Playing for Change: Peace Through Music

Playing for Change is a movement to help build schools, connect students, and inspire communities in need through music. Watching it is a great way to start the year. Enjoy!

How Companies Can Get Started in Social Media Marketing

By B.L. Ochman

In 2009, it's clear that resistance is futile. Corporations can no longer avoid social media.

Millions of people are creating content in social media. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time.

How do you start? Forget baby steps and dipping your toe into new media. The train has left the station.

Getting started
Before you begin, consider that:

o Social media isn’t one thing – it’s a set of tools.
o Social media is not a quick fix – the results come in the long term, the same way they do with PR. In fact, social media campaigns, like PR, often start producing their best results in the third year.
o Social media is not free. It costs money to create an effective social media campaign.
o You need to drive traffic to a blog, a forum, a community, a social network. That requires time, effort and money
o You have something to say that may be of interest beyond the CEO's office or the marketing department

Lurking is Good
o Before you join the conversation, lurk. Monitor what’s being said about your company in social media -- even on weekends.
o Once you have the lay of the land, join the conversation
o Tread gently
o Remember: we’re all humans. People are what matters, not companies.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.

Just because it's always been done that way doesn't mean that's how it should always be done.

The alternative?
The alternative is to fall behind to rivals that are willing to take chances with interactive marketing.

What does social media marketing cost? I wrote this post in Oct. 2007, and it holds true:

“Everybody’s talking about how great social media is for marketing, but nobody’s talking about what it costs,” cry the CMOs. Verily they said: “Tell us the bottom line.”

OK, let’s tear down the wall – let’s talk about money.

The budget for an effective social media marketing campaign begins at $50K for a two to three-month period. I'm sure companies have spent less, and I know they've spent more.

I have created effective campaigns with as little as $50K, and even better ones with budgets of $500K for three months. :>)

You can measure results through a variety of metrics, including referral drill downs in your site stats; mentions on blogs and in media; comments on the content; real-time blog advertising results, and clickthroughs to your company website.

Here’s some additional reading from a variety of expert sources:
- Social Media Storm Spreads as Motrin Ad Angers Moms

- My Social Media Secret – How I Keep Up With it All

- Nine Great Reasons Your Company Should Blog

- 10 Reasons Your Company Should Not Blog

- Does Your Company Have a Social Media Participation Policy? IBM & Sun Do

- SocialMedia.com: Rules of Engagement for Blogging

- Mashable: Top 10 Reputation Management Tools Worth Paying For

- Techcrunch: Top 10 Social Media Sites of 2008

- Interactive Insights Group: Superlist of What NOT to Do in Social Media

- Seth Godin: A Year’s Worth of Popular Posts

- Chris Brogan: A Sample Social Media Toolkit

- Hugh Macleod: the social marker- the "social object" on steroids

Image – New Zealand Railways Magazine
Copyright BL Ochman all rights reserved

DaimlerChrysler Christmas 2003 v 2008 - a Study in Contrasts, and Just Deserts

In December 2003, DaimlerChrysler created what it called the "first ever" living window display by challenging a family of three to live for five days in a 2004 Dodge Durango SUV that was parked in Times Square.

For every day the family stuck it out in the Times Square SUV, Chrysler donated $5,000 to a homeless organization, "up to a total donation of $25,000!" If the family lasted five days, they'd own the car. As Dan Barry pointed out in the NY Times, the value of the SUV was $36,000 so homeless organizations might have made out better if DaimlerChrysler just gave them an SUV to sell.

In 2003, DaimlerChrysler demonstrated their resistance to emerging social media, by not incorporating a web cam, or daily video blogs from Times Square into their stunt. Then, for the next five years, they continued to resist changes in consumer sensibility, in politics, and in the economy.

Now, five years later, this type of PR stunt is completely out of the question for a car company, and not just because many families are actually living in their cars.

In August, 2007, DaimlerChrysler drove off into the sunset in the gas guzzling SUVs they'd been stupid enough to keep producing. No Merry Christmas in 2007 or 2008.

Dear Jeff Bezos - Here's How Amazon Lost Me as a Customer - Forever

Dear Mr Bezos: Let me tell you how, earlier today, you lost me as a customer – forever.

