The web has been a buzz for the last few days due to the Old Spice social media campaign where in response to fans on Twitter and Facebook, the Old Spice man replied to messages with short thirty second to one minute videos that were witty and funny and probably more important, timely. Over a two day period Old Spice, a Proctor and Gamble Company, worked with their advertising firm to produce dozens of Youtube videos, although I can’t find the exact number. This campaign used the same actor and built on some already impressive TV commercials over the last several weeks. It clearly will be the business case that will be studied and over analyzed for the next few years as the campaign generated tens of millions of pageviews, and caused a lot of offline conversation that will probably help to increase revenue for Old Spice which is ultimately the reason for the campaign.

When everyone is trying to create viral videos and understand how to use social media successfully, how did Old Spice succeed so overwhelmingly? They decided to take a risk. Most companies will never have great success in social media because they are too cautious to ever take the risk that it requires. Two aspects of the Old Spice campaign that made them successful were they made the quick videos without a major concern for the potential negative impact and the willingness to task a risk with their brand although my belief is the risk of the brand is not as significant as many might believe.

Potential Negative Impact Is Not That Significant - One of the biggest fears of social media for businesses is the inability to control the conversation and the potential that someone could have a negative statement about your company  and that is just unacceptable. For that reason, most companies are still having internal debates about the need to be active on Facebook or Twitter rather than just getting involved. The reality is that most people on social media sites do not have a large enough audience to have an impact. The person with 75 Twitter followers stating that they had a bad experience is not the end of the world. Most likely, there are less than a handful of people whom even will see the message. Mark Cuban stated this same belief about a year ago, that most of the messages on Twitter are not worth a response because it is not heard by many people. But worrying about the what-if possibilities will keep most companies from ever really getting involved with social media successfully.

Too Brand Conscious – Developing your brand is something that takes years and years to build and should be guarded in every way possible. This leads to very calculated marketing efforts with the approval of executives and lawyers necessary for every piece of collateral, message wording, a commercial production. Due to this, most companies couldn’t duplicate the Old Spice campaign if they wanted to as it would take too long for approval to make the response relevant. Assuming that I am correct and the potential negative impact is not that great, more companies should be willing to respond more timely on social media sites to improve success. That is not to say everyone should use twitter videos because that is not for everyone, but using creative timely responses would prove beneficial for social media success.

While most are studying the delicate intricacies of the Old Spice campaign, there also needs to be an assessment of your corporate culture and the willingness to take that kind of risk. My bet is that there are not many companies that would take the leap, but that also explains why there are so many “viral” videos that never went viral.

January was my first full month of blogging in which my goal was to post at least one post per day, Monday through Friday. I did pretty well with posting on most days, but also missed a few in which I was able to make up for on the weekends. I thought I would have trouble finding topics, but between current events, some mind mapping I did at the beginning of the month, and simply remembering to write about some of the techniques that I regularly use, topics were not a problem. As I wrote more posts, new topics came to mind that I could add to the list, so topics should not be a problem for a time to come.

Here are some stats from Google Analytics that I was able to achieve in January. The numbers are not bad for the first full month and they set a good baseline for the months ahead. Using these numbers I can set goals for February and measure the percentage improvement.

Some of the January results:
Visits – 302
Pageviews – 546
Pageviews/Visit – 1.81
Time on Site – 2:05
% of Traffic From Search Engines – 30%

I am pleased with the 300 visits in January considering that I did not start posting until the 6th of the month and did not do any promotions on the blog. All of the numbers trended positively over the course of the month and with an average time on the site of over 2 minutes I can only expect that stat to improve as more content as added to the site

Goals for February 2010

My goal for February is to improve on the results from January and increase traffic to over 1,200 visits. That represents 4oo% increase in visits. It sounds optimistic, but without any outreach to increase traffic in January, a small effort in February should help to increase traffic. At least that’s my plan.

How I Plan To Meet My February Goals

I expect to be even more busy in February than I was in January, but there are some steps I will take ti increase traffic that I believe will have the biggest impact. Some of the techniques I will use are:

Social Media Submissions – I submitted two posts to StumbleUpon in January which drove 22 visitors. In February I will submit every post to Stumbleupon as well as other sites like Digg, Delicious and Reddit using Social Marker to save time. I would expect social media sites to drive at least 300 visitors in February.

Increase Twitter - My twitter account, @briankeithmay, only has about 80 followers right now and will have to increase for better exposure from Twitter. I will probably use Tweet Adder to increase my followers. In order to reach my goal of 1,200 visits in February, I will need over 1,000 twitter followers by the end of the month. I expect Twitter to drive over 200 visitors to the blog in February either through posts that I tweet about or through link on my profile page.

Post Four(4) Video Posts to Youtube – Although, I am not sure of the topic, I will post videos to Youtube that are training on some topic related to internet marketing or just life in general that may drive some traffic back to the site. My expectations for traffic from Youtube postings is pretty low, but it will help me to understand how to post videos best for success and which topics perform the best.

