Inflating numbers isn’t new, the problem I have is when we take the same methods and apply them to social media, and for this post specifically Twitter.

Social has given us a fresh start in the word-of-mouth world. The ability to see consumers in real-time talk about our brands can be the main cause of many awkward boardroom fist-bumps. However, we’ve learned along the way that most numbers being used to prove something is “working” is no better than the magazine circulation claims of the 80′s.

Follower counts have been proven to be next-to-worthless (thanks Newt) and influence score systems are always under the microscope. So we scramble around to find another metric set and have come up with a term that was made popular after the Internet explosion: Impressions. We then throw in the old school “Reach” -around that can help measure how effective our Tweets and Twitter chats are. Ya! We have our new metric set! Vanilla Ice fist bumps for all!!

Not so fast Rico Sauve.

Let’s take a look at an example of a report tracking a specific Twitter chat hashtag:

I’m not going to name the chat this was used for, because it’s irrelevant. Nor am I going to name the service that does it (unless they end up telling me they want me to) because I want you to focus on the numbers themselves.

So we have a chat that had 139 people involved on Twitter and generated 758 total tweets. Slammin! Good number of people on a specific topic talking together. That’s where the issue begins.

Then it states the hashtag/chat had a 2,100,000 person reach and almost 18 million impressions.

The reach number is calculated by the number of followers of all 139 people involved in the chat. The impressions are calculated by the number of followers a person has for each tweet they send.

So if I was in a chat, and I have 120,000 followers that would be included in the “reach”. And if I tweeted a total of ten times with that hashtag, I would contribute 1.2 million impressions (120k followers X 10 tweets).

I see people boasting these types of numbers all the time, but not just the Twitter brag, they’re sending this to sponsors and executives to say “SEE?!?! Look how awesome we did!”

There are so many bad moves with this, I don’t know where to start. But I shall try:

1. The majority of people with Twitter accounts aren’t active. Twitter claims that there are 140 million active Twitter accounts while also celebrating their 500 million user milestone. That’s about a quarter of all users.

2. Most of your followers aren’t on Twitter 24/7, let alone on there refreshing the homepage feed. I think half of the people, from experience, are refreshing their replies page hoping Bieber replied to there “ZOMG I lUv U!” tweet.

3. This brings us to a huge chunk of the impression stat: @ replies. Have a peek at the breakdown:

43% of the “Impression” metric is accounted for through @Message’s, or replies. This is when somebody in the tweet replies to someone else and uses the chat hashtag. There is a huge issue with including this. In the main feed, the one that people look at to see conversations they’re not involved in, @messages between two people are not shown to you unless you follow both people. So they don’t even appear on your screen. Ugh.

4. From my non-scientific research (which entails me looking at the screen and rubbing my beard in a professor-style way) and through sending over 85,000 tweets over 4 years and seeing the click-throughs, video and picture views of most of those and other accounts, this is more accurate: 10/10/10 rule.

10% of your follower count is online at any given time

10% of those will have a chance to see your tweet

10% will actually view it/click something

So for me, 1,200 people will see any given tweet of mine that is not a reply. Scientific? No. But I’m sure as shinola it beats “Impression” and “Reach” as a more accurate measure.

What is the answer? I think we have to stop being so fascinated by “size” for one. The above Twitter chat had a good number of people talking and they should be proud of that. Instead we go the sensational route and say 18 million impressions. Hell, 18 million people aren’t even on Twitter during that time frame. The problem is there will be no “result” that matches that. An impression online is something that can be used in the digital ad business that can prove an ad has been served on a website. Imagine an ad network selling ads by “potential impressions”. Then we’d have to call them a “newspaper” (Heyoo! Here all week, try the squash).

We have an uphill battle as it is in the boardroom convincing people to use social or at the very least listen to it. We better not claim a size we aren’t ready to back up.

Thoughts? Comments? Leave them below! It will make you really popular, this blog gets a ton of impressions.

PS – If you live in the Southern Ontario area, John Morgan and I are doing a public event on Friday April 20th! I rarely rock a public event, so get on over! There are only a few tickets left that you get you John’s new book and my new paperback.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

It’s a steal right!?!?

Yep, and it can steal their business right out the door into bankruptcy.

You get 30 services for $149 (10 of each mani, pedi, massage). That’s $5 per service. But the vendor usually gets half that, so $2.50. They’ve sold 157 so far. So for their net of just over $11k, they’ve committed to 4710 service renderings. 13 things a day. Every day, for 365 days. Even if only half are redeemed, that’s $5 per session.

One of the points of doing a daily deal is to get people into the door to try your service so they’ll come back and pay full price. But when you give ten of each service? And you can buy two sets for yourself? I’m thinking 20 pedicures can last this guy about five years. Not that I’ve ever had a pedicure done. Ok, once. Shut-up.

