The first of two social media marketing video successes I'd like to discuss here is the "Will It Blend" phenomenon. This story is about Tom Dickson, the President of a company called BlendTec out of Orem, Utah. When you see the video you will see that Tom is not right. He's enjoying blending these things way too much. There's a particular spot in the video where you'll recognize it immediately. ;) Tom created a blender, a great blender, and it better be, because it's a $650 home blender, a residential blender.
Tom knows the number one cause of blender death in America is Margarittas. I'm not kidding you. People get drunk, they throw the carafe... No, the blender death is not people death, it's blender death because they are grinding all that ice. Have you ever burned out a blender grinding ice for frozen drinks?
The night before Tom was ready to release his new blender product, he went into engineering and he pulled one off the shelf to test it. After all, his company is riding on this. It's after 6:00 p.m. and everyone had gone home, all of the engineers are gone. How is he going to test it? How do you test a blender motor? Tom sees a door, steps outside and he's in the parking lot when he notices that the yard-care guys have left their rake. So he brings the rake in, removes the top, turns his blender on, pushes the puree button, and jams this five-foot solid oak-handled rake into the running blender. Tom continues pushing the rake in until he's ground the entire handle down to the metal tines.
Talk about the proverbial chips hitting the fan! (I spellchecked that word several times). The wood chips flew everywhere! After all that, Tom is satisfied with the performance of his blender. If it can grind a five-foot oak handle, it's good to go.
The next morning the engineers came in and called the police. They thought they'd been vandalized. Only to find out, no that's just crazy Tom! Everybody in the company wanted to see Tom do this again, in person. Tom then sent the Administrative Assistant down the hardware store and buy a rake; well, probably two rakes because they had to replace one he ate up the night before, on the yard-care guy.
At the time, there was an intern who was working in PR for BlendTec. A young kid who had his digital video camera in his desk and he asked Tom if he could videotape this spectacle, because he thought "this is funny stuff!" So he did. Tom grabs a blender, starts it up, puts it on puree and begins grinding up another rake handle and the chips are flying everywhere and everybody's laughing. It's hysterical.
Now here comes the punch line. The kid takes the video and puts it up on YouTube. Within twenty-four hours that video was viewed by more than 1,200,000 people. And, within that same 24-hour period, they sold out of every single blender that they had in the warehouse. What did that video cost them to produce? Nothing, well maybe two rakes. And as an intern, I'm sure he didn't get paid either. How cool is that?
In this video example Tom isn't blending a rake. No, Tom went to the Apple store for an Apple iPhone and he blends a brand new iPhone!
To date, this one video has received more than 3,500,000 views. If I told you that I could market your company and I could get your customers to ask to watch your TV commercial, and I can get 3,500,000 people to watch, would you hire me? Especially when I tell you that I can do it for only the cost of a $400 cell phone? Isn't that amazing?
If you visit BlendTec's YouTube channel you will see Tom blend diamonds (cubic zirconium), hockey pucks, golf balls, glow sticks, Barbie dolls, pens, video cameras, cell phones, and my very favorite, his tilapia shake. This is where Tom takes a full can of Coke, in the can, a fresh tilapia fish, and blends it into a shake, and drinks it! He even blends silly putty. Amazing!
The second video I will discuss is Subway vs. Quiznos, social media gone wild. Quiznos sandwich shop decided it wanted to engage its customers by utilizing "user-generated content". They wanted to get their customers engaged in their brand. They created a contest. They wanted their customers to grab their video cameras, create a 60-second commercial about why they think Quiznos is better than Subway. Once completed, upload it to Quiznos's Web site. If they like your commercial and choose it as the winner, they will make it their national commercial. That would be cool and the customer / creator will get all that national attention. Well the winners--these guys got attention for sure.
In this video example, you'll see that these guys are a sandwich short of a picnic. Not the sharpest tool in the shed. A couple of bricks shy of a load. What they did is instead of uploading the video to Quiznos, was they uploaded it to YouTube. Subway saw it along with 54,000 other viewers in the first 24 hours. When you see this video, you're going to see why Subway sued Quiznos for defamation of sandwich.
Now that you've watched this video, can you understand why Subway, maybe, was less than pleased with that commercial? So they sued. They sued Quiznos. Here's the interesting thing about social media. As soon as Subway sued Quiznos, the noise, became a buzz, people started talking about it, and before long, everybody was watching the video. The next thing you know it's on the front page of The New York Times. That's how I found out about it. Subway actually did more to promote this video than did Quiznos.
