Step Outside Your Social Media Echo Chamber

December 13, 2011 Filed under: Blogging,Social Media Marketing — Tags: echo chamber, filter bubble, Google, Social Media Marketing —

I was struck recently by a tweet from a social media guru, commenting on how staid and outdated he found the presentations at a healthcare conference because social media was so undervalued and unappreciated as a marketing vehicle. That tweet really got under my skin. It seemed pretentious to me, calling healthcare marketing outdated because they aren’t using the latest social media tactics. But then I realized this ‘guru’ probably spends much of his time on social media blogs, following other social media gurus on Facebook, Twitter & Google+, and using all the latest ideas himself. I’m sure he talks with hundreds of clients, helping them make the best use of social media for their businesses. Of course he would think that healthcare professionals ‘just don’t get it.’ He, after all, lives in the social media echo chamber.

If you’re active in Social Media – any kind of media, in fact — you’re probably familiar with the echo chamber. The echo chamber is what happens when you follow online communities or media sources you agree with, and before long, you find you’re listening only to like-minded people, you hear your own opinions constantly echoed back to you, and you’re further reinforced in your own belief system. It goes a long way to explaining our currently polarized political system, where neither side can even hear the opposing side anymore, much less appreciate their point of view.

For many of us, the echo chamber also frames our business and personal discussions. Do you find yourself bored from reading ever- similar story themes in your daily Facebook stream? Do the tweets from people you follow all start to sound the same after a while? Do you find the sources you read tend to cluster around certain repetitive themes? If so, you’re in an echo chamber that was most likely crafted for you by Google or Facebook. It’s a dangerous place to live for very long, because you’ll find after a time that your opinions become hardened, you start to think your views are ‘the truth’, and you gradually lose your ability to see other points of view. Or, if you’re naturally more open-minded, you’ll find yourself becoming bored by the lack of diversity and new ideas you find online.

Remember those long-ago days when most people got their news from mass media, when we had to trust news editors to decide what was newsworthy and fit to print? In those days, editors had to print a diversity of topics in order to satisfy their diverse readership. Today, Google serves up a smorgasboard of information, making us feel like we’re exposed to endless diversity. But it’s deceiving because Google tailors the delivery of that information in search results based on what it knows of our interests and previous behavior. Facebook does the same, by favoring posts from people we interact with most. And Twitter has the same effect, as we follow people we find interesting and then get drawn further into their circles of similar people. Google+ alleviates the echo chamber somewhat by allowing you to deliberately create separate – and ever-widening — Circles of connections. But it doesn’t do away entirely with the echo chamber.

In the world of social media, it takes work to keep an open mind and a broad perspective. We’ve offloaded that job from the mass media news editor to the online individual. It’s a heavy burden but an important responsibility – to yourself and others. If you leave it to Google and Facebook, they will, over time, cocoon you in a well-padded chamber of echoes of your own voice. If that is scary to you (it is to me!), you’ll need to keep a vigilant hand in the management of your social media circles. Prune the list of who you’re following, what blogs you’re subscribed to, and what perspectives you’re reading. If you feel the chamber walls narrowing, go out and find opposing viewpoints and subscribe to those. Get active in their comments. Engage with other perspectives. The old adage “don’t judge a man till you’ve walked a mile in his boots” could be updated to say “don’t form your opinions till you’ve ventured outside your own echo chamber”.

I have this nightmare image that, if we don’t keep ourselves vigilantly openminded online, we could become an entire nation that’s a macrocosm of our current Congress. Now that’s a scary thought.

Just to keep things interesting and open-minded, here are 3 articles with quite different perspectives on the theme of this blog post.

Mass media marketing is dead. Not. (customerthink.com)
Swarm Theory: How the Media Controls the Debate // Luke Stibbs // 12.06.2011 (thecollegeconservative.com)
The Filter Bubble Within Social Media (searchengineland.com)

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Roundup of Google+ First Impressions

July 15, 2011 Filed under: Fun Stuff,Internet Marketing,Social Media Marketing — Tags: Google, Social Media Marketing —

If you follow anything about marketing or technology, you’ve probably heard about Google+. The new social media channel, released to a limited invitation-only trial on June 28, has taken the tech world by storm. Since there are plenty of news stories – and Google itself — to explain the new features, I’ll give you instead a roundup of the early impressions and opinions from early trial users. It seems to be generating as much enthusiasm among Search gurus as HP and the DH2 is among Harry Potter fans. Here’s what people are saying after the first 2 weeks:

Google+ Circles more like real relationships. The most talked-about new feature is Circles, which allow you to segment your social relationships more like people do in real life (define what circles you travel in socially, separate friends, work, family, etc.). Wall St. Journal columnist Katherine Boehret, invited to test the Google+ trial, gives a clear overview here.

