More and more I am having conversations with people, usually agency managers on how they are thinking about ramping up social media. Sure, the agenngies do a fair amount of SEO (which has somehow now become part of the Web 2.0 experience?!?!) but, most companies haven’t taken a serious look at social media.
Even marketing groups, branding agencies haven’t made this leap. Most are still on”old web” and interactive. “Let us re-do your site” and “we can re-do your e-commerce.” As far as getting viral (the real kind, not the kind where you put something on Youtube and hope people find it) almost everyone is ignoring social media.
What I am hearing from agencies are two things. First, that they aren’t equipped for social media strategy. They don’t know Twitter from a hole and they don’t know what else there is besides “buy ads on myspace” (not a social strategy BTW).
Secondly, and this is most important, the agencies don’t think their clients are asking for it. This stuck me as odd because in my part of the world everyone is launching or asking to launch social something. It is seen as a minimal investment with big upside. Drop 40 grand, and if it doesn’t work, eh, not a huge deal, you got to say you did something cool. If it does work, you are the genius of the market department who found a new way to save the world.
I wasn’t sure if I was just talking to companies who had a leading edge bend to them, or if the market really was asking for more than agencies think they are.
The best way for me to tell what the online free market is doing is to look at the demand on Google. I spent some time playing with keyword estimators and traffic projections. What I found was consistent so I will only show one set of results. You can see what type of phrases I used.
As you can see, there isn’t incredible demand, but there is some key demand from people looking for social media ideas. I’ll point out in the cases where there is data, more people are searching than there are people advertising for it. Sure, the searching in just March was weak enough Google couldn’t put whatever ranking on it (not entirely sure what that threshold is) but within the year people have been searching for these phrases.
The two terms that surprise me most are “social media press release” and “social media agency.” These two terms are obviously client/company driven, looking for social media experts. They aren’t finding them in the person-to-person networking world so they are actually searching online for those social media strategy experts.
Based on this quick set of results, the companies probably still aren’t finding the social media specialists they are looking for. No one is advertising themselves (using adwords at least) as a social media agency.
Ladies and Gentleman, when companies are looking for an expertise and no one is offering that expertise you have a market opportunity. Right now you can get in a bit of a ground floor doing just social media interactive work, after you convince you know your game, and have a market more-or-less to yourself. I can’t say it is the “next big thing” but there is certainly a itch market. Focusing on Twitter, facebook application, profile development, social SEO, Open Social, etc… you have something.
Yes, there are lots of tools, and programmers who kind of dabble. There are houses who will take a shot, but not a lot of places advertising “this is what we do and all we do” when it comes to social media.
And yet, there are obviously companies, potential clients, looking for that expertise. Anyone want to open a shop? Recent layoffs and disgruntled workers in Milwaukee means I can have an entire department starting Monday. So, if you have a six figure slush fund laying around, lemme know (how is that for a pitch? Think it will work?)
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.
A couple weeks ago someone sent me a youtube video declaring it “either the best or worst band, ever.” The video was While Gold singing One Gallon Axe. I noticed quickly that I had never heard of this band (not odd at all) it was, while silly, well made (a little odd) and had a lot of hits (not too out of the water).
The video is indeed silly, and pure self-aware sarcasm of metal/rock. Plus it has the line “rock the world’s face” which is classic.
Today I found whitegold.com the official website for the band. And it is cool. THe pre-loader is even great, goes up to 11 and makes the static louder. Then you have interactive videos, while the video goes on (and it does take forever to load) you can pick up move and click on things and stuff happens. It allows you to unlock other videos.
The site and music is really entertaining and cool.
Here is the best part, it is all an ad campaign. California dairy board (obvious now after you know it) created this persona and campaign. I love that you have no idea except for a small copyright in the corner and if you are paying attention.
I love how daring it is that they spent all this money for a campaign, and never even put a tagline or logo at the youtube released video, they don’t splash it around or even present it in the site. They took a “this better work or go bust” approach to the viral nature of the ads.
I wasn’t there but Mike Moran’s keynote on what corporations need from PR in a web 2.0 world sound like it was spot on. I read a few blog reviews of the speech and Lee Odden has the best run down.
Short version is this: jump in and try it, don’t spend too much time over analyzing the situation and nitpicking at the edges because by the time you get done, if it fails it has already cost you too much.
Take a shot, do it quick and if you fail you have money still for something else. His point is that by the time you him and haw about what to do your people may have moved on. Learn what they want now and then give them something and revise it.
Technorati Tags: social media, social media agency, social media experts
Follow me on Twitter