I suppose Subway was smart enough to hire some social media people that said, "Dudes (I think they were from L.A.) ease back, man. This is social media. They were just having fun. Quiznos didn't do it. It was a couple of Southies. Subway finally admitted, "Yeah, we know your sandwich is as good as ours and not as it was portrayed in the video." With that, Subway dropped the lawsuit, and what happened next was amazing. Subway got so much good press for dropping the lawsuit and taking a social attitude, they actually picked up market share.
That's what social media is about, even when it goes wild. Being transparent. Don't fight it, just go with it. Be honest. Even if things go terribly wrong, you can still recover and actually gain market share, if you admit your mistakes, and jut be sincere.
Lon Safko is the co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies For Business Success. He is also an innovator and professional speaker with over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering, speaking, training, writing, and e-commerce. He is the founder of eight successful companies, including Paper Models, Inc.
Click here for your free Fast Company The Social Media Bible Ten Commandment Ball. Just print, cut, glue, and be inspired!
A blog is the most important thing that you can create for yourself and for your company. It provides an environment that promotes two-way communication with your customers, your prospects, and establishes you as a thought-leader in your field. Blogging is free, it’s easy, and it doesn’t take much time.
The best way to explain why blogging is so important is to cite a few examples of companies that have realized exceptional success using blogs. The first is this airline you might have heard of, the only one profitable, Southwest Airlines. The company created a blog a couple of years ago and what I really love about it is the name of their blog; “Nuts About Southwest.” Get it? Nuts about Southwest.
Southwest Airlines has gotten more than one million visitors to its blog. One million visitors? Honestly, who cares what Southwest has to talk about? All I want them to do is get me from city to city, get my bags there, give me some nuts, and leave me alone. But, you know what? One million people cared enough to go and see what they had to say about their airline and comment, participating in their company and their brand.
What would you me pay right now if I told you I had a secret to get one million people to your homepage? What would you pay me? Write the check. I just told you. And the implementation and tools are free. That’s the wonderful thing about social media, the tools are all free. You just need to invest some time and some creativity.
Here’s another example of the power of blogs: A hotel chain by the name of Marriott. Ol’ Bill, J. W. Marriott’s Chairman; is still running the company. Excuse me for saying this, but he’s one of the old dogs, like me, over 50. And Bill’s a little bit uncomfortable with technology. As a matter of fact, Bill has never turned on a computer in his life. But that doesn’t stop him from writing his blog each week. Bill does it by using a digital recorder. He dictates his blog and gives it to his admin to simply transcribe and post.
Six hundred thousand visitors last year: They tell him the good stuff that Marriott is doing, so they can keep doing it; and they tell him the bad stuff that they are doing so that they can fix it.
What is that worth to you and your company? To actually hear from your customers, in a non-confrontational cooperative environment, what they like and what they would like you to do different. And it’s free. You have to communicate with, not to your customers. They’re going to start a conversation with or without you. Why don’t you control that conversation?
When I began researching blogs for The Social Media Bible, I heard a rumor that the search engines were giving blogs preferential treatment in their indexing. For the last several years I taught search engine optimization, and search engine marketing in more than 100 cities each year. I know that Google and Yahoo! take about 12 to 14 days from the time you create a new webpage until they index it. Twelve to fourteen days to index your page.
To test out the preferential treatment of blogs, I created a test blog called, “Subway vs. Quiznos.” This is about where Subway was suing Quizno’s for defamation of sandwich. This is under the category of social media gone wild. I created this blog on December 3, 2007. I had already set up Google Alerts for “Subway." Thirty minutes from the time I hit “publish," my blog page was indexed by Google and I was sent an alert. Thirty minutes! Not 12 to 14 days. To view the original blog, click here: http://www.lonsafko.com/2008/02/02/social-media-subway-verses-quizno%E2%...
If you type in “social media,” that term gets more than 46 million hits (last count), so that’s not what will take you to my page. And if you type in “Quiznos Subway," Fortune 1000 companies, that’s not going to narrow it down either. Don’t use my name, that’s too easy. If you type in ”Social Media Quizno Subway”, I come up #1 in Google. Not just on the first page, but in the #1 position. And, I have been in the #1 position on Google for those four key words since December 2007. What would you pay me or your webmaster to get you the #1 position on Google and keep you there since December 2007? That’s the power of blogs.
