Recently I’ve run into a number of companies who call themselves a  “social media agency”.  Here are some examples (this is not a joke):

1.) Company A

This company sells “engagement marketing” services.  They use an ASP Buzz Monitoring tool (a pretty good one) to identify brand mentions in Blogs, Forums, etc.  When they see a brand mention (positive or negative) they respond on behalf of their client (pretending to be their client).  They also tweet for their clients and build Blogs.  Company A makes much of its money from the markup of the ASP tool they use (I guess their clients don’t know that they could become a direct subscriber to the ASP company and pay far less.) As recently as a year ago, this company called itself a PR Firm.

2.) Company B

This company sells Ambassador Programs.  They have developed an ASP tool that is essentially Ning (except not free and not nearly as robust) with some Analytics behind it.  They use the client’s house email list as well as rented lists to invite current and prospective customers to become an Ambassador for the client.  Ambassadors get to log in to Company B’s super cool tool each month and report on the buzz activities they’ve engaged in on behalf of Company B’s client.  If they are good/active little Ambassadors, they get a free t-shirt, a coupon, and other incentives devised by Company B (bright ideas for incentives are part of what the client pays for).  The client gets a report at the end of each month on all the activity that has happened within Company B’s super cool ASP tool. (what, no activity?  I wonder why)  In a past life, Company B was mostly known for building Web sites (and the occassional Blog).

3.) Company C

Company C sells “integrated search and social media services”.  What this means is that Company C uses Social Media to build links as a means of improving their client’s search rankings.  Company C is really a search agency.

What’s my point here?  Buyer beware.  There is no such thing as a “Social Media agency”.  Social Media initiatives can require a wide range of things that a client might need from an outsourced vendor – strategy, web and application development, video/content creation, measurement and deployment tools, etc.  Even some traditional agency services like media buying can be useful for getting the word out about a contest, a new community, etc.

So…before you hire, think about your Social Media strategy and what you really need from an outsourced vendor to execute it well.  And remember that at the end of the day, relationships can’t and shouldn’t be outsourced.

Li Evans will speak at Search Engine Strategies: San Jose

If you’d like to catch her words of wisdom, here’s her schedule and topics:

Social Media: Managing Conversations and Reputations When the User Is In Control on Wednesday from 2:30-3:45
Extreme Makeover: Live Twitter & Blogging Clinic on Thursday from 12:45-2:00
Images & Search Engines: Getting the Full Picture on Thursday from 2:15-3:30

In the ancient days of yore (January 2009), T-mobile produced a spectacular video.

A flashmob suddenly starts dancing; and just as suddenly, stops. The dancers disburse leaving astonished onlookers to call, text, or share cell phone videos of the event with their friends and family. Fade up the tag line: “Life’s for Sharing” and you tie together the amazing event we’ve just witnessed (even through video) with the company and the message you want to send.  They gave us, the audience, a gift that seemed so genuine that we didn’t even mind that they branded it at the end. Absolutely brilliant.

Next in late March a Belgian television program repeated the stunt using “Do Re Mi” from the Sound of Music, bringing the experience of a musical into modern day life. (Plus who doesn’t love Julie Andrews? Ok, you’re right, the Nazi’s weren’t big fans, but other than them?)

In some ways I like this one better as it only uses one song, and better utilizes the elements of that song in the production, i.e. it adds dancers on cues rather than haphazardly like with the T-mobile commercial. Certainly it was riding the coat tails of the T-mobile success, but it at least tried to improve upon the formula with better coordination of the dancers and some group choreography rather than just individual/couple dance moves (it stands at over 5.6 million views).

Then in late April Trident attempted to follow the hype by staging a dance to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” in Piccadilly Circus.

Unfortunately the choreography follows pretty closely to the music video. It may have worked for a small number of dancers, but gets boring in the group. Plus the black and white photography that was iconic in the music video loses the dancers in a sea of gray. At best this feels derivative, and only says “me too.”  Although at 1.5 million views they’ve still garnered a lot of publicity.

I long for a new twist in the flashmob aesthetic.

What says originality more than MC Hammer? In early June a flashmob arrived at a trendy store in LA and performed the “U Can’t Touch This” Dance for A&E.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there’s something special about a flashmob dancing in gold parachute pants, including, my favorite, the elderly man in a three piece suit and a blue headband.

But come on, People!

Let’s do something new. Let’s add to the conversation rather than copying it with slight variations. Sure you can ride the coattails of T-mobile and garner even a few million views (1.6 to be exact), but no one will remember your video.

Enter T-mobile (again). Flashmob. Trafalgar Square. Hey Jude. Singing.

They added to the conversation. It may not have hit a million views yet (currently at about 750K), but they brought something to the table. They innovated on their own work.  And perhaps more importantly they continued to tie the stunts directly in with their message: “Life is for Sharing.”  The Belgian TV Show, Trident and A&E were following a hip trend that only loosely related to their message. A few months from now I venture to predict that their stunts will be forgotten amidst the next new and shiny meme that sweeps the internet.