Not only is the quantity an issue, but many businesses have learned that “some” of the people that buy (aka almost all) these group coupons aren’t loyal customers, they just move on to the next salon in town that runs a deal. Also the same people who won’t usually tip heftily on the deeply discounted service.

Can these promotions work? Sure. And if you’ve used one for your business, please post in the comments below, I’d love to see some success stories to give it balance and your thoughts on why it worked (limited supply/timeframe, scalable service/product). My wickedtastic place where I get my tattoos (WayCool) just ran a Groupon and so far it’s working out, but that takes a little more commitment than a pedicure

But there are way too many cupcake promotion from hell stories to let this slide.

Some ask “Why didn’t the business see this coming???” or say “The group site sales rep forced them!!” and I think it’s the case of both high-pressured sales and business being ignorant to the potential. This isn’t new because of the online explosion of sites either. There was the famous Hoover Free Flights fiasco in 1992 that went to court and cost them over $50 million. (thanks OnlineMom for the link). We even have a couple of doozy stories coming out in the new book (September 2012) that felt the wrath of the Mom-a-lanche.

What do you think about it all? Have you bought a deal before? Were you happy? Have you run one as a business? Have you worked for a group-coupon company? Tell us below!!

Oh, and for those that like to read things, the UnMarketing paperback is hitting the shelves. Woo! No group deal…unless I artificially inflated the price……… UNPAPERBACK IS 99999% OFF THE $1,000,000 COVER PRICE!! ACT NOW! SUPPLIES ARE NOT LIMITED! WILEY WILL PRINT MORE!

And then Budweiser Canada farked it all up for me and went and made one of the greatest Superbowl commercials of all-time. I’m already a Bud Light Lime freak and then this happened.

For the 3 people that don’t know, hockey is life in Canada. I don’t even play and it still holds a special place in my heart. You don’t even have to like the sport to love this. When I saw this video today, it connected on a level that most brands try but never ever reach.

You want people to share your brand? Do something awesome like this:

The look on the guy’s face sitting on the ice at the end made me tear-up. This was made for a Superbowl commercial in Canada, but will out last the game itself. That should be the goal of any campaign: make it so awesome that it achieves word-of-perpetual-mouth-motion.

For those that may miss it, these guys play recreational hockey. They aren’t in a pro league, there are never any fans at their games, they do it for the love of the sport.

I was told about the video by a Twitter friend Ameer Khan who was one of the players on the ice! I asked him what he thought of Budweiser now, his reply:

Now if that isn’t a testimonial to a success for a brand, I don’t know what is.

Well done Budweiser Canada, you win the Superbowl and the Internet.

http://www.facebook.com/budweisercanada

https://twitter.com/budcanada

+UPDATE+

Many people have commented and tweeted that this is a direct copy of the Improv Everywhere video from 2008:

So, what do you think? Does it change the impact of the new one?

I’ve had campaigns ripped off from past client work, and I hated it. I just hope Budweiser threw them some money, or a truck-ton of beer.

Hopefully someone from them or their agency can comment.

+++UPDATE #2+++

I reached out to ImprovEverywhere and Charlie Todd got back to me and said:

“Thanks for updating your post to reflect our original version of this idea in 2008.

To answer your question, no we were not paid by Bud.  They did not reach out to us at all.

Not the first time a brand has heavily borrowed one of our ideas.  It’s always irritating, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

Here is the link to the video and all the awesomeness that went with it.

How about it Budweiser? Send those guys a case of beer or something? Would be a great gesture to wrap this story of awesome in a pretty bow.

Ten days into the new year and I think we already have a champion.

No, it’s not the N-Control Avenger PR Disaster that rounded out 2011. Nor was it the FedEx foul-up.

Let’s say you own a BBQ joint and a customer comes in, one of the only ones and orders a meal. You can tell she’s not happy and it’s verified by a well-written and factual review on Yelp.

So what do you do to make it right?

A) Get in touch with her and offer a meal for free to make it up?

B) Respond to the Yelp review by apologizing and explaining the issues

C) Call her a bitch and post her pic on Facebook

If you picked C, then you may have a new fave BBQ joint to hang out at!

Here we go, ready? Buckle up your brisket:

(All pictures are linked to their file, so if you’re on a phone and they’re tough to read, just click it)

1. Stephanie and her husband go to Boners BBQ in Atlanta for a meal after grabbing a $10 off coupon from Scoutmob.

2. They leave and she posts her review on Yelp. One of the better written reviews on the site to be honest. She lists the things she liked and didn’t like, with reasons why. Not an all-caps “ZOMG!! THIS PLACE IS HORRIBLE!”

