AboutFace Media | Content Marketing

Part 9: Content Marketing Defined

Part 10: Truth in Content

Part 11: Geniuses and Transparency

Part 12: Viral Videos

Content Marketing Part 11 – Truth In Content

Posted By Barry Poltermann / 16th December 2010

Truth In Content

Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness” isn’t enough when you’re making content to disseminate in social media. That concept still flies for politicians whose “candid” remarks have been scripted and scrutinized agonizingly prior to being uttered on the supposed fly, but if you’re trying to engage and converse with potential customers on the web, they don’t even have to set their BS detectors – their BS detectors are finely tuned and always on.

If you want true, meaningful success with your content, it needs to be truthful through and through.

I mentioned one of my clients, Kmart, earlier, and this is a perfect time for a brief case study on the content we produced for them.

Kmart’s problem when we started was that their products were perceived as… well let’s just say, poorly. Too many of their target customers wouldn’t even consider going to a Kmart store to check out the new clothing line. Same thing with their home décor products – your linens, your rugs, your lamps, and etc.

The message Kmart wanted to get out was that they knew what you thought about them, and that they had listened and changed. They had hired a slew of designers from high-end and quality operations like Tommy Hilfiger, Kenneth Cole, and Pottery Barn. They had committed to better design and higher quality products at the same affordable Kmart prices. And it was true – their product had vastly improved. But no one knew it. Everyone was still going to Target to pay slightly more for the same quality.

The goal was to go step by step to change the perception.

Step 1 – to play upon and leverage the target market’s disbelief They wanted to say, “Hey, we know what you think, but you might be surprised…”

Step 2 – show that they really had changed. “Here are our world class designers and here is the new KMart line.”

Step 3 – convert non-believers into the faithful.

Step 4 – keep it going with new content to continue to expand the base of the converted.

This was the core of the Kmart Design campaign. And as you can see from the numbers and the reaction from the netizens, Kmart’s goals were accomplished.

So how do you make that crucial first step – create curious disbelief, in this case – happen?

Content.

Truthful content.

We at AboutFace produced a series of short documentary videos where we followed the new breed of KMart designers as they passionately worked to make a better product. The audience got to know the designers, got to know where they came from, and got to know why it was important to them to be able to make great product available through KMart at affordable prices.

The videos never shied away from the skepticism the audience was sure to have. It was warts and all. It was based on the premise that we, the audience and the Mart itself, all know the reputation, but these designers are here to change all that. See if they can.

Here’s an excerpt of two of KMart’s top designers from one early video.

JUNE: “When Lisa called me to join her here [at Kmart], I had two concerns. One was who we would be able to recruit based on KMart’s recent history.”

KIM: “I started out at the GAP, worked at Baby GAP, Nickelodeon, Ralph Lauren… Kmart was a new opportunity, it was almost like a startup. I just liked the challenge of trying to revamp their line.”

Notice the words “recent history” and “revamp their line”. These are two people who are employees of KMart, talking in a video that is going public, and they’re being very clear about KMart’s reputation – in a video approved by KMart brass and legal team and all.

That’s it – that’s the tone. It’s honest. It’s truthful content. We didn’t have to make anything up or ‘spin’ it to convince.

Honesty is the best policy out there today. It’s not that the people who make up the audience of social media are cynical, it’s that they’re post-cynical. They can see spin, or downright BS, coming a mile away and rather than scrutinize it or get analytical or angry about it, they simply zone it out and move on.

Truthful content gives you the chance to give these post-cynical potential customers the chance to give you a chance. Don’t lie to them or try to put one over on them. They’ll know immediately and never give you a second thought.

Truthful content is your hook. Not every brand has to overcome a negative reputation, but that doesn’t mean every brand should pretend skies are clear when it’s clearly drizzling rain. Be honest about your brand in your content and good things will happen.

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Part 9: Content Marketing Defined

Part 10: Truth in Content

Content Marketing Part 10 – Genuiness And Transparency

Posted By Barry Poltermann / 18th November 2010

Nixon - Not a great example of Genuineness or Transparency.

