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Effective Strategic Digital Marketing

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The REAL reasons why you should be using “social media”

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The REAL reason you should be blogging (instead of having a website that does almost nothing)….

The REAL reason you should be using Twitter….

The REAL reason you should be using [insert name of Social Media application you’ve recently read is the instant path to wealth a riches]…..

It’s not because you want to sell something to someone – though that may be a happy “by product” of your use of social media.

It’s not because you want to “network”  and meet important people- though that too may also prove to be yet another happy “by product” of your use of social media.

You most certainly shouldn’t be using social media because everyone else is doing it.

The REAL reason you need to be using  [insert social media application of choice] is to establish TRUST with other human beings.  An important part of establishing that trust is demonstrating the fact that you’re real.

If you’re blogging – your primary goal should be to connect with your readers and convince them that you’re real.  (Lance introduced me to Jamie’s blog where she gets real unplugged.  There’s no doubt that Jamie is “real”.)

If you’re “tweeting” – again, your goal should be to connect and convince people that you’re real.  An essential part of being real is being curious and engaging in two way conversations.

A natural “by-product” of being real  is that  you begin to build a relationship with other “real” human beings. That’s why it’s called “SOCIAL” media.

You should be using social media – not sell product – not to increase your profits- but to increase your CONNECTION to reality.

When you try to shortcut the process – when you forget why you’re there -when you add “marketing” to the “social”  and forget that marketing is just another way of saying “communication…. that’s when you start to run into problems.

Your Digital Footprints…

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Do you give much thought to the digital footprint you’re leaving?  Unlike footprints left in the sand, your digital footprint can be notoriously difficult to alter.

There’s a song I learned in Sunday School long, long ago…

“Oh, be careful little feet, where you go. Oh, be careful little feet, where you go.. There’s a Father up above, looking down in tender love, So be careful little feet, where you go.”

Ah – those were the days.  Back then, I only had to worry about an omniscient and omnipresent God  hearing what I said, seeing what I saw and watching where my feet took me.

Contrast that with today when anyone with access to the internet can be granted an unprecedented level of omniscience – at least when it comes to observing digital interactions.  Online we’re constantly being judged by what we write! The blog posts I write, the comments I leave on other blogs not to mention the information contained in various online profiles are available for ALL to see.  Combined, those interactions are creating a digital footprint that can’t be easily erased or altered.

Internet access + basic computer skills = a level of  omniscience previously unknown to mankind!

The new Web 2.0 is providing a level of transparency which is unprecedented and is making social networking very similar to showing up naked to a cocktail party.

If there’s one term that you must keep in mind when you decide to engage in Social Marketing, it would have to be TRANSPARENCY!

Remember, launching a social marketing campaign is like showing up naked to a cocktail party. If you haven’t been hitting the gym, EVERYONE is going to know as soon as you enter the room. Oh, and if you’re a pre-op transvestite… well THAT fact is going to be obvious as well.

Now it’s more important than ever to be authentic in your interactions!

In What Every Business Owner Must Know About Web 2.0, I share that bloggers are the ULTIMATE power customers. If you don’t believe it – read about Cath Lawsons recent hosting experience and see if it doesn’t color your perception of her previous web host. If you’re a business owner, then it’s essential that you know what people are saying about your business.  The “new web” not only allows your customers to engage in more open conversations – it also allows you to monitor and join those conversations.   Your customers are helping to create your business’ digital footprint.

However, while customers are definitely helping to create your business’ digital footprint – it’s possible that  the one doing the most damage to your online reputation (a.k.a. “digital footprint”)- could well be YOU!

“We have met the enemy and he is us,” Walt Kelly in Pogo

Last Friday, I was having a conversation with a beloved long time client.  We met virtually in 1999 and have worked closely together over the years.  Over the past decade, this client’s profile has risen significantly, and that meteoric rise has been reflected in her fees.  While in 1999 she was an upstart in this “new” world called the internet, she’s now a highly sought after keynote speaker and consultant.

Last week I got an email from her, inquiring what I knew about a blog that had nominated her as one of the 50 “best” in her field.  The award was a classic linkbait post.  In this case, the blogger was attempting to curry attention and inbound links by creating his own award and  nominating the “top” performers in the field in this post.  It seemed the criteria for nomination was to be listed in the first few pages of Google in a search for a particular keyword term.

Unfortunately, my client was not amused by the company of practitioners nominated by the blogger.

