December 2009 by Mark Murnahan

6 Reasons We Didn’t Hire a Social Media Consultant

I know you are expecting it to be snarky, so I will try to avoid letting you down. Yeah, you guessed it, I am writing yet another “Mr. Smarty Pants” article on social media. This time it is about some of the very good reasons for not hiring a social media consultant. Without further delay, I want to introduce Mr. John Lunchbucket of Clip Away Paper Clip Company to explain some reasons his company didn’t hire a social media consultant.

Number 1 – Obscure Market Audience

“We sell paper clips. It would be pretty boring to blog, tweet, and Facebook about that, don’t you think? I doubt anybody could make our business more fun or engaging.”

If that is the attitude you take, Mr Lunchbucket, you are right. You should probably carefully avoid social media. Come to think of it, you may do well to stop marketing your business completely. You wouldn’t want to bore people with paper clips such as explained in this video:

Number 2 – We Can Do It In-House

“Jerry in accounting set up our Twitter and Facebook accounts and he sends out some stuff every day. He says that by handling it in-house we can save a lot of money. “

I guess I really do understand this idea. After all, I was thinking about going to dentistry school so I can take care of my kids’ teeth one day.

It is good to spread the work around. It can show off the company’s best assets … the people. However, the sad part is that Jerry didn’t have anything more productive to be doing. Now I know why. While Jerry is busy handling bad marketing efforts, the accountant over at the competition is counting the money Jerry used to account for.

Number 3 – Localized Market

“We only provide products and services in a localized market. The Internet is better suited for companies doing business with a broader geography.”

This is fine if the people in your market area don’t use the Internet, like at the bottom of the ocean! I suppose that the enhanced search engine ranking from those links on other Websites talking about your company would be considered wasteful. Maybe you should save some of that recognition for the competition. When I ask the people at your competitor, can I quote you?

I am glad you have such a good grasp on my job, Mr. Lunchbucket. I hope you don’t go into my line of work like everybody else who “knows” the Internet as well as you.

Number 4 – The Expense

“It has been a tough year, and our budget is shot. We just can’t justify spending money on something that could take months to see a return on our investment.”

You are correct, Mr. Lunchbucket. It has been a really challenging year for a lot of companies. Thanks for pointing this out for me, because I really only like to do business with companies willing to plan for being around in a year or more.

Something to consider is whether it has been hard for your competitor, too. If so, but they get a leg up on you, how much harder will it be next year? If you only market during the best of times, you are doomed to fail. Allow me to share a wise quote with you:

“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.” –Thomas Jefferson

Number 5 – It Doesn’t Work!

“We already tried social media and it didn’t work. It was a big waste of time!”

Yep, it sure was a waste of time. It is a good thing you figured that out early. Maybe Jerry in accounting can get back to counting all of that money you are making through your newspaper and phone book advertisements. Good luck in the coming year!

Number 6 – We Ran Out of Reasons

“We ran out of reasons, but we are pretty sure there are others.”

Social Feed in Google Search Results

Do you see your Twitter updates or recent blog posts in Google? Well, of course you should. I would be pretty surprised to write a blog post and not see it show up in Google … at least at some point. However, it is taken up a notch with the near-real-time “Latest Results” section in Google search results.

What do I mean? Here is an example Google search for “murnahan“. Under the “Latest Results” it will show you what I sent on Twitter just a moment ago, instead of only a link to my Twitter account.

I heard it stated in a recent talk at Integrated Marketing Summit in St. Louis, that Google and Bing are the largest users of social media. It is true that when you break it down, their algorithms base results on community popularity. When something has a lot of incoming links, the ranking improves. The success of a site’s Bing or Google ranking is largely based on people voting it up by linking to it.

Social media really is a basis for search engine rankings, even when it is not as immediate or as conversational as you find with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and etcetera. It is still social media.

I have heard some people say they like this this, some said they do not, and others on the fence. In my opinion, it shows that Google is working very smart to keep up with the massive explosion of real-time social media, and doing a nice job of it. I think it may also help to remind people just how interconnected the many social media sites really are, and remind them to watch what they do with their social media presence.

Where do you stand? I would like to hear your thoughts on Google’s addition of Twitter and other social media feeds in search results. Please add your comment here on my blog.

