First a Little About the “Ethics” of Ghost Tweeting….

While at Search Engine Strategies Chicago I was interviewed by Web Pro News about the panel that I spoke on about Social Media and the ethics of “ghost tweeting”.  A lot of people had a lot to say about Guy Kawasaki and his use of Twitter back in March when he was the keynote speaker at SES NYC, most of it was not good in the eyes of the search marketing experts speaking about his keynote.  Granted, some of his tactics could definitely be classified as spammy, but at the end of the day, Guy Kawasaki is a marketer.

That being said, was his “Ghost Tweeting” ethical?  I’m more of the opinion it’s not a question of ethics, its more of a question of disclosure and expectations.  Knowing how busy Guy Kawasaki really is, most people likely wouldn’t have expected him to not be running his Twitter account by himself.  He’s got staff, he’s got help.  The problem with the situation was that he wasn’t disclosing it until Dave Fleet called him out on that fact.  Was his audience in an uproar about it?  Yes, some were, some stopped following, but since the disclosure, he’s gained more followers.

At the end of the day, its about the relationship you want to make with your audience.  Are you forming personal relationships with your audience, do they expect that from you?  Or are you just disseminating information like Guy does with his account?  There’s no real interaction going on, so the expectations are much lower. So what’s ethical, what’s not?  You’re audience is actually the one that will decide.  If you are trying to “trick” them by employing other people to tweet for you in a personal way, it will show through eventually.

And Then About Measuring Your Social Media….

Abby then went on to ask me about Measuring Your Social Media Strategy because Serengeti Communications put on a session about doing just that at SES Chicago.  Measuring has to be a key fundamental part of any Social Media Strategy you implement.  Without measuring how do you know what’s successful and what isn’t working?  What are you wasting your time on or what should you dedicate more resources too?  Along with that is your agency – SEO, PPC, PR or Advertising – selling you a laundry list of social media tactics because they know how to set up those types of things or is it because there’s been significant research done and you are going to be actively engaging with people in those social media channels?

It’s certainly not easy, and there’s no cookie cutter approach!

I’ve always been intrigued by Jeff Jarvis, ever since he single handily brought a firestorm down upon Dell and coined the term “Dell Hell” so seeing his keynote at Search Engine Strategies Chicago was at the top of my priority list.  I wasn’t disappointed this morning either, Jeff Jarvis hit some very relevant points with his presentation, especially when it came to this changing world of search, online marketing and “old media”.

I found his keynote very poignant, taking a look at how big media (newspapers) have really got it all wrong when it comes to Google.  Murdoch and some of the other media industry giants want to blame Google and paint Google as a monster, when in reality its their own lack of knowledge of how to operate in this new medium that is the actual boogie man in the closet for these media conglomerates.

I wrote about Murdoch’s idea to block out Google a few weeks ago, and I keep coming back to the same thoughts that Jeff Jarvis has.  Google’s not stealing content, Google is actually providing opportunities, it’s just that these old huge media companies don’t know how to properly and efficiently turn this opportunities to their favor, instead all they really want to do is blame someone and right now that easy target is Google.

Jarvis pointed out that the way the media outlets operate now is that they make people come to the news, they expect to dictate to the audience what is news and that they decide it.  That way of working is at an end.  People want the news that they want to find them.  This isn’t fairytale wishes either, with the internet this is going to be reality very soon.

Jeff Jarvis then questioned why haven’t these media companies gone the way of what YouTube has, by making everything embeddable?  By making things portable, you can reach more people and its easier for people to share what they think is important with their audiences.  There are some places experimenting with this already, The Guardian, Jarvis explained is one example.  The Guardian wants to be part of the fabric of the web and they are understanding that they need to come to you with their content.

At the end of the day, Google isn’t the enemy for newspapers.  As Eric Schmidt pointed out in his op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Google offers 100,000 opportunities to newspapers a minute to win loyal readers.  They do that for FREE.  It’s not Google’s fault that “blustery” CEO’s like Murdoch can’t figure out how to capitalize on these opportunities that are being dropped on their virtual doorsteps

In the world of social media marketing, one of the ultimate attainments of any marketer is to claim that you had one of your social media content pieces “go viral”.  Going Viral means that your content that you’ve provided to your audience whether it’s a video, a blog post, an audio clip, an interactive flash game or even a photo has really connected with your audience enough that they have felt the need to pass it on, and their audiences have passed it on and so forth that this “spread” or “viral” passing on is now bring you new visitors to your content (and hopefully your site) in masses that are not normally seen to your site.

