Are Social Media Rockstars An Endangered Species? Or The Future of Advertising?

Don't get me wrong--I couldn't be happier about Forrester's newest report showing that social media adoption has basically become "nearly universal." Definitely bodes well for me being gainfully employed.

At the same time, though, I can't help but notice that the whole social media rockstar thing is getting a little out of hand. As more and more businesses realize what Forrester's report highlights--namely that 51% of all online Americans have joined a social network and a whopping 73% are, if not joining, at least consuming social content in some context--they are whipping themselves up into a frenzy over the implications of this mass adoption. Suddenly there exist magical "Influencers"--regular people who are universally likeable and respected--into whose hands brands can place their products and these mythical beings will work their Twitter or blog magic and thousands of sales will be the result.

Or at least this seems to be their thinking, from where I sit. Take, for instance, Dooce. Just a regular gal....with 1,142,958 followers on Twitter. When Dooce tweets complaints about her new Maytag washer, this is what happens. OFFERS--plural--of free machines from other companies.

Now is it just me being bitter that I myself am not swimming in swag or is the deitization (is that a word?) of social media "influencers" getting to be a bit ridiculous? I mean, come on--companies honestly see her and others like her as so powerful that they are tripping over themselves wanting to get their product into her hands so she can tweet about it and huge sales will result? It's seriously starting to get a little crazy...I can honestly imagine how this washer thing played out. Dooce tweets her complaints about Maytag. Other washing machine companies, doing their social media due-diligence, are monitoring for mentions of their or competing brands. They see this opportunity to jump in and save the day and probably emergency staff meetings were held at multiple companies: ALERT! Opportunity to swoop in with a free washer and save the social media goddesses' day. It was probably like a hostage situation--a bunch of guys around a computer screen "Ok--quick--get a message to her NOW offering our machine for free! GO!" Waiting with white knuckles to hear back from her or--God willing--to have her tweet kudos and mention their brand's name to her million-plus followers. Many of whom will, naturally, go right out and buy a washer from this company merely because Dooce endorsed them.

Come on now. Is any one person's word THAT powerful? Apparently. At least she's using her powers for good, though.

The flip side of this coin is the sell-your-soul-to-the-devil thing where companies give a blogger a few gadgets to play around with for a few days and a trip to a trade show and expect to own his soul in return. In this case I'm talking about Chris Brogan, being ripped for CHEATING on his sponsoring company when, 8 months after his sponsored trip, he announces a partnership with the company he had a conversation with while on said sponsored trip. Now again--come on. Dude has to make a living. He did nothing wrong--didn't cheat, steal, etc--he struck up a conversation at a neighboring booth which, many months later, resulted in a consulting opportunity. What is about companies thinking that if they throw a blogger some swag they expect eternal gratitude in the form of a non-compete for actual paying business at any point in their lives? People can't live off the odd trip to Disney or a trade show, no matter how swag-lishious that trip may be.

My point? I'm not really sure. I guess it's that these truly are the days of the social media Wild West and it will be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out five or ten years down the line. Will swagging bloggers be a long abandoned experiment that ended up not generating any appreciable business for the companies that thought it would? Or will all journalism be bought and paid for and old-school advertisements a thing of the past? Is getting a social media superstar to talk up a brand the slam-dunk some companies seem to think it is? I guess time will tell.

Is It Just Me Or Is Twitter Not Ready For Prime Time Yet?

Over the past few days I've seen about a million re-tweets of the big news: Twitter is about to roll out business accounts. I seem to be the only one who finds this news disturbing.

I feel like I'm in the social media version of the Emperor's New Clothes or something. Twitter's shortcomings--which are so glaringly obvious to me--seem to go totally unnoticed by others. Or at least unnoticed in the flurry and fuss over Twitter's impending for-pay offerings.

What shortcomings, you ask? Um, well let's start with the first and most glaring: the ubiquitous fail whale. The fact that we're still seeing him--as cute as he may be--means Twitter is not yet ready for prime time.

