Update Those Social Media Widgets

Found on a Twin Cities Fox affiliate's site, one, perhaps two of these things doesn't belong here. We're slowly weeding out the also-rans and has-beens from the social media landscape. In the end there'll be a just a few players, so all you people out there dreaming up the next big "Sort of like Facebook, sort of like Twitter, but DIFFERENT!" app, please just stop now.

Cold Call Carl is Back

He's reached the end of his contact list and started over from the top.

(Click for big.)

More Cold Call Carl here.

OK, Gurus, They Did What You Said. Now What?

Last night I heard a phrase that catches my ear every time I hear it used in advertising, "Log on to our..." It irks me because we don't "log-on to" anything unless it's secure and requires a user name and password. We simply "go" to your website, we don't log onto it.

Anyway, that's a minor and debatable point. This time the ad said "Log-on to our Facebook page." The ad was for a group of regional medical centers, but everything else in the ad was lost to me, as I wasn't listening until the Facebook part. I'm sure it had to do with the chain of hospitals' commitment to "quality care, innovation and helping our community," three bullets that took the internal CMO and his committees 18 months to agree on.

And now they're on Facebook, just like the big boys. They're using Social Media! Just like they've been reading about in every magazine, probably including a very interesting piece in Hospital Marketing Monthly titled something like "Opening the Conversation: 10 Ways to Engage your Patients and Prospective Patients using Social Media." Just like a bunch of consultants told them they should. Just like their incompetent marketing agency pretended to know all about. It probably took them forever to get it all approved and there is probably a rigorous process of checks and edits before anything gets posted on their Facebook page, but they're finally there. And I'm sure someone in HR or Communications sent out a notice, or wrote a nice story in the company's employee newsletter, announcing that "We are Moving into Social Media!" and urged all hospital employees to friend, fan or follow their employer, thus instantly creating the illusion of popularity.

I'm sure they're patting themselves on the back at this point, delighted that they finally did what they've been hearing about for so long. And now they will sit and wait. And then they will start to wonder, "Was the only reason we did this so that we can post press releases and photos of employee events?" Then the CMO will say to his team(s), "I'm hearing a lot about this Twitter thing. I think we should create a committee to study a Twitter strategy and then recommend some initiatives." And in about six months they might set up a Twitter account, and within it they will post links to their Facebook photos and generic, mundane press releases. They might even hire a consultant who is an expert in Twitter Strategies, who will show them a presentation saying as much.

Everyone's on Facebook now, gurus. And they all have a Twitter account. Are you going to now recommend they be on Google Buzz? You used to tell them they needed a blog, and so they started a blog. Then they abandoned that because it quickly proved to be a pointless exercise in self-promotion that no one ever read, much less commented on. (Hell, even the new media agencies that used to advocate blogs don't bother to update their own blogs anymore.) And the YouTube channel you insisted they create isn't getting any views. And their MySpace page is dormant. (Yeah, you recommended a MySpace "presence," remember?) In their ignorance, they accidentally but wisely declined your urging to open up a shop in Second Life.

At some point, the game is going to be up. The doors are starting to close as everyone tells you, "We already have someone working on that," or "We took that in-house last year." And even you can't fool the laundromat, the local pack-and-ship place or that quirky-cool restaurant you found downtown that they need to hire a Social Media Expert. Perhaps after the speaking gigs dry up and your vast knowledge of how to navigate this "crazy new frontier" is just plain old common knowledge, you will close up shop and start looking for a real job. Maybe the hospital chain will hire you as their New Media Strategist, and you can sit in a cubicle and update the Facebook page and monitor talk of your company on Twitter, where you will be pasting pre-approved 140-character responses to angry customers in between linking to photos of the employees at their recent 5K run.

But you and I know an intern can do that.

Band Names from Google News

Volume XXVI, Number 5, likely.

