a product or service feels like bribery from the masters of the blogging sphere.

Launching with bugs for attention
The better approach is to launch your product with several obvious bugs or problems using the conventional launch methods and present it to bloggers and reviewers.
These bugs or problems will give the social media masters something to write about together with the basic explication and benefits of your service.
- A buggy product or service is great to write about.
People prefer to complain over praising.

All this content, even negative content, created about your product or service generates interest and branding. It will spread the message about your solution with a greater reach than any of your press releases or advertisements.
If many blog posts are written, chances are people start discussing about the use or benefits.

Google applied this method for Buzz as we cannot imagine Google released such an under performing web service. In any case it grabbed the attention on the blogs and social media websites.

The updated version to leverage social media
The trick is to release an updated version as soon as possible or when the media interest starts to decrease. This second version should be ready at the moment of the first release.

Admit your mistake publicly
Just make sure this second version is bug free and that it will get positive reviews.
Of course you will need Press releases and advertising admitting the mistake you have made, but with the advantage the brand name is already branded in the minds of the potential customers.

Benefits of buggy product launches:
- Branding (just make sure the bugs are not major)
- Reach
- Linking brand name with the functionality
- Benefits of the solution
- Explication of the service or product to the public
- Admitting your mistake is a sign of being humble making you popular
- Low cost campaign compared to the number of Internet mentions

How successful was your last product launch ?

Leaking product information sparking conversations
Apple is probably the king of leaks.
It saves them massive amounts of advertising.

Leading, hot or hyped companies like Apple, Microsoft and a few web service companies (Xobni, Brightcove, …) can leak their new products to the market in order to get even more attention.

This is the best marketing and social media marketing available as this sparks a conversation on the social networks: people participate by giving their interpretation and commenting. The total engagement at little or no cost.

Some companies have enjoyed previously the easily obtained massif interest, but lately generate less interest: like Facebook (from 2007) and Google as they have become less hot.

The teaser is more interesting than the news itself
Most companies can leak as much they can until they are dried-up.
Nobody cares abut their leaks as hardly anybody cares about their products.
On the other hand did we ever give it a try ?

Most companies are already happy if they generate some interest for their press releases or presentations of their new products.

Getting the complete news is less trilling than teasing with a part of the complete new picture. The real news is a fact: not much to tell or to imagine about it.
So maybe we should try to tease our potential customers and current clients with teasers for the next to be released product.
It seems to be the only or best way to spark a conversation and to generate more interest.

The problem is the distribution of the teaser news through the publications in your industry: not easy to achieve as your company is not hot.
Alternatively: why not tease by email directly to your customers ?

Have your leaked product information lately ?
Could you imagine leaking product information ?

Buzz history

Everything comes and everything goes away especially buzz words.

In the late nineties we had the WorldWideWeb as the buzz word, which ended in with the DotCom bubble and subsequent collapse.
After the collapse the Internet became more serious.
Then in 2004 Chris Anderson made the term the long tail popular.
In 2005 Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 hence defining all the previous as Web 1.0.
Then we had the rise and fall of MySpace where companies even bought their assets in order to keep up with the new trend.
Since 2008 the popularity of social networks like Facebook and Twitter got the trend of social media to become popular in articles, blogs and searches.

What will be next ?
Since several years the term semantic web has been lingering around but never made it to the general public.

The next trend is clearly Augmented Reality but are your potential customers already up-to-date ?

How long will social media last ?
According to Justin Kistner social media will peak in 2012, although it already shows signs of being overly used.
The highly inflated expectations are not realistic: hence the end is probably near.

Buzz marketing

Every new buzz word allows marketing having the opportunity to jump on the new current interest.
Marketing has the possibility or the task to redefine the messaging by adjusting to the current or next trend.

The questions are:
- What is the next trend ?
How to spot the next trend that is relevant for your offering ?

- When to jump on the new bandwagon?
Jumping too early and the audience or potential buyers will not understand.

- How to repackage the same offering with the new buzz?
The existing product or offering needs a face-lift in order to be rejuvenated to match up with the new buzz.

This is buzz marketing where trend spotting and timing are all important.

How good is your marketing in exploiting the next buzz ?

Social media is a communications channel between people.
Social media is often presented as marketing channel too.

