Highway to Hale

When Facebook hit the “destroy competition” button in their control room, vanity URLs arrived.

There has been some controversy about the way vanity URLs have been rolled out based on number of fans and whatnot, but a few big names are off and running with the new ease of accessibility for users.

Have a quick look at facebook.com/vw and facebook.com/cariboucoffee for a few early examples.

I can’t afford a VW and I don’t really like coffee that much, but I love social media possibilities. So, when I saw VW’s Facebook vanity URL at the end of their TV ad, I grabbed a computer and had to see what they were so confident about. I was not disappointed. The landing page didn’t even feel like a Facebook page (unless you wanted to interact). I wanted to be there because it was more interesting than anything my friends had going on. The wall is full of stories about buying or owning VWs and the content is written creatively with a fun edge.

But do you know what VW’s Facebook page doesn’t have? A salesperson asking me to buy a car. Thanks VW.

Volkswagon is cultivating a young community by handing out a fun user experience. I’m not going to Facebook when I want to buy a car, but now I know what to expect from VW and I will consider them an option the next time I am looking for a new car.

Caribou Coffee is climbing a different hill, but they also jumped on the Facebook vanity URL train quickly and intelligently with their “Wild It Up” campaign. The URL can be found draped all over the place because it is clear where it is taking you. Among some suggested popular drinks, a menu, and some other [unnecessarily] forced information, Caribou offers a sort of application for Facebook users to play around with. It is just a silly photo manipulator that encourages users to mess around with photos of themselves drinking Caribou Coffee – but it works.

Have you seen any other examples of Facebook vanity URLs being put to good use? I think we will be seeing a lot more of this kind of interaction if brands are staying smart. Facebook pages can be used in many ways and they can change fairly easily to keep people intrigued. This is a great example of brands getting to where users are and engaging them and Facebook made it easier by making the pages much more accessible.

It’s that time of the week again – when I give my opinion on my favorite people to follow on Twitter. I know not all of you are on Twitter, but most of these people have personal or professional blogs that I will try to link as well.

My first #followfriday recommendation goes out to the president of a small-ish online marketing firm in Minneapolis called Spyder Trap. The people over at Spyder Trap are always working working hard and it always shows in their tweets. They are not afraid to tell you exactly what they are working on, and it is hardly ever glorified in any way. @MikeRynchek may be the president of the firm, but he always has his hands dirty in the hard work going on at Spyder Trap. The Spyder Trap Blog often features posts directly from Mike…when he’s not too busy making two+ client pitches per day, playing hockey, or watching his hard work pay off as he signs a master service agreement with UnitedHealthcare.

My second recommendation belongs to somebody that works for Mike at Spyder Trap. He is a fairly new member to the team, but he has obviously fit right in and become dedicated to his work. He also blogs at the Spyder Trap Blog, but has a personal blog where you can find his progress in his new hobby (running) and other really neat insights into his life. I enjoy following @JasonDouglas because he makes a point to engage his followers. When he is not buried in work or running, he asks thought provoking questions (with a sense of general curiosity) and gives his take on pretty much all stories surrounding sports.

My final recommendation goes out to the youngest member of the Spyder Trap team. He’s a recent graduate with all of the energy you would expect from such. His hands-on research for blog posts is always fun to follow. I am not sure if @BradWellman writes for a blog of his own, but his posts at the Spyder Trap Blog are enough to keep me interested. If his tweets about social media, personal life, and hockey are not enough, he is also a BlackBerry enthusiast. In fact, he’s almost always on top of tech news.

You can also follow the @Spyder_Trap account of course, but these three recommendations aren’t happening because they all work in the same building – that’s just a fun coincidence.

Stay tuned for my upcoming blog post about what it is like in the social media job market for recent graduates. Have a great weekend.

Everybody Loves a Slinky

It is the distant future: the year 2011 – Twitter. Is. Dead. The URL twitter.com plays host to a 140 Error message. Biz Stone and Evan Williams are appearing on The Daily Show (recently handed over to Rob Corddry) tonight promoting their new book: The Last Big Thing Used To Be The Next Big Thing: The Demise of a Fad. Remember the name Ashton Kutcher? Sounds familiar, but I just can’t place it…

So, Twitter got replaced the same way all of those new web advancements did in the past – just like the “experts” predicted. More important than what went away is what remains. What is it that remains? Social media. The lessons we learned about transparency, customer experience, human interaction, consumer generated content, and permission marketing have only gotten clearer as the dust from some of the first social media applications settles. Consumer empowerment is still one of the strongest tools marketers have in their utility belt. Community development does not necessarily have geographic connotations as it once did all the way back in 2007.

