The Copywriter Underground

Like anyone invested in their craft, I can only handle so much stupidity before the mental elastic parts with a snap.

And frankly, no writer could be blamed for howling a little after repeated, long-term exposure to the following:

Bad Social Media Copywriting.

This morning I received an email promising me “a chance to win a t-shirt” if I managed to convince the sizable readership of my fly fishing blog to “like” an organization’s Facebook page.

Wow. A “chance” at a t-shirt. That’s real motivation for a top blogger, who invests a great deal of effort creating original content for his readers.

Clearly, the marketers share my pain.

Worse was this email (also aimed at my fly fishing blog), which – to spare you undue suffering – is only reprinted in part:

Hope your doing well. You’re getting this email because you blog about stuff real guys like. And [name withheld to keep their traffic to a minimum] Whiskey is as real as it gets. We’re betting your readers will want to know about damn good whiskey from the most award-winning distillery in the world. We are writing to invite to participate in a contest we call “Blogging for the Buffalo.”

Wow. Possessive fail in word #2, and it scarcely got any better. (Note my restraint with “most award-winning distillery” or the idea that they know what “real” guys like.)

The rest of the email is similarly challenged – as was the landing page (maybe a visit to one of Roberta Rosenberg’s Landing Page makeovers is in order).

Sadly, they caught me at the wrong moment, and this is what they got in return:

Wow. Goose bumps are rippling up and down my naughty bits.

I simply can’t wait to send my hard-earned blog readership to an anonymous, marketing-challenged distillery I’ve never heard of – and absolutely thrilled with the very real prospect of receiving little or nothing in return.

What thoughtful blogger – at least one capable of building a category-leading blog – could say “no” to a once-in-a-lifetime deal like that?

That I’m being asked to do your marketing heavy lifting for you via an error-ridden email only heightens the giddy anticipation; Social Media Experts know nothing screams “authenticity” like repeated grammar errors, caveman-esque syntax, and yes – Excessive Exclamation Syndrome!!

That your landing page continues the parade of errors only assures me that – as your email suggested – it was built by “real guys” (just like me).

Party on, The Trout Underground.

Social media represents a large (and growing) target; the hype is often unconscionable, and the low-bid implementations regularly fall below the just-invented “Laughability Line.”

I once considered launching a “Social Media Hall of Shame” blog highlighting the worst examples of social media buffoonery, but I (thankfully) realized no marketer could long expose himself to that kind of radioactivity without quickly accumulating a lethal dose.

Unfortunately, the trend seems to be accelerating. Unintentionally hilarious spam subject lines used to provide the majority of the amusement, but social media gaffes are quickly displacing it. And as quickly as you delete/glass over/ignore it, more takes its place.

Keep writing (but please, try to do it well), Tom Chandler.

Yahoo just purchased Associated Content – one of the leading article farms – for a cool $100 million.

For just a moment, I wondered how much of that payout is headed for the folks who actually populated the AC’s site with content.

And then I smiled.

Silly me. The answer, of course, is zilch.

As Nicholas Carr of Rough Type has pointed out, content creators have become the sharecroppers of the digital age, and those who create for the “greater good of the community” are likely to discover their community’s about to be sold for the “greater good of the owner.”

Obviously, benefits can accrue to those working in organized online communities.

Yet those benefits need to be balanced against the unhappy negatives.

Handing over control of content – which means investing time, money, and energy into someone else’s proprietary “community” – is only smart if you already have a plan to turn the largely intangible benefits of social media into tangible ones.

For example, do you “own” your 5,000 Facebook fans?

If Facebook killed your presence today, how many of those fans could you contact?

And if Facebook crumbled in the face of a sexier, less-predatory replacement, would you simply move on – leaving your massive time investment to crumble with it?

Could you reclaim your data (and your hard work)?

Open, My Ass

In what some are calling a new era of openness, it’s ironic that we’re seeing the resurrection of closed, proprietary platforms.

They’re very good at converting the work of the “community” into sky-high paydays for their owners.

Yet to do that, they aggregate the work product of many – often delivering only low-quality relationships in return.

Which is why I recommend implementing email programs before starting social media programs. (And integrating e-newsletters with blogs, and WordPress over Blogger, and open over closed…)

Are you converting social media “currency” into real dollars for your business?

Or are you simply chasing useless stats – feeding your ego, but not your bank account?

Are you turning followers into horrifyingly old-school email addresses? Fans into conversions?

Or are you simply sharecropping?

Taddy Hall’s excellent Ad Age article about social media offers us analytic types something unique:

Actual data-driven recommendations for brands using social media marketing.

I wouldn’t be the first marketer to suggest many of the social media “gurus” now flooding the Internet are working from an astonishingly small experiential base. It’s the result of a tidal wave of social media hype, much of it coming from people scrambling to establish their credibility in an emerging market – disguising the fact their bona fides are paper thin.

