Web Ink Now

What the heck is Web 2.0 / social media / social networking and how do these concepts relate to the new rules of marketing & pr?

Recently I've noticed that many people have been using a bunch of definitions, including "New Rules of Marketing", "Web 2.0 marketing", "social media marketing", and "social network marketing" interchangeably. (Feel free to substitute "PR" for "marketing" if that’s appropriate for you.)

I don't think these concepts are the same at all, and I think that using them interchangeably creates problems for all of us.

Here's a summary from my perspective: "social media marketing" and "social network marketing" are two different things. From the marketing & PR perspective, both are subsets of "the new rules of marketing & PR". On the other hand "Web 2.0 marketing" is essentially a meaningless phrase. See below for details of where I'm coming from.

I wanted to spark some dialog about this as I think that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about what some of the various phrases mean. Additionally, the tools and techniques vary.

Please jump in with your thoughts.

Here are mine:

The new rules of marketing (and the new rules of PR).
These phrases were not used prior to me introducing them in 2006. If you Google either phrase today, you'll see that links to my site, blog, and work dominate the top results.

I say that the old rules of marketing & PR were that you either had to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write about you. Prior to the Web, there weren't other significant ways to get noticed. The Web has changed the rules. The new rules of marketing & PR are that you can bypass the gatekeepers and publish your own content online in the form of content-rich Web sites, blogs, YouTube videos, photos, ebooks and the like and reach buyers directly.

Web 2.0 marketing (and Web 2.0 PR)
The term Web 2.0 is credited to Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly media.
"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

Many people have taken the "Web 2.0" phrase and slapped "marketing" or "PR" on the end to designate something new. My opinion is that the term Web 2.0 (as coined by O'Reilly) was meant to describe how people use the Web and how software companies are creating applications that are Web-based instead of requiring downloading to your PC or delivered via a client-server environment.

I'd say that people who use the terms "Web 2.0 marketing" and "Web 2.0 PR" (or the related "marketing 2.0" and "PR 2.0") are using those phrases as a catch-all to describe "new" and most can't really define exactly what they mean except to say that "it includes blogs and YouTube and Facebook and other stuff like that."

Personally, I steer clear of using Web 2.0 when describing marketing and PR because it is imprecise and confusing.

Further reading – the Web 2.0 Wikipedia entry.

Social media marketing (and social media PR)
I'd suggest that the term social media describes online media with a participatory or interactive component.

A news story that is delivered online becomes social media if there is a place for readers to comment on the news story. Blogs, forums, Wikis, and chat rooms are all social media in my opinion because they include an interactive component.

Marketing and PR using social media involves creating social media content (starting a blog perhaps) and participating in social media (by leaving appropriate comments other people’s blogs or forums).

Further reading – the Social Media Wikipedia entry.

Social network marketing (and social network PR)
I'd suggest that the term social networking describes online networking tools and the ways they are used to connect groups of people on the Web.

By my definition, social networking sites include Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, SecondLife, Bebo, and others similar to these. People use these sites to network and stay connected with friends and colleagues and to meet other like-minded people.

Marketing and PR using social networking involves creating personal profiles, creating and joining groups, and building applications for others to use. It involves participating in social networking sites.

Further reading – the Social Network Wikipedia entry.

Here's something important.

By my definitions, "social media marketing & PR" as well as "social network marketing & PR" are two different things and both are subsets of the "new rules of marketing & PR."

The way I see the world, as marketing and PR people we need to think about the new rules as including lots of tools and techniques and social media and social networking are two of those. But there are many others.

What are your thoughts?

ANALYSIS: Value of quote in the Wall Street Journal with a link to your blog and product

Many business people consider a "hit" in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best ways to get noticed. VC funded startups happily pay tens of thousands of dollars a month to public relations agencies to pitch them to reporters at the Journal and other important business publications like BusinessWeek and Fast Company. firms justify their fees when they secure a hit and show the press clips as proof of their skills when pitching new business.