Genuineness And Transparency

Genuineness and transparency are key in this hyper-connected era for any brand to foster trust, loyalty, or even be given the opportunity to be heard by potential customers.

Let’s look at two opposite examples.

Ford Motor Company was in a lot of trouble around the turn of the Millenium. Their product was suffering terrible backlash from customers and industry pundits, their stock price was down, and their formerly great American brand image was rusting away. They knew they were going down unless they turned it around somehow. Ford did turn it around. They started by admitting that they had been slipping, big time. They then improved their product behind their energetic CEO. And they let the world watch them do it. Ford launched a net-based video campaign called Ford Bold Moves. It was ahead of its time in that it let a documentary crew follow their CEO around, assessing and admitting to the shoddy shape of things. The crew had all-access to the problems the company had in the boardroom, in the customer service centers, and on the assembly lines. They copped to the truth – we have screwed up bad, but we’re trying to turn it around. The campaign itself was indeed bold. It was unflinching. It was hugely successful to anyone who watched in that Ford came across as owning up to its mistakes and willing to work hard to win back its former glory, its former great product line, and its former or simply disaffected customers. The Bold Moves campaign had the unfortunate distinction of being so far ahead of its time that it predated the explosion of social media, specifically the rise of social networking sites like Facebook, and micro-blogs like Twitter. Had Ford known what we know now, the sheer number of people who would have seen the campaign would have exploded, too. Alas, Ford was genuine and transparent when most companies would have been battening down the hatches and hiding from their own customers. This spirit of genuineness and transparency helped save a company on the rocks and turn them back into an American powerhouse.

Now let’s look at the more recent BP oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. What BP did was nearly the polar opposite of what Ford did in the clutch. BP shut out the public completely. They got their PR company into overdrive and tried to spin the story. The public knew they were lying about the extent of damage that was being done, about the amount of oil being pumped into the water and onto the beaches almost from day one. Their CEO acted brashly and dismissive, downplaying the disaster even as CNN showed experts and images to contradict BP’s claims all day long. Only after months of backlash, or rather an outpouring of hatred, did BP admit what was really going on and take steps to correct their behavior. That CEO subsequently lost his job and BP reported a massive loss, devastating its stock. And as of this writing, that is only the beginning. This is a company that may never recover from their lack of genuineness and transparency. That is not to say that if BP did an honest series of videos documenting their efforts their company would have chugged on through the crisis, but it would well have helped their image and perhaps avoided the numerous boycotts of their products. BP had the opposite spirit Ford did at a crucial moment in their history, and it’s likely they won’t exist as a result.

So what do those examples tell us? In a world this savvy to corporate spin, and especially in the realm of social media, it is paramount to be genuine and transparent. We don’t buy the apologetic ads BP started running three months into the spill. And so we don’t buy their gas anymore. We’re too well educated to PR to be fooled. If you want to market your brand today, crisis or no, you must go at it with G & T in mind, or your audience will smell the falseness of it out – like smelling a rat – and they’ll click off. Or worse.

Customer Company Pact WIKI

Want further proof that customers are looking for more from the companies that they patronize these days? Check out the Customer Company Pact that’s been launched, where else, online.

This Pact is very much in the spirit of G & T.

Since the Pact was launched, hundreds of companies from around the world have signed on. The successful ones will honor the spirit of G & T.

Part 9: Content Marketing Defined

Content Marketing Part 9 – Content Marketing Defined

Posted By Barry Poltermann / 5th November 2010

Lauryn Hill sang that "Everything Is Everything". We'd argue that "Content Is Everything", but we probably wouldn't get a hit song out of it.

Content Marketing.

At AboutFace, we are content marketers. What does that mean? First let’s define content in the context of social media.

Content is anything you put out there. Sorry to be vague, but it’s true. Every Facebook status update is a form of content. Every Tweet. Every picture you upload to Flickr. Every video you blast out through TubeMogul. It’s all content. And it all adds up to who you are and what you’re about.

