Alright, so one of the weird little misconceptions I’ve been dealing with for a while now is the belief that social media marketing is, well, how do I say this? “Cheap.”

It’s an opinion often held by marketers, communicators, executives, and the like, many of whom have clicked on the pony-tailed chief’s ‘DIY’ blog and the clever, professionally underproduced video on YouTube and the messy, yet oddly functional fan page on Facebook, and because of this, have formed an opinion of what social media marketing is, how it’s done, and ultimately what it must cost.

And really, can you blame them?

These folks are simply making a calculation of value based on the tangible merit of what’s being presented to them — with very little insight, understanding or weight placed on the effort required to really bring these projects to life, let alone what it takes to keep them going and make them truly successful.

Of course, to complicate things, there’s a near endless parade of free online tools and services that are surfacing every month, each in their own way perpetuating the “man-this-stuff-is-cheap” mentality as their own hype cycles crest (cough, FriendFeed) and later crash.

Lastly, and most importantly, I think there’s a tendency in ROI conversations to over indulge in hard numbers sans consideration for all the underlying soft costs of social media projects. And by “soft costs” what I’m really getting at are the *absurdly high* time and attention investments that typically come with these projects and what are the unique shared scars among many a social media practitioner. If you’ve ever administered a blog or a community of sorts, you’ll know what I mean, nuff said.

Sadly, time and attention factors are often overlooked and greatly underestimated in most marketers’ understanding and appreciation of these projects.

Now, does this mean social media work can’t be done on the cheap? Nah, of course not. You go right ahead and create your corporate Blogger account and your executive’s MySpace page and that barely-discernible-but-kinda-indie looking mobile video of your company event;)

Kidding aside, just remember that free is never really free. That time’s an investment too. And that social media marketing requires a lot of it and because of this, “cheap” investments could end up costing you a bundle if you’re not clear about what you’re buying.

[This post has been cross-published to Media Guerrilla]

Alright, so there’s all sorts of assumptions companies make about social media these days, one of the most dangerous of which is the assumption that the feedback, opinions and insights people share online are absolutely representative of their customer base.

Be careful about walking into this particular perception warp, it’s very easy to fall into and terribly difficult to escape.

Yeah, there’s a ton of valuable customer feedback to be gathered and analyzed on the web, however, more often than not, that feedback is coming from what’s best described as, well, a vocal minority. The perception warp is believing this group of customers online reflects the opinions, attitudes and experiences of *all* your customers (e.g., the much, much larger silent majority).

I was reminded of this recently on a client project where we were analyzing commenter registrations on the company’s blog. Our WordPress admin page showed thousands of comments and thousands of registrants, but as we chopped up the user data, we found that about *40* commenters accounted for nearly a third of the total comments.

I’ve seen very similar patterns on other projects, and generally speaking, I think there’s plenty of evidence to support the fact that the ratio of writers to readers online is wildly disproportionate. And unfortunately, once again, it’s one of those unique challenges that falls onto the laps of those who manage social media programs to determine just how much weight to put on the collective customer feedback culled from the web; also I suppose, how influential (or not) your vocal minority of customers are to your silent majority of customers.

Over the weekend the famous ‘measurement’ question was discussed quite a bit by Scoble and Owyang. A few months ago we talked about the monitoring and mining aspect, but Scoble asks the direct question, “how will doing this help my sales?”

Like Robert says, this question is asked quite a bit by some of the large firms we talk to. What’s the quick response? “How are you currently measuring your PR/Comms/Marketing programs?”

The answer usually can go one of two ways:

1. A company describes how they currently measure the ROI of their PR/Comms/Marketing.
2. A company admits they really don’t have a good measure on the ROI of existing programs.

If 1: then part of your work is already done for you. Find out how to apply some of the existing methodology to the project. After all if X is the standard they use to measure all other programs, then how can you integrate a way to measure X in your project?

Kami Huyse did this with the SeaWorld Journey to Atlantis project. Many of the existing programs are measured by exit surveys, why not use the same tool to ‘equally’ measure the different programs.

If 2: then you can set the precedent for measurement within and organization. One of the great things with online content is that you do have plenty of data to work with. The trick is what to do with the data, and how to determine what’s relevant to the client. Is it RSS subscribers? Comments? Links? Bookings?

If you know how and what you’re measurement goals are to begin with it’s easier to build in the proper components from the start.

In a few recent conferences that Dave Coustan and I have attended together, whenever the topic of SEO comes up, he always mentions the human element. In other words, the reader. You need to make sure the content you’re posting is ‘Fit for humans’ as Dave says.

Thinking about it more, I jokingly refer to it as HRO, or Human Reader Optimization. It’s the next step beyond SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Sure it’s great that you’ve used SEO tactics to get somebody to your site, but is that landing page something they actually want to read. It might contain the keywords, but is it relevant and perhaps most of all interesting?

Google helped make this a bit more obvious (hopefully). Think back to Alta Vista, when ‘relevant’ meant a page that contained the most instances of a keyword, with Google relevant is partially calculated by what others (via links) think is relevant.