How you ever gonna get the labels to notice you, little rebels, if you can't even garner a measly following on MySpace or Facebook? Here's the trick: you need to name yourself something unique. And don't just look around your apartment and see something and try to make a band name out of it, because "Girlfriend's Hairbrush" or "Empty Cat Food Can" are just lame names for your group. Go to Google News. There is a daily trove of possibilities waiting for you. Like today. Click the name to see what inspired it.

• The Dry Eyes
• Chocolate Love
• Bubba's Heart
• Raising Eyebrows
• The Buzz Biffs
• Immediate Withdrawal
• Crippled By Desire

For more in this series, see here.

Band Names From Google News (The Reunion Tour)

A formerly popular feature on this blog was "Band Names from Google News" (See here for the archives) in which I conduct a cursory glance of Google news headlines and come up with names for your fledgling act that is currently wowing the kids over at MySpace.

I thought I'd bring it back, at least for a day. Below are the names gathered from today's headlines, with links to the stories that inspired the names.

• Dark Side of Funny (link)
• Up To The Hype (link)
• Some Immunity (link)
• Plastic Logic (link)
• Elvis Birthday (link)
• The Genius Scandal (link)
• Wholesale Power Trade (link)

And speaking of MySpace, check out these punks from Scotland. (Thanks, @everysandwich.)

Bye Bye Bloggers

Two creative bloggers I enjoy have called it quits this week, and it's only Tuesday. First, Scamp threw in the towel, endeavoring to write a novel. Good luck with that. I'm still waiting on an agent to take the chance with my first.

Now Catcher in the Rye has left the ad blog world as well.

On the subject of dying blogs, The New York Times had an interesting piece last Sunday, in which they liberally quoted some guy from Technorati, who seemed to be speaking from a temporal rift in the space-time continuum. On the subject of where authors of blogs disappear to, the leader of the always-down and never-accurate Technorati said, “Some of that activity has gone to Facebook and MySpace, and obviously Twitter is a new phenomenon.” Ya think? MySpace? Really? And bloggers don't quit blogging to go to Twitter, this thing you call a new phenomenon. Bloggers just get tired of the ball and chain a blog can be. The article mentions that some people hoped to get rich from their blogs. If you got into blogging to make money, well - I'm sorry you believed that was possible.

It gets old, I guess, this blogging thing. But I'll keep doing it for now. It's a creative outlet for me. I've always been the guy who draws cartoons about co-workers or creates ads clients will never see, much less run. I'm the guy that always gets called "blunt" and then gets called on the carpet for embarrassing superiors in front of their bosses. I'm wiser now (I hope) and I think I've learned to draw that back a bit in the office, the better to keep my job, so I need this blog to shout and spout my nonsense. Or maybe I just need to stop looking for shit to make fun of. Haven't figured it out yet.

Best to you, Scamp and Catcher. Enjoyed your insights. Tell me how it feels in a few months. If you say, "Quitting that blog was so liberating," I may consider joining you.

Band Names from Google News

A neglected feature, now nearing 200 entries, for all you post-punk-neo-soul-ska-garage-death-speed-alt-pop-emo-hair-scene-scream-hip-R&B-hop-heavy-Americana artists seeking a catchy name for your group/act. Or maybe you just need to rebrand. Your name was cool a few years ago, but maybe "Black Socks Bedroom Floor" was a little too out there.

The gist: scan Google News headlines and find names that would evoke intrigue and prompt the teeming masses to buy your shirts, wear your hats, attend your shows and maybe, just maybe, make you a profit. (With links to the actual news items.)

Increasingly Perilous
The Meat Plants
Leaked Memo
A Year in Prison
Doggy Damage
Ready to Cooperate
Their Own Monarchs

Here are 186 other choices.

Lincoln Takes His Facebook Profile Picture

In the bathroom mirror, no doubt.

size matters

Band Names from Google News

Time to revive that old series (it's been over two months since the last installment) wherein I invent seven names for your fledgling musical group based on today's headlines from Google News.