Great, so content is everything. So then content marketing is… what?

Content marketing is a comprehensive, strategically-managed approach to producing content (again, Tweets, blog posts, videos, everything) and disseminating that content all throughout the social media landscape.

You want to have a cohesive brand across all the outlets and channels where users, potential customers or clients, will interact with you. So it’s not good enough to have a website, you need a Facebook page, a Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and any other number of accounts and presences. Remember – the fish are already out there swimming around, it’s your job to go get them, wherever they may be.

Marketers need to be publishers — create great content and get it out there in the most impactful way possible. That’s content marketing.

A Little Note On The History Of Content Marketing

It’s not a new concept. Airlines have been doing this to us all for decades. They just haven’t been doing it online.

Ever flip through that airline magazine in your front seat pocket? An article on some Hollywood actor answering softball questions is usually the cover story and lasts about a page. Then comes the genius part – just lots of articles about places you’ve never been. Best food in Amsterdam – page 11. Intriguing nightlife of Berlin – page 20. The picturesque beaches of the French Riviera – page 32. And the spiritual landmarks of Tibet – page 47.

The articles are usually rife with beautiful photography. Completely enticing everything. The airlines want you to want to go there. They don’t need to tell you how many direct flights they have to and from your home airport daily. You’ll get to that on your own. They’re playing the nice guy just by whispering in your ear about these amazing places that, yes, you, too, can visit. (Except on blackout dates.)

And every major airline does this, in nearly the same format, and has been for years. So maybe you read about Morocco on Delta and ended up flying British Airways to get there. Too bad for Delta, but they’ll get you when you decide to go to Argentina. So as long as all the airlines are helping to get you flying, they’re increasing their potential market and it will eventually come around, back to their airline.

The Mad Men would be so proud.

Advertising Is Content. Content Is Advertising.

In an article for iMedia, King Fish Media director of marketing and research, Gordon Plutsky, had this to say about content marketing:

Content marketing has become one of the most important trends in the field, especially as mass markets dissolve and media choices multiply ad nauseam. Smart and savvy companies have positioned themselves as authoritative experts and trusted sources of information by creating their own content. These companies understand that when they become the media, they strengthen their bonds with their customers.

So, okay, content is important. Extremely important. You might say content is the whole ballgame, and it almost is. But let’s examine why.

According to iMediaConnection, the average clickthrough rate of banner ads across the web is currently 0.2% – 0.3%. That is amazingly low. But let’s be honest – most of us don’t even see them anymore. We know they’re there, but what we’re looking for when we click open a new page is something in the body of that page. So we simply tune them out. Unless they’re one of those annoying ones that pop up over the body of your screen for ten seconds or whatever and you have to sit actively disliking them (and likely by transference whatever it is they’re selling) until they roll back into being plain old, highly ignorable banner ads. That, my friends, is bad content. But it is still marketing.

The goal of content marketers is to do pretty much the opposite of that annoying banner ad. At AboutFace we do documentary videos that tell compelling stories. We won’t force you to watch them. We want you to want to watch them. That is our content. That is also our marketing.

Now we all engage in other content dissemination whether we know it or not. As we’ve said before, every Tweet, every status update, every blog post is content. It is also all marketing.

Think of it this way. If you follow Dave The Financial Advisor on Twitter and he is constantly Tweeting about financial issues relevant to you, your location, or your tax bracket, you’re going to start to respect him. You may even trust him. If he’s doing so in a thoughtful, insightful way, that is. And that is, on a very micro level, Dave advertising Dave The Financial Advisor.

If Dave is, on the other hand, chattering on about how he got hammered in Cabo for all two weeks of his vacation, you’re unlikely to consider him a solid choice should you want to hire someone to be in charge of your kids’ college fund. Cabo Dave has just, through his Twitter content, whether he knows it or not, marketed himself right out of the running for new business from you and probably most other people who are seeing his Tweets.