Having a piece go viral is great – right?!

I ask this because I see it happen a lot by happenstance or accident.  Companies put something out on their site with no plans on how to capitalize on the attention a media content piece gets once it does go viral.  There’s no goals set, there’s no actions to be taken, there’s no accountability.  Let’s just “shoot video” and put it out there.  Let’s just make this cool game and put it out there!  People will love it and people will come to our site.

Great!  They love it, they come to your site, they see your picture, watch your video or play your animated flash game, but what do they do next after maybe sharing it with their friends?

While getting the people to your site through viral content is cool and while gaining links to your viral content is cool, at the end of the day has it done anything to lift your brand perception or raise your bottom line by those visitors doing some other action other than viewing the viral content?  As someone who came from the search engine optimization (SEO) world I understand the implications of gaining links via viral content, and the affects of the influx of traffic can have.  But here’s the thing, are the links really pointing to the content you really want to be known for, or is it just for that one viral piece.

I have a friend in the industry who created this flash game for Christmas time.  This flash game hit it viral pretty big and every year around this time, he sees the traffic spike again because people love to play this game that involves reindeer and Santa.  All of a sudden around November it’s “new” again and people pass around the link.  The game draws a lot of traffic to the page and that page has gotten a lot of links.  You think that would be awesome right?

Here’s the reality of the viral piece – It hasn’t lead to any major leads or conversions for what he sells.

The game has nothing to really do with their business.  The people who play the game aren’t really their target audience.  There’s no action at the end of the game to encourage the player to visit just what their product can do.  The game itself has nothing to do with what the company sells.  While his “time on site” statistic and “new visitor” statistic rises, that’s not really telling the full story.  Of course they are going to rise because people are playing the game and passing it on to their friends – they aren’t rising because they are interested in the company’s products or services.

So when it comes to wanting successful “viral” content, there’s got to be a social media  strategy spelled out.  Writing a list about top 10 Thanksgiving cooking disasters isn’t great viral content for an automotive parts site, but it could be for a company that sells pots and pans.  Make sure you plan out your social media strategy when it comes to creating viral content, too, not just let it be another list item in the list of marketing tactics your agency has told you to deploy.  While accidental “viral” content can be seen as “hip & cool”, and maybe you might not have planned for it to go “viral”, you can still have it benefit your bottom line.  Take some time to figure out how it can positively affect your company, brand, products or services and re-adjust that “accidental viral content”.

If you are planning as part of your social media strategy to create viral content, make sure you look at all aspects of how it can positively affect your bottom line.  From increased subscribers to your blog to purchases on your site, make your viral content work for you, not against you!

Rupert Murdoch the CEO of News Corporation is really creating a bit of buzz in the Search Engine world.  Why?  Well it seems that Murdoch believes that his collection of news sites which include U.S.  media outlets such as FoxNews.com, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and international news outlets such as the Daily Telegraph in Australia, The Sun and The Times in the UK as well as channels such as National Geographic, would not suffer greatly if he blocked Google from accessing them and allowing Google to have them in their index and offering them up as relevant search results for searches done on the site.

So is he crazy?  Does he really realize the effect that taking such a drastic measure will have on his search traffic?  I would suppose they have some inkling since Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s chief digital officer was quoted by the Telegraph.co.uk as saying

“The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.”

I cannot claim to be an expert of News Corp’s properties or their properties’ demographics, but most people consume their news these days via hearing about it on a site, primarily social media sites, and then going to a search engine to find out more.  It’s happening more and more these days – look at how much Twitter and its trending topics affect how people search.

