B.L. Ochman has kept me entertained with his various articles poking fun at the proliferation of people claiming to be social media gurus. His most recent article about how the number of self-proclaimed “social media guru” titles has gone down but other, but new titles are emerging got me thinking:

Hiring a [social media] strategist, guru, consultant, or any other title is a bad idea for 99% of the companies I come in contact with.

Now, before someone with that title gets all upset and leaves me a heated comment, let me explain why I feel this way.

Social media is a very small piece of what it takes for the majority of businesses to succeed online, pure and simple. Hiring someone who is a recently name social media _________ is a bad idea, because it’s very likely that person knows little about many of the other tools in the online marketing arsenal.  It takes years of study, trial and error, discipline, and a little luck; to become an effective online marketer.  Do you really want to hire someone who has mastered Twitter and Facebook to manage your online strategy?

If you think you need a social media strategist, then I’m going to make a very educated guess and say that is probably only a part (maybe a small part) of what you need.  Most businesses I start working with are not doing many of the other fundamental things right – so why would you jump into social media?!

If you’re not effectively marketing to search engines and generating qualified traffic that converts, then you have work to do before diving into social media.

If you are not segmenting your customers with email lists, cross-promoting to them and building loyalty and referrals, then you have work to do before diving into social media.

These are some sweeping generalizations, but it boils down to this: you need an online strategist, not a social media __________. You need someone who can look at your business and craft a solution from all the many tools in the online marketing toolbox, not just push you into social media because it’s what everyone wants to talk about right now.

Related articles:

• Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Your Social Media Marketing (verticalmeasures.com)
• 3 Social Media Myths You Should Be Careful Of (onesocialmedia.com)
• The Big Myth – Anyone Can Do Social Media (charlesheflin.com)

This is actually pretty simple:  don’t.  If you want to get real results from your site, you need to be talking to someone who understands online marketing and has a proven track record of success, not just someone who wants to “build you a website.”

If you’re in the market for a new website, you need to make sure that you’re asking the right questions. Or at least, that the firms you’re talking to are asking you the right questions. I cannot say this enough: web design has become highly commoditized. There is a very low barrier of entry to being able to call yourself a “web designer.”  My father has built a website before, but you don’t want him building your business a website!

Everyone has a cousin Max, or knows someone who can “build a website,” but if you’re interested in really driving growth for your business through the Internet, just walk away…

Cover via Amazon

Here are some thoughts to consider if you think that you need a (new) website:
Building the site itself is only the first step.  This isn’t Field of Dreams, and you are not Kevin Costner. If you build it, they will not come. Get that idea out of your head altogether.

If you are going to launch a site, a good rule of thumb for most SMBs is that you should devote 25% of your budget to the site itself, and 75% to driving traffic and promoting it. So, if your web designer or firm doesn’t mention anything about what they are going to do after your site is launched, thank them for their time, and walk away.

Online success requires your interaction, so if anyone talks to you about building a site that cannot be easily updated (by you) in the future, then you need to keep interviewing vendors. There is absolutely no reason to build static websites anymore; not unless you are a true designer and can’t code your way out of a paper bag.

There are some amazing, free products that do all this for you! WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, just to name a few. If your web designer can’t build you a site on some type of content management  system, then you need to look elsewhere. There are many opinions over why you should use open-source or proprietary, but that’s another topic entirely.

Lastly, if the people you’re talking to are only asking questions about your taste in colors, and the kind of content you will have, and what imagery will be used; then walk away. Don’t get me wrong, those are all very valid questions, but that isn’t ultimately what will make your site successful. If you keep with the 75/25 rule, then on 1/4 of your discussion about the site should revolve around the site itself. The other 3/4 of the discussion should be focused on your business and what will be effective at marketing it online.  How is your audience, what appeals to them, what are their pain points, what are your differentiators from the competition? These are questions that can lead to a successfully developed website that will have some legs under it.

If you’re in the market for a new site – make sure you talk to at 3 firms, too.  It is very difficult to compare apples to apples when it comes to web design/development, and also with online marketing. TALK to your prospective vendors and make sure you feel comfortable with them, and have a high level of confidence that they know what they are doing.  Look for case studies, check references, do your homework and see if they can back up what they are telling you. Find out what/who they use for project management, and how they can ensure that your project will be completed on time, within scope, and within budget.

Good luck, and if you get stuck – we can always help you vet them out! 

Here’s an interesting thing that I’ve noticed that is great news for marketers:

Precise stats on cart abandonment are tough because they range widely depending on the source, but if you take the mean then something like 50% of people who add something to their shopping cart never check out. That seems pretty high to me, but let’s be honest we’re all guilty of doing it – right?

