It’s entirely possible that this post is filled with envy and narcissism. But I don’t think so.

This topic has been brewing in my mind for some time, and yesterday, I arrived at a point at which my thoughts crystallized and I could make sense out of what I was thinking.

My point: I hate social media bullshit artists. As a practitioner, it is getting harder to teach internal and external clients the skills to distinguish what is helpful, concrete advice and what is self-serving of shallow counsel. This frustrates me enormously because some high-profile names pollute and dominate the space with pontifications and advice that I feel is at times, self-serving and at others, a firm grasp of the obvious. This makes it SO much harder to have solid advice sink in when a client’s response might be “Well, [person here] has written four books and was the keynote at BlogWorld Expo. Why should I listen to you?”

I’ll tell you why: because I am not a bullshit artist.

Could I have envy that so-called “A-Listers” write books, get huge speaking fees and make a bazillion dollars a year? Sure. But again, I’m content with my place in the world of social media advice but am frustrated that some big names make it harder for the rest of us who try to offer actionable advice. Recently, I was horrified to read a blog post in which an A-Lister posted his normal speaking fees, and the cost of one speech – ONE SPEECH – could easily outstrip the annual salary of a junior social media worker bee in a smaller market.

I have to offer a caveat, and it is a big one: I am writing a book so point the finger at me with many of the same criticisms that I will level here. Here’s the difference, though: I am not trying to sell more books (it’s not even out yet), but an important part of the book is to attempt to help up-and-coming social media practitioners distinguish between those who are smart and they can learn from, and those who I think are phoneys and bullshit artists.

The best advice that I can give here is a combination of my own ruminations, those of my colleagues and friends in a Facebook group (you know who you are) and specifically what my friend and author of “The Like Economy,” Brian Carter pointed out. When starting out or hiring someone to help formulate a social media strategy would be to ask them:

• In the recent past, what accomplishments can you point to that you have achieved for others? The unspoken point here is, aside from writing books, counting your Twitter followers and crowing about your speaking engagements, what have you actually done that has helped others achieve their social media communications objectives? And how have you measured the success?
• What types of clients have you served? Again, many offer case studies about helping Fortune 500 companies (or at least speaking at their events), but the majority of companies in this country are small or medium-sized enterprises. Is the strategic advice that you give applicable to all companies, and does the difference lay in the tactics? Most companies don’t have multi-million dollar budgets to throw at social media. When I was teaching, the fixation of texts and Harvard Business Review articles to focus on Fortune 500 companies missed a critical point: most people will NOT end up working there. They will end up at much smaller organizations and need advice on how to make it work there.
• Finally, is there as much listening as there is pontificating? I spent nearly 15 years in the agency world, and through practice (and mistakes), I learned to listen to clients and tease out what is was that they were attempting to accomplish through the use of social media. Start with the client’s communications objectives. Some more recognized names go on about the latest, shiny tool, but one size does not fit all. Nor does one strategy or one tactic. And tenting ones fingers and saying “engagement” over and over again serves only to pollute the space in which many of us operate. It makes it harder: damn harder.

So yeah, I’m writing a book and have pimped it here. I am at best, a B-minus Lister, but in my career (or for most of it) I have tried to be a good listener, stay on top of what is new and interesting in social media and offer practical, actionable advice to clients. Not sell books. Not trying to build my “personal brand.” Not increase my Klout score. And certainly not crow about what I charge for people to come listen to me.

Am I envious? Not really.

I’m disgusted.

Mark

Image:  Shark Bait Shirts.

©2012 intersection of online and offline. All Rights Reserved.

My take on the kerfuffle with National Rental Car and Chapstick and theory that the blame lay with management resulted in some good, interesting feedback.  Thanks, guys. I postulated that likely, with MAJOR consumer brands, the fault lies in bad decisions made by higher-ups that overrule or ignore the advice of the internal social media evangelist(s).   I can’t imagine that a major brand would pick someone out of his mom’s basement or elevate someone who is completely compliant or clueless about listening and building social media-based dialogue with stakeholders.  I could be wrong, though, because you can’t fix stupid.

