CHAPTER FOUR
SOCIAL MEDIA
Informal Communication, Powerful Profits
Tim Ferriss had a challenge. He’d never written a book before, but he wanted to have a best-seller with his first one, The 4-Hour Workweek. He had an idea how to do it. He knew something about the Internet, and it didn’t involve an expensive marketing campaign. In fact, his marketing didn’t cost a dime.
Ferriss generated online buzz for his book with a clever two-part strategy. First, he developed relationships with influential bloggers in the months leading up to the book’s launch. Then, when the book was ready to be promoted, he sent those people copies—and it got an enthusiastically positive response from all of them.
Blogs are like online diaries—personal web sites—that are updated regularly and available for others to see. Some blogs have become widely read, attracting thousands or even millions of readers. Some blogs focus on particular topics, such as gardening or sports or basketball. Ferriss talked up his book in both business and mainstream blogs.
Blog by blog, Ferriss chatted his way through the online community. Through links to other sites, his and others’ comments about his book traveled with increasing speed. Soon he had hundreds of blogs, online communities, and other web sites talking about his book.
Online buzz often leads to offline publicity. Eventually, Ferriss was being invited to speak on network morning shows and at other high-profile venues.
The key to Ferriss’s success, he thinks, is that he never pitched his book to the bloggers directly. Instead, he familiarized himself with their blogs and views on business and life, sent them messages about past posts of theirs that he liked or disagreed with, and met them in person at blogger conferences.
“The trick is to have a real dialogue,” he says. “To really get to know them. Sending them a hypey marketing/PR message doesn’t work. They see right through it.”
Ferriss admits that this is a time-consuming approach to marketing a book. But, he says, it’s a zero-cost way to promote yourself or your product on the Internet. And being known on the Internet can propel you into the national limelight, from which point publicity becomes almost self-perpetuating—a phenomenon known as “viral marketing.” (Ferriss’s book is still on many best-seller lists more than a year after it was published.)
THE PERFECT MARKETING CHANNEL FOR ENTREPRENEURS WHO HAVE MORE TIME THAN MONEY
Kimbo Slice is probably the best-known mixed-martial artist in the world today. A back-alley Miami brawler, he became famous on the Internet when his managers videotaped him boxing street toughs in backyards of Dade County. Slice became a legend among martial arts enthusiasts, and within a year after starting a social media campaign, his managers had him booked on network TV.
In order to drive traffic to his new web site,
Mrfire.com, author and speaker Joe Vitale was looking for a gimmick that would generate lots of conversation on the Internet. He settled on selling an “Elvis Mermaid” on eBay.
What is an Elvis Mermaid? Nothing more than a photo of Elvis Photoshopped onto the image of a mermaid, both of which Vitale collected online.
Vitale had a feeling that the gimmick would attract a lot of interest, and although it was pretty silly, it worked.
The Elvis Mermaid went up on eBay and within seconds—seconds, not minutes—hundreds of people were checking it out and then going to Vitale’s web site to see his Photoshopped masterpiece.
That “silly idea” gave Vitale the traffic he needed to launch his site. Investor’s Daily Edge (IDE), an investment advisory publisher, was puttering along with about 150 hits per day on its web site from its pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign through Google. Then one day, one of IDE’s writers noticed that Digg (an online social news site where readers contribute content) was getting a lot of postings about Ron Paul, the perpetual Libertarian candidate for president. He wrote a provocative article about perceived media bias against Paul and his supporters, posted it to Digg, and it was an immediate success. It drove a 400 percent spike in traffic to IDE’s web site the day it was published, and then a one- to two-week period of increased traffic after the initial jump.
Gary Vaynerchuk was an anonymous wine lover and liquor-store owner when he came up with the idea of creating an Internet site devoted to his particular take on wine. His personal blend of enthusiasm, irreverence, and humor attracted fans by the thousands to his web site. Today,
WineLibraryTV.com is a certified online hit, with 90,000 visitors a day. Vaynerchuk has become a mainstream wine celebrity and is frequently featured on TV talk shows and radio, and in newspapers and magazines.
As you can see from the above examples, social media marketing has changed the nature of promotion and publicity for small-time entrepreneurs and wannabe celebrities. Anybody who has the time to devote to this marketing channel can become a recognized author, movie director, pop singer, artist, or expert on any subject.