• Serena Slams Safina
• Issues of the Middle Class
• The War Children
• Logic Bomb
• Heatwave Chaos
• Eight Times The Ethical Questions
• Super Bowl Jesus

Here are 179 more.

How to Use Social Media: Another Blogger Weighs In

Much has already been written on better blogs (and spoken about at numerous conventions) on the subject of social media and the marketer's place within them. My turn. Nothing said here will be anything that brighter minds haven't already thought about; I'm just giving my take as a marketer.
Let's start with: What the Hell is Twitter?

I was skeptical even to adopt it as a user. I've always fed my latest blog posts to it, but to actually "tweet" seemed silly. I used it as a one-way news feed: "Go here and read my blog." But as more people started to follow me, I started to follow more people. I've quickly un-followed the people who are using Twitter as a blatant marketing tool. The people I follow tweet the oddest things. Some are hilarious, some mundane, some informative and others as random as possible. It eventually occurred to me that this group of people, from Dave Matthews to Bad Banana to Daryl Ohrt, were on Twitter to be friends, to have contact, to share information and to just basically hang out. It's not unlike early Internet chatrooms. Daryl also uses it to communicate with colleagues and to occasionally plug his brand, Plaid. In the case of someone like Matthews, Twitter is a tool for maintaining contact with his customer/fan base; the Dave Matthews freaks who trade bootlegs of live shows or love hearing about snow in the Virginia mountains at Christmas via Dave's tweets.

The few I follow, (some 40-odd) will on occasion mention a product or a company. It might be a good mention and it might be bad, and it can even be neutral. "I just used Acme Instant Hole and it sucks," or "Anyone looking for a good instant hole, Acme is awesome," or "I'm looking for a good instant hole. Anyone know one?"

Here's the only place, as far as I can tell, where a marketer has any business being on Twitter. If you subscribe to any sort of Twitter alert, you can easily find out when Acme Instant Hole is being tweeted. And you can jump in when it is mentioned. But will anyone ever actually follow Acme Instant Hole? Very unlikely.

And here's where marketers fail: They don't see the revenue stream. And here's what they don't want to hear: There is no revenue stream. Corporate blogs failed for the same reason. No one wants to write a company blog (and even fewer want to read it) that amounts to nothing more than spider food, especially when you have the comments feature disabled. This is about customer service, brand management and the "taking care of the little things" that no one wants to do. You want revenue? You want sales? Good customer service breeds sales. It's foundational. Everyone knows that. Treat me right and I'm likely to be loyal to you.

In preparing this post (which is a painstaking process involving sitting out on the back porch with a glass of wine and thinking about this post) I was trying to think of a product or service to which I'm loyal. The first one that came to mind was Formula One Firestone. It's a garage just down the road where we take the cars if they need help beyond the routine oil change. They have never been unable to fix a problem, their walls are lined with certifications and they are straight with me. I'm sure I can find cheaper car service somewhere, but this crew has proven itself. Craig, Al and Pete lead the show down there. I'm not good with names, but I know their names, and I see them maybe once every five months on average between our two aging cars.

I saw a couple of tweets from Bill Green, a social media advocate if ever there was one, where he scathingly and humorously rips United Airlines three or four new ones for screwing up his flight plans and failing to help him resolve them. All within the allotted 140 characters. Now if I'm United, my TweetBeep goes off and I go find this guy. I reply: "Hey, Sorry to hear about your experience. Hit me back by DM and I'll give you my email addy. See if we can't fix this.(Yeah, I work for UA)" That was 140 characters exactly. Bill invited that discussion by dissing my brand and I responded. You can call that "engaging the consumer" at your next conference speaking engagement.

