1 Good Reason - Internet Marketing

The Federal Trade Commission is considering new regulations that will hold companies responsible for the actions of bloggers who make false statements about their products, when the blogger has been compensated by the company.  So if a company gives a blogger a tube of skin cream and the blogger falsely claims in their blog that the skin cream cures cancer the FTC can sue the blogger and the company.

This seems reasonable until you start to dig into it a little.  What about someone who doesn’t have a blog but has thousands of followers on Digg, Twitter, Stumbleupon, etc. etc.  What about Facebook, and Digg, etc who received ad revenue from Google for ads for the skin cream?  What about Google who received ad revenue for these same ads?

What about when the skin cream manufacturer offers free samples to 1000’s of people via Facebook and invites them to come back and talk about it?  This after all is the essence of social media, crowd sourcing and viral marketing.  If a few of these people make false claims is the manufacturer liable for them?

It’s very easy to see how the lawsuits will begin targeting the deep pockets of Facebook, Google etc.  But the real losers in this are the public.  Companies won’t want to promote their products via social media.  Bloggers won’t get samples to write about.  But most importantly, Companies will require bloggers to submit product reviews for approval. This will kill the independent blogger review of any product online.  How can you believe someone who had to have their article approved by the vendor?

Jeremiah Owyang will need to revise his list of sponsored blogs because they are going to go away.  Why would I or anyone else want to put our reputation on the line when we have to get the vendor’s legal approval?  If the article is critical, the vendor will pressure me to change it.  As a corporate PR person I know I will if given the opportunity to impact a blogger writing about my company’s products.  David Meerman Scott also has an interesting story on this from the perspective of book reviews.

Many will say that it’s a good thing for sponsored blog posts to go away.  But it’s not, because the largest impact will be on the small company starting out who wants to get noticed by the big boys.  They don’t have the resources to vet each article, so their lawyer will tell them not to send out free samples of that new organic soap you’ve made.  And big popular writers will not be willing to submit each article to a dozen different companies for review.  And that will be the thing that hurts us all.

I titled this article Social ME-dia because one of the great equalizers about social media is that it’s all about ME.  What I say online in Twitter, and in my blog are my responsibility.  I also write the blog for my company and what is said there is the official statement of the company.  In each case the responsibility for any statements made is squarely on the shoulders of the owner of the blog?  I am responsible for the things I say, not someone else. Making some company responsible for my actions simply because they gave me a sample of their product is foolish.

I want to publically ask my blogger collegues and the FTC to not make the deep pockets of companies responsible for this.  It has the ability to stifle and pervert the nature of internet marketing in ways that we cannot forsee.  Make the individual responsible for their words.

Ok I should start by apologizing to my readers for not having written much recently.  For those of you who have been following my other life- the one that pays the bills- it’s been rather hectic lately.  That tends to happen when your startup gets bought by a Fortune 500 and you’re responsible for the PR campaign associated with it.  So that’s why I’ve been busy lately.

Anyway, I’ve just started a new series of blog posts over at the Ripple6 blog and the process I’ve used is interesting and engaging.  So I thought I’d explain what I did and how you can do the same thing- and this is for free!

I started with a panel discussion Ripple6 did at a conference.  We had a great panel with senior executives from Gannett, Procter & Gamble and Meredith (Meredith publishes; Good Housekeeping, Parents and about a bazillion other magazines).   Now I’ve been on a whole bunch of websites where they took a panel discussion video and simply posted it on the website or blog.  And even when you have a great panel it’s a big thing to ask someone to come to your site and give you 45 minutes or an hour for a video.  Short attention spans are the norm on the web and long form videos just aren’t that popular.

Another problem is some of the best stuff in a panel discussion comes at the end during the question and answer period.  But often you need a few minutes of the main section to get the background so you can understand what the questioner is asking.  This leads to a requirement of watching the whole video to get a few minutes of the best stuff.

“I suppose if your video is really, really, REALLY boring there’s not much that can be done to help it.”

