Last week I conducted a social networking experiment. I had been asked to recommend someone in LinkedIn and as I was doing it I got to thinking about how I’ve never been big on writing recommendations for LinkedIn. In fact, I’ve struggled with LinkedIn’s true usefulness for most professional unless they’re in the market for a new job (and therefore need the networking components LinkedIn provides.)  It’s great to make connections but I don’t get the sense of community and activity there like I do in Facebook or something more local for me like Digital Nashville. It’s not that I’m against LinkedIn, it’s just that it felt like something I should do but didn’t really see a direct benefit.

The Experiment

A funny thing happened while I was writing the requested recommendation. I started thinking about how bloggers strategically spread “link love” by linking to fellow bloggers to promote both blogs, so could two people benefit from some LinkedIn love in the form of recommendations? I think so…and my little experiment has proven so.

I spent about a half hour recommending people I know from various work experiences. Some are former coworkers. Some are current clients. Some are vendors I work with. I wrote short, genuine, personal recommendations for several people. And then I waited.

What happened in the 48 hours that followed was wonderful. I heard back from almost every single person. Some simply thanked me for the kind words. Others said they would return the favor and write a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. In one case, I found out the recommendation even made it to the “What Others Are Saying About Me” page on one guy’s business blog.

The bottom line was it bolstered my own LinkedIn recommendations a bit (with some others still coming I understand) and it earned me some relational equity from the rest of the people. It was a win for them (they received an unsolicited recommendation) and it was a win for me because I was able to do something nice for them and get a little LinkedIn recommendation love myself.

My Hesitation For This Post

One final thing…I should note that I was hesitant to post about this experiment because the last thing I want to do is misrepresent my motives in this experiment as self serving or that I only wrote recommendations for the favor that might be returned to me. That wasn’t the case because I actually didn’t know what kind of reaction I would receive. I suspected that some people would be happy with the recommendation, but I was equally braced for the fact that some people could be highly suspicious of an unwarranted recommendation so I only wrote recommendations for people I know personally and I didn’t ask anyone to recommend me back.

The way I see it is that the gift of unsolicited recommendations is the cake. If recommendations or relational favor are a result, that’s icing. The experiment was really just that: if I serve cake, does icing exist? I found that the answer is YES…as long my cake is authentic. Maybe you can serve some authentic cake today too.

Yesterday I saw a term I haven’t come across in a while: Mass Media. Remember that term? Yeah, we don’t hear it much these days. The context for the term came from a professor friend who teaches at a college here in Nashville. She mentioned a class for freshmen this fall called “mass media and society” but I got hung up at the mass media part of the class title.

I asked the professor why that term is still being used and it sounds like it has something to do with the book selection or something like that. Maybe it’s a historical perspective of media and our society. I’m not actually clear on what it’s going to be but the term got me thinking…isn’t mass media dead?

Mass media was all about the big TV networks, major newspaper outlets, and terrestrial radio, but how massive does something have to be to be considered mass media these days? With the numbers declining in all three of those areas can we even still call them mass media? Is the term even relevant today? Mass media died as it related to television years ago around the time cable TV really took off.

One might say mass media is about the number of people you reach, meaning you reach “the masses” (which I assume we translate into millions of people) through the mediums. Yet, that doesn’t really work because there are blogs, podcasts, and even YouTube videos that reach millions of people and we wouldn’t classify them as mass media. They’re the opposite of mass media: user generated, freely accessed, open to everyone, micro media.

Mass media is just a term that used to mean something that we don’t even think about anymore. It’s like the 8-track tape. It had a good run for a while but simply has no use to us today. Perhaps mass media didn’t actually die but simply disappeared in the shadow of so many other things that we use today.

The bottom line is that we kind of know that mass media doesn’t really stick like it used to. It doesn’t have the teeth it did even ten years ago. The real question as a marketer then, is do you still act/plan/execute like the mass media is still massive? There’s a new “MASS” you should be thinking about if you’re not already.

