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Why Companies are Afraid of Social Media

“We don’t do social media, because people might say bad things about us,” the executive said. “If we have a Facebook page, people might leave negative comments on it.”

“They’re already saying bad things about you,” I said. “Whether you’re on it or not, people are complaining about you, and they’re telling as many of their friends as they can.”

The rest of the conversation went as expected. Reason after reason. Excuse after excuse. We’re not on social media because. . .  we don’t do social media because we. . . it’s only for young people. . .

In No Bullshit Social Media, we listed 28 different reasons companies are afraid of using social media: no money, no experience, no guaranteed results, we’ve never done it that way before, yada yada yada.

There are any number of reasons why companies are afraid, and there are only a few reasons why they shouldn’t be. But these reasons trump all the excuses any business can ever come up with.

1) Social media is not going away. It’s not a fad. It’s not something we’ll forget about. Social media has been brewing for the last 30 years, when Compuserve and Prodigy started as community bulletin boards. Or even before that when real computer bulletin boards were introduced in the 1970s. Companies may come and go, but real-time communication isn’t going anywhere.

2) Social media has gained wide acceptance faster than any other medium. It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners; television took 13 years to get 50 million viewers. Facebook, on the other hand, added 100 million users in 9 months. Social media is only going to grow and get a stronger foothold in the way we communicate and receive information and news.

3) Social media is inexpensive. Facebook is free, Twitter is free, blogging is free, assuming you’ve got the time and knowledge to use it. If you don’t, you can hire people to manage it for you. It’s no different from hiring in-house or outsourced professionals to manage your TV ads, your websites, and your trade shows. The only difference is once you hire social media people, your overhead is mostly finished; the tools don’t cost anything to operate.

If you hire someone to produce your TV ads, there’s still the costs of actually creating them, and then buying the airtime. You can hire people to manage your trade shows, but you still have to pay the added costs of booth space and rentals, going there, working it, and coming home. Plus expenses.

4) Social media marketing can be measured. One big difference between social media marketing and regular marketing is that we can measure social media marketing through tools like Google Analytics and SocialMention.com (both free) and Radian6 and Vocus (both paid services).

How do you measure a billboard? How do you know how many people drove by, read it, and bought your product? How do you measure a TV commercial? How do you know how many people actually sat through the entire commercial and bought as a direct result? How many walked away after 20 seconds? 10 seconds? How many people never even saw it because they changed the channels?

With social media, we can tell who read a blog post, clicked a link, and then made a purchase. Mainstream media can give you estimates and guesses, but they can’t actually count. Social media can tell you how long someone watched a video or visited a website, when they clicked away, and where they went. Mainstream media can only guess at the numbers of viewers, listeners, and readers.

Social media marketing isn’t going away. And while it seems like everybody is using it, there are still hundreds of thousands of businesses that haven’t even considered it. It’s not too late to start. It’s not too late to create a Twitter account or a blog, and then talk directly to, and hear directly from, your customers. There’s nothing to be afraid of, and there are plenty of people to help you get through the rough spots.

Erik Deckers is the co-author of Branding Yourself: Using Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself, and most recently, the co-author of No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. He is co-owner of Professional Blog Service, a ghost blogging and social media consulting agency in Indianapolis.

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Import Your LinkedIn Contacts to Google+

Everyone is so worried about getting their Facebook contacts into Google+. That’s the wrong way to go about Google+.

Given that most of us who are on Google+ are social media power users, chances are we’re looking for another social networking tool that will benefit us professionally. And while we may be Facebook friends with our professional contacts, LinkedIn is the real professional social network. LinkedIn also keeps any contact information like cell phones and websites, so this is going to be valuable anyway.

So, why not instead import your LinkedIn contacts into your Google+ contacts? Here’s an easy way to do it.