So with that out of the way, like many of us who have worked in social media before it was called social media, what do you do when you run into roadblocks and brick walls- mindsets on the part of clients, or harder, internal bosses that either ignore the good advice you have given them, are afraid of it, ignore it, or simply veto it?

There are zero easy answers and perhaps the clearest answer depends upon how much you are invested in your job, your brand or its place in your corporate or client’s communication program.  In short, how hard do you fight, and how?  Having found myself in this situation many, many times, I’ve come up with some suggestions that may help you from going insane when you know you are right but simply can’t get decision-makers to listen.

I covered part of this is a much snarkier post I wrote in November 2008 entitled “How to Sell Social Media to Your Dumbass Boss.”  Some of the precepts I laid out I still believe are true, but having gone from client work to in-house, my views have evolved somewhat.  Here’s my advice when you hit the social media reluctance brick wall:

1. Like any good social media program, your first task is to listen.  Before you tip your hand too much in the direction you want to go, give a “soft sounding” to the person who can either be an ally or an obstacle. Determine what her objections are likely to be and think carefully about how to refute them.  But like a good lawyer, when you are building your case, think carefully about the evidence presented and how you will react to this.  And this is only internal listening.  To the extent that you can, listen to those who are important to your clients or your organization, and find out what they are interested in and from where they get their information.
2. When and where possible (and this is perhaps the most important point of all), get a commitment/dedication to social media as part-and-parcel to your organization’s efforts from the most senior person you can.  Think about it:  legal will want to own it, IT may well want to own it if you are building in-house tools, your communications shop will want to own it, and higher-ups will want to parachute in at the last minute and offer meaningless advice (and I have gotten this one day prior to a site launch) “Black just isn’t really a business color. Change it.”   All of this means that there will be some refereeing that needs to take place and the more senior level commitment you have, the better chances you have to move in the right direction.  Frankly put:  if you are going to get into a pissing match with people who want to own the social media function, have a big person who has your back.
3. Be a teacher first and an evangelist second.  My experience has been that the more senior people are in an organization (and I mean internal and external clients), the more removed they are from truly understanding how you can augment, extend and improve your organization’s communications efforts through a good social media program.  This is not true in all cases, but (insert eye-roll here), “my daughter has the Facebook” is actually a teaching moment.  This is an opportunity to point out that personal and business social media accounts have different objectives, purposes and desired outcomes.  This may not always work, but if you find a generational gap, you have the opportunity to have what we used to euphemistically call a “teaching moment.”  Not all teaching sticks, however.Also, when you are teaching, remember to use benefit-oriented statements and language that people will understand.  When you introduce or explain Twitter, an explanation of “a micro-blogging platform with a 140 character limit” will ultimately result in a glazed over look, especially if you are dealing with a knowledge or generation gap.  Something that may lead to more success would be a statement like “Twitter is a place online where people can follow us and hear what we have to say.  And we can link back to our Web site, drawing more traffic.  Plus, it’s free.”
4. Know thine enemy.  You know it’s coming.  You have seen it.  Like a monster who hides in the closet or under your bed, higher-ups who either are afraid to try or expand on or begin with social media, don’t understand it or are just plain obstructionist, you are going to get the “What’s the ROI on this?”  Suppress your instinct for the eye roll and try explaining that some things can be measured while others cannot.  ”Return on investment” is in and of itself a vague term.  What is a return?  A sale?  An impression?  A plate of pasta? Once that is out of the way, one of the hardest conversations to have and get across is that not everything can be measured. Listening, creating feedback, engaging in dialogue may or may not be measurable. This is tricky.  If you are pressed,  and especially working in-house, I use the (ducking here) metric of cost per contact.  I take the total expenditures of something that I measure divided by the number of measureable interactions.  This is a slippery slope because a Web site visit does not mean engagement – you know it and I know it- but if someone wants a statistic, give them a bone to chew on.  And gently suggest that in something like marketing, it’s also very difficult to make a direct connection between building awareness and relationships – and making a connection to sales.  When I was teaching, I hammered home the point that the difference between public relations and marketing is that marketing is about generating revenue.  Both are about building awareness, but marketing, like social media, is hard to tie to a statistic.
5. Begin with baby steps.  If you don’t already have a big-time social media program, start small.  Try a Twitter account (easily measureable for those who crave statistics).  Nothing succeeds like success, so find a platform that works for you that is discreet and upon which you can build success.
6. If competitors and doing it right, point this out as well.  Competitors mean competition, and if your competition is building a online profile that demonstrates success, this is a good argument too.
7. Finally (and I could go on and on on this topic), know when to say “when.” Sometimes, you are simply not going to make headway.  This is something that I hear from my friends all of the time who have tried the above tactics and more and are left with an empty arsenal and a gun in their mouths.   You have a couple of choices.  You can bear it and try other ways (other internal clients or other agency clients to focus on), or you can go nuts.  And if you are going nuts from frustration, go home and look yourself in the mirror and ask if it’s worth it.  I get that it’s still a bad economy and that changing jobs is risky, but there are enough studies to show that stress causes illness.  Is it really worth it?  Ask yourself this very difficult question and consider getting the hell out of Dodge and on to somewhere will you have the resources and support you need to be successful.