Blog pages are created from HTML code, but the interface is incredibly easy to use. It’s as easy as creating a word document. A blog page template can look exactly the same as an HTML Web page, except it can actually have more features (widgets & plug-ins), than does standard HTML. My 101 page website was HTML that I first built in 1994 and I continually added on to it. When I saw the power of the blog from an SEO perspective, the next morning I formatted my server. I actually erased 100% of my website and I recreated it, the entire website, using blog software (WordPress). Now anytime I add a page, anytime I make a change to a page, Google indexes me in 30 minutes with priority preference. Does that have any value to you?
Now, I’m not recommending that you go out and erase your corporate Web pages, but I am certainly telling you to add a blog to your Web site and start blogging. Blogs are powerful.
Lon Safko is the co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies For Business Success. He is also an innovator and professional speaker with over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering, speaking, training, writing, and e-commerce. He is the founder of eight successful companies, including Paper Models, Inc.
Click here for your free Fast Company The Social Media Bible Ten Commandment Ball. Just print, cut, glue, and be inspired!
Twitter is one application of a broader category called microblogging. You've seen it on The View, you've watched it creep into night time dramas, you've heard it in the news, you've seen Larry King take on Ashton Kutcher with their one million follower challenge. Ashton Kutcher got over one million followers and beat Larry King / CNN. Ashton had 1,230,000+ and CNN had 980,000+ where the match actually bought malaria nets for children in Africa. Isn't this a great application of social media; helping kids?
Then of course, that led to the Ding-Dong Ditch where Ashton Kutcher "punked" Ted Turner the owner of CNN. If you're not familiar with the Ding-Dong Ditch; you ring someone's doorbell, then when answered, you begin throwing Ding-Dongs, literally. CNN lost, so they bombed his house with Ding-Dongs. I learned that even Demi was Ding Donging with the rest of them.
Back to discussing Twitter though. Twitter is text messaging on steroids. Recently, I was in Atlanta presenting to Jerry McGuire's clients (Leigh Steinberg), and there were more Super Bowl rings in the room than I had ever seen before. I made the same statement and this crowd went dead. Steroids...not a good thing; the marketing moral is, know your audience.
On Twitter, you voluntarily select to receive text messages from people that you respect so you "follow" them. People who respect you receive your text messages or "follow" you. Anytime you get an inspiration or something intelligent to say, send out a Tweet. When others have something intelligent to share (and sometimes not so intelligent) they Tweet it and you see it. This way you're instantly informed. That's all there is to it.
At my most recent conference, we had a Twitter Roll on a separate screen at the front stage. It was a laptop connected to the Internet that simply received any text messages sent via Twitter that mentioned the conference. That way anytime someone in the audience had something to say about what was being presented or any questions, I could address them immediately in real-time. A phenomenon I recognized for the first time, was we had as many questions from the conference audience on the screen as we had from people from around the world, not at the conference. I'd answer their questions and people would Tweet my answers back out to the Twittersphere.
Everyone keeps asking me about Twitter metrics; how can you make money using Twitter. Whether it's Twitter or any other social network, it takes time to build your trusted network, but when you do, they're there for you. Here's one case study that makes it easy to see the ROI. If you haven't already seen Gary Vaynerchuk, you have to go and look at some of his videos. Gary has produced nearly 700 videos about wine. He's a Jersey boy. He took over his dad's wine distributorship, which had annual revenues at about $5M. He started using Twitter and creating short, self produced videos about wine and within 36 months built his company to $50M. And recently, he signed a $1M contract to write a series of ten books on social media marketing. That's the power of this genre. Click here to listen to my conversation with Gary V: http://www.thesocialmediabible.com/2009/02/27/gary-vaynerchuk/
In December, Gary wanted to understand the value of his twitter relationships. He wanted to specifically compare conventional marketing that we are all comfortable with, with this new Tweet stuff. He started by creating three different codes that when entered on his wine Web site would give the customer free shipping on their next wine order. This discount would range from $9 on one bottle of wine to $49 on a case of wine. He then created a direct mail piece, which offered one of the codes. He did a billboard on one of the local highways with its own code and then he sent out a text message (a Tweet) on Twitter with the third code. Here are the results.