When people see things trending on Twitter, say for example like Kayne or Taylor Swift when Kayne so rudely interrupted Taylor’s acceptance speech for an award.  On Twitter you saw that both Kayne and Taylor Swift were trending terms shortly after the incident happend.  Without going to a search engine to figure out why they were trending, you’d have to guess through the tweets that were happening.  By going to the Google, at that time, searching for either one of their names produced a news one box with links to news articles that contained a lot more relevant information.

While Miller says the traffic received from Google is the least valuable, I wonder where they are looking to get more valuable traffic?  Other than relying on their return visitors through bookmarks or direct type ins, there’s not much more valuable traffic.

Social Media although it looks like it could be the answer to all their prayers, if you take a look closer, it’s likely even less valuable than Google’s traffic.  News media sites primarily focus on social news sites like Digg, Fark, Reddit or Ballhype.  If they are expecting better traffic they should really look at how members of these communities function.  Community members in these sites click on the story to see if they want to vote for it and immediately leave to go vote on more stories back on the social news sites.  This type of “hit and run” traffic is a lot less valuable if you are trying to get the visitor to stay on the site longer or view other  pages.

At least with search traffic coming from Google visitors stay on the site longer, especially if there’s photos or videos to interact with on the content, because they want to become educated on the topic they searched for.

All of this hull-a-baloo that Murdoch is making sounds more like someone who’s just pissed off with the popular kid they were playing with and wants to take his toys home so no one else can play unless they come with him and that hopes the rest of his “gang” will follow him back to his house.

If other news sites actually start analyzing their web analytics for their sites and really break down the search traffic, I have a feeling they are going to continue to “play” with Google because they will find the traffic from Google is actually quite valuable.  They also might find that while Social Media News Sites will drive traffic, if they segment that out and analyze that as well, they can see a difference in the quality via time on site and pages viewed.

So what say you?  Is Murdoch crazy for pulling his sites from Google or is he’s one of the smartest guys to try and start a “Google Revolt”?

Hope that headline grabbed your attention! Especially if you are planning your entire social media strategy around the marketing tactics of Digg, StumbleUpon or MySpace, you just might want to read on.

When it comes to having Business Value, according to a survey performed by MarketingProfs, utilizing Digg, StumbleUpon and MySpace as social media tactics are pretty much worthless to those marketers who where surveyed. Even marketing tactics around YouTube were found to have little value by the survey. Where did they find extreme value? Twitter and Blogging.

(posted w/ permission from Marketing Profs)

According to the MarketingProfs survey of over 200 Twitter users, Twitter ranks behind only blogs as the social media tool that delivers the most value. On a five-point scale where those Twitter users they surveyed ranked value of the marketing tactics they were using in social media strategies, 41 percent of respondents said Twitter delivers “great value” to their company.

I’m not going to give away the whole report or survey since the report is available for only $49 from Marketing Profs. Honestly, this is a great bargain since it not only gives you the survey information but 10 different Twitter Success Stories.

What I have presented here though should get your mind wondering about your strategies in social media, or those strategies being recommended to you to implement.  What are you going to find the most valuable?  Is your whole strategy that has been presented to you based around these marketing tactics a lot of other marketers are starting to find no value in?

Of course there also needs to be research done into where your audience is.  If you are a company that provides a certain kind of content, you strategy might find extreme business value in implementing a strategy around Stumbleupon.  If you are a rock band who needs to get the word out, MySpace may just be the place for you.  If you are a “green company” and putting out a lot of content around that, Digg could just be a natural place to seed your content.

However most companies implementing strategies around these types of tactics just might not find a great business value in doing so.  It’s all about establishing what will be your “Return”, your “Value” on the investment you put into your social media strategy.

Yesterday we launched the first tweet chat aimed at discussion and conversation about social media metrics, both measuring and monitoring.  The focus of the conversation was around “Are Free Monitoring Tools Enough to Measure Your Social Media Efforts”.

There’s a lot of confusion out there about what to mesaure and how to measure it.  People are finding that a mix of free tools, paid tools, home grown tools and spreadsheets can all work together to accomplish their tasks.

We’ve taken the transcript of the #SMMetrics Tweetchat from yesterday and made it into a PDF that you can download and print, or just view.

