04.11.08

Spring Rain Metaphor

Posted in Best Practices, Public Relations, Social Media at 11:12 am by Mosey

I don’t know if other parts of the US have this but in the midwest we get these odd spring rain storms. One minute sunny and nice the next just a monsoon on your lawn, five minutes later sunny again. No drizzle or warning just thick, fat rain to soak you to the bone or sunny happiness.

Today my wife decided to walk to school and pick up my youngest. Five minutes after she left there was one of those random rain storms, and I hope she missed it. Then sun for 10 minutes then rain again for five. I can imagine her running with a 4 year old in one arm and his scooter in the other during the walk home.

While I watched this from my office window I realized this is a lot like almost all social media programs. You tend to not have a lot of “sort of viral” or “kind of a big hit” it tends to be either feast or famine. Now of course there are levels of “viral” and what your goals are can still be met with lower levels, but when something fails it falls flat and when it succeeds you look like a champ and then some.

Setting those client expectations, that each social program, each marketing idea, just because and especially if it looks like the last big success, is key. I could give you two failed programs for each good one you mention, and those failed ones might have been better but something was wrong.

A few tips on keeping those client expectations clear:

Remind them that there are failures
Show them some, say “do you remember…” no of course not, it failed, someone spent a fair amunt of money and it crashed. Every time they bring up that such and such went gold with almost no budget have a reminder they are the exception more than the rule (especially for no budget).

Take their examples of wins and tell them why it worked
Sometimes this can be a bit critical of what they are doing. Their example may have been funny, or had a huge PR campaign you didn’t see, or was the first on the block, or was edited well. A $10,000 campaign budget isn’t generally going to perform like one that was $100,000. Keeping these ROI expectations when they are focused on the far end of the bell curve is very important.

Set high and low goals
You need to set the expectation of “here is worst case” so they know you were thinking of it as this campaign was created. “we might only get 5,000 people to go to the site in 3 months… it might not catch on.” While optimism is fine, ignorance that everything you touch is first-rate just doesn’t work in social media. On the high side, be realistic, that way you can still exceed expectations.

Remind of the long-tail
Not everything is an overnight success. Just like when you show up to see a hot video on youtube you are already the 108,238th person to see it. That video has probably been up for months and until some morning show in Houston mentioned it it was sitting on 10,000 views and a couple mentions on Digg. That is the nature of viral, it can sit around and then blow up huge to be in everyone’s inbox by noon. Unless you have a huge initial push budget don’t expect a big gig day one. Sure, you can bump day one but it might not sustain. Obviously this gets into getting something viral into the hands of the right people but that is a different post.

Have an exit strategy
If you are three months and 60% of your budget in, how are you going to cut bait? You can still save the brand by putting the money into something more secure. Just like a falling stock can be bought out and put into a CD you know has less upside but isn’t going anywhere. Before you start the campaign you should have dropdead metrics and dates in mind.

Let the client know that if things fail they won’t blow their entire budget on a loser, there is still a plan C.

Know how to tweak
Any good social plan has tweak points. If it is a blog, posting more or less or using different language or attitude. Know your tweak points, know the cost to tweak and DO tweak. People are not commenting, figure out why and encourage it.

The client knowing this is going to happen is like knowing your baby sitter will check in on the kids after they are asleep and not just watch cable.

Plan on deconstructing
Did it work or not? Either way it was probably a fine detail that made the difference either way. A catch phrase, wasn’t funny, was funny but to the wrong audience, whatever. Because you are going to need to talk about it, you have to watch it. You know it, they know it, it helps.

Report and expand regularly
Sometimes campaigns start strong and fall off. Others they start slow but show signs of life. Report these, predict, and say why. “downloads are slow now but in the reffer logs we just got a hit from a major blogger, so hopefully that picks things up.” or “we really fell off after that first email newsletter, it didn’t seem to get passed on and we need to watch when to call it dead.”

Most importantly, setting expectations up front is the most important part of any social media campaign. We all know the upside of a real winner, we need to remember that not everyone bats 1.000 (heard from jib-jab lately?), anticipate big upside, don’t let the client expect it.

Technorati Tags: social media, social strategy