Three(3) Guest Posts – To increase links and to increase traffic, I will guest post on 3 other blogs throughout February. Since I have not identified any targets for guest posting, this will be more of a challenge, but it must happen if I am going to meet the goal of 1,200 visitors in February.

Facebook – With over 800 friends on Facebook, I will post at least 4 posts over the course of the month and my expectation is that I can receive at least 100 visitors from Facebook over the course of the month, Now that I type this I also think I may create a fan page so that I can get a message out to a group more frequently and more quickly. Facebook should become a nice traffic source.

Carrying through with each of the methods that I listed coupled with direct type in traffic and search engine traffic, I should comfortably be able to reach my goal of 1,200 visits in February. If you are reading this and want to help out, pass this post on to a friend or a hundred and help me reach my goal for February. I also have a personal goal of losing 10 pounds in February. This will simply require discipline in going to the gym regularly and eating better and staying away from the fast food.

The goals for this month are kind of aggressive but very attainable. I expect February to stand as the groundwork for even more aggressive goals in March. I will update my goals list on March 1st to let you know the results. Let’s go!!!

Google often salutes different holidays with creative changes to their logo on the homepage of Google.com. Since today is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Holiday in the United States, Google has added a creative logo to their homepage to salute Dr. King and the legendary accomplishments that he made for civil rights and human equality in the United States. Google has often been criticized because they choose not to change their logo for all religious or political holidays. No complaints on this one from me!! Well one complaint is they could have made the people a little larger and more visible, but not a big deal.

Google is also using the homepage to promote information and resources for contributing to the relief crisis in Haiti. The Google homepage generates a tremendous amount of traffic and Google is very selective in the causes or products that it chooses to promote on the home page. For the past two week, Google has been promoting the launch of their new mobile phone, Nexus One. Hopefully, the use of the Google homepage for the Haitian relief efforts leads to continued outpouring of giving and support that has been witnessed all of the United States and other parts of the world. It must be great for a company like Google to have the ability to point their large firehose at a problem and encourage their users to support. My guess is that the results will be very impressive.

Over the last three months, both online and offline media have been totally consumed with the saga of Tiger Woods and the allegations against him that he committed multiple acts of adultery against his wife. Not sure if it is all truth, but the court or public perception has decided for the most part that he is guilty of all of the allegations made by the various women that have said they had a relationship with Tiger. There have hundreds of reported sightings of Tiger at different places around the world, but there have not been any verified sighting since the day after Thanksgiving.

The infatuation by the media and the public with the sex scandal causes his good deed of donating $3 million to Haiti relief efforts to go unnoticed. This is an example of where a personal or corporate brand needs to dedicate money and resources to protecting their online identity and shaping the information that is shown first when there are searches for their name.

A search for Tiger Woods on the day after he pledged $3 million in relief aid, still shows links about his scandal before it mentions his donation. It will require a lot of work for a reputation management expert to overcome the many stories about the scandal because most of the stories were linked to from other websites hundreds or even thousands of times.

Even a search through Google News for Tiger Woods has no mention of his donation in the top 10 links. This is where Woods’ team needs to be pushing press releases and posting to various news sites, so that his stories of his donation moves ahead of stories about his scandal.

Unfortunately, most of the news outlets have not mentioned his donation, but from their perspective viewers are much more interested and engaged in scandal than humanitarian efforts. There are also many who question Tiger’s motive, thinking that the reason for the donation is to divert attention from his scandal. If that were his motive, a donation of $1 million would have done that just as well as $3million.

Managing your brand online is very important and as this example shows, very difficult as well. To limit the exposure of damaging information, brands should strongly consider hiring online reputation managers who could help to ensure that positive information rises above the negative stories. The cost of the reputation manager will seem like a steal when you consider the cost that it will take to repair your brand, if repair is even possible.

Can Twitter be effective for small business owners? It really just depends, but for most small business owners the answer is no. Small business is typically defined as smaller than $50 million in annual revenue. If that is the criteria, then the higher end of the range could possibly make twitter effective, but the lower end of the range, less than $15 million, are probably not going to see great results from twitter. There are a few reasons for this assessment.

1. Twitter requires a significant time investment – For a small business on the higher end of the range, it is more likely that hey will have a full marketing department and resources that could be fully or partially dedicated to to Twitter and other social media efforts. For smaller businesses, this task will most likely fall on someone who is fairly overextended already, therefore an analysis must be done to determine if the time investment is worth the uncertain returns. In most cases, the answer is a resounding no! Twitter can be effective for some, but there are many more sellers on Twitter looking to sell their products than their are buyers. For that reason, the time that it takes to interact and influence the buyers is significant and competitive. Keep that in mind when trying to measure results of your Twitter efforts.

