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What’s really interesting to me about where we are in modern marketing, communications and social media is this:

If you asked the experts what ONE thing to focus on…you’d get dozens of answers.

This is one reason we’re pleased to announce our next big (HUGE) webinar (that we’re doing TWICE), coming up on March 22nd and March 29th (plus you get a copy of our updated e-book).

Social Search Webinar

We don’t want to give away everything – this is a paid webinar and, even though the price is VERY affordable, we HAVE to save some of what we’ll talk about for the day(s) of the event. BUT, in the spirit of whetting your appetite:

1. There is no silver bullet

That’s a given – if there WERE a silver bullet, everyone would have purchased it. (The price of silver would have gone way up, too, supply and demand being what they are.)

But, and back to our point from earlier, there is no one thing experts can agree on when it comes to where to focus. For every one person who says “Google+ is a vast wasteland” there’s someone else who says “it’s from Google, and it allows you to laser-focus on your niche.” And so on, and so forth.

2. Getting Found, Findability, Inbound Marketing, etc., are still vital

Part of the problem here – and we struggle with it, too – is that you could conceivably focus all your time on the SEO basics – and forget why you’re doing it all in the first place.

I know a guy who’s writing a book, and he’s using the traditional publishing route. The opportunity for him is to leverage all of the time he spent as a blogger of note – and turn that into cachet with publishers. And those publishers are sniffing around on the Internet ANYWAY, looking for the next big thing (topic, author, trend) to turn into a publishable book.

SO…this guy has a nice problem to have in that he’s getting found, but he may not be found for the right things for his book project. Hmmm. See the next point:

3. “Integrated” is the word

Content. Convergence. Whatever you want to call it, all this stuff working together is making this the “Integrated” generation. This means you can’t put out a press release and get a billion hits without telling the rest of the company what the heck you’re up to. And so on, and so forth…

So there’s your 1-2-3 sneak peek. Will we see you on the webinar?

Here’s a clever signup button, too. Again, affordable price, tons of value. We’re here to help you get Social and Search for Marketing and Communications just right.

Mistake #5…Ignoring YOUR “Personal Brand”

“Brand.” “Personal Brand.” Gee, which one to put in quotes.

Step one is to remember the following.

Your brand is NOT your logo.

Brand: A series of experiences, of expectations, of behaviors that people associate with your product or service. Or your company. Or YOU.

Your Personal Brand = the series of experiences that people associate with YOU.

When small business owners dive into social media, they start to find people finding them – whether they like it or not, and whether they’re prepared or not.

Your restaurant, your coaching practice, your real estate practice, your dry cleaning business…the list goes on…these things are extensions of you, the business owner. And the sum total of all that stuff you say and do online will be attached to YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS.

BUT, watching your P’s and Q’s – well, that’s what you do anyway with your business. If you think of your online social media marketing time as an extension of what you do at the front of the store (greeting customers, providing excellent customer service, making a great product), you’ll go far.

And so will your personal brand.

Final thoughts…Don’t Be Afraid…To Make Mistakes of Your Own!

One thing is constant – change.

Today’s Twitter is tomorrow’s MySpace.  Or something else. We know that will change over time.

But there’s a constant set of behaviors, on- and off-line, that sets average businesses apart from stellar businesses. That keeps average people from breaking through and becoming huge successes.

Do we have all the answers when it comes to those behaviors? Heck no. And don’t hire someone who says they do.

BUT…

We’ve watched this space evolve – from small business marketing to social media marketing. From the “send out a bunch of emails” world of a few years ago to the “how many followers do you have?” world we’re in now.

Engagement Marketing, Authenticity Marketing, whatever you want to call it…it asks YOU to get involved. To have conversations. To share with others. To build real relationships. To get real.

Go get ‘em!