The direct mail piece cost him $15,000 to produce and mail. We've all been there; $15,000 is a reasonable cost for a decent direct mail campaign. This conventional marketing technique acquired Gary 200 new customers. He got 200 new customers for $15,000 using direct mail. The ROI or Cost Of Customer Acquisition was $15,000 divided by 200 or $75 per new customer. His billboard cost him $7,500 and he generated 300 new customers. His ROI or CCA here was $7,500 divided by 300 customers or $25 per new customer.
His one free text message, a Tweet using Twitter, brought in 1,800 new customers. This marketing was 100% free. What was the ROI here; $0 divided by 1,800 customers or infinity. That's the power of Twitter. That's the power of social networks. That's why this stuff is so important. People follow you, people trust you. They'll listen to you when you have something to say.
Lon Safko is the co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies For Business Success. He is also an innovator and professional speaker with over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering, speaking, training, writing, and e-commerce. He is the founder of eight successful companies, including Paper Models, Inc.
Click here for your free Fast Company The Social Media Bible Ten Commandment Ball. Just print, cut, glue, and be inspired!
Social networks, there's a lot of them out there and you're being invited to participate in new ones every day. There's MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn. There's eCademy, Plaxo, Ning, Bebo, Friendster. Jaiku, Orkut, Tumblr, and moore than I can mention here. The question is, which ones do you use? Which ones are the most important? It depends on who your demographic is and what's in you strategic social media plan. Start with MySpace, FaceBook, and LinkedIn.
Let's look at some of the numbers for the more popular social network sites. Facebook has more than 150 million members with more than 80 billion page views each month. Facebook is represented in 170 countries & territories, every continent, even Antarctica, and is available in 35 different languages. More than 1 in 5 people who access the Internet visit Facebook. If Facebook were it's own country, it would be the eighth most populated country in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia, & Nigeria. Just put that in perspective for a second. And, it's not just kids, the average age in Facebook is 27 years old and that number is rising. Now, why is all that so important? As a marketing person, as a sales person, as a person who's responsible for the growth of his companies--if there's some place where I can have access to 150 million people and I may have something in common with them, I want to be there.
MySpace, on the other hand, has more than 76 million users in the U.S. and 120 million people worldwide with an average age of 26 years old. 88.1% of its members are between 18 and 55 years old and the 35 to 54 year old demographic is at 32%. It's no longer just teenagers using MySpace. I had a conversation with Angela Courtin, the Senior Vice President of Marketing Entertainment & Content For MySpace and she explained that MySpace is different things to different people. Angela clarified the misconception about MySpace being just for teenagers. Angela told me that 85% of MySpace users are over the age of 18 and that 40% of all moms online, are on MySpace. Angela explained how MySpace and Disney teamed up to launch High School Musical 3, engaged more than 4,000 schools and had an opening day box office of over $40 million. She also shared how small businesses are benefiting from MySpace MyAds and where one small business increased its revenues by 200%! Click here to listen to that audio interview: http://www.thesocialmediabible.com/2009/02/27/angela-courtin/
And finally, LinkedIn is used as a professional directory and has more than 27 million users with an average household income over $110,000. The gender distribution weighs heavily toward males at 65% and 35% Female with an average age of 41 years old. When I spoke with Krista Canfield, Public Relations Manager for LinkedIn she told me about the many ways people are connecting with other professionals using LinkedIn. She explained about the not so obvious applications of LinkedIn and how a company was actually acquired by the Weather Channel. Click here to listen to this audio interview: http://www.thesocialmediabible.com/2009/03/03/krista-canfield/
When you think of participating in any social network, you have to look at it as if you are at a party or networking event, an event or party with 150 million people attending. Now, is MySpace the right place for your business? Probably not. Certainly Facebook. I do like FastPitch, which is like a professional directory for your company. And absolutely LinkedIn! You have to be in LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional contact list. More than once, I relied on LinkedIn to make contacts during the research for writing The Social Media Bible. LinkedIn succeeded where all other marketing attempts failed.
You might be thinking, "I don't want to fill out all of those profiles on all of those sites. While it's true that filling out all of those profiles in all of those networking sites can be tedious, having your profiles completed is important. You can use OpenSocial to make it easier. I interviewed Kevin Marks, Technology Advocate, Google - OpenSocial who headed up this incredible multi-corporation, multi-language automated system for propagating information into your new profiles. Kevin explained how OpenSocial is changing the way "trusted networks", work. OpenSocial created a standard ov how personal profiles, data bases, and trusted networks share information while protecting 350 million users from repetition and password fraud. Click here to listen to that audio interview: http://www.thesocialmediabible.com/2009/03/03/kevin-marks/
Have we completely figured out how to best utilize social networks to increase our company's bottom line? Not yet, but we are discovering new ways every day. One thing for sure, if you want to win, you have to be in the game.