Like Porky Pig said, “that’s all, folks.”  Please feel free to add more of your suggestions in the comments.

Mark

©2012 intersection of online and offline. All Rights Reserved.

In this morning’s Washington Post there is an article entitled “Tweets tweet our emotional status.”  This article is both mundane and presents and screamingly firm grasp of the obvious.

The premise of the article is as our moods change, so do the tone of our tweets.  Well, duh.  An excerpt:

Optimism is reborn with each new day and slowly erodes as we work, study and go about our quotidian affairs. Our mood lifts as we head home to friends, family, entertainment and beer. Our outlook tends to be sunnier on weekends. And speaking of sun, when it starts to pile up in the spring or disappear in the fall, that affects our mood, too.

Well, there’s some groundbreaking news.  We hate work, errands, and love to party.  I know very few people who, on their deathbeds would say “Gosh, I wish I had done just one more day at work…[cue EKG sound of flat-lining].

There are a couple of things that caught my eye in the article, which to be honest, is not really worth reading unless you have not make the connection that we tend to share our emotions with others – or are perhaps more likely to do so via social media.  But here’s something interesting:

A new study in the journal Science examined the contents of more than 500 million tweets sent in 84 countries over two years, looking for signs of good moods and bad. It found what a lot of us could tell by looking at our own lives.

Let me see if I get this straight:  it took people or Cornell University two years, 500 million tweets and 84 countries to prove that people have emotions that go up and down and are shared via Twitter?  Wow!  And if you are a Cornell alumni donor, I would think carefully about where your money is going before writing the next check.  I doubt that you are getting a new basketball arena any time soon.

But it was the last part of the article that caused me to spit out my (expensive) Starbucks coffee:

“This is a stone in the foundation of a new social science that is being built,” said Nicholas A. Christakis, a sociologist at Harvard University who was not involved in the research. “We’re in a similar place that we were in in the 17th century with the discovery of the telescope and microscope.”

Telescope.  Microscope.  17th century?  I suppose that sending a man to the moon, working on discovering a cure for cancer or eradicating such diseases as polio are way down on the list.

I think what chafes my saddle sores is that first, this is viewed as serious research rather than a firm grasp of the obvious, or second, a formerly great newspaper like the Washington Post found it newsworthy – in the A section, no less.

What’s next?  ”One billion dollar study from the University of Phoenix shows that giving someone the middle finger in traffic may be tied to annoyance?”