Photo Credit: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid

It’s an awesome movie. Alec Baldwin’s performance is amazing. Watch this clip, pulled from YouTube, if you haven’t seen it a million times before. (NSFW – that means “Not Suitable For Work.”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI

A wonderful spend of 7 minutes. Baldwin’s character spells out a couple acronyms in his NSFW diatribe, including AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, part of the sales funnel that we think is dead) and the most famous, or infamous, ABC. Always. Be. Closing.

ABC should be replaced, though. As this very 80s clip from a very non-PC workplace will show you…this stuff doesn’t work anymore. Some alternative suggestions:

ABR. “Always Be Recruiting.”

Tech Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist Mark Suster pulled out a can of awesome yesterday in his TechCrunch advice to startups. And that was his point: if you as an A-List Tech Exec are not out searching for more like-minded people at all times, your business will stagnate, you’ll be relegated to the B-List, and you’ll recruit C-List players.

We have seen this time and again – and not just in technology and startups, but in all types of businesses.

The “Turf Warriors” are, IMHO, the worst – their mission is to protect their own empire, and you can see it in the type of people they hire. You may have worked for one before, you may be working for one now. Most of the time, the people they hire are lacking gravitas, or might not have top-notch skills.

Don’t go there with your own business, your own department. If you’re not hiring somebody who is, to borrow Suster’s term, “punching above their weight class,” you need to take another look at your own hiring practices.

Always. Be. Recruiting.

ABL: “Always Be Launching.”

I have been accused of having ADHD – not because I’m all over the map, but because I seem to be working on the next thing all the time.

I don’t have ADHD – I’ve been checked out for that – but I do have an addiction (of sorts) to product launches.

This is borne out of two things. One is necessity – I need to make a living, and having something new to offer clients and prospects helps me do that. Two is constant improvement – I want to see people in my circle (clients, friends, associates, whomever) make more meaningful connections that improve their business.

As a result, I am always launching.

Your next question is “what about failure?”

The beauty of having multiple product lines, service lines, things to offer clients and prospects, is this: some of them will not work. Not all of them are for everyone. But being in constant launch mode leads to more (gasp) innovation – because this thing may not be what they need, but the next thing very well may be.

Always. Be. Launching.

ABY: “Always Be Yourself.”

I have seen some awesome things happen to online friends of late – things that could never happen to me. There’s Erika Napoletano, Redhead Writing, who will be penning for Entrepreneur Magazine. There’s Paige Worthy, whose “Hire Me” page led to a gig with YouSwoop.

These particular things could never happen to me – because, well, I’m not the kind of person who writes in Erika’s style, and my story and Paige’s story are pretty different.

But other things could happen to me. And to you.

You have a voice – read this awesome post from Danny Brown – and your mission is to find that voice. You could be like the woman who digs gaming so much that you do your own web show. (Not the famous one, but a different one. One that’s more, well, you.) You could be the guy whose food truck rocks, or the gal whose jewelry rocks or the rock band that actually does rock.

But you can’t get there if your aspiration is to be somebody else.

We just went through this exercise as part of our launch (natch) of 12 Minute Marketing. We revisited our own mission statement – which keeps evolving, but it’s pretty true to the “voice” that we’ve developed over the past six months of daily blogging, and over the past 4 years of being in business.

To provide training and consulting in new media, digital media and social media that helps business owners and managers to better connect with people and sell more stuff.

Which, I think, is pretty much what we are good at doing over here at HQ.

Always. Be. Yourself.

After the Japan Earthquake last week, just about everyone is asking how they can help.

Our friends at Hellobar stepped in – their tool can be seen on the top of this site, that red bar with the link on it.

Hellobar has been running their own bar with a link to the American Red Cross, and we’ve decided to do the same.

If you want to get your own Hellobar to use on your site, we have a few more invites – you can use it for whatever reason you wish, just visit our FB fan page and “like” us. We’ll get you a beta invite.

Prayers to our Japanese friends, who need just about everything at this time of great need.

What content do you have lying around?

There’s a long-standing phrase in the real estate industry:

The three most important words? Location, Location, Location.