But I beleive that T-mobile, and more importantly for them, their tag line and the image that these videos helped establish for them will be remembered. 

They will have greater positive buzz, greater brand recognition, greater good will from customers, and finally greater sales all because they got a flashmob to dance, and then they made it sing.

Too many marketers take a ‘good enough’ approach when it comes to their Google Adwords campaigns.

I recently had a phone call with a client who had over 4,000 words of unorganized content on his landing page and couldn’t understand why no one was purchasing his service. When I encouraged him to change his landing page, he quickly interrupted, insisting it was a waste of time and consumers “will get the gist.”

Web visitors are not your friends and family.  They are the most fickle, impatient bunch that will ever come in contact with you or your brand.

Web users, in mass, seem to have one enduring mantra: when in doubt, click out.  And why shouldn’t they? Your website is not the only circus in town.  In any industry, it’s possible to have between 20 and 20,000 competing sites.  This puts a premium on creating tight, well organized, and engaging content that will lead customers to the call-to-action.

You don’t have to be a wordsmith to create compelling content.  You don’t even have to speak the language.

I used to work with a software company managing their English speaking campaigns.   After producing very positive results, I mustered the courage to see if I could handle their overseas campaigns as they were heavily engaged in Germany and France.

They were slightly confused by my request (I speak neither German nor French), but I quickly explained that despite speaking neither language, it was quite obvious that they were making some serious mistakes.

In my opinion, the greatest infraction of all was that they weren’t performing ad or landing page testing.  I quickly pulled their ads, wrote new ones using a free translator, and shipped them off to the German office for review.

I know what you’re thinking: I embarrassed myself in the process and probably should have been fired.  That might be true and, yes, some of the ads were enormous failures.  But, within a matter of a couple days, I could quickly determine the duds and discard them.  After another three weeks, I had enough of a statistical sample to determine which ads were the sale-producing gems.  These became my go-to ads and, from an experimentation standpoint, my control ads that would be predominantly used throughout the campaign.

I adopted a similar strategy with their landing pages and, after two months, their cost per lead plummeted from $9.75/lead to $1.50/lead.

Don’t think for your customers.  Let your customers think for you.

Coincidentally, I worked for another software company that was truly excited to test landing pages.  After spending hours building graphics for their new product, I got a note from the client inquiring “What if we just show a woman typing on her computer?”

After rolling my eyes, I figured I would build the page and include it in the testing.  I knew the page would fail, and when it did, my authoritative rule over the campaign would go unchallenged and my status at the company would undoubtedly elevate to all-knowing Zen master.

When the page launched it not only succeeded, but beat every other campaign by a conversion rate of at least 15%.  To this day, I have no explanation for the success of this page.  It was dull, uninspired, and hands down the most effective landing page.

The lesson from this is simple: testing your ad copy and landing pages will allow your visitors to tell you what they want.  You might not understand why visitors behave in certain ways, but the patterns will be impossible to ignore.  The key to improving an Adwords campaign is embracing these patterns and using these trends to increase the likelihood of conversions in the future.

Don’t Cater to Conventional Testing Standards

Common industry logic dictates that it typically requires 300 conversions before you can make informed decisions regarding a new landing page or specific ad copy.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this logic and think many exceptions exist.

Instead of testing conversions, let’s imagine we’re testing the effectiveness of guinea pig food.  We have 300 guinea pigs in our lab.  After feeding the first 5, they all tragically die within a few short minutes.

Do we really need to feed the other 295 guinea pigs or can we make a reasonably well-informed decision right now?  Personally, I think it’s in the best long term interests of the laboratory to discontinue testing and develop a new product.   Sure, these results could be anomalous and the food could actually be fine, but that’s beyond the point.  It’s about using your resources as prudently and effectively as possible.

Let’s alter the example.  What if after feeding the first five guinea pigs, one dies?  We have less information and our ability to delineate causation versus correlation is greatly impeded.  In this case, it’s wise to continue testing until there’s enough data to make an informed decision.

Look at your companies objectively, unemotionally, and always test the premises and strategies on which your marketing campaign is built.

One of the biggest complaints about social media, or rather reasons companies give for not getting involved in it, that I hear time and time again is that they are afraid of what people will say about them, and fear they have no control over that. Unfortunately for these companies what they don’t realize is that this is going on whether they are involved in social media or not. The problem really isn’t that there is something bad being said about them. The real problem is that they (the companies) aren’t listening to what’s being said.

Right now I’m on vacation in Key West. I say that not to make anyone jealous, but more to give a background to this post. See I booked my hotel based on the establishment’s response to some “negative” reviews on a Social Media site called TripAdvisor. I’m staying at the Palms Hotel on White Street here in Key West. I was looking for a quaint hotel, closer to the heart of Key West, but not amidst the busy happenings of Duval Street. I searched through reviews of a lot of hotels and B&B’s when I came across the listing for the Palms, I noticed a few negative reviews. But I also saw the owners, actively engaged in responding to those reviews.

