Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookie

A few days ago I bought some Girl Scout cookies. Thin Mints to be exact. I love them. My family does too. A mom and dad sold them to me outside of a hardware store while their daughter was holding a big “Get Your Girl Scout Cookies Here” sign. They are marketers…and you probably are too.

Marketing isn’t just for the professionals. A few people are marketers all of the time, but most people are marketers sometimes. This isn’t anything new. What’s new are the tools that are available to the occasional marketer. Social media tools let the occasional marketer be just as successful as the professional marketer.

If you’re a professional marketer and are trying to figure out social media for your business, this might concern you. If you’re an occasional marketer, this might excite you. The barrier to great marketing isn’t access to the tools nor the size of the marketing budget. The playing field is nearly level on those things for the first time ever.

The new marketing success factors are time, passion, experience, transparency, flexibility, knowledge, energy, eloquence, creativity, authenticity, and endurance. If you have even a few of these things about whatever your marketing (whether you’re professional or occasional) you’re more likely to win. If you can combine those things with content people will find valuable, you’re very likely to be a social media marketing success.

Social media marketing requires that marketing budgets change because money isn’t the most important item in the marketing department budget. Time is. As marketing shifts toward more social mediums, time will be the most cherished and protected item in the marketing departments across the country.

The recession has spurred numerous reports about how marketing departments are cutting back their budgets. What nobody seems to be talking about, however, is marketing departments cutting back on the amount of time their employees spend doing things they don’t need to be doing. Today, the marketers in many corporate marketing departments are mostly project coordinators. Most of these professionals have both the knowledge and tools they need (or could get them very quickly) to be a great social media marketer, but their time is filled with all the projects they’ve outsourced. Their role is more like an air traffic controller than a professional marketer.

With social media marketing, many of the outsourced projects of today simply won’t exist in the future. They won’t need to. It’s not about getting to as many people as possible anymore. It’s about getting to the right people. This means that some percentage (and in many cases a large percentage) of marketing employee time will be free to pursue conversations with and create content for the right people. And that’s the promise of social media marketing.

Outsourced marketing will be replaced my insourced marketing. It only requires you stop doing the things that probably aren’t working anyway.

A few weeks ago I posted the longest video in MicroExplosion video of the week history. Today, it’s the shortest video in the history of this series. Regardless of your political affiliation, you’re going to like the Obama’s Elf video.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_B5UrI7nAI]

Today I was asked to provide a brief statement for a Nashville Chamber of Commerce event coming up next week. The statement was supposed to give “three reasons why businesses should embrace social media.” I couldn’t think of three things. I could think of one. Then I thought of about ten. Then I wrote this:

Businesses only need to embrace social media if they’re ready to listen and ready to talk. There are many great tools that let you do this better today for less money than ever before. The tools are great but they’re not magical. The new technology can help your business but only if you’re ready to think and act differently. The talking and the listening are what make it social. When you take them away it’s just the same old media. You are the one who makes it social. The tools just help you listen to the right people, talk to the right people, and spread the message to more of the right people.

I think that’s pretty much social media for business in a nutshell.

Two weeks ago I had the chance to talk about blogging specifics and some general social media concepts with a new video game blog, Beyond the D Pad. Here’s the interview:

[audio:interview-with-beyonddpad.mp3]

One of the more popular and widely discussed ideas surrounding social media and social networking suggests you adopt a “join the conversation” marketing strategy. For the most part I agree with everything this means. There are numerous conversations happening right now online (and offline) about your company, your industry, your products, your customers, etc. For those that are happening online, you can find the conversations and join them. What a great opportunity.

I know a retail company that is hesitant to join the conversation because they’re afraid of what people may say about them. The retailer doesn’t understand that people are already talking about them…a lot. They just haven’t joined the conversation to gain any influence. This is one side of the conversation coin: joining.

On the flip side, many people are joining conversations and benefiting greatly from the learning experience, but I am observing a new trend. As more individuals or organizations join conversations, they are not ready to change the conversations if given the opportunity. In their wildest dreams they just hoped to be part of the conversation and, fortunately, they’ve been great participants in the conversation, but now they have a strong voice and are not sure where to go. This is the other side of the conversation coin: changing.

My suggestion is that once you’re ready to join the conversation, start planning how you would change the conversation if given the opportunity. If this retailer jumped into the conversations about them, it would take quite a bit of time before they would fully join all the conversations about them, but in six months or a year they could be well on their way to active and willing participation in the conversation with loads of equity and trust. If they earn that, they need to be ready to take that conversation somewhere. They may choose to change the conversation to influence broader perceptions about their company, launch new campaigns, or even start more beneficial conversations. That would all need to be decided. Ultimately, you want to join a conversation with the assumption that you’ll eventually have a voice and influence so that you can change the conversation if needed.

Here is a quick overview of how to think about the conversations:

• Joining the conversation to hear what’s being said is highly valuable.
• Joining the conversation to dominate it or to talk without listening will get you kicked out.
• Joining the conversation to share your perspective is a great idea.
• Joining the conversation without knowing how you would like to influence it if given the opportunity would be a shame.

Some weeks I like to post videos that aren’t terribly popular online for the video of the week, but this week you’ll see one that is gaining popularity like crazy. In just over two weeks online, this video has over 9 million views on YouTube. I saw this video several days ago and knew right away it was this week’s video of the week. Enjoy David After the Dentist.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txqiwrbYGrs]

A few years ago I met with a guy named Scot Justice who was positioning himself to open his own CPA firm one day. I had been studying social media informally for several months at that point and was just starting to blog myself, so I suggested he take up blogging as an introductory web presence and marketing tool. At the time he was a CFO for a printing company here in Nashville. A year or so later the company was sold and he was out of a job…and he couldn’t have been happier.

Now, three years later, he’s on his own and doing great. He still blogs and he’s active on Twitter and together they account for 75% of his business. I’d call that a pretty good return on his marketing money, but of course time is the new money when it comes to social media marketing and Scot gets that.

I sat down with Scot last week to talk to him about his social media journey and he was gracious enough to talk to me. Scot’s even getting questions now from CPAs around the country who are waking up to the possibilities of social media. I’m proud of what Scot’s done. He’s put in the time and energy to do it right and is reaping the rewards. Here’s the interview.

One more thing, I referenced another interview in this video. Here’s the link to the interview with the blogging gunsmith.

One of the great things about the Internet is it allows innovative people to spread their ideas and work quickly. Really good content can’t be held back even if you want to. Just ask the guys from OkGo. Two and a half years ago they uploaded the now infamous treadmill video and 43 million views later they owe any success they’ve had to YouTube.

This week’s video of the week from Oren Lavie is certainly in the same league as the OkGo fellas. You can’t stop watching it to see what’s next…and in less than three weeks the video is just shy of 2.5 million views. Not too shabby. Really good content won’t be held back. It only spreads.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY]

In the latest episode of The New Mediology, Nathan and I talked about social media ethics. We used the recent story about Belkin paying people for positive reviews on Amazon.com as the basis for the discussion. This is a classic case of someone trying to use social media without understanding it…at least I hope the guy from Belkin who did this was simply ignorant. It’s much worse if he knew better but did it anyway.

In the end you have to remember that the promise of social media is the chance to influence through candid and genuine content and conversations. You must remember three things about social media:

1. Be genuine.
2. Be authentic.
3. If it feels less than genuine or authentic, it probably is (and you don’t want to go there.)

Authenticity wins in the long run. Trickery and gaming the system will always come back to bite you in the rear end.

The podcast is only 20 minutes and you can listen online or on download it in iTunes.