Yesterday I talked about the difference between the two…today I saw this video on the Collide Magazine blog. It’s an advertising stunt from Australia that’s literally explosion marketing. It sounds like some people were on hand to see what would happen but I wonder how many can remember the company that did this and then used the company’s services as a result. It makes a big boom but what did it really do in the end? I think a spark strategy would have been better…but take a look for yourself.

A little over two years ago when I was starting my blog I came up with the idea of calling it “microexplosion” it was all based on the idea that all the new media tools are simply spark creators and that if the goal of marketing/PR/advertising is to create ideas that catch fire, then leveraging the new spark creators would be worth looking into. The funny thing about a spark, is that it doesn’t seem like a big deal all by itself. After all, a spark vanishes in an instant. You don’t even feel it if it touches your skin…but given the enough time and the right circumstances a spark can turn into a blazing fire.

Traditional marketers don’t have time for sparks. They want something that goes boom. It needs to be big and it needs to be loud. They want everyone to know when it ignites. Their entire professional worth is based on the bigness and the loudness of the boom. They get paid to make big booms.

Social media marketers don’t need a big boom. They have all these little spark starters. They can go over here and create a spark and then go over there and create a spark and then discover another area and create a spark and in the end they step back and see some of those sparks turn into tiny flames. Those flames can turn into small fires and those fires grow and can go on blazing for a long time.

Think of it like this…explosion fires are quickly put out, but fires that start with sparks aren’t. Explosion fires are quickly discovered and dealt with but spark fires go unnoticed at first but when they are noticed they’re already spreading rapidly. That’s why forest fires are such a big deal. They can take weeks to put out.

If you’re marketing with explosions you have to keep making it bigger and louder just to make sure someone notices your explosion among all the other explosion marketers. If you’re marketing with sparks, you just have to find the right scenario for your spark to ignite.

Last week I had the opportunity to interview Tony Zito, the CEO for mediaFORGE, a company that “has widgets comin’ out their ads.” More to the point, mediaFORGE creates widgets as a new means of display advertising. What that means is they don’t do online advertising the way most people do. Don’t ask them to create a banner ad for you. They won’t do it. They’ll give you a widget instead…and you’ll be glad they did. According to Zito, their widgets perform with a conversion rate that’s three to five times higher than standard banner ads. You can see some of their widgets on their showcase page.

Think about that conversion rate over standard banner ads…three to five times more conversions. So if you’re getting a 3% conversion rate now, you could be getting 9% or even a 15% conversion rate by simply ditching the ads that people don’t like anyway for something they’ll engage and act on. Zito thinks this is the next phase of display ads. I happen to agree. We know banner ads don’t work. Even stats from four years ago show they haven’t been working for a while.

Widgets seemed to really take off last year as more marketers looked to them for sales and promotions. According to Zito, “last year was the year of the widget, but this year is the year of ‘how do we monetize the widget?’” For all the interest marketers are showing for new media marketing opportunities, the inevitable question is: “Ok, now what? When does this start making money for us?” That’s a question that all social media marketers are dealing with and one that mediaFORGE seems to be providing an answer for.

What I’ve personally be perplexed by for a while now is that if not banner ads, what do you recommend for mere display ad purposes? I think Zito and mediaFORGE are going down the right road. The widgets provide something that has value to the customer or prospect. It allows a person to engage an ad rather than simply being interrupted. I don’t know for sure if widgets are the next wave of display ads, but it sure seems like it’s going the right direction.

When I was on vacation last week I read a fascinating story about the rivalry between the two top gadget blogs in the world: Engadget and Gizmodo. It turns out these two blogs are the Hatfields and McCoys of the blogosphere and they’re taking aim at each other every day in the form of scooping each other with the best gadget and gear news available.

This blog on blog conflict is great for the readers because they reap the benefits of the rivalry. The dark side of the feud is that it turns personal from time to time. Apparently each blog has accused the other with various accusations and that got me thinking about the rest of us who blog. After all, I personally advocate content that will “outrage” as one of the five categories of good social media content so what if we developed a rival who seemed to have us squarely in his crosshairs on a regular basis? How would you deal with that given you have a public platform with which to fire back? Or maybe you’re the aggressor and you’re gunning for someone else for some reason. How do you decide what’s in play and what’s out of bounds? As I’ve thought about these things I’ve come to this one statement to sum up how I will act in either case: Accuse slowly and apologize quickly.

The BeautiControl Lesson

The thing about having a publishing house at your fingertips is that you can say (or do) just about anything and send it out to the world only to think better of it only a few hours later. That’s part of the power of a blog or online video. You get things published quickly, but once something has been online go ahead and assume it’s indexed and cached somewhere (probably by Google) to be found later…which means whatever you publish likely won’t disappear forever even if you want it to. I remember a story from a year ago when the company BeautiControl was promoting an online video called “Cars, Money, Friendship, Bling, and Travel” as a sales and motivational tool for potential BeautiControl consultants. The company started catching some heat from their consultants for the video so they pulled it down, but someone else had already captured it and republished it on YouTube. That video has over 10,000 views as of this post. That’s 10,000 more views than Beauticontrol wanted, but there it still is, a year later, still getting views.

