For Social Media Marketing, it's the End of the Innocence

It was really just two or three years ago when many "traditional" public relations agencies and their business-to-business clients were wondering if social media marketing was just another shiny new toy, a passing fancy, an amusement for idle minds and hands that would have its 15 minutes of fame and then fizzle.

Since then the question has transitioned from "what if social media marketing is real" to "how do we maximize it for our business?" Add to the list "how do we make sense of the hundreds of social media marketing channels, applications, and analytical tools, etc., that are evolving and being ushered in and out on a daily basis?" And "which ones are right for us and our key stakeholders?"

Flashback:  excluding the early adopters, from 2007-2008 business-to-business public relations and marketing professionals started to kick the social media marketing tires in earnest.  At that time, many professionals and their organizations were signing on to LinkedIn and Twitter for the first time just to be there;   to see what the fuss was all about.  Yes, the great recession influenced the number of LinkedIn and Twitter newbies as these platforms are ideal for job hunters.  But a great many also were logging on to figure out how to begin integrating social media into their existing marketing efforts.

Then in 2009, providers of marketing services in the business-to-business world started their deep dive, en masse, into social media marketing.  And at the same time, PR agency prospects took stock of whether the agencies involved in their new business reviews were walking the social media talk. Do you blog and comment on blogs?  How many Twitter followers does your agency have?  What type of content are you generating and tweeting?  Do the managing partners tweet?  What should we do?  If they didn't ask, they were thinking it.

2010 was a watershed year for the marketing services industry as far as the impact of social media marketing is concerned.

Today, as 2010 winds down, if you live in a B2B world and work in public relations and/or marketing, you are likely (hopefully) well versed in social media marketing -- as a counselor and/or as a practitioner. Because the train has left the station.  In 2011, social media marketing loses its innocence and you better be planning for it.

10 Public Relations-related Discussions I Could Live Without

Everyday I look forward to the avalanche of creative ideas, links to information and news I wouldn't see otherwise, the levity, the quirkiness and the provocative conversations, blogs, tweets and posts and all that spills forth from my favorite social media networks.

Well, almost all that spills forth... 

We're probably a lot alike in that we start each day by browsing Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, etc., and end each day pretty much the same way.  We want to know "what's new" even before we get out of bed (some of us).  And in just a few minutes, before we take that first sip of Sumatra or Chai, we have a pretty good take on the conversations that took place while we slept and about what's trending for the day ahead.

Unfortunately, however, much of the creativity and thoughtfulness that is shared within our social networks - I'm finding -- is being offset by the seemingly never-ending regurgitation of (too) familiar discussions.  I am specifically speaking of the conversations taking place within the world of public relations. And more specifically, technology public relations.  

This may sound a bit like whining to you.  I'm sure it would to Seth Godin, who blogged just today about whining.


Mr. Godin says whining is just a waste of time.  He's right.  Still, I believe everyone has the right to whine, albeit only once in a while.

Today, it's my turn.  

With that, I give you my short list of regurgitated, recycled and restated discussions which are taking place in a PR-oriented social media community near you. All are discussions we, 'er I, can live without:  

• Is traditional media really dead?
• Press release:  R.I.P.
• Who should own social media? Ad agency, PR agency, in-house team or social media agency?
• Why PR agencies missed the social media train.
• What journalists hate about PR people.
• 10 essential tools for measuring social media (especially annoying when they're tools you never heard of and when you click on the links half of them are already obsolete!)
• How to pitch bloggers.
• How many CEOs are actively using social media.
• How do you measure PR success?
• Is PR dead?

Phew.  Quite a list.  But I'm sure I missed a few, so please feel free to weigh in with your personal favs.  

  

It's Time to Usher Out the THUD Factor in Corporate Communications

Many articles and blog posts have been written about the various types of followers on Twitter.

For example, it's typical for someone who is brand new to Twitter to follow anyone who follows them - even if that follower has little or no reason to follow you or vice versa.  Social media strategist Greg Pincus calls this type of follower The Recipro-pal.  Another favorite of mine from Greg's list is what he calls The Aggressor -- out of the blue, they follow you.  If you've been on Twitter for a reasonable amount of time, you have experienced these Twitter follower types, and many other types as well.

Here's how I deal with the Recipro-pal and the Aggressor:  every couple of months I sort through my relatively modest list of Twitter followers to weed them out.  I feel I'm doing them a favor.  And I know I'm doing me a favor.

Last time I went through this exercise I blocked more than a hundred Twitter followers, which at the time reduced my number of followers by more than 15%.  Also blocked were the hard core selling types -- pay-per-click and SEO specialists, folks who assure me I can make a million dollars selling on-line, and the auto-DM crew.  Not that these people don't have something important to say. It's just that I'm not buying what they're selling and I know that they're following me for one reason and one reason only.

And every once in a while a prostitute slips through my Twitter filter and ultimately get blocked as well.

What's my point? The number of Twitter followers you or your company has doesn't say a single thing about your social media effectiveness.  Yet, the vast majority of corporate communications professionals in North America who participated in a recent Bulldog Reporter/Thomson Reuters study still cite the number of followers as their MOST used measure of social media effectiveness.  And almost as remarkable is that nearly three-quarters of the respondents count the number of visits to their company's website -- versus the number of high value visitors -- as the second most critical social media measure.

What floors me more even more than this, however, is that "clips remain king" in traditional media coverage.

Almost 74% of the respondents said the number of clips is the number one metric they use to measure the effectiveness of their traditional media campaigns closely followed by the number of impressions.  Unfortunately, it appears that our industry is still mired in the old way of doing things.  Are you experienced enough to remember the days of walking into your client's office with a six-inch thick clip book and dropping it on his or desk?  We called it the THUD factor then.  It appears, at least based on the Bulldog/Thompson survey results, the THUD factor is alive and well.

Earlier this summer the Institute for Public Relations (IPR), following its European Summit on Measurement, published the "Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles." 

There's a lot of good information in the Declaration with  most being evolutionary - not revolutionary.

And here are two key points from it that I think corporate communications pros must pay closer attention to if our industry is going to show progress against the objectives set forth at the Barcelon conference:

• Overall clip counts and general impressions are usually meaningless.
• (Social media) measurement must focus on "conversation" and "communities" not just "coverage."

Makes sense to me.  How about you?