Marketing Hipster

If there is anything that I am more passionate about than social media, it would probably be fantasy football.  Every summer, myself along with millions of others across the globe count down the days of summer until the end of August, beginning of September.  This is when the thermometer begins to drop while our excitement rises with the anticipation of another NFL football season.  To many, including my wife, this type of excitement is seen as a tad bit off and potentially crazy.  I don’t see anything wrong with having a countdown clock counting the days, hours, minutes and seconds until my league’s scheduled fantasy football draft.

Last night as I was putting together an email to my league, (yes we are already emailing and talking about this season) I began to think about how there are a number of similarities between two of the things I enjoy most – Social Media and Fantasy Football.  I have finally found a way that I can combine my two favorite things.  (Insert evil laugh with heavy reverb here.)

Community

I have loved playing and watching football since I was a kid.  I love waking up on a Sunday morning knowing that there will be games played at 1 pm, 4 pm and finally 8 pm.  JOY!  But, I feel confident in saying that I wouldn’t be this “into” the NFL without fantasy football.  What I love most about participating and managing a fantasy football league is the community.  I am in several leagues, but the one that matters most to me is a fantasy league that I have been running for more than 5 years.  The league consists of 10 friends, we call them owners as each owns a team.  We use to all live in NC, but over the years we have had a couple move away, but they are still in the league.

There are times that I will go months without seeing some of these guys, but we keep in touch via email because of fantasy football.  As I get older and priorities like career and family take center stage, it becomes harder and harder to keep friendships and relationships alive.  Fantasy football enables me to keep connected with some of these friends.  We all get together in person for the draft, we have an end of season party, we give out trophies, we bet and play for cash and most importantly, we continually and relentlessly bust and make fun of each other.  It’s wonderful and this community would not of been possible without fantasy football.  I treasure this community and the people in it.

Isn’t this exactly why social media is so powerful and growing at epic speeds?  The web has no borders or boundaries, it  allows people to find and engage with people of similar interests.  Social media is allowing people to truly create real human connections that are so very powerful.  People feel the same way about people they have only met online as I feel about the guys I play with in my fantasy football league.

Voice

Without question, what gets me most excited about social media is it allows anyone and I mean anyone an opportunity to let their voice be heard.  The burden of entry is incredibly low.  All you need is a computer and an internet connection and you have the opportunity to let your voice be heard far and wide.  Think about how incredible this is.

My fantasy football league is very similar.  We have ten guys who have different backgrounds, jobs and interests.  We have single guys, we have married guys, we have guys with and without kids.  But no matter what, each owner has a voice in how are league is run and what changes we make in the future.  At the end of each season, all the owners come together and discuss changes to the rules, how we play, etc.  Whether you came in first place, like me or last, you have an opportunity to be heard and persuade the other owners in voting your way.  It is a democracy at its finest, the majority vote wins.

Clean Slate

One of the guys who participates in our league named Tom came to last seasons draft with a strategy.  He thought he had figured out a way that would guarantee a fantasy football championship and all the glory that comes with it.  He shocked the world (hyperbole) by how and who he drafted.  He was confident and stood tall in the face of criticism from the other owners.  Unfortunately for him, his championship strategy didn’t work out too well and his team did not live up to expectations.  Throughout the season, off season and into this years draft, he has taken and will take a lot of ribbing.  But you know what on September 2, this seasons draft day, he gets to start with a clean slate.  He can come up with a  whole new strategy that might actually work this season.  (I doubt it, but there is always hope.)

I think of social media in a very similar way.  You continually have the opportunity to reinvent yourself, try new things, take chances, see if something might work and if it doesn’t, you might take some shots, but you can just dust yourself off and try again.

Now all I need to do is figure out how I can get paid to do social media, but all I focus and talk about is football.  *pinch me*.  Championship!  34 days, 2 hours and 16 minutes until draft day.