Here’s a thought: Social media really isn’t very different from other media channels.

The same strategies – altered slightly to fit new distribution methods – still apply (“what’s in this for me” asks the reader).

Keep writing (and marketing), Tom Chandler.

Much of the online universe woke up last week to discover Google was involuntarily disclosing the names of their email contacts to the world, and if there’s a lesson here, it could be this: Making wads of money on other people’s content doesn’t necessarily render you omnipotent.

For marketers, there’s also a larger lesson.

The buzz about Google Buzz isn't great.

Within hours of first seeing Google Buzz (I didn’t like what I saw and turned it off), I received two emails from online marketing “experts” (note the quotes); both were positively glowing about Google Buzz, and neither seemed aware of the firestorm brewing – or of the privacy risks to their clients.

Simply put, it’s never been easier to pass information to an audience.

Which is a poor excuse for passing bad information to that audience.

Especially if that audience is paying for your expertise.

Succumbing to social media’s “get it while it’s hot” time pressure entails some real risks – especially for marketing consultants.

After all, we’re supposed to know this stuff.

Which precludes recommending (or hyping) services solely because they’re a trending topic on Twitter.

It also forced me to ask myself if I ever recommended a product or service to client without wholly knowing the ramifications of that endorsement.

And sadly, the answer is yes.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

UPDATE: The Good Morning Silicon Valley site offers up a compelling argument explaining how Google might seem surprised by the frankly predictable reaction to their Google Buzz fiasco…

Social Media is the subject of a great deal of hype, though less-explored are its downsides.

These include employee oversharing, the need to “Feed the Monster” – and an increased risk of malware and spam attacks (the new social disease?).

From the Good Morning Silicon Valley site:

More businesses may be incorporating social networking into their internal and external communications, but that doesn’t mean the cranky guys back in the systems room are happy about it. A new report and survey of 500 companies by security outfit Sophos found a 70 percent increase last year in the number of firms reporting spam or malware attacks via social networks. Almost three quarters of the companies surveyed believed their employees’ behavior on social networking sites endangered security, and 61 percent named Facebook as their biggest worry among the social sites.

Obviously, every media channel has its pluses and minuses, and they need to be weighed against the potential benefits.

Outside of concerns about malware, I speak candidly with my consulting clients about the dangers of employee oversharing. Social media fanatics are often quick to call for transparency and unfettered employee access, but frankly, some folks shouldn’t be allowed near a Twitter client or a blog.

More than a decade ago, I gave a vendor direct access to my client. It was a tough project (an ad/show campaign), and to my horror, that vendor immediately got into a nasty email flame war with my key client contact.

By the time I found out, the damage was already done, and though I made amends, I (understandably) lost the client.

Oddly, I’d worked with that vendor for years, and their actions never suggested a tendency towards corporate suicide (with their clients or mine).

The moral here is that you can’t simply hand each everyone access to direct media channels like social media. The above exchange took place via email – but imagine if the flame war had taken shape on a Facebook page or even a blog – for all to see?

Too many social media projects begin on a seemingly ad hoc basis – lacking a plan or even a clear idea of the goals, means, and yes – potential pitfalls.

Keep your eyes open about the pitfalls, and you’re a lot less likely to have a bad, bad day.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

This observational gem from a thoughtful presentation on social media metrics on the zygote blog

social media, teen sex

Teaching – done right – is really just learning in disguise. And what you learn when you teach is often what you already knew, though perhaps not as deeply as you should have.

I recently finished teaching the last local session of my Online Marketing Boot Camp. Aimed directly at small businesses, it was a reminder there’s life outside the twitter/facebook/blog echo chamber occupied by most freelance marketers.

My students were little interested in spending an hour a day generating “content,” and the challenge was to chart a path through the online marketing thicket that was appropriate (and realistic) for my micro-entrepreneurs.

Because my students needed more than an overview of all the possibilities, we found ourselves constructing an Online Marketing Map – a document outlining each businesses’ online marketing activities and the channels they’d use.

It’s hardly revolutionary. But it is grounding, especially in an era where a marketer has literally hundreds of options.

More importantly, I’ve discovered small businesspeople market best when marketing becomes a process – same as accounting or ordering supplies.

Too often – especially when overworked entrepreneurs are involved – marketing is the last job to get done, and yes, that realization also comes from grim personal experience.

Outlines? Or Graphics?

People learn differently, and in fact, that’s the source of my biggest struggle as a teacher. I’m an experiential learner, which is to say I dive into things and learn them by doing.

It’s not always the most effective technique (sometimes reading the directions actually works), and worse, my first response to students who want simple, basic, step-by-step directions is to just tell them to dive in and do it. What could be easier?

