Grover takes on the Old Spice Guy and wins.

Seth Godin is very popular among the social media/internet marketing crowd. He should be. He’s awesome.

But if you look at Seth’s internet presence, you’ll notice something. There’s a twitter account ( http://twitter.com/sethgodin/ ), but it’s private and he’s only allowed 5 people to follow him. The public account, like Seth’s Facebook Page, is really only a feed leading back to his blog. No responses from Seth. No @replys to anyone. Just a feed that points back to his home.

So much for engage or die.

It’s not that Seth never responds. He occasionally replies via email, but hardly ever via social media channels.

So, what gives?

Here is my theory: Seth is about much more than social media. Seth is *the* idea guy. The thread that runs through all of his work isn’t something as trivial as “engage or die” nor does he have blog posts about “100 steps to master social media”.

Seth’s message is this: “Be Awesome”.

It sounds like a oversimplification, but take some time & read through his books. Comb through his blog posts that you can’t leave comments on. It’s there over and over again.

Be Awesome.

http://delivr.com/qr-code-generator

enjoy!

Every time someone mentions the word “blog” to me, I get up on my soapbox and say, “If you’re not going to update it at least once a week, don’t even bother. Doing it badly is worse than not doing it at all!”

And, yet, here mine sits.

Part of it comes out of the fact that I loathe self-promotion. Yes, I’ve got a lot of cool projects that have been hitting the Internets lately, but I hate tooting my own horn. I hate it so much that I’ve entertained notions of trying to kill my business by ending all advertising (Yes, Yellow Pages, I’m looking in your general direction) and relying solely on word of mouth to generate business.

Ah, but I once again digress.

The really fun news making the rounds last week was that Mickey D’s increased their foot traffic by a whopping 33% via a FourSquare promotion. Word of this social media success spread faster than a bad cold until someone at ReadWriteWeb took a little time to think about things and point out that the emperor was not wearing clothes.

The thing that bothers me about the initial reaction to this bit of misinformation is that it reflects what we’re all looking for. We want that magic pill that instantly makes us insanely profitable. A lot of people point to social media success stories like this & the Old Spice campaign and that only creates unrealistic expectations. Facebook pages are created, tweets tweeted and nothing happens.

And then social media gets the blame.

I’m not doubting the benefit of promotions via social media, but it really is a long term investment. It’s not just about motivating potential customers by contests, coupons or the good old bait and switch upsell. It’s really about putting yourself out there and showing who you are and what you’ve got. It’s holding conversations and building relationships.

If you want to see a master at work, check out @CosmicKitchen on Twitter. Hands down, Kris (not a typo) does the best social media marketing of any business here in town. She’s not above a little shameless self-promotion, but she mixes it well with real conversations.

Of course, the fact that they have some of the best food in town doesn’t hurt (I could go for a Reuben right now).

Wilmington has a awesome arts community and they’re showcasing local artists downtown during the 1st Annual ARTblast Festival.

Check out CoolWilmington.com for the deets: http://www.coolwilmington.com/

In case you’ve been living under a social media rock for the past 48 hours, Old Spice has launched the current mother-of-all viral social media campaigns.

Apparently, they’ve assembled a crack creative team and locked them in a Portland, Oregon bunker with cameras, a shower and a live internet connection to answer questions posted at various social media sites.

When I first sat down to write this, I thought I was going to poke all sorts of holes in it. Yeah, a big company with a well established character & brand could do this sort of thing with deep pockets, but it really doesn’t do any good for the little guys. Local businesses could never pull this sort of thing off.

But why not?

I mean, yeah, you couldn’t do it on this sort of scale cranking out 87 videos in 11 hours that get national attention, but how about on a micro scale?

Maybe one a week?

With some sort of interesting delivery?

Educating & informing your potential customer base instead while entertaining them?

It could be done.

But you’ve got to have something of value and be interesting first.

Clickbrix QR Codes for Real Estate: via Brand Flakes for Breakfast

QR Codes are nifty little things. I’ve even spotted a few  in the wild locally in Wilmington and we spotted them in a few places around Washington, DC while we were on vacation.