One of the things I ADORE about this client is her wickedly sharp wit.  (There’s a reason she’s a sought after keynote speaker.)  In this situation, my client could have chosen to “ignore” the nomination or she could have done as many other “nominees” and thanked the blog owner for the “honor”.  However, she chose a different path – that of direct confrontation via the comment section of the blog.

She sent me via email the comment she left and it was positively sardonic.  I love her for that.  The blog owner replied defensively and the battle had begun. My client was winding up to take another swing and sent me a preview of the reply.  In a battle of wits – the blog owner was definitely unarmed and blissfully unaware of this fact.  My client was about to let loose with a salvo that would illustrate this clearly.

When she contacted me originally – I had suggested she politely thank the blog owner for the award or ignore it.  As she wound up for another round, and again asked my advice,  I took a more “direct” approach.  I told her, “When you stir shit – it stinks!  STOP STIRRING!!!”

See, there is a tactic of shameless self promotion where a blogger is encouraged to try to make enemies and therefore increase blog traffic and name recognition as a result.

In the case above, the upstart blogger had a lot to gain from positining himself as my client’s “enemy” – and my client had nothing to gain from such a pairing.  She’s well known within her industry and he is not.  It is my professional opinion that she doesn’t need to provide him with a “leg up” by engaging in this battle.   Quite honestly, her responses were entertaining enough to provide significant value to his blog.

We had a conversation about this on Friday and she thanked me for reminding her about the digital footprints she was leaving as she ventured into the strange new land of Web 2.0.

Have you ever “pulled back” and not commented on a blog post for fear of the impact upon your digital footprint?  Have you ever edited blog posts or comments with your digital footprint in mind?  How do you keep your personal digital footprint distinct from your professional digital footprint?

Everything’s relative… setting your life thermostat

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Today in my little corner of south eastern Florida – it’s 60 degrees today.

BRRR!!!

I don’t expect you to cry me a river – especially if you’re living in the path of the bitter cold that is blanketing much of the northern United States. However let me assure  you that temperatures in the 60’s feel positively FRIGID when you’ve spent a few summers surviving “surface of the sun” heat indexes in the mid to upper 120’s.

Meanwhile, a check of the weather back in my hometown in Indiana reveals that the current AIR temperature is currently -11 and the wind makes it feels like -29 … and those temps are °F by the way!   It’s even worse where my in-laws live.  It’s -20 and it feels like it’s -40 below just an hour north!  (Yes, I’m deeply concerned about the state of the plumbing in my Indiana property!)

But this whole weather thing has got me thinking about how where we are (and who we’re with) affects us and how our experiences shape our view.  In other words – there’s more than one setting on your life thermostat.

For example, I know that the weather today at my house would have felt positively tropical in January when I was living in Indiana five years ago.  Unfortunately, KNOWING that doesn’t make it FEEL any more tropical today.  Living down here for four short years has reset my thermostat – without my “permission” I might add.

That’s right.  I didn’t make a conscious decision to TRY to reset my body’s  thermostat.   I didn’t attempt to use “positive thinking” to change my body’s physical reaction to temperature so 60 degrees would feel cold to me.   As a matter of fact,  the opposite is true.  I desperately didn’t WANT to be a “Flor-idiot” who complains about being cold when it’s 60 degrees outside.

It didn’t matter what I desired, by moving to southern Florida, I changed my physical environment and as a result, my body’s physical responses have been altered.

Setting your Life Thermostat

However, there are other aspects to setting and regulating your life thermostat – beyond that of your physical perceptions of hot and cold.  Call it self help, call it self awareness, call it authentic expression or call it creative productivity –  the input you allow into your mind greatly affects your life thermostat settings.  (Oh, and if you think you can separate your “business” from your “life” ….. good luck with that.)

Just as your body will get “adjusted” to your physical environment – your mind will also get “adjusted” to the environment you create there as well.

Way back in 1997, I taught myself to code in HTML.  When word got out around town that I had acquired this skill, local business people started hiring me to create websites for their businesses.  One day about a year later, a very progressive woman who called herself a “life coach”  hired me to create a website for her business.  This turned out to be a significant “life thermostat altering” event.

What you read – what you watch – and the people you choose to accompany you on this journey called life – all have a dramatic effect on where your “life thermostat” is set.

Because I started working with forwarding thinking, successful people, my life thermostat settings changed… to the point where I find it difficult to relate to people from my “previous” life.

