Remember when we used to say that “people” are the power behind the social web?   Can we can honestly claim that any more?  The social web has rapidly become just another a mass-marketing channel like TV or magazines, dominated by the mega-brands.

Think about the videos going viral these days.  What was the biggest hit of the year?  The Nike Tiger ad, a bizarre production certainly aimed at the viral potential of the Internet more than any paid TV opportunity. In fact eight of the top 10 most-viewed You Tube videos of 2009 were professionally-produced:

1. Evian roller babies (see above to view)
2. New Moon movie trailer
3. Wedding entrance dance
4. David after dentist
5. Britain’s Got Talent – Susan Boyle
6. through 10 – professional music videos

1. Texas Hold ‘em Poker
2. Mafia Wars
3. Michael Jackson
4. Barack Obama
5. Vin Diesel (Vin Diesel???)
6. Starbucks
7. Lady Gaga
8. Twilight
9. Coca-Cola
10. Skittles

Jay Baer is one of the few bloggers I’ve found who consistently provides business-based, practical marketing advice.  I usually agree with him.  But he made a reference to social media marketing on a post this week that struck me as odd:

“… unlike every other marketing tool for the past 200 years, it’s a meritocracy, and that benefits us all.”

I’m only picking on Jay because this is the most recent iteration of a theme I’ve observed countless times — the opinion that somehow the social web is in a special new category where you actually have to EARN the trust of your customers.  Another variation is that the social web has “changed everything” about business and marketing.

No, it hasn’t.

The free market economy has ALWAYS been a meritocracy and always will be. If you don’t provide a quality product or service and you don’t represent it in an honest and compelling way, you won’t earn your way into the hearts and wallets of the world’s consumers.

Pre-social media, pre-Internet, even pre-mass communications, the fundamental tenet of marketing was this: Establish a brand promise based on consumer trust and never, ever break that trust. The concept is simple, the execution is extremely difficult.

Marketing is a continuous war to promote and protect your brand, whether it is a company, hospital, university, sports team or individual.  Social media offers an exciting new way to connect, but the marketing fundamentals are truly still the same.

The social web is just a new battlefield, not a new war.

How is the social web affecting your battle plan?

The Economist is one of my favorite magazines. I usually read it cover to cover. So imagine my excitement when I saw their special report this week, Social Networking: A World of Connections.

After I read the report, I concluded — to my surprise — that there was really not much new in the report. This is not a negative reflection on The Economist. I believe it’s a positive reflection on the efficiency of Twitter to stream the most important news and trends my way before they get summarized by a business periodical.

Nevertheless, there were a few interesting nuggets I wanted to pass along:

>>Follow me on Twitter signs are appearing on the doors and windows of small businesses around the world. Asurvey found that 17 percent of Britain’s small businesses were using Twitter. They saved an average of $8,000 a year by cutting out other forms of advertising.

>>  A survey of 1,400 chief information officers conducted last year by Robert Half Technology, a recruitment firm, found that only 10 percent of them gave employees full access to social media networksduring the day, and that many were blocking Facebook and Twitter altogether. The  executives’  biggest  concern was that social networking would lead to “social not-working.”  Some bosses also fretted that the sites would be used to leak sensitive corporate information.

>> An astonishing amount of time is being wasted on investigating the amount of time being wasted on social networks.  One study estimated that personal use of social networks during the working day was costing the British economy almost $2.3 billion a year in lost productivity. Another concluded that if companies banned employees from using Facebook while at work, their productivity would improve by 1.5%.

>> The magazine described Facebook’s “hacker culture.”  Their head of engineering’s motto is “move fast and break stuff.”  What matters is getting fresh products out to users quickly, even if they do not always work as intended. To generate new  ideas, they hold all-night hack-a-thons to at which engineers work on their pet projects. This Red Bull culture maybe why Facebook has just one engineer for every 1.2 million users.

>> Survey of 300,000 Twitters users showed more than half tweeted less than once every 74 days and 10 percent of all users account for 90 percent of all tweets.

>> Facebook’s audience is bigger than any TV network that has ever existed on  the  face  of  the  earth.

>>In Asia several social media companies such as Japan’s GREE, South Korea’s Cyworld and China’s Tencent, are already making healthy profits from sales of games, premium personalization options, virtual goods, and custom backgrounds.

>>Salesforce.com predicts that demand for corporate internal social networking services will riseas managers realize that they now know more about strangers on Twitter and Facebook than they do about the people in their own companies.

