(really) entrepreneureal

OK, so not exactly genius, but pretty close.

There’s just something about a humorous, tongue-in-cheek ad that gets to me.  It’s clearly a joke, and since there was a similar pamphlet on every neighbor’s door, I can’t be faulted for simply being unobservant.

So other than a chuckle, what’s missing?

A fridge magnet, so that the next time I’m ankle-deep in water from an overflowing toilet, I’m a phone call away from help (and a $20 discount!).

Recent articles (here and here) have highlighted how the traditional marketing community is barking up the wrong tree in its use of social media (thanks to Seth for pointing the links out).  We all know that it’s only a matter of time until advertising hits social media channels full-on, and until then we get to watch the first adopters – like P&G, and Crest – give it their best shot, and sometimes fail.

Not all social media channels are created the same, however.  For example, during the Beijing Olympics, Lenovo and other companies let their sponsored athletes film short video clips, which were then posted to YouTube.  This as a form of social media marketing is relatively inoffensive because it does little to encroach on regular users; in this case, Lenovo puts content up like any other YouTube user, and has to fight just as hard for eyeballs.

However, there’s another type of social media marketing that’s a little different (and it’s the one that’s causing such a ruckus): sometimes a company decides to piggyback an existing community of users, essentially buying into an exclusive club – and buying access to eyeballs.  The problem with this is that oftentimes the users don’t actually want to see ads, they haven’t given permission to be wooed.  In these cases companies are essentially hijacking online communities for their own use – examples include the companies that are coming onto Twitter,  or using targeted Facebook ads, or placing content on YouTube.  It would be like placing ads in hardback novels: people don’t expect to see ads when reading, so when they do pop up, reactions are often negative.

So what does this portend for the future of marketing and social media?  I think there will be a fundamental shift to a new model of marketing, where companies are perceived as people, citizens, individuals – and must act accordingly, or risk being shunned.

Stay tuned for the next post on what I call “action marketing”, where I dig a little deeper into these issues.

As much as I often get to help clients determine the best Web 2.0 strategy for their needs, my experience with promoting VotetheQuote.com just goes to show that what goes in one ear really does come out the other…

The scoop:

VotetheQuote.com is a side project of mine that I started with my room mate, Etan (who you can find here).   We initially wanted something that was easy to produce and would be easy to disseminate – a web-based voting platform seemed liked the perfect idea, especially given the proximity of the presidential elections.

As it turns out, Etan and I work pretty well together, and the research, design and prototyping phases went by smoothly.  We had a brief moment of panic when I discovered Google Lab’s InQuotes project, but since we have what we believe to be an inherently more engaging product, the worry subsided quickly.

However, we started running into problems when it came time to promote the finished product (or beta version, anyway), and were faced with some important questions: What’s the best way to get it out there? How much lead time do we need?  What is the best strategy for minimum input (from us) and maximum output (ie: users and media coverage)?  We ended up mixing the old with the new: a traditional email campaign to friends with a request to send the link onward, as well as some strategic comment-placing on political and news blogs, and some minor activity on some popular social networks.

Initial response got us excited – just over 120 unique I.P. hits in one day! It was as if we were on the path to becoming the next Facebook (forgetting that Fb has over 20 billion hits a month), and life seemed good.  To supplement our outreach over the next few days, I created a Facebook Cause and created entries on Digg and StumbleUpon.  On paper, at least, it seemed as if we were golden.

On paper.

It seems that I (and I say “I” because Etan can weigh in on this himself!) forgot the fundamental rule of networking and spreading ideas on the social web: finding and using the right tools is less than 10% of the battle – the rest is getting other people to use them (or, indeed, choosing tools that people already use).  So while the ingredients for a rocking viral idea were there – a Facebook cause, bookmarking articles, blog comments and articles, even a good search rating on Google – and the chefs were ready (me and Etan)… the restaurant, as it were, remained empty.

Here we are, 2 weeks in (with one week to go), and we’ve barely crested 500 unique hits.  500.  From an exciting growth curve to flatline in precisely 3 days.  And what did we learn?

1. If using the social web to spread an idea (even if it’s a good one), give yourself enough lead time.

Aiming for hundreds of thousands of hits (which are the figures we dreamed of, albeit foolishly) with barely three weeks time to build traffic isn’t just overambitious – it’s ludicrous.  Save a Black Swan, there’s no way that the web moves that quickly, even in this day and age of the billion page view month.

2. Don’t forget that your friends are friends – not your personal marketing reps.

It’s OK to send an email to your friends, asking them to check out a site.  It’s even OK to hit up these same friends with a request to join a Facebook cause/group, or visit a MySpace page.  What’s not OK is using these friends like a marketing rubber band – keep coming back too often and they will break, which is bad for everyone.  People have other things to do beyond forwarding your emails, and trust me, they don’t care about your Google Analytics stats. Period.

3. Be persistent.

It’s easy to think that with a social web success story appearing every day, you’ll hit the jackpot and win it big.  Take a site like TriplePundit.com, which went from 0 to 150,000 readers a month in under a year.  It’s convenient to forget that one of the core team at TriplePundit, Nick Aster, was also the co-founder of Treehugger.com (now owned by the Discovery Channel) and is currently media architect at MotherJones – Nick couldn’t have had enough eyeballs on him if he tried, and it’s no accident that quite a few of them followed him over to TP.  Nick put in the time at Treehugger to build up a loyal following, and there’s no reason to think that you don’t have to do the same.

And finally:

4. Be positive.

Not every social web project is meant to be.  Maybe it was bad timing, maybe it was simply a bad idea – in any case, it’s a necessary step toward learning what works, what doesn’t, and how to use the web to affect change in the world.

Rock on.