    1. Most importantly, you should have a Gmail account. If you don’t, get one. Google+ will delve into your Gmail contacts to see who you interact with the most, and suggest those people for your Circles.
Export your LinkedIn Connections as a .csv file to import into your Gmail Contacts.
  1. Log in to your LinkedIn account, go to your Connections page, and Export your connections.
  2. Choose any format you’d like, but the .csv (comma separated value) is your best bet. Save this file to your desktop.
  3. Go to your Gmail Contacts window, and select Import from the More Actions menu. Locate your .csv file, and import it.
  4. Google will merge any contacts that already match, saving you some duplicated matches. However, Google isn’t perfect, so you will need to go through and find/merge a lot of your contacts by hand. It may be tedious, but it will be worth it in the end.
  5. As an added bonus, export your Gmail contacts and reimport them into your LinkedIn account. This will then sync up your two networks. And since Gmail is the one email program that most social networks use to “find your friends who are on this network,” having your professional LinkedIn contacts can help you build any new networks you join quickly and without all the fluff and unnecessary crap that Facebook brings with it, like your Farmville and Pirate Clan friends.
  6. Jump back over to Google+ and start adding people to your circles. Start with the ones that Google+ recommends, and then begin searching for the people you want to add to your Circles.

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Why Is Klout Important?

My post about three secrets to improve your Klout score generated a lot of discussion, partly about other techniques, but also wondering why Klout is even important.

Billy Kirsch asked how it would influence him on Twitter. Brooke Randolph wanted to know how it would help her, and why she would want to improve her score beyond bragging rights. And Ivan Torres said it was just an artificial number that didn’t affect the experience.

To answer these questions, let’s take a look at what your Klout score means.

Your Klout score is basically the best way we have to quantify whether you’re doing a good job on social media. While it measures mostly Twitter, it also looks at your activity on Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s a measurement of your social media influence — your clout — and whether people like and trust you enough to respond to the things you do. In other words, if your social media footprint were a sales letter, would your readers respond to your call to action?

Your Twitter “call to action” includes things like:

  • Do people click on the links you send out. If it’s to a new blog post or an interesting article, do they follow the link, or ignore it? If you typically write and tweet interesting stuff, they’re more likely to follow it.
  • Do people retweet the interesting tweets you send out? Do they respond and share it with their networks, or do they just go “meh” and let it rot at the bottom of their Twitter barrel? If you’re engaging, witty, or really smart, then you’re probably tweeting interesting stuff that other people want to share.
  • Are people talking to or about you directly? Are they asking you questions, pointing out interesting articles to you, or inviting you to stuff? Or are you an unknown quantity like that weird kid in high school no one really paid attention to? If people know who you are, you’ll be top-of-mind when it comes time to write original tweets to specific people.

Klout measures things like this and compiles your score, based on a scale of 1 – 100. However, it’s different from your traditional grading scale: 60 is not a D, and you have to be an international star to get 100. Chris Brogan has one of the highest Twitter scores, and he has a 81. Ashton Kutcher has 81, and Justin Bieber has 100. (I also have a higher score than Helio Castroneves, even though he has more followers and more Indy 500 wins than I do, so being a celebrity is no guarantee you have a high Klout score.)

So what does a good Klout score do for you?

Truthfully, not much. You don’t win prizes, you don’t gain fame or fortune, and you don’t get book deals. Beyond bragging rights, there’s not a lot that Klout will do for you.

Except…

Except people with higher Klout scores are considered influencers. People with high Klout scores have worked hard to grow and polish their reputation, and become the kind of person other people want to click through, retweet, and talk to. And these people get some benefits from marketers who want to reach people with good reputations.

  • I received some swag and DVDs from the makers of the TV shows Lone Star and Southland. Lone Star sent me a t-shirt, some beer and martini glasses, a cooler, and a tin of popcorn. Southland sent me similar stuff. Both shows wanted me to watch their show and tell all my followers about it in the hopes that they would watch it to. (Sadly, Lone Star was canceled after two episodes.)
  • Audi asked influential designers, technology pros, and luxury lifestyle thinkers with high Klout scores to test drive their new A8 model at an exclusive San Francisco event. The hope, other than finding that Klout influencer with 100,000 bucks laying around, was that people would talk about the A8 to their friends via Twitter, their blog, YouTube, and Flickr. For the price of a what is normally an automotive journalists’ trip, Audi was able to get some word of mouth advertising and reaching a non-automotive audience who might not normally consider an Audi.
  • Bottlenotes Chicago offered tickets to the Around the World in 8 Sips Chicago free wine and cheese tasting to wine influencers. Restaurants and special events always give away free meals or passes, but by reaching out to Klout influencers, they are able to get some digital ink from the social media influencers for their food costs, without spending any more money on print advertising, or TV or radio commercials.
  • Movie studios have offered free passes to fans in the hopes that they’ll tell their friends about the movie, again providing word of mouth marketing for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing and advertising. Rather than putting together a special screening for people, they give away free passes and reap the same benefit as the screening.