3. After seeing the Yelp review and being told she didn’t tip the server, the person who runs Boners BBQ Facebook page decides to put her in her place by posting her picture (censoring by me, they put the unedited photo up):

And they added both this description and follow-up comment:

4. So, like most places on the Internet, the morons were there first saying things like “F&$K YA!” and other eloquent expressions, clicking “Like” to share it with their other Grade 10 classmates. Then people started commenting on how it’s wrong to post her picture and call her names and they replied with remorse and maturity… just kidding, they told her to F&$# Off too!

5. Now the owner jumps in, to bring some logic and sanity to it?

The logic of “She left us a bad review on Yelp so we can say what we want on our wall!!” really pushes the public’s buttons and a mass of comments hit their wall. Your wall or not, nothing can stop the Geekalanche once it starts.

6. They pull the entire status and comments and also delete any other posts that come in about it, which just makes people angrier. They end up posting an “apology” which is what I’d advise a client to do, just not so…..well…insincere.

You just get this feeling that they’re not apologizing for what they did, but that they wanted to stop the mass amount of anger.

7. It becomes pretty clear when they post in the apology comment thread later:

Yeouch. He had it perfect, explained what they’ve been doing, got frustrated and had a bad “moment”. Annnnd then reminded everyone there is no excuse for not tipping. What he doesn’t understand is it’s not about tipping or not (although if a tip is mandatory, then it’s a fee and should be stated as such) it’s about how you deal with people. We are a forgiving society if you just own-up. FedEx is a great example of that.

8. As it turns out, she said she DID tip. She posted on Reddit about the experience:

That Facebook post was about me. That picture is me. I can give some background on this if anyone wants to know. The basics are that my husband and I went to Boner’s BBQ for his birthday dinner. We were enticed there with a Scoutmob coupon (for $10 off) and we were the only ones in the place for our meal except for a brief period where a couple came in to get a pickup order. We paid in cash and yes, we left a tip. The ticket was $40 even minus $10 for the coupon + tax= $32.80 We dropped two twenties on the table and left. And yes, I did, politely, let the waitress know that the food wasn’t as I expected and no, I didn’t lick the plates or even eat all the food, that was my husband. He is far less picky about his BBQ than I am.

So what can we take from this? This isn’t a “social media” problem. You don’t train people not to call customers a “bitch” on Facebook and post their picture. (I’m picturing George Costanza saying “Was that wrong?”

Social media doesn’t make a business bad or good, it amplifies what they already are.

So, does this hurt their business or are you one of those “Any PR is good PR!” people? Will she sue? Comment below!

And one of you has to explain to my family why I have 9 screenshots on my desktop called “Boner”. Thanks.

Special thanks to Johanna Harrison and Michael McCready for the screenshots and heads-up. With my second book due to my publisher at the end of the month, it practically writes itself

+++UPDATE+++

So realizing the error of their ways (or it was the fact that news cameras showed up at their place (broadcast embedded below), and the Huffington Post blogged about it, they decided to give a little more sincere apology… but not really:

Looks pretty good right? And that’s that!! Problem solved…………… Orrrrrrr not.

Next someone adds this comment:

Not sure the worst part here: the fact that he calls people assholes, the fact that the woman actually DID leave a tip, 20% at that, or the waterboarding. Yeah, the waterboarding part. But this isn’t Boners BBQ that wrote it, they can’t control what some jackalope says on their wall right? You see that little “thumbs-up” sign with a 4 beside it? Let’s see who the 4 people are who clicked “I AGREE!!! ME LIKE!” beside the assholes/waterboarding comment:

Would ya look at that….. Doesn’t make the apology seem so sincere now does it?

Some people have asked what would I advise them to do if they were my client…

And I tell them they never would be. No amount of social media or marketing help would ever trump crappy product and a crappy attitude.

Customers should not be afraid to leave honest reviews for the fear of being publicly humiliated.

Today’s News:

Back in the old days of the Internet/Email, it was a happy place (we’ll call this time period B.S. “Before Spam”). In the BS years the Internet was pure information and email was a way to communicate useful information and conversation. Every time an email came in, it was like a little butterfly of excitement flew into your computer, knowing it was containing an ingredient of awesome. Then something changed. Email started getting UnAwesome.

Cold-callers, Cold-knockers (those that went door-to-door) and Car-smackers (placing flyers on your windshield) realizing that their methods of sales assault worked less and less, had found a place that they no longer even had to lift a finger to push their useless wares on the public. “Now we can email our crap!” and proceeded to group-high five (which is now evolved to awkward fist-bumping).

The holders of the inboxes started to get angry and classified anything they didn’t ask for as Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), or SPAM for short? Laws were passed, ISP’s set up block lists and the word was spread “People don’t like spam. Stop it.”