For years I've been convinced that such exposure is overrated in terms of quantifiable measurements of success.

Now before I jump into an interesting analysis, I do want to say that there are many intangible benefits to being quoted in a major business publication or having your product talked about in them. You can put the information on your site and tell all your potential customers. It may convince an investor to jump in, an analyst firm to initiate coverage, or a potential employee to join the company. I am certainly not knocking the many benefits nor would I ever stop speaking with reporters when they call me. Coverage is important.

But what about the tangible results?

On Monday March 17, I was quoted in an article in the print edition of The Wall Street Journal. The article was titled "Attention, Bloggers: For small businesses that can't afford a lot of marketing, the blogosphere offers a cheaper alternative" and appeared on page R5 (the small business section of the paper). My full name (searching on it brings up only me) and my blog URL were both listed in the paper. The article was in my area of expertise and the things I write about in my books and this blog.

The article also appeared in the online Journal at WSJ.com (my blog URL was a hyperlink) together with a companion article called "Recommended Reading Small Business: Marketing With Social Media." In this piece, the WSJ asked Scott Monty for recommend a list of blogs and books for owners and managers at small companies looking to learn more about tapping social media to engage customers online. Scott mentioned my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR and said it is: "A must-read. Mr. Scott delves into strategies of how to reach consumers directly and how to get into the social-networking space." (Thank you Scott).

So what would you expect? Ten thousand extra links that day? More? A thousand books sold on Amazon that day? More? That's the sort of result that many people expect and why they spend so much on PR firms.

The reality is much more sobering.

Let's make a value of 100 as the baseline of the amount of blog traffic I got in an average day this month. On the day of the WSJ hit, I got a 95. That's right, on the day of my WSJ hit with my blog URL listed, I got fewer visitors to my blog than an average day in the month of March. My best day this month was March 5, the day after a post I wrote called "The new rules at universities – authors connecting with students." Lots of people shared that article and some wrote about it on their blogs. On March 5, I scored a 186 (almost twice my average traffic).

The best traffic driver to my blog this year was a result of the hundred or so bloggers who wrote about the publication of my latest ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing. For several weeks after I published the ebook, my traffic was double the norm.

What about books sales? I'll use my Amazon ranking as a proxy for book sales. The Amazon rank, which updates every hour based on actual book sales, indicates what number your book is among all the millions of books that Amazon sells. Since its release in June 2007, The New Rules of Marketing & PR has consistently hovered in the 250 to 850 range. Early in the morning of the WSJ hit, the rank was about 600. It finished the day at about the same place (meaning that the relative sales rate for that day did not change as a result of the WSJ mention). As I write this on Thursday morning, the Amazon rank is 328, meaning that substantially more books are selling today than Monday when the article appeared. But during no day this week did my rank go above the typical range that it has been for the past nine months or so.

What can we learn from this?
> A hit in the WSJ and other big business publications is great—but not as great as you might think. If you get one, think about tangential benefits (like bragging rights), not actual sales. Think how you can leverage the notoriety, not just what will happen without your help to push it along. Use it to influence other media and analysts, don't just sit back and wait.
> There really isn't a holy grail of marketing & PR. The closest I've found is to create something yourself and publish it online to drive traffic. That blog post I put out had more success than the WSJ. The best thing I've ever done to drive traffic is write an ebook. The case examples I write about prove this theory.
> Lots of little hits are much better than one mega PR hit. Passionate bloggers drive traffic to my blog and help drive sales (thank you all!).
> Mega PR hits may drive some interest with what you do, but you should really think through if it will actually drive sales.
> Maybe, just maybe, WSJ readers buy books in physical bookstores instead of Amazon. Perhaps I'll see a sales bump at Barnes & Noble and other stores in March… But I doubt it.

Do you know this person? Is it you?

Practically every day, people ask me for help and advice in creating the sorts of new rules marketing and PR that I speak about and write about.

This is always a difficult request that I never really know how to answer.

