DV8 Digital Marketing Tips and Insight

HBR makes a conclusive case for why SURPRISE creates the most effective marketing. Surprise is another way of saying exceeding expectations and I AGREE.

The warning shot is if we market ONLY to what we see in our data we become increasingly predictable. We KPI surprise OUT of our thinking and marketing.

Great article on how to build positive surprise into your marketing process and thinking.

Agree and Disagree with Heidi 
Agree and am not surprised by the data showing CEOs not on social media. I disagree with why. CEOs make time for all kinds of things that matter to them, so let's take time as an objection off the table. 

Fear of a PR blunder could be a culprit, but CEOs grant interviews and go on TV to talk to the bombastic Jim Cramer so fear also seems a false objection. 

Belief and passion are missing for CEOs. Warren Buffet all but scoffs every time social media is brought up. Apparently the idea that social media is just a faster more efficient version of the annual meeting Buffet puts on every year hasn't occurred to him (or social media hasn't been presented that way to the Oracle of Omaha). 

CEOs an Important SMM Absence
CEOs control the heart and soul of their institutions, so to be absent from social media is to speak mightily of its perceived value (or lack of same).  If you are a CEO and reading this I have three ideas for you to consider:

1. Social Media is a conversation with customers, is it valuable to speak with your customers?

2. Social Media controls the backend of search engine marketing (SEM); do you want your websites to be found? 

3. Social Media will be how we make money in the not too distant future, do you need to make or increase profits?

If you answered YES to any two of these questions then YOUR continued absence on social media is costing your company money. You see there is a problem with social media marketing. I can blah, blah, blah all day, but, in the end, social media will change you in ways I can only predict. 

No matter how good my prediction you will end up surprising and redefining both my prediction about what and how CEOs will and can learn from social media marketing. I've worked with and for several CEOs and they are always surprising. 

In fact surprise is part of why they become CEOs. They see and do things differently. The absence of CEOs is not just hurting their companies it hurts social media marketing too. The minute CEOs adopt and have passion for social media marketing it will change by leaps and bounds. 

 If you know of great examples of CEOs using social to engage, coach and excite their following please share so we can hoist them on our shoulders in the hope that others will emulate. 

Yes, CEOs are too busy to blog or tweet, but they all should at least be paying attention to social media.

Best Social Media or TV Ads
The problem with this list is it elevates the visual aspects of social media. I think the most converting social media is some customer service innovation by Zappos or someone similar that we will never know about. 

The elevation of the visual, while cool and fun, reinforces the wrong side of social media. Yes SMM has a fun side, but it is very serious business and that is where the money is being made. 

Treating social media like a one sided visual "campaign" reinforces dangerous stereotypes that have CFOs and CEOs doubtful about the real ROI of social media marketing.

As much as eye candy is fun and sells blog views the real benefits of social media are boring old LINE management benefits. I realize "Boring Old Line Management Benefits" isn't a headline that gets many views, but let's be careful about what we hype as "best" least we reinforce stereotypes we are working hard to throw off.  

Thank you to Marty Smith for this great find. Top 10 social media marketing campaigns in history.  I agree with the author that #1 and #10 are controversial, but they both got me to join.

1. The Blair Witch Project

2. Blendtec: Will It Blend

3.  Old Spice: “Smell Like a Man, Man”

4. Burger King: “Subservient Chicken”

5. Pepsi Refresh

6.  VW: Fun Theory

7. Office Max: “Elf Yourself”

8.  Evian: “Roller Babies”

9. Ikea: “Facebook Showroom”

10. Hotmail

Ken's Key Takeaway 

From text:

What are some of the core elements that were in these campaigns that made them such a success? For me it includes these elements

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/08/31/the-10-best-social-media-campaigns/#L4cZtwttdWOuo3Tl.99

Here is my favorite section of this post:

The Smobile Web Social + mobile = "smobile." While there's no real insight in pointing out that both mobile and social are going to be big in 2013, I believe they're becoming co-dependent, and most businesses aren't ready for that.

A smobile Web means your customers, coworkers and colleagues expect their digital experiences will be optimized for mobile/social sharing and as a result spend less time tethered to a PC or television.The technology for this is evolving rapidly.

Social and mobile got a THING goin' on in 2013.