If you are accused of being a spammer, it’s the biggest shame there is in business.

Now there is a bigger problem. Warm-Spam. Social Spam. Friendly Unsolicited Commercial Contact (FUCC). It’s the practice of spamming your social media contacts and it needs to stop.

Think about it, someone finally accepts you as a contact on LinkedIn, follows you on Twitter, friends you on Facebook and apparently that is yiddish for “SELL SELL SELL!!” to some.

It’s actually worse than old-school spam. With a faceless spammer, we can delete/block and think evil thoughts about them, but with social spam, you sometimes know the person in real life, so removing/blocking them can cause more awkwardness then seeing Uncle Louis at Christmas dinner after he poked you on Facebook.

Some common Warm Spam techniques:

1. Real Event invites – Inviting your entire friend list to an event, regardless of geographic/demographic make-up. (more on this practice in a previous post)

2. Fake Event Invites – An event made for a non-event. It could be your “website launch party” or “Vote for me because my self-esteem is based on artificial online popularity campaigns”. It’s not even the issue of the “event” itself, but the relentless inviting and messaging people who haven’t “RSVP’d” for an event that doesn’t exist that make people stabby.

3. LinkedIn Emails that show everyone’s email address. Nothing like you emailing everyone about your upcoming paralegal training seminar through LinkedIn, which exposed our private email addresses to each other! Yes, this just happened.

4. Tagging – Mostly on Facebook, but now creeping into Google+, it’s the practice of tagging someone in a pic/post for the sole purpose to make them read it and have it appear on their timeline.

5. Auto-DM – Tweeting someone about your Facebook fanpage as soon as they follow you on Twitter is like shaking someone’s hand at a networking event and then asking if they want to go to another event down the street.

6. Publicly Shaming – Asking someone to support a cause publicly by adding their Twitter name is like asking me to support your charity at an event with other people standing around. Ask privately or post a general support message. Don’t shame people.

7. Fan page requests – Inviting people to “fan” your business by sending a request hurts my brain. Add it to your blog, put it in the signature in your email, but going out and picking people to be fans is just awkward.

8. Farms Run By Mafia Ville – I know you want more coins/land/bullets are whatever they’re offering you to invite “your friends” to play a game of Farmville/MafiaWars/TheSims but stop it. While you’re tending to your farm, we talk about you behind your virtual back. (Thanks to Amanda Wood for the reminder on this one!)

Relax your pitchforks, “real” business people, I’m not saying never sell. I’m not even suggesting social media is a sacred ground, never to be sold on. It’s the method. Your wall on Facebook is yours, do as you please. You want to tweet about your upcoming teleclass? Knock yourself out. You lease that space. However, as soon as you add my @UnMarketing to the tweet or tag someone on a page, well, now you’ve FUCC’ed it. Especially if that action also generates an email to that person, now you’ve spammed their email with the notification. Double FUCC’ed.

Your wall, your profile is your real-estate. Post as many promos as you want. But you soon realize that nobody is sharing/liking/clicking/retweeting them. Now, a logical person would realize “Hey, maybe people aren’t engaging with my ads because they don’t really like ads in a social setting.” But sadly, most react “People aren’t clicking because they missed it!! I’ll just post this on their page too!!”

Nobody has joined a social media site to get sold to, but people do actually buy from people they know, like and trust, things that are created by being social with others. See that equation. Be nice, be helpful and don’t FUCC people, and social media can be the greatest thing in the world.

Have you had a friend send constant Warm-Spam? What did you do? Leave a comment below!

1. Don’t be a “speaker”. Be an expert who speaks. Speakers are a “nice to have” but experts are a necessity

2. The power is not the point – slides are there as navigation points, not to be the content

3. If everything you say is on your slides, you’ve rendered yourself useless. Speak, don’t read.

4. There is a high demand for people that can both provide content and deliver it effectively from stage. Some can do one of the two, most don’t do either and a select few do both. Aim to be great.

5. End your presentation early.

6. What new ideas/skills will your audience have when they leave your session? If the only answer is “they’ll know more about me!” You need to start over.

7. Be prepared to present without slides if something goes wrong. And then do it on purpose.

8. Its not about you.

9. No matter how many times you remind people, someone’s cell-phone will go off during your talk. Get over it.

10. Make sure your own cell phone is off before speaking

11. Speakers are their best during Q&A because they’re not handcuffed to a slide. Think about that.

12. Stop walking in front of the projector. Seriously, how do some people not know this?

13. Use a hand-held clicker for slides instead of using the laptop. And when they don’t see the hand clicker, you look like Obi Won Kenobi when the slide progresses on its own. I use Kensington 33374 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer (affiliate link)

14. Don’t apologize to the audience about something they wouldn’t know was wrong. Saying “I was supposed to have a video here” doesn’t help. Keep going.