After seeing the responses, taking into account both positive and negative reviews, looking at the photos, and also seeing the Triple A reviews, I decided to book my stay here. Not because it was glowing 5-stars, but because it was more real than any of the other reviews I saw. It was a nice mix of negative, positive and active involvement of the establishment. It also gave me a much better idea of what to expect when I got here to The Palms. As some of the reviewers pointed out, there is no parking, but when you realize this hotel is actually in a residential area, you understand why. It’s also not the Ritz, it’s a quaint, out of the way hotel with very nice staff, attentive for the most part, and clean!

Whether you are a service provider, such as a contractor or painter, a professional service provider like a doctor or lawyer, or a hospitality provider, like a restaurant or hotel; you really need to be involved in social media review sites. If you aren’t involved and just sticking your head in the sand hoping sites like these will just go away, you are going to be waiting a long time. Sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, which have the ability to rank your business name, are only growing in popularity.

The flip side of this coin is that people who are looking for information about services aren’t always going to be looking for your business name. Like me, they’ll comb through review after review to get a balanced perspective and know that they can trust you’ll do a good job for them. They won’t believe the reviews that are just too glowing: those actually appear fake. What they will believe is a balance of negative and positive, solidified even more by the business owner’s involvement.

So don’t be afraid of the negative. Not only is it a chance to turn a bad situation into a brand new evangelist, it’s also an opportunity to change those “on the fence” buyers into your customers. Just like in face-to-face dealings with customers, you can’t please them all, all of the time. You can, however, at least take the time to acknowledge their complaint and use that information to either improve your services or keep it in mind for the future. After all, even in social media, not all days are days at the beach … but hiding your head in the sand isn’t the answer either.

Last week Li Evans had an article posted on Search Engine Watch entitled What Are Your Social Media Goals?

Li discusses some ways to measure social media involvement and how to set appropriate goals

A couple of posts ago I wrote about a gentleman from the UK who had made some mistakes that had been captured and spread across the web. How did he get caught up in his situation?  Two men were masquerading as a woman online, basically sitting behind a fake persona.  Is this ethical? No it’s not.  Yet people do it.  On the internet you don’t have to be who you are in real life.  You don’t have to be a spotty 16 year old with a weight issue, you can be an unquestioned expert on lepidoptery.

But what about companies?  Is it fine for them to have employees not identify themselves as employees, or take it even further and pretend to be a member of a different demographic to subtly push the agenda of the company?  Again, no it’s not.  There’s even a term for it – “Sock Puppets”.  What tends to happen is that Brad in marketing slips up when posting as “Brenda, a 58 year old grandmother from Arkansas”, and the community gets suspicious and outs ‘Brenda’.

It’s true that Brad could keep up his persona, indefinitely, and be a ’secret agent’ for the company.  Yet he could still be found out, especially if he’s posting from work (most forums log the IP address of posters, and it’s a simple process to do a reverse lookup to see who owns that IP).

Once the person is outed, any and all goodwill that they built up will be gone, with the company most likely facing a backlash from the community who won’t take kindly to this type of fraud.

This is why we recommend to all of our clients that they be honest and transparent in their social media engagements.  If they have affiliations, let them be known up front, don’t let someone else find out about them and accuse you of dishonesty.  If your company wants to engage in social media, you have to engage the right way, otherwise you’ll end up with more damage than if you’d never started.

Recently we’ve had a number of clients who’ve come to us wanting to evaluate their current web analytics package to see if it’s still the right package for them.  Sometimes they’ve done a bit of research on their own and have a basic understanding of a few options and the capabilities of each.  In other cases they don’t know anything about the differences between the packages.  One aspect that seems to be true for all of them, however, is that they all want to know about Google Analytics.

They know it’s free and that can be very attractive to a company that is cutting costs to try and weather the recession.  What they don’t know is if it will fit their needs and that is a critical question to ask when choosing a web analytics package.  The topic is often brought up in forums and written about across various blogs.  Sometimes the posters or bloggers view Google Analytics in a positive light and in other cases more negatively.  What is constant is that there can often be information that gets put out there that may not be completely accurate.  The folks over at Google Analytics have  been following these blog posts and forum threads and decided that it was time to put out a post of their own.  The post aims to debunk the top ten myths about Google Analytics.

The post definitely addresses many of the issues that get brought up regarding Google Analytics and can certainly be used as a reference if you’re going through the process of evaluating the right web analytics package for your company.  If you’re not sure how to go about the process of choosing a web analytics package or just simply don’t have the time then contact us.  We can help guide you through the entire process from choosing the right package to correctly implementing it so that it properly tracks all the metrics that tie into your site goals.

At IM Spring Break our very own Li Evans spoke with Robert Garcia of Ecom Phenom about branding.

Check out the interview for some best practices on building your brand.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/show.aspx?userurl=Ecom-Phenom&year=2009&month=06&day=03&url=Brand-Building-with-Li-Evans

Over at Takeitinhouse.com we have an interview with Melanie Mitchell, VP of Marketing at Folio Investments, Inc. She discusses her nearly nine years in search marketing, points out some great reasons for educating the entire company about SEO, and shares insights on in-house search marketing teams and their role in the company.