If it is a marketing channel then it must be possible to:
- Insert marketing messages
- Distribute marketing messages
- Predictability

Insertion into social networks
Inserting marketing messages is no problem as each of your employees could be an insertion point.

Distribution problem
However getting them distributed seems to be the problem: you can not force people in social networks to redistribute your advertising. Thus for inserting he message you better use people that have a certain authority or respect in their social environment. In order to keep their authority or respect these people can’t distribute to frequently marketing messages.

Predictability of success social media marketing
Even if you use the authorities or respected people in social online groups still predicting the success is impossible as too many factors need to be present: message, timing and current interest.
Any major news that is important for the social group will disturb your success level.

Ability to measure social media marketing
The result of printed and broadcast marketing has become difficult to measure due to the large number of available channels and methods but they have proved their success rate since many years.
Online marketing excels in the ability to measure as not one click get lost.
Due to the chaos of social media marketing the results are probably impossible to measure.
As companies prefer to spend money on methods than can be measured social media marketing is not favored.

Social media marketing: to be used less
Anything with an unpredictable outcome is not liked by businesses. Companies want certainties. They prefer to pay an amount of money for a certain result. More the result becomes uncertain the less likely businesses will spend money on it.

Social media marketing has a high uncertainty.
Maybe social media marketing is not suited for businesses to count on for their marketing.
Of course there will always be managers that want to take the gamble in their eagerness to win the high return if they succeed.
The main spending on marketing will stay with conventional methods for a long time. A lesser amount will be gambled on social media marketing.
It is a probability trade-off between certain and uncertain methods.

Social media marketing will mainly stay a communications channel like it was intended from the start.

Do you use social media marketing ?

Schmoozing
Schmoozing is to chat in a friendly and persuasive manner to make a social or business connection in order to gain a favor or to obtain an advantage.
Schmoozing takes long before it can effectively be used for getting the favor or the advantage.

Digital schmoozing
Digital schmoozing is similar but using the Internet as medium:
- Commenting on blogs of industry leaders or influencers – praising the writer
- Getting linked on LinkedIn, Xing, Viadeo, … with company leaders or influencers
- Answering questions on business social networks in order to be remarked
- Writing a blog that mainly summarizes and links to blog posts of industry leading bloggers
- Favor and comment published presentations or ebooks of industry leaders or influencers on social publishing sites
- Follow industry leaders and influencers on Twitter and send them direct Tweets

Getting remarked
The first goal is to:
- Build rapport supporting their content with the industry leaders or influencers
- Provide supporting or interesting links to their work
- Propagate their content on the Internet (this is more than just retweeting)
The problem is that all your efforts shouldn’t be to obvious but look natural and not on purpose as these people will spot fraudsters from far.

If you are sure they have noticed you, try to engage into a conversation by making a suited bold or daring statement to open the discussion using:
- The social websites
- A comment on their blog
- A comment on a industry leading blog
- A published presentation or paper that you suggest to them by a comment or tweet
Don’t send them a direct email as they will feel the intrusion.

Engage into a conversation
If they engage into a conversation with you, it signifies they find you important enough to spend time on you. This engagement can be using the social websites, but more likely they will address you directly by email – as your email is easily retrievable.

This is when you build your relation further in order to get to your real goal: get a favor or gain an advantage.
Try to increase your relation through a direct conversation by email, IM (Instant Messaging) or even calling using VOIP like Skype.

Asking the favor or advantage
As you communicate with them directly and you have gained their respect, then it is appropriate to ask for your favor or advantage.
It is a hard and long investment that is not always rewarding as the industry leaders or influencers can forget about you at any time or they can decrease in importance while schmoozing digitally with them.

Digital schmoozing is probably even more time consuming than schmoozing in real life.

Business social networks: LinkedIn, Go BIG Network, BizFriends, Biznik, Ecademy, Xing, Viadeo, Vator.tv, …

Social publishing sites Scribd, SlideShare, Authorstream or Docstoc

Have your ever tried digital schmoozing ?

Is Facebook redefining the way people go about obtaining information and news?

Facebook provides every member with a social stream containing the events and news of their friends. Effortlessly the stream comes to them.

Information is becoming less of a destination that people seek online.
The social stream of information comes to the people instead of them reaching out to a search engine to find news or information.

