Connecting the Dots on Social Media and the Future

Today I thought of sharing a few reflections in loose form, stream of consciousness. I will attempt to connect a few dots about the future of marketing with you. What's next?

The future is not more of the past, of what worked. Even if it is still working a little bit today, it will soon be quite obsolete in every regard. You know that as a consumer, yet the leap has not quite been made by marketers. Why?

First off, a few questions:

• When was the last time you felt engaged with a product or service as a direct and sole result of marketing?
• Since when has it been enough to announce a new product and service and just stand back and take orders?
• Where are we with the issue of control? Who's in charge? Does the question confuse you a little?
• Does a press release get you going on checking out a product? You can be open with me, I won't mind learning what you really think.
• More importantly, even in a social media format, is a press release enough to get the conversation going?

You get the idea.

A Riff on PR

I receive a lot of press releases from agencies. Nothing unusual there, if you have a blog with a pulse you probably do, too. What I find interesting is that when I review a product or a service on my own - something I have found through research, or a referral - the follow up from the company I mention is usually a push - sometimes gentle, sometimes pretty hard - in the direction of the pitch.

Help me out here, if I just posted about your product or service, why would you pitch me harder? And why do so off line, by email? Come on in and comment in the post, share a story, provide more information that is useful to my readers. Are we still thinking that the blogger is a journalist and they will need to do the work to rewrite or repackage from an interview? Why? 2.0 = two people, you can be one of them. Be my guest!

Everyone talks about them as an example, it's not by chance. They get it. The communicators who talk on behalf of Dell have not once tried to comment off line. Every single time I have published a review, a story, an example or a question about Dell, they have joined the conversation online - with me and my readers. All the way to the higher levels in the organization.

This is PR 2.0, ladies and gentlemen. If it feels a little scary, it may be because you have little practice. Try it, you'll like it. It will strengthen your core, just like Pilates.

An Example of PR 2.0

Or the new PR, if you prefer. The company itself is already active in social media. Many on staff are involved, engaged in the community, and engaging. They also have a PR agency. One of those that get it (it will become apparent why shortly). A team like that of SHIFT Communications, Livingston Communications, or Every Dot Connects for example. Insert here your own examples, please. We need more of this kind of firm.

The client and agency work together and in concert with each other. In fact, the agency is more in the background in this case. Shall we talk about SavvyAuntie? Melanie Notkins has provided the perfect example of what that looks like. After the launch of her new beta site, Melanie has received a number of favorable reviews and has done a flurry of interviews. I know she works with a PR agency because she mentioned it in our talks for the interview I published today at Marketing 2.0. I dealt with her directly.

The reason is that we already know each other from Twitter. As to the reason why Melanie was able to get so much coverage right at the July 9 launch date, she said:

I met Adam Hirsch, COO of Mashable, and Brett Petersel, Events Director at Mashable, at the Jeff Pulver Media Breakfasts in New York City. I met Eric Kuhn there on a separate occasion. Each one of them has been a supporter of me and my dreams as an “auntrepreneur” since our first meeting. These guys are men to watch in the social media world; while all only in their 20s, they have managed to carve out immense careers for themselves by being smart and generous with their network and their support.

While I never met founder of TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, in person, we did share a few direct messages via Twitter. And while I would love to say that that relationship helped with my placement in TechCrunch, it was his eagle-eyed blogger Calley Nye, who picked up and ran with the story, interviewing me the day before launch.

Read more at Marketing 2.0. It's all connected. A blogger takes the initiative, two young entrepreneurs stay in touch, an influential publication triggers more coverage, etc. It sounds a lot like word of mouth, doesn't it?

Is Marketing playing second fiddle, then?

Not quite, but it is becoming clear to me that it's leaning towards more than just artificially constructed interactive. More like a game that is built and evolved by the participants. Over a week go, Tim Brunelle unveiled one his company created to celebrate their one year anniversary. Viking Smackdown has already gathered more than 25,000 players and is still ranked as a "staff favorite" within the web-apps on the Apple App Store.

Tim also reports that their logs indicate that quite a few people are playing the game more than an hour at a time. That is addictive.

Broadening the conversation to the future of advertising, I tempted the MarketingProfs Daily Fix crowd with the thought that it might very well be playing games. I had fewer takers than I would have anticipated. That's probably because we're not the crowd these games are attracting. How about Gen Ys and Millennials?

The key to games is engagement. In the post I provide the example of the Ultimate Flirt Facebook appl from V05 as a successful branded application. It's a branded community/game built around the competition to become the Ultimate Flirting Champion. Users engage and interact in a rich manner by answering a Flirt Question of the Day, rating each other on how datable they are, sending each other Flirt Gifts, uploading pictures, messaging each other, and much more.

A few numbers: the application has nearly 300,000 total users with an average of 5,000+ users that are active each day, and it has in one month generated over 2,000,000 page views. [developed by Stuzo, Inc. and promoted by Appssavvy]

Engagement 2.0?

