Courtesy of jbhill via Flickr

Social media – everything from Facebook to Digg to Twitter to Flickr – has been quickly snagging the attention of small business owners and employees of big companies across the world. The business applications for these tools are being explored and many are finding success.

But is this all hype? Are businesses really adopting these tools and, if so, why do they succeed (or fail)?

In this post, I will give you proof that the use of social media in business is expanding rapidly, illustrate what social media offers your customers, and give you some questions so you can determine whether it’s the right strategy for your company.

Social Media: What’s The Big Deal?

Some businesspeople scoff that social media is a passing fad. Thanks to a recent study from The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, we have proof that it’s not. Social media is becoming more familiar – and more applicable to business – to a much wider audience. From the social media in the Inc. 500 study:

“Just over one quarter of the Inc. 500 reported social media was very important to their business/marketing strategy in 2007. That number has increased to 44% just one year later.”

So why the sudden and dramatic increase? I contend that businesses figured out where their customers were congregating online and are learning a new way to communicate with current and potential customers.

Go Where Your Fans Are

In David Meerman Scott’s e-book, The New Rules of Viral Marketing, he tells a story about a business finding its customers online and communicating directly with them (which also turns out to be cheaper and more efficient).

Cindy Gordan, VP of New Media and Marketing Partnerships with Universal Orlando, was tasked with promoting a new Harry Potter theme park. She told only seven people, but those seven people reached 350 million potential customers through social media.

What I find interesting is Gordan’s insistence that she was compelled to use the social media channels and websites where those Harry Potter fans gathered and shared news.

“‘If we hadn’t gone to the fans first, there could have been a backlash,’ Gordan says. She imagined the disappointment dedicated Harry Potter fans might feel if they learned about Universal Orlando’s plans in, say, The New York Times rather than an insider fan site.”

Customers expect you to meet them where they are. In overwhelming and still increasing numbers, they are online and frequently reading blogs, checking in with friends on MySpace or Facebook, and sharing what they find online with their friends.

Sure, customers are online, but must businesses join them?

Talking The Talk

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know that I’m a big believer that businesses must communicate more personally with their customers (note that communication is a two-way street). They don’t want you interrupting them with marketese, but they are willing to have a chat if your product is good and you are polite.

A recent AdWeek article details this shift in conversation and explains who in business can bring about this change.

“Once thought of as an interesting new media channel, social media is increasingly seen as a catalyst for changing how companies operate. It points to a new corporate structure that favors open over closed, dialogue over monologue, and decentralized power over command and control.”

Some people think this new way of doing things is bogus. But as General Eric Shinseki said, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

The AdWeek story gives examples of businesses getting wise to the change though, including Ford, Pepsi, and Intel. The article seems to advocate, as Joseph Jaffe and I have in the past, the idea of a Chief Conversation Officer. It may seem “out there” now, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

On The Other Hand…

I am a true believer in social media for business, but take a long look at your business before jumping in headlong. Focus on strategy rather than cool technology. Consider whether you have the infrastructure to support a social media campaign. Re-read posts on this blog for help with this.

Like Seth Godin says, if your business is selling meatballs, don’t slop ice cream on top. In other words, not all businesses need a social media campaign. Don’t expect to see ball bearing manufacturers on Twitter – their customers aren’t there and it doesn’t fit their business model or strategy.

It’s true that not every company needs to have a Facebook group or share photos over Flickr. But every business needs to be listening. 99% of businesses’ customers are online and many of them are talking about your product. You need to be attuned to what they are saying. Not only can it stave off crises, but researching your audience can only improve your actual product.

Your customers are talking about you. Don’t let the benefits of social media pass you by.

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In this installment of the series, I will cover all of the books, magazine, websites, and podcasts that you need to become an A-List Blogger. These resources will give you the ammo to be the very best in your field. (And if you think this amount of reading, watching, researching, and learning is impossible, visit tomorrow when I will share the secrets of how to carve out at least 10 hours per week to study.)