"Read my book and my blog" sounds egotistical.
"Attend my seminar" sounds like a sales pitch.
"I don’t know" sounds like I'm an idiot.

About 6 months ago, I put a little note on my site that went like this: "Please note: Due to the tremendous success of my latest book The New Rules of Marketing & PR, except for seminars, I am unable to take on new consulting clients at this time."

However, some people really need help and support, both full time and part time. Many companies are looking for smart people.

So I wanted to create a sort of new rules of marketing & pr job description. The idea for this came from Jeff Ernst, VP marketing at Kadient (I'm on the Kadient board of directors). Jeff has an open position right now and this is how he described what he's looking for:

"She (or he) created her Facebook profile well before any of her buddies did, then encouraged them all to join, and now has 700 friends on Facebook. She writes her own blog where she talks about her favorite bands. She loves to experiment with new ways to drive traffic to her blog. She's read David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR, and is passionate about combining her love for social media with her work by applying the new rules in a B2B marketing environment. "

(I think Jeff was buttering me up with that last sentence, don't you).

Jeff says: "This doesn’t sound like the typical marketing job description."

I agree. But new rules marketing & PR isn't a typical marketing job.

I'd add a few other random things to our emerging alternative job description:

1. You're curious about new things and always try stuff like Skype, Second Life, Twitter, Ryze, XING, digg, and reddit early. But you are busy and there is so much to do so you don't keep up with the things you try (like Second Life for example) and you don't feel the least bit guilty when you leave a network.

2. You know that the bosses who tell you that ROI and leads and clipbooks are the most important measurements are dead wrong. To prove it, you are building up evidence that the things you're doing outside the traditional stuff -- like commenting on blogs, focusing on the phrases people use to search and tossing out a few online news releases -- are beneficial. But its tough because you really have two jobs -- a full time role in new marketing that you know is the way to go, and a full time role with the traditional crap to keep your bosses happy.

3. You don't "go online" and you don't "use the internet" because your physical life and virtual life are one in the same.

4. If you are located in the US, you follow the presidential election, but do so online and salivate at the thought of investing the sort of money that the candidates are spending on TV ads to implement a bunch of cool viral initiatives.

Does this sound like you? If so, you've got an amazing career in front of you.

Got something to add to the job description? Please add other thoughts to this ongoing riff.

Looking for a job? Maybe post a comment here with a link to your blog or Facebook page and someone in a cool company will find you.

Will your company be successful in the year 2208?

I spent an enjoyable day this week with my editor and his colleagues on the marketing, editorial, and PR teams at my publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. to discuss new initiatives for my current book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR and ideas for future book projects. For example, there will be an Amazon Kindle version of New Rules shortly. And yes, I've got two more books in the works—one to come out in 2008 and one in 2009. It is just a little early to announce anything now, but you'll be the first to know.

Amazingly, Wiley has been publishing books for 200 years. Can you imagine—Wiley was founded in New York City when Thomas Jefferson was president! And Wiley has been a significant player in the publishing industry for two centuries.

How can a company be around for that long? Simple, the only way is to be tuned in and develop products and services that people want to buy and markets them in the ways that people find information or solve problems.

Here are a three examples of the new rules at work at Wiley:

1. When I wrote New Rules, the professionals at Wiley embraced my new publishing model of blogging the book as I wrote it. They encouraged me to give away a large percentage of the book for free on my blog. Other publishers would freak out if an author wanted to put bits of the book out for comment and solicit ideas online. Wiley encouraged it.

2. Wiley has a group of passionate employee bloggers. One of them is my friend Joe Wikert (who introduced me to Wiley). He writes the terrific Joe Wikert's 2020 Publishing blog: A Book Publisher's Future Visions of Print, Online, Video and All Media Formats Not Yet Invented.

3. Wiley Europe has a cool online media room where they educate and inform reviewers, the media, and consumers.

To mark the company's bicentennial, Wiley has just published a terrific coffee table book to mark the occasion Knowledge for Generations: Wiley and the Global Publishing Industry.