Games are portable, they are open ended in that you can start a new one or choose to play one at about any time, they are social, and they are fun. Online, you can really see what sticks and what generates traffic and interest. They can also be a great vehicle for peer to peer conversations, or word of mouth. They are tools in the hands of the influenced rather than the influentials and have a better likelihood of spreading for that reason.

You see how some of these dynamics have evolved the way we interact and how the product or service has now gone back to being the social object, to put it in Hugh MacLeod's terms, a reason to talk about what we love doing and who we are. 

This is where we're heading. So before you start doing Marketing and PR 2.0, pause and ask yourself: is your product in the right category with your marketing and PR ambition? Enterprise 2.0 anyone?

[cartoon designed on the back of a business card by Hugh MacLeod]

Comments

[Todd Defren]

Valeria, thanks so much for the kind word about SHIFT.

Honestly I am encouraged by the # of PR people I meet nowadays who are inspired to change. It will take far longer than any of us would like, and will NEVER be perfect, but, change is a'foot.

[laurent]

I was at a conference a few weeks ago where someone said that if a marketer wants to engage in social media, first he/she needs to look at what's social in the product/service to market. Some are more than others obviously (For example, a dog service/product is by nature more social than a credit card because dog owner talk about their dog and there's emotion involved in that). Makes sense. However I think that if the social wave really takes over the way we do business, it's possible that companies will design 'socially colored' products/services capable of triggering emotions in us..the same way every company created a cool packaging when packaging became key to a product sale.

[james svenson]

Great post. I love the Hugh cartoon. Great idea in this mesh of ideas - work in concert with your clients. Jump in, get involved. The game is changing and it's exciting and fun. It seems like this is leaning to less BS and more...engagement, being real, being transparent. What a breath of fresh air. I can hardly stand watching TV commercials anymore...unless they are funny, which is rare.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Todd - change takes longer in the short run and less time in the long run. Funny how that happens. The direction is encouraging.

@Laurent - I will refer you back to something my friend Gerry of Stories that Work said one post ago here - "The consumer knows when the message and the action of the brand are authentic. Their crap detectors are very sensitive." I think we know. We buy products and services that match our world view.

@James - funny is always welcome, especially after a long day! Since I do not watch TV, that would need to come from other sources. One other thought I had last night as I was writing this is that of pause - silence, reflection, interval. Those are getting rare and most treasured. I wrote about the concept in a couple of posts in the past 'The Sound of Silence' and 'The Substance of Marketing'. Now I'm thinking it might be time to revisit that conversation...

[Geoff Livingston]

Valeria:

Thank you for the heads up? I appreciate it.

Geoff

[Connie Reece]

Valeria, thanks for the kind mention. Your post raises some interesting questions about where social media fits into the bigger picture. That's the focus of a panel proposal some of us did for SXSW. (We're on the list; voting begins Aug. 8) We called it Beyond Social Media: Introducing Social Communications.

As always, I enjoy you writing and the information you share.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Geoff - keep up the good work.

@Connie - Thank you for letting me know about the proposal. I'll make sure I tune in to vote when the time comes. The reason why I like talking about it all as communications is that it is indeed much broader than just any one tool, or any one purpose.

[Lewis Green]

Valeria,

Coming from the newspaper, then corporate PR and the communications side of things, I don't believe public relations was very effective until 2.0. Most press releases went and still go unnoticed. I like what Spike at Brains on Fire said in response to my question: Social Media should be a movement not a campaign. To create a movement, we need to be known, trusted and respected by the influencers; we need a good story; and we need to reach out to those we want to engage in conversation.

Excellent post. Thank you!

[Paul Chaney]

Valeria, I must admit I'm part of the crowd that doesn't get into games. Maybe it's because I'm older, not sure. I do see their value though, as it pertains to engagement.

Regarding your post, once again, in a few short paragraphs you've taught some valuable lessons. Thanks!

[Connie Bensen]

Thanks for the really succinct points, Valeria. I want to add that it's the human factor that makes the difference. It's no longer a 'campaign'.

And I presently have the good fortune to be working with one of the agencies that you listed. You are absolutely correct on 2 points - 1. their being in the background but very effective & 2. progress (more to come on that I'm sure).

Connie

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Lewis - when pubic relations is just media relations, it is indeed ineffective. Thank you for sharing Spike's take. I remember when Fast Company was not just a magazine - it was a movement!

@Paul - There are only so many hours in a day, too. Growing up we played physical games with friends all the time. Tennis table (it's fun in groups), foosball (we had tournaments), cards, etc. Games are part of being social. With the digital environment, the scale and complexity of the games has been exploded.

@Connie - "campaign" was language borrowed from war, command and control situations. The reality is that a well executed communication is a continuum that spikes on different media in different forms for different audiences. We are making progress, even when it seems like tiny steps at the moment. I am encouraged by agencies that are starting to lead the way.