“There are times during the football season when my wife sees me yelling at the TV that I have no doubt she questions why in God’s name she ever married me.” – Cord Silverstein

The Department of Energy in the wake of the whole BP debacle has developed a new social media strategy by launching a blog and a Twitter account to go along with their Facebook and YouTube accounts.  I think it is great that a government agency is looking to engage and communicate better with interested citizens.  I have taken a closer look at the DOE’s new blog and Twitter channel and while I applaud them for this initial launch,  I would like to share five recommendations for how they can do better.  You listening DOE?

1.  Social media is about creating and developing a two-way conversation.

You do not offer commenting on your blog.  You could easily moderate comments to ensure nothing goes live you do not want to, but instead, you chose not to offer it.  Seriously folks, why create a blog at all?  What’s the difference between your blog posts and the press releases you have been churning out since the beginning of time?  They are both one-way conversations with you showing very little to no interest in what we (the voters, the taxpayers, you know US!) might have to say.

Lesson: You want to educate, inform and engage with us in social media, you have to respect us enough to allow a two-way dialogue.  Trust that for every negative comment you might receive, if done right, you will also reach someone you would not have had the opportunity to reach before.

2.  Speaking of those press releases, why?

You have created a blog to engage with the public and in the top right hand corner above the fold are links to (big exhale and let down) press releases?!?!?  The public does NOT read press releases.  They are dry, they are boring and they usually offer very little information that a individual user would find interesting.  You know who reads press releases, the media.

Lesson: Understand who your target audience is.  If you want this to be a place for media to get their information, great, but tell us that.  Don’t take a one size fits all approach, it does not work.

3.  Who are you people?

Secretary Chu posted your first blog post, but after that you have all these different people posting for you, names like John Schueler, Scott Blake Harris and David Sandalow.  My question is who are these people?  I would love to know a little about who is writing these posts.  Unfortunately, you do not offer any type of bio’s on these folks.  On the bottom of each post, you have tag links that says “Learn more about:  David Sandalow”.  When I clicked on that, it just took me to a search page of everything he has written.

Lesson: Understand that you need to earn your users’ respect if you want to have an impact.  That respect begins by properly introducing who these people are and what they are about.  Why should I believe what this person is writing when I don’t know who this person is?

4.  Social media is all about transparency.

Very similar to my last point, on your DOE Twitter page, you have more than one person tweeting, but you are not identifying who these people are.  President Obama mentioned a number of times during the campaign and during his tenure as President that his administration would be more transparent.  You need to represent accordingly by adding tilde’s ^ to each tweet and add the initials of whomever is tweeting.

Lesson: There is nowhere to hide in social media.  You need to come out from behind the curtain and be willing to stand up and be heard.  If you are not ready to do that, you are not ready to play in these social media waters.

5.  Follow people damn it!

I am tired of government organizations attempting to play on Twitter, but the only people they follow are other government agencies.  Look at your follow list.  You don’t have to follow everyone, but if someone writes an interesting blog post that is relevant to the Department of Energy (Like this one!) show that person some respect and follow them.

Lesson: Social media is just not about talking, it is about listening.  You need to show that you are able and willing to listen to the people who are supposed to matter most to you, your constituents.

To my Department of Energy peeps, I am hoping that you are actually listening and have found and read this post.  I hope this was helpful and might provide you with some suggestions on how to improve this important and necessary initiative.  And if so, I would be tickled pink to hear back from you on any feedback,  thoughts or opinions you might have.  I look forward to hearing from you.

The big news that everyone has been talking about is the amazing Oldspice campaign done by Wieden+Kennedy. I am not going to go into detail about the campaign, if you are not familiar do a Google search and you can get caught up. Specifically what interested me was the interviews done after the campaign with members of the Oldspice team.

A number of  team members talked about that since they had to turnaround these response videos so quickly, they were not able to get sign-off by the client P&G for the content of each video. They had established some guidelines ahead of time and the client “trusted” the W+K Oldspice team.

