Mark Wanczak

Listen, I understand the importance of a blog post title. Just like any other headline, it needs to grab attention, spark curiosity and ultimately make you read the body of the post. Still, blog authors are allowing concerns over attracting traffic to undermine the quality of their content. The blogosphere’s informality doesn’t justify writing headlines of suspicious intent and curious immaturity.

For example, let’s look at a post from the well-known inbound marketing company, Hubspot. Today, they’ve published a post titled, “What Did Jane Austin Know About Social Media.”  It’s insulting to anyone smart enough to read this blog post to imply that Jane Austin knew anything about social media, let alone to suggest she’d be involved in social media if alive today. I’ve insulted myself by even having to write that last sentence. Furthermore, the post transitions from headline to body content not via Jane Austin’s own literature, but instead a TV series interpretation. What would Jane Austin say about that kind of etiquette?

While they have good intentions, Hubspot and many others are simply trying too hard. Weakly framing social media etiquette around Pride and Prejudice is amateur, poorly thought out and, more importantly, unconvincing. I know Hubspot is much smarter than this and expect better. While I may be too hard on Hubspot, the truth is they’re just the latest in a long line of well recognized internet marketers to fail its readers by creating content that stretches too far to make a simple point.

This kind of content runs rampant in the SM industry. There are far too many posts of this nature, most of which simply repeats the same vague advice only with a different, absurd frame. I’d love to be able to blame on all the supposed “social media gurus,” but the truth is some of the most respected names in the industry are guilty of similar tactics.

Posts such as Hubspot’s are easily identifiable and share similar characteristics:

1. Titles that don’t hold up for the length of the blog post. The post’s headline will often promise a connection between social media and some pop culture reference, only to force fit the content into the format, creating a mess of words trying too hard to satisfy the unrealistic metaphor set up by the post’s headline.

2. Vague advice. Swap out “social media” for a different subject and the post still makes sense. Go ahead, try it.

3. Starry-eyed, irrelevant comments. The comments left for these posts contain over-the-top exclamations like “how true!” Absent are comments initiating debate or contributing further to the topic discussed because there is nothing substantial enough to debate.

The criticism of Hubspot’s post above and similar posts below is rooted in the high expectations readers have when reading content from industry leaders. There are some influential, well-known names in the list below, many of whom I respect and enjoy reading other content from.

My message to these authors: you and your readers are too smart for this dumbed-down content. Most of you have proven you’re better writers than posts like these lead on. Think twice before writing that next headline.

Some other equally as stupid social media blog post titles:

What Socrates Can Teach You About Social Media

What Seinfeld can teach you about social media

6 Things World of Warcraft Can Teach You About Social Media Success

What Jason Bourne Can Teach You About Social Media

What Tyler Durden Can Teach You About Twitter And Social Media

What Zig Ziglar Can Teach You About Social Media

What Chad Ochocinco Can Teach You About Social Media

What Brett Favre Can Teach You About Social Media Strategy

What the State Department can teach you about social media

Photo via striatic.

I don’t know whether to love this or hate this:

The availability of metrics is not a reason to use a medium. Metrics are a tool not an objective. They don’t further your business, however good they look on a power point slide.

- The Grumpy Brit

Here’s what you missed this week:

1. Haven’t had enough of the AT&T/Luke Wilson commercial bashing? Read some more.
2. Google quietly releases Goggles, allowing you to search by picture taken from your phone. Sick.
3. If you had $500 to spend on a digital campaign, what would you do? I bet it’s not as smart as this.
4. Social media gives branding a bad name. The Grumpy Brit straightens it all out for us. (Love the last line of this)
5. How to make street flyers a little bit better.
6. Think online video is huge? Think again.
7. Dave Trott takes simple soccer advice and eloquently applies it to advertising. Love it.
8. Worst post of the week: 137 Twitter Marketing Tips for Small Businesses. 137? Really? Twitter is the simplest tool on Earth, don’t complicate it.
9. Best post of the week: The Content Strategist as a Digital Curator. Really unique perspective on managing online content. Long but certainly worth it.
10. Timely post of the week: The Art of Manliness Holiday Gift Guide 2009. Definitely asking Santa for that vintage tweed MP3/Radio.