>>Intel estimates it has saved millions of dollars a year in fees by recruiting senior managers through LinkedIn rather  than using headhunters. US Cellular said it saved more than $1 mm last year by using a LinkedIn system that produced good candidates faster than traditional recruitment channels.

>> Social networks have made the labor market more transparentin another way too. A survey by CareerBuilder.com of  2,700 executives last year found that 45 percent of them looked at job candidates’ social network pages as part of their research, and more than a third of those had unearthed information that put them out of contention. Time to turn up those privacy settings?

Some interesting stuff!  Of these facts and trends, which jumps out for you as having an impact on the way you do business?

Illustrations: Part of The Economist report.

This headline is just a bit ridiculous, of course!   But I did want to make a point that social media works in amazing and unanticipated ways.  This week, I’m featuring personal case studies to show how the social web can provide legitimate business benefits, sometimes when you least expect it!

The first example is about how I became the Chief  Marketing Officer of Freesource … without ever meeting my new boss.   

About a year ago I saw notice on a LinkedIn Group that the American Marketing Association was offering a webinar on using the social web to make your business more efficient.  The presenter was a guy named Nathan Egan, a former LinkedIn exec who had just started a company called Freesource.  The price was right — free — so I attended.  Nathan seemed like a bright guy and at the end of the webinar, he invited the participants to follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn, so I did.

Getting on the radar

Through Twitter, I appeared on Nathan’s radar and he began reading my blog.  The topics I wrote about resonated with him, and, like many readers of {grow}, one day he called me to talk through some of his business problems. We continued to support each other and toss ideas around over a period of months.

Nathan assembled a great team and Freesource grew quickly as businesses sought the company’s advice on using the social web to make their businesses more productive and efficient.  As the client base grew, he needed a wide variety of resources to support projects, and, since I can do a wide variety of things, I seemed to fit the bill!  Nathan began sending me paid assignments to fill in the many white spaces of a start-up company.

I loved the work because our views on business and marketing were aligned and I absolutely bought into his vision of how the new media could work for a corporation. As Nathan’s trust in me grew, he provided more important, strategic assignments.

Freesource quickly became one of the largest and most respected social media marketing agencies in the country.  Nathan no longer had time to work on the critical marketing functions of his company and asked me if I could help.  I recently agreed to become CMO on a part-time basis and help him through this exciting growth phase.

The success formula

This is a good time to reflect on that important formula I introduced a few months ago:

Connections + Meaningful content + Authentic helpfulness = Business benefits

How this worked in the real world:

• I was active on LinkedIn and established relevant new business connections.
• By providing meaningful content through Twitter, I appeared on Nathan’s radar screen. Ideas from my blog grabbed his attention.
• We offered authentic helpfulness to each other without regard of any future “pay-back.”  This built trust and a dialogue that led to a mutually-beneficial business partnership.

The more I’ve studied success stories in the social media space, the more I am convinced that this formula really does work.  This week, I’ll share a couple other examples to show how.

How does this fit with your own experiences on the social web?

This is part of a series on the unexpected business benefits of the social web. You might enjoy these other articles:

Part 2: On Twitter, even casual tweets can create business benefits

Part 3: LinkedIn: A goldmine of business opportunity

Zappos* is a successful company with a well-publicized, aggressive employee use of social media.  In fact, it may be the most famous social media model in all of blogdom. They have 13 blogs, 50,000 videos and their employees tweet like rabbits in heat.  It’s worked for them and it’s a wonderful case study. I get it.  But it’s probably the wrong model for most companies.   

And here’s the point where the waves of Zappo-sniffing social media purists come crashing down on me.  So be it.  This is dangerous stuff. 

It is relatively safe to blog and tweet about shoes.  But in many companies, the risk of an all-employee social media free love policy will far outweigh the benefits.  For many important companies all it will take is one Twitter-induced SEC violation, a leak of vital competitive information, or a national defense breach, and the hammer will come down on the use of social media forever. Policies are usually made to deal with the lowest common denominator.

Is this a leadership issue? Not necessarily. There are irresponsible people everywhere.  There are disgruntled employees even in the best-managed companies.   Where corruption can occur it will occur. Welcome to the human race.

So what’s the answer?

Under the following conditions, the Zappos model might be ideal:

• Company culture supports employee engagement
• Company leadership understands the model
• Customer base is active on the social web in a meaningful way
• Benefits outweigh risk of security breach

If just one of these conditions are not met, the free love policy cannot work. 

That’s not to say that social media won’t work in some form with almost any company if there is appropriate training, role clarity, effective policy and boundaries. But you have to fit the tactics to the strategy — and the culture — just like any initiative. 