Here's the thing: the whale was cute when people were just using Twitter to talk about what they were having for lunch. It's no longer cute when companies are paying FTEs to be Twitter moderators and those people can't do their jobs because the site is down. It's one thing to rely on a free tool; that's kind of a "buyer beware" situation. But it's going to be a whole different ballgame when big companies are shelling out money for Twitter business accounts and the site goes down.

Big deal, you say--no platform is 100% reliable all the time. Ok, how about these Twitter issues:

• Hacks.


• Huge security breaches resulting in hundreds of confidential Twitter corporate documents ending up in people's inboxes.


• The Denial-of-Service attacks that first shut Twitter down for hours then continued to cripple it several subsequent times in the following weeks.


• Metrics. If I'm a company using Twitter for business, I need to be able to refer to search results indefinitely--not just for 2 weeks. Part of being a social media professional means being able to prove your worth and demonstrate the ROI of your new communication channels. My job may well depend on proving that the money my company spent on a certain campaign was well-spent, and the way to prove that is to be able to measure engagement. I can't do that if all the tweets disappear after 2 weeks.

I really wish I’d read something from Twitter about what they’re planning to do to address these huge obstacles before I read any more about their impending business offerings.

Am I crazy or are these legitimate concerns?

*Update*
If you didn't think my other reasons were compelling enough, how about this Twitter exploit I just read about on Mashable?

Wonder Why CEOs Don't Blog? This Is Why

If CEOs weren't blogging or using social media much before the recent tizzy about Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's "attack" on healthcare reform that has resulted in all sorts of bad media coverage, they probably won't be starting now.

Granted, you would have thought Mackey learned a lesson about the potential hazards of using social media after he was sued for comments he posted under an alias that the FTC later decided added up to anti-trust violations. Some thought he'd lose his job then but he didn't. What about now, though, when his op-ed has led tens of thousands to join a Boycott Whole Foods group on Facebook?

Here's the thing: in this era of the "personal brand" it is impossible for a CEO to write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about such an emotionally-charged issue and claim, as he does on his blog, that it's his personal opinion and not his company's. Mackey allegedly meant the headline to read, simply, “Health Care Reform.” He says an editor at the WSJ rewrote the headline to read “Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare.” His brand, whether he likes it or not, is CEO of Whole Foods, not just "an occasional blogger," as he describes himself in the "about" section of his blog.

Then again, if you want to go with the "any press is good press" angle of this whole thing then maybe Whole Foods is secretly psyched at the controversy; after all, if one of the purposes of having a blog is to attract traffic to your website, getting almost 2,000 comments on a blog post can't be all bad--especially given that most of his other blog posts have comments only in the single or double-digit range.

Maybe Whole Foods will fire him as CEO but keep him on as Chief Blogger?

Reflections on Virtual Attendance And New Revenue Streams

(Thanks to Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation for the ribbon)

Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm obsessed with social media--I blog about it, use it constantly, even get paid to do it for a living. So of course I'm using it to stay on top of what's going on at ASAE's annual meeting in Toronto this weekend. Thankfully Twitter has been cooperating and has not sustained anymore denial-of-service attacks because I've been living vicariously through the tweets of ASAE's annual convention attendees.

ASAE did a great job with their online Hub--providing links to blogs, videos and attendee tweets. But equally responsible for enabling me to experience the event are the attendees--both those on-site and those also attending virtually. Weird to be able to get great takeaways from people who aren't even there? Maybe--but in this case the reality is that ASAE has some really smart, connected members who are adding a lot to the value of the official meeting content. Two great examples are Michael McCurry's great wrap up of Gary Hamel's keynote presentation and Dave Sabol's suggestions on how ASAE might make their engagement offerings even more robust.

I second Dave's suggestion that ASAE consider making more actual content available to virtual attendees. It's great that I'll be able to catch Jeff De Cagna's session "Associations Next: Serious Questions for 2010 And Beyond" via UStream...but that's courtesy of Jeff, not ASAE. Hopefully the fact that virtual attendees are actively participating in this event will pave the way for ASAE to explore new revenue models for future events via additional offerings for virtual attendees. A few ideas:

• A virtual attendee rate that lets virtual attendees receive CEs.


