Meet the new Queen of Viral Video
Aug 4th
I have such a special treat for you today.
One of my first Twitter friends was Michelle Chmielewski. What started as a silly little tweet exchange turned into a wonderful friendship and collaboration. You may remember Michelle for being featured prominently in The Tao of Twitter.
Early in her career I recognized that Michelle was an extraordinary video producer and on-air talent. To help her along, I bought her her first HD camera while she was still a graduate student so she could help me with a video, and now she has become a multi-media phenomenon. She started out by doing insightful and quirky social media commentaries and now she is doing … well, click on her video above. You really have to see for yourself!
The video I’ve featured today was a turning point for her young career because for the first time she truly reached a “viral status.” I think you’ll love her video and in this interview, she describes what it was like to get 700,000 views for one piece of video content.
ME: So tell me about your “Oh My God moment” when you realized you had produced a viral video. When did you know it was a hit and how did you react?
Michelle: I think I peed my pants a little.
And I kept saying “what ?! what ??!! WHAT ?!?! OK people are crazy, it’s not that funny” (I never think my videos are for some reason). That Monday night I remember seeing a friend and saying “I’m in a really good mood because one of my videos is doing really well” And then the stats just kept going through the roof. It was crazy! I didn’t know how to take it. People kept congratulating me as if I had done something amazing or were really talented, but I hadn’t changed anything, for me I had just done a video like any other week ! It was really funny, and flattering, and bizarre all at the same time. The best was a voice message from close friend saying, “Michelle? … just wanted to call because I just saw you on the TV and … I’m not sure why” It was epic.
It’s not uncommon for funny videos to find an audience on the Internet but what do think it was about this one that captured so much attention?
Honestly, I have no idea, other than it just hit home for French people. Everyone I talked with said, “wow, you really nailed it!” All I did was mimic what I had been seeing around me every day.
You have a come a long way since you produced that quirky little video for me! What have been your top three video lessons of the past two years?
1) Invest in good sound. It makes a difference. 2) Learn from what other vloggers are doing, but don’t let it alter your style or
what you do. 3) Have fun. It shows if you’re not (and it shows if you are)
You have an increasing audience and some proven star power now. You’ve moved away from producing social media commentaries to mini-comedies. Was this a decision or an evolution?
I DEFINITELY wouldn’t say I have “star power” but I’d say I’ve definitely seen the growth of a really interesting community of people that are from all around the world and live all around the world. They’re over here by the way if you want to say hi 
I’d say I made a conscious decision to move away from social media commentary (except for the exceptional post) because I realized that I’m still learning so much and don’t want to be “another social media expert.” I don’t have 10 years of experience behind me, though, or even 5! I figure better to live and learn for the moment, and “teach” later. Of course there are always opportunities to share and grow and learn, and I welcome them with open arms. I’m just purposely looking to experience everything firsthand myself.
Where do you go next for your videos? Do you do them for fun or do you have ideas for
something bigger? An opportunity to monetize?
No idea to monetize yet. For that I would have to be a vlogger who gets a million views a video. For the moment I’m still just focusing on having fun and seeing what opportunities come my way. I have a really fun and interesting and demanding job working with Seesmic for the moment, and my blog has started offering opportunities to do different things (like go behind the scenes at Paris Plages this August!) that I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise, and a couple of friends and I are starting a new project soon. Stay tuned
Somebody actually told me the other day I should probably take down the video you made for my company. But I just can’t bear to do it. I have an emotional attachment. What should I do?
It’s time to cut the cord. I owe you so much for believing in me and giving me the tools to make this a reality today, but I have to admit even myself that my video editing has come quite a ways since then. Thank you thank you thank you thank you for your faith and trust and encouragement. Now please take that horrible video off your site. If you’d like, come to Paris and we’ll redo a video.
… So the verdict is in. My little video from Michelle will have to go at the end of August 2011. If you want to see it one more time, here it is. But stop by the comment section and let us know what you think of these videos. And if you want even more Michelle, here is an answer to the “Speaking French” video for Southern Americans:
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A spicy approach to addressing complexity on your website
Aug 3rd
By Robert Dempsey, Contributing {grow} Columnist
The information density of our world is creating a challenge for every indvidiual and business. We have not yet reached the Age of Filtering! And while you may be thinking “more is better,” maybe we can take a sales lesson from an unlikely source – a Thai Food Cart.