You still need to be good at what you do, but you no longer need luck or money to get the word out about yourself or your business to the rest of the world.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS MANY DIMENSIONS
Social media advertising takes many forms, from online forums to message boards to blogs to video-, photo-, and music-sharing sites to social networks and comment sections on web sites. The list goes on and on.
The primary method of taking advantage of social media is through viral marketing—essentially, word-of-mouth advertising.
Social media giants such as Facebook, YouTube (purchased by Google for $1.65 billion), and MySpace (acquired by Rupert Murdoch for $580 million) have received a great deal of coverage in the press. But just as significant for the small- and medium-sized business is the rise of hundreds of less-sizeable social media sites that together have a huge audience—millions and millions of prospective customers.
FORMS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
• Internet forum/Message board—an online community that allows users to post messages and content, and have “discussions.”
• Weblog (“blog”)—an online diary of sorts, updated regularly, that can be maintained by one person or several. A blog can include text, pictures, video, and links to other web sites.
• Videolog (“vlog”)—a weblog consisting mostly of embedded videos or links to videos.
• Wiki/Group creation—a web site that is created and modified by a community of users who generate its content.
• Podcast—a syndicated digital file (video or audio) that can be downloaded and played on a home computer, or, more popularly, a portable MP3 player.
• Photo-sharing—an online database of photos and pictures that can be viewed or even used by others, sometimes for a fee.
• Comment posting/Wall posting—leaving a message on a user profile in social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
The term “social media” applies to many different models of communication. But most of them can be put into one of two groups.
First, there are the social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook. These sites primarily feature user content. In other words, they publish videos or text submitted by users and ask other users to rate that content. Such sites have become very popular because they give ordinary people a zero-cost way of getting their message out to the world and claiming their stake of celebrity.
Then there are blogs. Blogs work very differently. With blogs, the content is generated by the publisher of the blog and user content is secondary. When blogs are very good, they can become popular very fast. When they are mediocre, they are unlikely to attract any attention at all.
To take full advantage of the potential of social media advertising, you can do two things. You can create outbound campaigns to blogs and forums and chat rooms, as Tim Ferriss did to promote his book. And you can start your own blog, as Gary Vaynerchuk did with his wine web site.
You can stimulate conversation on social media sites about you, your business, and/or your products by publishing special reports or covering news or sending out targeted surveys or questionnaires. But to ensure that the “buzz” is positive, you have to promote yourself gradually and organically, as Tim Ferriss did, by developing genuine relationships with the social media sites you have targeted.
If you have an active business, in all likelihood you have a customer service site or user network that you can go to. To ignore your own customers on your own site is an unforgivable mistake in today’s interconnected world. You must always be answering your customers’ questions, responding to their complaints, explaining problems and opportunities, announcing new products and services, listing upcoming events, reminding customers of upcoming deadlines, and so on.
If you have a social media site and are not involved in the ongoing conversation, you’re missing out on an important chance to lengthen, deepen, and strengthen the relationship you have with your customers.
THE BARE MINIMUM
Every business should have, at the very least, an active, Internet-based customer forum.
A forum is a site where your customers and potential customers talk about you, your business, and your products. In the twentieth century, business owners liked to control what was said about them and their companies. In the twenty-first century, that’s no longer possible. Smart business leaders have realized that, rather than controlling the conversation, they are better off participating in it.
Customer forums give you an excellent opportunity to find out what your customers are thinking and feeling. They have made customer surveys and focus groups obsolete. Forums will tell you what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. They will give you clues about what your customers need and/or want and what other products they are buying.
Why pay tens of thousands of dollars for an outside marketing company to conduct a customer survey or run a focus group for you? You can learn loads more about what’s really important by spending just a few hours on a forum.
The challenge of social media advertising is to get customers, prospects, colleagues, and competitors to talk about you in a structured way. They will talk about you whether you like it or not. But when they do so through a forum that you control, you can take full advantage of those conversations.
If your business is devoted to developing good products, the conversations on your forum will be generally positive. You will get slammed from time to time, but the naysayers will be drowned out by customers who have bought products from you and are happy with them and the service they have received. When your customers come to your rescue and defend you and promote you, that is the best publicity you could ask for. And you don’t have to pay for it. It is given to you free of charge!