So, as you can see, even on that small of a level, Tweets, content is advertising in this new space.

Now look at it from a much larger brand’s perspective. One of our clients at AboutFace is KMart. We have made scores of videos for a new effort of theirs called Kmart Design. The idea is to showcase Kmart’s commitment to great design on a budget anyone can afford. Part of the plan is managing the Kmart Design Twitter account and content, as well as that of Facebook. Our social media partners, along with key designers and management at Kmart, post and Tweet about our Kmart Design videos and Kmart Design happenings, sure.

But we also post and Tweet nearly as much, if not more, about other relevant design articles, photos, and trends. Why? Because it’s what our customers and potential customers want. They want to know about the new hot styles coming out of fashion week. And it makes us not only helpful, but trusted. We’re not just trying to shove our advertising down their throats. We are like them. We care about this stuff. We’re offering them value. We’re offering them information. And we’re being seen as experts in the field… which makes them more likely to trust us and, ultimately, to buy from us.

The point is, even when we’re not offering up our videos or articles on Kmart products, we are still putting content out there into the community. We’re still advertising the Kmart Design brand. And we’re fostering a community where we have back-and-forth with our customers, because we’re seen as honest, mostly unbiased lovers of fashion and style and design.

We’ll get into the community aspect of content marketing later on, but you can see where this is going – everything you put out there is content, and all of your content is marketing. So make sure it’s good marketing and not that intrusive banner ad your potential customers will have to sit through. Because, for the most part, they won’t.

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Content Marketing Part 8 – Other Forms of Content

Posted By Barry Poltermann / 27th October 2010

The "C" is for "Content", and also for "now we're Cooking with gas!".

ARGs.

ARGs, short for Alternate Reality Games, are campaigns in which users are invited to play a game, usually with elements of play both online and in the real world. There is often a mystery component to ARGs, and also often a tie-in to a good old-fashioned prize for winners at the end of play.

The upside to launching an ARG is that the good ones are often great at generating press for the brand or product being promoted. The downside is that they are often complicated and expensive, with a lot of moving parts, and tend to have a limited audience of hard-core gamers.

I was lucky enough to be intimately involved with several ARGs back in the mid-2000s, including one for the release of Microsoft’s X Box 360. We were working for a brilliant and trailblazing marketing firm called 42 Entertainment, and the campaign 42 created was called the “Hex” 168. Hex was a contest where users were tasked with creating photos or videos under certain rules to submit and winners won a coveted X Box 360 before it was released to the public, as well as got to attend the exclusive release party.

I was one of the directors making videos to show the kind of rules-in-action to serve as a guide to the users. We also shot a behind-the-scenes documentary on the campaign that aired on MTV. We were doing things all over the country that would seem very strange if not tied into a Microsoft promotion. For example, we hired one of the world’s foremost experts in creating crop circles to, well, create a crop circle in the shape of a the Hex from a field in Oklahoma. You could just about see it from space. And we were all along shooting the behind-the-scenes of this kind of wacky, fun cross media marketing effort.

In the end, user response was… interesting — we got lost of photos and text entries, but videos were few and far between. What videos we did get were generally solicited by us by calling everyone we know and telling them that “you got a good chance, there are hardly any entries.” Now, mind you, the prize was an all expense trip to the middle of the desert to go to a giant launch party and get to play the X Box 360 before the game was released.

The campaign did get some good press, some bloggers were very excited, and we definitely engaged hard-core gamers who were willing to go very far for a shot at the new X Box, but why didn’t we get more video entries?

But then, the strangest thing happened: The behind-the-scenes documentary about the Making Of The Hex Campaign was seen by MTV and they decided to run it. It was compelling and fun and showcased Microsoft’s passion for their product. It was genuine. The documentary was a sort of add-on to the campaign. And MTV ran it as regular programming, not as an ad. So, while the centerpiece of the project was the ARG, it was the “making of” (which was an afterthought) that became arguably the most successful component of the campaign.