Targeted for Business. While Facebook was designed with college students in mind, Google+ seems a better fit for businesses. Google has plans to start a test phase for businesses today, so expect more light to be shed soon on how business can make best use of it. With high expectations and baited breath, many are waiting to see if and how Google is the social business network we’ve all been waiting for. Read here about Google’s social business plans.

Game changing for small biz. Google+ Circles, a real-life way to segment your social connections online, will allow small businesses to ‘go social’ with their customers more easily, and will make it easy to join circles of your favorite local businesses through an integration with Google Place listings. Andrew Shotland writes a great piece on Google Plus Google Places.

Plenty of hype & navel-gazing. Since the trial has been by invitation only, Google has heightened the mystery and gotten the pundits talking. Like lots of big tech announcements, the initial hype may be a tad overblown. “Once Google+ users start discussing topics other than Google+ then it might get interesting…” quipped one commenter on TechCrunch.

Google’s Trojan Horse. Devin Coldewey (TechCrunch) claims (convincingly) that the latest Google announcement is not only a replacement for Facebook and/or Twitter, but Google’s long-range plan to take over the Internet. “Sure, right now it seems like it’s aimed at Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter, but when the stakes are this high, you better believe they’ve got guns pointed at everyone in the room.” Yikes.

Inevitable Facebook comparisons. Google has been widely rumored to have Facebook in its sights, so the comparisons are rampant. Some of the more interesting include Rafe Needleman’s (CNet) claim that “Google+ Makes Me Happier Than Facebook,” Ryan Singel’s (Wired) preference for Google+ over Facebook on Privacy, …and Mashable’s Facebook Defectors survey results from voters who said “I’ve already left. Facebook is so dead to me” (24.4% of votes at this writing).

It’s still social media. While lots of pundits are saying it’s an improvement, Google+ still gives you the unending stream of comments from all your connections. Here’s some early advice on how to manage it before it manages you. Peter Meyers (SEOMoz) advises how to invest only 15 Minutes a Day on Google+.

If you’re not one of the early trial users, be sure to get on Google’s waiting list so you can discover Google+ for yourself!

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Ten Tips to Keep From Burning Out on Social Media

March 22, 2011 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: Facebook, Social Media Marketing, Twitter —

Social media is great for forming online relationships, for sharing information with people who share your interests, for keeping your finger on the pulse of your industry or community, and probably for lots of other things too. Gotta love it! If you plug in every day, you can be sure to stay connected and to have your say in what’s going on. But how do you keep from getting addicted? And how do you keep from burning out on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Quora, and all the other social media channels? Here are 10 tips to help you stay fresh and avoid burnout. They work for me, at least, and help keep me freshly excited about blogging, tweeting, Facebook posting, bookmark sharing, etc. each day. What works for you?

Comic from Geek and Poke

1. Look for opportunities to add value. It’s tempting to just jump on board and start chatting on Facebook or Twitter because everyone’s doing it. But think first about why you’re doing it and then stick to your goals. Are you looking to stay connected to friends and family? Great, then share your personal news and pictures and see what others have to say about theirs. If you’re looking to use it for business, however, stay focused on how you can add value to the customers and prospects you want to reach. Use tools like search.twitter.com to find out where the conversations are happening about your company or your industry. Find bloggers who write about topics your customers care about. Follow closely what fans are saying on your Facebook page or pages of your competitors. Use all these sources to understand what your customer base cares about and who is talking about it. Then look for opportunities where you can add value. Offer free advice, help someone with a problem, refer people to helpful information online — in general, demonstrate what you know and how you can be of service. Social media is not the place to promote yourself, and if you do you’ll burn out fast. But if you seek to help and add value, you’ll find it easier to go the distance.

2. Focus on 2-way relationships. Social media is not a 1-way communication vehicle for blasting out your promotional messages to the world, or even to your niche market or friends. It’s a 2-way conversation with people who choose to connect with you. So, welcome and respond to people who follow you. Comment on their posts. Link out to other websites and share what you’ve found. Engage with your friends, family, business partners, customers, and other people you want to hear from. Listen more than you speak and respond to what moves you. If you only speak and don’t listen, you’ll end up as lonely as the blowhard at a cocktail party who wonders why the room has cleared out when he’s finally finished talking about himself.