Yeah.  Annoyance like reading this steaming pile of  pseudo-journalism.

Mark

P.S. – I would normally state something here like “Image source:  Washington Post,”  but I am pretty sure they would kick my ass if they read this post.

©2012 intersection of online and offline. All Rights Reserved.

Although many of opined on this topic, every person has their own thinking on the most annoying – nay, downright maddening – behaviors in the world of social media that well, merit the social media death penalty.

By “death penalty,” I’ll leave it up to you to decide (adding a disclaimer that I am NOT endorsing you grabbing a gun and using it).  It could mean calling someone out on Twitter, Facebook or a blog post.  Worse yet, your egregious infractions could land you in the print media doghouse – like I did to me a year or so ago when I was an idiot.

So here’s my list of the Top Things that Merit the Social Media Death Penalty:

1. Twitter trouble: I try to keep up on followers on Twitter.  If you are nice enough to follow me (and are not a spam bot which probably DOES merit the death penalty), I try to follow you back.  But sending me a DM right after that goes something like “Thanks for following me.  To get more eyeballs on your web site, get my advice HERE!  http://jerkoff.com/123abc. ”
   Suggested punishment: Lifetime Twitter ban.
2. Calling yourself a “guru.” If you call yourself a “guru,” there is 100% chance that you are an idiot.  In my experience, people who lavish praise on themselves are rarely deserving of it.  Plus, there are a bazillion gurus out there who are clogging the social media space and confusing people who actually need good social media counsel.
   Suggested punishment: Public humiliation. Note: When I was at Fleishman-Hillard, I remember getting ripped to shreds in a client meeting by a consultant that the client had brought in to manage us.  A “guru.”  With our alpha Web site on the screen, she tore into us.  Revenge?  I said “Ok, can you please show us an example of your work?” I kept pressing and finally we pulled up a Web site that looked like it was designed in 1990 by blind monkeys.  Touche.
3. Facebook follies. If you “like” yourself on Facebook, you are a most likely and egocentric moron.  If you “like” your own blog post that you cross-post on Facebook, you are a double idiot.  Let others praise you (but if you are the one doing this, don’t hold your breath).
   Suggested punishment: One year ban from Facebook (accompanied by 40,000 volts of electricity delivered via your keyboard if you load the page).  Hell, the way that Facebook is going prying into people’s lives, this can’t be more than a couple of weeks away.
4. Temper tantrums. For those of you who think this is a tantrum, feel free to publicly flog me.  But for this one, I am thinking of people of a particular prestige who engage in petty pissing matches with others.  And get personal.  And the winner and undisputed champion of this one is Jack O’Dwyer.  Last year, he got into a public flaming match with respected Waggener Edstrom over their refusal to pay for a listing on his compilation of top PR agencies by revenue.  And recently, he took on public relations measurement Queen Katie Payne.  Get over yourself, Jack.  Really.
   Suggested punishment:  Mass unsubscription of his service.
5. Blogger hubris. There are plenty of bloggers out there whose egos far outstrip their accomplishments.  Their keyboards write checks that their online following cannot cash.  Hell, look at this blog and this post.  And me.
   Suggested punishment:  Be Mark Story for a day.

Bonus offenses:

1. Using the term “hits,” as in Web site.  I think that it was my friend Shel Holtz who termed this “How Idiots Track Success.”  Same for “hotlinks.”
2. Using AVE, or Advertising Value Equivalent.  Ads are not consumed and processed the way that earned media is.  And earned media is not paid media.  See #5 above.
3. “;-).”  It creeps me out when people use this emoticon.  Especially when guys use it. If you don’t wink at me in real life, please don’t wink at me online.  For me, this is the social media equivalent of the wet fish handshake.  <shudder>.
4. Bonus bonus:  Doing the “double gun” when you see someone.

What’s on your list of offenses that merit the social media death penalty?