So what is the benefit to you to having a decent Klout score? Right now, not much. Free movies, free swag from TV shows, free meals, and a chance to drive a car that costs more than the average national salary. Plus, you get to dog on your friends who may have a score lower than yours.

But, and this is what’s most important, you’re getting a good indication of how your social media efforts are working out. Think of this as analytics for your social media influence. It may be an artificial number, but it’s the closest thing we’ve got to a quantitative indication about how well we’re doing. And while people are still debating the efficacy of the Klout score, it’s the best indicator out there.

So use it, take it with a grain of salt, but don’t ignore it or dismiss it out of hand. If you care about whether you’re actually making progress in your social media efforts — or you just want some cool swag — pay attention to Klout until something better comes along, or until they improve.

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Are There Too Many Geo-Location Networks?

A couple days ago, I shot a quick video for 12 Stars Media’s You Do Video program, spoofing all the different check-ins I could make on my phone. In the video, I checked in (pretended to; I was acting!) on 7 different geo-location networks.

The sad thing was that out of the 7 I named, I actually had 6 of them on my phone.

Now, I’m a regular Foursquare user. I’ve invested the most time and effort into it. And I’ve played with Gowalla, and I like that they create tours that users can take of different cities (I may even create my own tour for Indianapolis). But then there’s Whrrl (which Jason Falls got me to try), Hashable, Google Latitude, Yelp (I blame Thomas Ho for that one), and Facebook Places (the one geo-location network I refuse to use). I even signed up for Bizzy, but haven’t installed it.

Someone had the brilliant idea of creating a third-party app that would check in to all of your geo-location networks at once, but Foursquare and others said they wouldn’t give any points from those third-party check-in apps, so I gave up.

There are just too many damn geo-location apps to keep track of. I know there are at least a couple dozen more that I could be using. But I was so disgusted with my geo-whoring that I dropped Whrrl (sorry, Jason) and Hashable from my phone, and saved myself about 10 MB in space. I also removed Latitude from my home screen, and recommitted to not using Facebook Places. I’ll stick with Foursquare, use Yelp when I want to leave a restaurant review, and use Gowalla only on road trips.

What about you? What geo-location networks are you using? Or are you avoiding them completely? Let me hear from you.

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Are You a Social Media Private, Captain, or General?

I’ve noticed that most social media books are written at one of three levels:

  • 30,000 foot view — The General
  • 15,000 foot view — The Captain
  • Ground level — The Private

Books at the ground level, that is, the Private’s level, are how-to books. They detail the step by step process you need to follow to execute a strategy. Follow those steps, and you will have done the right thing. Write a weekly blog post using these 12 steps. Add 1,000 people to your Facebook business page by using this tool. Feed your blog post into Twitter with this plugin. They touch on strategies, but they’re mostly just books on execution.

Books at the 15,000 foot level — the Captain’s level — are the strategy books. They show you how to create the plan to give to your Privates, with some statistics to back it up. They tell you to blog, because 77% of American Internet users read blogs. They tell you to use Twitter, because 150 million people are on Twitter. They tell you to use Facebook because Facebook has 600 million users. They may touch on the why, and they may cover a little execution, but they’re by and large books on the what and when of social media

30,000 foot level books — the General’s level — are the why books. They tell you to use social media, because social media is more popular than porn, or because more people use social media than any other form of entertainment out there, including television. They tell you why you need social media, maybe even tell you what you can accomplish with it, but they’re short on strategy, and they never, ever discuss processes.

A General’s book explains why you should “Take that hill,”

A Captain’s book shows you how to “Take that hill by outsmarting your enemy.”

A Private’s book explains every step you need to “Take that hill in 30 days.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because I’m trying to decide the next stage of my development. I’ve spent so much time on the ground, telling other people how to do processes, and that’s working well. Those blog posts are some of the most successful I’ve written. Those talks are some of the most well-attended at any conference. But, just like the army, there are thousands of us.

