One Reason Why Social Media Fails

By Mark Evans in Social Media 9 Comments

Over the past few months, I’ve been working with a growing number of companies looking to do a better job online – be it building a brand, attracting more traffic, generating media coverage, or selling more services/products.

Not surprisingly, many of them are excited about embracing social media given the amount of buzz surrounding tools such as Facebook and Twitter. When I started ME Consulting, I was excited about social media tools as well until I realize that they’re just tools.

By that, I mean that Facebook, Twitter, blogs, et al are weapons you can add to a communications, marketing and sales arsenal as opposed to silver bullets that can solve or fix your business challenges. Admittedly, this is a straightforward assumption but you’d be surprised by how many people still think social media has magical qualities.

What I have come to appreciate is successful corporate social media strategies are built on a solid foundation of knowing three things:

1. Who you are
2. What you do
3. Why it matters

Most companies should have these pillars in place but the reality is effectively communicating these ideas can be challenging. They can be difficult to create and articulate because how a company views what its products/services do and its strategic mission can be different from how consumers see it or even how consumer use a company’s products/services.

Another factor is a company’s strategic focus can change over time, which means that messaging and branding need to change as well.

Assuming a company has a strong grasp on its mission and the benefits offered to consumers, the next challenge is taking the right approach to social media. This means putting together a plan that reflects, highlights and sells your brand and products/services without coming across as overly-promotional or spam-ish. It means using social media to promote your company but also providing value to customers or potential customers.

Twitter, for example, can be a really effective marketing and sales tool if you’re also using it to educate and entertain consumers. You can engage consumers and generate goodwill by offering something rather than just trying to use Twitter as a way to generate traffic and more sales. Sure, traffic and sales are important that it’s not the sole reason to use social media.

To me, companies doing social media well have a strong grasp on who they are, what they do and why it matters. If you haven’t nailed them, your social media prospects can be hampered.

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The Perils of a New Search Engine

By Mark Evans in Search Engines 11 Comments

So, Wolfram|Alpha is sort of live after a lot of hype and blogger salivating.

Not surprisingly, the reviews are mixed: TechCrunch is “not super-impressed”, although “it shows a lot of promise”, while Plugged.in suggests Wolfram not a “Google-Killer But a Serious Threat”.

At the end of the day, Wolfram may or may not live up to expectations, and it may or may not become a successful search engine/search engine business. But what Wolfram’s launch illustrates once again is the challenges and perils of being the new kid on the search block.

Google has set the bar so high that the launch of new search engines can be a treacherous experience if not handled properly and positioned really well. To pitch yourself as a Google-killer will certainly attract a lot of attention but it’s likely to blow up in your face.

Look at what happened to Cuil when it burst on the scene claiming to have a larger database than Google. The problem was although Cuil’s database may have been larger, the user experience failed to be significantly more impressive so Cuil failed. (Look at the traffic numbers below to see how badly Cuil has struggled since its launch).

So, what do you do if you’re a new search engine? How do you give yourself a chance of successfully launching? How do you get the media, bloggers and consumers to give you the chance to prove yourself?

The key may be loudly proclaiming that you’re not Google, and don’t want to be Google. In a sense, Wolfram has tried to do it but when bloggers and the media think about search, they think about Google. This is why Wolfram is finding it difficult not to be compared to Google even though it’s not really competing against Google.

The second important consideration is having a service that’s amazing right out of the gate. As much as companies can learn a lot from public alpha or betas, they also provide a forum for public failure.

Look at what happened to Flock, the social media browser, when it launched a public alpha. The product wasn’t ready for prime time let alone a friends and family beta so Flock was crucified – and it’s never really recovered.

Finally, a new search engine needs to have a well-honed plan to keep pushing forward after launch. It’s one thing to throw a lot of time and resources into getting the product out the door but it’s also important to keep moving forward from a communications, marketing and business perspective as the product improves and evolves. At the end of the day, great services should, in theory, be successful. Sometimes, you need to keep telling people how well you’re doing.

Update: Henry Blodget dismisses Wolfram as having “big dreams but no chance” because “search isn’t broken. It can be improved, yes, and companies like Wolfram Alpha will show Google how to improve it. But no search engine we’ve seen, including this one, comes close to making the quantum leap in performance required to get real volumes of Internet users to switch.”

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Cutting Through the Noise

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media No Comments

Seth Godin
I’m going to be doing a short presentation tonight at Trend City focused on the need for filtering and prioritization tools and services to deal with the growing amount of digital noise many of us are now struggling to handle – inboxes that are overflowing, a constant stream of Twitter updates, RSS readers with thousands of unread posts, et al.

It’s a theme Seth Godin touched upon during his keynote speech today at the Communitech conference in Waterloo. With time-strapped people getting inundated with marketing, Godin said it is becoming more difficult for companies to break through the noise.

