Archive for year 2012
Blogging: Writing truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
Aug 16th
“The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.”
– Jean Giraudoux
One of the biggest ironies of the social web is that almost any post you read will pontificate about the need for “authenticity.” It has been repeated so many times we are beginning to believe it.
I heard a guru guy speak about this last week. Authenticity. Authenticity. Authenticity.
Yet his Twitter avatar photo is 10 years old. At least.
His blog is covered with badges about this list or that list he is starring on. Most powerful Twitter this or that. Some of the lists are made up by his friends. Some of them are made up by him.
Most of his blog opinions are simply repeated quotes from the other gurus that he has commandeered as his own.
“Authenticity: Conforming to an original”
I’m not picking on him. We all do it, to some degree. Point is, we are NOT authentic. And why would you WANT to be? Isn’t the social media “you” a lot better than the real you? When was the last time you read a blog post about somebody being constipated, smelly, or horny? Do you really want that in your RSS feed? On the social web, I think people more often present the person they aspire to be.
Last week I had shoulder surgery. I have been sleep-deprived, wracked with pain, medicated, and working with one arm packed in ice. In this period, I haven’t been transparent about almost anything in my life, but I have been honest, writing about challenging issues that have been on my mind. I think that is a better contribution to the world than showing up as the whiney, miserable bitch-man that I authentically am at this moment!
But there is always an expectation for honesty. Yes, there is value in that. Honesty. Truth, as we see it. Can we use those words more often?
Ladies and gentlemen, we are writing and connecting and tweeting in Oz.
In Wonderland.
Is anything as it seems? Is anything authentic? In one way or another, everybody is pretending to be the Wizard of their world, pushing the buttons behind their curtain. Nothing wrong with that … as long as we can try to be truthful under these imaginary circumstances.
Right?
Please. Make me feel something!
Aug 15th
By Mars Dorian, Contributing {grow} Columnist
Recently, I watched a talk that blew my mind. It was called “Why the best companies make you feel something”.
The speaker, John Kearon, dubbed as the “Steve Jobs of Market Research,” asked the audience which of the following states contributed the most to the success of an advertisement:
A) Purely Logical
B) Logical and emotional
C) Purely emotional
You’d probably pick B like most did, but Kearon claims that PURE emotion is the sole buying decision influencer — because it’s targeting
your oldest and most powerful part of the brain – the fight-or-flight REPTILIAN BRAIN. Grrrrrrr.
And in order to create the strongest reaction (e.g. making people ACT on your calls to actions), you have to create something that either pisses them off or excites them.
Kearon left his speech with a bold claim (I’m paraphrasing): ”We are feeling creatures. Content matters so much LESS than you think it does. Do something shocking or exhilarating in your marketing, but don’t be bland. If people feel nothing, they do nothing.”
Whether that’s 100% true or not, it made me think about my digital career so far. It also reminded me of this popular quote in the branding world:
“WE ARE NOT THINKING MACHINES THAT FEEL;
RATHER, WE ARE FEELING MACHINES THAT THINK.”
– ANTONIO DAMASIO
This order is important.
When I write with more FIRE (aka passion), I get more shares and comments. When I create work that’s more edgy and over-the-top,
I get more (and better) clients.
When you say that’s totally unreasonable, you’re abso-fricking-lutely right. But we humans are unreasonable creatures by default:
Buying a car for 60,000 bucks is unreasonable. The main reason for getting a car is that it takes you from point A to point B
faster and more conveniently than your feet. But who cares? A Kia simply doesn’t make you feel the way a Mercedes does.
What about the iPad ? (Ahh, no example without Apple. Those bastards.) When it launched no one needed it. It was too impractical to create work with it (that’s what the Mac’s for), and the app choice was rather meager back then. But people bought it like it has the cure for death inside. Because it wasn’t YOU who bought it — it was your emotive reptilian brain again. Grrrrr.