A while back I talked about the SEO strategy surrounding blogs and made some jokes/jabs about it. With blogs, the SEO strategy should start with, “Write good relevant content that people find interesting.”

Newsroom vendors hype the SEO benefits of keyword-optimized press releases. Great, are they HRO? As a general web user, is a press release really what you want to read?

Fast Company just published an article that raises some questions about targeting Influentials (you know, those people whose actions and opinions cause others to follow suit) as the best approach to reaching one’s intended audience.

Duncan Watts, a Columbia University professor on sabbatical and now at Yahoo!, argues for caution because he feels it’s unclear how Influentials do what they do:

“[T]here are a lot of ways an Influential could convert the masses. Merely talking to a friend once could infect her with an idea. Or it might take several conversations. Or maybe Influentials are so persuasive they’re like trend vampires, and each victim they bite becomes hyperpersuasive too. Depending on how you define the specific mechanics of influence, you’d get totally different types of epidemics–or maybe none at all. But gurus of the Influentials theory never directly clarify these mechanics.”

Sure, but on that last point I’d argue that simply because the mechanics aren’t fully explained yet shouldn’t dilute the recognition of the impact that Influentials have. And then again, anyone who has been in the communications industry long enough would shy away from saying that targeting Influentials is the one-and-only approach to take.

Marketer Ed Keller, co-author of The Influentials, criticizes Watts’ computer model-based theories as “too academic to reflect reality,” noting that he “is making a straw-man argument. Because nobody, including myself, thinks that Influencers are the only group of consumers who matter.”

Which in the end is probably the take-away here — communications professionals have to continue doing what they’ve always done, namely customize their approach and strategy depending on the myriad of factors involved, such as audience, product/service, timing and a host of other things.

It’s getting harder and harder to find examples where social media does, actually, sell stuff. One area where it is NOT hard to find examples is in publishing. Now I’m a bit biased here, as I landed a book deal with Crown Publishing specifically because I sold a few thousands books on my own using nothing but social media (so this is a simultaneous full & open disclosure, combined with a shameless self-promoting plug — the best of both sides of social media in one fell swoop).

But outside of the unique success stories of social media rags-to-riches stories like David Wellington and David Wong, let’s take a look at how a big-time publisher used it to sell books.

Now right off the bat, our example blurs the lines, because the example is RULE THE WEB by Mark Frauenfelder, published by St. Martin’s Press. If you haven’t heard of this guy, he’s a co-founder and regular blogger for BoingBoing.net. If you haven’t heard of BoingBoing.net, put down your abacus and stable the horse, it’s time for you to get caught up. BoingBoing.net is arguably the most-read blog on the planet (and since we only know of blogs on this planet, that makes it the most-read blog in the universe … nice work, Mark!).

So clearly, Fraunefelder (pictured at right) is a digital native with a big following of other digital natives. Even so, St. Martin’s didn’t rely on that alone to sell the book.

“We built a dedicated Web site for it,” said David Moldawer, editor of RULE THE WEB. “We used a blog to offer the same advice as the book, as well as a live podcast with interviews and a traditional, short, regular podcast with Web tips.”

They built the blog with TypePad, and hosted the podcast with BlogTalkRadio. They tried leverage Fraunfelder’s name along with the book’s website to multiple channels.

“We did extensive blogger outreach, both to people in our personal networks as well as to bloggers in the lifehack/Web tip arena,” Moldawer said.

RULE THE WEB peaked at #2 on Amazon’s “Computers & Internet” list, and hit #51 overall.

When it comes to these results, it’s impossible to tell if social media links happened because of the book’s content, or because of Frauenfelder’s status as internet royalty.

“It hit those peaks when the book was mentioned on sites like Lifehacker and 43 Folders,” Moldawer said.

And, of course, Fraunfelder posted about the book on BoingBoing.net, but the big sales peaks came when other heavyweight sites talked about the book.

“While Mark’s own posting about the book on Boing Boing certainly also boosted sales on Amazon, the mentions on the other Top 100 lifehack sites definitely had a sharper effect,” Moldawer said. “The lesson, which many of us already know, is that having other people talk about you is always more effective than talking about yourself.”

And don’t forget the obligatory video book promo on YouTube. The one listed here generated some 13,000+ views.

JUDGEMENT: DOES IT SELL BOOKS?
Hard to say. Frauenfelder would have sold a boat-load of books with or without the extra efforts by St. Martin’s Press. The spike charting on Amazon that coincided with online media mentions in Lifehacker and 43Folders, however, does point to a strong correlation.

Those mentions, though, are more PR than social media initiatives - if you count Lifehacker as an established media outlet, which I do. Getting a post in Lifehacker is not a “social media initiative,” - it’s the same things as a New York Times book review, an established media source talking about a product.

It’s funny, it’s so easy these days to become enamored and enthusiastic about a “web project” that you tend to quickly underestimate its technical plausibility.