Lon Safko is the co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies For Business Success. He is also an innovator and professional speaker with over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering, speaking, training, writing, and e-commerce. He is the founder of eight successful companies, including Paper Models, Inc.
Click here for your free Fast Company The Social Media Bible Ten Commandment Ball. Just print, cut, glue, and be inspired!
During research for writing the The Social Media Bible, I investigated more than 200 social media companies and technologies. This is why most everyone is so overwhelmed by social media. There's just too much of it. I suppose that's why the most common question I get asked is; "Where do you start?"
There's good news, you only need to know about three to get started and be successful. That's all. So get out there, pick a couple, and try them. See, which ones will work for you and just narrow it down. Then when you get good with that, then just simply expand to the next, and to the next. But the key is not to get overwhelmed, because it's really a wide landscape.
I want to give you a couple of take-a ways, some digital technology that you may or may not be aware of, that I use on a daily basis. Remember, social media is about socializing using media.
The first one is AOL-AIM... America-On-Line Instant Messaging. You could also use Skype--Oprah does! One of my companies designs and sells three-dimensional Internet advertising, and my two partners are based out of San Diego while I am in Phoenix. Every morning when I turn on my desktop it automatically logs into my AOL-AIM account. When my partner gets online it simply says he's there. I can instantly type something... and he gets the message, he communicates back with me... and we have real-time text communication going back and forth, all day, as long as we want. And I can do this with 20 people, we can conference, and it's absolutely free. Amazing! I don't have to pick up the phone; I don't have to make long-distance calls.
Maybe texting is a little cumbersome for you. If so, you just simply click a button and you can talk to your computer, assuming you have a built-in microphone. It's just that easy, and in my case, instantly I am actually talking with my partners in San Diego, real time. It's as if I'm on the telephone, all day. I have an open long-distance line; it's called VOIP, voice-over-Internet-protocol (you don't have to know that, just that it works). I'm just talking as if I'm in the same room. Kind of makes my wife nervous from time to time, when I'm all alone in my office and I'm talking to myself. But it's really an effective way to communicate.
Now if you want, you can click the button again and if you have a built-in video camera you can now see the other person. We just did a conference call with somebody in Edinburgh, Scotland, exactly the same way. Absolutely free! Why would you make a long-distance phone call for the rest of your life when you can automatically text, speak or video, 100% free! How often have you read a marketing blog where somebody kept telling you that, "Everything that we are going to share with you is 100% free?"
That's what's so amazing about Social Media! Real time, live video conferencing just with the click of a button, anytime you want, absolutely free!
Another piece of technology I count on is Google Alerts! Go to Google and type "Google Alerts" or got to http://www.google.com/alerts. You do need to have a free Gmail account first. If you don't have a Gmail account, please when you are finished reading this have someone counsel you on why Gmail is a good idea. It's also free! But with a Google Alerts you can set up an alert by typing in any text you want, and anytime, anyplace in the world that the text is mentioned, you get an instant email notification.
Add your name, add your company name, add your products, add your services. Anytime anybody in the world creates a blog or a Webpage, you instantly get notified with an active link. People are going to talk about you and it's not just your schizophrenia talking here. People are going to say things about you. They are going to say good things; they might say something that's not so pleasant. Don't you want to know what that is? Don't you want to participate and be aware of those conversations that are taking place with and without you?
You can, just by setting free Google Alerts. I have one for "Lon Safko", one for "The Social Media Bible", another for "Innovative Thinking". I have an Alert for all of my buzzwords. Anytime somebody writes about it, I go right to the blog, I introduce myself, I comment, and I begin to build a relationship because we have something in common, trusted networks! Networks build trust. Trust builds business.
Lon Safko is the co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies For Business Success. He is also an innovator and professional speaker with over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering, speaking, training, writing, and e-commerce. He is the founder of eight successful companies, including Paper Models, Inc.
Click here for your free Fast Company The Social Media Bible Ten Commandment Ball. Just print, cut, glue, and be inspired!