Marketing has a funny relationship with education, research, and good, ol’ fashioned studying. Maybe it’s because the communicative aspect of marketing comes naturally to us that we forget there’s a lot of hard work that needs to happen, too. In short, you cannot be a good blogger or marketer without studying your craft.

You Can Study Communication?

From David Ogilvy: “This willful refusal to learn the rudiments of the craft is all too common. I cannot think of any other profession which gets by on such a small corpus of knowledge. (page 21)” Sometimes the flashy new tools or the expense accounts or the pursuit of new clients can all distract us from our responsibility to constantly improve our game.

And while the world around is may be shifting from books to blogs, an A-list blogger or marketer perhaps should think in terms of content or research or media, regardless of the medium. Read, watch, and listen to as much as possible, and think critically about whether the message has value.

Help Me Help You Help Me

Of course, I can only speak from my own experience. But I thought it might be helpful to outline the books, blogs, podcasts, and other forms of blogging/marketing research in which I’ve partaken during the last year.

This isn’t meant to come off as boastful. My main goal is to impress upon you the importance of continual professional education, then see you buy or subscribe to these resources and suggest new resources to me.

Books Read

• On Advertising, David Ogilvy – Great to see how much (and how little) has changed over the years
• The Long Tail, Chris Anderson – Required reading, but I just got to it this year
• Join The Conversation, Joseph Jaffe – Again, required reading; may be my favorite book of the year
• Niche Envy, Joseph Turow – A terrible screed against marketers; if you must read it, do so at the library so he doesn’t make any extra cash
• Made To Stick, Chip and Dan Heath – Also a contender for favorite book of the year
• Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin – Not worth the hype, but good for beginners or to brush up
• Blink, Malcolm Gladwell – Not a lot on marketing per se, but a quick read
• The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Rarely have I read a book where the author was so omni-present, and rarely have I found that author so pompous
• Why Beauty Is Truth: A History Of Symmetry, Ian Stewart – Not a lot on marketing, but very interesting for former science fair kids

Websites

Your best bet is to consult the lists in the right column of the blog. Here is a highly subjective list of my favorites:

• First, check out the bloggers in the WordPress Marketing Bloggers Network (WMBN) – this is a new group that I am honored to be a part of (above blogroll on right side)
• Copyblogger – THE copywriting blog
• Marketing.AllTop – Like RSS for people who don’t want to know about RSS
• Drew’s Marketing Minute – Solid marketing advice from the heartland
• Logic+Emotion – Fellow Chicagoan puts us all to shame at the intersections of marketing, design, and UX
• QualityWriter – Phil Dunn spreads the good word(s)
• THINKing – Harry Hoover and team cover marketing, social media, PR, and advertising
• Web Strategy with Jeremiah Owyang – The prolific Forrester researcher would risk overkill if it weren’t all so damn interesting

Magazines

• Fast Company and sometimes sister publication Inc.
• Free B2Bs: Electronic Retailer, Website Magazine, Deliver Magazine (a great offering from the U.S. Post Office!). With the exception of Deliver, B2Bs do not usually feature outstanding content (sorry guys), but the occasional gem makes it worth it
• Even off-topic mags like Good or AdBusters can sometimes produce useful ideas

Podcasts

I’ve listened to more than my share of marketing podcasts and these are the ones I turn to week after week. (Either use the link for more info or search for these names in iTunes.)

• Jaffe Juice by Joseph Jaffe – Simply the best
• Managing the Gray by C.C. Chapman – A little spotty – not surprising considering how much content C.C. produces – but still tops
• Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel – Like a Canadian James Brown, Mitch is the hardest working man in podbusiness
• Media Driving by Jay Moonah – Another Northerly neighbor who just started podcasting but is doing it all right
• Marketing Over Coffee by John Wall and Christopher Penn – Despite sounding a little like the 2 Craigs from the Meth Minute (Channel Frederator podcast), these guys are great too (and their website features time segments marking when they discuss certain topics for easier reference)

Tech

No one is allowed to get by without some understanding of the technology out there. Here are some resources this English major finds helpful:

• WIRED magazine – The best for the layman, the blogger, and the marketer without a doubt
• This Week in Tech (TWiT) – By far the best tech audio podcast, and funny to boot (be sure to catch an episode when both John C. Dvorak and Jason Calacanis are both on)
• Video podcasts: GeekBrief.TV, Webb Alert, CNET videos, and Loaded from CNET (select it from the “tech shows” pull-down menu)

Did you read this far? You deserve a cookie.