After writing this response to Snow's article and Guillaume's response I realized it finishes a group of 3 pieces on SEO:

A. SEO and Data Got A THING Going On.
B. Etropy Is Creating Web 3.0 Under Our Noses
C. Google and Data Got A Thing Going On (Below)

Google and Data Got A Thing Going On
I agree that we've moved close to a more true meritocracy, but I'm not as far as Snow or Guillaume. Google's influence remains very significant in who sees what in search, and search still controls the purse strings.

If Google didn't float their index they would have rapidly become irrelevant. By floating, by removing the absolute TRUTH of the game so well described, the game changed in ways ONLY Google can understand.

Look at the Not Provided numbers now climbing close to 50%. While Google says they made this move based on security it is clear to anyone with a brain that Google's desire is to float more than their index. If you can't find absolute reference in your own Google Analytics then something fundamental has changed.

In fact many things have changed including:

* We live floating on a Sargasso sea now never reaching shore.

* Algorithms and predictive models will rule our future.

* Algorithms and predictive models were always going to rule.

* Google controls LESS and makes MORE.

* Mobile is DISRUPTIVE in the short run.
* The longer the web is alive the more local it becomes.

These last two bullets are the engine of the current discontent. Google's brilliant move to float the index would seem to be a direct response to the chilling amount of User Generated Content (UGC) being created, but, in reality, the float was in the works well before it was clear social would rule.

Floating the index allows control to be harvested by Google and Google alone AND potential ad inventory moved from X to infinity. Now you can see why Not Provided was so necessary. Without the obstruction any website could model the float. The more advanced websites such as Amazon will model the float and continue to create larger and larger continents within the Sargasso sea.

Finally, let's discuss Snow assertions. Yes the world is undeniably more popular and populous. There is MORE and it is being organized, at least to some significant degree, by social signals. The thing you don't get from Snow's graphics is the flocking and emergent behavior of those signals.

Read Bursts by Barabasi and you come away with an understanding that a. we are not as unique as we think and b. we tend to flock or tribe into packs and clusters. What happens when you are playing in a field and it starts to rain? Everyone who was playing runs for cover (flocking behavior in response to specific stimuli).

The web only SEEMS massively random. In fact, for those "psycho-historians" to borrow a term from Isaac Asimov capable of seeing and patterning the BIG DATA being produced the world quickly smooths into patterns.

This is why Amazon has 1.4B pages in Google's index. At that level, many times even CNN.com one of the sites that must have the highest amount of unique content, there is clearly a new game being played. Snow and Guillaume are discussing the cosmetic layer we have influenced with out UGC social signals.

Behind the cosmetic layer there is still flocking behavior-herding traffic into huge divots created by Facebook, Amazon and Twitter. Zuckerberg correctly and foolishly identified the game as a play for infrastructure.

Mobile is disrupting the massive investment in status quo infrastructure by the web's biggest players AND it is eroding margins. Margins ARE ALWAYS slim in the beginning. I remember when Amazon was new they were everywhere, would give you free shipping, wash your car and bring you a pizza for an order. AND Amazon was buying just about at retail for about the first year.

I was a wholesale distributor then (1993 - 1999) and we couldn't figure out what Amazon was doing. What we didn't realize was Amazon wasn't playing the same game we were. Amazon could have cared if they made a dime then. They wanted the NAMES on their FILE. NAMES = POWER. NAMES = MONEY.

Snow and Guillaume are both RIGHT and WRONG. They are right that our rebellious use of social signals has wobbled the web's surface and mobile is creating a wobble in infrastructure. They are wrong because, in the end, the math always wins, the patterns will emerge and scale will harvest the crop.

As we eat we will feel more HEARD and IN CONTROL when in actual fact that feeling may be mostly an illusion. At the infrastructure level what was once 3 players may expand to 8 to 10 as the telcos elbow their way in, but the principle is the same just the players are a tad different.

The good news is the unrelated game for artifice does feel over with Panda. I think of Panda a little like my mom. My mom knew how reluctant I was, as a teenager, to clean my room. She knew the pattern so well she didn't have to actually see the room to know its state. Google's Panda is an algorithmic mom. They have power distributions on every element of your website (including expected UGC). Violate those means and you will be sent to Siberia. Why?

Because the math always wins.