There’s a bit of a digital divide in the Webbed Marketing offices- those of us who grew up learning to make phone calls on rotary dials use the term “cell phone” or, if we’re feeling pretentious, “my mobile.”. Those in the younger demographic just say “my phone” and don’t feel the need to add the “cell” or “mobile” modifier. Maybe the phrase “cell phone” is going the route of “digital alarm clock.”

That is, there is an assumption with the workers coming into the ranks now that certain technologies are just part of life. There aren’t cell phones, just phones. There isn’t social media, there is just media. There aren’t online influencers, just influencers.

And of course I can Tweet anything I want.

I would not want to be an intellectual property attorney in the age of YouTube, AdWords, Twitter and all the other forms of online communication that allow consumers to produce content about a brand faster than you can say “cease and desist.” An army of lawyers for Coke could not chase down everyone who has made the “Mentos/Diet Coke” videos.  Whether you are Apple, Honda, or the guy that owns a pool cleaning business, there are three truths to the relationship between consumers and your brand:

• There are more of them than there are of you. At least, there sure as heck better be. Even if you have global team of marketers, you are simply outnumbered. The more consumers who love, hate or simply use your product, the more content they create about you online.
• They are faster than you are. If a consumer has a bad experience with your bank, they can blog about it, right now. If your bank wants to respond to the blog post, your marketing writer puts together a response, the marketing VP edits it, your compliance guy approves it and your IT guy tells you he ain’t opening up access to Blogger.com for you to post it anyway. This weekend I was at Kings Island and several times I heard people leaving rides or haunted houses saying, “I’m going to Tweet about that.”

• They are more trusted than you are.  Consider this; you want to lose 20 pounds. You can get all kinds of information from various Web sites telling you how great this exercise program is, and that diet is. The brands simply don’t carry credibility with you. Now go search Technorati on the term “PX90” and take a look at all the highly credible bloggers, not to mention real people, saying good things. Who are you more likely to believe?

So aside from volume, speed and credibility, consumers really don’t have much of an edge over brands.

This has all been a very long and winding road to my original inspiration for this blog post. Several team members have attended webinars recently. When they received a follow up e-mail from the webinar, there was a note at the bottom saying the webinar content was specifically for attendees and should not be Tweeted or posted to a social network. I’m still waiting to see the first privacy notice on the bottom of an e-mail saying the contents of an e-mail are meant for the sender only and should not be Tweeted. Will more brands feel the need to expand their existing confidentiality and privacy statements to included social media? Is it necessary? Even if it’s necessary, is it effective?

Or, how many Facebook fans does it take to get the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Here’s an old parlor trick of SEO folks from the late nineties. The SEO agency would tell you that they would be happy to be paid on performance and then define “performance” as keyword ranking. They told clients they promised page one ranking on Google for a great term like “big yellow bananas in Tallahasee.” They achieved the ranking. And of course, client’s business didn’t change one bit. And SEOs developed roughly the same ethical image of heroin smugglers.

Then smart SEOs and clients said, “Let’s measure how much business comes from search. Our keywords may be on page one or page two or page five of the search engine results, but what really matters is this: looking at all the traffic that comes from search engines, are we getting more leads, sales, media coverage, voters, donors or members then we were before?”

Then a few years back we all started to realize that we need to pitch bloggers like we pitch reporters. In the day, blogger pitch plans had a crazy number of target bloggers: “We’ll e-mail 200 blogger for $5,000 and 500 bloggers for $10,000.”  Then, (and I’d like to think Webbed was one of the first to figure this out) us online PR folks figured out that it’s really dumb and inefficient to reach 500 bloggers, but if we find the three or five or 10 most influential bloggers in any space and build great relationships with them, we have much more successful campaigns.

Now, social media is going through the same evolution in figuring out what to measure. A year ago people just said, “Get me some of that Twitter.” Then we all decided we need to set goals and track success. The easy way to do this is to set goals on number of followers. So, 150 followers is better than 50 and 1,000 is really great.

Well, maybe.