Upshot: bad house, great block better than great house, bad block. Or, near the good schools better than far away. Or…

In advertising, back in the day we’d hear that the three most important words were:

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition.

The Three Most Important Words in New Media Marketing?

Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose.

Content is King. Content you already have on the shelf? The King’s Court. Or a whole bunch of Princes.

Where’s that paper you wrote two years ago? You know, the one you thought would be a good white paper but you weren’t able to do anything with? Should you look it over, see what’s there, share it with your world?

Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose.

That video you did six months ago? The one that was clever, showed your ability to position yourself as a thought leader, led to a few more page views, maybe a couple new contacts?

Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose.

An important thing to realize: it might be new to your audience. It could be old and stale to you, but that’s just because you have seen it a dozen times.

We used to do this as fledgling sportscasters, back in the day. You have to give the same score update every hour for three straight hours in what, for a college student, is a crazy early time of the day. (6 a.m.?) But the people who wake up at 7 and 8 have no clue what happened, and they want you to tell them – and have energy when you do so.

The challenge was to breathe new life into the old story – which can’t be done if you just have a “blow the dust off the old stuff” mentality. So you learned to do that pretty quickly, or you found yourself lower down in the pecking order of fledgling sportscasters.

We are NOT talking about lame “article spinning” programs. Quite the contrary.

Google changes their algorithm all the time, so it’s highly possible that the article spinning program you bought last month will be rendered useless this month.

What we are talking about is either doing more writing yourself to refresh your content, or finding folks you like working with who can write and re-write for you.

In any event, find stuff you have that’s good, and share it again. We’d LOVE to read it.

Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose.

Borrow this artwork if you'd like.

Gah! Lots of craptastic marketing going on, especially those who are selling themselves as the Social Media Rockstars but lack the social proof to back it up.

Social. Proof.

What is it? Well, it is what it sounds like. Take a look at the “Social” universe, any slice of it will do, and look for “Proof” that Mr or Ms Craptastic knows their shit. (Yes, I said it.)

3 Steps to Social Proof

Step 1: Transparency.

I’m going to borrow liberally from Olivier Blanchard’s thank you to Jack Scrib. Great stuff. Here’s a link: In Praise of the A-list.

For us, this sort of runin with the snake oil types ACTUALLY HAPPENED over the period of a week or so, recently. A breakdown:

• I tweeted a link to my discovery of a Pakistani firm called Groupin. (Okay, I tweeted it a couple times, and it was a link to my own blog post. I do that to catch people at different times of the day and in different time zones. It works. So sue me.)
• Late in the afternoon, in the public Twitter stream, up pops a response from someone, let’s call them @JaneAJohnson. (NOTE: When someone has their full name AND a middle initial, I run scared from their Tweets. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, because I have actually BLOCKED all of the tweets from some dude whose company sets up Twitter accounts for people using that setup on every single account.) Jane says “Groupin sounds like they’re similar to these guys.” Link follows. Whaddya know, another Daily Deal site!
• Simple question from me, in response: “Is that a client?”
• Tumbleweeds for four days.
• Finally: “yes, they are, you should follow them.”

No. Es. Bueno.

Further sleuthing uncovered these facts: “Social Media Agency.” “Lots of content that appears to have been written just for search engines.” “No contact people, just phone numbers.”

Total Bullshit. See step two.

Step 2: Authenticity.

Ah, WYSIWYG. Not always the case. F’r instance, if your name rhymes with “Floss,” you’re probably just out there re-purposing stuff from ages ago. Over and over again. And you’re sharing it many many times over on different accounts on different media. Over and over again. And you’re talking about how great you are in the comments.

Yeah, you’re probably a “bot.” Or you have dozens of bots representing you.

We’re all for repurposing here at Area 224 HQ. But, to a point. The authentic you may actually be an Uber-Goober – but give us something new, will ya?

Just because you’re a Social Media Consultant does not mean anything.

If your name DOES rhyme with “Floss,” call me.

Step 3: Engagement.

You can fake this one, right? Sure. Go ahead. Fake it.