Think about your business. Will your company be around in the year 2208?

Thank you fellow business book authors

11,000 business books are published each year. The published ideas in these books educate, inform, and influence how people go to work every day. As an author, I like to think that our efforts help to make people more successful. It is an honor that tens of thousands of people have invested time and money to read what I am passionate about.

800-CEO-READ (8CR) is the premier business bookseller and is used by corporations to buy copies of the best business books available. They created the 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards to recognize the best business books of 2007.

How cool is it that my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR was selected as "authors choice" from nearly 300 books submitted. I’m stunned that my fellow business book authors chose my book as a best title of the year. If you voted for me, thank you!

Please check out all the terrific books that were selected. These authors work really hard to write great books.

Join me for a free live conversation with Seth Godin and Michael Port to discover the one thing that will make or break your marketing

Alert readers of this blog will recall that last month I reviewed Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin's terrific new book.

Good news—I'll be speaking with Seth as part of his virtual book tour and I would like you to participate. All it will cost you is an hour of your time.

On Monday, January 14th, at noon ET, join New York Times bestselling author, Seth Godin, Michael Port (author of Book Yourself Solid) and David Meerman Scott (that would be me) for a panel discussion.

Seth promises that you'll discover the one thing that will make or break your marketing efforts this year. (I can't wait to find out myself…)

Here are some other things we hope to discuss. (But then again we may just take the conversation down some equally interesting other paths.)
> The most important question to ask when choosing a marketing strategy
> How to increase sales and build brand awareness with less effort
> Why My Space, You Tube and viral marketing work for some, but not for others
> How to effectively generate buzz and word-of-mouth referrals

Can't make the live call? Go ahead and register anyway and we'll send you an email with a link to the recording so you can listen to it on your iPod.

It's free to register.

I hope you can make it.

Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae – buy a copy for your boss*

When I deliver keynote speeches and run seminars at companies, I am often asked for advice on how to convince the bosses that the new rules of marketing really work. Frequently people say something like: "My bosses make me prove ROI before I can do this online thought leadership and viral marketing stuff."

My cynical answer is: "What’s the ROI of putting on your pants in the morning?"

But then I suggest that people to ask their boss if in the past few months, they've made a product or service decision based on a direct mail piece they received or a based on a TV advertisement. (Almost no bosses have). Then they should ask their boss if in the past few months they've used Google or another search engine to make a product or service decision. (Virtually all bosses have).

Well now I have something else to suggest. Buy a copy of Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? for your bosses.* Tell them it is an important book. Meatball Sundae will be your tool to help others in your organization to understand what you already get and what you are eager to implement. It will help you to get the buy-in to do the new rules of marketing that you know makes sense.

But first your bosses may need to transform your company.

Seth kindly sent me an advance copy of the book (it is expected to ship on December 27, 2007). He has put the "new marketing" stuff that I talk about into great perspective for the skeptics in the big companies and also for the bosses who demand to know "what the ROI of this new fangled stuff."

Meatball Sundae lays out in a convincing manner the transformations that are taking place in business today. These transformations mean that everything needs to be looked at carefully, including marketing. But to just toss new marketing onto the top of obsolete business models is like putting whipped cream and a cherry onto meatballs to make a sundae. (Yuk).

Godin tells a story I really like. Josiah Wedgewood, a potter in England in the 1800's at the start of the Industrial Revolution, was the first to create a factory with a production line and job specialization. He built a showroom and shipped product around the world. And he sold bespoke pieces to royalty but first displayed those fantastic and expensive creations for several months so all could see. (Wedgewood was a marketing genius AND a business pioneer.)

Josiah Wedgewood took advantage of changes in society and technology and changed the way business is done, made millions, and founded a company still famous today. But his brother Thomas Wedgewood stuck to the ways that all potters have worked in the past, barely made a living, and is forgotten today.