The Paradox
Many companies offer a long list of services, which makes their website nearly impossible to navigate and confuses a would-be buyer. While it may seem like a paradox, offering fewer options increases the likelihood of getting more business. To see why, I’m going to use an example of something seen quite frequently here in Thailand – the open-air restaurants composed of between 10 and 100 food carts.
Specialization: The Lesson of a Thai Food Cart
In every Thai town there is one common sight – open-air “restaurants” composed of food carts. Each evening food vendors drive or wheel in their food carts (some are the entire back of a pickup truck), set up tables and chairs, and start cooking. You want to talk about competition? These restaurants can have 10, 50 … even 100 of these carts! In this environment you have to be very good at what you do. And that means specializing.
These carts run the gamut of tasty offerings:
- Noodle soup
- Roasted pork leg with rice
- Sweet desserts
- Fried chicken
- Sausages
… and many other dishes. Heck, even the soups are broken into different styles – one cart may be selling pork soups and another chicken.
The point is that each of these vendors specializes in one type of dish. But it’s not limited to food carts.
Many of the restaurants here have a limited menu, offering only curries or 6 different chicken dishes. The restaurants that have a signature menu item are the ones that have the longest line of people waiting to get in.
What is YOUR signature item?
Well I’m assuming you aren’t actually running a food cart as your business but don’t let the example hold you back from seeing the lesson, which is offering too many options to customers may not be a good thing for your business.
When a potential customer visits your website, they don’t know what the right answer is for them. If they did, they wouldn’t be searching for it. But they do know, more or less, what their problem is. That’s where content – be it on your blog or on your sales pages – comes in.
Don’t confuse them with a large list of services, products or solutions. Show them you understand their problem and can help them solve it.
And Don’t Worry – This Is Very Common
If this is how your website is set up today, don’t feel bad – it’s how the majority of websites are built. Take a look at the site of any large company, hit their home page, and take note of how many actually address a problem within the first 5 seconds of you reading it. It’s going to be very few.
So now the question is, if we know that specialization can increase demand for what we do and probably allow us to charge premium prices to do it, why aren’t more companies doing it? In a word: fear.
Don’t Let Fear Run Your Business
Are you afraid of losing business if you don’t have that long list of services available? I know I used to be. I thought that by not offering a service I was losing out. But what I was really losing was my most valuable asset – time. It was only when I honed in on where my business can provide the most value – direct response social media – and specializing in that, that demand increased and so did my prices.
How can you apply the specialization lesson from the Thai food cart in your business?
Robert Dempsey specializes in direct response social media and blogs at http://DempseyMarketing.com/journal/.
Image courtesy of Heinrich Damm
Five steps to fix Foursquare
Aug 2nd
It’s been about a year since I wrote anything significant about Foursquare so I thought it was time to check-in.
Check-in. Get it? Oh, never mind.
In my article, Foursquare or Bore-square, I concluded that the major hurdle to adoption of this technology is that there just isn’t anything there to hold my attention, entertain me, or reward me. The primary attraction of fake electronic mayorships will appeal to a small audience indeed. A year later, I am puzzled to report they still have the same problem.
The good news is that in the past year they have significantly enhanced their interface, added some modest new features, and raised enough capital to stay in business and dominate the buzz.
The bad news is, I still really have no new reasons to use it. The reviews and tips are nice, but there are other apps like Urban Spoon that do a better job and are more fun to use. I did find a friend at a restaurant through Foursquare once and he bought me a beer, so that’s worth something I guess.
Foursquare seems determined to stary boring. They just announced that a new infusion of capital would be used to expand overseas. Cool. Now we can be bored in several new languages. And this week’s big announcement: People will be able to create their own pages to leave tips for friends. ZZZzzzz.
I understand the need to move quickly and dominate the niche but it seems they are ignoring some very fundamental improvements they could make to really drive organic growth. Until Foursquare adds some sizzle that will appeal to people beyond the Geek Squad, it will remain a minor player in the social media world. Here are five ideas to make it more interesting:
1) Put your people on the ground. Forget about spending your money in Europe. Use the money to get sales people in major cities to work with restaurants and retail to offer more opportunities for engagement and deals. I am a consistent user of Foursquare wherever I travel and have never been offered one attractive offer. That’s just pitiful. Foursquare needs to learn from Groupon and put people in cities to make something happen for their users.