15. Have passion for what you’re saying. If you don’t, your audience won’t either.

16. If you use feedback sheets, there will always be somebody who didn’t like you. If its in the majority, you need to consider what’s said. If its in the minority, ignore it.

17. Be early and stay late. Getting to know the audience beforehand and talking after to answer questions is a forgotten thing that gives the highest value. (Great post by my man Olivier on this)

18. Speaking for free is a great lead generator and a quick way to go broke. Get value one way or another because you give it. Get conference passes for others, barter for product or services or at least a wheel of cheese.

19. Videotape every session you do. Share it on your blog and watch it yourself. Learn from it.

20. Change your presentation every time. Update stats, bring new examples. Own the content, not repeat it.

21. Ask for testimonials, don’t just assume the organizer will send one.

22. If you start every point with “In my book…” you’re doing a commercial, not a seminar. The best way to sell is to teach. I’m not saying ignore that you have a book, just simmer down a bit, we heard you the first five times.

23. It’s not about you.

24. If the conference has a #HashTag on Twitter, start finding people who are going to be there by searching with it. Talk to them, build relationships and then track them down at the event to say hi. It’ll be like you already know them, because you do.

25. Send out helpful tips that have to do with your content by using the same hashtag as above.

26. Watch Twitter for mentions of your talk and let people know you appreciate them spreading your word.

27. You’re not their parent, don’t tell them to put phones away, just ask as a courtesy to put the ringer on silent. I don’t understand speakers that tell audiences they can’t text/tweet during a talk. Make your content so good people feel they HAVE TO tell others right away, but great enough that they don’t want to miss a word.

28. If you’ve done a certain presentation numerous times and you feel it’s routine, either change it up or trash it. It may be the 20th time you’ve told a story, but it’s the first time that audience has heard it.

29. It’s not about you.

30. If you use feedback sheets, create two check-boxes at the bottom. One that says “I would like to be subscribed to your newsletter that provides [insert awesome benefit]” and the other says “I know of a group/association that would benefit from your talk, drop me a line”. Extend the contact past the session.

As always, your comments make the post 10x better! I’ve added some of your tips below, taken from the comments. Be sure to leave your own!

31. Speaking kits and demo reels are all well and good, but in my experience, it is all about contacts, personal brand, posturing and social proof to get booked at gigs. (from Dean Hunt Site / Twitter)

32. When the introducer says, “Please give a warm welcome to Jim Smith,” don’t start your talk with “Hi I’m Jim Smith.” An don’t thank them for the warm welcome or start listing all the organizers you want to thank. You can weave that into the talk. Start with a powerful statement, an intriguing question or other compelling beginning that will rivet their attention. (from Randy Gage Site / Twitter)

33. Tell great stories (your own, not someone else’s), and be funny. Don’t tell jokes, but use humor. (From Ava Diamond Site / Twitter)

34. Know your audience. There is a big difference between talking to 5th graders and mid-level corporate execs. The more that you know and tailor, the better the speech will be. (From David Siteman Garland Site / Twitter)

35. When a participant asks a question, remember to repeat the question for the audience. There’s a chance that others, especially those at the back, didn’t hear it. (From Sherine Clarke)

36.  Ask for a cell number of the conference organizer if you have to travel to speak there and text them when you get in safely. A less-stressed meeting planner/client means a happier one too This goes double if you’re the opening keynote the next day.

37. Record a video shout-out for the conference to potential attendees to get to know you. It can be a minute or two, but allows the client to use the clip on their blog/site to help build up buzz for the event.

38. Right before you go on, clarify what time they need you to wrap-up your talk at. If you were told an hour originally, and the previous speakers run over their time, it’s up to you to see if they need you to compress your talk or go the full hour. Nothing is more stressful for a conference than one that is running late.

39. Don’t use video/flash/audio in your slides. Your slides should be able to play on a Commodore 64. Don’t be “that guy” with custom fonts, and dancing babies on the screen unless you’re bringing your own laptop. If you do insist on using your own laptop, then arrive early enough so it can be set-up properly. And for the love of the late Steve Jobs, bring a dongle, MacFanBoy.

40. If you walk in front of the audio speakers, or don’t come early for the sound check, don’t throw the look of death at the A/V people when your mic doesn’t work right away. Those A/V people have seen 1,324 speakers this year already, they don’t need “Mr. Death Stare” throwing them under the bus to the audience when it wasn’t their fault in the first place. My goal is to make the A/V crew enjoy my talk. If you can please them, you can please anybody in that room. Oh, and if they don’t like you, they can make you sound “less” pristine.