Oh let’s forget those high-class products … just look at what kind of content people spread virally online. Cats that fart and hiccup at the same time or a father that pierces his daughter’s laptop with a 44?
Come on, that kind of content has ZERO value, but it DOES evoke a strong emotional reaction in you, whether it’s laughter or disgust.
Totally unreasonable, but totally emotional.
Here’s my claim – in these social media times when everyone’s OBSESSED with stats and data, and how-to content, maybe it’s time to remember WHOM we are doing this all for — real, human beings. With reptilian brains.
Try it out for yourself — instead of worrying just about the content, focus more intensely on the emotional part of your marketing strategies :
How to infuse more emotional OOOOMPH into your marketing
- Be “too.” Some people say my site is too cartoonish and colorful – it looks more like a comic geek’s lair than a visual marketing biz. Well, they’re obviously not my clients. I attract the RIGHT clients who luv that style. What about you — what can you make “too?” Too edgy, too colorful, too friendly? Too over-the-top design? Find those edges. And walk right up to them.
- Concentrate on the feeling benefit of your products and services. Show pictures, words and/or videos of how people feel after they bought your product or services. What’s the state you want them to feel?
- Write visual. Using lots of latin-based words makes your ego think you’re one smart something, but it has the emotional power of a vacuum instruction manual. The easier it is to grab your sentences, the more your audience can picture it. And if they can “picture” it, they can feel it. Ambulate this direction? No. Walk this way.
- Include conflict. Me versus them. Our group against theirs. Your past self versus your new one. Whenever we include conflict and contrasts in our content, sparks fly. And emotions arise.
- Surprise. Email clients when they least expect it. Personally welcome every new subscriber to your email list. Send your best customers a real card on special occasions. Create a video for your brand that no one would expect (but still relates to the brand.) When that works, you have their full attention, and you can do something with it.
Remember what Kearon said: If people feel nothing, they do nothing.
So, go beyond the numbers and how-tos, and create an emotional response to make people ACT on your calls to action!
Have you tried this in your company? Are you going to try it now? How are you going to make me feel something?
Mars Dorian describes himself as a creative marketeer with a moon-melting passion for human potential and technology. You can follow his adventures at www.marsdorian.com/
Original illustrations by the author.
Klout overhauls its business model, but does it answer its critics?
Aug 14th
Klout announced a radical overhaul to its scoring system, site design, and score transparency. But what is the real impact? Will it make a difference? I had a chance to speak to Klout CEO Joe Fernandez to try to determine the depth of the changes that were announced today … and answer the question on everybody’s mind — “Will my Klout score drop?”
Substantially more data points
Joe Fernandez of Klout
The new site will be introduced this week to a small set of users and will roll out in increments over the course of the next few weeks, according to Fernandez. Among the most important changes, Klout announced that it is beefing up the robustness of its scores by looking more broadly and deeply across social platforms:
- Klout will now consider 400 distinct data inputs to determine your score, up from 100 data points today. New data inputs include stuff like Facebook photo tags, LinkedIn job titles, and Wikipedia entries.
- By expanding the number of platforms and inputs being considered, Klout will analyze 12 billion data points per day (up from 1 billion) in an attempt to provide more accurate scores.
- The company is providing slightly more consideration in its algorithm to what Klout calls the “real world” influence of LinkedIn and Wikipedia.
Tempering the vacation effect
A major complaint about Klout is that people’s finely-tuned scores drop whenever they go on vacation (and stop tweeting/posting). Fernandez said that Klout is giving more weight to relatively stable data inputs like LinkedIn profiles and Wikipedia entries that will help minimize the drop in people’s scores when they go on vacation. Scores will also be considered over a 90-day period instead of a 30-day period so that sudden inactivity will have a less dramatic impact on scores.
Transparency
Klout is adding a Kred-like feature called “Moments” that allows you to see which specific activities influence your score. Fernandez says this will help people “create better content” through constant feedback on what is providing the biggest actions from your networks.