Don’t talk to people online after you say stuff inviting their comments. Use your position of power, linkage, mass followers or whatever to broadcast your shit, but not anyone else’s. Fail to share notes of encouragement, don’t retweet anyone or anything that doesn’t mention you.

“But I’m so busy focusing on tweeting for my clients, I don’t have time to tweet for myself!”

Bullshit.

This ain’t about follower numbers, people. I interact with some really really engaging people whose streams are all “@ responses” and whose mission is to interact and engage. And you can normally tell this by looking at their volume of tweets (in the 10,000) – and you can ignore their volume of followers.

I see some damn clever Facebook marketers who ask questions and then….holy crap they watch the comments and actually respond to them?

They write on YOUR wall and, when you say something in response, they keep the dialogue going!

Go ahead. Say it. “Engagement” is just a buzzword. Fine. Put a different wrapper on “having conversations with people.” And then come up with your Social Media Consultancy’s Having Conversations With People Strategy.

Are you the one this is directed toward? Call me. Seriously.

3 Steps. Social. Proof.

Thanks, Dogfish Head

Let’s focus on the good stuff, eh?

Social Media Highlight of the Week? One errant tweet from Red Cross, and one classy follow-up – not just from the Red Cross itself, but the brand mentioned (Dogfish Head) and its community (craft beer folks). Go to the source for this one:

#gettingslizzered For a Good Cause.

NOTE: Red Cross true to its mission. Person in charge said, pretty much, “mistakes happen, and we deal with life-and-death issues all the time. This is not life-and-death.”

Toyota had a Mommy Blogger “incident” that they handled swiftly. You can read the background here, in Shelly Kramer’s excellent summary.

Toyota Buying Mom Bloggers?

NOTE: Brands get ripped on all the time on the web; in this situation, Toyota was well within their rights to go after the team that made it seem like they were authorized, when, in fact, they were not. And Toyota scores serious points for how quickly they moved on this one – setting the record straight in real time.

And a Twitter client called “UberTwitter” got suspended. Twitter took the step of telling us on their support page – but…honestly…the more interesting piece on the Twitter blog was this one:

Join Twitter, Win the World Series.

NOTE: We hope the Cubs start tweeting a ton.

But Act on What?

Make no mistake, every single industry is seeing a cultural shift. Gone are the days when Ye Olde Tyme ways of Marketing, Selling and Promoting your business will be effective.

AND, Realtors are the Absolute Worst.

You may argue that you ARE one of the Realtors who is doing it correctly. Good on ya, mate.

Realtors who use Social Media effectively are in the minority.

In fact, the biggest mistake Realtors are making with Social Media?

The lack of a Personal Niche-Driven Brand.

Here’s what we mean: the typical search for real estate on the part of the buyer goes one of two ways.

Way 1: Drive down street, see For Sale sign. Proceed to Google, iPhone, or some other method of choice to get more information about home. Then make decision on what Realtor to potentially use. Decision based on several factors. Findability and “shelf of the mind” are the top ones.

Way 2: From comfort of own home, using computer, laptop, iPhone, iPad or other device, Google some long-tail search term. “El Paso Texas homes $400,000.” See who pops up. Surf their web presence, decide to use them, or return to beginning and start over.

Do you see either of these equations involving any of the following:

• Vanity URL – 123anytownlane.info?
• Foursquare checkins?
• National Real Estate Brand searches (e.g., ReMax.com)?
• Facebook search?

And here’s where most Realtors — 99% or more — mess this up.

The Vanity URL is a waste of $10.

Foursquare checkins have no value in the real estate business. If your Realtor checks into their office, question what they are doing for you.

Most National Brands don’t have the search thing figured out.

Oh, and Realtors on Facebook trying to sell you on their services? NO. On their personality, or their ties to the community….yes, eventually.

What’s a “single” Realtor – the one who so desperately needs clients – to do?

Build a Personal, Niche-Focused Brand.

Personal: John Smith, Realtor.