3. Expand and prune your circle of contacts to keep them relevant. I think of my social media connections as a living, breathing garden of connections. Just like you prune your garden so that some plants thrive in one season, others in another season, so too you can prune your social media connections. I find that when someone dominates my stream too much, I tuck them away and hide them for a while so I can let others shine & be heard from. Hootsuite is a great tool for doing this, as you can juggle between different lists and decide which list you’ll pay attention to (or not) at different times. It also pays to plant new seeds, look for new people to follow, add more color and variety to the people you hear from each day. If you particularly like someone’s tweets or posts, find who they follow, and follow them as well. If you’re hearing repetition among the bloggers you follow, branch out and get new ideas from bloggers in other fields.

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Finding Your Social Media Voice

February 22, 2011 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: Social Media Marketing —

I often talk with small business owners who want to jump on the Social Media bandwagon and establish their presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, or some combination of these. After all, everyone is doing it and who wants to be left behind? Many people adopt the “just try it” mindset, and create an account, start posting, build a following, …and then wonder where to go from there (the classic Fire, Aim, Ready approach). That’s fine if your goal for social media is just to be social. But if you’re intending to market your business through Social Media, you should take a more deliberate approach. I call it finding your voice. Here are some practical tips for how to get there.

Establish your goals. Are you looking to draw visitors to your website? Address customer concerns and feedback? Establish online thought leadership? Build a brand? While these are all valid goals, your answer should NOT be “all of the above”. Decide on one or 2 primary goals and put your full weight behind those. You’ll be more effective if you’re focused.

Identify your intended audience, and make a clear mental picture of who they are. If your audience is your customers, for example (that’s the case for my blog), keep a single person in mind and define them more expansively than just their interest in your product or service. What do they look like, what interests do they have? What do they care about? My favorite example is the Fiskateers blog, which targets scrapbookers. Sure, they use Fiskar scissors, but the voice of the blog understands that a scrapbooker is much more than just a user of scissors. By defining a clear persona as their target reader, Fiskar has built a successful following by catering to the specific needs of the scrapbooking persona.

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Facebook Updates Your Company Page

February 11, 2011 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: Facebook, Social Media Marketing —

Big changes are afoot at Facebook, which has just updated its Facebook Pages. This is good news for small business, as they appear to be making a clearer distinction between personal profiles and company/organization pages, and making Facebook Pages easier to work with, edit, and track, all of which help to support the needs of small businesses. Here’s a quick overview of their changes (and here’s Facebook’s overview of the changes):

Choose your identity. Since Facebook started as a person-to-person exchange, and only later added Facebook Pages for organizations, there has often been confusion between personal and company identities. Now they’ve made a clear distinction. You still need a personal account to setup a company page, but you can now operate as either the personal or company identity – and you can change between them within one account (see pink arrow). In the picture above, I have entered posts on my company page (Sound Web Solutions) as both Sound Web Solutions and as Cynthia Lavoie (see red arrows). And when I comment on other pages, I can do so as either identity, using the “use Facebook as…” chooser (pink arrow).

NOTE: To switch between identities, you’ll need to go into your company page Settings and uncheck the box next to “Always comment and post on your page as PAGE NAME even when using Facebook as YOUR NAME”.

Showcase photos. Photos have long been a favorite thing for Facebook users to share, but they’ve never been particularly prominent on the standard design of a company page. Now they are (see blue arrow). Take advantage and dress your page up with some personalized photos – of your employees, your place of business, or whatever.
Feature other pages. If you go into the “Edit Page” mode (purple arrow), you’ll see Featured Pages which allows you set the other pages that you like. Make sure to feature your friends’ pages, business partner pages and clients. You can also feature the human owners of other pages.
New Left Navigation. Facebook has moved the navigation tabs from the top to the left of the page (see gold arrow). To move the left navigation around, just click edit and then drag and drop. To add some variety and interest, you can add Notes, YouTube, Event and your blog to the default list of tabs Facebook provides.
Interact with other pages. You can see activity from the pages you like in your News feed. You can also highlight other Pages you are connected with as well as the people who are managing your Page.
Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts.