2. Difficult to cut through the useless chatter – Attempting to have  a true business conversation on Twitter is equivalent to attempting to talk business in a crowded nightclub with the music blaring. Some things will be heard, but expect most of the conversation to be missed by your target audience. On average, most people are “following” a few dozen people which in many cases includes celebrities who constantly update their Twitter statuses. Your messages may get lost in the chatter many times or surrounded by more interesting chatter, therefore causing your message to get lost. Twitter success is a numbers game in that it requires large volumes of updates and constant interaction to cause any positive results.

Twitter will continue to dominate the news channels for a time to come, but due to the overwhelming amount of time required for the uncertain return, my recommendation is that Twitter is good for customer service or branding, but is not a great plan for business development.

Social media is a medium still in it’s infancy, but undoubtedly will continue to grow and evolve as a platform that is heavily used for expression, information, and communication. This poses a challenge for businesses to determine how to effectively use social media and how to achieve the results they desire. The task can quickly become very overwhelming as there are many different networks to manage which all function a little differently. Here is a list of things to consider when developing your social media strategy so that you can be efficient from the outset and not spread your resources too thin by attempting to conquer too much.

Things to consider when developing a Social media Strategy

1. Resources – One of the benefits of social media is the ease of use. Very little technical skill is required to get started in social media which contributes to it’s popularity. Many third party applications are available that make using social media even easier. The main resource that is required to participate in social media is people and time, which can be fairly expensive. The effective use of social media requires regular monitoring and engagement in the community and offering valuable information to others. Many businesses make the mistake of being too sales oriented in their social media efforts which is usually ineffective because it lacks an authenticity that is required for social media success. Social media is about developing trust within the community and indirectly increasing your business through those efforts which leads back to the need for people and time to make that happen. Social media is a significant time investment that should not be underestimated. If only 15-30 minutes per day are allocated to social media, that is simply not enough. Your company must commit the time necessary to adequately participate in social media. Only allowing for a small amount of time will be time wasted.
2. Expectations – Setting realistic expectations is probably one of the most difficult aspects of social media. Two questions that must be answered are 1) what your company hopes to achieve and 2) how long will it take to meet your expectations. A myth in social media has been created that causes people to believe that the results are immediate and the response is overwhelming. This is simply not the case. With consistent effort and a clear focus, social media can produce positive results, but if your efforts are concentrated into one hard week of work and waiting for the phone to ring, then you are probably wasting your time. That is similar to extreme dieting and simply is not an effective strategy. It must be clear to your leadership that social media efforts are a long term strategy and not a quick fix and also many times the results are not as tangible as other media.
3. Goals – Setting goals for social media can be difficult especially if your goals include lead generation. If goals are loosely defined by such things as “more exposure” or “increased fan base” then those are easier to obtain because they do not have hard numbers. When setting goals for your social media strategy some things that should be included are a defined increase in website traffic, a defined number of leads that should be produced, and a goal of revenue to generate. These metrics are important since resources will be allocated to social media, the ROI of these efforts must be compared to all other marketing efforts to determine future direction. Without clearly defining goals for you social media efforts, it will be difficult to assess how successful your efforts have been and if it is worth moving forward.
4. What networks to participate in – The short answer is all of them, but that is a little naïve and unrealistic depending on the resources you have available or are willing to invest. With finite resources as all businesses have, the decision must be made as to which network will give you the most return on your investment which as I discussed earlier, is not an easy metric to measure. The best guide should be determined by your targeted audience and which platform they participate in most heavily. For most B2B companies, this is going to be primarily Facebook, Linkedin and Youtube, with some usage of Twitter and Myspace. In B2C, all five are equally valuable. There are many other smaller networks that can be targeted that are more topic specific. A simple search on Google or Ning.com can identify many of them. So the challenge for business owners becomes how to effectively manage these networks and produce results that make their efforts beneficial. Starting with one or two networks and gaining momentum is your best bet.
5. Two way conversation – The ability to broadcast your message to a large number of people is an intriguing aspect of social media and when used properly can be very effective in reaching your target audience. This may include press releases, promotional offers, and just general information. The other aspect of social media is that it allows your audience to speak back to you and sometimes in unflattering ways. Just like every other medium where customers can voice their opinions, it is usually those that are the most unhappy that speak up. This requires the engagement of these people within the social media community and constant monitoring of those communities to identify when opinions need a response. The larger your company and your client base, most likely the more potential for these types of responses. When developing your business social media strategy, consider that there needs to be an understood company response to certain accusations as well as a focused message when using social media to obtain maximum benefit. If social media is not treated as a two-way conversation, you will have a hard time being effective.

The ROI for social media is still very sketchy for both B2C and B2B. There are very few reports from successful social media campaigns measured using tangible data. Success thus far has been measured in statements like “exposure” and “engagement” which are tough to measure and this identifies a lack of strategy and lack of numerical goal setting. Using the list outlined above when developing you social media strategy should lessen the learning curve and ensure that your efforts are aimed at the tasks that will produce the best results.