One common way to fix the 45 minute video is to edit it down to 10 minutes of the best stuff.  And that was suggested to me as a way to address our video.  However, I saw a different way to do it.  There was so much excellent material in the video that I could use almost the entire thing.  But I knew no one wanted to sit through it all.  And oh by the way I’m facing the common lack of resources and funding that any Marketing department today has.

So I took a different route, I decided to chop the video into 15 different small pieces each covering a single topic.  This allows me to write a blog post on each one and allow our readers to comment on each topic.  Something that a 10 minute multi-topic “best of” reel doesn’t allow.

And with 15 little pieces I can now reorder them into a progression that makes sense. I can take that excellent question that came at the end of the panel and move it to the front of the series.  Where it now serves as an excellent intro piece, which no one foresaw as the best way to start the discussion.

The kicker here is that cutting the video into a bunch of little pieces wasn’t actually that hard.  It took a few hours of watching video to decide where to make the cuts.  And I found a few excerpts that make excellent testimonials in other places on our website.  When necessary I write a short intro piece that creates the set up needed for the viewer to understand the video.  And it wasn’t too expensive, for those of us Marketers (all of us-lol) who find ourselves on a budget now-a-days.

Now I suppose if your video is really, really, REALLY boring not much can be done to save it.  But this method gave me blog topics for 2 months and great interactive content that seems to be getting lots of people interested in the series.  The anticipation of the next post is part of the fun for people and heightens the success of the series.

I hope you enjoy my new blog at Ripple6 and I’m going to try harder to post here on 1GoodReason more often.

Tanks for reading,

Chris

PS:  Please leave a comment here if you use this idea with a link.  I’d love to see what you can do with it.

Bryan Person & Nicole Simon at Web 2.0. Photo credit Brian Solis

I went to NYC Social Media Breakfast today.  It was a blast.  I got to meet some people I’ve only twittered with, to renew connections with others, and forge new connections.  I even missed meeting Julia Roy face to face, next time Julia, but we Tweeted each other from across the room.

But the most interesting and amazing thing about it was that I was there at all.  You see, I’d missed the announcement and when I found out about it, I discovered that I was too late it was sold out.  Now I happened to have met Bryan Person quite a while back on Twitter and on my blog, and face to face at Web 2.0 a couple of months back.  So I sent Bryan a message to see if I could get in.  He replied that with regret the event was overbooked and there simply wasn’t going to be room.

Then yesterday Bryan sent me another message that a seat had opened up and would I be interested in coming?  Now this is a wonderfully kind and generous thing for him to do.  But in and of it self it’s not too amazing because we know each other.  Here’s the amazing part:

BRIAN AND I ARE COMPETITORS!  We work for competing companies in this tiny little incestuous industry of Social Media.  He works for LiveWorld and I work for Ripple6.  Yet he went out of his way to invite me to SMBNYC!

Because of that I am declaring for the whole world to hear that Bryan is a true gentleman.  He knows that a rising tide lifts all boats and as we both go out into the world and push for a broader understanding of social media in general and social networking in particular we will both benefit from it’s growth.  He is also a savvy businessman knowing that at some point in the future he may need a favor from me and I’ll (GLADLY) owe him one now.

This is how it’s supposed to work, people.  Take your lead from Bryan invite your competitor to lunch, because you never when you’ll be working together.  Life’s too short, pay it forward.

Thanks Bryan.

It’s the new “Age of Conversation” and everyone is getting into the act.  As a matter of fact they’ve even let me in on it.  Yes that’s right, security broke down and the editors of Age of Conversation have allowed me to join in on one of the great experiments of the age, the collaborative book, Age of Conversation 2.  And if you keep reading this blog post I’ll include the entire contents of my section of the book later in the post so you don’t have to buy the book, if you don’t want to.

First I want to thank Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton, for their incredible efforts to get these 237 authors, (which must have been akin to herding cats) to produce this incredible work.  By incredible I mean, “how in god’s name did you get 200+ marketing bloggers to cooperate?”  These people are from all different walks of marketing, and about the only thing we all have in common is respect and admiration for the efforts of Drew and Gavin.   Well, that and the desire to write about marketing and help others to understand how best to market themselves and their companies.