See let’s take it down to the business goal. If Oprah retweets you and drives 500 people to your Web site and you sell a lot of books, that is a great thing- even if she is your only follower. Now let’s say there is this guy John you have never heard of. But John has connections on Facebook with editors and analysts. And on LinkedIn, he’s connected to CTOs from Fortune 500 companies. And on Twitter, he is followed by your Governor. And when John talks about your products and services, your Web site traffic triples and your leads from your site quadruple. That’s what I’m talking about.

The bottom line? Tracking number and types of social media connections is important, but followers and fans don’t make payroll. Stick to the business goals. If social media is driving more sales, leads, media exposure, or whatever your core success metric is, then the program is successful.                    

It comes down to the difference between Just-In-Time and Just-In-Case.

Every generation says “we live in strange times.” But even previous generations would have to look at 2009 and admit that we are in the midst of fundamental shifts in media, technology and communication.

Just last week I blogged about how people are relying more on social media and less on print and broadcast media. Advertisers are shifting dollars rapidly from traditional media outlets to search and social media.

But in spite of all this, there is this perception that somehow broadcast and print media are more legitimate, especially to us marketing communication folks. Our clients love to see when people on Facebook make wall comments and those comments drive Web site traffic and that traffic converts to business. Or when getting ReTweeting results in their store filling up with customers. Or when a blog post helps them get a call back from a prospect.

But there is nothing like seeing your name in print. Even if those 500 media pickups from your online press release drive a lot of new business, there is just a “something” about seeing your name in the business section of the local paper, even if it can’t be tracked, measured or attributed to a single sale.

Now here it the challenge. Every week there are two fewer newspapers in the US. Magazines are going from weekly publication schedules to monthly, or going entirely online, or just going away. Reporters are being laid off. There are fewer places to earn print media.

And if you’re like us, you hear that reporters get so many phone and e-mail pitches, they don’t bother reading most of them. But… they do use Twitter and LinkedIn to find sources and post queries. The next question is, okay that is great, how and when do I use LinkedIn and Twitter to reach the media. Here are the ways our clients are most successful.

Twitter is about Just-In-Time communication with the media. Yes, you can and should Tweet your news releases, but don’t expect a viral explosion over the announcement of your new Web site. Like so many other aspects of social media, the real value is in listening. Follow the reporters, editors and analysts you most want to reach.  At the very least, you’ll learn what topics that reporter cares about. If their main focus is on cloud computing, stop pitching them on why IT directors need social media policies. The real home run is when they send out those delicious urgent queries. When reporters need a source right now, they Tweet for it. Respond fast with a good pitch or source, and you’re on your way to a great pickup.

We only have two eyes and 24 hours, so regrettably, after years of arguing the other side, I concede. There has to be a winner and a loser.

For years I've been saying that the terms "traditional" and "social" media didn't make sense.  I argued that we should just think of media in general. Whether content is distributed on a blog, on CNN, on the local radio station or via Twitter, we should treat the channel as “media” and focus on how to use it as part of our marketing and communicating mix. This makes perfect sense.

Unless the name on your paycheck is a newspaper.

For us marketing and communication folks, it’s true. We pitch a blogger, we pitch an editor, we pitch a fit when they misspell our name. We reach our audience by doing good things and telling others about those good things. But for folks in the “traditional” media world, it is different.

Again, I’m the guy that for years has said things like “the lines are graying” and “bloggers blog about the news, the news covers blogs.” Yes, “reporters” write blogs and bloggers are newsmakers. But ask the guy laid off from the local paper last week about gray lines.

Between January of 2008 and March of 2009 more than 120 US newspapers have folded. That’s about two per week. Newspaper circulation dropped 25% last year. In the fourth quarter of 2008, newspaper ad revenue dropped nearly 20%, that’s following at least six consecutive quarters of decline.

Meanwhile, Facebook's active users doubled in the course of eight months to top 200 million.  Facebook is enjoying 276% growth in 35-54 year-old users and 513% in users 55+. Twitter growth is reported at numbers so big they are meaningless, what does 1500% annual growth look like? And the growth is primarily in the 30+ age group. Recent reports put the number of Twitter users at 23 million.

