The Dog & Pony Show is Over

Cluetrain Rule #16: Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

Unfortunately, at least in my experience this is a rule that many marketers often break. It goes against everything we've learned in school - we've been trained to spin, position and drop plenty of buzzwords. Now it's time to unlearn these skills. I know it's easier said than done but if you're looking for ways to hint to your marketers that this no longer works and you think little humor will work try sending them this IBM video:

Web 2.0 Makes a Good Service Great

Great example of why encouraging communications between users can increase the value they get from the experience of using your service. More than a “customer review” section as on a product site like Amazon, Orbitz’ new service encourages users not only to review travel services that Orbitz represent, but also to provide real time contextual information that could make the job of planning a good trip a lot easier. If you’re looking to stay in a hotel in NY next to the show you’re going to see, you may care less about the quality of the hotel and maybe more about the proximity to the theatre. Context is everything and being able to communicate with real people about their experience might be more valuable than anything else Orbitz offers.

This is not necessarily new thinking, the authors of Cluetrain captured it pretty well

• Rule #8: In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
• Rule #9: These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
• Rule #10: As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
• Rule #11: People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

Why Marketers Should Leverage Facebook

The American Chronicle gives us eight reasons and although I agree with Scott that that the viral nature of Facebook should be further down on the list of compelling reasons to use Facebook I do think the list hits the main points:

1. The very nature of Facebook is viral.
2. Facebook is the ultimate in social presence marketing.
3. Your target market tells you exactly what it wants, and they’re easy to find.
4. Over half of the people using it, use it daily.
5. Better, stronger online connections.
6. Hard core marketing is out of vogue and declining in effectiveness.
7. Your clients — and your competition’s clients — may already be on Facebook.
8. Facebook friends are willing to continue the conversation.

First on the list should be what they are calling "social presence marketing" which isn't even in Wikipedia but is defined in the article as, "the activity of promoting by participating in the pre-existing conversation around your target market, in a way that enhances and uplifts the dialogue, rather than intruding upon it."

This is what social media is really about - being social and joining the conversation. In some ways this has brought us back to a time when the marketplace was a gathering of local villagers who would all talk with each other and share their experiences. Now that same interaction is enabled in an online marketplace – the benefit to marketers is the ability to communicate directly with our customers. But it also means we can't hide behind corporate speak and those who try will suffer. As the sixteenth rule from The Cluetrain Manifesto, the original Bible of Social Marketing, states: "companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone"

Dell Breaks the Social Media Laws (Cluetrain Laws #53-55)

A blog post at NewsBlog on CNET by Declan McCullough this morning told an all too familiar story that highlights a common transgression in a Marketing 2.0 world. A former Dell Sales Manager posted on his blog at Consumerist.com with tips on how to buy from Dell. Dell responded aggressively with a legal threat asking that it be taken down because it included confidential, blah blah blah. Well . . . that went over like Google at the eBay party. Here’s a quote from McCullough’s blogpost:

“That legal threat might have worked a decade ago, but not today. The correspondence was Dugg; it was Slashdotted; it was generally dissected and discussed at length by increasingly irate customers (and potential customers) until Dell was forced to turn tail and apologize.

That happened in a "we goofed" post on Saturday by Lionel Menchaca, Dell's digital media manager. He said: "We blew it... Instead of trying to control information that was made public, we should have simply corrected anything that was inaccurate. We didn't do that, and now we're paying for it." (Dell also offers a community forum.)”

I feel like Dell could have avoided all this had they only taken time to really understand the nature of information now that we’ve come up with all these interesting ways of distributing it. Did they really think they were going to put the cap on information once it was in the Social Media Web? You can’t respond faster than a blog post, you can’t shout louder than a forum, and you can’t kill a conversation you didn’t start. Let’s hope others are learning from Dell’s embarrassing example of how NOT to participate in someone else’s conversation.

From Cluetrain:

53. “There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well.”
54. “Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.”
55. “As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.”

Are you voting for Ray Hopewood?

Of course not, he doesn’t exist – he’s a fictional character at the center of a viral marketing campaign that according to SF Gate has “served 45,000 videos in the first couple of weeks, 15,000 page views, and (has stickiness of) 1 minute and 40 seconds (per visit).”

Ray Hopewood may be a fictional character in the real world but in the virtual world he has a profile on MySpace, Facebook, and flickr. He's got his own blog, an ecommerce site, and banner ads on various other sites.

So how much gold is there at the end of the Social Media Marketing rainbow? I think that depends on the execution. My team’s Marketing 2.0 / Social Media Marketing plan is built around these execution strategies:

1. Understand the Rules of the Game – There is no ‘control and command’ when it comes to Social Media Marketing – you need to be willing to let go and trust that your product or service can withstand the truth. As the twelfth rule from The Cluetrain Manifesto, the original Bible of Social Marketing, states: “There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone."
   
2. Exploit Social Networking Sites – Spend time driving traffic to your site or campaign using new media sites. David Wilson has done an interesting study that shows which social sites are likely to provide the highest returns.
   
3. You don’t have to start a conversation to have one – Go where your customers are – Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or wherever it might be. Go there, sign up, connect and start typing. Starting a conversation is a lot more work than jumping into one.
   
4. Don’t forget the Basics – Content is still king. Whatever you have to say make sure it’s worth saying.
   
5. Learn as you go – No risk, no reward. We are all treading in new waters here – don’t be afraid to go out on a limb and see what happens – it worked for Ray!