The key to overcoming this challenge, he said, is doing things or making things that are remarkable – however you want to define “remarkable”. “Something remarkable is worth making a remark about,” he said, adding that when “people starting talking you, the spam filters move away”.

Some companies, Godin said, are lucky to own “permissions assets”, which lets them speak to consumers who are willing to listen. He said Apple, for example, is a company that attracts a huge audience when it holds conferences to announce new products and services.

This is the first time I’ve heard Godin speak. It goes without saying that he’s a terrific performer – entertainment, informative and educational – who offers a lot of food for thought.

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Ten Things a Google-Killer Needs to Have

By Mark Evans in Search Engines 3 Comments

In the wake of Google’s Searchology event and Google’s plans to extend its domination of the search market, it raises the question about what a Google-Killer (GK) would look like and what it would need to offer (if, in fact, a GK could exist/emerge).

Here are 10 attributes that GK would need to possess.

1. A GK would, of course, have to feature great or good enough results to meet the needs of most users.

2. A GK would have to offer a user-friendly interface. It would have to be clean, easy to use and intuitive.

3. A GK would provide some sizzle in addition to search results – perhaps related search results found on Twitter or blogs.

4. A GK would be scrappy but humble. It would definitely not position itself as a GK, or come across as arrogant.

5. A GK would have a huge database but it wouldn’t be sold as a front and centre asset. Instead, an extensive database would be seen as table stakes to play in the search market.

6. A GK would mostly grow based on word of mouth and virally.

7. A GK would operated by a small group of super-smart people who could engage with search users while still developing in semi-stealth mode.

8. A GK would provide great customer service, and happily accept suggestions, criticisms and feedback.

9. A GK would be adored by the media and bloggers, who would do a lot of the heavy lifting from a marketing perspective.

10. A GK wouldn’t be a GK but simply a great search engine.

What else would a GK need to establish a solid foothold in the market?

More: Richard MacManus wonders if the new features – Search Options and Rich Snippets – unveiled by Google yesterday are an indication that it may be losing its core focus.

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The Newspaper Genie Can’t Be Stuffed Back in the Bottle

By Mark Evans in Media 1 Comment

Newspapers
Over the past few years, newspapers have salivated on and off about the idea of selling online subscriptions to generate much-needed revenue. In practice, few of them have been successful, mostly because most content a newspaper might have wanted to sell is available elsewhere at no cost.

But with newspapers desperate for revenue as they scramble to survive, newspapers are turning their sites again on getting consumers to pay for online content. According to the Financial Times, the Wall St. Journal, for example, is considering micro-payments for specific stories, as well as, monthly subscriptions.

Rupert Murdoch, who owns the WSJ, recently described the availability of free content as a “flawed” business model, while talking about possible fees to read more newspapers within his media empire that includes the Times, Sunday Times and the New of the World.

Murdoch isn’t the first person to bang the drum for online content fees as the newspaper industry continues to implode.

The question is whether getting people to pay for content will be the economic salvation that newspapers need to survive and perhaps thrive. You also have to ask if pay-to-play can rescue an industry with a business model that doesn’t work any more given the blows newspapers have taken from the Web.

As someone who loves reading newspapers and spent 15 years working for them, and someone immersed in the Web and content creations (blogs), I find it difficult to see how you can get the ink-stained genie back in the paid newspaper bottle if there’s someplace, somewhere to find content you want for free.

Consumers have grown accustomed to reading free content from a wide variety of sources. Google News, for example, has made access to free content something that people expect. So if a newspaper such as the WSJ starts to charge for content, it’s hard to believe consumers will pay even if the content is excellent.

The market has changed, and consumers expect to get free online content. Expecting them suddenly pay goes against the editorial grain.

I do think consumers are willing to pay for some content that isn’t a commodity such as long features, excellent essays and well-known columnists. These, however, are exceptions, to the rule even if people such as Mr. Murdoch sees otherwise.

More: For anyone interested in the newspaper industry’s free, a must-read is Clay Shirky’s essay on newspapers, “Newspapers and Thinking the UnThinkable”.

Update: For what it’s worth, the Telegraph said it attracts 75,000 visitors a day from sources such as Digg, Reddit and Twitter. (Hat tip to Econsultancy). As well, Howard Kurtz has an interesting column in the Washington Post that blames newspapers for their own demise.

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Copyright Issues for Twitter?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment

In doing some, um, research earlier today, I stumbled upon something interesting the legal folks over at Twitter may want to check out should writer Donna Page ever decide to claim “Twitter” as her own.

I wonder if Mrs. Twitter is on Twitter?

For what it’s worth, the book can be purchased at Amazon.

Mrs. Twitter

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