I want to believe that everyone wins. I want to believe that social media and traditional media will peacefully coexist. That society will demand its newspapers. But even the eternal optimist can’t hold onto these beliefs much longer. I get a lot of resistance when I talk about social media and traditional media. And no wonder, it’s an emotional topic. Here’s what I hear:

• “Bill, you’re biased.” It’s true, I am biased. See, I’m not just an employee of Webbed Marketing, I’m a journalism school grad. I’ve worked at two daily newspapers. I love to read Time magazine at the end of the day. Newspapers are like coffee. Yes, I like coffee, but I like the act of drinking coffee even more. I like newspapers too, but like the act of reading newspapers, even more. At the same time, as a consumer, I’m also guilty of contributing to the decline of traditional media. Last week when I wanted to know what was going on at the local high school football game, I didn’t turn on the radio. I went to search.twitter.com and “watched” the game on Twitter through the eyes of hundreds of fans. With social media, everyone is a reporter. We are all producing news content for each other. And we do it for free. How does traditional media compete with faster and free

• What about ethics and accuracy? When talking about social media, people always question the validity of information. Not long ago, an Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones was falsely reported dead via Twitter. And then there was…. Well… Okay, that’s the problem with the validity argument. It ain’t valid. The high profile Tubbs Jones incident is the one everyone talks about it, but I get most of my news from Twitter. Of the thousands of news stories I’ve consumed via Twitter, exactly one has been inaccurate. Not a bad percentage. The ethics does make it tougher on the media relations crowd though. If you pitch a reporter poorly, she just won’t cover your story. Pitch a blogger poorly and feel the wrath of angry social media.

• The market will force traditional media to compete. News programs integrate Twitter into news. Everyone can win. I only wish it were so. According to Paper Cuts, a site that tracks job losses in the newspaper industry, the paper industry lost 13,000 jobs so far this year… and the number goes up every day. Dave Barry, one of my very favorite writers, has written about the decline of the newspaper industry for years.  I remember reading in one of Dave’s columns that every few years a newspaper would bring in a consultant to talk about how to attract more young readers. The consultant would recommend the paper write more articles about things like skateboarding. The newspaper produces a bunch of articles about skateboarding. Young people still don’t buy papers. Older people stop subscribing to the paper because all the stories are about skateboarding.

Not long after last year’s presidential election I was on a panel with a veteran newspaper reporter. The crowd was mainly college kids. They were passionate --- about traditional media. They argued repeatedly that newspapers were just fine, thank you very much. They criticized social media and stated that it could not be viewed with as a legitimate form of journalism. My support came from the most unexpected place. The AP reporter closed the session with something like this:

“Take two business models. In one you plant an acorn. It grows into a tree. That tree is cut down and turned into paper. That paper is put onto a printing press. Then some people go out and talk to other people. They write stuff down on another piece of paper. Then they drive back to an office and type up a story. That story is printed on the printing press. Then the paper is cut into blocks, loaded on a truck and taken to people’s homes.

In the second business model one person witnesses news and types it in a Blackberry, then the rest of the world consumes it.

Which one do you think will win?”

For years I have talked about how so many companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars on really beautiful web sites. When I ask these companies why, I’m usually told the web site has to be great because a web site is, and I quote “the first impression a company makes online.”

I’ve always disagreed.

Statistically, the SEO crowd will tell you that 40% of everything typed into that box on Google is a company name or URL.. the so-called “navigational search.” We all do it. We want to visit Technology Innovation International’s web site. Is that “techinnovationintl.com” or is it “technologyinnovtion.com” or is it.. ah heck with it, let Google tell me. Still don’t believe me? Take a look at your web site traffic statistics. I’ll bet a pound of bacon that the top five terms referring traffic to your web site include your company name and URL.

Here’s the catch, when you search Google, about 25% of all the results returned is content created by consumers. Blog posts, Tweets, forum discussions, YouTube videos and more. My argument… search Google on your company name, URL, product name, executive name, phone number and address - that is the first impression consumers have of you online, not your web site. Smart companies spend as much time and resources on influencing that Google search results page as they do on their web site homepage.