Amazon.com allows customers to rate and review everything they sell on its site, from books to leaf blowers. If you’re in the hospitality business, online forums and message boards can be especially powerful. Sites such as
Chowhound.com allow diners and travelers to rate your hotel or restaurant. They talk about the noise level, customer service, food, cleanliness, and location. Savvy web surfers check these sites before booking trips or planning evenings out.
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA
The first and most notable advantage of social media advertising is its low cost.
Once your site is built and running, it costs very little to get your customers and prospects to go to it. They will do it on their own almost every time you put an advertisement in front of them and every time they consider buying one of your products. If you have established e-mail contact with your customers, stimulating them to use your social media site costs you nothing more than the expense of composing the message. Expensive list or space fees do not apply.
The next thing that should be said about social media is its wide reach. When a social message catches fire, it can travel around the world, to millions of people, in a matter of weeks or even days. The main reason for this is the Internet. But other media are often involved too. It is not unusual for a hot Internet message or video to be picked up by radio, television, magazines, or newspapers. Sometimes, all of these media jump on the subject at one time.
Social media is also, as we’ve said, a superb way to gather information about your customers, their wants and desires, and to deal with any business problems you may be encountering. Social media advertising is the most effective way to establish, defend, and boost your company’s credibility.
Social marketing has many potential benefits. But there are drawbacks too. Of all the advertising channels, social marketing is the one that offers the longest odds. For every Joe Vitale and Tim Ferriss who was successful with their social campaigns, there are hundreds if not thousands of people whose efforts were fruitless. The reason social marketing is so difficult is because of the channel itself. It is big and it is powerful, but it is not controllable by the marketer. In some cases, it can backfire by turning into negative publicity.
This is especially true if you try to use social media dishonestly. If you misrepresent yourself online, you will most likely get caught and suffer the consequences. The online world will quickly turn against you with a wave of very bad buzz across cyberspace. This will result in lost sales, public outrage, and more.
So how do you use social media dishonestly? Shady marketers have created fake profiles of “fans” on social networking sites like MySpace in order to promote their products. They’ve also created “consumer” blogs that were written by their company’s PR department.
In one widely publicized recent case, Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey was caught posting negative comments about a competitor on Yahoo Finance message boards. He used a pseudonym during the entire eight-year run of trash talk. Many believe his goal was to drive down the stock price of the competitor so that Whole Foods could easily take it over. That allegation was enough to get the SEC involved.
In another case, Wal-Mart’s PR firm hired two journalists to travel across the United States in an RV, visiting stores along the way. Posing as ordinary people, the reporters collected overwhelmingly pro-Wal-Mart interviews with employees and customers and posted them on their blog. Around the same time, the same PR firm created a fake grassroots campaign in which a mom, part of a working-class family, sang the praises of the retail giant. Savvy Internet surfers soon realized the “bloggers” in both cases were hired guns, and spread the news online.
Honesty is a key asset with social media, not only because of the consequences if you get caught “faking it,” but because of the creative strengths you enjoy when you figure out how to promote the core values and qualities of your company and products through this channel.
These are the main principles that apply to social media advertising:
• The Message Is for the Medium. When creating an event, writing a press release, or crafting a video for viral marketing, think about what people are interested in, not what you want to show them. Nobody in the major social media is likely to be interested in a new product you create or a new development in your company. But if you can reposition your news so that it will be interesting to the greater public, you have a good chance of getting coverage. The trick to writing good press releases and/or informational videos is to study the media beforehand. Figure out what types of stories/videos they like to run, and tailor your piece to match.
• Audacity Is Everything. When developing a news story or event, be aggressive in your conception. Big stories are generally better than small ones. Crazy events are more interesting than sane ones. Odd or funny videos get more play than conventional ones. But when thinking audaciously, be calculating. Study the media’s preferences. Determine what kind of odd, crazy, and/or funny messages they like to feature.
• Respect the Priorities. Records are more interesting than lists. Lists are more interesting than facts. Social media loves world records, even world records for obscure and silly things. Next to world records, social media loves lists, especially top-10 lists: forecasts, trends, favorite picks, and so on. The best movies of the year, the best albums of the year, the best electronic gadgets, and the best travel destinations are examples of lists that are popular in social media. People have strong opinions about these subjects, and such lists can generate a lot of discussion among those who disagree with the ratings. Think of how your business can generate its own world records and top-10 lists.
• Give Them Something to Talk About. Everyone likes a scandal and controversy. If you can figure out how to sex up your message, try it.