• The ability to make virtual appointments with exhibitors via the Hub's Online Connection Center. Surely exhibitors would pay more to be able to connect not only with physical attendees but untold numbers of virtual attendees interested in their products and services.


• Some kind of affiliate program like SocialFish did with Buzz2009 where sponsors could pay ASAE extra in exchange for having ASAE tweet about those featured sponsors and/or have virtual attendees host ads on their blogs.

Ok, I'll stop now....but please feel free to add any of your own suggestions in the comments. In October I'm going to be facilitating a brown bag on new revenue streams so it's something I'm going to be doing a lot of thinking about.

Why A Social Media Career Might Not Be As Great As You Think

My kids love to snicker about my job: I'm a social media & community specialist. I kind of though they'd think it was cool that their mom gets paid to be on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all the time, but of course I was wrong. They think it's not a "real" job.

Not surprisingly, many people feel this way...and sometimes I have to say I question the long-term validity of my own career choice.

Why? Let me list just a few reasons:

• Your livelihood rests in the hands of web services that are out of your control. If part of your job as a social media person is justifying your existence by virtue of stats like click-throughs on links, what happens when the service you're using ceases to exist and that data is gone? Or when you're doing a demo on the importance of Twitter for the Board of Directors and the site is down? What if Facebook decides you're a spammer and shuts your page down? When you are a social media professional, the tools of your trade are, for the most part, free services with no stable business model. Doesn't exactly instill confidence that social media is a rock-solid career choice, does it?


• You can do no right. People have very strong feelings about the "right" and "wrong" ways to use social media. Everyone knows you can't please all people all the time, but because the nature of social media is about real-time and transparency and, well, being "social" you're going to hear about anything customers or members or fellow social media professionals think you're doing wrong. Look at the American Cancer Society--who would ever diss them? I mean, who could find anything wrong with a campaign called "More Birthdays"? Celebrities endorse it, people dedicate their birthdays to finding a cure for cancer--who could find fault with that? Well, the answer--with all things social media--is, inevitably, someone. Or millions of someones if you're that unlucky. With social media it's anyone's guess as to what people will find brilliant and viral and what people will consider to be intrusive and spammy. So when a campaign inevitably goes wrong, who takes the fall? The "expert" who came up with the idea in the first place.


• It's anybody's guess as to what the value of your position is. For all the talk about "transparency" in social media, it's hard as hell to figure out what people get paid to do social media as a profession. How do I know? Because I've blogged about it before--and because an increasingly significant portion of my blog traffic comes from Google searches for "social media salaries." I've noticed a dramatic increase in the amount of traffic referred by that search recently--which is no coincidence as more and more companies are beginning to hire social media professionals. Here's the thing, though: for the same skill set and basic job description you've got salaries all over the map. Some companies are using free interns while others are paying consultants top dollar...all to perform the same basic function. It doesn't help that the titles for social media positions are all over the place; creating social media job titles is like playing word jumble. Pick two or more terms from the following: community, social media, manager, coordinator, new media, digital, strategist, director, specialist, vice president, expert. Now benchmark the resulting position for salary. Or spin the roulette wheel--both strategies are probably equally accurate.


• Your position is seen as experimental at best. While many people see the value of social media, many more do not. In times of economic crisis, having the words "Facebook" and "Twitter" in your job description is kind of a liability. You are most likely going to be called upon to prove your worth on an ongoing basis, and, at some companies, unless you can figure out a way to demonstrate immediate, traditional ROI, you might not want to get too comfortable at your desk. Best case scenario, you get to keep your job and are doomed to explaining, on an ongoing daily basis, exactly why Twitter and Facebook are not stupid.

Ok--your turn--feel free to add your own reasons social media jobs might not be all they're cracked up to be.

Are Hyper-Local Bloggers Going to be the New Mommy Bloggers?

I came across links to two similar posts on Twitter today--both about successful newspaper replacements: websites that rely heavily on user-generated content.

The first was about AnnArbor.com--Michigan's new online daily. It replaces the Ann Arbor News. The website features a staff of 60 (down from 316 when it was a print publication), of which 35 are journalists (called content-creators). It also has "around 80" bloggers - most of whom are unpaid.