A marketing leader has to make effective decisions based on what IS, not on what you WISH for. You can’t “will” a social media effort to work in your company just because it worked in the Zappos corporate culture.

For an excellent and thorough perspective on the need for effective and appropriate corporate social media policies, I recommend Kent Huffman’s recent post on the subject.

OK, your turn. Let ‘er rip!

*If you are unfamiliar with the Zappos social media model, Jeff Bullas has written wonderful case studies on this company:

• How Does Social Media Help Deliver On Zappos’s 10 Core Company Values

• Why Would Your Company Need 13 Blogs?

• Revelations On How An Online Retailer Went From Zero to $1.2 Billion

• 6 Ways Zappos Uses Twitter To Increase Sales

I’ve spent a lot of time studying social media “listening tools” and found this site via Sidney Eve Matrix (follow!).  This slide deck by Stefan Betzhold (follow!) compares both free and paid options and I found it very useful. 

The idea of monitoring and measuring is crucial to social media marketing, whether for a company or your own personal brand.  It is also the most dynamic and exciting area of marketing right now. If you haven’t put together a personal “listening” platform, this side deck is a good place to start!  Click and enjoy!

This is also a good example of effectively using Slideshare to promote a concept and a company.  Do you have slide presentations suitable to share with the world? Why not get a little extra “oomph” out of your effort by posting on Slideshare?

If I leave a conference with a few “kernels of truth” I can gnaw on and think about, I consider the time well-spent. Here are a few nuggets I picked up at the Social Fresh conference held in Nashville this week.

“Movements make their audience feel like rockstars.”
To me, the highlight of the conference was a talk by Geno Church. Geno, of Brains on Fire, is an engaging speaker and discussed the distinction between marketing plans and a cultural movement. The most amazing case study of the day was work he had done for Fiskars Scissors (I guess you could call it cutting-edge). By enlisting scrap-book enthusiasts (The Fiska-teers) to contribute as bloggers, they created an army of passionate Fiskar users. If you can make scissors exciting, this guy can market about anything!

“People fill information voids with rumors. Your strategy is simple. Don’t allow information voids.”
Another super-bright guy I met was Dan Zarrella. Dan spends his time poring over Twitter statistics to determine the secret sauce that makes something go viral. He applied evolutionary theory, mathematical principles and psychology to his study.  A few Twitter items that people pay attention to:

• Warnings
• “Social proof” as evidenced by large numbers of tweets
• Bigger, bolder, louder statements
• Tweets with “you”
• Tweets that are personalized
• Tweets that occur later in the week

“The biggest failure in social media marketing is not doing anything.”

Paula Berg, who just left her job with Southwest Airlines told some riveting stories about the social web and crisis communications.  Remember when the USAir flight went down in the Hudson and the first news and photos came through Twitter.  USAir did not have a Twitter account … but started one that day!  She also talked about the trust-selling strategy on Twitter, noting that the airline had been on Twitter since 2007 but did not attempt to make a sale through the channel until 2009.  When they did, they set a single-day sales record — only using the social web!

Paula also provided an entertaining case study about a rap-singing flight attendant that became a national phenomenon.

“If you don’t think it’s about BUSINESS your gonna be out of a job!”

This was a refreshing and encouraging statement from Jason Falls, an admitted recovering social media purist. He has distanced himself from the “it’s all about community crowd” and in fact playfully made fun of them.  Nice to see capitalism creep into the social conversation.

Illustration: Christian Science Monitor

I’d like to start with an excerpt from a a recent Gregg Morris post. This is an email from one of his associates, expressing frustration at an inability to convince small businesses to engage in social media marketing:

Social networking is making zero inroads into any of the businesses (SMBs) we have visited and interest in “mining” those networks is similarly zero.  It’s not that they are rejected as future possibilities, but rather that SMBs haven’t time for it, since they sense the costs far exceed the benefits … The facts are the facts – SMBs are still the same as they always were: overworked, scratching for dollars, but now fighting even harder for market share. They are competing not just with local competition but also with online, distant suppliers and, of course, big box retailers.

To the point: Joe average – architect, restaurant owner, retail store – are not stupid, nor are they unaware of the need to handle their customers better. All I see … is the same, stupid Social CRM Expert-type of messaging. A bunch of esoteric bullshit skimming the surface of the problem, with no real solution offered. Everywhere I look, they all say the same thing: “You have to communicate with your customer…”, “you need to serve your customer…”, “you need to do this, that or the other…”. Lots of “you needs”, but few “here’s exactly how”

This little rant hit a chord for me because I teach a social media marketing class for small businesses and I constantly hear these same concerns.