41. Be you. When you try to be someone else on stage, it makes you even more nervous. I dress like me, I talk like me and I say what I think. I tell stories. That may not be your style. Don’t force funny. People will try to knock that out of you. Just in the past two days one person said I should have better “hygiene” and wear a tie, because I wear a black shirt and have facial hair. Another person said I was “over the top” with how I speak. What you don’t hear is the silent majority that like you being you, that are relieved that it isn’t nother stuffed-up suit and tie on stage, and for some of us “over the top” means really freaking passionate about what we say. I ain’t changing that for anybody. And neither should you.

And thanks to the awesomely wonderful Pam Slim for this post which contains some of the best tips for preparing for presentations I’ve ever read. (and her book isn’t too shabby either)

On a panel? I also wrote a post about those!

Let's call him "ROI Guy"

“What’s the ROI of Social Media?”

That’s the question that gives me ulcers when asked it.

Easy now, old-school business folk, I don’t have a problem questioning the value or return of something that takes potentially both time and money from your business. Any smart business person would do that.

My problem is we hold social media to a higher level of judgement than most things in business.

So, at no charge, I will Skype into any of your companies and explain exactly the ROI of social media, if you first can tell me what the ROI is of the following common business practices:

1. Meetings. Especially meetings about how social media is a waste of time. Weekly meetings…. with 10 people at them.

2. CC’ing everybody on every email. I figure the time it takes to read every “official” corporate email, you could’ve built a Twitter empire, ruled Facebook and had time for some Angry Birds (on Google+)

3. Meetings.

4. 2,000 mugs with your logo. I know when I need a lawyer, I search my coffee mug shelf. I know, I know, you bought them in December so you could spend your budget so you’d get it again next year, but still.

5. Overpaid conference keynote speakers No, wait. Scratch that. Nothing to see here. Move along.

6. Meetings.

7. Making your employees commute. Your business is mostly done over the computer or on the phone. Why do they have to sit at a desk again? Face time FTW!

8. Leather boardroom blotters. Ask the admin assistant that is on year 5 of a wage freeze how impressed he/she is that you just spent $2000 on leather squares.

9. Meetings.

10 Your Yellow Pages Ad, Direct Mail pieces and Tradeshow Booth. If you know the exact ROI on these three, awesome. You’re ahead of the game. Most have no clue.

11. Fax machines and toner. Seriously. I had a vendor say I couldn’t email a scanned version of a contract to them, since they needed me to “fax the original”. You know the actual piece of paper doesn’t travel through the phone line right? Right??

And even the smarter ones in business know that to be successful, you have to:

- Answer questions about our product or service

- Educate consumers

- Offer post purchase follow up

- Market research

- Discuss industry best practices

Read those five things out to a social media naysayer and ask if they agree about them being smart for businesses. Because that’s a checklist for what social media is used for. Just sayin.

Combine these with banning employees from using social media at work because it “distracts workers” and you see why I’m losing my hair. (Social media didn’t create distracted workers, Minesweeper did).

What do you think? Anything to add that you see companies doing with no question, yet deny social media because of “ROI”? Leave it in the comments below!

There are countless blog posts online about how out of touch PR people are with trying to reach influential bloggers/social media types. From mass-emailed blind press releases to not understanding how social media really works.

I finally have a story that is the opposite.

Many of you have heard of, or even read the story about Tassimo’s campaign in Canada in my book, (great post about it from Erin Bury here) and how they spread the word about the coffee maker by giving machines to influencers instead of a TV campaign.

It was pure genius on many levels, and so much of it had to do with Duri Al Ajrami, the Director of Social Marketing – Senior Partner at OgilvyOne Canada.  It was his ability to connect with me and many others that made us even open to the thought of this campaign. He emailed us after doing his research, met with us and understood how it all works, being the beloved go-between for their client and us crazy social media/blogger entitlement types

Fast forward to a month or two ago: I have been approached hundreds of times since by PR/Communication folks to try out their stuff and in return I can give them free exposure. For the most part I don’t even blink. It’s like they just went from blindly faxing reporters to blindly emailing bloggers. Then Duri drops me an email and explains that Magnum Ice Cream is launching in Canada and they want me on board, I’d hope it was because of my rugged good looks and boyish charm, but mainly because I have a platform.

He said all the right things: I only had to tweet/blog if I wanted to, only talk about it when/if I wanted to. He knew I wasn’t going to post a blog on UnMarketing as a “sponsored” post to say how yummy their ice cream is. His main concern was that I did anything that I was comfortable with and my audience would be too. We high-fived, they shipped me a case of ice cream in dry ice, I ate most of it in a 2-day binge, reflected on what went wrong that made me eat a case of ice cream in 48 hours and then decided to record this video (I haven’t even gotten to the awesomest part yet, keep reading):

I thought it was a fun way to talk about it! I even titled it “Magnum’s False Advertising”, which I’m sure made the client throw-up a little. I talked about how the box said the flavour was “Double Chocolate” even though there are actually four layers of chocolate, and I demanded it be changed to “Quad Chocolate”. Duri loved it, I enjoyed making it because I was my smart-ass self, and my friends liked it. They didn’t even mind that a lot of people who watched it wouldn’t be able to enter the contest since it’s only open to Canadians. Perfect. All good, everyone’s happy, let’s go home and eat ice cream?