The second was about the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which folded in March, but kept the website up...a website "heavily reliant on more than 200 unpaid bloggers." According to this article, both audience and revenue for/from the new site are ahead of projection.

On one hand, it's great to see bloggers figuring so prominently in the future of news...but on the other I wonder how long until the bloggers providing free content for these types of sites realize they want some kind of compensation.

If you're experiencing deja vu right now, thinking you've read this post before, you're not crazy--I've blogged about this same thing before. These two articles seem to indicate that the model newspapers are moving towards--more online content; specifically user-generated content--is proving successful.

It also makes me wonder what would happen if these unpaid content generators decided to do their own version of the PR blackout. In case you're not familiar with the PR blackout, mom bloggers are being challenged to eschew all PR stuff--giveaways, paid posts, etc--for a week in an attemp to get back to what blogging is really about: writing about what you want to, on your own terms. (Well, according to MomDot, that is; Resourceful Mommy has a different view.)

Right now mommy bloggers are all the rage, but if it turns out that local bloggers are the thing that turns around the failing newspaper industry, are we going to be reading about local or news blogger blackouts in a few years? Are those bloggers gong to realize, as mommy bloggers have, what a valuable commodity they are and are they going to start wanting to be compensated? Is it reasonable to expect that bloggers will always be willing to provide a never-ending stream of monetizable content for free?

I'm Confused! Conflicting Social Media Studies

One of the most confusing things to me about all this social media stuff is the constant conflicting information. One day there's a study showing one thing; the next there's another that shows just the opposite.

For instance, WorkPlace Media's recent study "Can Big Brands Crash The Social Networking Party?" found "The overall impact of a brand's presence on social networking sites was shown to be minimal in terms of impact and perception." Stephanie Molnar, CEO of WorkPlace Media, says "When it comes to influencing brand perception and purchase decisions... social networking... has a long way to go."

But then you check out Charlene Li/Wetpaint's new research on "deep brand engagement" and it seems to show just the opposite--that the brands most deeply engaged in social media demonstrated an average 18% growth in revenue over the past 12 months compared to the least engaged, who showed an average decline of 6% in revenue over that same period. This doesn't seem to illustrate brands being minimally impacted by social media; seems to be pretty persuasive evidence of the exact opposite.

Now the same thing with the teens/Twitter thing. First "Stats Confirm It: Teens Don't Tweet." Ok.

But then I read this. "Naturally, younger respondents were more familiar with the microblogging site. Only 11% of 18-to-39-year-old advertisers did not know enough about Twitter to have an opinion on its value, compared with 20% of advertisers ages 40 to 49 and 21% of those 50 and older." What do you mean, "naturally"? I thought teens don't use Twitter? Which is it--they don't use it or they're the experts?

What this whole thing underscores for me is the reality that it's impossible to be a social media "expert" because social media is a constantly moving target, with new "truths" being revealed--and dispelled--every day.

Hotwire Customer Service 2.0

Here is a real-time example of why the traditional customer service model is dead. I just tweeted "Totally disappointed with Hotwire. Have to blog it because it's too long to tweet." Within a few minutes they responded via @ message: "We're interested in your experience! love to have u follow + DM us w/details, if you care to share! itin #/email would be great"

Kudos to them for their responsiveness; rather than email them the details I'll blog the story then update later so you can see how it was resolved.


It's Patrick and my 2nd anniversary on August 14. To celebrate, we figured rather than go out of town we'd do the DC tourist thing even though we live in a DC suburb. Having had success with Hotwire in the past as far as good room deals, I went to their site and saw a room at a 4.5 star hotel in DC for $119 a night. Bargain, right?

As soon as I receive my confirmation the name of the hotel is revealed: The Madison. Nice, huh? Wondering how much I saved I went to check out the room rates. They have a package--room, $50 food credit and free parking--for $149 a night. Hold up--I just paid MORE THAN THAT on Hotwire--$119 for the room and parking is $40 a night--and no $50 food credit included. Thanks a lot for the bargain, Hotwire.