I agree that trust between an agency and their client is absolutely critical. It is something that takes time and the right people and chemistry on both sides of the fence. I think there is something else that is just as crucial for a campaign and a relationship to be successful.

On the agency and client side, a point of contact is needed that is senior enough to provide the necessary feedback and sign off, PLUS have the confidence and may I say guts to take responsibility for the campaign. I would be willing to bet that there is a VP/Marketing Director/Creative Director on the P&G and W+K sides who are now basking in the glory of their successful Oldspice campaign.  But if the campaign went bad or underperformed, these same people would of been placed under a microscope by their superiors. Very simply put, good or bad, the buck stopped with them.

My impression is in today’s economy everyone is scared about losing their job resulting in a lack of real accountability. It feels like on both sides of the client/agency fence, we are doing just enough to cover our own butts and we are unwilling to take a chance and put it on the line. I am glad to see that there are teams out there on the agency and client sides that are not afraid and serve as examples for the rest of us.  I am ready, willing and able to put my butt on the line.  If there is a potential client out that is willing to do the same, let’s talk.

My congrats to the W+K and P&G teams for a job very well done.

I believe that everyone has something of value to share and I don’t care if you have a million followers or just one, I will follow you on Twitter and hopefully be able to engage with you.  Unfortunately, I have several “Twitter Fails” that will force me to either not follow you or unfollow you.  Here they are:

1.  No bio – You want me to follow you, but you cannot take the time to write a short bio on who you are and what you are about?  If you are not willing to take that time why should I by following you?

2. Bio – Your bio is supposed to tell me something about YOU, it is not supposed to sell me something.  If you bio contains links with some self serving copy like, “Start making money today” or “Download my ebook” most likely you will not get a follow back from me and I would guess others as well.

3.  Your picture – If you have no profile picture, a scantly clad woman or a  picture of money more than likely I will assume you are spam and not only will I not follow you, but you will be blocked.

4. Auto DM’s – I hate auto DM’s.  For anyone who is not familiar, you can setup Twitter to automatically send a direct message to someone when they begin following you.  Usually these auto DM’s say something like, “Thanks for the follow!  I look forward to getting to know you better.  Friend me on Facebook here and check out my website here.”  In most cases, you don’t know me, our first true interaction on Twitter is a cold auto direct message that you send to everyone and you are already asking me to do something?  This does not work for me and recently I have begun unfollowing people I just followed because of their auto DM’s.

I wanted to provide five Twitter Fails, but to be honest, these four are the best and only ones worth sharing at the moment.  What did I miss?  What are some of your Twitter Fails?

Last Thursday the internet connection at my house died. My wife works from home and without an internet connection, she cannot get her work done. She called Time Warner Cable and the recording said there was an outage and crews were working on it. They did not give any estimate on how long the outage would last.

I did a quick search and found @TWCableHelp on Twitter. I sent them a tweet asking if they knew what happened and how long the outage would be. Within minutes I received the following tweet:

“@Cord Looks like there was a fiber cut. No ETA but we are in the field working on it. ^BP” – @TWCableHelp

I responded back thanking them for their quick response and asked if they had any kind of estimate on how long the internet would be down.  We were trying to determine if my wife needed to go elsewhere to get an internet connection.  Again, in minutes I received the following tweets:

“@Cord In many instances most fiber issues are resolved within 48 hours, many of those the same day. The ticket doesn’t reveal the extent of

@Cord the damage so I cannot accurately advise. ^BP

@Cord Will keep an eye on the ticket. However you’ll likely see services restored before it is closed. ^BP”

At times, I catch myself thinking about social media and potential marketing programs in these grand schemes.  I get caught up in my world and I forget that sometimes it is the little things that can make all the difference.  Time Warner Cable showed me that they have made a commitment to have employees listen and manage a Twitter account and they are empowering these employees to engage with their customers.  Just by engaging, Time Warner Cable has won the battle.  If you see  by the tweets I listed above, they did not know when the issue was going to be resolved, but instead of hiding and obfuscating, they were open and honest with the information they had and they offered to “keep an eye on the ticket” for me.