• Simplicity Is a Virtue. When announcing your news, express it in the simplest possible language. Simple language gives you two big advantages. First, it is easier to comprehend. Second, it is easier for people to remember and repeat, like a catchy sound bite that you may hear on TV. Think of how quickly catchphrases from the sitcom Seinfeld (“yada, yada, yada,” “not that there’s anything wrong with that,” or “no soup for you”) passed into everyday usage.
• Make It Brief. The core concept of the message—the part you want people to remember—should be short enough to print on the subject line of an e-mail or in the headline of a magazine article.
Early to Rise incorporated in December of 1999 and has had a forum since June of 2000. During that time, we have had many interesting online conversations. We have also had a few dissatisfied customers post their experiences with us—and those postings were helpful. They made us aware of problems or perceived problems, and helped us improve our business.
ANATOMY OF A SUCCESSFUL BLOG PROMOTION
As we mentioned before, the main difference between a forum and a blog is a matter of who dominates the conversation. In a forum, the customers do. In a blog, the blogger (company representative, business owner, or expert) does.
For a business owner, a forum is like an auditorium full of customers that are talking about your company. You can walk in and talk any time you like, but you are always walking into a conversation that is already taking place. You can interject your comments, but you can’t control the crowd.
A blog is much more like a soapbox in a public park. The business owner stands in the passing crowd and talks and talks, hoping he can get some of them to stop and listen. Some who stop will ask him questions. Some will shout out their own opinions, even criticize him on occasion. In a blog, it is the business owner or his representative who starts the conversation and does most (or much) of the talking. He has much more control over what people hear (because he can edit out any feedback he doesn’t want publicized). And if he does a good job, he can create a larger and larger group of loyal listeners.
Rich Schefren has had great success using his blog to promote his business,
StrategicProfits.com, and his business-development products. “When I post to my blog,” Schefren says, “I am posting content for my readers. But my readers can also add their comments to my post, and other blogs can link to mine. Suddenly, my content has morphed into communication: A new dialogue between my readers and me
... and between my fellow bloggers and their readers!”
Schefren says he has found that the key to success in blogging is “transparency.” “Your readers want to know what is really going on inside your company and inside your head. The more honest and direct you can be with them, the better they will like it.”
Here’s an example of what Schefren means. In October of 2006, Strategic Profits and ETR came to a standstill about a planned series of teleconferences for our combined readerships. Schefren wanted the level to be fairly sophisticated, but ETR wanted to gear it toward beginners. When we couldn’t agree in time to produce the first call of the series, we cancelled it temporarily. When we came to a compromise—to provide a combination of introductory and more advanced information—Schefren got on his web site to explain the decision to his readers:
My call with ETR was cancelled because we could not decide on whether or not people were ready for (or capable of) implementing the extremely powerful strategies in use by our offices.
Should we make the program just for beginners? Or should we unlock every door and leave no stone unturned, throwing in every advanced marketing technique we know?
ETR made the point that many people are just starting out.
I countered with NUMEROUS examples from my coaching program of clients who have gone from a one-man shop to a small virtual team doing millions of dollars per year in revenue. So I know you guys can do it.
That argument led us to a compromise. The Internet Wealth Alliance will be for BOTH groups. Beginners and advanced marketers.
Schefren’s posting on his web site produced a rush of responses. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, including those listed below:
• “I was encouraged that you have structured the IMA to benefit beginners like myself. I am concerned that the pricing will be such that ‘true’ beginners will not have a seat at the feast.”
• “This thing does sound exciting. And I am very grateful you decided to break it into two groups . . . still not sure I’ll be able to pay my way in but at least that sector is available and those that can will have a shot.”
• “You just said in an e-mail two minutes ago ‘Yep this is open to newbies as well as seasoned pros.’ Well mate, not many newbies could afford the $800 per month price tag on Brad and Andy’s program.... I’m not saying that their program isn’t worth it (It probably is!) but many of us and especially ‘Newbies’ would have to stop feeding their kids to pay out this kind of cash.”
Remarks like these weren’t limited to the comments section of Schefren’s blog. Many e-mails were sent in to his office by customers and potential customers as well. For several months following the “incident,” both ETR and Strategic Profits readers kept writing in, wondering if Schefren and ETR were still “feuding.” The reason this one posting got so much attention, Schefren believes, is because it was entirely organic. “It stemmed from a real conversation to a group of readers who were excited about the original call. They were truly disappointed when the call was cancelled, and human curiosity took over.”
