My first video post

I'm not going to apologize for how crappy this video is.

Superbowl half-time shows suck

The music acts are so uncontroversial now that nobody cares enough to be able to hate them, which means nobody loves them.

You only watch it because it's on.

I was reading Stuart's blog yesterday about the personal/professional separation and he said that you have to put yourself into your work. You have to have enough personality that people can actually like you, which means that some people are going to hate you.

Most of us get that in our day-to-day lives, but how many businesses will see it the same way? If you want people to love your company you have to accept that some people are going to hate it. If nobody hates you then you're probably boring. And you're giving people nothing worth loving.

You're probably trying to sell the wrong thing

Apple doesn't sell computers or phones.

They sell pieces of the future.

That's why people buy them.

That's why their competition can't actually compete with them and keep making ads that suggest they make phones or computers or whatever as good or better as Apple does.

Well fine, who knows, maybe they do. But nobody cares because that's not what Apple was selling in the first place.

There's a reason people called the iPhone the Jesus Phone, both fans and haters. Because that's how people felt about it. Like they were holding something completely unrelated to a phone. They weren't holding technology. They were holding something spiritual, something they'd assumed was unattainable.

And the haters saw this and mocked them for thinking so highly of a phone. As if it had anything to do with making calls.

They were holding a piece of the future in their hands, and everything else seemed like an antique in comparison.

Blackberries, by contrast, aren't selling you the future. And they're certainly not selling you a phone, either. They're selling you professionalism and formality. That's why people buy them, because it's the closest thing you'll ever get to having a corner office downtown.

And that's why when Blackberry tried to compete with the iPhone they failed miserably. Who the hell wants a shiny bit of technology from them? Nobody. In fact, Blackberry trying to sell the future is off-putting at best.

So when Microsoft says, hey, don't buy a Mac, you can get the same functionality from us, for cheaper, you can do the same things with a PC, it just sounds empty. It doesn't mean anything.

Why? Because Microsoft is selling efficiency and cost, and Apple is selling the future.

People buy PCs because they can't afford to buy the future, or aren't interested in owning it. Or they think that Apple trying to construct the future just makes their products cumbersome and overly flashy (to the detriment of user-experience).

So what are you selling? If you describe your business as selling a product or a service, you're probably doing it wrong.

Social media IS NOT its networks

So stop saying it, please.

Your social media strategy is not to start using Flickr and Facebook to spread your message, okay?

First, a tactic is not a strategy.

Social media strategy is about figuring out, first of all, why people should care. It's what Mark Earls calls the "What For?" of a business:

"Put really simply, the Purpose-Idea is the "What For?" of a business, or any kind of community. What exists to change (or protect) in the world, why employees get out of bed in the morning, what difference the business seeks to make on behalf of customers and employees and everyone else? BTW this is not "mission, vision, values" territory - it's about real drives, passions and beliefs. The stuff that men in suits tend to get embarrassed about because it's personal. But it's the stuff that makes the difference between success and failure, because this kind of stuff brings folk together in all aspects of human life." - gapingvoid.com

So that's how a strategy begins. Now, if you can understand that, and still think that executing a strategy just has to be about using social or peer networks, you've still got a problem.

In the phrase Social Media, "social" is the keyword.

The media is interchangeable.

Social media can take place on the good old sneakernet.

The reason that social networks are used in social media is because they enable people to connect to so many people so quickly. But it's their usefulness that makes them so widely used for social media campaigns, not because the terminology or strategy necessarily demands it.

So please, stop writing what you think is your "social media strategy" by starting off with a list of websites you need to post your content on, as if the media will create the society. It won't.

Communities create networks, not the other way around.

Social media and tourism

How long do vacations last? A week? Two?

How long does the memory last? Years, likely. If it's a particularly interesting vacation, the memory can last a lifetime.

So which did you pay for, where is the real value? The experience, or the memory?

Neither.

You paid for the conversation.

You paid to be able to talk to all your friends and family and coworkers about the trip you're planning, you paid to get to email your friends from some exotic locale and make them jealous, and you paid to be able to force everyone you know to look at your photos when you got back.

That's the lasting value, that's what you paid for.

So if you're marketing a tourist destination, are you focused on making it a one-off experience, unsharable and proprietary? Or do you facilitate sharing the memories, do you help your customers tell everyone they know about the great trip they had, or the great B&B they stayed in?

Do you have free wi-fi and cheap post cards at your hotel? Do you allow and encourage people to take pictures at your attraction? Do you market yourselves as conversation pieces, or as a single experience?

Hugh talks a lot about social objects, and about the need to identify what your social object is that you're selling. If you can't figure out what it is about your tourist attraction or accommodation that will start people talking, that will get people to share the memory with their friends, you're in trouble.

And which is more valuable? Tons of ads, or a few people telling everyone they know about how great their trip was? Which one will get more people interested?

Which one are you focusing your marketing budget on?

I can find your audience elsewhere

The internet is not TV, or radio, or print. Lots of people may only watch one or two shows. Lots of people may only listen to one radio station, or only read one newspaper.