They took a customer, me who was once totally in the dark with no information and instead of having to call an 800 number, choose thirty-two different options in their voicemail tree and wait on hold for 30 minutes, I engaged quickly and easily online with a person who treated me like a real person and provided me real answers.  I cannot ask for anything more.  I would like to send my props to BP (rough initials) at @TWCableHelp for a job well done.

We have to keep reminding ourselves it is the little things that can make significant differences in people’s lives.  What is the low hanging fruit that we tend to skip right over that could make an impact on our customers?

Can you believe it is already July?  Where did the year go?  I am adding a new feature to the Hipster blog.  Some quick links of items that I have read that I think rocked and are absolutely worth sharing.

There is nothing like reading or watching something that another person created all on their own.  Authors like the people below continually push me to strive to do better work. Thank you!

14 Stages of Writing a Book by Ann Handley – Would like to meet Ann one of these days

Cameron Herald’s TedxEdmonton’s presentation on entrepreneurship – Really inspiring

Art & Copy Documentary – Watch this movie.  Netflix has it available for streaming.

Social Media Monitoring Tools – How to Pick The Right One by Katie Van Domelen – Well written, good info.

Social Media at Work by Allison Najman – I knew I hired her for a reason.   Good social media fundamentals.

If you have some kick butt content, please feel free to share in the comments below.  Oh, spam is not considered rocking content.

Courtesy of alicepopkorn Flickr.

It is a big question and depending on who you ask, you could get a multitude of answers.  Adam Cohen, Creative Director at Capstrat and a really smart guy introduced me to a documentary called Art & Copy. Over my vacation, I found it available to stream on Netflix so I pulled out the handy iPad and watched it.  Isn’t technology grand?

The documentary looks at the advertising business by interviewing some of the most influential creative folks in the industry. They discuss many of the most well known advertising campaigns from the early days right up to today.  The documentary is incredibly well done and for anyone in this business, a must watch.

What I found most interesting was the discussions in the movie about what it actually takes to produce great work.  The one theme that really jumped out at me was that it takes a lot more than getting a bunch of smart and talented people together to create truly inspiring work.  A number of these industry giants discussed how the work environment is absolutely critical to foster and incubate work that will be remembered.

David Kennedy from Weiden+Kennedy spoke about that one of his main responsibilities these days is to ensure his company has a conducive environment to create  top-notch work.  I found this amazing and refreshing.  The founder of an ad agency with offices around the world who has developed campaigns for Nike, Coke, and ESPN believes in this so strongly, he has taken on the responsibility himself to ensure his company has the right culture and environment.  How many CEO’s do you know who does that?

Jeff Goodby from Goodby, Silverstein (no relation, unfortunately) and Partners mentions people in advertising are usually insecure because their ideas are more often than not turned down or disregarded.  Think about the creative process, you come up with a whole lot of ideas during a brainstorm, some might rise to the top while other ideas are kicked to the curb.  You present those ideas to others and more get trashed.  You might do focus groups and eventually present ideas to the client.  All during this time, your ideas are being poked, prodded and killed.  I had never really thought about it that way before.

Goodby emphasizes the need to have a work environment that encourages the team to take chances and NOT be afraid to fail.  When a team has that level of comfort, they are free to think outside the box and deliver superior work.  Without that level of comfort, people will not extend themselves and put them in a position to be vulnerable.

I know none of this is earth shattering stuff, but when you live in a fast paced work environment with so many things going on,  you tend to forget the importance of things like culture, vibe and inspiration.

This documentary reminded me that I need to do a better job at creating that optimal environment for my team.  I need to spend more time inspiring people and not always concerned about getting work from Point A to Point B.  I have been thinking about specific ways that I can inspire my team, company and myself.  I am still working on that and will share when I have something of value to say.  In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on how you inspire and create that optimal environment.  What have you experienced that has really worked?