You see the point? Social media is not Twitter, or any set of tools, in the same way that PR is not the telephone, email, or a newspaper.

Let’s snap back to 2009 (you know, back when Jon Stewart hosted the Daily Show). Don’t expect to see the future written above (except for the lessons learned from the current tools). While Twitter is nothing more than a tool, there are plenty of reasons it is going to be around for awhile, but consider this one reason:

Twitter has weaved its way deeply into society in a really short amount of time. You could make the same argument for the Slinky back in its golden days, but CNN didn’t look to the Slinky for the latest on hot topics and I don’t recall any Slinkies flopping their way out of locker rooms with breaking news about steroids and staff changes. Fads tend to infiltrate every corner of society in the blink of an eye, but Twitter has something that leg warmers, bell-bottom pants, scrunchies, and Tomagotchis were missing.

Twitter did not come alone to this society fad party. Twitter brought along countless friends in the form of third party applications. All of the friends Twitter brought along have made it a chameleon. You might not use Twitter the same way I do and neither of us probably use it the same way as @BreakingNews does.

The other simple thing Twitter has going for it is that it is where the people are. I tried Plurk and it is just fine…but there was nobody for me to talk to. I could build a community of interesting people to converse with on Plurk, but I’ve already done that on Twitter. FriendFeed aggregates all of my networks…but nearly all of the updates come from Twitter and FriendFeed apps are just slightly behind in quantity and quality.

I think Twitter will be around for a little while. What do you expect in 2011 – flying cars?

Lately, I have taken a step back from the social media landscape. What have I been doing? Listening to some great conversations online, reading non-stop (blogs, twitter, books, news), and researching options for employment pretty heavily – even actually doing a bit of freelance work. Where I’ve done my writing this past week is in the comments of blogs from others.

So, I’m back and have some pretty cool posts lined up for the near future. But today, I take a note from some friends and bring you my follow Friday recommendations via blog. For those of you on Twitter, these are the people I believe you can receive a lot of useful information and good conversation from.

My first recommendation is only natural because you have seen him show up in this blog a few times. Furthermore, he is the reason you can find my follow Friday recs in my blog rather than on Twitter this week (and in the future). If you want to know about PR, marketing, community building, or just have an intelligent conversation, this is the man to listen to. He does a great job of interacting with anybody willing to add value to a conversation. Hopefully I will be able to meet @ArikHanson in person soon because I know the conversation would be great and the fun would be endless.

My second recommendation is a double feature. These two brothers have both recently moved back to their home state (one coming from Minneapolis, the other from Norway and a host of other European countries) to start up a business. They’re young, smart, motivated, and willing to let me in on some of their work to keep my skills sharp and continue learning. @BigTwig16 and @johntmeyer are technically savvy entrepreneurs in the marketing industry with a passion for sports and community. These guys are creative, intelligent, and hardworking – a winning combo.

My final recommendation goes out to an artist. Very few people work as hard as he does for a chance to express their creativity. He works two side jobs so he can have the creative freedom that comes with working at a small start-up agency in the community he loves. He shares great information about design and finds some serious examples of extreme creativity that he loves to converse about. I just framed some of @BrenniFresh‘s print work yesterday because it would have been a shame to let it stay in that trash can I kind of stole it from.

As a last note, try to follow some of the social media coming out of Iran lately. The situation is amazing, horrifying, and intriguing. A lot of young people using social media to bypass an oppressive government and reach out to the world to express that they would like to have a voice.

This guy is clearly annoyed.

There is a fine line between staying relevant and getting annoying.

For example, #followfriday used to be relevant and was a great tool for finding new, interesting people. Now, #followfriday is annoying. It has become Twitter’s greatest form of spam. Proponents of Twitter say spam is not possible because you choose which users to follow, but #followfriday changes that theory. Some of the most interesting people on Twitter have become the most effective spammers as soon as the clock strikes 12:01 on Fridays. Another route some have taken is to simply throw every trending topic into a spam tweet. Annoying, but it can be dealt with.

So, how does one become relevant while embracing the idea of Follow Friday? Insert @ArikHanson and @DannyBrown (I’m sure others are doing this too, but as far as I know, these were two of the first). Arik now records a video containing the few people he believes deserve to be highlighted as the best people to follow. He takes a few seconds to explain why each person deserves the mention and he posts the video on his blog – Communication Conversations. Danny does much the same at his blog, but he writes out individual descriptions of each person he highlights rather than filming a video. They have both created categories so viewers can easily distinguish what the person does and why they should be followed. It is a very personal touch and it gives back to readers. I don’t get the sense they are listing names for their own well-being or for the approval of those they are mentioning.