Privacy
Klout has been caught up in some embarrassing privacy miscues, including showing profiles from minors on the site and re-introducing people into the Klout system who had opted-out. Fernandez said they have hired an outside privacy consultant for a “long-standing engagement” to perform audits and also that they have a full-time team overseeing privacy on a day-to-day basis. “We’ve learned our lesson on the mistakes we made,” he said. “Our goal is to lead the industry in matters of privacy protection.”
The Bieber versus Obama debate
An endless Klout complaint is that Justin Bieber, previously the only person with a perfect score of 100, has a higher score than the president of the United States. Fernandez believes that putting a higher weight on Wikipedia and LinkedIn will provide a fairer perspective of “real world” influence. And yes, the president now has a higher score than Justin Bieber.
Gaming the system
Fernandez told me they have designed new systems that will “turn the knob down” on people who are gaming their score instead of driving action by organically providing great content. ”We will protect our system,” he said, “and reserve the right to take action if somebody is using tactics to simply raise a number artificially.” For example, he said that a person who created 100 re-tweets by sending out “100 pieces of crappy content” would be penalized compared to somebody who earned 100 re-tweets with one piece of great content.
Site Redesign
According to Fernandez, the new design, which has been in the works for a year, will “help you feel more recognized than judged” with more “emphasis on content rather than your score.” As you can see, the profile page has been dramatically re-designed, with a real emphasis on the the new “moments” feature:
The Klout mobile app
Fernandez admitted that the current Klout mobile app is “painfully crude.” However, an improved mobile app is in the approval process through Apple that will include the distribution of Klout Perks. This is expected to be available sometime this fall.
Do Klout Perks drive purchases?
While Klout Perks (free gifts generally provided to people with high Klout scores) can have the same short-term impact as coupons, Fernandez said they are getting closer to developing models that demonstrate influencer impact on purchase intent. He said that they are eliminating the noise and complexity of this work by working closely with several brands on a statistical analysis to determine a new “strength of influence score.” This score may be able to forecast buying behaviors based on patterns in an influencer’s audience.
The bottom line
Klout deserves credit for listening to their critics and attempting to knock down the problems one by one. Will it silence the critics? Of course not. If you hated Klout last week, you’ll probably hate Klout this week too. When it comes to Klout, logic rarely prevails.
I think the more important question is, has Klout improved its service offering with substantive changes? Yes and no.
- Probably the biggest concern has been privacy. It appears that Klout has taken a no-nonsense stand on this, but time will tell if they can be a role model on this issue.
- Likewise, Klout’s dead serious tone on people gaming their system is the right move. Any social platform that becomes popular eventually attracts corruption. Spammers almost killed Twitter in 2009 and Quora in 2010. Klout realizes that its ability to hold off the gamesters will be critical if they are to present legitimate “influencers” to clients.
- On “transparency” they seem to have stepped up to requests with the “Moments” feature, although Kred appears to still provide more detail in this area. If you have the time to study it, this feature is useful and provides insight into their algorithm. The company also provided a detailed list of factors that impact your Klout score.
- By quadrupling the inputs to personal scores, the scope of their influence assessment far surpasses any rival. But it also adds substantially to the complexity of the algorithm and creates opportunities for things to go wrong. The changes will not significantly impact the fact that a Klout score will still be weighed more toward Twitter- and Facebook-centric activities.
- Most of the other changes announced today — emphasizing content over scores through their design, minimizing the vacation effect, and the “Obama over Bieber” change — are simply window dressing to moderate criticisms, in my opinion. It’s not going to make any real difference in their business model or the scores of the everyday social media user.
At the end of the day, Klout, Kred, and PeerIndex only measure one thing: Can a person create content on the social web that gets shared and elicits a reaction? That of course is a legitimate source of power on the web today in this Era of the Citizen Influencer where everyone can publish and have a voice.
But after several years of effort, Klout is still missing out on a real gold mine of online influence — blogs and YouTube videos. These are the forums where rich content is created, discussed, and shared. Today, Klout scores are impacted only by activity on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Google+, Klout, and Wikipedia. You can also connect YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, Lastfm and flickr, but they don’t compute in your score.