Not satisfied? This 5-minute video of Dan Wieden should do the trick.


Between The Cracks is a weekly roundup of noteworthy links that you may have missed. It is most definitely not a weekly commentary on defecation. Get your mind right.

Here on the blog, my favorite examples of advertising usually relate to video, but it’s time to give Twitter its due. I have my Twitter stream open all day and can’t overstate its importance on keeping me up to date on just about everything, including the latest clever use of Twitter from the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas.

The hotel (whose sales are down 25% this year) is turning to Twitter users for public admission of sins to help spark business. Twitter users are encouraged to tweet their sins (Vegas = sins) along with the #mgmsin hashtag, which the hotel will monitor and award a free nights stay to a random guilty tweeter each day for  30 days.

The hashtag also allows bored bystanders (yours truly) to monitor the stream and read some gross curious sins (see above). The real kicker to this campaign is what MGM will be doing with the tagged tweets. Think projectors. Think big buildings. Think embarrassment:

The campaign kicked off on Twitter, but out-of-home wall projection systems in Los Angeles will shine the confessions from dusk until 2 a.m. on the side of buildings, such as Staples Center, Nokia Theatre and LA Live complex in Downtown LA, and Hollywood and Highland.

-From MediaPosts’s coverage of the campaign, read more.

I say Kudos to the MGM Grand. Original idea and creative execution. Let’s see how it plays out.

We’ve all seen the case studies. The coffee shop that saw triple digit increases in sales. The food and ice cream trucks that are driving customers to their location each day. Even the Sunset Strip is (desperately) turning to Twitter. Judging by the many success stories, Twitter seems to have a well-deserved, proven place in the small business marketing toolbox.

But will it stay that way?

Small business turn to Twitter for a variety of reasons, none more important than its simplicity and cost. If I told you that your business could potentially increase sales using a free marketing tool that’s incredibly easy to use, you would certainly give it a try.

Over and over again, we hear that all Twitter and other social media tools cost us is our time. But what’s your time worth? What’s your hourly rate from 9-5? Why stop calculating at 5pm? If you make $15/hour, is it worth $15 for you to spend an hour a day on Twitter? Will you see an extra $15 in sales for your small business?

Perhaps the bigger question to ask is if you spend an hour a day on your other marketing efforts? Is Twitter’s free cost leading small businesses to rely too heavily on the popular tool? I can’t help but think that some businesses, who already have cut their marketing budgets, are giving social media an increasingly share of marketing time and dollars.

Is Twitter’s success and quick adoption due in part to the fact that we all have more free time in a recession to spend on something like social media? I think it may. And this leads me to question small business marketing priorities once the economy turns around and there’s money to spend.

Will small business turn to the proven, traditional marketing efforts and begin to phase out social media as their business picks up and grows, as they don’t have time to sit in front of the computer for a few hours a day?

We all use Twitter to learn, but most Twitter advice points users to follow the best and brightest in a particular industry. Effective advice, sure, but don’t we also learn from what not to do just as much as the opposing alternative (see #fail)?

We shouldn’t treat Twitter as any different. Just like anyone else, I want to discover new or different trends and outlets from those I follow, and I’m guessing most want the same in return. We all get the give and take, the foundation of efficient Twitter use.

But I have to admit, I’m guilty of following people just to take.

I’m no Twitter expert (are there really any, given Twitter’s stark simplicity?), but the established taboos provide a litmus test for qualifying follow backs. Not RT’ing anything good or at all? Constant self-promotion? No follow backs for you.

But here’s the thing– the people who often come across as promotional or make a habit of Twittering the mundane details of life seem to be the ones claiming some kind of social media expertise or experience.

While I don’t like these tweeps, I can’t stop following them. I look forward to the next tweet telling us social media’s all about sharing ideas, then seeing six songs from Blip in a row.

Am I a social media expert? No, I’m not even sure what being an expert entails. I’m unsure why social media people only get to add ‘expert’ to their title, when the rest of the professional world uses real, established and recognized titles like manager or director. Expert is self-proclaimed, unsupported and unsubstantiated.

Adam Singer at thefuturebuzz.com said it best, “You don’t need a social media expert, you need a good marketer.”