For this I blame you, web 2.0.

Seriously, here’s the thing, I think most of us are experiencing a better web today, one that’s regularly[ishly] tickling our minds and imaginations and showing us that we can and should extend our own understanding and expectations for what the web can do for our marketing and communications programs.

New platforms, new protocols, new web services, new mashups, new plugins, and the like are reminding us everyday that there are some kick ass things we can do with the web that even just a few months ago might not have otherwise been possible. And that’s exciting stuff.

Just allowing yourself to imagine a bit is arguably a healthy thing, but here’s the buzzkill, this imagining of yours and mine has to be tempered and grounded with an understanding of the technical limitations and real-world cost restraints that come with web development work — particularly some of the higher-level new media projects. And that just begs the question:

How do bring really cool web projects to life?

For most folks, the easy (and sometimes only) answer is to rely on in-house expertise to get the job done, which inevitably comes with its own set of issues and challenges. For example, does the corporate web team have the time to take on your project, and if they do, how confident are you that they will do it really well? Oh, and how quickly can they get it done? All are important factors to consider.

The alternative is to bring in some outside help, which again, comes with its own issues and challenges, not least of which is, say, the headache of choosing between a consulting shop with web development capabilities, or a web shop with consulting capabilities. Oh, and the cost of it all. It’s all very messy.

Ultimately, there’s a very visible gap that I’m poking at here, one that’s annoyingly dividing ideas from implementations, concepts from experiences, thinkers from makers, etc., you get the gist.

We need to close this gap.

I have some ideas that I’ll be blogging more about here in the weeks to come, also some related Voce news on our approach to this problem. More to come….

Last week I was at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Research Symposium and Summit 2007 in Las Vegas, which, in my mind, is one of the “must attend” yearly conferences. Along with Jake McKee, I was one of the official conference bloggers. Being a designated blogger is a very different experience that being a regular attendee or even a speaker, and having now worked in that capacity, I have a much deeper respect for what goes into such a seemingly easy task. Aside from the typical challenges of racing from one session to the next, making sure your computer battery doesn’t run out of juice when there is no available plug, being flexible with program and panelist changes, and writing without the luxury of reviewing and editing what you’ve written, there is the responsibility of trying to record the highlights of the covered sessions in such a way that readers are able to get value from what you’ve posted.

Without question, for me one of the highlights of the conference were the research and measurement sessions. Not necessarily because they were the most entertaining (I’d put the lunch keynote by Richard Tait, Grand Poo Bah of Cranium Inc., the keynote by Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking or the session “No Fans, No Band” in that category), but because they provided the oh-so-important hard data validating the effectiveness of word of mouth.

Between the Research Symposium and the Summit, there were over twenty sessions on research and measurement. Additionally, attendees received the excellent Measuring Word of Mouth: Current Thinking on Research and Measurement of Word of Mouth Marketing, WOMMA’s third annual research volume (available for purchase as well) that contains over twenty papers covering a wide range of topics with a particular emphasis on the influencer model.

What’s also useful within the research volume is the section on WOMMA terminology, which aims to “provide a unified framework for describing and measuring word of mouth marketing.” It provides definitions of word of mouth (”the act of a consumer creating and/or distributing marketing-relevant information to another consumer”), work of mouth marketing (”en effort by an organization to affect how consumers create and/or distribute marketing-relevant information to other consumers”) and WOM Episode (”a single occurrence of word of mouth communication, which includes Participants, Actions, WOMUnits, Venues, and Outcomes”), among other things. There is also an excellent visual summary of what happens during a WOM Episode, along with the associated qualities thereof — namely a participant taking an action on a WOMUnit in a particular venue that then results in an outcome.

(Cross-posted from New Millennium PR)

How we measure success is by providing killer counsel, strategy and implementation for our clients. But it also feels great to get kudos from the media, since it’s the journalists and influencers we work with who ultimately help our clients’ tell thier stories.

That said, we’re particularly proud of being recognized as a Top Tech Communicator in the Mid-size Agency category by the IT editorial community in PRSourceCode’s list of the “best of the best.” We’re also proud that Matthew Podboy was named one of the top Individual PR Practitioners.

You can download the full writeup here,

Andy Beal over at Marketing Pilgrim points to a recent study from Immediate Future that ranks “The Top 100 Brands in Social Media.” It’s a fairly chunky study and I’m still trying to grok bits and pieces of it, but I think Andy extracts some of the larger findings. The funny thing is that as I’m drilling through this, I realized of the top 10 brands (as determined by share of voice) we actually represent two of them - Yahoo! and Sony.

We’ve been working with Yahoo! for several years nows, architecting and executing a mixed bag of social media and influencer marketing projects. Likewise with Sony via its PlayStation brand. It’s been a lot of fun working with these companies (particularly in this manner), so it’s satisfying to see their brands - and to an extent, our efforts - recognized, although there’s so much more work to be done….

/Mike Manuel

Read more about social media and new media marketing on Mike’s perso-professional blog, Media Guerrilla.