How Not To Do Social Media

One of the most visited posts on this blog over the years has been the Land O' Lakes Butter box trick. It is also the most spammed post on this blog. Usually I delete them as soon as they come in, but I'll leave the most current one up, just as a lesson on how you shouldn't promote your business on blogs. Never mind the bad grammar, as I don't speak Spanish and am not one to make fun of anyone who can speak more than one language. But the form is the same in all of them, "Love your blog. Please keep it up. Now visit my site that has zero to do with anything being discussed here." Here is the current comment, verbatim:

Sure, it was probably automated. (Wait, it can't be since I have the word verification feature turned on. So someone is actually pasting this comment in along with their linked name and typing in the captcha.) So what has the site owner lost in terms of time or resources? Probably very little. But is a link buried in a mildly trafficked blog post comment thread really that valuable when you risk looking like a shameless spammer?

Parkrrr points out in the comments that it's all about Page Rank, which is all about links, and one time a long time ago BoingBoing linked to me, giving that post some rank. So it's a piggyback link game! Well, screw you, Costa Rican Land Pimps. Your comment goes away now.

One Size Fits All and the Death of Creativity

(Click it for the big picture)

Seeking Pizza Blogger

Actual job listing on Craigslist:

Needed: a part-time blogger to help set up and run a blog. Flexible hours and working environment. Must have blogging experience and also must have prior or current working experience in a pizza restaurant.

Over the weekend, we went to a new restaurant in the neighborhood. A jazz trio played indoors, the wait staff dressed all in black while a couple of ladies lingered over a glass of wine on the patio for an hour, their Golden Retriever at their feet. From the name of the place, to the atmosphere to the overuse of the word "artisan," this restaurant was trying way too hard. Their interactive agency, who boast knowing all about "Web 2.0," also talked them into a bunch of blogs, none of which have been updated in a few months.

It ain't working, people. Blogging for your business because someone told you to, with a careful eye toward not offending anyone while promoting your business is not effective, a waste of time and soon abandoned.

They Do Advertising in South Dakota?

The Dakotas don't get much respect. For that matter, most of the Midwest, Upper Midwest, South and North don't get much respect. (Friend of the blog Alan Wolk has a great piece on the ad world's neglect of a huge segment of the country over at Ad Age.)

Some coastal dwellers (probably of the NYC and LA variety) long ago deemed the interior of the nation "flyover country." But until you've lived there, you don't know what you're talking about. The cost of living is waaaay cheaper and they get the same channels on their cable boxes that you get. The sushi is a little suspect, but that's offset by the ability to leave your front door unlocked.

So I was checking out my tanking ranking at Technorati to see who links here when I found that rare thing: an agency blog that doesn't suck. (There are a few over in the sidebar that fit that description.) It's from agency Henkin-Schultz of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

And since we're now living in the future, I can look up the agency's address and zoom in to their building in a creepy, stalker way. Looks like a cool building. Whaddayaknow? The cool ad agency building trend is happening in South Dakota. Something tells me their work would stand up to any created in Manhattan or Malibu.

I'll Be Your Jackass of New Media

Rick at Blog World & New Media Expo says I’m a “jackass” because I shat all over his just-finished blog conference back in July on this site. For those who don't know, Blog World Expo is "the world's largest blogging trade show and conference dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media." Rick also tells me, “Glad you didn't come. If you change your mind and decide to come next year, please think again and don't.” I assured him I will not be there.

I’m on the record, Rick, as thinking this whole blogging consultancy industry is a sack of crap. My opinion hasn’t changed.

click for big

I'm not saying blogging has no place in business. That would be stupid. But social media should be common sense and we needn't have silly new titles like Social Media Guru and New Media Maverick. We don't really need a conference to tell us how to blog. What's more, huge investments are being sunk into something that can show very little in return. All the tools you need are free.

Here are a bunch more opinions of mine on the subject. So maybe I am writing the book. Or hosting the conference. And maybe I'm just a shitty capitalist.

The Corporate Blog Challenge
Enrage The Consumer
Save The Money and Get a Kid to Do It
Cold Call Carl: Selling Twitter Consultation
The Podcast is Dead
Cold Call Carl: He Keeps on Dialing
Buy the Book - Attend the Seminar
There's a Comment Pending Approval
Your Company Blog Bites
Drinking the Kool-Aid - Not Catching a Buzz
Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out
Your Title Was Boring and I'm Busy
If You Can't Trust a Paid Blogger
Relevance - It's a Beautiful Thing

What Happens in Vegas Will Be Pointless

The promoters of this and the believers in it will say, "Mark Cuban is the keynote speaker! Mark Cuban will be there so you know it's legit! Mark Cuban is a zillionaire and he owns the Dallas Mavericks and he's a maverick and he's the keynote speaker."