Everyone asks me, "Now that I'm getting a better idea of what social media is, How do I actually apply it? Where do I start?" Start with these, The Five P's of Social Media. The Five P's are; Profiles, Propagate, Produce, Participate, and Progress.
The first of the Five P's are Profiles. There are basically two types of Profiles, your personal profile or your company profile and a group profile. Personal profiles can be; Lon Safko in LinkedIn, in FaceBook, in MySpace, in Flickr. An example of a group can be Social Media, The Social Media Bible, or Innovative Thinking.
Go fill out and lock in your name, company name, and group names in every social networking site you can think of as soon as possible. If you've got a particular subject matter that you can think of that you or your company is going to participate in, make sure you get that group name so that you can have control over it.
The importance of filling out your profiles right now, is to make sure that you lock in your names under that profile before someone else gets it and precludes you from doing that forever. We're beginning to find cyber squatters. These are people who are going out and taking people's and company's names, claiming ownership and then trying to sell them back to you or your company later.
The second P is Propagate. That means that after you've created your accounts and filled in your profiles in Flickr, PodBean, or YouTube, you need to begin to propagate those accounts. You've got photographs, you've got company photographs, you've got product photographs, service photographs, you've got customer photographs, you've got video and you probably have audio files.
Get out there and get all of your digital files collected and get them uploaded to these websites. If you want to win the game you have to play. You've got to be able to participate by propagating all of these sites. You need to be there when your customers and more importantly, your prospects are there looking for you (or, better yet, your competitors).
The third P is Produce.If you don't have a lot of content, or if you just want to add new content, then create it, produce it! It's really not that hard. Your computer, more than likely, has a built in microphone and free sound editing software (if not, go get Audacity, a free audio recording and editing software). You can create podcasts like I did for my book, The Social Media Bible. The creation of this content is essentially 100% free. For the book, I created 48 audio interviews that if played back-to-back would run for 24 continuous hours. Click here to listen: http://www.thesocialmediabible.com/the-experts/
The best part of all this is there is no associated cost. Just sit down, get familiarized with it, practice it a few times, and start talking. The most important thing is--if you're going to produce video or audio, or even text in a blog format--remembering to include a strong "What's in it for me?" message for the consumer of your information.
For the same reasons that you began reading this, you want to know about how to get started with social media. You want good take-aways in exchange for the time you spend reading this. If you don't come away with good usable suggestions, you won't come back. There has to be a strong, what's in it for me--WII-FM message. Your take away is that you are going to, just by giving me a few minutes of your time, understand how to begin to implement social media.
So make sure that when you're creating your video, or you're creating your audio, or even writing your blog, that there's going to be a strong, "What's in it for me--message" for your customers. Give them a reason to keep watching, listening, or reading your content.
The fourth P is Participate. Participate means that you need to get out and actually participate in other people's content and in their blogs. Begin commenting, but don't just jump in and comment. After speaking with Robert Scoble and Chris Heuer from The Social Media Club, one of the things that kept coming out in all these interviews were, that you can't just jump into the conversation. You need to listen. You need to understand. You need to participate.
It's like going to a party or a networking event. You walk into a party and there are little groups around the room that are all participating in their own conversations. For you to walk up to any group and just say, "Hi, my name is Lon, and I sell and consult..." and interrupt everybody would be completely inappropriate. Proper etiquette would dictate that you walk up to the group, you listen to the conversation for a while, you wait until to you have something of value to add, then you simply add that value by commenting. Whether is at a party, a networking event, or on someone's blog, video sharing site, or on their photograph sharing site, it always works the same.
Participate first, and remember, if you're not participating you're not in the game, and you cannot win.
The fifth and final P is Progress. The old saying goes, "You cannot manage what you don't measure," so be sure you measure and manage your progress. Measuring means, how many views has your video gotten on YouTube? How many downloads were there of your podcast? How many views of your Flickr photographs? How many comments are coming in on your blogs? How many Google Alerts are you getting where other people are linking to or talking about your website?
These are ways that you can manage your progress, but you have to measure it in order to manage it. It's really simple to get out there, and almost all of these tools are absolutely free; like Google Alerts are really valuable! Albert Einstein once defined "insanity" as doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results. That's really true. When you get out there and you're looking at your progress, and which videos are being viewed the most, and which blogs are being linked to the most, it's got to give you an idea of what your customers, your prospects, and your followers are most interested in.