Top 10 Reasons to Buy Age of Conversation 2

10.  Because it’s for Variety the Childrens Charity, you like kids don’t you?

9.  Reliable authorities have stated that it’s “a MUST READ” (Quote by Gavin Heaton).

8.  The authors of this book have a combined reading audience of over 500 Billion, counting every time, anyone ever read one of their blogs.

7.  You don’t need any electricity to read the book (unless you get the e-book version).

6.  All of your friends will make fun of you if you don’t.

5.  You will own one of the rarest books produced in 2008.

4.  The last book made over $15,000 (US) for Variety, Children’s charity- you like kids don’t you?

3.  “There’s really good market’n learn’in in there” said Homer Simpson of Springfield.

2.  You’ll need it to complete your set of all of the Age of Converstation books.

1.  Because it’s for Variety the Childrens Charity, you like kids don’t you?

This book is a collection of some of the best thinking on marketing, blogging, and social media in the world today.  I’m proud to have been included with the likes of some great minds.

And here they are:

A Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi

B Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich

C C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Chris Brown, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson

D Daniel Honigman, Dan Schawbel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Dave Davison, David Armano, David Berkowitz, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner

E Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller

F Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson

G G Kofi Annan, Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming

H Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber

J J. Erik Potter, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne & Todd Cabral, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, John Herrington, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Foster

K Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kristin Gorski

L Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux

M Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel

N Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice

O Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz

P Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman

R Rachel Steiner, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen

S Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Sean Scott, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Sreeraj Menon, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood

T Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tim Brunelle, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman

U Uwe Hook

V Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau

W Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff

Y Yves Van Landeghem

Friend Request Accepted

Perhaps I’m the last person in New York to see this, or notice it but I snapped this picture on the E train this morning on the way to work.

A sign that social media is moving into the main stream?

Now Valley Wag complained  about this last month saying that New Yorkers will hate them.  I can’t speak for all NY’ers, or for any actually because I’m a commuter not a resident.  But I don’t think it’s half bad.

What I do think is noteworthy is that Dentyne feels that social media terms like “friend request accepted” are main stream enough to use them as the key to their ads.

There are others:

Send and Receive

The original instant message

I think this a sign that social media is moving into the mainstream of the social conscienceness.   And as a social media practicioner I find that encouraging.

What do you think?

This post is an experiment.  Below are my unedited notes from the conference I attended today at the New York Times building.  It was moderated by Charlene Li and had an excellent panel discussing Social Media and it’s impact on various businesses.  So in the spirit of an experiment please let me know what you think, is this a good format?  Do you find it useful?  Should I do it again?

————————————————————————–

Facebook- Spark a Conversation

Moderated by Charlene Li, Co-author, Groundswell, and Thought Leader, Altimeter Group
Panelists:
Paula Drumm, VP Digital Marketing, H&R Block
Walt Freese, Chief Euphoria Officer, Ben & Jerry’s
Elias Plishner, SVP, Worldwide Digital Marketing Strategy, Columbia TriStar Marketing Group

CL Q: how do you spark a conversation.

Elias; in movies take prod from 0 to max awareness in 6 weeks and then on to 0 in a few months.

Calendar year 600-700 films. Look for uber fans on Facebook, etc. They look for people with mentions of films in profiles. Why, they are going to see the film anyway? Because they are thought leaders.

Walt: Ben & Jerry’s, built on non-traditional marketing. Facebook is a natural extension to the brand allows them to converse with the fan base.

CL: What did you do in detail?

Walt: B&J decided to give free ice cream to everyone one day a year. They used Facebook to allow people to give free cones to friends on Facebook. 500K free cones were given away as part of the promotion for the free ice cream day.

Elias: Gifting is a big idea in movies. They gave away a smoking pineapple which was popular with women (don’t know why). It seems that gifting on Facebook is a more female activity that gets a female audience

Paula: how do you get people talking about taxes? A portion of the audience gets a sense of accomplishment when hey get their taxes done. It’s a way to build trust in the H&R Block brand. They get people talking about the success of doing their taxes on their own. They tested lots of ideas to build trust, 2^nd life island, Facebook fan groups etc. They used gifts on Facebook too, money bag for friends. 250K people gave that gift on tax day.