Turns out, a lot of things.

A sample graphic marketing map.

These differences played out even across the Online Marketing Map. I’m all about outlines, largely because I’m a writer (so I’m used to the format), and perhaps indecisive (I can change them easily). You can also easily add detail to an outline (just indent), and I like detail.

Some students did a lot better with graphic representations, so I pondered that for a while before constructing one in OpenOffice’s Drawing module (which was damned easy).

It lacked a certain level of detail, but the students were happier (especially the artists), and who am I to argue with success?

I liked the Online Marketing Map idea because I’m involved in one of my periodic reviews of my own marketing, both professionally and on my fly fishing blog, which I’ve decided needs to pay its own way.

And it’s never a bad idea to break out of your rut, asking yourself questions like:

• Am I working smart?
• Am I wasting time in unproductive channels just because they’re hot?
• Am I capturing the full value of prospects I do draw to my site(s)?
• Am I converting all this effort into sales and revenue?
• What am I missing?
• Can I back up any of the above with data, or am I rationalizing?

These are all good questions for freelance writers, especially when the economy is tough, and the number of media choices multiplies daily.

In the case of my trying-to-become-a-sustainable-media-property fly fishing blog, the Online Marketing Map exercise proved particularly useful, especially since advertisers are bound to ask them too.

I’m not done yet, but I’m already making decisions. Is it time you built an Online Marketing Map?

There’s No Denying Social Media’s Buzz. But How Real Is It?

I recently read (and misplaced) an article deriding many social media “consultants” as carpetbaggers, and after reading a presentation to a trade association by a social media “guru” I’d say that’s true for at least one of them.

Naturally, this isn’t a blanket condemnation of social media consultants. After all, I’m a True Believer (note the caps) in engagement marketing, which qualifies me as someone willing to believe in the long-term power of connection with your audience.

So instead of condemnation, consider this a call for sanity.

In the marketing world, social media channels should meet the same performance standards as other, less-glamorous marketing channels. But the buzz is hard to escape – as is the sense that more than a few consultants aren’t doing their clients any favors.

Online Marketing Tough Love

I’m in the midst of teaching an Online Marketing Boot Camp – a class I developed for a local economic development agency. Even at the outset, social media reared up on its hind legs, demanding attention.

My students want to know if they should dive in. I’ve got two more weeks to figure it out.

Over the last month, I’ve read a lot of “Ten Reasons Why Every Primate Should Have a Twitter/Facebook/MySpace Presence” posts.

What’s striking is how few of those Top 10 “reasons” offer any hope of revenue. After all, I’m teaching small business owners and micro-entrepreneurs – people with limited time, and long, long to-do lists.

It’s easy to rave about the blue-sky benefits of Twitter and Facebook. But harder to define the dollars-and-cents return – especially when most of my students didn’t enter the business world to become “content generators.”

Most have trouble sticking to a regular e-newsletter mailing schedule. And email/e-newsletters remain the ROI Kings of online marketing.

Yet the social media buzz is powerful – as are the temptations.

Social Attraction

I consult with a small business client who’s done a great job putting their online marketing world in order.

Their Web site is solid (it’s running atop WordPress). They’re growing their monthly e-newsletter list (within a week of each mailing, the e-newsletter generates about half their revenue)

We launched their blog into a regular, google-pleasing, traffic-pulling orbit (no, we didn’t call it a blog – we wanted the publishing platform but not the baggage).

They’re a regional business, and yes, 95% of their new business comes via the Internet.

And yes, they’re asking me about social media.

My answer? Maybe.

Asking The Right Questions

First, let’s revisit the idea that new technology doesn’t drive marketing programs – business goals drive marketing programs. Investing time in a new media channel because it’s generating “buzz” doesn’t quite meet the bar.

In other words, the questions aren’t “Should we Twitter?” or “How about Facebook?”

It’s “Where are your customers? How do they want to be contacted? Can you deliver high-value content? How many media channels can you reasonably feed?” Then comes the biggie: “Do the contacts generated by social media convert into sales – or just traffic?”

In the case of several of my boot camp students, the answers to those questions suggest getting their online house in order before they launch social media initiatives. Sites should be dynamic and sticky. And – for most clients – an email program is a necessity.

Lest you think I’m a total unbeliever, I’ll say this: One of the boot camp students is an absolutely perfect fit for the hippest, hottest social media we can dredge up (fashion), and we’re going to go for it – though I’m suggesting an email program to turn short-term social medioids into long-term (profitable) customers.

For that small business client? I’m thinking it’s time to explore Facebook – but the second he misses an e-newsletter deadline, we’re taking the keys to Facebook away.

Keep marketing, Tom Chandler