It's really simple. The videos that aren't getting any views, well stop it. The ones that are, simply do more of those. The same thing goes for your blog. If posts aren't getting traffic stop writing those kinds of posts and try something else. So get out there. I want you to complete your profiles, create your groups. Propagate your accounts with good content, produce good meaningful "What's in it for me content," whether it's just a simple photograph, an audio file, or a video. Participate in the conversation. Comment on people's blogs and, of course, measure your progress.
Do these five tasks and you will be on your way to successful social media marketing.
Lon Safko is the co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies For Business Success. He is also an innovator and professional speaker with over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering, speaking, training, writing, and e-commerce. He is the founder of eight successful companies, including Paper Models, Inc.
Click here for your free Fast Company The Social Media Bible Ten Commandment Ball. Just print, cut, glue, and be inspired!
As an author of The Social Media Bible, I am often asked, "What do I need to do engage my company, my products, and myself in social media?" The answer is easy: participate. Get out there and get involved. If you aren't in the game, you can't win. Here's your Ten Commandments or things you need to be doing to get in and win with social media.
Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy).
Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere).
Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them).
Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find).
Thou Shalt Podcast (often).
Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately).
Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs).
Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone).
Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week).
Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)!
Commandments 1. Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy)
Blog. Please. That's the first priority. Set up a blog, a personal blog, a business blog. It's easier than you think. Use an existing blogging site such as Blogger.com or GOingOn.com or install your own branded blogging site right on your own server by using WordPress. And, WordPress is free.
Commandments 2. Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere)
Create your profiles; do it now before someone else takes them. Once they are gone, they are gone forever. That's called cyber squatting. So get out there. Use Open Social to make filling in your profiles as easy as a click of a button.
Commandments 3. Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them)
Upload photographs. You've got them. Don't upload the one with you with a lampshade on your head…counterproductive; but other photographs? Absolutely. Customers want to see and participate. You want to give people a face to go with your company.
Commandments 4. Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find)
Videos. You all have got videos. I don't care whether it's training videos or customer videos, grab your video camera and go interview some of your customers. What's better than seeing your customer's smiley face on your Web site? And it doesn't cost anything.
Commandments 5. Thou Shalt Podcast (often)
Podcast. If you're too cheap to get a camera, use the free audio software that's in your computer. That's what I did. I created 48 audio podcasts. If you take the podcasts I did for my book and played them back-to-back, they run 24 continuous hours of interviews. You can do that. It's free. It just takes time.
Commandments 6. Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately)
Set alerts. People are talking about you. You probably need to know what they are saying and you want to participate.
Commandments 7. Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs)
Comment. Commenting is like going to a cocktail party. You wouldn't walk into a networking event, walk up to a group of people talking, and tell them your name and what you do in your business. That would be rude and unacceptable. Listen first. Read the blogs and add comments. You can be controversial, that's okay. But participate. Get involved.
Commandments 8. Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone)
Get LinkedIn. Put it in your email that you have a LinkedIn account, you have a FaceBook account, and that you have a Twitter account. Make it a part of your heading on your letterhead, because that's how you propagate. That's how you sell it.
Commandments 9. Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week)
Explore social media. Give me thirty minutes a week, that's all I'm asking. Friday morning grab your coffee, lock yourself in your office, and give me thirty minutes. Just Google something. I promise you within the first 30 days you will be excited. You'll be as excited as I am. You will get excited because of the ROI.
Commandments 10. Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)
And the most important commandment is creativity. That's all. It's just creativity and having fun. But you know what, that's what your customers want. They want to see transparency. They want to see authenticity. They want to see you having fun. They want to be able to relate and communicate.
Click here for your free Fast Company The Social Media Bible Ten Commandment Ball. Just print, cut, glue, and be inspired!
Lon Safko is the co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies For Business Success. He is also an innovator and professional speaker with over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering, speaking, training, writing, and e-commerce. He is the founder of eight successful companies, including Paper Models, Inc.
Southwest Airlines has gotten more than one million visitors to its blog. One million visitors? Honestly, who cares what Southwest has to talk about? All I want them to do is get me from city to city, get my bags there, give me some nuts, and leave me alone. But, you know what? One million people cared enough to go and see what they had to say about their airline and comment, participating in their company and their brand.
Here’s another example of the power of blogs: A hotel chain by the name of Marriott. Ol’ Bill, J. W. Marriott’s Chairman; is still running the company. Excuse me for saying this, but he’s one of the old dogs, like me, over 50. And Bill’s a little bit uncomfortable with technology. As a matter of fact, Bill has never turned on a computer in his life. But that doesn’t stop him from writing his blog each week. Bill does it by using a digital recorder. He dictates his blog and gives it to his admin to simply transcribe and post.