Godin says fourteen trends are completely remaking what it means to be a marketer. And while these trends are transforming organizations that have the right approaches, they are crippling the organizations that are stuck with nothing but meatballs. Once again, marketing is transforming what we make and how we make it.

For more information on the book, check out Meatball Sundae on Squidoo.

On Monday December 17 you can learn more about Meatball Sundae as Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now interviews Seth Godin on WebmasterRadio.FM. The show is called Meeting of the Marketing Titans. Bryan is a co-author of Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? I’ve spoken with Bryan several times and he is a great choice to lead the discussion on Seth’s new book.

* > If you are the boss, you should buy copies for your board members and investors...

Lights! Camera! Sales! Welcome Wall Street Journal readers

I am quoted in a terrific article in today's Wall Street Journal by Raymund Flandez titled Lights! Camera! Sales! How to use video to expand your business in a YouTube world. The article includes many examples of viral videos and is worth a read. We also filmed a television segment for the Wall Street Journal Report where we discussed how small businesses can create online videos that can increase their exposure on the Internet. Thank you for speaking with me Raymund.

If you've found your way to my blog via The Wall Street Journal, thanks for stopping by. I am an online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist and through my books, seminars and speaking I show organizations how to harness the amazing power of viral marketing.

Here are a few things I've written on this blog about viral marketing using YouTube videos that you might want to check out:

8 tips to make your YouTube video go viral

Viral Marketing with Jerry Garcia's toilet

IBM's terrific "Mainframe: Art of the Sale" sequels now available on YouTube!

Video on the Web to reach your buyers

You may want to check out my bestselling book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. I provide much more information about creating content, including YouTube videos, that people want to consume.

My ideology: marketing and public relations is vastly different on the Web. The old rules of mainstream media are about controlling a message and the only ways to get noticed is to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write about you. The new rules of marketing and PR (on the Web) are completely different. Instead of buying or begging your way in, anybody can publish their way in using the tools of social media such as YouTube videos and other online media (blogs, podcasts, online news releases, ebooks).

Malcolm Harris: A hot fashion designer bypassing media gatekeepers

I'm always fascinated when people use the Web to tell their stories directly. Sandra Mendoza-Daly let me know about how fashion designers "are not only using the Web to further brand themselves, but more importantly, to bypass the very closed off, defunct media and PR gatekeepers." Sandra runs Debutante Clothing. A vintage clothing store and blog where vintage, street and runway meet.

How cool. I'm not in the fashion biz (everything I know about how the industry works comes from The Devil Wears Prada). But what I hear is that the glossy magazines have traditionally been at the top of the heap in terms of dictating style.

No longer.

Sandra shares a link to an interview with designer Malcolm Harris of Mal Sirrah called Fashion 2.0: A cut, sew and blog above.

Harris is an amazing example of the New Rules of Marketing & PR at work promoting his Mal Sirrah brand directly to his buyers using YouTube videos, his Cut, Sew & Blog blog, and a MySpace page. Check these out. Malcom Harris does it right. He truly is "Changing the world, one dress at a time."

Sandra says: "Never in the history of fashion has it been so easy for a young, talented designer to get their name out there an build a following."

What about your business? Can you do what Malcom Harris has done?

Forrester Research misleads CMOs by confusing advertising with marketing in new research report

UPDATE November 5, 2007

This afternoon I had a conversation with Shar Van Boskirk, the author of the Forrester US interactive marketing forecast report that I talk about below and Tracy Sullivan, Senior Public Relations Specialist at Forrester Research. They also sent me a copy of the report.

I want to thank them for reaching out to me. Clearly Forrester is monitoring blogs and engaging bloggers. Good for them. Very few companies that I talk about in this blog contact me.

Van Boskirk provided some additional information and clarification about the research which was designed as a way to do market sizing of social media. As she explained, in many cases (such as YouTube) the only way to measure how much marketing activity is going on is to measure advertising and use that as a proxy for total spend. After all, it’s not like companies have a YouTube budget that could be quantified. Forrester analysts also looked at things like agency fees and spending on technology.