At least, that was the drum I was beating until yesterday. See, first I thought it was just me. My Blackberry is on the fritz. Five years ago, (assuming that Blackberry’s had existed then) I would have gone to the Blackberry web site and looked at FAQs. A year ago I would have searched Google for a solution. Yesterday, I searched Twitter.

In fact, when I have any tech support or customer service issue, I search Twitter for an answer. When a person applies for a job at the WM I search for them on Twitter. When a new prospect calls, I search for them on Twitter. When I want to know if the new pizza place is any good, if my son’s new teacher is well liked or if my new neighbor is a creep, I search Twitter for them.

It turns out, I’m not alone. Yesterday I was training a client on social media and we started digging into the client’s Twitter presence. In turns out the Twitter community was using Twitter as a means to ask and answer each other’s questions about the client’s products. In fact, one of the products was being Tweeted about every 15 minutes.  When I checked the followers of the Twitter folks talking, I started seeing that members of this community tended to be connected to one another. They all lived in different parts of the world and had very little in common…except for the use of this product.

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes hat and smoking jacket, I can safely conclude that something like this happened: Consumer A says, “Hmmm… I have a question about this product, wonder what the Twitterverse is saying about that?” She searches Twitter and says, “Wow, people are Tweeting about this product about once every 15 minutes. Just look at Consumer B - G.” Consumer A starts following Consumers B-G.  Consumers B-G follow her back. A conversation ensues. All this happens in minutes. Then Consumer H says, “Hmmm… I have a question about this product, wonder what the Twitterverse is saying about that?”

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

All this happens without the corporate customer service folks ever getting a phone call.

So, do I still think your search results page on Google is one of the first impressions you make online? Yes! But your Twitter search results page is pretty darn important, too. Oh, and don’t forget it changes much faster than your Google search page ever does and those Tweets are not only showing up in Twitter search…they’re also being indexed in Google.

I’ve heard the argument that companies are so busy building, maintaining and updating their corporate web sites they don’t have time to manage a presence on social networks.

That’s kind of like saying you don’t need email because you have a web site. Or you don’t need a cell phone because you have a blender. Your web site and your social media profiles serve fundamentally different purposes, here are three differences:

The people you want to reach use social media every day.

Think about a professional relationship you have is rock solid. Maybe it’s your advertising agency, or your CPA, or your number one supplier of widgets. Now, how often do you visit their marketing web site.

That’s what I thought.

Most B2B sites, aren’t (to borrow a 1990s phrase) “sticky”. There aren’t compelling reasons to come back.  No matter how much your clients and prospects love you , they probably don’t frequently return to your web site.

It’s no different in the retail world. Think of your favorite restaurant, tennis shoe manufacturer or beer. Now how often do you get back to the site?

Or let’s say you really want to connect with the media. Log in to your Google Analytics and tell me how many page views your press section received last month. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Now imagine if your market or audience visited your site every day. Imagine if you could connect with your clients frequently while you are developing the new release of your software.  Imagine if you could tell everyone within 15 miles of your retail location about overstocked USB drives you are selling for $10. Imagine if you could directly connect with the editor of the most important trade publication in your niche industry to talk about your break through research.

Your clients, customers and the media simply aren’t going to visit your site every day, but they are logging on to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn every day. If you are there, visible, communicating with them you can get your message out.

 Your web site is a monologue, social media is a conversation

I know, I know, you have a “Contact Us” form on your web site. But for the most part, your site probably talks, rather than listens. The magic of social media is just reverse. Social media is the world’s largest, fastest, least expensive and most accurate focus group.

At Webbed Marketing we’ve worked with dozens of clients to help them use social media. Without exception, the ratio of listening to talking is directly proportional to success of a company’s social media strategy. (That is, those that listen do much better).

