My friend Bruce Hetrick recently posted a blog entry about a friend of his who works for a national organization whose leaders decided they needed a new website. They asked for, and received, numerous proposals from people who wanted to design, program, and “build the client’s brand.”

But not one of them wanted to provide the content.

“(T)he words, the images, the video, the music that would either inspire people or bore them to tears,” Bruce said.

Not too surprising.

Everyone loves to do the programming and web building. That’s easy. Anyone with a computer and a semi-fast Internet connection can now call themselves a “web programmer,” thanks to sites like WordPress and Blogger.

But that doesn’t mean they’re content providers.

Bruce says — I’m paraphrasing here — that basically once the designers and programmers are gone, you’re stuck with what they’ve left you: an empty shell. Oh sure, it’s a good looking empty shell, complete with Flash movies, an e-commerce site, and a blog that’s supposed to draw in all kinds of traffic and bring you stratospheric search results. But it’s still an empty shell.

So who’s supposed to fill that shell?

“Uh, you are,” the programmers and designers say. “We don’t do content.”

They didn’t tell you that in their proposal, did they?

Most of my designer friends have one of two reactions when they’re asked about providing content: 1) they stammer nervously about the client needing to do the content, or 2) they roll their eyes and snort derisively when the clients are out of earshot.

And that’s the problem with most of these social media and Web 2.0 tools. You are the one who’s supposed to provide the content, update the posts, send Tweets, post photos, and connect with people. And when you don’t, guess who gets the blame for the failure of the project?

The programmers and designers.

But you need to look closely in the mirror, because chances are the marketing program that you declared a failure was not a failure of the designer, but rather your own fault.

I remember once meeting with a direct mail vendor who had a really cool idea. Thanks to the wonders of digital photography and public access, they could do a postcard direct mail campaign with the recipient’s house on the card. That is, my postcard had my house on it, your postcard had your house on it, and so on. Variable data printing at its finest.

They had a car dealer for a client, who hired them for a bang-up direct mail campaign: recipient’s house, a personalized URL (called a PURL) for tracking whether someone responded, and a website that a user could specify which car they liked, and would like to buy.

Out of 5,000 cards sent, over 200 people responded — a 4% response rate. This is huge, because a good response rate for car dealer postcards is .5%, so this was an unheard-of increase. Keep in mind, these were 200 people who answered the call to action and actually visited the website, answered the questions, and told the dealer what kind of car they wanted to buy in the next few months.

Pop Quiz:

What would you do if you were that car dealer?
a) Call the respondents and invite them in to see their favorite car.
b) Make arrangements to send a salesperson and their favorite car for an around-the-neighborhood test drive?
c) Send them a generic mass email, inviting them to stop by the dealership to see your wide selection of quality automobiles?

If you were the car dealer you picked C, and then blamed the postcard vendor for the campaign’s miserable failure.

When I heard this story, I rolled my eyes so far back, I could see my brain.

The problem is that most people forget that all marketing tools — Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Yellow Pages, radio and TV ads, newspaper advertising, billboards, postcard campaigns, auto racing sponsorships, forehead tattoos — fail if you don’t use them properly.

For social media, that means actually using the tool. Don’t just set up a Facebook account and then never use it. Don’t create a Twitter account, post “Trying to figure what Twitter is all about” and then never touch it again. And don’t create a blog, post to it three times, and let it gather dust for six months before you say “blogging doesn’t work.”

Because chances are, the problem is not with your vendor. It’s with the vendor’s client.

Photo: Jayel Aheram

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Tags: blogging, Bruce Hetrick, Social Media, social networking, variable data printing
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