It’s exciting, to be sure, and it’s bound to make Facebook an even more popular channel for small businesses to market themselves. However, let me add a note of warning. As these updates show, Facebook is known to change things around often, without warning. They also own all the content on your pages, and do not add significantly to the ranking or authority of your website. With that said, it’s hard to ignore the fact that they have more than 500 million active users. My suggestion: update your Facebook Page to these latest changes. If you don’t, Facebook will authomatically update you March 1^st anyway.

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How to Manage Your Search Marketing Agency: No More “Go Do It Please”

October 27, 2010 Filed under: Content Marketing,Internet Marketing,Social Media Marketing — Tags: content marketing, Search Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing —

There’s no doubt about it – marketing as a profession is undergoing massive changes, right now, in real-time. When you’re in the midst of change, it’s hard enough to shift your perceptions, and even harder to alter long-established practices. But in marketing as in anything else, if you want to stay ahead of the curve, you need to acknowledge that things aren’t what they used to be, and then be willing to reset your expectations as well as your plans.

I’ve been a marketing professional for over 20 years, and for the first 17-18 years, the practice of marketing didn’t change much. Companies determined their product (or service) strategy, created marketing materials, attended conferences, hired ad agencies to run ad campaigns and PR agencies to pitch stories to the press. (Gross generalization, I admit, but roughly true). When you hired an agency, you expected the ‘creative types’ to go off, think creatively, and come back with some cool-looking ads or some punchy story ideas to pitch to journalists. The implicit expectation: “just go do it for me, please.”

The new world of search marketing and social media is much different. If your job is to market your company’s products, you can’t expect an agency to just “go do it” for you. Why not? There are 3 main reasons, as I see it:

Content Freshness. Your online image is only as fresh as your content. While an outside marketing agency may know lots about your company or product, they’re just not as close as you are to what’s new and interesting about it. You’ll need to keep the content coming, and keep the news fresh. An outside agency can, however, be a terrific brainstorming partner, content management advisor, ghost writer, editor, content optimizer, writing coach, and even blog “personal trainer” (ask me about this if you don’t know what I mean). Online marketing is fast evolving into content marketing, and an agency can be a valuable partner in helping your company to make this transition.

The Personal Touch. Social media is all about connecting directly with your customers and prospects, and an authentic voice is critical to establishing trust. It’s therefore a good idea to develop your own company “voice” and to build a credible presence on social media. An outside agency can be a key partner in helping you set goals for your social media strategy, understand the different social media channels and which are best suited to your goals and audience, and coach you on how to get started. They can also help you tie your social media strategy to a larger Content Marketing strategy, and measure your effectiveness across the board.

Quick Response. It’s likely your company is being talked about online. Whether it’s online customer reviews, social media discussions, or blog comments, your company name – and hence your online reputation – is out there. If you want a chance to respond, shape your image, or even just track what’s being said, you’ll need to tune in to this chatter. A company representative is once again your best online voice, although a marketing agency can track and measure what’s being said and point you to the trouble spots that need your immediate attention.

Success for a marketer in the current online environment starts with engagement. Engagement is becoming an over-used word, but it’s an apt one nonetheless. If you don’t engage with your customers, you’ll lose their online attention; and for a growing number of consumers, online is where their attention is increasingly focused.

Does this mean you shouldn’t hire a marketing agency? No, that’s certainly not what I’m suggesting (disclosure: I AM a marketing agency). And you should still expect creative ideas, solid strategic thinking, and excellence in execution, as good marketing agencies have always provided. But I am suggesting you alter your “just do it for me” expectation. To help you succeed, an Internet Marketing agency needs your deep involvement. While there are agencies who’ll encourage you to outsource everything to them, a more effective approach is a partnership.

If you want to portray an authentic online presence, you’ll need to develop your own unique voice in social media, generate unique content on a frequent basis, and respond in a timely manner to your online fans and reviewers. These are big tasks, and an online marketing agency can help – as coach, editor, organizer, strategizer, ghost writer, metrics tracker and analyst, and more. But they can’t “just go do it” without you.

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Ode to Blogging – A Welcome Return to Deep Thinking

September 8, 2010 Filed under: Blogging — Tags: blogging, Social Media Marketing —

It sure feels like we’ve become an easily-distracted, always-too-busy, information-overloaded, chronically multi-tasking culture. You would think, and I often do, that this would reduce us all to superficial thinkers, attention-deficit sufferers, and sound-byte-limited writers. Well, yes; there is certainly lots of evidence that these conditions are on the rise.