Niche-Focused: John needs to look at his last 12 listings or sales and find out what his niche is. “West Side.” Then, it’s about building community in the West Side.

This is where your online extension of the off-line you comes in handy.

Takes time, but when it works, it can work wonders.

Pets.com Sock Puppet, cc, Flickr

Groupon. Much will be said about their “poking fun” at the plight of Tibet, at the expense of half-price Himalayan food coupons. Our beef?

“Your comment is awaiting moderation.”

For a social (commerce) darling, we expected much better in terms of blog, and response, from Groupon.

First of all, see here – the Groupon blog – where they explain their reasoning and, it seems, how pumped they were to get actor Timothy Hutton.

Then, see here – which hasn’t been updated as of 3:05 AM Central Time, Monday, February 7:

You’re telling me that “Annie” is the ONLY person who commented?

No – because we commented – but were told “Your comment is awaiting moderation.”

Hint: if you wanna be truly “social,” have someone at the helm at least letting a few more comments into the mix. Also, this is a great place to score feedback, at better than 90% off, since the feedback is mostly free.

GoDaddy. We, for one, can’t wait to see the “.co” extension spread like wildfire.

We jest – but GoDaddy lost the Brand Bowl in this case to one competitor: Network Solutions. Who didn’t even run a Super Bowl ad. Instead, they hired Cloris Leachmann and made fun of GoDaddy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn25Lb8dick

For the love of Mike, they’ll even let you embed the ad on your own blog.

The buzz before the game was so great that, by the time GoDaddy showed who their spokesperson was – Joan Rivers! – they were out-hipped by “Go Granny.”

Note: We don’t use either company for anything here at Area 224 HQ. But, from a purely “social” standpoint – clever, meme-worthy, promoting sharing, truly social – Network Solutions kicked GoDaddy’s bottom.

Now, we return you to regular programming.

Thanks, Speedysigns.com

Imagine a process, or discipline, that can call itself an “industry.”

For instance, let’s say there are a couple of factions in this emerging industry that are almost constantly at odds with each other. One side has always done things one way – the other side has always done things another way.

And a third group emerges – they have their own ideas, and they are dead set against the normal ways of doing things. They are the cowboys – and cowgirls. They are going to win the overall battle – because they’re the loudest and most boisterous. Not necessarily because they know the most stuff.

While they can argue, disagree and have spirited debates, it is obvious that, for their industry to be successful, they absolutely have to work together.

What Industry Am I Talking About?

The “Turnaround” Industry, also known as “Corporate Renewal.” Circa 1999.

Gotcha.

I was there, in the middle of it all. I had a “cup of coffee” as the Director of Public Relations for the Turnaround Management Association, circa 1998 and 1999. And I watched this battle unfold – between three distinct groups that made up the membership.

Group One: Bankruptcy Attorneys. Staid and by the book, their mission is to follow the rule of the law and make sure that assets are redistributed accordingly. Don’t piss them off.

Group Two: Asset-based Lenders. They want to know two things: what do you have as collateral, and what are the odds you will pay back a loan. While you’re at it, don’t piss them off, either.

Group Three: Turnaround Managers. These folks were unknown a few years prior to my arrival. And there were a few “Turnaround Artists” who gave the moniker “Turnaround Manager” a bad name.

What is really interesting, as I think of the parallels between Social Media Marketing and Turnaround Management, is how there were no absolutes.

Really – it wasn’t as simple as ticking the Yes box next to “Did you turn that business around?” There was always a complex give-and-take between the groups.

And the objectives would differ in each case, meaning the strategy could be markedly different. Boil down turnaround management to its essence, and you get one of my favorite questions.

What business problem are you trying to solve?

Which is why it is an apt discipline to compare to Social Media.

You’ve got the three groups – Ad Agencies, PR People and Social Media Marketers.

They can argue and complain; they can claim that they were here first.

Or they can work together and answer the “What business problem are you trying to solve” question.

Go forth and turn things around.