I recently was contacted by a co-worker from my past.  She was laid off from a subsequent employer and worrying about what she would do when her unemployment ran out in a few weeks.  She contacted me in hopes of landing a “J-O-B”.  However, her passions don’t lie in administrative work – and as much as I would have LOVED to have a passionate virtual assistant, it was easy to see that she was not that person.  So, in the course of the conversation (which lasted less than 40 minutes), we came up with a plan for her to start her own business based on the very things she was passionately devoting her time to during her unemployment.

I was surprised at how blatantly OBVIOUS what she SHOULD be doing was – and then I realized that my life thermostat settings have changed DRAMATICALLY since we last worked together.  She’s been punching a time clock, rubbing elbows with other “wage slaves” over the past decade.  Meanwhile, I’ve been spending the last decade connecting with other people who breath “rarified air” on a daily basis.

I am honored and feel privileged to be surrounded by such an amazing group of successful business owners.

Don’t underestimate the power of your surroundings to impact your perceptions and thinking.   What changes have you made (or do you need to make) to change your life thermostat?

Shameless Self Promotion in a Graceless Age

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There was a time, not so very long ago, when female cultural icons were the likes of Grace Kelly and Jackie O.  These two women were not only stunningly beautiful, but both were the epitome of class and grace.

The AMC series Mad Men is a critically acclaimed television series for good reason.  The superbly written and acted scripts provide a behind the scenes glimpse into the lives of people working at a second tier ad agency in the early 1960’s.  This was a time when Marilyn Monroe was controversial,  Grace Kelly was the “it” girl and Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy’s monogram didn’t include an “O”.  In one episode, a client of the fictional advertising agency refuses to allow their spot to run during a controversial television program episode.  In the “too hot to handle” program the word abortion was mentioned.

That was then – and this is now.  Heather Rand sums it up beautifully in her post Marketing in a Graceless Age:

This idea of grace, of making informed decisions and acting with poise and self-awareness, a countenance of dignity and beyond reproach has me thinking of Grace Kelly and Jackie O.  These ladies seemed the epitome of class, and represent a bygone era where acting with circumspect and moderation were important self-governance attributes.

In her post – she’s railing against Pepsi’s New Suicide-Themed Ads and makes the observation that marketing in the new millennium seems to be “continuously pushing the boundaries of propriety”.  (Thanks Liz Strauss for introducing me to Heather’s blog!)

This is an age where our cultural icons are Brittney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan.   To get noticed, to create a marketing message that “goes viral“, you’d better be pushing the boundaries of propriety.   It seems that morality is joining traditional media in the death march to extinction.   Unfortunately in the age of reality television, that feat is becoming more and more difficult to achieve without making the commitment to acting like a Filthy Marketing Whore.

Well – there is another way and that’s to file a frivolous law suit – which is exactly what Liskula Cohen, a Canadian model, has done.  If you’ve never heard of Liskula Cohen – well, you’re not alone but that’s about to change because she has obviously embarked upon a campaign to raise her visibility.  Her act of shameless self promotion is a graceless age is to sue Google because one of it’s many blogger blogs is the now infamous Skanks in NYC.

This act of shameless self promotion has been remarkably effective.  According to Caroline McCarthy over at Cnet news:

Meanwhile, the search terms “Liskula Cohen” and “Skanks in NYC” skyrocketed to the top of (ironically) Google Trends, earning “on fire” ratings. Hey, considering that I’d never heard of Liskula Cohen before, and I’m sure that I’m not the only one, this might’ve been the best thing that ever happened to her.

Gyutae Park assures me that being Snarky will come back to bite those seeking shameless self promotion in a graceless age.   Tom assures me that authenticity is still the necessary ingredient in the search for success. Stacey assures me that this too shall pass.

I certainly hope they’re right.

Twitter Bug on the Loose

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I got a personal email from a well respected blogger which was weird. It was weird that this blogger would be emailing little ol ME – and then the email itself was weird.

The email said something along the line of that he had found a picture of me and I should click on the link. Being the modest sort – I clicked without thinking. When I clicked (something I normally don’t do – but this is a RESPECTED blogger) – it was obviously a phishing attempt trying to get my Twitter information. Thank goodness it was obvious what was going on. Some phishing attempts are top rate – this one wasn’t.

Remember, it’s only paranoia is they’re NOT out to get you and it’s obvious that someone is out to get you and acquire your Twitter login information. I didn’t think much of it until this morning when I read Chris Brogan’s Log Into Twitter And Change Your Password.

Ignore the email if you get it. If you get one from me – let me know. Change your Twitter password in the meantime.