Social Media Objectives: Popularity or Profits?

What do you seek from social media? Do you know? Are you wasting time?

In a recent conversation with a friend, I asked him why he spends so many hours per day using Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other social networks. I asked him if he had achieved any considerable objectives, and whether they were personal or business objectives.

I was really asking him these things to help him consider his objectives, and to gather his opinions. After all, gaining others’ perspectives is a huge benefit of social media. My friend works for a living and counts on new business to keep a paycheck coming in. So there is presumably a business hope for gain. He admits that he has hopes that it will help him meet some future business goals, but it has thus far been unfruitful. He also is a very friendly and social person, so there is clearly a gain there. He meets a lot of cool people. I wanted to know how his gains measure up with his expectations and his goals, or if he even considered any goals, or what action he was taking to address them specifically. Without actually having a set goal, all of the greatest social life of an arena rock star will not get you there. You must know what it is that you are after in order to achieve it.

I approached this subject with my friend in part because I really wanted his honest answers of how he believed it would benefit him to be what I call a “popular information gatherer”. There are many people who do this, but seldom do they actually have an answer for their reason, and even more seldom do they actually find any benefit for all the time and energy they spend. Plus, there are a lot of services that do this, so the “service” they render of shoveling content back and forth across their networks is not a whole lot different than that friend you have who emails you jokes sixty times per day.

I believe that is it very important that if you spend a lot of time with anything, you should have a good idea why you are doing it. The reason can be anything you like, but there should be a conscious purpose for the time you spend. Otherwise, you should perhaps spend more time with your children, cleaning house, or a hobby. Time is your most precious resource, and once you use it, you cannot have it back. Spend your time well, and know why you are doing it.

For some, social networking is a hobby, and it certainly has some interesting appeal for many people. There can be many different benefits to a good social network. Social networking is great for meeting friends. Friends can help you to find customers. After all, if you are my friend, I will do my best to send people your way when they need the product or service that helps you to earn a living. Don’t you do this for your friends if given the opportunity? There are a lot of great benefits, but it seems common that I ask people what they are after and they either truly do not know or they are going about it completely wastefully.

A more serious question was in how much time my friend spends trying to be popular. Being popular is not so bad, but it can also be a bit of an addiction. For example, I know a lot of people will use Twitter to send rapid-fire messages about the funny video they just found or the amazing news article that just broke. They will monitor Digg.com, Alexa Hot URLs, Google Trends, and dozens of RSS feeds to find the coolest and latest trend and hope to be the first person to make the story popular. So this begs the question of what they are really after. A common answer is that it will help them become more recognized in rating services that rank users with various standards. If they are the “top user” in their city, state, region, or country, that is awesome! It will help more people find them and watch what they have say.

Here comes the wasteful and arrogant part. When these people do this, they often completely neglect the fact that if they are popular with knitting grandmothers, but the people they really want to reach are a completely different group, they may be wasting a whole lot of time.

The other side of this is that networking is nearly always good. Meeting the knitting grandmother is great. She may become your good friend. There is also an outside chance that she will introduce you to her daughter who is in the same field as you or is single and really right up your alley. There are many possibilities that are opened up with networking and knowing a lot of people. The possibilities are hard to count.

There must be a balance! If the popularity contest is what you are after, there is a huge likelihood that other areas of your social media hopes or expectations will suffer greatly. If all you want is to be popular without any reason, you are probably lying to yourself and others. Being popular in itself is not a meaningful goal. Being popular in order to spread a purposeful message or to meet an objective such as earning a living can make a lot more sense. Popular by itself is really pretty shallow and meaningless, don’t you think?

So, when you set out to become popular by spending hour after hour Tweeting, Digging, Facebooking, and FriendFeeding every last “useful” piece of content, why not take a look at your message and find a place for quality in the equation. If all you are doing is passing along the story you just found, perhaps consider why. What is your objective? Is it to make somebody laugh? That is fine, but how many hours are you spending, and what might you be missing during all those hours?

If you are really clever and resourceful, perhaps you may try creating some content for a change. Then, if you are really … I mean really good at it, there is a chance that the unique message you have to share can take on a quality tone over and above quantity. Best of all, it can set a tone of your own, and not just like that of the dog who drags a dead rabbit to the porch to impress their master.