Paula: on Twitter, use it as an outreach mechanism. They decided that it’s a better way to engage with people not to do outreach- one who got it. HR Block in my cross-hairs, in a Comcast cares way to find problems and fix them as a brand. They changed opinions of a blogger from a critic to a proponent. 

CL: to spark the conversation you need to listen first this way you can learn how to get into the conversation.

CL: How does advertising help to spark the conversation?

Ben & Jerry’s doesn’t use advertising. They are counterculture so they don’t like to do traditional mktg. They use, PR(others talking about them), event marketing, and no advertising. They do a lot more social marketing, social networking. They use Facebook, and twitter, scoopshots, event and guerrilla marketing and other forms that engage the consumer. They are glad to see the demise of normal talking at the consumer.

H&R advertising to push people to Facebook pages and MySpace profile, and YouTube. They are seeking to have consumers build trust. They created Truman Green a YouTube character created as a quirky person to engage with. Advertising was used to promote Truman Green, not H&R Block. They found this advertising to be much more effective than traditional advertising.

B&J Social marketing is to create lifetime customers not to get a transaction. If you want transactions use a coupon not social media.

H&R Social is successful in driving transactions. Customer interaction does lead to transactions which can then be used to prove ROI of the effort. H&R has proven this.

Elias: ads need to be telling a story. For second Grudge movie they found a real college student- but the whole thing was a publicity stunt. The story was that the student was given a tour of the movie set etc. And then the second day the student was missing. This part of the effort was the stunt.

CL: How do you measure this type of social engagement? They use standard audience survey techniques with response cards in theaters etc. they use comments and fan pages and page views. But they are not very reliable.

Elias : have big arguments on whether to leave comments on for social sites. They usually do leave them on. H&R leaves comments on as well. They are moderated for decency and language but are left intact despite the fact that some are critical of the company.

B&J loves the comments and interaction. They believe that the truth will come out and be exposed by the audience if the company isn’t transparent.

H&R what’s the ROI of ignoring social media? The cost of actually interacting on SM is very low as a % of the total marketing budget. The ROI is very high because you need to be involved now so you aren’t playing catch up later on. H&R is convinced that SM is going to be the major part of the advertising media mix in coming years.

Elias: has a new head of Social Media.

B&J customers who give negative feedback are doing a favor because if you can respond and turn the situation around you will have a more avid fan and promoter for the company than if you had before. But you must respond.

Audience Q: How do you get vertical apps like Facebook and twitter to bleed over to the website? They use widgets. They develop a hub idea so their community of interested fans can use a single site as the base for information which is then spread across the various sites.

Elias: We use apps and widgets but did not have such great success. They are moving to not recreating the wheel, so they use existing successful apps in the space. They found success lately with Flixster etc.

B&J used Social media to create a peace mosaic and tried to pull people to the B&J site. This was a mistake. They should have had the customers stay within the community. H&R agrees with B&J and Elias on this point. You aren’t trying to move them to your place, you are trying to meet them in their place.

Biggest surprise per H&R. They had a perception that few of their core community would be in places like 2^nd life. They found a bunch of “tax professionals” in 2^nd life. They have an H&R block island in 2^nd life. And they have employed these fans in their social media niches to support the brand.

Q: what about success on line and failure in the real world. Elias: there are plenty of campaigns where more people are visiting the web site than are seeing the film, Snakes on a plane.

Q: How is Facebook an extension to TV or is it in addition to TV advertising? H&R online doesn’t replace TV it’s just another avenue. Elias: online is complimentary to offline. There is much crossover between media. Like can you use outdoor for mobile phones to access online.

CL: did you take money from other budgets? B&J no. H&R every year is diff. They use testing funds to explorer new connections with consumers. Elias: Yes online budget is going up and others are not expanding. So yes it taking funds from other media.

———————————–

My take-away from the event? The question from the audience; “how do get this traffic from the social media sites to your web page?”

The answer the panel gave which is correct.. You don’t.  The idea of social interaction is that you meet them in their place not yours.  We’ve still got a long way to go to train marketers in how social media works.

Please let me know if you think I should continue this type of blogging in the comments below.

