Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Google+, and Pinterest, and Goodreads, and…

Original Image Source: http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee277/jefferyhodges/Slim-pickens_riding-the-bomb_enh-lo.jpg

While it achieved landmark status (whatever that actually is) for its in-depth analysis of just what made successful companies successful, it’s widely remembered for a 2-page “Interlude” between Chapters 2 and 3 titled: “No ‘Tyranny of the Or’ (Embrace the ‘Genius of the And’)”

They wrote:

Instead of being oppressed by the “Tyranny of the OR,” highly-visonary companies liberate themselves with the “Genius of the AND” — the ability to embrace both extremes of a number of dimensions at the same time. Instead of choosing between A OR B, they figure out a way to have both A AND B.

Fast Forward to 2012

The traditional media is rife with stories pitting one social site against another:

• The Mounting Minuses at Google+ – The Wall Street Journal
• Facebook vs Google+: What’s the best social network? – Fox News
• Facebook vs. Google: The battle for the future of the Web – CNN

The media loves a good dust-up; but in reality, listening to these articles and choosing one social network over another for your business is precisely the wrong thing to do. Choosing one social network over another because you clients and/or prospective clients are on them is the right way to make that decision.

For example: my video production company Brunswick Media Services has a presence on almost every popular social network: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo, etc. For my business, I have little interaction with prospective clients via Facebook. It’s just the way it is. While some of my clients are indeed on Facebook, they are not using it as part of their job, for the majority of them, Facebook is a place for personal connections, not a resource they go to when looking for a video production company.

I reach my clients through other social networks, mostly Twitter and LinkedIn. I reach my friends mostly through Facebook, but more and more those touchpoints are moving to other networks like Pinnterest, Vimeo, and Google+. At the risk of flying in the face of some of the more popular self-appointed Social Media Ninja Gurus out there, it is not essential for me to have a Facebook Fan Page for Brunswick Media Services, in fact, for the most part social media does not drive my marketing, my marketing drives my social media choices, and that’s OK. There I said it. Your business may be very different than mine, and you may find Facebook is where your clients and potential clients are.

When Google introduced the Google+ network, I was on it within the first 2 days. Is it the best thing ever? Perhaps not, but it has distinct advantages (pluses even) for me including: Search Engine Optimization (SEO); a wide network of people I had not connected with on other services, a much more robust system for discussion, and a community of fiercely loyal users to tap into. All of these make it well worth my time. Your mileage may vary.

The Pragmatic Part

Social Media takes time and effort. There are dozens of networks, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. Everyone’s time is limited, so how do you decide what to spend your limited time doing? The web is filled with Social Media Ninja Gurus writing daily “You MUST Be on XX Network” blog posts. You read one and it says a social media strategy without Facebook is evil, or ignoring Pinterest is the greatest sin since the apple.

The big problem I see in many of the “You MUST Be on XX Network” blog posts, news stories, and books is that glaring generalizations are repeated until they become “facts”. The authors often quote the latest “wow” statistics of how many messages are shared on one network over another, and before long, you start believing that every last bit of their mumbo-jumbo applies to you. The reality is, if your clients and potential clients are not on a given service, or do not use that service to find businesses like yours, you may just be wasting you time trying to market your business on that network.

So here’s my suggestion for a pragmatic approach:

1. Find out what social media sites your current clients/customers are in the social media world.
2. Spend time there too.
3. Have a presence on the less relevant ones, just don’t kill yourself over them.
4. When new networks come along, keep an eye on them, and see if they have potential.
5. Ignore the Gurus, they’re probably just selling books anyway.

Now, that being said; I’m a huge fan of social media, and use it daily, and encourage my clients to do so as well. There are plenty of other ways to use social media sites other than just for marketing. I use Twitter to keep in touch with colleagues, share news, find information, get project feedback, enhance SEO, etc.