Incidentally, the mass media and society class at the college will have a blog. How’s that for irony?

I missed posting about my two year blogging anniversary a few weeks ago so this is my post to make up for it. In my very first post for this blog two years ago on the topic of social media I wrote:

Everything available to you through web 2.0 takes time to get off the ground. Some people will be fine with that, but for those of you with mandates and timelines you’re going to come to a fork in the road of whether you want to do something that people can see soon (old marketing methods) with something that will have an enduring impact (web 2.0 methods). Consider it your own little blue pill vs red pill. One will take you to a world you couldn’t imagine and the other…will keep you right where you are.

So, do I still believe this two years later? I sure do. In fact, I think this blue pill/red pill decision is one that more marketers are deciding on today than they were two years ago when I first wrote this. I had lunch today with some people from a company who are deciding right now which way to go. I had a similar lunch meeting yesterday. The tide seems to be coming in on social media.

Some people thought social media was a fad (and have since admitted so to me) but now see the communication/Internet/marketing world has changed and they need to change with it. Other people just weren’t paying attention or maybe were paying attention but didn’t take the time to get their hands dirty in the social media sandbox. Whatever the case, there’s is a rapidly widening awareness of the choice that needs to be made.

So which will you choose? If you choose the blue pill (blissful ignorance) then congratulations, you don’t have to do much. You can relax knowing you won’t have to go through the possible discomfort of change and new learning. I also hope you’re planning to retire in the next 12-18 months, otherwise you may regret the choice. If you choose the red pill (hard truth) then congratulations, you’re about to enter an exciting and unsettling journey. If you feel like the rules have changed you’re wrong. It’s the game that has changed and it has its own rules…but now you’re choosing to play, and that’s the best place to start.

As the Internet continues to both evolve and take further root in our culture there are a few things you might still be doing that simply aren’t required anymore (but I still see and/or hear them…hence this post.) In the same way that most everyone seems to have gotten the email that you don’t say “world wide web” anymore, there are a few other things you may want to consider checking too. Here are three things you do starting today…

1. Drop the WWW. That’s it. Just drop it. You don’t need to tell people to visit your site at www.yoursite.com anymore. Just say, “check out yoursite.com” and that’s all they need. Most browsers now can handle the URL without the www…so drop it. Besides, isn’t it a lot easier to say a URL without actually saying WWW first? It’s just too much of a verbal speed bump.

2. Drop the “online” from your URL. I saw this on a truck the other day on the highway. I don’t remember the company name but let’s say it was XYZ Trucking. The URL on the truck was XYZOnline.com. Do they really need to say “online” anymore? The point here is that an online presence is assumed these days and once people see a .com, .org, .tv, etc. they’ll figure out that you’re talking about a website. XYZTrucking.com would be a much better URL for the trucking company.

Last week I announced the 90 minute social media marketing micro conference I’m hosting a week from today with twenty five spots for businesses and and five free spots for non profits. All the non profit spot are full as of a few days ago (and we’ve had to turn a few away too…we’ll get them next time around) but there is still space for paying attendees. Remember…the fee covers you and up to ten people from your company to participate and you’ll get an MP3 recording of the micro conference when it’s over. If you’re ready to participate go ahead and get in on it.

In two weeks I’ll be leading a micro conference especially for marketing, advertising, and public relations professionals. So, whether you work in a communications office, marketing staff, PR firm, or advertising agency, you qualify for this micro conference. The 90 minute micro conference will be on April 29 at 10:30am EST and will cover the following:

• Why new media marketing is worth a shift to your marketing strategies
• Growth statistics for new media technologies
• Explanation of the technology, the shift in online culture, and the shift in the way to communicate online
• How to think like a social media marketer
• The most effective strategy for social media marketing

Limited Space (but five spots are FREE)
Space will be limited to 30 companies/organizations. The price is $249 for the 90 minute conference but five of the thirty slots will be given away for free to non profits. If you work for a non profit or know of one that may benefit from the conference, pass this information along to them. All they need to do is send me an email stating who they are, what they do, and why they are interested in social media marketing.