But then, there’s blogging. Blogging is like a long breath of fresh air. Since I started blogging, I’ve found that I’m making time again for deep, well-considered thinking. It’s given me an excuse and justification for taking some quiet time out of my day to think, to sort through the racing thoughts and fire hose of information and try to make sense of it. To pull together some coherent thoughts, careful conclusions, and occasionally, some original insights. Gosh, it feels great. The mad rush of daily life and unanswered emails used to feel like there was just no time for such luxury. But a blog demands it. I’m so thankful.

I haven’t really talked about this with others, but I suspect other bloggers know what I’m talking about. They must, because I read lots of blogs, and I’m really impressed with the quality of thinking and writing I find in the blogosphere. Traditional wisdom used to suggest that only journalists and columnists could express themselves in ways and on topics that deserved a reading public. But the blogging community dispelled that notion years ago. There are, in fact, many writers and commentators who have valuable contributions to make to public discourse – in every conceivable niche – and I’m convinced that we are all becoming wiser and more knowledgeable as a result of all this blogged wisdom.

Yes, there’s plenty of drivel out there, and many a blog that’s a waste of your time. There’s also a worsening of the information-overload phenomenon with every blog you add to your read list. But the best way to get the overload monkey off your back is to join the blogging ranks. You don’t need to write long treatises — shorter is better — but that doesn’t mean you can’t think long and hard about what to write. Think in the shower, during your commute, lying in bed at night — whenever your mind is loose and fertile (and be sure to jot quick notes when an idea strikes you). I bet you’ll find it helps you to take deeper breaths, have deeper thoughts, and – best of all – look forward to getting your ideas down on “paper” (so to speak).

Note on my blog post title: I was an English major in college and always liked the word “ode” in old English poems. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know what it means: “An ode is typically a lyrical verse written in praise of, or dedicated to someone or something which captures the poet’s interest or serves as an inspiration for the ode.”

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Want to Promote Your New Blog and Increase Blog Traffic? First, Think Small.

August 23, 2010 Filed under: Blogging,SEO — Tags: blogging, Social Media Marketing —

When you start your own blog, don’t expect to make it big. At least not initially. While some book authors make a killing on their first novel, it’s far less common in the blogging world. Most experts will tell you it takes 6 months to a year to build momentum and traffic to your blog. For many, it takes even longer, especially if you can’t sustain a schedule of 2-3 posts per week.

But, while it’s tough to achieve widespread fame and popularity in the blogging world, it’s very possible to build a following, establish your reputation, improve your search rankings, and draw qualified traffic and leads to your site. The trick is to focus. Narrow your goals. Start small and build from there.

Focus Your Topics

Choose a handful of highly relevant keywords that crystallize the topics you want to promote and be found for. Do some keyword research to make sure those terms are not too competitive, and to find wording that searchers are actually looking for. Build your content around those terms.

Be Unique

Don’t state the obvious or repeat what’s already been said elsewhere. Find your own voice, draw your own conclusions, look for unique insights. They don’t need to be grand or profound – just a different twist on something of interest in your market (here’s a fun blog post on how to document your epiphanies, from Marnie Pehrson).

Identify A Narrow Audience

Blogging strategy: Big fish, small pond

When you first launch your blog, tell everyone you know and make as big a splash as possible – you never know who might come. But once you’ve gone public, define the target audience where you want to make your biggest impact, and tailor your promotional efforts to them. Aim first to be a big fish in a small pond; make good impressions and let the word spread.

Establish Yourself

Search Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to find out who is talking about your topics. Talk with them, share relevant links (including, but not exclusively, your own blog posts), host discussions, answer questions, offer helpful hints. Give before you get. Find a Bookmarking site or an online forum that services your target audience, and make yourself known there by offering valuable comments. (My favorite is a wonderful small business site called BizSugar). Read and comment on other blogs in your field. This helps you get known by other bloggers, who, if your posts are good, will link back to you. Contribute guest blog posts on related blogs and link back to yours. Or, publish interviews with other bloggers and they may return the favor. Add some video into your blogging mix, as it will appeal to people who are tired of reading.

Ask Your Followers to Spread the Word

If your content is good and interesting and unique, people will follow it. If you want to build your followers, ask people to subscribe, to share your posts, to retweet — and make it easy for them to do it.

Be Patient

Finally, don’t set unrealistic expectations for yourself. Learn as you go, redirect as needed, and be patient as your following takes its natural path. It may take you a while, so don’t get on the blogging train unless you intend to hang in there for the long haul.

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