Many of the clients that I consult for use social media for the same reasons, but also for things like customer service, client feedback, organizing events, the list goes on. As marketers, we can sometimes lose sight of the broader picture, and view everything as a marketing/sales channel. While Twitter may be a great tool for your business to find clients and customers, I might have better luck with Pinterest. If you’re using social media to sell industrial valves, Facebook may not be the ideal network for you, LinkedIn may produce better results for you. Conversely, if you’re selling knitting supplies to hobbyists, Facebook may just be the place for you. Think of it like space advertising, your ad for the new line of industrial valves will most likely produce better results from a trade magazine than the local penny-saver.

The next time you read a “You MUST Be on XX Network” story, keep a critical eye out, and ask yourself, or better yet, ask your clients if that really might be a great place for you to be or not.

I was recently a guest on on the Rockstar Podcast Lite with host Lorenzo Araneo of Screaming Lunatic Multimedia, LLC.

Lorenzo and I had a pretty wide-ranging discussion covering everything from forklift safety training videos, to social media, to obscure bands from the ’70′s.

You can listen to or download the podcast from the Rockstar website: http://rockstarpodcast.com/rpl2/

Thanks for the opportunity Lorenzo!

I just sent out a tweet that got me thinking:

Wondering when the downside to lists will come: Suppose I created a list called “Zipperheads” or “Dumb People”… might cause a stir

Twitter just released the List function to all (or most) users, and people are busy playing with the feature, constructing new lists from the people they’re following. So far it seems to be a big hit with users, who are generally constructing subsets of other users based on what they tweet about, where they live, or generally positive attributes. But what happens when people use the Twitter list function to slam other users and/or brands in the social media space?

Is it so far fetched to think that, for example, a power user with hundreds of thousands of followers would put together a list called “Brands that Suck” or that a list called “Suspected Terrorist Sympathizers”? Aside from the personal affronts possible, what does this new feature mean for your brand? Hopefully Twitter users will only use their new-found power for good, but anyone who’s been on the intertubez for more than 10 minutes knows there will be some who will use it for “evil.”

In the mean time, I’m off to finish my list of zipperheads…

Sometimes you read a blog posting and just say: “wow, I wish I had written that.”

Mark McGuinness over at Lateral Action, just posted one of those. (In fact I’ve stolen his title too) 10 Creative Lessons from Bowie in Berlin combines two “Mike” things, Bowie & Marketing.

I could summarize it for you, but, well, eh, just go read it for yourself.

It sort of redeems my misspent youth listening to Bowie. I just wish my parents were around so I could say “told you so.”

This is not a political post.  No Really, it’s about permission marketing, new media, and the last stand of the old media guard.

By now you’ve most likely heard that Sen. Barack Obama has selected Sen. Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential running mate; but how did you hear about it?

If you’re a bit of a political junkie like I am, you probably heard it the same way you heard about Dick Cheney’s selection by George W. Bush… the traditional media.  If you spent any time watching the 24-hour cable news channels on Friday or Saturday, just about all you saw was a series of talking heads chiming in on who they thought would be Obama’s choice.  Some were right, some were wrong, but you just couldn’t help but notice a sense of cynicism whenever the talking head du jour mentioned the Obama campaign’s upcoming text message announcing the choice.

With camera crews camped outside each of the potential VP’s houses, the “traditional” TV news folks were determined to scoop the campaign’s text message announcement.  Cable News’ last desperate stand to prove themselves better than any new fangled media. So the cable news strategy worked out for them, they scooped the campaign, proudly announcing that their sources and stake outs indicated that Sen. Biden would be the choice, and that this brave new world of new media was just a flash-in-the-pan, and the message to supporters first was an epic fail.

Ah, but was it really?  The campaign generated so much coverage on each of the news channels, there was hardly a mention of Obama’s rival Sen. McCain on Friday.  On top of that, the Obama campaign has collected untold thousands of cell phone numbers of highly interested people, an amazingly hard to come by resource these days.  Thousands of numbers left out of almost every telephone poll, thousands of numbers to contact for support, volunteer efforts, and get-out-the-vote efforts. An exceedingly smart way to incorporate that third-screen into the campaign’s overall effort.

With an increasingly large number of people abandoning their land-line telephones, and the amount of noise in their email in boxes, mailboxes, and TV screens, the News Media may have won the battle, but the Obama campaign has may great strides in winning the war.