Let me begin by stating upfront, I do NOT consider myself a Search Engine Optimization expert.  In a previous life, I worked for an SEO company and have done SEO for a number of years, but there are many folks who are far more knowledgeable than I am on this subject.  There are also a number of slimy, snake oil, unethical people who give used car salesman a bad name also working in the SEO industry.

What I would like to do is share with you my take on SEO.  I am going to start by not pretending that there is some kind of secret sauce, there isn’t.  No-one has a special algorithm, decoder ring or the phone number to Mr. Google.  Very simply put, this is my opinion on where to start and how to move forward to effectively compete on your most important keywords and phrases in the search engines.  Here are my three simple truths on search engine optimization.  I do want to warn you before you continue reading, you are not going to like what I have to say.  As long as we are clear, let’s continue.

1.  Google is all that matters

When I use the words ‘search engine(s)’ I am referring to Google.  Yes, there are other search engines out there, but they really don’t matter. 

“You are talking crazy there Cord!  This is one of the last employees left in the search department from Yahoo! and I take offense to your last remark.”

“Hello Mr. Cord, this is Steve Ballmer at Microsoft.  We have this great new search engine named Bing. How dare you say we don’t matter. Bing is even fun to say.  You try it, Bing, Bing, Bing….”

Sorry Steve and Last Yahoo, but it’s true and here’s why:

1. Newsflash:  There are more searches done on Google each day than all the other search engines combined.  They dominate the search market.
2. If you achieve strong visibility in Google’s natural search, you will absolutely be doing well in the other search engines.

I guess what I am trying to say is when that SEO firm you hired sends you a ranking report and calls out that one keyword moved from #25 to #5 in Alta Vista, you shouldn’t get that excited.  Is Alta Vista still around?

2.  Your website must technically work

If your website was developed incorrectly and does not allow search engine spiders or bots to easily index or read your website, you’re toast.  You could have the greatest website ever created, if the bots cannot index it, you will have no visibility in the search engines.

An easy way to confirm your website is being indexed as long as your site has been around for a little while is to go to google.com and do the following search:  site:yoururl.com

Make sure you replace yoururl.com with the domain of your website.  This search asks Google to show how many pages it has indexed within the domain you chose in your search.  I did a search using Marketing Hipster, site:marketinghipster.com. As you can see by the screen shot, it returned a result of 960 total pages in Google’s index.  If the number of pages in your search seems low or is at zero, you might have a problem.

Alright, you have done your search and your website is being indexed by Google, outstanding!  Now all we need to do is get your website competing on your most important and relevant keywords.  This is where some might suggest “optimizing” your website by focusing on things like meta-tags, alt tags, site map, page names, search engine friendly URL’s, etc. etc. etc.  Please don’t get me wrong, all these items have merit, but they are not going to have a great impact on effectively competing on your important and competitive keywords.

You have only so many hours a day to focus on SEO if you are lucky.  My recommendation would be to spend them working on things that will deliver you the best results possible. You want to compete on relevant terms in Google, in my humble opinion, there is only one thing you should focus on, drum roll please…….  CONTENT.

This is why I warned you.  I know this might be a bit of a letdown as there is nothing earth shattering about content.  I told you there is no secret sauce, you want to compete, you need to put all your available time and effort into developing well written content that your readers will find interesting and want to share.

3.  Content, Content and oh by the way, Content!

Two things determine your rankings and visibility in Google:  content and links.  You need well written, interesting content that includes the keywords and phrases that you want to compete on.  That’s it.  Write kick butt content with your keywords and you will get the visibility you are looking for.

“But wait Cord, what about the links? How do I get them?”

Right, well lets first make sure everyone is clear on what a link is. A link is when another website takes the time to link to a specific page on your website.  Google believes that if someone has taken the time to link to your website, you must be offering something of value and will reward you with better rankings and visibility.  There a number of ways to get links and there are some really strong folks who have written great articles on linkbait, but if you write well written, interesting content, people are going to want to share that content with others.  That sharing will deliver you links that Google loves and will reward you with better visibility.