Think again.

Duri just showed up at my house (he emailed first, relax) and said “I have a gift for you!” And handed me this:

Are. You. Kidding. Me?!?!

If you didn’t catch it, look at it again.

They loved the video so much, they “whipped up” four custom boxes of the ice cream with my new flavour description. And these aren’t stickers slapped on, it’s four real boxes, with the ice cream bars inside.

I literally lost it in the driveway, ran upstairs and am typing this right now.

Just because you’re in an agency, doesn’t mean you can’t be awesome.

PR doesn’t have to stand for Press Release. It can still mean Public Relations.

When you do awesome things, it makes people want to share the awesome.

It wouldn’t matter how much they paid me, I wouldn’t use this blog to promote ice cream.

And now I just did. Because of the awesome.

Well played Duri and Magnum, well played indeed.

Has anyone outreach/agency really blown your mind? Share it in the comments.

+UPDATE+ Duri mentioned in the comment below “To be fair to all … The idea of the box was a team effort lead by the the AWESOME Mark Forward and Jamie George (two amazing Ogilvy folks) who planned this and blessed by our amazing clients Gina Kiroff and Joyce Kim who always drove us to think out of the box. I just delivered Thank you all for your great words … we’re still learning”

Another great PR/Business lesson: Give credit where it’s due.

(You KNOW this post has to be epic, I started it off with a Helen Keller quote. Shazam!)

Facebook. Half a billion people. One of the greatest things to come out of the Internet for many reasons, without it there would be so many social media consultants that would go hungry and have to go back to shilling “video email!” from 1998.

The biggest threat to Facebook and it’s success isn’t a change in format, structure or infrastructure. It’s user apathy. And more specifically when it comes to Facebook for business, event apathy.

Exhibit A

This event invite defines all that is wrong with them. I live 2,519 miles from the event location, I’m not single and frankly a “hands-on” singles night sounds like something we should all be doing in private. (You may think I’m picking on the event organizer here. Which I am. If you don’t want to appear in my blog, don’t invite me to events like this. Easy peasey)

Many people have said to me “It’s no big deal, just reply with no, and be done!”

I say “NO” to that. The onus to stop Facebook event spam should not be on the receiver. The logic is the same that email spammers use (if you don’t want it, just delete).

More importantly, if you look closely at that event again, this is the most glaring thing:

3 “Yes”, 19 “Maybe” and 4,552 AWAITING REPLY! This screen shot is just before the event takes place, and the invite had been out there for weeks, so it’s safe to say these people weren’t replying anytime soon.

Read those numbers again.

Notice it doesn’t show the number of people who said “No” which I assume is about 400, since they most likely used a script to auto invite 5,000 “friends” to the event.

Do the math.

It’s not even the 400+ people you’ve pissed off with your untargeted invite to get 3 “yes’s”, which you’ve actually achieved the impossible with: You’ve made direct mail and cold-calling success ratios look good. It’s the 4,552 who never even saw the invite that scares the jeebus out of me.

This isn’t a freak occurrence. Most people I’ve talked to have gotten so over whelmed with Facebook invites to events like these, they’ve either stopped noticing invites or turned of notifications all together (like I have). And that is horrible.

I threw a party at BlogWorld last year. Open bar, 100+ of my fave people, fancy pants velvet rope. 45 people on the invite list never even replied and didn’t know about the event because they stopped checking them long ago. They missed an event that was targeted (only people I knew/thought were going to BlogWorld were invited) and most would have come.

And we have done this. The most social, strongest community in the history of the world, and people have turned to apathy for events. This has to stop.

We must stop:

- Inviting people to a local event that aren’t

- Creating events that aren’t actual “events” but a way to email mass people at once, regardless of reply

- Constantly emailing people who haven’t replied yet with information about your event like the person is coming

- Publicly inviting people to a private topic event (weight loss, confidence, being single). I’ve been invited to 15 different weight loss events in the past 3 months. What are you trying to say?

What can we do to make it better? Invite people to events that are a geographic and demographic match. You know, like actual real marketers do? Stop blasting it to thousands to try and land a few. Every time you do that, a baby unicorn dies. A baby unicorn.