Here are some examples: Sign up for Tweet Beep and see what consumers, the media, competitors, vendors and employees are saying about your company, and your competitors. You’ll find out who your clients are talking to, how your competitors price and what the media really thinks of your latest product. Google Alerts can help monitor posts on blogs and other social networks. Even visiting sites like LinkedIn and Technorati and searching on your name provide great insight. Don’t be surprised if you’re surprised. You may be sure that your customers love you because of your product features, and discover that it’s really your customer service that wins them over.  We  marketers can sit at a table and work to define our brand, but nothing is as accurate as real time conversation, from real people.

I haven’t called a customer service phone number since I joined Twitter. Today, if I have a terrible shopping experience, or visit a beautiful airport, I tweet about it. In almost every case the brand finds my tweet and responds to me in less than an hour. If you’re not participating in social media and monitoring the conversation about your company, you’re missing valuable market data.

Social media is faster than your web site

Okay, go ahead and add some content to your site that is relevant to today’s news. Great, okay, now run it by your brand team. And legal. Now get it to IT to upload to the CMS. Wait! Your search engine optimization agency needs to write some title tags. Good, okay now upload. But wait, we need a new spot in the navigation for the content. Contact your web design agency to change the navigation. And we need the usability folks to do a run through.

Okay now it’s posted. The story is three weeks old and irrelevant. And Google won’t even crawl and index the page for another two weeks.

Now, suppose you need three beta testers today. Or you’re shipping a truckload of building materials to an area devastated by a hurricane. Or your new software is current with the new FDA regulations issued last week. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are instantaneous. Your content immediately reaches your audience and shows up in search engines in hours or minutes.

Yes, you’re spending a lot of time and energy to maintain your web site. And I’m not suggesting you stop. But while your web site today is a great way to present a polished corporate image, social media is about listening and engaging in real conversations, with the right people, right now.

In my first job out of college, I had a really unpleasant task every Monday morning. See, I worked at a large regional bank and every Monday morning I had to call a dozen other banks and get all their rates. Saving, checking, loans, mortgage. There was no way to disguise who I was. After about 10 minutes on the phone, the teller was pretty annoyed with me. After 15 minutes, he was ready to hang up on me.

“Wait!” I’d cry.  “How about a 30-year fixed mortgage on a….”

Click.

Back then, monitoring the competition was tough. Today, thanks to the ever growing world of social media, it’s a whole lot easier to find information about your competition.  Here are a few simple tips to get started:

1.       Be a Twitter Spy. Set up a Tweetbeep. If you can use Google Alerts you can use Tweetbeep. Just go to Tweetbeep.com and enter your competitors’ names. You’ll be notified when anyone Tweets about your competition. The information you receive will be a gold mine. Your competitors’ clients will tweet about how well (or poorly) the latest pitch went, their employees will complain about working all night to get the new product into beta. A reporter will talk about using them for a source. Customers will talk about pricing. The HR intern will tell you that layoffs are coming today.

Did you hear that something big is happening at a competitor and you can’t wait to be Tweetbeeped? Then just go to http://search.twitter.com and type in search strings like “[Competitor name layoff” “[Competitor name] acquired” “[Competitor name] president” People will share scoops on Twitter that they never would in person or on the phone.

You can also start following your competitors’ executives, managers, employees, interns and contractors. Not to mention, their biggest clients.  When news is coming from the company, you’ll get it from every perspective—giving you the full picture. Of course, don’t be surprised when you get the spin from the company president and PR director and the juicy stuff from the interns and contractors.

2.       Get LinkedIn. I’m willing to bet you already have a LinkedIn profile and some good connections on the site. But now, it’s time to start mining LinkedIn for information on your competition.  First take a moment to consider what LinkedIn knows about a company:  it knows who just joined a company, it knows who left, it knows who received a promotion and it knows who is connected to whom at other companies. Now, rather than rely on a person to write a company profile, aka Wikipedia, LinkedIn can create an automated feed to pull all this together into a shockingly accurate profile. Go ahead and check out your own company profile by searching here: http://www.linkedin.com/companies.

A quick scan will tell you how many people work at the company and who recently left the company. Seeing who left is not only a great tool if you’re looking to recruit from the competition, it’s also a good way to see if a particular department is in the midst of a shakeup.