I went back to Hotwire and clicked "contact us" and got the old-fashioned contact form. I told them exactly what I'm writing here--and that I wanted a refund so I can go get the same room for less on the hotel's website.

This was the response they emailed me:

Dear Margaret,

Thank you for contacting us regarding your hotel reservation at the The Madison - a Loews Hotel, check in August 14, 2009, Hotwire Itinerary Number XXXXX.

I understand you found a lower rate on the hotels site. I have some information below on this type of find.

Our Low Price Guarantee promises that within 48 hours of booking, if you find a lower rate for your entire stay, in an equivalent room type at the same hotel on the same dates, we will offer to double the difference in rates.

The conditions of our Guarantee are as follows:

- The lower rate must be available for booking. Please note some sites display rates not actually available when you try to buy.
- Only one refund under the Guarantee will be granted per household per six-week period.
If you would like to apply for a refund, under the Low Price Guarantee, follow these simple steps:
To submit a refund request, first go to the "My Account" page.
- When you have logged into your account, identify the hotel booking for which you would like a refund. On the details page for the booking, click on the link in the Low-Price Guarantee box, near the top of the page.
- Fill out the request form completely and submit.

Once we receive your request, we will confirm the availability of the lower rate you found. Then, within 10 business days of verifying the lower rate, we will issue a refund in an amount equal to double the difference of your Hotwire rate and the lower rate. The credit will be issued to the card used for your original Hotwire booking.

Rates not available to the general public (AARP, AAA, group rates, corporate rates, convention rates, etc.) are not eligible for the Guarantee. The Low-Price Guarantee also does not apply to rates made available on Hotwire after your booking. You can get more information about our Low Price Guarantee from our Help Center by:

- Clicking on the Help Center link at the top of any page, then

- Click on Hotels / After Booking

- Click on Low-Price Guarantee, then How do I qualify for the Low-Price Guarantee?

If we can be of further assistance, please feel free to reply to this email or contact us directly at 1-866-HOTWIRE (468-9473). Thank you for choosing Hotwire.

Here's the thing, Hotwire. That's a lot of hoops for me to have to jump through. First of all, the 14th is less than 10 days away--I don't have time wait to see if you grant me a refund before I've already had to shell out $40 for parking. Second of all, I'm almost positive you're going to tell me that the actual room rate is not less--that because it's a special offer it doesn't apply. But the bottom line is that it should apply: I booked a room on Hotwire and will end up paying MORE for the same room plus parking. Semantics? Maybe. But is it worth losing a repeat customer over? Had I known ahead of time exactly what hotel I was booking of course this would be a non-issue because it would be my own fault for not checking this out first. But I had checked out the prices for 4.5 star hotels in that area and room rates were all well over $200 so I just figured I'd be getting a great deal.

Here are my suggestions:

1) The world works in real-time now, as you obviously realize given that you are monitoring mentions of your brand on Twitter and responding almost immediately. Score one point for Hotwire.

2) Making a customer sit on pins and needles for 10 days while you mull over whether or not to issue a refund: lose one point. Surely you are going to need to do better than this to continue to compete in a real-time world.

I'll update when I hear back from Hotwire.

**Update**
I'm still waiting to hear back from Hotwire--again, kudos to them on their responsiveness on Twitter. But I finally found the link to a post I wanted to reference yesterday when I wrote this--Why and How to Hire a Social Media Responder.

BTW, my point with this post isn't to do a re-enactment of the Crocs/blackmail thing at BlogHer; my intent was really to illustrate the point of the "Why and How" post.

**Update 2**
Alas, while Hotwire did provide great customer service--got back to me the next day via Twitter DM telling me that unfortunately the hotel rate counts as a special rate and therefore is excluded from their guarantee--I guess we'll be paying more rather than less this trip. In fairness, I can't really fault them--policy is policy--but maybe this will pave the way for some improvements in their policy. If nothing else, it does demonstrate that it's a lot easier to stomach a "sorry but no refund" one day later via Twitter than to have to go through a bunch of hoops on their website, wait 10 days then get a "sorry but no refund."

The upshot is kudos to Hotwire for great customer service, but I can't say I'll ever use the service again to make reservations.