42 Entertainment has done numerous successful campaigns, before and since Hex. The Dark Knight campaign they did is of particular note for being superb and successful. But as a footnote here, as far as my personal journey from traditional marketing to the new model goes, the unexpected success of the behind-the-scenes documentary component of Hex was a light bulb moment. “Why was it so successful and well-received? And what does that mean?” We’ll come back to that later.

Live Events.

Coca Cola sponsors a Black Eyed Peas concert and streams it live on the web. Either users watch it for free or pay a small ticket price. BEP comes out and kills. I drink a Coke Zero, lose interest after “My Hump” and go to bed. You get the just of this Live Events thing. There’s not a ton of variance other than in the amount of self-promotion the brand does (meaning, ads or no ads?) and if there’s a fee paid to watch. Like with the stalwarts of the traditional marketing model – sports, concerts, and other live-essential events – there will always be a place for these as long as enough people like one thing enough to make it worth an advertiser’s money to reach them.

Video Podcasts.

These babies are easy to make, inexpensive, and a good source of vitamin C (“C” is for “Content”). Basically, video podcasts are a form of branded content, but most center around a topic of interest, perhaps even a timely, hot-button issue, in a certain field. For example, if Toyota did a series of podcasts this past year entitled, “We Are Very Sorry About Our Shotty Brakes, Steering Wheels, And Other Stuff, Too”, they may have saved a portion of their television ad budget where they espouse “Nothing is more important than your safety” by actually addressing the issues and advising customers on how to best proceed.

Come on, Toyota! No one in this sophisticated, media-savvy world believes the “Safety” television commercial campaign. It’s not helping your brand image any more than BP’s desperate campaign featuring Gulf natives who work for you promising they all want to clean up the spill. A better approach for either brand would be to address the issues head on, honestly, admit wrong-doing, and outline how it won’t happen again. A video podcast would be a perfect place for that. Control the content and the message but be honest and genuine.

Critical hypothetical examples aside, video podcasts are just videos about certain topics that are put out online and work very well across social media.

What do all of these example have in common? In every instance the focus is on creating useful, engaging or somehow valuable content for customers and brand advocates.

And all of this valuable content can provide fuel for your for social media marketing, the new marketing, permission marketing, or whatever buzz word-label you want to put on it. It doesn’t seem too daunting, right?

Good. So heed the call. You can’t beat it, so join it. At AboutFace, my company uses a specialized form of content (vitamin C) as the centerpiece of our marketing strategy. Content into social media equals success. If you do it right. We use short-form documentary video.

But you needn’t create mini-docs. You can do just about anything that your customers will find value in. Ask yourself this question: Will my customers ‘like’ this? Imagine them clicking that button on Facebook. They don’t typically ‘like’ your ads, do they? There are exceptions, of course… but usually ads are intrusive and ‘dis-liked’. All of the above content areas make friends and create connections.

Now I’m going to give you the why and the how of what we do and how we’ve done it successfully in this new social media-obsessed world. Because, by the end of this series of blog posts, you’ll be able to do it, too.

Content Marketing Speaking Events

Posted By Teddy Lyngaas / 20th October 2010

Denise McKee continues to speak extensively about all things video, content marketing and social media optimization.

October 21, Denise will be in Milwaukee for the Southeast Wisconsin PRSA Chapter meeting you can still buy tickets here.

December 6-9 she’ll be in Las Vegas for another Social Media for Government Conference. Mention her name and you can save $400 off current registration rates, while in Vegas you’ll learn how To Engage Your Employees And Citizens By Using The Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Drive Communication Results

March 17 in Chicago; More info TBA.

If you missed her last presentation in Chicago, she drilled down to some great social media tips and tricks that can be applied by anyone looking to connect with markets across multiple channels.

The Golden Rule – “It’s not what we want, it’s what our audience wants”

Know your marketing objectives - and know them in advance.