PS – Don’t get me started on the new “groups” feature that adds you without permission and emails you every wall post until you opt-out of each group individuality. That’s for another day and Helen Keller quote.

Do you pay attention to invites? Do you get redonkulous ones? Do tell in the comments below!

]]> http://www.unmarketing.com/2011/02/15/how-we-are-killing-facebook/feed/ 437 http://www.unmarketing.com/2011/01/11/the-awesomeness-of-being-a-2-0-author/ http://www.unmarketing.com/2011/01/11/the-awesomeness-of-being-a-2-0-author/#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:14:31 +0000 unmarketing http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/?p=722 I don’t know how authors did it years ago. You pour your heart and soul into a book, it hits the shelves and you hope people like it.

I’m such a spaz that I don’t think I could handle the lack of immediate validation and/or rejection.

I’ve been amazed since UnMarketing came out. The immediacy and coolness of tools has blown my mind. Waking up everyday and reading tweets in real time about people reading the book makes me smile. Every. Day. It’s the passive conversation our readers are having with each other that was untappable (my new word) previously.

Twitter mentions

And sadly most authors aren’t even listening to their readers:

And it’s not just on Twitter. Blog reviews, and other mentions can happen under our radar. Setting up a Google News Alert for your book title in quotes will keep you on top of most mentions online. I’m also tacking Trackur for a spin. I’ll update this post to let you know how it goes.

Kindle

I was initially a little miffed at the Kindle version of UnMarketing because they made all my saucy/sarcastic footnotes into endnotes, and people wouldn’t click on them, thinking they were real citations and other ridiculousness, but I now LOVE the Kindle version for many reasons:

1. Immediacy – I’ve had people buy the Kindle version during one of my talks as they’re in the audience. This blows my cranium. The drawback of being an author who speaks is when people leave the session, they rush off to the next one and forgot to purchase your awesome book. Or worse, there is no bookstore on site and if you think that they’ll rush to the bookstore when they get home, you’re sadly mistaken for the most part. The immediacy and ability for your audience to buy your book on their phone/laptop/reading device in real-time is epic. If you’re even a half-decent speaker, the highest moment of intent to purchase your book is during your talk. And people can buy it. Brilliant. (this isn’t unique to the Kindle, you can also grab them on the fly as iBook, Nook, Kobo, etc)

2. Digital loaning – I freaking love this about the Kindle. You can loan your copy (link explains it) to someone else for up to 14 days. All you need is their email address. You can only loan a book out once, and can’t read it while it’s out on loan. I believe it’s only available currently to USA based purchasers, I’m not sure why they hate Canada but nonetheless this is great for spreading your content, especially to those that can’t afford all the books they want to read. The author/publisher also  has to agree to it. I learned about it when I saw this tweet a few days ago:

I saw the tweet and retweeted it. I received a large amount of responses that people were impressed I would retweet that, since it doesn’t create sales. I say why wouldn’t I? I want people to consume the book. To love it. That’s our job as authors as far as I’m concerned. It’s not just to write it or talk about it or even sell it. It’s to get people to devour it. Jim wanted to read the content but didn’t have the means currently and I wanted him to read it. And now he is

Heck, if you’d like to get a loaned Kindle copy, leave a comment below or if you have the Kindle version and are willing to loan it to someone, leave a comment too. Then simply reply if you have or want it to the person. And Shazam! We have an UnLibrary!

3. Free R&D – This actually made me say out loud “WOW!” which was awkward since I was sitting by myself in a coffee shop, but I digress. Kindle lets you highlight parts of a book. That isn’t the cool part. Kindle also takes the data and tells you the most popular highlighted lines from your book. Check out the UnMarketing ones! This is R&D for an auther/publisher and tells you what is resonating with your readers. (I just said YA! out loud. I’m going to get thrown out of this place.) Another great thing to do is to take these and make them tweets. You already know it clicks with people. Bring on the retweets!

Here is a sample of mine:

That’s gold Jerry!! You don’t have to guess what’s working, it’s right there in front of you! You can go and check it out for any Kindle book, not just yours. Just click over here. And you can also see the top highlighted books. Just click on the book title and it will show you the highlights. Amazeballs!

4. Track Sales – Using Amazon Author Central you can login as an author and see sale info that used to only be available to your publisher. It allows you to track where it’s selling and in what medium.

Click to enlarge the chart

Digital books are gaining traction. Do not ignore them. It doesn’t matter if you like to read in that format or not.

And this is only a fraction of what is being done and accessible out there to authors and their fans. Did I mention I did an entire 30-city UnBookTour planned through Twitter without any cost to myself or my publisher? Ya, that too.

What have you seen out there when it comes to books that excites you when it comes to the 2.0 book world? Leave a comment below! Or let me know you want to loan/borrow the Kindle version of UnMarketing!