Will Klout’s announced changes make a difference? I think they have taken steps in the right direction, but the only meaningful answer will come from its customers — the real ones who give them money, not us. Can Klout deliver effective incentive programs that nurture powerful word of mouth influencers and create brand advocates? The company seems to be on a roll, creating 400 influencer campaigns in the past 12 months, but time will tell.
And, oh by the way …
Will your Klout score drop?
(Drum roll) Probably not. Klout CEO Joe Fernandez said that the changes to the system are substantial, but only about 10 percent of user scores are projected to drop, compared to 40 percent in the Klout-pocalypse of November 2011.
I would be eager to hear your views of these changes, but fair warning — I’m weary of comments with no more rationale than “Klout is stupid.” If that’s where your head is, read this short explanation of social scoring systems before you comment! Thanks!
Disclosure: I have never taken a Klout Perk or any form of compensation from Klout. My publisher McGraw-Hill worked with both Klout and PeerIndex to offer Return On Influence as a Perk in the spring of 2012 and there may have been a small indirect benefit in terms of additional book sales.
Why social media strategy should NOT start with a drive for Facebook fans
Aug 12th
Why does every social media strategy seemingly start with a company cajoling people to come “like” their Facebook page? This post will explain why that is usually a bad strategy if you are aiming at creating long-term, loyal customers.
I’ve been honored to be selected to help judge a global company’s internal social media competition. Entries were submitted from all over the country as their locations put forward their best shots at social media gold.
There were some interesting entries, even some very good ones, but they all had one thing in common. In the “objectives” section, every single organization stated something like this:
“Our goal is to enter the conversation with our customers and engage with them on our Facebook page.”
Last week I wrote about how our relationships with brands develop over time through many small interactions that create awareness, affection, trust, and eventually a loyal relationship … similar to the way we create friendships in real life.
When I was a kid, it took quite a few interactions at school or on the playground before I was invited to go home after school and play at a friend’s house. And it would get kind of boring if my friend never came to my house. You expect that kind of reciprocity in a relationship, right?
The one thing missing in almost any social media strategy I see is a plan for company representatives to actually go spend some time at the customer’s “house” — 100 percent of the effort is usually aimed at the very difficult task of drawing those eyes to THEIR page, their home, every day instead of visiting customers where THEY “live.”
If the true goal is customer connection, why does it have to start on your own Facebook page?
Why is the metric for success always the number of comments or likes you have on your page, rather than the number of likes and comments your company gives away on other pages? Shouldn’t the effort be at least equal?
This default position of driving people to your page is easy because it is so much simpler measuring your “likes” and comments as a metric of success. It’s the popular thing to do, but I’d like you to start questioning if it is the RIGHT thing to do for a long-term strategy. Check out this diagram and see if this makes sense:
Relationships start with small interactions — and you probably have to go to where your customers are at first. As they get interested in you, maybe they will start coming to your site where they may connect in a bigger way, and eventually bring their friends as they turn into fans.
If you’re sincerely trying to drive people up this curve (and not just “check the Facebook box”), why would you have a strategy that only involves buying likes with coupons and contests? Maybe you need to go visit their house a few times first and get to know them on their terms, too!
(Note: Based on some reader comments, I wanted to clarify that visiting a customer’s “house” may not necessarily be Facebook. It could be their blog, Twitter account, LinkedIn, etc. — it’s where they “spend their time” on the web).
Of course there are many different ways to be successful on the social web and lots of companies are doing great things on their Facebook pages, but I wanted to introduce the idea that it doesn’t necessarily have to start with a “drive for likes”
Have you had similar experiences? Do you ever connect with your customers on their home base Facebook page, blog, or LinkedIn account?
Top illustration courtesy of Toothpaste for Dinner
Welcome to {grow}
You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
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
Groups We Believe In