For those of you about to flame, we salute you.  This is satire, people.

Mark

Image credit:  Sydney Morning Herald.

©2012 intersection of online and offline. All Rights Reserved.

Reprinted from a Media Bullseye article I wrote that was published on May 18, 2009.

The Spice Girls are, in my book, perhaps the worst band of the last century (sorry, fans), but I invoke the name of one of their more tortuous songs to talk about measurement.

This article has been bouncing around in my head since the “For Immediate Release” call-in show on April 25, 2009. The guests were Chip Griffin, CEO of CustomScoop (disclosure: a sponsor of The Hobson and Holtz report); and Aaron Weber, Insight Manager at Spiral16. (further disclosure: I am paid to write this article by Media Bullseye, a sister company of Custom Scoop.)
The guests described a variety of topics, including what constitutes good social media measurement and when it gets “creepy,” meaning you might make a Tweet complaining about a product and then hear from either the products’ representatives or perhaps a competitor. At that point, I had not encountered any “creepiness,” aside from a comment on my blog from Comcast after I took on DirecTV.

The lively podcast (and call-in) discussion got me thinking about “what I really, really want” out of a monitoring service. I have blogged and written articles about measurement and the ensuing steps your
can take for online reputation management ad nauseam, but I have a new wrinkle to add to the discussion:

1. Capturing the right information from the right sources is just the first step, but
   adding context to content is the next, critical step that many monitoring services lack; and

2. Those who do offer some sort of analysis of blogs posts, media mentions and not even
   tweets are often “hired guns” who lack the ability to ascertain the nuances that make a mention, positive, negative or neutral, let alone a favorability ranking. You can’t tell me that someone sitting in another office who has 10 other clients can know more about your issues than you.

The Conundrum

• Are those who do monitoring, either inside or outside of organizations, looking at
  the right thing to measure? and

• Are the right people actually doing the measurement?

My answer is: a) sometimes, and b) not really.

My public relations measurement uber-hero is Katie Paine, whose book “Measuring Public Relationships” is still the best read out  there on the topic, and I am going to borrow liberally from her book in order to help make sense of this.

What to look at

There are two types of horrendous monitoring, one worse than the other. The first is a “clips report” simply regurgitating a bunch of stories without providing any frame of reference to what it all means.

Lame.

What is still bad, but marginally better, is measuring “impressions.” Impressions are a made-up number that is still imprecise. Some organizations say it is 2.7 times the circulation number (counting pass-alongs) and some say it is simply the circulation number itself. This concept is fundamentally flawed as well because just because your article appears, it is a not a lock that the number of people
who see a publication = the number of people that you reached. This is at best flawed, and at worst, downright lazy. Still lame.

Non-Lame-ness

Here’s the Katie Paine part that, when I first read it (and then taught it) was one of those serene moments in which the universe makes sense. She offers up a simple way to measure the messages that actually get through to your audiences. Does it matter how many people buy the publication that your earned media piece runs in? Hell, no. But does matter how many people actually saw the message(s) that you were attempting to convey? Hell, yes.

Katie elegantly calls this revelatory statistic “Cost Per Message Communicated,” meaning that when you cut through all of the (lazy) monitoring mumbo-jumbo, the simplest and most precise way to determine the value of the public relations effort you have undertaken is to a) capture the right information an b) measure the messages that were available to your audiences.

I’ll talk more about this in the second article, but what I “really, really want” is a monitoring system (technology AND subject-matter experts) who will:

1. Capture all of the print, radio, television, blog, online news, Twitter and message
   board stuff that is said about my organization or issue;
2. Separate the “wheat from the chaff” and let me know – concisely – what I need to pay attention to; and
3. Help me understand the value of my public relations, public affairs or even crisis communications outbound messaging – not the “thump test” of number of publications or impressions, but how many of my key messages reached their intended audiences.

©2012 intersection of online and offline. All Rights Reserved.