If you type in “social media,” that term gets more than 46 million hits (last count), so that’s not what will take you to my page. And if you type in “Quiznos Subway," Fortune 1000 companies, that’s not going to narrow it down either. Don’t use my name, that’s too easy. If you type in ”Social Media Quizno Subway”, I come up #1 in Google. Not just on the first page, but in the #1 position. And, I have been in the #1 position on Google for those four key words since December 2007. What would you pay me or your webmaster to get you the #1 position on Google and keep you there since December 2007? That’s the power of blogs.
On Twitter, you voluntarily select to receive text messages from people that you respect so you "follow" them. People who respect you receive your text messages or "follow" you. Anytime you get an inspiration or something intelligent to say, send out a Tweet. When others have something intelligent to share (and sometimes not so intelligent) they Tweet it and you see it. This way you're instantly informed. That's all there is to it.
Let's look at some of the numbers for the more popular social network sites. Facebook has more than 150 million members with more than 80 billion page views each month. Facebook is represented in 170 countries & territories, every continent, even Antarctica, and is available in 35 different languages. More than 1 in 5 people who access the Internet visit Facebook. If Facebook were it's own country, it would be the eighth most populated country in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia, & Nigeria. Just put that in perspective for a second. And, it's not just kids, the average age in Facebook is 27 years old and that number is rising. Now, why is all that so important? As a marketing person, as a sales person, as a person who's responsible for the growth of his companies--if there's some place where I can have access to 150 million people and I may have something in common with them, I want to be there.
And finally, LinkedIn is used as a professional directory and has more than 27 million users with an average household income over $110,000. The gender distribution weighs heavily toward males at 65% and 35% Female with an average age of 41 years old. When I spoke with Krista Canfield, Public Relations Manager for LinkedIn she told me about the many ways people are connecting with other professionals using LinkedIn. She explained about the not so obvious applications of LinkedIn and how a company was actually acquired by the Weather Channel. Click here to listen to this audio interview:
There's good news, you only need to know about three to get started and be successful. That's all. So get out there, pick a couple, and try them. See, which ones will work for you and just narrow it down. Then when you get good with that, then just simply expand to the next, and to the next. But the key is not to get overwhelmed, because it's really a wide landscape.
Maybe texting is a little cumbersome for you. If so, you just simply click a button and you can talk to your computer, assuming you have a built-in microphone. It's just that easy, and in my case, instantly I am actually talking with my partners in San Diego, real time. It's as if I'm on the telephone, all day. I have an open long-distance line; it's called VOIP, voice-over-Internet-protocol (you don't have to know that, just that it works). I'm just talking as if I'm in the same room. Kind of makes my wife nervous from time to time, when I'm all alone in my office and I'm talking to myself. But it's really an effective way to communicate.
You do need to have a free Gmail account first. If you don't have a Gmail account, please when you are finished reading this have someone counsel you on why Gmail is a good idea. It's also free! But with a Google Alerts you can set up an alert by typing in any text you want, and anytime, anyplace in the world that the text is mentioned, you get an instant email notification.
Go fill out and lock in your name, company name, and group names in every social networking site you can think of as soon as possible. If you've got a particular subject matter that you can think of that you or your company is going to participate in, make sure you get that group name so that you can have control over it.
The third P is Produce.If you don't have a lot of content, or if you just want to add new content, then create it, produce it! It's really not that hard. Your computer, more than likely, has a built in microphone and free sound editing software (if not, go get 
The fourth P is Participate. Participate means that you need to get out and actually participate in other people's content and in their blogs. Begin commenting, but don't just jump in and comment. After speaking with Robert Scoble and Chris Heuer from The Social Media Club, one of the things that kept coming out in all these interviews were, that you can't just jump into the conversation. You need to listen. You need to understand. You need to participate.
These are ways that you can manage your progress, but you have to measure it in order to manage it. It's really simple to get out there, and almost all of these tools are absolutely free; like Google Alerts are really valuable! Albert Einstein once defined "insanity" as doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results. That's really true. When you get out there and you're looking at your progress, and which videos are being viewed the most, and which blogs are being linked to the most, it's got to give you an idea of what your customers, your prospects, and your followers are most interested in.