You can also identify the companies most connected to your competition. This may help you identify where they recruit their employees, who their biggest clients are, and what strategic alliances are most important.

Company divisions and acquisitions are also listed, allowing you to understand the corporate hierarchy. The information on number of employees, revenue (listed even for many private companies), median age, employee gender and the various schools their employees attended, rounds out the picture.

2.       Dive deep with Manta. Manta.com is one of the largest and most popular business information sites on the Internet. Manta has profiles on 63 million plus companies, including yours. The site specializes in hard-to-find information about small businesses and other privately held companies. Membership to the site is free and you can use the free contact management system on the site to track and share competitive information with the rest of your staff. The information on companies varies, but in general, you can find annual revenue, key contacts and number of employees. Premium financial reports are also available for a fee. Can’t find the information you need? The site has a question and answer feature that allows users to post a question that can be addressed by the site’s other members. 

Interested in seeing who is affiliate with your competitors? Visit their company pages on Manta.com and find Manta members who are associated with the company. You can also see who else (maybe your clients and prospects) who are viewing your competitors pages. And, similar to Tweetbeeps for Twitter, you can an alert on your competitors to be notified when something on their pages changes.  (Disclosure: once upon a time I worked at ECNext, the company that owns and operates Manta).

One other point: Your competitors are probably using these same tools to keep tabs on you. Keep an eye on your own social media presence to see the image that you are projecting.

Social media has changed the way we do a lot of things in the business world, including how we keep up on what our competition is up to. Somebody, somewhere out there, is talking about your competitors, opening up a world of information never before available. Now is the time to take advantage of it. Who knows, now may also be the time to take advantage of a 30-year fixed loan, too.

Did you hear about the woman who had 6 months to live? The doctor told her she should marry a social media consultant. “Why?” the woman asked, “Can social media really cure a terminal disease?”

“No ,” the doctor answered, “but it will be the longest six months of your life.”

It’s a good time to be in social media. We’re really busy. The industry is growing fast. It’s dynamic and fun and we’re helping great organizations grow more efficiently than ever, even in a down economy.

But, the industry is full of challenges. There is a laundry list, but the one on my mind today is the “overpromising” of social media.  John McCain would not be president now even if he used social media more effectively, GM would still be in bankruptcy, even if they had a great Facebook page, diseases aren’t cured, wars aren’t won, soulmates don’t meet and recessions aren’t avoided because of social media.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been working in social media since the Geocities and Tripod days of 1999. I’ve seen great things happen, but I’ve never seen a social media miracle.

Often times, our phone rings with a new potential client looking to integrate social media into a marketing communications plan. At Webbed, we are very goal oriented and always look to outline clear ways of defining success with new and existing clients. Our goal is to sit down with a client every month and be able to say that without question a program is a success because we are reporting this many sales, leads, media pickups or other clear hard success metric.

But are there times we say no? Absolutely. And there are times you should say no.

1.       Social media can’t get people excited about a bad product.  No matter how much money you put into social media, eight track players can’t outsell iPods. If the market doesn’t believe in your product, or your clients’ products, don’t think social media will make it better.

2.       Social media can’t make people spend money. Yes, you can use social media to get people coming to your paint store. You can target highly qualified consumers with disposable income who want to paint their houses. You can communicate the virtues of the high quality paint in your store. But once a consumer is in the store, especially during a recession, they still may buy the cheap stuff.

3.       Social media can’t create a new market. Okay, it created a market for social media consultants-but other than that, forget it. There are only two rules in fishing- the first is “you can’t catch fish where there aren’t fish.” The same applies to marketing. Products that don’t solve a problem or provide real value aren’t going to sell, no matter how many fans there are on their Facebook page.

When we speak to groups about blogging, we always get the same two questions: "What time is lunch?" and "Where are the restrooms?" Okay, after those two, we get "What do I blog about?" and "What if bloggers say bad things about me?" Join us for a free blogging webinar tomorrow as we address these two topics.