Know Thy Target Audience – Just as important as knowing your objectives, it’s absolutely crucial that you know who you’re trying to reach before firing your first shot.

Tips for Twitter – A great place to start for marketers getting started using Twitter.

Tips for Youtube – Some basic tips to help you get started optimizing your Youtube channel.

Social Media Do’s and Don’ts: Part 1 – What to do (and not to do) when marketing via social media. Part one of three.

Social Media Do’s and Don’ts: Part 2 – What to do (and not to do) when marketing via social media. Part two of three.

Social Media Do’s and Don’ts: Part 3 – What to do (and not to do) when marketing via social media. Part three of three.

Ford Fiesta Movement Concept Explained

Posted By Ryan Dembroski / 15th October 2010

I still get a ton of questions about the basic concept behind my participation in Ford’s Fiesta Movement.
Here’s a newly released video that explains Ford’s thinking. They’re pretty open about what millennials thought of their brand and their cars – frankly, before my experience I was definitely one of those detractors.

If you look really carefully you can see my smiling face in the video – if you find it let us know where in the comments section!

Getting Serious About Video View ROI (Part 4 of 4)

Posted By Barry Poltermann / 10th October 2010

Content Matters

Why do we believe it’s important to measure this deeply? Because by tracking these metrics you’ll be able to benchmark and report on the effectiveness of the CONTENT and not just the marketing push or dollars spent behind it’s deployment.

It is our opinion that any content that is created with an eye towards being useful and engaging to the customer will work better than traditional marketing messages. So as I go through the following analysis of an AboutFace CPV keep in mind that I am not suggesting that we have some special kind of genius. The reality is that any marketer can achieve similar results if they focus on the relevance of the content to their customer.

So let’s take AboutFace averages and run it through the same calculation as above to get an effective CPV.

A typical AboutFace CPV campaign on YouTube results in an initial CPV of $0.50. Why so much lower than the YouTube average? Because the content is highly targeted and created with the goal of being interesting to the customer, not just relaying the marketing message. Just like Google Adwords, the more targeted and appealing the ‘ad’ the more likely to get ‘clicked’. The more likely to get ‘clicked’ the less you pay for each click. So the same $100,000 would typically result in about 200,000 video Views for AboutFace clients.

Then take a typical rate of Collateral Views for our CPV campaigns, which runs between 30% and 100%. That’s right, 100%. Seriously. Why so high? Because if people LIKE the first video they watch, then they watch MORE of your videos. Even better, the more useful or engaging a video is the more likely it is to get embedded in a blog, tweeted about or posted on a Facebook profile. So in this scenario we would typically see an additional 60,000 to 200,000 Views for no additional spend. Let’s go on the low side and say you now have 60,000 Views plus your initial 200,000 views for a total of 260,000 views, which gives you an effective CPV of $0.38.

Now factor in Engagement. A typical AboutFace campaign gets between 40% and 80% engaged views (watching more than 60 sec). Let’s say this campaign hit our average of 68%. So multiply your 260,000 views by 68% and you have 176,800 engaged views. Your effective CPV is therefore $0.56.

That’s right, $0.56 as opposed to the more typical previous example of $2.84.

In both cases the client paid $100,000 to promote their content. In the first case the client effectively got 35,266 engaged Views. In the second the same spend resulted in the client effectively receiving 176,800 engaged Views.

The second example resulted in five times more actual value to the client.

Qualitative Responses

Did people “like” your videos? Some would say that it is impossible to measure likability in any reliable quantitative manner. Others might point to tools like Radian 6 which can aggregate social chatter from RSS feeds and generate various custom reports by tracking selected keywords.

But we would argue that your likability is being measured if you take the time to assess the factors above, because you’ve factored in how long viewers watched the video and how many Views you got from people who watched more videos or passed the video around through social channels. The more people like your video, the more ROI is generated through this calculation.

But, of course, numbers don’t tell the whole story. That’s why we’d also recommend you do a series of simple qualitative snapshots analyzing the sentiment of the viewers when they respond to the videos throughout social channels.