What’s the lesson to be learned here? It is annoying to simply go through the motions. Stop and consider the motive behind actions and you may discover that you can do it better. I was talking to a friend in medical school the other day and she mentioned that many doctors simply go through the motions and it causes a lot of angst in patients. The doctor has seen a million patients with the exact same problem, so they do the standard tests without explanation. It is necessary to consider the motive behind the tests and pass along the knowledge because it is probably the patient’s first time. The information is relevant to the patient.

I have heard graphic designers often run into similar problems with logos. After working on a logo for days or even weeks, the designer sees the final product and quickly tires of it. To them, the logo is old. They have seen it a million times. To them, it is annoying. They must remember that the audience has only seen the new logo a few times. Consumers find constant design changes annoying because they never know what to look for. In this case, you can stay relevant by staying the same.

Relevancy can be achieved by change or consistency. Either way, it comes down to recognizing the motive. Next time you start a project or jump on a bandwagon, consider the reason you are doing such. Consider your unique goals and try to avoid doing something just because that’s how it has been done in the past.

There have been a lot of campaigns lately that have recieved mixed reviews about whether they are relevant or annoying. What are some the recent campaigns you have seen that are relevant and what are some that are simply annoying?

This post comes in response, and with a big thanks, to @DavidSpinks and his post called “Are You Good At Social Media?”

Don't be this kind of tool.

So, you can create a Facebook page? You’ve @replied somebody on Twitter? You read your friend’s LiveJournal?

Would you hire a graphic designer based on their ability to tell you what Adobe Creative Suite is? I hope the answer is no (if you answered yes, call me Scott Hale: Graphic Designer). The same goes for social media – Knowing what Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are does not give you the skills to effectively design a social media strategy. Building a community and cultivating conversation takes more than a username and password on the most mainstream social tools the web has to offer. At this point, knowledge and proficient use of social media tools is more like using your right arm and less like using a tool.

So, what is the most important tool in social media? YOU.

You must have background knowledge in marketing, PR, customer service, human interaction, technology, writing, sociology, and psychology. To this point, education has been concerned with nice neat little packages so everybody can succeed. Social media has reached a point where customization is necessary. Cookie-cutter automation will not work in social media. Nobody can stand in front of a class of students or marketing professionals (or CEOs) and give them the magic bullet to interacting correctly.

The overriding theme of social media is interactivity. When interacting with others, the only tools you have come from yourself. Your ability to read the situation and connect with ideas are central to maintaining conversations and constructing a community. The term “relationship marketing” has been showing up a lot lately, and I believe it describes the goal of social media quite well. Relationships demand loyalty from both sides and the way to engage consumers will be different in every strategy.

Individuals create successful social media strategy. Social media strategies need to be unique. It is not only necessary that campaigns have the ability to be customizable, it is necessary that every campaign be customized. Great customized plans are run by people with a great knowledge of interaction, idea connection, sociological patterns, and flexible strategy.

Are you a tool? I believe I am. If you (or anybody you know) are looking for a social media tool, feel free to contact me.

According to some recent statistics (eMarketer.com/Deloitte), 74% of US Employees agree (50%) or strongly agree (24%) that social media usage CAN damage a company’s reputation. I do not know why anybody would disagree, but welcome to the future of business. Welcome to the age of transparency and accountability.

Employees are accountable for what they say and companies are accountable for the ways in which they treat employees.

Maybe I’m living in a dream world, but if social media can damage a company’s reputation by sharing truth from the inside, it can also promote the company positively. Are there any Google employees complaining about their work environment or their horrible boss? Not that I have seen. Social media has been great for companies that treat their employees, clients and colleagues like rock stars.

What is it that you are doing that you do not want your employees or clients to share? And then why are you doing it in the first place? There is no need to outlaw social media use in the workplace if you are able to hire trustworthy employees and you are able to treat your trustworthy employees well.

This all brings me back to my original thoughts about Facebook. Everybody says use your privacy settings and remove pictures that portray you negatively. I agree, use your privacy settings so there are no surprises about who has been checking you out. But, if the act you are participating in is questionable to the point that you do not want others to see it, you need to ask yourself why you are doing it at all.

Clients are smart. If they can’t find any of your employees on the internet, they’ll suspect something is up. There is no reason to hide anything if you are proud of what you are doing.