2) Add some fun. The leaderboard thing is lame. Foursquare has all the elements of a fun and competitive environment but who cares about the results when there are no prizes? I mean they don’t even have FAKE prizes like “Hey, you just reached an all-time high. You’ve unlocked the too much time on your hands badge.” When I have an “achievement,” I want to see one of the Angry Birds dancing on the screen or Conan O’Brien revealing a surprise. Maybe do movie tie-ins. Partner with SCVNGR so we can unlock secrets created by Foursquare users (geo-caching?). Why not have competitions to crown a city champion? Why not have playoffs among friends? Bring it on.
3) Put people who game the system in a penalty box. I check-in pretty frequently at a local restaurant but never seemed to be close to becoming mayor. Found out it was a guy who works there. Well, that just ruins the whole point. That is not building loyalty. That is not rewarding customers. Now I know it is POSSIBLE that somebody is actually visiting every day, so create new categories like super-mayor and vice mayors and governors so you can push people who are possibly gaming the system aside to allow real money-spending customers to be engaged and rewarded.
4) Involve the establishments. I have never had any establishment manager acknowledge I was in the house. You know, that might even be better than a prize. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a manager come up to you and say, “Mr. Schaefer, I saw you checked-in on Foursquare and I just wanted to thank you for visiting us today.” This is not happening. Why not? If the locations are not getting value out of the system the model is busted.
5) Make it more social. Foursquare is still so obscure that I really don’t have a lot of friends around when I go to a restaurant. Or, maybe I just don’t have many friends period … in any event, on the rare occasion somebody enters the restaurant when I am there, it would be fun to have an alert. Why can’t we mark our very special friends so we can get very special alerts when they are nearby? And egads … what would happen if we were actually rewarded with free food and goodies for bringing a lot of our friends together and all checking in? Restaurants and pubs are sponsoring tweet-ups but why aren’t … ummm … Four-ups (?) … catching on?
OK Foursquare. Based on my current consulting rate, that is about 23 cents of advice. Which is 23 cents more value than what you have given to me, by the way. Other than the beer of course. That was cool.
So now it’s up to them … and you, of course. What would you do if you were the Mayor of Foursquare?
Are B2B companies that refuse to engage in social media facing extinction?
Aug 1st
“No.”
That’s the short answer to a question that was posed to me in Focus (which seems quieter and more manageable than Quora). It got my attention because it is a question I often hear in my classes too. Instead of preaching fear and pontificating about social media as the Second Coming of B2B Marketing, let’s look at this another way.
Social media is growing fast, but it’s no longer new. If social media were such a dominating competitive force that non-users would be threatened with extinction, wouldn’t we be seeing some signs of that by now?
In fact, I am struggling to recall one case study where a B2B company used social media to dominate a market and extinguish a competitor … and I watch for these things.
I really like Eric Qualman’s inventive Social Media Revolution videos — I even show them in my classes some times. But there is one phrase in there that makes me cringe: “The ROI of social media is that you will be in business five years from now.”
Oh puhleeeze. Let’s see. Eric’s first edition of this video came out in 2009 which means we are less than two years aways from the Social Media Armageddon. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to change my vacation plans just yet.
Social media marketing can undoubtedly be used in very meaningful and powerful ways but I don’t think it is necessarily a “let’s bet the ranch” investment that is going to transform very many B2B marketplaces. And let’s not forget the powerful applications for HR, PR, and many other parts of the company. I’m an advocate and think every company should make an informed decision about how these tools integrate with current efforts and can create some new ones.
Yes, it’s big, it’s bad, it ain’t going away. And I’m all over the value selling perspective. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that a ton of business in this world is still won and lost at the end of a negotiation by the company who is prepared to knock off another penny per unit, especially in these economic times. That can kill a business faster than an inactive Twitter account.
I also think it’s difficult to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage based on a social media strategy. The entry barriers are low and it would be pretty easy for competitors to mimic efforts.
If you’re selling ball bearings to Ford you’re probably not going to tweet your way to long-term success, right?
What do you think? Are you seeing any non-tech B2B businesses storming the fort with social media marketing successes?
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Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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