Basically, they are bar codes that can be read by smartphone users. The information that they can contain varies, but the really cool application is that you can use them to direct smartphone users to a web page. Realty companies in the area are starting to use them on for sale signs to direct potential buyers to listings and I’ve seen them at Lowes linking to information on plants & plant care.

They’ve been around in Japan for a while now, but you can generate your own with one of several online tools. Put them in your ads, on business cards or on various items in your store and lead customers to more information to complete the sale.

Part 1: Refollow

I’ve tried a lot of twitter tools and some are painfully slow or borderline useless. Yesterday, I decided to thin the number of people I’m following and used Refollow ( http://refollow.com ) to thin the herd.

It was awesome. Fairly quick to use once it loads your info and offered just about every way possible to sort Friends/Followers.

** This is a unsolicited/unpaid, yet glowing endorsement

Part 2: General Social Media Philosophy

While I was going through the list of people that I followed, I started to notice that quite a few people weren’t following back and I started to get a little miffed. I’m not talking about celebrities either major or minor (for a good take on that look here: What Twitter is For ). Some were people that I knew personally and others were businesses that I though, “Well, heck. why wouldn’t they want to follow me???”

You Can’t Take Social Media Personally

After getting a grip on myself, I started to really think about why someone doesn’t follow back and I’ve put this in a nifty web friendly scanning unordered list for your viewing pleasure & enlightenment.

• They Don’t Use Twitter The Way I Do
  Believe it or not, a lot of people use social media for *gasp* socializing with their friends. Even business accounts are going to skew towards friends & associated because they’re run by real people. They’re not so much interested in links or (as in my case) the occasional anonymous dry sarcastic comment. They’re communicating with their real life circle and that’s a good thing.
• I’m Not Offering Anything of Value
  My Twitter account is a mix of professional and personal items and leans heavily in the personal direction because I feel that blatant self-promotion makes me look sleazy. No offense to anyone who blatantly self-promotes; it’s just not encoded in my DNA. Still, posting design related items doesn’t always attract local business people because they’re worried about other things… like staying in business.

  Along the same lines, I don’t follow everyone back immediately. I only reciprocate after I look at their profile & recent tweets and decide that they’ve got something I’m interested in. I also am not prone to follow someone if I’ve already got an expert in their field in my list. For instance: I’ve got my goto guys for SEO already.

• I Haven’t Engaged Enough (or at all)
  Guilty as charged. I see a lot everyday that I think is cool or interesting. A Retweet isn’t always enough. I’ll be making a effort to engage more beyond my normal circle.
• I Haven’t Shown Up On Their Radar
  Many Twitter users follow thousands of people. I don’t know how they keep track of it all. Unless you’re making a regular effort, you’re going to miss some people.

In Closing

Getting upset about the whole who-follows-me-and-who-doesn’t social media game is a lot like cursing the darkness; the darkness doesn’t care. The best thing to do is be yourself and try to be interesting. All the cool tools & tricks in the universe won’t gather you anything of value if you’re not trying to do those two things first.

A client called me last week about re-shooting a video his friend shot for him. I knew I should try to sell him on the fact that I could make it look better, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Why?

I didn’t really think he needed to re-do it.

You see, he’s this really nice gentleman that hand makes turkey calls. They’re beautiful. In this world of slick plastic produced by borderline slave labor, he makes each of these things by hand. There’s a real art & craft to what he does. It’s not high tech. It is very low tech, but it has this human element to it that makes it rare.

He sells them for far less than what they are worth.

The video is DIY, very much like what he does and for that reason, it fits him. But, it also *works*. It shows his calls and how they work. You can hear the sounds and if you have a trained ear you can appreciate how effortlessly he’s producing these sounds.

He’s already had 350+ views on his video and it’s helped him sell calls. I could make it look better, but I doubt that it would make it more effective.

And so I talked him out of it.

Yes, I’m a horrible salesman, but I hope that it’s because I’m more concerned for my clients than my own bottom line.

Social Media badges on every page?

Why?

Once customers come in your shop, would you send them down to the coffee shop (where all their friends hang out) just to sign up for your mailing list?

Heck no.

So, now that they’re on your website, why would you make it easy for them to go to Facebook where there are a thousand other distractions?

Once they visit your site, you’ve got their attention. Do something quick or you’ll lose it.