Social stream versus search engines

For a start people no longer seek. They expect the information or news to come to them in a social stream.
This is probably due to their laziness as:
- a stream is convenient and is automatic,
whereas
- search using search engines require some inspiration for keywords and the effort of narrowing down the result by multiple searches.

The Recommender model of trusted parties

In a social stream all their friends are trusted parties, because they belong to their network.
The friends have evaluated the web page or content and recommend it to their friends.

In search the search engines are certainly not trusted parties as they are sponsored by advertising and can have higher goals (like Google). The top links are not always the better or higher value links. It is not because many people have previously clicked upon certain good looking links that the information or content on those high ranking pages are the best.

The problem with the “Recommender model“, using friends as trusted sources, is the biased and limited information that will be generated.
A lot of information will be missed due to the friends only receiving a small part of the information available on the Internet. The friends will be filtering and gathering only this limited amount information.

What will be retained is not necessarily the most important news, but is likely to be the most sensational news.

On the other hand a lot of not relevant or not interesting information will be filtered out by the friends thus saving time for the person using the stream.

An additional benefit is that all the friends get the same information which gives again a basis to be part of the group and to discuss about events and news they are all aware off.

Social stream beating up the search engines

Is Social stream becoming competition or a challenger for search engines?
Probably this has already happened.

Can the conquest of Social stream on the Internet go fast?
Anything can happen fast on the Internet especially as there are already so many people using it: Facebook.
This type of Social stream is not limited to Facebook: LinkedIn and others provide it too.

The search engines have a serious issue with Social stream as:
- It will decrease their advertising revenue significantly over a short period of time.
- They cannot deliver a social stream due to the fact they don’t have members with friends.
Hence the end of the hegemony of the search engines is near.

Of course for searches on specific information or news, search engines are the specialists.

The Social stream becomes a marketing challenge

The repercussions of this “Recommender model” od Social stream on marketing can be important as the commercial messages need to get into the stream of the trusted friends.
How to get advertising into recommendations and messages of friends ?

Thus instead of getting a high SERP (Search Engine Results Page / Position) by SEO, SEM, link building and all the black hat SEO tricks available, the fact of getting included in the Social stream of friends becomes important.

This is whole different game as this model of Social stream nears the Word of Mouth model.
However it is still different as Social stream is emitted by only one person to influence many.
The Word of Mouth repeats itself by communication from one person to another to another.

Should we forget about search engines, links and SERP?
No – as recommenders still need to find the original information, news or event.
Should we find methods to get inserted into social streams ?
Yes – as their importance is rising due to the convenience and the adoption.

The new game and rules of the Social stream are a problem for marketing to be solved.

If you know the answer or solution please let us know.

You can post many blog posts.
You can leave comments on many blogs.
You can reply on forums.
You can submit articles to article websites.
You can in vain submit your website to directories.
You can tease (or spam) bloggers.
All this will make you run out of time anytime soon.

Many (skills & experiences) more (people) is required

Unlike Apple most companies can’t rely upon their advocates or customers (Apple fan boys) to promote their stuff on the Internet.

As the Internet is overwhelmingly big you need many more actions and efforts to score on the Internet.
Something you cannot accomplish on your own due to lack of time, experience and skills.

Hiring a staff for social media marketing isn’t a solution for most companies as you will need many people that have different skills and experiences in different matters.
And after the job has been done, you probably no longer need them or occasionally.

Still you need presence, links, articles and mentions in as many a possible places on the Internet else the findability of your website is minimal.
You need noise using written content, video content, spoken content and visual content.

Hiring a temporary army

You need an army of workers: temporary workers to do the job of making noise on the social media.

Mechanical Turks
One of the possibilities are the Mechanical Turks of Amazon but they require simple straight forward work tasks which you need to organize and explain.

Freelancers
On other possibility is to look on freelance boards like eLance (or similar web services) to find skilled people. The question is will these freelancers be interested in a short 15 minute job? Probably not.

Fiverr @ $5
The easiest and probably cheapest solution is to browse and select some of the propositions on Fiverr.
These people have a certain skill or have a certain experience and offer these for $5 for a job.
The benefits are:
- their experience
- the well specified job
- the fixed price
This is the place on the Internet where you can afford to hire an army to conquer the Internet.

How are you planning to get a presence on the Internet for social media ?
What services do you use ?