I don't give a rat's ass who's there. Let me save you the trip to Vegas for this Festival of Nonsense.

Blog. Do it daily. Link to other blogs. Make comments on other blogs that link back to your blog. Ask other bloggers for link exchanges. Write interesting posts that have a unique voice. Don't just be a link farm to a bunch of bullshit that you didn't have anything to do with. Be original. Use technorati or any of the other tag services you prefer. Create interesting titles for your posts. Use pictures - they're fun. Use relevant labels. Don't be a corporate voice. Allow comments. Moderate them when they start to get offensive. (This is the "conversation" part you will hear so much about at your conference.) Try a podcast. Give up on it. Try a webcast. Give up on it. Give up on creating a viral video before you even try it. Viral happens naturally - you don't unleash it with a marketing plan. MySpace is NoPlace for your business and you will gain nothing from it other than people hating you. Same goes for Second Life and Livejournal. We'll see about Facebook. Tweet if you want, but the Twitter backlash is coming. For now, it's a good monitoring tool. Oh, one other thing: Customer Service is not a phrase to be tossed about in your Mission Statement. It's a practice. When you suck at it, expect your business to suck.

You can call yourself a Social Media Guru, New Media Maverick or Thought Leader. You can even print it on your business cards. But I don't need to pay a bunch of money to hear you say in two days what I just said in one minute. It's common sense. It doesn't really need to be an industry.

Cold Call Carl - He Keeps on Dialing

It was going to be a one-off, but the man can't be stopped. He's selling social media and Web 2.0.

Click for a better read

Not What We Had In Mind

My Kingdom for an (Iron) Horse

Hey, Delta has a blog!

And they're Green, Diverse, aware of Breast Cancer and doing what they can for the Poor.

Bases pretty well covered in their efforts to rebuild following bankruptcy.

Now, if they can do something about the smarmy treatment so prevalent with airlines.

From the ticket counter to security to the baggage claim, everything about flying just plain sucks. Come on , Amtrak, get your act on track.

UPDATE: HighJive notes in the comments that it's unlikely we'll see anything good out of Delta with this recent news.

Original 1970 image is via.

The Corporate Blog Challenge

Click for bigger, printable, stealable version.



Having assisted companies in setting up and administering blogs, I know it’s challenging to convince them of the need to be transparent, less stodgy and a little “uncorporate” if they want to (get ready) “maximize their presence in the social media space.” Most of the blogs I helped get established are miserable failures now because the companies either a) gave up on frequent posting or b) only wanted to be rah-rah vehicles, self-promoting and basically devoid of personality. The authors also weren’t going out to other blogs, boards and forums and making relevant comments that directed readers back to them.

I recently visited the corporate blog of a worldwide company. It is well-designed, has many expert authors and frequent postings. (One author has over 800 posts.) They’ve employed all the appropriate tag mechanisms and social media link widgets. They incorporate plenty of text links, images and the navigation is intuitive. But nothing is happening interactively. I am hard pressed to find a single comment on the entire blog. There is no “two-way” happening. The posts read more like little articles and they appear to have been sterilized. I’m starting to wonder if the blog is merely search engine fodder, because clearly, there’s no “conversation” going on. Comments are also monitored heavily, which is generally expected of a corporate blog, but I submitted an (somewhat) innocuous comment last Friday and it has yet to appear, perhaps because it was (somewhat) humorous and not in keeping with this corporation’s communications guidelines.

Corporate guidelines should be relaxed to a degree if you’re going to get any interaction from your company's blog. For legal reasons, you can’t have your authors going off on rants like a private blogger is free to do, but at the same time you should allow your authors (and commenters) the ability to speak with some candor.

The corporate blog I visited has a 150 word paragraph of fine print above the comment box. It's full of legalese, with phrases like “collect, process, use,” “personally identifiable information,” “worldwide in perpetuity,” and “without notice to you and without compensation.”

I mean, c’mon. I just want to comment. But this is one example of why corporate America is having a hard time getting a handle on “Web 2.0.” (Kill me if I ever use that term again.) In the interest of sales and marketing (and in the interest of covering their asses legally) they’ve pretty much killed the conversation.