I like creating strategies better. I like being the Captain. I’ve created enough marketing strategies over the last 18 years, because I get the most enjoyment out of it. Of course, with an army of two here at Pro Blog Service, I’m also the Private, carrying out the strategy I just created.

But I hate being a General. I don’t have the patience or world view to tell people how to see the big picture. I can’t even see it that clearly myself a lot of the time. I know enough to explain to a client why we need to take that hill, but once that’s done, and they’re convinced, I can’t add any more value, unless I can put on my Captain’s bars and create the strategy.

However, it’s the Generals who are seeing a lot of the success in this industry. A lot of luminaries in the business world are Generals. A lot of rock stars are Captains, but they don’t get the glory. Or the keynote speeches. Or make the New York Times Best-sellers list.

But I also know myself enough to know that I’d much rather give up that stuff if it meant liking what I do. Still, I’m wondering if I can create a new niche for myself. Maybe I can be a Major, or even a Colonel. I can tell people why they need a strategy, and then I can create it. Sort of the 22,500 foot view. I don’t want to hang out out 30,000 feet above the earth, and I’m tired of slogging in the mud.

So who are some good Majors to pay attention to? Who are some of the business leaders I should be watching, and what books should I be reading? What have you been reading lately, and why should I read it too? Leave a comment, and let me know.

My own book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link) — a true Captain’s book, if there is one — is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy, another Captain, who’s been eyeing a Generalship lately.

Photo credit: Virginia Guard Public Affairs (Flickr)

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Social Media is Older Than You Think It Is. Much Older.

Social media is not as new as people think it is.

It’s not even as new as the new date you just thought of after you saw that last sentence.

Social media, or at least its very beginnings, is almost as old as I am. (Give or take 10 years.)

The very first place for people to communicate online was on the bulletin board systems (BBSes), which were created in the late 1970s, and allowed people to dial in on their 300 baud modems. They were usually only for the hobbyists and geeks who wanted to talk about things that interested them, usually computers. Since long-distance charges applied for out-of-town groups, most users were from their particular city. And user gatherings (this was before we called them “meetups”) were a regular event, where people had the chance to meet those they had been chatting with online the night before.

In 1980, the Usenet — a collection of BBS-type discussion groups — was created and used widely in academia. There, people could visit a group, post articles and messages, and other people would reply to them. While Usenet was originally started to be discussion groups for researchers and computer users, people started creating groups for their other interests. Back in 1990, I joined a soccer discussion group on Usenet, and had “friends” from England, Scotland, Australia, Italy, and Germany. We would discuss our favorite soccer teams, and the 1990 World Cup, which had just finished before I joined. There were groups for political viewpoints, philosophical thought, favorite TV shows, and various sports. I connected with people from all around the world, but especially in the US.

"You've got mail!"

Four years later, I took the plunge and joined AOL, downloading the first software in 90 minutes over my wicked fast 14.4K modem. (I had to choose between it, Compuserve, Prodigy, eWorld, and a host of other online communities.) AOL was the first major attempt at offering an online community to people outside the university setting. This was like Usenet on steroids, because there was a more graphical interface to AOL, and it looked nice. There were also more consumer groups, geared toward those non-computer users. I belonged to groups for writers, home brew makers, cooks, and fans of Celtic music. Since AOL had local and long distance access numbers, our friends were from out of town, and meetups were unlikely (and frequently warned against).

A lot of people outgrew AOL, once they learned they could explore outside the walled community with a web browser and an Internet Service Provider. We consumed the web for information, we emailed each other funny websites we found, and we shared graphics by breaking up ASCII files and emailing them, reassembling them in word processor file, and then converting them with a text-to-graphic converter. But we didn’t have community, unless we returned to AOL or joined an email listserv.

It wasn’t until groups like Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook took advantage of the Internet’s increasing speed and the web browsers that did all that assembling and converting for us, making it easier to connect with our friends, and even telling us where they lived. Twitter boiled communication down to its barest essence, letting us share information in text-sized bits. And LinkedIn played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with our professional networks, letting us see who we were connected to, and how far we were from each other.

The point is this: social media is older than Facebook (2004). Way older. To truly understand the history — and age — of social media, you need to talk to the computer geeks who were online in the late 1970s and early 1980s, participating in the different BBSes and Usenet groups that dotted the online landscape.