I agree. It is difficult to measure marketing in many social media and advertising spend is a decent proxy for the interest in the area among marketers. However, I still believe marketing and advertising are very different and some aspects of the way the report was described in the news release and landing pages was misleading.

Sullivan said that the press release has been added to the media room pages.

+++++++++++++++++++

ORIGINAL POST

Last week Forrester Research "an independent technology and market research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology" released a report called US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2007 To 2012, written by Shar VanBoskirk. I have not read the report, but have seen the news release about it as well as the summary of the report on the Forrester site.

Some of the highlights of the report include:
> "Interactive Spend Will Better Align With Consumers' Media Behavior"
> "Interactive Marketing Will Top $61 Billion By 2012"
> "Search Marketing Will Triple In Five Years"
> "Online Video Ads Perpetuate A Virtuous Cycle Of Growth"
> "Social Media Will Drive Emerging Channels To $10.6 Billion By 2012"

While this data is certainly interesting, I am dismayed that the statistics refer to interactive advertising spending. In my opinion, it is misleading for Forrester to use MARKETING when they really mean ADVERTISING.

As readers of this blog and The New Rules of Marketing & PR will recall:

OLD RULES -- buy your way in with advertising and beg your way in with the media
NEW RULES -- publish your way in on the Web for free

As far as I can tell, this report is about the old rules of marketing (buying your way in) but just applied to the web. As I've said many times, marketers have long-term ingrained habits. Many of us assume that we must spend money to play the game. We equate marketing with advertising (as Forrester has done).

However, as many successful marketers know, on the Web, marketing is not the same as advertising. Marketing is all about creating great content. For free. To be successful, you must unlearn what you have learned.

It's not about advertising on YouTube, it is about making a YouTube video. It's not about advertising on social media sites like Facebook, it is about participating by creating profiles, groups and events on Facebook.

I like Forrester's work. In my last corporate job as VP marketing for a technology company, I was a Forrester client. Some of the companies I work with are Forrester clients. I have found their research valuable.

There is something deeply troubling in VanBoskirk's quote at the end of the press release. "These changes will not only affect the budget structure of marketing organizations, but it will also give interactive marketing professionals a more legitimate seat at the marketing table," VanBoskirk continues. "In fact, with interactive marketing gaining executive visibility as much for its popularity with young consumers as for its measurability and cost effectiveness, we see a class of marketers emerging who will involve themselves with a few high-profile interactive experiments in order to catapult themselves into the CMO seat."

In my opinion, advertising people already had their chance in the CMO seat and they've screwed it up. We've already got CMOs who understand the 30-second TV spot and who are skilled at interruption techniques. That's not marketing. That's not what consumers want. That's why the average tenure as CMO is less than two years according to Spencer Stuart.

Businesses certainly don't need trade CMOs who know TV ads with those who know how to run banner ads on YouTube and Facebook.

Instead, we need CMOs who know how to resonate with potential customers. We need CMOs who are skilled at creating products and services that people want to buy. Instead of dreaming up "creative" ads to interrupt people and shout "buy my product," we need CMOs who are Tuned In to their marketplace. We need CMOs who connect with buyers by publishing great content on the Web.

Here's another interesting thing. When I was writing this blog post on October 15 (four days after the Forrester report had come out), I had wanted to point to the press release on the Forrester site to drive any traffic from this blog to them directly. But the Forrester press release is not on the Forrester site, so I am pointing to it on Yahoo.

I entered the phrase US Interactive Marketing Spending To Reach $61 Billion (the headline of the press release) into Google and (at least the time that I looked) none of the top 50 hits pointed to the Forrester site.

While I completely advocate using the news release wires to send releases, they should also be published on a company's online media room. Maybe it was just an oversight on Forrester’s part.

The new rules of marketing and PR is about publishing interesting content that people want to consume and bringing them back to your own site where they can learn more.