I know I am making this seem simple when it is not.  Writing great content is a huge challenge, but that is my point.  My experience has been that people tend to focus on the other things like meta-tags because it is easier to do.  Though in my opinion, your valuable time should be spent on the research and development of great content giving your target audience something to talk about.

I have a number of friends who are true experts in this.  If you would like further help, contact me and I will be more than happy to make an introduction.

So what are you still doing here?  Get writing!

Any feedback and/or disagreements are welcome in the comments below.

I am a huge fan of the TED talks.  If you have never had the chance to watch any of these fabulous videos, I absolutely recommend them.  TED has these amazing speakers on a incredible range of topics, but what I really enjoy about them is usually each talk is no more than 20 minutes.  As a person who enjoys and does a good amount of speaking, the less time you have the more time you need to prepare.  Give me an hour to speak and I am ready to go right now.  Give me 20 minutes and hold on, I need some time to prepare.

I wanted to share this amazing talk by Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of the Ogilvy Group.  I was watching this last night and he brings up several points that really go against what we tend to believe in the Advertising and Communications industries.  What really made an impact on me is his feelings that we SHOULD sweat the small stuff.  The small stuff is what has the greatest impacts and having a large marketing and communications budget can actually work against you.  Let me know what you think.

Over the last couple of weeks, I had the opportunity to speak to a college classroom, be interviewed by a young man who just graduated from my Alma mater and meet in person a couple Twitter friends who have just graduated. What they all had in common was they wanted me to share any thoughts and wisdom I might have as they begin their professional lives.

To be honest, I actually felt a little like an impostor. Yes, I am coming up on the big 4-0, but have I really figured anything out? I realized a long time ago the day you stop learning is the day you start dying.  Could that be considered some wisdom?  No?  Fine, be that way.

This weekend, as I laid in bed lying next to my snoring wife and dog.  The dog was the one who was snoring.  I began really thinking about what have I learned during the 39 years of my life and the 15+ years I have been in the workforce? What pearls of wisdom could I share that would actually be helpful? My brain started trucking at this point so I got up, headed to the computer and here is what I came up with.

Take as much time as you need to find your passion.

When I am passionate about what I am doing; I do it better, I do it smarter and I LOVE doing it no matter how long it takes.  When I accomplish something and I did a good job, I feel great!  All the money in the world cannot make you feel that way.  Don’t ever stop searching for what will drive you and make you feel alive.  You might need to do other things during your search to pay the bills, but never stop searching for the job that you were meant to do.

Start reading and writing and don’t ever stop.

Find the time to read and write.  Consume great writing and learn how to write well yourself.  It does not matter what kind of job you want, if you write well, you will have a leg up on so many people.  I have seen first hand my writing inefficiencies and I try to improve on them everyday.

Find a mentor

One of my first real jobs after school was with Grey Interactive in New York City.  I was hired as an HTML grunt.  At the time, Grey’s Executive Producer saw something in me and took me under her wing.  She was not only an incredibly nice and caring person, she was so smart and talented.  I learned so much from her and I have no doubt I would not of had the opportunities I have had in my career without her help.  I try to pay that forward by doing the same thing with people I work with and meet today.

Recognize your team

One of the first things I realized when people management was added to my responsibilities was something very simple, but it seems to be forgotten a great deal.  The only way I am going to be successful in my job is if the people who report to me are successful.  One of my top responsibilities has always been to do everything I can to ensure the people on my team can do their job the best they can.  I don’t care what kind of business you have, the single most important asset of your business are the employees, the human capital.  Many leaders tend to forget that.  I try very hard to recognize team members after they have done a job well done.  I am not doing my job if my team does not feel like I appreciate and care about them, which I do.

What do you think, is any of this valuable?  Drop some of your knowledge in the comments below.