What resources did I miss for the up-and-coming blogger/marketer? Are there any sources or mediums I neglected? Please leave a comment with your suggestion.

I hope the items I’ve listed here help you as much as they have helped me. I’m a believer that whenever you stop learnin’, you start atrophyin‘. Here’s to living and learning together!

(Interested in other ways to be an A-list blogger? Try commenting, optimizing for search, and curiosity. And if you like these articles, please use StumbleUpon to recommend them.)

In his 1983 book, On Advertising, master David Ogilvy held forth on the central tenet to sell products:

“You can do homework from now until doomsday, but you will never win fame and fortune unless you also invent big ideas. It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product…Research can’t help you much, because it cannot predict the cumulative value of an idea, and no idea is big unless it will work for thirty years” (emphasis by the author, page 16).

And yet, almost the very same day as I read this from Ogilvy, I find myself almost stunned off the treadmill as new master Seth Godin holds forth on the big idea in the third disk of his audio book, Meatball Sundae:

“There’s a difference between a big idea that comes from a product or service, and a big idea that comes from the world of advertising. The secret of big-time advertising during the 60s and 70s was the big idea…Big ideas in advertising worked great when advertising was in charge. With a limited amount of spectrum and a lot of hungry consumers, the stage was set to put on a show. And the better the show, the bigger the punchline, the more profit could be made. Today, the advertiser’s big idea doesn’t travel very well. Instead, the idea must be embedded into the experience of the product, itself. Once again, what we used to think of as advertising or marketing is pushed deeper into the organization. Yes, there are big ideas. They’re just not advertising-based” (disk 3, minute 48).

Of course, we should probably define a “big idea.” As explained, a big idea is an advertising tool to sell products. It stands the test of time. It originates with the company and is distributed far and wide. It is inextricably linked to the product and the experience of the product.

In my mind, big ideas include cut-out coupons. By-mail Sears catalogs and mail-in rebates. Tony the Tiger and the Trix Rabbit. Toys in cereal boxes that had kids begging Mom to pick that one! (Why cereal innovation is on my mind this morning, I have no idea.) Shopping malls. Radio jingles. Anything that fundamentally affected people’s decision about whether to buy a certain product or not.

So where do I stand?

I side with Ogilvy. The big idea isn’t dead – in fact, it can only be expanded. I don’t see Tony the Tiger disappearing from the hills of Grand Rapids. In fact, I would be disappointed if there wasn’t a new way to interact with Tony. I want his roar as my ringtone. I expect to see him at Club Penguin.

None of this has changed – the ways companies persuade, coax, cajole, argue, and convince us to buy their products – except for Godin’s point about the ideas being provided solely by the company. Of course consumers have more opportunity to interact and suggest to a company and the wise companies listen.

But for Godin to claim that the experience of the product is only now linked to the big idea is folly. Mothers bought a particular type of margarine because of the coupon. We chose Honey Smacks cereal because of the colors, the kinetic energy in the commercials, and the cute, cracked-out frog mascot (again, with the cereal…).

The big idea has always been linked with the experience of the product because the experience has often been more important than the product itself! This is nothing new.

The internet and Web 2.0 only give us more opportunity to riff on that. Big ideas may not have to originate with a company, but they will still likely need to flow from or be enacted by the company. Maybe the new importance in advertising is not creating the big idea, but being wise enough to hear it when it is whispered from the crowd.

The email from Citibank was lame, but for a huge company, not totally surprising. However, the arrival of this email does not necessarily negate that the company is listening. Toward the end of the post, I make that connection and most of the time, it’s true. In this case, however, I don’t think it is responsible to connect one lame email with a company’s entire attitude.