Access For 10 People From Your Organization
Access to the micro conference will be available for listening online or on the phone. Participating businesses and organizations will be able to have up to 10 people from their company attend as well. That means if a couple people in one office want to gather around a phone or computer but someone else is a little less social…everyone can all listen from their respective locations. Or maybe one of the staff is traveling and will be driving all that morning. She can call in and access the entire conference from there.

Conference Recording Available to All Participants
The entire session will be recorded and emailed as an MP3 to the email address provided during the registration process…so even if someone from the staff is out sick that day or you just want it for future reference, you’ll be able to pass it on to the rest of the staff after the conference is over.

Your Questions Answered
The reason for limiting the number of participants is that I want to be able to answer at least one question from each participating organization. Once you sign up send me a question (or several if you like) and I’ll be sure to answer at least one during the course of the micro conference so I can answer something you specifically want addressed.

If you’re ready participate click here or click the “add to cart” button below.

This is certainly off the beaten path of my normal blog posts but too funny not to share. My friend C.H. told me he realized this week that he’s getting old and out of touch.

While listening to the local radio station a few days ago, C.H. heard a promotion for an upcoming concert and the announcer was making a really big deal about giving away “$48 tickets for Fifty Cent.” This completely dumbfounded C.H. because he thought, “Why the heck would the radio station promote a giveaway for a concert yet charge the winner fifty cents to win the tickets? Can’t they just give them away for 100% if the ticket value? Is there some kind of tax implication to the station for giving away the full value of the tickets? Is the radio station just so cheap that they’ll pay the first $47.50 but not cover the remaining fifty cents? What a lame giveaway. Why can’t the station come up with a measly fifty cents more?”

After really being perplexed by this strange radio promotion it finally dawned on him. The tickets aren’t going to cost fifty cents. The tickets are for 50 Cent…the rapper. It’s a 50 Cent concert. Guess the radio station’s promotion isn’t so bad after all, though maybe their phrasing was. Or maybe it was just lost in translation on a guy who’s not quite as in touch as he thought. Whatever the case, I got a good laugh out of this.

I admit that I’m not an SEO guy and and don’t want to be. There are lots of specialists who know the ins and outs of how to get the most Google juice out of your website or blog and it’s worth knowing where to go for that kind of help.

Eric Holter and the team at Newfangled Web Factory, located in the shadow of the University of North Carolina, (no kidding…they’re right down the road from the campus) have put together a two part series on search engine optimization. The video below is the first of two they’ve done to help people understand how to do search engine optimization better. You can read more about Newfangled’s two-part series on SEO here (part 1) and here (part 2).

How to do SEO

That’s the topic Nathan and I discussed on the latest episode of The New Mediology podcast. Also, check out the blog that inspired this entire conversation, GoodURLBadURL.com.

…I think he would be saying some of the same things he was saying 85 years ago. I had never heard of Claude Hopkins until recently. I think I would have liked him. I also think he would have liked the marketing opportunities we have today with social media tools. Here’s something Claude wrote in his book, Scientific Advertising, back in 1923:

Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests or your profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising. Ads, say in effect, “Buy my brand. Give me the trade you give to others. Let me have the money.” That is not a popular appeal.

The best ads ask no one to buy. That is useless. Often they do not quote a price. They do not say that dealers handle the product. The ads are based entirely on service. They offer wanted information. They site advantages to users. Perhaps they offer a sample, or to buy the first package, or to send something on approval, so the customer may prove the claims without any cost or risks. Some of these ads seem altruistic. But they are based on the knowledge of human nature. The writers know how people are led to buy. Here again is salesmanship. The good salesman does not merely cry a name. He doesn’t say, “Buy my article.” He pictures the customers side of his service until the natural result is to buy.

Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising

I think Claude would agree that content is a good promotion strategy. He might even sing a little bit of “Old McDonald” with me.