There is a business cultural gap that is keeping many SMB’s from working this channel: Typical SMB ”advertising” is a hand-off. All the work is done by an ad agency and/or the advertising sales people.  There is little personal time expenditure and the cost/benefit is usually easily measurable. Not so with social media marketing.  There is more hands-on doing and the results may not be immediate.

When I consult with small businesses, I recognize that for many, the time commitments and demands of maintaining a consistent, effective presence seems overwhelming so I help them cut through the hype and FOCUS.  I encourage them to consider five very practical questions:

1) Do I know enough about social media marketing to make the right decision for my business?  Not knowing the possibilities would be the same disadvantage as operating a business without knowing such a thing as television advertising existed.

2) What is mybusiness strategy and how could a social toolkit align with my key initiatives?

3) Are my customers using the social web?

4) Are my competitors using this channel, and what are the competitive implications if I decide to participate or not?  Could I create advantage by being an early adopter?

5) Do I have the resources, or can I acquire the resources, to conduct limited, focused experiments to see if working through the social web can provide a cost-benefit exceeding traditional advertising?

After my students walk through these questions, they usually conclude a) yes, this is something with a lot of potential and b) there are practical and manageable methods to approach this if I stay committed and focused.

Does this make sense to you?  What is your experience with SMB’s and the social web right now?

{grow} community alert: Pete Mosely, a frequent contributor to {grow} has a new eBook out on promotion fundamentals which is a nice companion piece to this blog article.

 The mysterious, mean-spirited, self-proclaimed “strumpette” Amanda Chapel is the most divisive personality in the social media movement.  She relentlessly shoots poison darts at nearly every voice of authority on the social web.  It’s typical for her to characterize many of her A-List blogger targets as:

• “Baby babble”
• “Full-on non-stop shameless surreptitious sleaze”
• “The cacophony of dopes”
• “Sacs de douche”
• “Self-important fatuous boobs”

… and worse. But her commentary can also be positively brilliant, insightful, and hilarious.  There is no humor so sublime as pomposity pricked. 

All this venom sometimes leaves me wondering if she’s a just a pesky mosquito annoying everyone at the social media picnic or if she is having a meaningful impact on the evolution of the social web.  Does Amanda Chapel even really exist?  Does she matter?

I decided to ask her these questions myself.  Here is my interview with Amanda Chapel, which was conducted last week via email (I added the hyperlinks):

MWS: You are one of the most reviled personalities on the blogosphere. Why are you so mean?

AC: Actually, that’s two separate questions.  With regard to “reviled,” I am/we are anti the general Web2 Cluetrain commie crap.  We poke at the movement’s weakest links.  We show their Golden Calves for what they actually are, i.e. self-serving buffoons.  That said, we also take no prisoners.  As such, we lay claim to, and inspire, the inverse of the movement’s immature passions … as does anyone who thinks critically … as does any skeptic who refutes a bogus pseudo religion.

As to “mean,” I am cutting.  Satire and mockery are biting at their best.  Poignant is poignant.  It’s smart and often cuts through the clutter.  I also believe that the “David Letterman Beat It To Death School of Comedy” is VERY effective and resonates.

MWS: So you refer to yourself as “we.”  This begs the question, are you real?  Are you even a woman?

AC: The identity issue is so old and tedious frankly.  It’s been asked and answered SOOOO many times.  Sadly, it keeps coming up because the nature of the SMedia crowd tends to be literal minded. Brian’s interviews with Bill were pretty explicit.*

“We” means a group represented by a single brand.  Asked and answered.

All to say, you can call me Amanda Chapel.  That’s what we are.

MWS: One of your biggest criticisms is that many of the A-List bloggers don’t have the business experience or credentials to have a voice of authority in this space.  Why are you different?  Why should we listen to you?

AC: I’m not selling anything.  I’m questioning.  Those two things are NOT on equal footing.  “Doubt” is not about credentials, per se; it is about the strength of the argument.  That said, we stand on what already exists.  The core of our system/Union is NOT enthusiasm; it’s rationalism.

MWS: What is pissing you off the most these days?

AC:  Most?  That’d be Liz Strauss, Brian Solis, and Deepak Chopra.   Ironically, as more light has been shed on the ethereal emptiness of the movement, its “evangelists” have gotten bolder and strident.  They’ve become irrepressible caricature.  It’s like watching amateur Benny Hinns whistle on the way to the bank, having only increased their flocks after being busted on 60 Minutes.  Arrrgh.