If you're Bill in the above scenario, you're freaking out that a giant, uncaring corporation just found you badmouthing them and is now trying to fix your problem. On Twitter no less. You are definitely DMing me and getting my email addy. Chances are better now that Bill might fly United again, even if I can't fix his problem to his utmost satisfaction. I was there. I showed him I'm listening. What does that cost United? Hell, I'll do it for you, United, as your highly-paid social media consultant. But the money I save you in salvaged customers might well offset the salary and perks (free flights for life, first-class) that you pay me. Will Bill now follow United on Twitter? Who cares? Numbers of followers is not the point, unless you're tweeting stuff like, "First five people to reply get free round trip tickets to anywhere in the continental US."

Twitter is the latest social media application that marketers will fast ruin. Look back a year or two. What happened to MySpace? It got overrun with tools and shills, getting in your face or spamming you. Where did everyone go? Facebook. And they'll be leaving that soon, too. Anyone use AIM anymore? Yeah, I didn't think so. All those "buddies" you kept getting who were really companies? Skype? Had its day. We run from the marketers - because they're always marketing; always looking for a way to slap us in the face with a banner or yell at us with some unsolicited blurb. Or worse, they pretend to be our "friends."

They'll find a way to find you. (We always do.) But until the marketer stops using social media to sneak up and pounce on the target, the target will continue to find new places to hang out, running from them.

You want to use social media? Look at them this way: social media are places where you can strengthen the ties you have, repair the ones that are severing and maybe in the process (but only by luck) build a few new ones.

And Twitter, you don't really have much hope of becoming a money-making operation in the traditional sense of selling ads. Most Twitter users don't even see the Twitter.com site; they're using mobile devices or second-party widgets embedded in their iGoogle homepages. You're going to have to "think outside the box" since you already blew your shot at making serious money when you turned down Facebook's $500 million offer. Whatever you do as you explore how to make money from this fast-growing application du jour, take a lesson from those who've blown it in front of you: Stay out of the users' faces.

Even as marketers, what do we always think of the marketer who is trying to force his way in? We think, "Get out of my face!" Here's an opportunity for us to do just that.

If You Buy This Book, You Are, How Shall We Say, "Not So Smart"

What a waste of effort on the "authors" parts. What a waste of money if you buy it.

Everything you need to know about blogging I already wrote here.

Band Names from Google News

Bringing back an old feature, wherein I invent names for your fledgling musical group based on today's headlines, with explanations in footnotes.

Here are 172 more.

• Keep Your Chair¹
• Space Station Lube²
• Super Tanker Pirate³
• Too Sick to Travel⁴
• Cuban Cubs⁵
• Gorillas and Guerillas⁶
• Cool to Amnesty⁷

1. Democrats tell Lieberman to shut up and do as he's told and keep his silly little chairmanship of whatever, which they will strip him of as soon as he steps out of line.
2. Astronauts are doing an oil change on the International Space Station.
3. A Saudi oil tanker is being hijacked off Somalia.
4. Michael Jackson's doctor says he can't make it to some court case, even though you know he ran to Macy's when he heard "boys pants are half-off."
5. Mark "Asshole" Cuban was trying to buy the Chicago Cubs.
6. Somewhere in that giant country of Africa, I think in the Congo, a bunch of rebel fighters are messing with the habitat of some precious endangered species.
7. US not so sure they want to grant immunity to a Taliban guy.

Why This Depression Will Be Cooler Than The Last One

This one will be live-blogged, tweeted, facebooked and texted. All of your friends getting laid off and looking for work are telling you about it in real time.

Back then, in the Sucky Great Depression, you'd have to wait months for Johnny out in Nebraska to scrape together 2¢ to find a stamp and an envelope. Then he scratched his bad news on a spent matchbook with a gnawed-down rat bone and sent it to you in the mail. By the time you heard Johnny was at the end of his rope, he'd probably already hanged himself. At least now we can say, "Hey, now! Chin up, Johnny! Life's not so bad! There's a breadline I just Googled not 5 minutes from where you are right now. I'll text ahead and save you a loaf."

You'll know it's really bad when your friends don't tweet, email or IM anymore.