Nobody only goes to one website. Your site is not irreplaceable.

I can always find your audience elsewhere.

If you really, really value your website, and see it as a necessary site on my media buy, then you should be trying your hardest to convince me of that. If you see it as so important, so necessary, so irreplaceable that you won't bargain, won't facilitate, won't help, then you're off. I'll find your users somewhere else.

I always can.

Microsites Suck

Mostly.

If the client asks you why people would actually go to the microsite you're proposing to advertise their product, and you reply, "because that's where all the ads will direct them," you've given a very, very wrong answer.

If the reason someone would go to your microsite is because that's where the ads click through to, don't make it! Seriously, just... stop it.

Office Max's "Elf Yourself" is a microsite, and the reason people go there is not just because some ads directed them there. Burger King's "SimpsonizeMe" is a microsite, and people don't go there just because they clicked on an ad and were directed there.

People go to these sites because they offer something other than another advertisement like the one they just clicked on. People go there because the means (a fun experience interacting with the site) justifies the end (being told about a product). In fact, they'll spread the link around to their friends for the same reason, they'll advertise for the product because, at the end of the day, there's a rewarding experience to be had.

If your microsite doesn't offer an interesting, rewarding experience to the consumer, you're building it because you can't think of anything else to do.

And if your microsite has a loading screen... just give up, go home, and sit in the corner and think about what you've done.

Traffic Ain’t Everything

In fact, it's almost nothing.

“How much traffic does your site get?” This is a question commercial websites get asked a lot.

And it makes sense, right? If you’re paying to put an ad on a website, you want as many people as possible to see it, so you’d want to make sure that lots of people visit the site.

Well, that’s just not how it works.

See, most of these sites sell on a CPM basis. This means that you’re only paying when someone sees your ad. So if you buy 10,000 impressions (or 10,000 instances of someone seeing the ad), then it often makes little difference how much traffic the site gets.

If you’re considering purchasing ad space online, “traffic” is simply not a thing to worry about in most cases. Reach might be. %Composition UV should be. But traffic? Not so much.

If it is a crucial part of your decision-making process, you’re thinking about the wrong things. You’re thinking that you’re buying space in a newspaper, or on a TV show. You’re thinking about Gross Rating Points. You’re not thinking that you’re advertising on the internet.

Internet advertising allows you to measure every single time someone sees an ad, every single time someone clicks an ad. You can see where they’re from (down to the postal/zip code), you can see what browser they’re using, whether they’re on dial-up or broadband, and so many more things. And many sites offer all of these things and more as targeting options. This is not TV, this is not radio.

Traffic isn’t a thing, people. Hitting your target demo precisely, and only paying when you do -- that’s a thing. That’s the thing that matters.

Slashdot has a ton of traffic, but if you’re selling nail polish*, that just doesn’t make a difference.



*Sorry to whip out the No Girls on Slashdot cliché, but you get my point.

You'll have another best idea

Don't save great ideas for media or creative executions (or anything, really) because you think they might work better with some ideal future campaign or situation. Use it as soon as you can, even if it feels like you're "wasting it" on a campaign that's not high-profile, or doesn't have a huge budget.

You'll have another best idea ever.

You might worry that you won't, though, that you have this one great thought that you need to save until you have the perfect opportunity to use it the way you think is ideal. You're sabotaging yourself, though, and you won't be happy with the campaign you're working on, and you'll never be happy with your great idea because you'll likely never get to use it exactly how you'd like to.

People who seem to have great ideas all the time are no different than you or I, they just use the good ideas they have as soon as they come to them, confident that, eventually, another good one will follow.

It's frustrating to talk to someone who says that they had a great idea for a website or advertisement, or anything else, but they didn't use it because they wanted to "save it."

People don't care if you have a great idea you're holding onto, they only see that you're not executing on any great ideas. It's small consolation that maybe someday you'll be of some use.

Sell by the CPM

Seriously, don't try to get me to buy ad space on your website based on time. I'm just going to assume you're trying to trick me into paying more than the space is worth.

Internet advertising is measurable and trackable, so I'm going to buy based on measurable and trackable amounts. I'm going to buy based on how many impressions the ad actually receives. So if you insist on selling by the month or week, I'm still going to work out the effective CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and decide from there if it's a good deal. And I'm never going to buy space on a site that can't give me real data on how many impressions the ad is likely to receive. So save us both that trouble and sell on a CPM basis from the get-go.

Now, I understand that it might be a little more complicated for you. Because how do you decide how valuable those thousand impressions are?

Well, first consider supply and demand. If you have huge inventory, you don't want to risk it going to waste and not having enough advertisers buying, or enough impressions being purchased. So you'll want to set a CPM that gets most or all of your impressions purchased.

If you don't get a lot of traffic, you'd better have a great reason why those limited eyeballs are really valuable. Define a niche for your site that makes that small number of impressions worth buying. If you can justify it, you might even be able to set a reasonably high CPM. If you're selling out your inventory, then you're doing okay (if you're selling out your inventory really, really quickly, maybe you should up your CPM).