There’s a difference between inspired marketing and inspiring marketing. The first is on behalf of the marketer, something we have control over. Inspired marketing is the result of our own efforts, but can have no definite results with the audience we’re targeting.

Inspiring marketing is in the eye of the beholder, in our world, the consumer. As marketers, we can create what we think is an inspiring ad or campaign, but ultimately, we can’t decide its fate. The inspiring marketing trend seems to be constantly evolving, each effort bigger in scale than the last. In line with this evolution,  I present T-Mobile’s latest video.

Call it viral. Call it word of mouth. Call it whatever the term is now. I call it inspiring marketing.

T-Mobile – Hey Jude

One of the great things about Twitter is that other people get to peek through a tiny, 140-character-sized window into your life a few times a day. Most of us have a purpose behind our Twitter use, professional networking, personal branding or just for fun. Our followers recognize where we fit and overlap among these three options and can choose to unfollow or hang around.

It’s common perception that those who constantly self-promote will fail at professional networking or even personal branding on (and off) Twitter, whether it’s in the form of no follow-backs or poor quality of followers. Those using Twitter just for fun, to connect with real-life friends and other reasons, have nothing to lose.

I heard Guy Kawasaki say on a webinar that Twitter is a marketing tool, so why shouldn’t it be okay to  self-promote? Guy uses his Twitter account to promote his site Alltop fairly frequently and I still follow him because he lets through some great info in between the Alltop tweets. Guy is also very well known and respected among industry peers, an impression I’ve gathered from other well known marketers referencing Guy on a regular basis.

Guy is promoting a useful site, not himself. After following Guy for months, I have no reason to believe that Twitter Guy Kawasaki is unlike the real life Guy Kawasaki. And I like that. I don’t want to be deceived.

On the other hand, you have people tweeting in the same way as Guy, but, instead of promoting a tool that helps someone, they promote themselves. Of course, this is viewed by many as a Twitter faux pas, and rightly so. If you’re not helping anyone else, why would we listen to you.

But what about those who promote the idea of idea sharing, yet seem to contradict themselves?

Is it possible that this is an unfair snapshot of Scott’s Twitter usage? Sure. But I’ve followed Scott for months, and it’s always bothered me how he seems to contradict the very advice he gives daily. Is Scott a great guy in person? I’m sure he is. But this is also Twitter, and either Scott or Guy could have bodies locked up in their basements and I’ll never know.

My point is that I feel like I have a good grasp on Guy without ever having met him. Because of his inconsistencies, I can’t say the same for Scott. Does any of this really matter? In the long run, probably not. But this is part of the process I use to not just follow someone, but to take their information, links, data, and tweets seriously.

I’m always looking to learn more, whether it’s about online marketing or green building.  I use those I follow on Twitter as experienced guides and resources. I suspect many do the same, not everyone has the pleasure of sharing an office with Chris Brogan.

Can I trust what your telling me, who you are?

Courtesy of salukipilot4590

You set up a blog for a company as a part of a new marketing strategy. Add all interested parties as authors and brief them on the blog’s goal. Appoint an admin who understands blogging’s benefits and has final say on all published content.

Then someone high up has a piece of news that needs published ASAP. What happens next? Does the established structure and philosophy of your corporate blog go out the window? Here are a few questions that should be asked:

1. Why does this need published ASAP? Is it crucial to crisis communications or just a line item someone wants to push through immediately. If so, will rushing this news adversely affect other efforts?

2. Who is authoring the blog post? Is it the person with the information relevant to the news? If not, is there anyone else informed enough to develop the proper content? Is it an issue that should be addressed publicly by upper management?

3. Who is being notified of the new post? If your blog is new or doesn’t have regular subscribers or daily readership, how will anyone know about your urgent news? If posts are promoted using tools such as Email or Twitter, how will this urgent post fit into the overall promotional strategy?

4. Why isn’t the person asking for the post to be written physically writing it? Clearly, they’re most aware of the subject matter, isn’t it possible they could summarize it in the time it takes to find someone who will?

What I’m getting at is that the same goals, strategies and tactics implement when a company founded a blog should be maintained, regardless of a post’s origins. While an issue coming from the top may have more importance or immediacy, it doesn’t mean it should break a blog’s initial intent and come off the tracks for the sake of accomodation.