The new Microsoft ad campaign:

First, the new MS ad campaign is ripe for parody, (thanks Jeremyah for this meme).  So what should MS do?  Get in front of the parody and embrace it with gusto!  It’s clear to everyone that their last campaign with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates was a complete failure.  So what should they do next?

Embrace the parody with social media!  Set up a video parody contest on YouTube or some windows video sharing site and grab the gusto of the new media.  Give new PC’s (I’m a new PC!) to the best parodies that don’t insult or ridicule.  Run with it, because you know it’s happening with or without your consent.

Now there’s nothing on YouTube yet, but this search will likely show a  couple of videos in the next 24 hours.

Please post links to good parodies you find in the comments below.

Tanks for reading,

Chris

UPDATE:  Here are the automatic responses you get if you email the addresses in the video:

First from Sean@windows.com

Hello! I’m a PC – and I can’t answer your email right now. I’d like to say that I’m out climbing Mt. Rainier or biking across Europe with the Swedish Beach Volleyball Team, but in fact I’m probably just chained to a desk somewhere in the depths of Redmond pounding out product specifications.

Now that I have been in a commercial, Microsoft has given me access to super-secret “BillyG” level of executive resources. That’s right – I have my own email auto-responder!

This, as you have probably surmised, is my pre-prepared auto-response (All natural, no filler. No animals were harmed in the making of this response. Except for a ferret.) I really would like to have answered you myself, but if I did, (a) I’d probably get no work done, and (b) then I’d get fired, and (c) then I’d have no chance of doing any more of those really awesome commercials.

So let me try to prognosticate a few of your questions and answer a few of them.

Why did they put you on TV?

I think it’s my devastating good-looks and animal magnetism. No, really – there’s a ferret stuck to my leg right now.

But really – you aren’t even an actor!

No I’m not. But I play one on TV. I really am a Microsoft Program Manager. I work on IPv6, and other things that you haven’t heard of.

How did you get selected?

I auditioned along with a couple of hundred others. I guess I looked very Engineery. And the ferret probably helped.

Are you interested in more acting?

Oh no, I think that Engineering is MUCH more fun. <rolls eyes>

What’s with Windows Vista?

<sigh> You’ve been watching those commercials again, haven’t you? Windows Vista rocks. Listen to real users, not actors.

-The Real PC, Sean Siler

next From Bill@windows.com

this is an exciting time… wait, you know what? it’s always an exciting time. i am as excited and passionate about Microsoft as i was when we were Micro-soft. the goal never changes for us, so everyday seems like the first day, and the first day was really just about one thing: connecting people.

maybe this didn’t answer your question at all. but I wanted to say it anyway. i mean, this is an auto-response email. and i will try to answer a few of them, but they will all say the same exact thing…

this is an amazing company. and, yes, the future really is delicious.

Mmmmmm…

Bill

And finally from feng@windows.com

Hi. My name is Feng and I am an SDE, which stands for Software Development Engineer. In layman’s terms – a code monkey. Not a great name, I know, but I think I’m a pretty good balance of geeky and girly (maybe a little bit more on the geeky side). I love hanging out with my friends, watching TV, and shopping online. And I spoil my dog (Lucky) to death.

In case you’re wondering, yes, this is an auto-response email. I am really writing it, just ahead of time. I can’t get to every email I have received. Although, I am trying. So keep checking your inbox. Mainly, I am working on the next release of Windows. There is a brand new feature that will help people organize their data much more easily. Can’t say much more than that

Thanks for the email. And yes, being on TV is cool.

-Feng

Social Ad Summit was a conference held in NYC this week and billed as the “invite only” event  ”focused on strategic issues driving the growth of advertising in social networks.”   The team at Social Times blog did an excellent job pulling it together.

I do however have one complaint and bit of advice for them and anyone holding an event of any type.  The audio system was working but almost everyone was having problems hearing and understanding the speakers on the first panel.  The old joke is that the first rule of holes is; when you find yourself in one stop digging.  As it applies to this situation, stop the presentation until you can get the audio adjusted.  The only reason people were in that beautiful room was to hear what was being said.  Soldiering on inspite of the problems in that case is simply foolhardy.  That’s my only complaint of the conference.