The lesson here is that just because you can publish something quickly doesn’t mean you always should. If you’re going to accuse someone of something you should really make sure you know what you’re getting into. Do you have all the facts? Do you know another side of the story? If not, why not take a little extra time.

Dear AT&T: I’m Sorry

If you do screw up or there’s even a hint of misunderstanding on your blog, be willing to apologize very quickly. You’ll be forgiven. You may lose a little credibility, but in the end people will remember you apologized as soon as you realized it was a mistake. Don’t delete the mistake either. Unless you’ve published something that’s gotten you into legal hot water leave the accusation up with a link or note to the correction. In the spirit of full disclosure and transparency you need to leave it there for all to see…even if you were a jerk or an idiot.

I had to do this last summer. I accused AT&T of missing the launch of the iPhone on their website the day it launched. I thought I had a big story there…until about an hour later I got a phone call from a friend who told me I was 24 hours early on the iPhone launch. AT&T wasn’t late. I was early. I quickly updated the post (leaving the original, incorrect post) and admitted I was an idiot. I think AT&T got over it.

The Bottom Line: The ability to publish quickly is good and bad. You determine which it will be every time you post. Accuse slowly and apologize quickly to stay out of a little less trouble.

I’m a big proponent of social media but I know everyone isn’t. Some people I talk to or work with are equally bullish about what social media can do for their companies. Others are a little more neutral. They’re not against social media, but they’re not convinced it’s great either. Then there are also those who simply don’t like it. The word “blog” gives them a nervous feeling in the pit of their stomach or the idea of customer comments and feedback makes them really uneasy.

I understand these people to some degree. They may have had a bad experience or have seen blogs (or other social media) used in a way that it harms someone and have therefore equated all blogs and social media to that same instance. The end result of this thinking, however, is that these individuals are social media killers within their companies. They’re the naysayers who won’t stand to listen and try to understand all the benefits. In my observation, there are three traits I’ve seen from the social media killers. They are:

• Fear - Whether they’re afraid of what people will say, won’t say, might say, or could say, the root of their unwillingness is a fear of the unknown. They don’t know social media and they’re scared. It’s too new, too open, too conversational, too accessible, too uncontrollable, and simply too different from the way they’ve always done things.
• Mistrust - Social media killers don’t trust people. They don’t trust their employees to be good representatives for the company and they don’t trust their customers. They want control and control always draws things in. Control doesn’t release. Trust requires release and social media requires trust.
• Unwillingness to listen to customers - Social media killers don’t want to hear what their customers have to say. Like the ostrich who buries his head in the sand, it’s easier to keep doing things like they have always been done than it is to ask the customer about his/her experience. If you ever hear someone say something like, “They may something bad about us” you’re dealing with a potential social media killer. In this case you may gently suggest that people may very well already be saying bad things about you, but you just don’t know it. At least if they’re saying bad things about you where you can see it, you can respond and maybe (just maybe) learn and change if needed.

The opposite of the three killers above are trust, faith, and a willingness to listen. Every company that’s considering social media will have to decide on one way or the other. If you’re trying to implement social media within an organization with a lot of social media killers I would recommend you start small. Get some small wins and then begin to take on the big three killers.

I remember being totally enamored by the story of Mozart the first time I saw Amadeus. One of the things Mozart did was change the way the Austrians viewed operas. They thought they knew what an opera was and then they experienced Mozart’s operas. He built on the foundation of operas as they had been done but improved on it dramatically.

In many ways that’s how I see the new marketing opportunities with social media and social networking tools. They build on the foundation of old marketing for something better. The video below from Amadeus drives home the difference between the old and new. Be sure to listen for the quote, “It doesn’t really work, does it?” Seems like it fits the old marketing vs. new marketing analogy pretty well. Here’s the clip for the feed readers.

I’m always interested in the latest social media stats that come. So is my friend Aaron Linne. Aaron pulled some stats together for a meeting at his company recently. There’s great info here if you haven’t seen any social media stats in a while.

Becky is a marketing strategist for a large company here in Nashville. One evening she was planning some snacks for an evening with friends when her search for a snack led her to purchase a book she didn’t know she wanted. Here’s the email Becky sent to her director the next day:

“I Googled Chili’s because I wanted to find out how much it would cost to get chips and salsa to go. When I Googled Chili’s, this link came up that said “Brand Autopsy: Would you miss Chili’s?” That intrigued me, so I clicked on it and found the blog of a marketing guy who used to work for Starbucks and Whole Foods. He, in turn, raved about this new book that is all about marketing and social networks. I thought it might be something that our whole team would benefit from. Isn’t it ironic that I was looking for chips and salsa and found a marketing book? But it hit the right audience at the right time!”

I really like this story at a number of different levels because:

• It shows the power and influence of blogs even in the most unlikely of connections.
• It reminds me that people trust blogs that seem trustworthy.
• It reminds me that your target audience cannot be segmented so neatly all the time because Becky the marketer wasn’t looking for a book but she found one and bought it (and will likely buy one for the entire marketing team at the company) when she was Becky the snack shopper.
• It reminds me of the power of a Google search and how blogs could make (or break) the positioning of your brand.