Here’s another situation that was interesting to me along those same lines.  I went to go check out Angie’s List the other day. If you’re not familiar with the service, it’s a fantastic idea (especially when you’re trying to find someone to paint your new condo on the cheap!).  During the signup process, I never  realize it was a paid service – until I had already given my email address and created a password for my account.

That’s a good idea for their service, because now they have me!

I was short on time and didn’t want to go find my wallet and complete the signup process, so I closed the laptop and off I went.  True to my A.D.D. nature, I didn’t remember to go back and finish the checkout process, so guess what happened next? Angie’s List sends me an email a week that says “we noticed you didn’t finish signing up, so here’s a coupon” that would allow me to use the first month without paying for the service.

Image via Wikipedia

Smart strategy, and one that is easily achievable for your organization if you put a little thought into how you structure the calls to action on your site. Think through the service and information that you can offer on your site, and find ways to capture information about your site visitors. With cart abandonment (and signup) rates being whatever they are, why wouldn’t you want to reach back out to someone who expressed some interest in your products or services, but may have just gotten sidetracked?

Targeting and segmentation are the name of the game – so use the tools at your disposal: analytics, lists, etc. and improve on what may or may not be working on your site.  My favorite quote that relates to what we do was by Lord Kelvin over 100 years ago: “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.”

A recent Comscore article shows that Facebook and Twitter Access via Mobile Browsers has Grows by Triple-Digits in the Past Year, which really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. I don’t know about you- but it seems that everyone I talk to these days has an iPhone, Droid, or Blackberry.

The rise of mobile technology has some neat (and somewhat frightening, in the Big Brother-sense) implications for how we can be targeted by marketing/advertising. Applications like Foursquare publishes your location to the world, which could allow a monitoring application to watch for anyone who “checks-in” at specific locations.  Think about the implications of checking-in on Beale Street in Memphis on a Saturday night, and then getting a reply that offers you no-cover entrance, or 2-for-1 on your first cocktail at a nearby blues club?

Consider what that technology could that do for restaurants: giving them the ability to offer location-specific specials for lunch or dinner?  What about B2B organizations (a lot of whom seem to be struggling with ways to use social media tools) who want to target locally?  It would be relatively simple for an application to cross-reference someone’s check-in location (like in your company’s office complex, for instance) with specific keywords in a Twitter profile data.  I could then send a message to anyone who is listed as a CMO or Director of Marketing that checks in at Memphis’ business incubator, Emerge Memphis, a message that said “Good to see you in our neck of the woods. If you’ve got 10 minutes, stop by and we’ll show you something neat that we’re up to”.

Alright, I may want to put a little more thought into that message itself, but the point is: I can get hyper-specific with who I am targeting and what messaging I send to that person.

A Better Mobile Web
My other thoughts on the rise of mobile are nothing new – I love that mobile technology gives us so much freedom and instant access to information, but I hate that web site (not app) developers are not catering more to mobile users.

Web sites need to get smarter!  This presentation from Razorfish’s John Petengill points out how mobile users do not want their Internet experience to be watered down. Check it out – very short, but powerful (plus its a really cool presentation).

Valeo is proposing an optional, mobile-friendly version of every with every new site project that we have pitched in the last 6 months.  Why wouldn’t you want a mobile site if you’re developing a new web presence?  Give mobile users a better experience, because their numbers will continue to rise.

There’s a lot of hype about having a mobile app, and there are some great companies who have developed an application that will build mobile apps for you. Our neighbors, Resolute Interactive, has developed their Appanda software that allows you to design and publish your own iPhone and Android app through a web interface. (Shameless plug: check out Valeo’s app on iTunes that was built using Appanda)

This is a break through for anyone who doesn’t want to hire someone like Resolute or Valeo to build you a custom app, but don’t forget about your website, which still has the power to drive far greater amounts of traffic to your online presence. Having your own mobile app is great – but between a mobile app, and a mobile-friendly version of your site, which do you think has more potential?  I’ll give you a hint- mobile apps are not showing up in search engine results…

Looking to the Future
Not huge in the States yet, but sure to be crossing the oceans and coming here soon, I think QR codes will play some part in the mobile future.  I’m not quite ready to talk about that yet – but we’re working up some ideas, so I’m sure we’ll have something for you sometime this year.  Stay tuned…

Some interesting reading about Foursquare:

• Facebook About to Drop a Bomb on Foursquare? (socialmediatoday.com)
• foursquare fascination (timesunion.com)
• Putting Foursquare-esque Technology to Work… at Work (socialmediatoday.com)