Band Names from Google News - with Footnotes

If I've told you once, I've told you at least 21 times. In a world of never ending replication, where one angst-filled band sounds exactly like the next one, you need more than tight jeans with white belts to set yourselves apart. You need more than clever rhymes and poseur street-smarts. You need more than a MySpace account and black t-shirts. More than even a gimmicky haircut and carefully applied eye makeup. You need a name. You need a brand. Allow me to help. These possible band names come from this morning's headlines on Google News. The links at bottom will take you to the stories from which the names come.

• Dark Turn¹
• Statement from a Dog²
• Bad Lonely Schoolboys³
• Scandalous Dairy⁴
• Amid Uncertainty⁵
• Fair Flynn⁶
• The Animals Engineered⁷

1. Condoleezza Rice says Russia has taken a dark turn.
2. The Georgia Bulldogs need to make a statement.
3. Schoolboy Islamist jailed for two years.
4. China dairy ordered milk off shelves.
5. Malaysia's #2 leader delays trip amid uncertainty.
6. Former Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn in fair condition.
7. FDA releases guidelines for genetically engineered animals.

Here are 165 more.

Band Names From Google News

You set up your MySpace music site. You uploaded your logo to Cafe Press. Your sister and your cousin are telling all their friends to download your sure-to-be-a-smash-hit song "Second Lunch Kiss," and you and your bandmates have all bought really tight low riding girl jeans and white belts, even the chubby bassist, who looks really stupid in them. But for whatever reason, the big label deal hasn't arrived yet. Maybe it's because your band's name just isn't touching the masses. Sure, it's obscure and mysterious, but you might need to consider a new one. I offer you these, based on today's headlines at Google News.

• Forty-Five Year Dream
• Here Comes Gustav
• Desperation Prevails
• Safe Passage
• Arson House
• Jail For Mom
• Tequila Nightmare

Here are 158 more.

Band Names from Google News

It's that time of the week, (been a few weeks, sorry) when I give you a replacement name for your struggling musical act based on today's headlines at Google News.

• Hurtful Handshake
• Beijing Lip Sync
• 100-Meter Butterfly
• Bigfoot Buzz
• Trickle Back Home
• Ko Lin Pow
• Mark Penn & the Wolf Sons

Here are 151 more.

Band Names from Google News - SPECIAL EDITION

This will be the first time that all seven band names from Google News come from one story, an unconfirmed story that you may not know about, since (most of) the media is pretty much not reporting it, because it pretty much is nothing but rumor at this point. But still, surely one of these names would be a great name for your band.

• Love Child
• Beverly Rendezvous
• Not Good, Johnny
  
• Enquirer's Notebook
  
• Hilton Baño
• Ashen Faced
• Condition of Anonymity

Here are 144 more.

Band Names from Google News - Yet Again

How’s that MySpace band thing working out for you? Me, not so great.

Perhaps we need to change our names. I may rework all my music to some sort of alt-country Americana and perform under the name “Wichita Starbucks.” (Gonna have to buy some new clothes.)

The premise of this continuing series is: I scan Google Headlines and come up with band/music act names based on today’s happenings in the news.

• Intensified Attack
• Roar to Life
• Lay Down Green
• Wichita Starbucks
• Uninspired and Undecided
• Testing Positive
• Clergy Defecting

Here are 137 more.

Rebrand Your Band

You ask for it, I hotkey over to a Word doc when someone enters my space as I deliver it to you. It's Band Names from Google News, a regular feature. This time with links to show you where the band name comes from. The premise is: You ain't goin' nowhere with your stupid band name. Rebrand your band.

• Nation of Whiners (link)
• Fannie Freddie Slide (link)
• Knütkütter (link)
• Pope Going Down (link)
• Graphic Novices (link)
• The Christie Crusade (link)
• Roman Apples (link)

Here are an additional 130.

Image is actually of German thrash metal band Kreator, found on a Google image search for, of all things, "German thrash metal band."

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.