This isn’t so scientific, but it is an essential part of the reporting matrix. Do people say nice things? Do they seem to find it valuable?

We admit to being seduced by the allure of a well crafted line graph showing keyword trending as much as the next guy, but in reality you can learn as much (if not more) by simply listening to comments than you will by looking at charts generated by Radian 6.

Take Away

If you want to get a relevant sense of the return you are getting on your investment in video content, ask these four basic questions when talking about Views:

Did someone actually choose to watch your video? In other words, are you counting actual Views or are you counting Impressions or OTS’s?
Did they watch enough of your video to matter to you?
Did the viewer like your video enough to watch any of your other videos or share your content with their friends?
And finally, what did you pay to promote the video and get that View?

Without taking into account all of these factors, your View count (and the correlating Cost Per View) is a virtually meaningless statistic.

But by measuring these factors, it will soon become clear that deciding what kind of content you are going to offer up through your video marketing channels is NOT just a creative decision. It’s also a financial decision.

It is, in fact, a measurable, trackable cornerstone of how you generate value from your video spend.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Content Marketing Part 7 – Barriers To Moving Away From Traditional Models

Posted By Barry Poltermann / 6th October 2010

No army has ever breached the walls of Helm's Deep... until Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. If Orcs can break down barriers, so can all of us!

Barriers To Moving Away From Traditional Models

A lot of marketing types have heard the statistics about declining television viewership and the like and seen the writing on the wall. And a lot of those same marketers have declined to break away from the dying traditional models. Over the years, the biggest impediment to changing over to the new (and inevitable) ways have been: Measurement; Uncertainty Of Results; Belief that the audience “isn’t there yet”; and, the old classic, Fear. We’ll take them on in reverse order.

Fear.

Yes, it’s scary to leap into the unknown. You’ve known one way to do something for so long, and now you’re faced with the prospect of having to do it another way. Well, evolve or become extinct. It’s that simple. Anyone can be scared. It’s natural. But as we’ll see here or in a myriad of other publications and studies, you have to jump. And we’re here to help you fly, rather than plummet to the cold, hard ground below.

Belief that the audience “isn’t there yet”.

In 2007, broadband in the home passed a critical milestone by reaching over half of all homes in the US. PewInternet reports that overall broadband penetration in US homes grew to 63% in March 2009, and US broadband penetration among active Internet users grew to 94.65% in May of 2009. There are hundreds of millions of MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. YouTube plays is the second-biggest search engine and plays untold hundred-millions of videos per month. One of my employees at AboutFace has a ninety year old grandmother who claims that the family computer is haunted. Pretty much everybody else is already online. And online a lot. Your audience is there already, you just have to find them and give them something they want.

Uncertainty of Results.

Okay, so say you decide to enter the fold of social media marketing, throwing off the albatross of the traditional marketing model from around your neck. What if you go out and execute a campaign – you build a website, you open a Facebook account, you Tweet – and it doesn’t make any impact at all? You’ve left the traditional models behind only to find out the new models don’t work? Obviously, no one can say with 100% certainty that “this will work” or “that will not.” But the nice thing for anyone getting into the new models now is that they’re not that new. Others have tried things and failed before you. I’ve tried things and failed before you. And others will continue to try things and fail alongside of you. You have the benefit of their experience to guide you. And AboutFace is living proof that the new models can and do work.

Measurement.

There is a massive misunderstanding in the way many people look at measurement of social media marketing. Many people think it must be impossible to measure anything, or to learn anything from what you can measure. Frankly, the reality could not be any further from those assumptions. In fact, what you can measure, what you can learn, and how specific your tracking can get is extremely sophisticated, especially when compared to that of television commercials or periodical reader behavior/demographics. As a marketer with an arsenal of metrics tools, you’re not quite the NSA, but you’re not too far behind.

Still not convinced you’re ready to take the social media plunge? Good. I will now convince you.

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