Through a Glass Darkly

"In the past, we would only let specially trained janitors and housekeeping staffs use this highly Powerized cleaning product, but we have decided to start allowing you, the untrained amateur, to experience the streak-free shine of our Commercial Line™ of cleaning products on your glass surfaces. Please use responsibly."

I might've known...they even have a website. And people actually write to them with real life stories. I am a little disappointed that they don't include AIM icons, desktops or screensavers, and they aren't sponsoring a user generated video contest. Also, no Windex blog. Wow. So behind the times. But they were forward-thinking enough to include a game called Shine Time.

The sad drawback is Shine Time works only with the Windows 95 and Windows 98 operating systems.

Your Company Blog Bites

But fret not, corporate honchos interested in tapping into The Conversation; Bossman's team of Rockstar Change Agents are here to push that envelope.

If you click it, it will grow.

Drinking The Kool-Aid - But Not Catching a Buzz

On Friday, Copyranter did me the kindness of linking to a story here at Where’s My Jetpack? (Good for a huge spike in traffic, with that link being the leading source of traffic over the weekend – and likely through this week.) In the comments section of that post, I thanked him, as did Mr. William Green of Make the Logo Bigger. Bill pointed out that Copyranter “ranks higher than me on every blog ranking list he doesn’t want to be on.”

Copyranter has no labels, no Technorati tags, no digg icons and he doesn’t Twitter. He’s not asking you to Stumble Upon him or mark him as del.icio.us. There’s no way for you to email his stories to your friends from his site. He steadfastly refuses to keep a blog roll, even though he’s known to make the rounds as a commenter here and there. The most he offers his visitors is a Feedburner link.

So what makes Copyranter’s blog have a Technorati ranking of 14,117 and an Authority of 297? (Those numbers, for those of us who watch them, are mockingly higher than many blogs with every social media icon known to man cluttering up the end of every post.)

Say it with me, class…CONTENT.

That’s not to diminish the value of all those social media tags and widgets, and if Copyranter were to employ them, he could probably write a book, sell it online, and retire in wealth and peace, free to toss the Plastic Flatball™ with his girlfriend in the park. But any book he wrote would only be a bestseller because of its content.

Content is still king. For all the attempts by some to make their blogs rack up huge traffic numbers and links from other blogs, it’s surprising how many of them have so few comments under the posts. Why? Likely nobody cares about what was written.

I’ve had the opportunity to help clients set up blogs, and I know many of you are engaging in the same practice. But I honestly fear for the livelihood of those blogs. Few are participating in them at best. And no one’s reading them at worst. Maybe it’s a lack of transparency. Maybe it’s already a backlash on the part of the audience, small though it is. It is easy to distrust a corporate blog, unless that corporate blog is in some way compelling by its content.

You hired a new employee? Woo-hoo! You’re speaking at a conference? Yay you! You landed a new piece of business? Awesome. You'd be better off to save that news for your Sunday afternoon call to your mom, so you can hear her say, "We're so proud of you." Or issue a press release no one is going to read.

I want you to tell me something new, something refreshing, something newsworthy or something funny. I want you to be an authority. I want you to have an opinion. I want to see you push the bounds of corporate communications and tell me how you, as the high-powered and well-known CEO of Acme, Inc., think the San Diego Chargers made a HUGE mistake in firing Marty Schottenheimer. (You do have a personal life. Your customers and prospects can benefit from seeing your humanity.) I want you to throw open the curtain and say, “People are complaining about our new rollout, Product X. Some have outright called it 'a piece of shit.' We’re working to resolve some of the obvious problems, but I invite those people who are dissatisfied to please comment here on my blog and see if together we can resolve your issues.”

Another problem with corporate blogs is frequency. If you’re posting once a week or less, just quit now. You need to keep it up. And get out there and comment on other blogs if you ever hope to see a visitor who didn’t just find you by accident. And by all means, do not engage in fake conversations with yourself, commenting anonymously on your own blog just so you can have some comments.

The Age of Conversation is very real, and I’ve made virtual friends (even met one) out here within this Series of Tubes. I’ve found voices and opinions I love to listen to and converse with in the year this blog has been active. The blog is a powerful and fun tool. (I’m not talking about MySpace, Facebook or Second Life yet. That’s a whole different post.)

Blogging isn’t going anywhere, but it has yet to be tapped effectively by those who seek to make it a means of “engaging the consumer.”