Because of its transparency, the Internet has brought people together like no other technology.
SOCIAL NETWORKS, SOCIAL BOOKMARKS, AND SOCIAL NEWS WEB SITES
Most people consider social networks, social bookmarks, and social news sites to have the greatest influence in social media marketing. These web sites encourage visitors to post personal content and—usually—have it rated by other visitors. Generally speaking, the higher-rated content gets the best exposure on the site.
The external goal of a social network is to link people with similar interests. The internal goal is to make money through general advertising by exposing visitors to display ads.
In many cases, users post profiles filled with personal details, likes and dislikes, pictures, blogs, and more. Each user is provided with a separate location on the network where he or she can keep in touch with friends, spread the word about movies and music they’re into, and meet new people.
In recent years, some businesses have gotten into the act by posting “profiles” for their products.
The major social media networks are
MySpace.com, currently the third most popular web site in the United States, and
FaceBook.com. Smaller, less-general, sites include
LinkedIn.com, which provides networking opportunities for business professionals, and
MeetUp.com, which serves community groups and associations.
In social bookmarking, users save links to web pages they stumble across on the Internet in a publicly viewable forum. The bookmarking allows the user to remember where they found an interesting web page and find it again. But because others can see what they bookmarked, the most interesting pages are quickly bookmarked by users with similar interests. A web page that generates a lot of social bookmarking interest can become very popular very quickly and will be highly ranked on the bookmarking site.
Social news sites are a bit different. Users nominate news articles, blog posts, and any other written online content that they feel deserves wider attention. They post a review or summary of the material on the social news site with a link to the original. The community of users decides how prominent the article will be on the site by voting. One thing to keep in mind: Obvious advertising messages are summarily rejected.
These sites are becoming more and more popular by the day. Some of them are even attracting more traffic than the almighty Google!
GENERAL ADVERTISING AND DIRECT MARKETING IN SOCIAL MEDIA
In the beginning of this book, we made the argument that the Internet is tailor-made for direct-response marketing. This has proven to be true in every area of Internet advertising, but especially when it comes to social media.
Let’s start by pointing out that Internet traffic is absolutely useless if you don’t do anything with it—in other words, if you don’t monetize it. And, in fact, at the Webmasters World Conference in Las Vegas in 2007, the top search engine marketers in the world had a panel discussion entitled “Monetizing Social Media Traffic.”
Most of the panelists admitted that it was difficult to monetize this kind of traffic. Social media users, they said, were less interested in advertising content than other web site users, and less likely to linger on social media sites to look at the advertising content posted there.
It appeared, they thought, that one of the only ways to monetize this traffic would be to use a CPM (cost per thousand) advertising model, selling advertising and charging by the number of people who visited the social media site. For a direct-response Internet marketer, this is not helpful. Getting traffic to your blog or your forum does you no commercial good unless you find a way to convert those visitors to customers.
But here’s an example of how we tried—and ultimately (we think) succeeded—to make social media traffic work for the industry that ETR is in: information publishing.
Early to Rise’s sister division, Total Health Breakthroughs, published an informative and controversial article on processed meats in its e-newsletter. To give the article traction, it was distributed to several social media outlets, including StumbleUpon. This article gained momentum through viral buzz within the StumbleUpon community—and before we knew it, more than 27,000 visitors came from Stumple-Upon to the article itself posted on the Total Health Breakthroughs web site. Great, right? Well, sort of....
Turns out the traffic was going to an article web page that didn’t have an e-mail sign-up box. So, although the page received loads of traffic, it wasn’t possible to harness that traffic via e-mail addresses.
The upside is that the branding, syndication opportunities, and back-links garnered from that effort were extremely helpful in terms of Total Health Breakthroughs’s search engine marketing and the web site’s increasing organic traffic ranking. And (though this is an assumption) some of those leads may have gone from the article page to the home page, where the sign-up box was located.
Of course, now an e-mail sign-up box appears on every page of the Total Health Breakthroughs web site, including the article pages, so there is no longer the potential for missed e-mail addresses from social media efforts.
Even if you think this particular marketing channel is not appropriate for your business, we encourage you to try it out. And make a good effort: The rewards can be huge. And because social media marketing is, for the most part, free, your cost is nothing more than your time.