One question asked of the Social Network Advertising panel was, “How does the industry get credit for social ads as opposed to the CPM model?”  The panel agreed that it is a big problem, but there are some new developments; Facebook has recently started delivering statistics on mentions of brands to advertisers that are not tied to ads.  In other words FB is delivering non-sponsored mentions of an advertiser on it’s network.  (For many of us this is considered as basic metics that need to be offered in any social media network.)

Gordon Peters of Social Cash discussed the fact that impressions are becoming worthless, there are 15 billion impressions on Facebook every month.   Is this the beginning of the death of CPM as it relates to Social Network advertising?  I don’t think so.  Because as several panelists said, we’re looking for Life Time Value of a customer.  We’re looking for engagement, and relationships, and one of the ways that you do this is with repetitive contacts.  The nature of these contacts will change but impressions and contact points will be need to be meausured and tracked for analysis.

One interesting point that came out was that JP Morgan uses Facebook in recruiting.  Of course they aren’t doing much recruiting today with the market meltdown.  But presumably they will be recruiting when the new owners take over. (that’s a joke.)

Choosing your primary social network is still a simple matter of deciding where your customer is and meeting them there.  JP Morgan choose Facebook because they are targeting college students.  MTV’s Comedy Channel choose MySpace because there is a strong community of commedians there. 

Ford Motor Co. has strong enthusiast communities on both MySpace and Facebook.  Ford has targets everywhere, “everyone who drives” according to Scott Monty the new Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager at Ford Motor Company.   (Why do big companies give people huge titles like that?)  Scott’s a friend and we had lunch together, and I wish him the best of luck with Ford.  Ford is doing some interesting things with technology today (Microsoft sync in cars), they are reaching out to bloggers and doing some real social marketing.  Expect to see more interesting things coming from Ford in the social media space.

Further analysis will be coming in a second article later this week.

Tanks for reading,

Chris

Hear the whole story live today at noon (unless you’re reading this on another day, in which case you can simply follow the link and listen RIGHT NOW!)

So just CLICK RIGHT HERE and listen to it live, (or any time).

I’m going to be on the program: SocialMedialogy™ - the art and science of achieving tangible results from social media, hosted by John Lawlor.

So check it out and let me know in the comments below how I did.

Tanks for reading,

Chris

UPDATE: Rescheduled to Noon Thursday 9/11/08 due to technical glitches.

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) If you are going to flog, aka Adverblog (and you know you will) the old school ideas of subtlety, innuendo, irony and sarcasm need to be supplanted with simplicity and clarity.  Basically because we suck at spotting subtlety in written communications. Like Duh!

It’s extrememly difficult to recognize sarcasm and irony in writing especially on the web.  Perhaps this is because of the fact that people skim web pages rather than read them in detail. But studies have identified a more likely cause as being the missing information which can be derived from voice and body language.  We’ve all picked up the phone after a long series of confusing emails, back and forth, forth and back, each more difficult to write, seeking to describe the subtlety, and neuance of the situation, only to clear it up in a 30 second phone conversation.

Personal experiences that many of us share relating to that time when they “totally missed the sarcasm/irony in that email” should help us to understand the depth of the problem.  I’ve jumped down people’s throats because they were more subtle than I was able to detect in their email.  Man, that makes you feel stupid.

Man, that makes you feel stupid, is the point here.  The very last thing an Adverblogger needs is to make their target audience feel stupid, misled, fooled, hoodwinked, bamboozled, betrayed, etc… you get the point.  So the only way to deliver AdverBlogging that works and isn’t an affront to the readers is to be clear about your intent, goals, or support (i.e. the money behind the words.)

Consider carefully how the reader could possibly misinterpret your words.  Could they be thinking your Advertisement is not that, but a true unsolicited customer testimonial?  If that’s the case, (and it often is) then you need to make it more apparent that it’s an Ad, period.  If that means a label as blatant as “this is an advertisment” then that’s what you need to do. Because the alternative is making the target audience, your customers feel stupid.  And that’s never a good thing.

Do you think I’m being stupid?

Tanks for reading,

Chris