If you're in the mid-range, with lots of impressions but not more than you know what to do with, you don't necessarily need a mid-range CPM. Again, if you can justify why those impressions are more valuable than the next guy's (if you have a niche website, or serve a need that no one else is covering), then you don't have to charge a middle of the road price.

So if you're selling ad space on your website, those are a few things to keep in mind. And remember, the best thing you can do to get yourself on one of my buys is this: Make it painless. If I can call you up or fire you off an email and expect great service and great ROI, and provide a great experience for myself and my client, then you've got the best shot at getting on a buy.

At the end of the day it's about value for my client, and since they're getting billed based on how much time I spend on a buy, too, if buying on your website gets me valuable impressions without having to spend a lot of time on it, you're doing us all a favor.

Reach ain't everything - Tip #1

My last post on web marketing threw out an example of something that I sometimes need to explain to clients when preparing online campaigns for them: Reach vs. % Comp UV.

Reach ain't everything. Just because a certain site might hit a huge percentage of your audience (Yahoo!'s network of properties, for instance, reaches about 100% of internet users in Canada), that doesn't mean those sites are sufficient on your buy, or even the best way to spend your money.

Sites with huge reach often have prices to match. While Hotmail may have more impressions than they know what to do with and can therefore offer a low CPM (cost per thousand impressions), most sites with huge reach charge a big price for their valuable impressions.

So what do you do with a small budget, or a client extremely concerned with efficiencies? That's where % Comp UV comes in. It's the percentage of a site's unique visitors that are composed of your target demo.

So one site, say, Facebook, might hit 90% of your target demo, but their % Comp UV may only be 3%. However, a smaller, more targeted site might only reach about 5% of your demo, but it could be composed almost entirely of people in your demo. Find enough of those smaller sites with huge % Comp UV and you might be able to spend less over a bunch of sites and hit all the same people without having to dump all your money on one or two sites with huge reach.

Of course, if you're breaking your buy up into smaller chunks like that you'll want to make sure you're not hitting the exact same people over and over again on those sites.

Agencies use tools to measure reach, % Comp UV, and duplication, among many other metrics, but a good eye and intuition (and carefully worded questions to the people running the sites you're interested in) can still get you a long way. I can't really talk about specific tools I use at my day job, or go into detail about how we construct buys, but hopefully the little bit of information I've given will create a bit of awareness of what goes into buying media online.

What, would you say, you do here?

It's odd that I haven't really discussed what I actually do in web marketing for a living.

I think it's because I'm not entirely set on where this blog is going, yet. It's been reasonably professional and painfully formal so far, which bothers me a bit. I'm no stranger to overly-personal blogging, so I'm hoping I'll be able to find a comfortable middle ground soon.

Anyway, my day-to-day job is planning and buying online advertising campaigns. So I get briefed on the client/product/creative and I plan the online execution from there. I find the sites to purchase impressions on, make the buys, monitor campaigns, and work with the client to keep them up to speed. So that includes a lot of research, negotiation, and more spreadsheets and acronyms than could be easily imagined. Oh, and meetings after meetings after meetings...

That's for the display side. I also handle all the search marketing for our client's campaigns, both PPC and SEO. So I would set up and monitor and maintain Google/Yahoo paid link campaigns, and make SEO recommendations.

The rest of my job is being the internet expert in the office. Lots of meetings explaining social media, why CTR isn't as important as people would like to think, explaining the difference between reach and %Comp UV, and why if you make a website with a loading page you should be fired from the internet.

I'm actually preparing an hour-long talk that I'll be presenting to all my coworkers on Thursday about Web 2.0 and Social Media. I'm going to try to have it recorded, so depending on company policy I might be able to post it online.

So, yeah, that's a little bit of what I do. And also I'm the one male in the media department, so the other part of my job is being "the guy" who tries to turn the conversation away from Girlicious and toward Indiana Jones. With limited success.

Ask, Don't Tell

Everybody hates meetings. Well, most people do.

If you love meetings you're likely organizing lots of them, so you should probably keep in mind that most people hate meetings.

And the people who like meetings are typically the ones doing all the talking, the ones doing all the telling. The people who hate meetings are typically silent, thinking about other things, likely thinking about all the work that's piling up while they're away from it.

If you're stuck in a meeting, the best way to get something out of it, or at least try to keep it relevant, is to ask good, tough questions.

How many times have you sat in a meeting and wondered why the conversation has taken this turn? How often do you think no one's actually addressing relevant issues? When this happens, ask the question!

If you're in a meeting about how to promote a product before the product has even been developed, before there's even been a creative brief, ask why. Ask how you can be planning an advertising campaign before you've even differentiated the product from the competition. This sort of thing happens, and if nobody asks the question everyone will be wondering long after why nobody asked it way back then.

Ask the question. Best case you'll get a good answer and everyone will be enlightened. Worst case you might not get dragged into so many meetings anymore...