• #SMMetrics Tweet Chat Transcript 09/09/09

Next week @nathan_linnell (Nathan Linnell) will be heading up the TweetChat and topic will be “What Metrics Are You Using to Track/Monitor Your Social Media Efforts“. To follow or join in the conversations around social media metrics just follow the hashtag #smmetric and include it in your tweets so we’ll see your questions and contributions.

#SMMetrics Tweet Chat is Every Wednesday at 1 p.m. EST.

Nate Linnell (@nathan_linnell) and I (@storyspinner) noticed that there wasn’t a lot of discussion going on about metrics, monitoring and measuring in social media, so we decided to lead up that charge! Starting on Wednesday September 9th at 1 PM Easter time, we’ll engage the Twitter community in a talk about Social Media Metrics. You can follow the hashtag #smmetrics to join in the conversation. Our first week’s topic for #smmetrics chat will be focused on: “Are Free Monitoring Tools Enough to Measure Social Media“. So come on in and join the conversation!

If you’d like to get just a taste of what Charlene Li spoke about at SES San Jose in August of this year, SES has just released a video full of snippets of her keynote, an interview with Charlene and interviews with people who attended the keynote. Also in this video piece, Pattie Simone of WomenEntrepreneur.com has some really great points of why Charlene Li’s keynote resonated so well, “anyone can be a publisher now and it’s important to get those people on board with you.”

Charlene also goes into a bit of detail around the engagement pyramid she spoke about in the keynote,  so take a little time and have a listen.

Serengeti Communications Interview at Search Engines Strategies

While in San Jose, CA for Search Engine Strategies in August, I was interviewed by the Search Engine Strategies team about building relationships in social media communities.  It is a bit longer of an interview, but I discuss a few points that we really didn’t get into on the panel that discussed managing social conversations.  John asked some great questions which the audience didn’t and in social media, really needs to be addressed.

We discuss tying social media to your bottom line, and what that bottom line really means.  Unfortunately some companies are deeming that social media doesn’t work because it isn’t selling more of their products.  Click to purchase rarely happens in social media, instead companies must look at other measurement methods to understand exactly how successful or unsuccessful their efforts are.

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of presenting on three panels and at the last minute, the honor of getting to introduce Thursday’s keynote speaker, Charlene Li.  As an avid fan of the book Groundswell which Charlene co-authored this was a real honor to do no matter how last minute it was.

Charlene had a lot of great nuggets of wisdom in her presentation which focused on the How to Prepare for the Future of Search and how social media is affecting it each and every day.  The biggest piece of advice was probably the hardest for any SEO or PPC professional to comprehend; Focus on the Relationship with People, Not the Keywords People Use.

Conversations in Social Media

That was the point of my presentation at Search Engine Strategies as well.  The session “Managing Social Conversations” included myself, Dave Evans of Digital Voodoo, Mike Volpe of Hubspot and Brian Kalma from Zappos.  The whole panel had that focus too, in social media its about the relationships and conversations you are having with your audience that ultimately win the day, not the keywords that drive those conversations.

There were two primary focuses to my presentation, the first was that social media needs a strategy.  That requires a bit of work to create something successful.  Research, defining and measuring all go into strategy – it’s not just tactics like putting up a Facebook page, or starting a Twitter account.  If you don’t have a sound strategy behind doing those tactics, your efforts will most likely fail.

The second focus on my presentation was on measuring and monitoring.  Without measuring and monitoring how does a company know that what they are implementing with their social media strategy is really working?  Unfortunately most companies have been conditioned to relate success to a “click to purchase” ratio.  In social media this type of action rarely happens.  So what’s a company to do?

In Social Media – Measure Something Different!

So what do you measure?  How about interaction, involvement, influence and intimacy?  These are all factors that can be measured and proven to affect the bottom line of a company.  These can be measured and monitored through buzz monitoring tools and web analytics, its just a matter of understanding the data and turning it into actionable data. This is what our new social media white paper: “Social Media Impact: Unicorn or Elephant” is all about, so sign up for it if you are interested in learning more about doing Social Media the right way.

You can take a look at our Social Conversations presentations including the ones from SES SanJose and connect with us on Slide Share.