The book Becky found was called “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed By Social Technologies” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I’m reading this book now too but I found out about it through Twitter via Jeremiah Owyang.

I’m keenly aware of the irony here (and also the affirmation of the power and influence of social media) that a book called Groundswell benefited from the groundswell in at least two cases I can point to directly (mine and Becky’s) and I’m sure countless others. So the question is, what are you waiting for if you’re not getting in yet? Don’t fight the groundswell.

“All right stop, collaborate and listen…”

Vanilla Ice in “Ice Ice Baby”

Ever think Vanilla Ice had anything to teach you? Me either…but my friend Scott Mills jokingly pointed out at lunch recently that Vanilla Ice had a few things to say about social media marketing when he said to stop, collaborate, and listen. Scott was joking. I’m not.

Vanilla’s advice is actually pretty good for social media marketers. We have to stop, collaborate, and listen if we’re going to be good social media marketers. Checking out the hook while his DJ revolves it is optional.

Stop: If you’re dabbling in social media marketing you need to stop. Do you have a plan or are you playing around with social media because it seems like the thing everybody is doing these days? Do you have measurable goals? Do you even have goals? The worst thing you can do is not stop and figure out how social media will work for you and then how best to move forward within it. If you don’t stop first you’re probably going to create a meatball sundae…and nobody wants that…so stop first. Once you stop I recommend you begin to think about a content strategy to really take full advantage of the new marketing tools.

Collaborate: In some form or fashion collaboration is at the heart of every good social media initiative. It may be the type of collaboration that involves a wiki (which Google spreadsheets even does now) or simply allowing comments, tags, trackbacks, and other forms of feedback to your social media. Collaboration is both active and attitudinal. You must convey that you actually care what other people think…and not just that you care, but allow them to participate and contribute in some form. Mitch Joel does a great job of this by allowing audio comments on his podcast, Six Pixels of Separation. Mitch actively allows people to collaborate and also has an attitude that reflects this. Collaboration is one of the biggest shifts from web 1.0 to web 2.0. It was a shift in technology that enables collaboration and it was a shift is tone and attitude toward collaboration.

Listen: Social media is as much about conversation as it is collaboration. The two go hand in hand really, but did you ever talk to someone who was more interested in talking than having true conversation? The missing piece of course was that they weren’t listening. They were just looking for an opportunity to talk. Social media marketing isn’t about one way communication or disruption tactics. That was the old way to do marketing. True conversation, like true social media marketing, doesn’t interrupt. Rather, it engages and listens. The fact of the matter is these conversations are already happening. You just have to decide whether you’re going to join the conversation or not.

So there it is…wisdom from Mr. Ice. Word to your mother.

I loved playing baseball as a kid and especially enjoyed batting practice. The great thing about batting practice was that it allowed you to work on your hitting outside of the pressure of the game. I’d like to invite you to some social media batting practice with me and here’s how it will work…

I believe there are no businesses or organizations that cannot benefit from social media marketing but for probably many reasons, social media marketing is still considered something that only quick, young, startup types of companies can utilize.

Social media batting practice will be our way to show that social media marketing can, in fact, work for any type of business or organization and this is where we’ll share those ideas. My hope is that this will be a way to stretch those of us interested in social media marketing (without the pressure of the pitch from a prospective client) and hopefully prove its worth to some doubters or skeptics. So…we need pitchers and batters (and those who want to do both.)

Pitchers will throw out an idea of a type of business or organization we might not think could or would use social media and it’s up to a batter to give some specific ideas of how that business would implement social media marketing. The batter can think about it like being temporarily hired as a social media marketer for the business or work. The only request for the “pitches” here is that they be real or at least plausible. For instance, a pitcher might say, “how would a gunsmith use social media? Or maybe, “how would a dog grooming store use social media marketing?” That’s more the spirit we’re going for here…businesses that people might think could benefit from social media marketing.

If you want to be a pitcher or batter just let me know in the comments or shoot me an email (Bill@MicroExplosion.com) All pitchers and batters will get credit and links to their respective blogs or websites. The pitchers really have the easy job here…just throw out a type of business and give some parameters so the batter can give a good answer. The batters are the ones who have to come up with a couple of things they could do and give some specifics. It’s not enough to say, “Start a Facebook group , create a blog, and post some video to YouTube. There, have a nice day.” That won’t cut it. You need to be more specific. This post might help if you need it.

Who knows how long we’ll play. Maybe through the summer. Let’s see how it goes. So, who’s ready for some batting practice? Here’s a pitch if someone wants to be the batter (email me if you do and I’ll have a full post with your response):

How would a weekend fly fishing guide and instructor use social media to grow his business? Assume the guide works a job during the week but would love to be a fly fishing guide full time if possible. He knows the best spots for good fishing in the region and is a great instructor as well. He’s only booked one weekend a month right now, but wants to be full every weekend. What should he do?

By the way…I totally made that up but that’s the kind of information a pitcher will need to provide for a batter.