MWS: You have been one of the most visible voices of dissent for several years.  Have you made a difference?

AC:  Many say I have made a significant difference.  Frankly, I’m not so sure.  I think I’m more of a catalyst than a direct agent for change.  Our outrageousness with Strumpette,** etc. made it safe for critical thinkers like you, Bill Sledzik,  Sean Williams,  Joel Postman,  Ike Pigott, et al. to occupy the middle.

MWS: Do you have plans to ever shed the Amanda Chapel character or are you in it for the long-haul?

AC:  I think the character is only good as long as our argument is relevant.  Let’s put it this way: most of the failure of Cluetrain, etc. is pretty basic.  But it is a bubble that sadly continues to grow.  However, the FTC, Congress and business are waking up.  I’m certain when the bubble breaks a new canvas will present itself.  I’m pretty excited about that actually.  It’s long overdue.

MWS: So far I have not been the target of your fury.  What would I have to do to have you take a crack at me?

AC:  We’ve seen you slip on occasion.  But that’s rare.  To REALLY get our attention, I’d think you’d have to have had a serious head injury.

______________________________________________________

The title of this post is “Does Amanda Chapel Matter?” so I’ll offer an opinion. 

One of the most disturbing aspects of power and the social web is the herd mentality.  You’ve seen it.  If Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki or Jeremiah Oywang burps, it is tweeted 900 times.  That burp gets repeated and codified by other bloggers and soon, it becomes a marketing tenet, a “rule” for social media marketing.  That’s called “group think” and it is DANGEROUS.  Maybe we should call it “burp think.”

It is difficult to have an impactful, dissenting voice in this arena.  It’s like yelling for the opposing team at a home Steeler game – You won’t be heard and you’ll probably be squashed.  

But Amanda gets through.  She often pisses me off.  She’s shrill, offensive and sometimes even flat-out wrong … but her message GETS THROUGH.  We need that dissent. Even her detractors should admit we need it.  Some of the most important and effective dissenters in history have been anonymous “characters” and maybe that’s what we need to rise above social media’s sycophantic mind muck — a voice who doesn’t play nicey-nice all the time.

I think Amanda matters.   What about you?

* This refers to a 2008 series of interviews of Brian Connolly by Bill Sledzik.  In this interview, Connolly disclosed that the idea for the Amanda Chapel character started while his friends were watching a basketball game. The idea for the “blog of naked PR” was born, complete with an Amanda Chapel backstory. Between 4-7 people have sustained the Chapel character and signed a non-disclosure agreement. “Amanda” would not disclose the identity of the person or persons who answered these questions.

**Strumpette was the Amanda Chapel blog which was discontinued in 2008. 

A while back I wrote an article about the fortress-like tendencies of the A-List bloggers and the sycophants who follow them. I compared it to an exclusive country club.

But as I’ve reached a wider audience and gained more experience on the social web, I’m learning that some of the online behaviors deserve even less credit than that.   A couple of anecdotes:

• Last month I met with a high-profile blogger/speaker who said he had been “black-balled” by those following Chris Brogan (not Chris himself) because of disagreements he lodged with the uber-blogger.
• Another top blogger told me conference speaking invitations had dried up since he criticized fellow A-list bloggers
• I recently politely disagreed with a number of high-profile folks … who promptly “unfollowed” me on Twitter
• One follower implied I was chauvinistic because I had more men than women on one Follow Friday tweet
• A nasty and unprofessional online fight recently erupted between East Coast and West Coast factions over the issue of social media credentialing.
• Recently, a well-known social media pundit named me as one their favorite bloggers.  One of my followers said she now had a “moral dilemma” of whether to follow me or not because she did not like the other blogger. 

Pardon me folks, but doesn’t this sound a lot like high school?  Or worse.

The petty politics of every day relationships are exacerbated on the social web because we are making very limited assessments of people based on their written words. People seem quicker to judge, and harsher in their reactions without thinking about the real live human beings behind those little icons.  I’ve been guilty too.

In the end, I can only be accountable for myself.  The social web mantra of  “authenticity” and “transparency” is a load of crap.  Nobody is truly authentic. Nobody is truly transparent.  Nor should you be!  However, there is an urgent need for civility, tolerance and honesty in this space.  I’ll try my best to walk the talk in those areas and if this makes any sense to you, maybe we can support each other and make the change together. 

Thanks for hanging in there through the rant.  You may now return to your social media high school home room, wherever that may be.  : )

Community alert: Sean Williams, a regular contributor to {grow}, pointed out this timely WSJ op-ed piece  on the subject of social web civility. Which was a civil thing to do.