A month or so ago, on Amazon's website, I pre-ordered the second and third book in the 10-book series, The 39 Clues for my nephew.

Book two, One False Note, was published on December 2, 2008. It was my nephew's much-anticipated Chanukah gift. He didn't receive it.

The third book, The Sword Thief, is scheduled to be released on March 3, 2009. I also pre-ordered the card set that goes with the second book to help him play the online 39 Clues game. I chose the shipping option “Group my items into as few shipments as possible.”

Would you think that meant do not ship the book that comes out in December until March 2009? I didn't.

Nobody likes to wait
But as the customer service person for whom I waited for on hold for seven minutes said – that means all items in the order will be shipped when the last one is ready. To whom does it mean that? I wonder.

What would be the next thing the customer service person might have said: “We’re sorry your nephew didn’t get his Chanukah gift. I can imagine that was a major disappointment to an 11 year-old boy. Please let us send the book to him by overnight delivery – at our expense. And we’ll include a $10 gift certificate with the book.”

I guarantee you that would have been the response from customer service at Zappos, or LL Bean, two companies that live and breathe customer service and are wildly successful as a result.

What did your customer service person say when, exasperated and more than a little angry after 20 minutes on the phone with him, I asked his last name or employee number? He said “We don’t give out our last name, just our last initial. We don’t have employee numbers.” When I asked the name of his supervisor, he said, “We don’t give that information out.”

Customers are not always right
Mr Bezos, the only people who don’t use a last name, or at least have an identifying number, are hookers and people who don’t want to be held responsible for that they are saying or doing.

I'm not saying that customers are always right. Because they're not. Idiots exist, and try hard as you may, you will never make every customer happy. And there are those, too, who try to take advantage of a business' good intentions. But this was not one of those situations. And your customer service people should have enough training to know the difference.

B.L. Ochman's 2009 Online Marketing Predictions: Mobile, Better Lighting, Subscriptions Rule

By B.L. Ochman
With timerity, I offer my Internet marketing predictions for 2009. They are in no particular order. I think the words of the year will be mobile, subscriptions, lighting, and blog advertising.

2009 is going to be a roller-coaster ride, but we'll be fine in the end. I wish you all a year of peace, good health, prosperity, love, and growth. Thank you so much for reading What's Next Blog for all these years. You rock!

1. iPhone will finally allow a BlueTooth keyboard to be attached so you can actually type instead of using iPhone's stupid excuse for a keyboard. Other manufacturers will follow and phones will eclipse laptops. No matter how light the laptop, those mothers are heavy and cumbersome with battery, adapter, case, etc. that you have to schlep with you.

2. Correct lighting for video cameras and vlog broadcasts will be the must-have product of the moment. That's because nobody likes looking at dark videos and ghoulish-looking people.

3. Podcasts will either adopt better production values or die. Dunno about you, but I can’t listen to rambling podcasts. Brevity is a virtue.

4. Google stock will hit $1000 a share and split. The founders will cash out and the company then accused of piercing the corporate veil with creative accounting. They’ll come out on top before the end of the year, and new accounting standards will be set by the case. I predicted this last year. I was premature.

5. Nobody will buy Twitter. It will adopt a subscription model for corporate clients, and every fifth tweet will be an ad unless individual users pay a small fee for ad-free Tweets.

6. Bloggers who built their personal brands with blogs and then diluted them with Twitter, FriendFeed, etc., will return to their blogs in earnest. (Including me)

7. Pawfun.com will be a huge success. B.L. Ochman will end 2009 as a t-shirt marketer, retiring from consulting.

8. MySpace will be replaced by a social network that bans ugly pages and stupid music that won't shut off.

9. Blog advertising will become the hot ad medium of the year and ad agencies will screw up big-time as they learn the ropes. I've been saying this since 2005, but it takes a while for agencies to get the picture.

Savvy advertisers have already learned that it is possible to have outrageously high click through and conversion rates through obscenely cheap and highly targeted blog advertising. Shameless plug: I have consistently achieved click thru rates as high as .857%, and averaging .268% with niche-focused blog ads.