That said, the moral of the post – companies who fail to listen will be overtaken by those that do – still stands. I believe that will only become more apparent as time goes on. -End update

To fail may be human, but for a company to fail at customer service these days may well be disaster.

You may remember when I mentioned a Citibank ad last week in a post about features versus benefits in advertising. Their print ad was spot-on when it spoke about how Citibank fit into their customers’ lives (plus, who can resist a cute puppy?).

Epic Fail

So when I sent them an email noting my complimentary post, I expected at least a quick “thanks!” That’s the response I got from Moosejaw (they even promised to send me some schwag which must have gotten lost in the mail…). So imagine my surprise then almost 48 hours later, they reply with a standard “sorry, we can’t even respond to your email” email.

The email isn’t that important and I don’t expect a pat on the back from a multi-national company. However, the time delay tells me that this was not an auto-generated email – some person sitting at a computer was getting paid to send Citibank customers (or fans!) crappy, say-nothing emails. Which means their customer service representative’s job is to rebuff customers or potential customers.

What It Means To Be Human

Yet, on the same day I received this epic fail, I went to Amazon.com. On the top of the homepage – the very first thing you saw – Amazon was thanking its customers for buying the Kindle, offering special discounts for those who ordered in advance, and relating in a totally human way by showing off the Kindle cake. How different is this response?

Maybe Seth Godin is right (again). About two-thirds through the first disc of the Meatball Sundae audio disc, Godin talks about the difference between companies that sold stuff (meatballs) before the internet and those that grew their business on and through the internet (the sundae). (Incidentally, notice that there are two friendly mentions on the Meatball Sundae Amazon page that tell me the book is available on a Kindle.)

The point of his whole book is that you can’t just use the fun new web tools – blogs, wikis, Facebook, etc. – to sell that same regular stuff. These new tools require a whole new business model. And the reality is that it is really, really difficult to do this if you are in the meatball business.

Sometimes you can learn from failure; hell, sometimes it’s down-right hilarious. But to fail at customer service these days, when it’s as easy and cheap as an email, is ludicrous. Sure, Citibank is the old model, selling meatballs like they have for a hundred years. But it’s time to clean the dust out of your ears and start listening to your customers. Either that or you won’t have to worry about them being customers for much longer.

My problem with Godin was the fact that everything he said sounded like common sense. “You need to learn the new marketing before applying it to a business.” DUH. “Your business might not be right for the new marketing.” SNORE.

Sure, Godin is full of common sense about marketing – he should be! But it didn’t seem that useful to me. (Not that I’m a genius, but I felt his suggestions were awfully apparent if you just paid attention.)

Here’s what I didn’t understand

What I didn’t understand about Seth Godin is the sheer scope of his common sense-iness. Everything that comes out of his mouth is good marketing advice and after listening to his new audiobook Meatball Sundae, I understand that this long form is the way for me to appreciate his work. You see, listening to so much good (common sense) advice illuminates how much crap advice marketers hear every day.

Godin is able to not only create lists of handy ideas, but he’s able to simplify how we do things and why. The real-life stories he tell serve to give a concreteness to his work, like little voices saying, “I told you so.”

Should you read it? It depends.

However, for as good as Godin is, I cannot say that I’d recommend this book or his other work to everyone. His stuff is must-read for marketers, period. But I honestly don’t think individuals in other professions would get anywhere near as much from his books. I just don’t think it translates as well as other marketing-type books.

I recommend books like Made to Stick because readers in all fields will garner something from that information, be they fire-fighters, stock brokers, or professors (I’m lookin’ at you, MMB). While I think non-marketers will be entertained by Godin’s wit and stories, I don’t think they will end up using his advice in their daily lives. And the point of this blog is to emphasize marketing and marketing tactics for ordinary folks.

Sorry Seth, I can’t give it a 100% recommendation. But I’m sure you’ll understand. It’s just common sense.