Bonus Link: B.L. Ochman's 2008 Online Marketing Predictions: Mobile, Subscriptions, Collaboration Rule

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I've Joined the Un-Agency Adhocnium - Here's Why

The most rewarding result of my online career is the global network of smart people I've met as a result. They're people who've helped brands large and small join and thrive in the online world. People who often are ahead of the curve - sometimes by years. Although others might brand them so, these are people who do not call themselves "social media gurus."

And now, by joining the new worldwide alliance called Adhocnium, I am joining an un-agency comprised of experienced creative specialists in communications and technology, with stellar track records and expertise in communications and technology; with insights on integrated marketing, PR, branding, and social media. Chris Heuer is the catalyst for Adhocnium, and the manager of this all-star team.

Nope, It's Not a Job. It's an un-Agency
The beauty part is that we each maintain our own separate businesses. We will come together in experience-based teams on an ad hoc basis, to help companies with strategic planning, creative campaigns, leveraging technology for market engagement, program audits and more. Our team and our services are in development.

Each of us has our own business. Some of us have more than one. I am in the midst of launching Pawfun.com, for example, in addition to whatsnextonline.com. A year from now, I hope Pawfun and its spin-offs will be my full-time work. But I'm not about to pass up the opportunity to work with and learn from my colleagues at Adhocnium. Sleep, after all, is for sissies. :>)

Can Viral Content Be Created? Yes, and No

Can viral content be created? Yes, if the product or service is something people want to tell their friends about. No if the product or service sucks.

If you create something people will like, that offers them value for their money; that makes them laugh, think, or feel; or that saves them time, money or aggravation; people will want to tell their friends about it.

Then you can create a vehicle that will help them do that. When you make it easy for them to send a video, link, email, image, coupon, or report about your product or service to their friends, you've created content that can help your product or service go viral.

That is NOT the same as creating a video about something nobody cares about and calling it a viral.

Seth Godin has written a masterful post on viral marketing. In it, he says:

"Viral marketing is an idea that spreads--and an idea that while it is spreading actually helps market your business or cause....Something being viral is not, in an of itself, viral marketing. Who cares that 32,000,000 people saw your stupid video? It didn't market you or your business in a tangible, useful way... Being viral isn't the hard part. The hard part is making that viral element actually produce something of value, not just entertainment for the client or your boss....."

Here's Hugh's definition of social objects:

"The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that "node" in the social network, is what we call the Social Object."

The bottom line: if your product sucks, no amount of marketing, advertising, or PR is going to turn it viral.

Related:
- How to Make a Video Contest Succeed - or Suck
- The Doghouse: A marketing video that's gone viral and why
- 10 Tips on How to Make Your Video Go Viral

Cartoon by Hugh Macleod

AdHocnium Asks: Why Don't Consultants Publish Their Rates?

Money: the final frontier.

You are more likely to know what your best friend eats for breakfast or how many times a week he or she has sex, than how much money they make.

Despite all the Web 2.0 talk of transparency, openness, and honesty, you'd be hard pressed to find out what most new media consultants charge.

AdHocnium - the new adhoc social media consultancy launched last week at LeWeb in Paris - announced their rates on their website - generating a lot of buzz.

I've been publishing my fees on my website, whatsnextonline.com, for the past 10 years. But until last week I was one of very, very few consultants who do.

AdHocnium founder Chris Heuer writes

"Enabling potential clients to know the rates up front should end up saving everyone a lot of time by avoiding conversations that lead to nowhere due to false assumptions and may even get more opportunities from clients who may have assumed the services were too expensive."

I'm glad to see money discussion coming out from under the rock where it's been hiding for eons.

But a big responsibility comes with knowing your worth. You need to be confident in your ability to deliver the goods. That is a whole lot harder than publishing your fees. I stand with those who are up for the challenge.

Why is money so hard for people to talk about? I'd love to know your thoughts.

Related:
- Why Don’t Consultants Display Their Rates?
- The Etiquette of Money Talk
- Don't be gauche: Polite ways to talk money
- Women Don't Talk Money
- Social Media Marketing: Who's Full of Hot Air? Who's The Real Deal?

My Favorite Thing a PR Person Ever Told Me

When I pointed out that I don't cover the subject area a flack had just pitched me, I got this email:

"I apologize for the incontinence and will make the changes in our media list."

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