OK. So you’ve launched your new social-viral-mashable-linked-web2.0-connected web place, and you’re tracking a million metrics. Which ones should you actually be paying attention to? Those are your Key Performance Indicators.
As Rhian James at FreshNetworks mentioned in a comment on my recent post about measuring social media marketing efforts, that’s really the key. Burying yourself in a mound of data is unproductive; knowing which data tracks progress to your critical initiatives is pure gold.
FreshNetworks posted on this topic on their blog, and created a valuable SlideShare presentation illuminating the difference:
Measuring the results of social media marketing efforts has been challenging to say the least.
Five or six years ago, when I was helping start-ups put blogging campaigns together to kindle the development of user communities, I didn’t really have a clear idea how to measure ROI. About the only things we measured were visits and sales … which wasn’t too bad, but was only a very small part of the story. And based on our unsophisticated set-up (plus lack of Google Analytics) we really had no clue what the connection between visits and sales exactly was.
Today there are plenty of other ways to measure social media marketing results. Here are just a few, starting with quantitative measures:
- YouTube views & subscribers
If you’re doing anything on YouTube, the obvious measures are:
- How many times your videos have been viewed
- How many people have subscribed to your channel (you did create a channel, right?)
A less obvious measure is the number of comments on your videos. While you’re checking that, be sure to get a sense of the overall tenor of the comments: are they positive, negative, or lukewarm?
- Del.icio.us bookmarks of your page
If you’re creating valuable content – and you’re sharing it properly with the world, and have sprinkled some magic pixie dust on it – you’re going to get some attention. A good measure of how valuable the content is is whether people care enough about it to bookmark it and share it on Delicious or other social bookmarking sites. If the answer is zero … reconsider your content, approach, or both.
- Number of references on Digg
Along the same lines as Delicious … if people care about your content, they’ll save it and promote it on Digg, StumbleUpon, and other similar sites.
- Search engine rank
This is probably the most obvious ranking measure, period, and it correlates strongly with your ability to do something interesting enough and remarkable enough for people to actually want to link to it. But it’s not just the obvious search on your name … while you’re checking your search engine rank, you want to look at …
- Name – how you rank for your company name and brand names
- Good keywords – how you rank for keywords that you think people will use to find services like yours … for example … hawaii flights for Hawaiian Airlines
- Bad keywords – how you rank for bad keywords, ones you don’t want to be associated with your company … such as worst airline ever, or lemon, if you’re a car manufacturer
- Website metrics
Is traffic to your website going up? And/or, are you getting higher quality traffic that stays longer, looks at more, and converts better? You can use Google Analytics for free, or other stats packages. Some of the metrics you want to be tracking are:
- Unique visits
- Return visits
- Frequency of visits per user
- Time spent on site
- Number of pages visited per visitor
- Leads generated (total, and per visitor)
- Sales (total, and per visitor)
Note: if you’re not actually selling something, substitute whatever it is you want users to do … your conversion goals … for “sales.”
- RSS subscribers
How many people think your material is good enough to want more, on a regular basis. These people will subscribe to your RSS feed, or your email list to be updated when a new post comes out. Note: Feedburner is a good service for this.
- Engagement
When you post on your blog, or on whatever service you use, how many comments are you getting?
- Followers on Twitter
You are on Twitter, right? Does anybody care? Find out by starting to track:
- Number of RTs – how many are re-tweeting your posts?
- Number of DMs – how many are interested enough to direct message you?
- Followers – as mentioned above, how many followers you have
- Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, etc.
How many people have friended you on social networks? If you’ve started groups, how many people have joined? Of the people that have friended you or joined your group, how many are actively engaged – listening and talking?
More qualitative ….
That’s a fairly quantitative list, but there are some qualitative questions to ask as well.
- Are we seen as experts in our industry?
- Do we get mentioned/cited when people are talking about our industry?
- What is the quality of interaction we’re seeing in all the above places?
In the final analysis …
… there is no final analysis. Social media marketing, is, after all, marketing. As such, there is very rarely a one-to-one correlation between input and output.
The reality, however, is that your ability to connect with clients depends on your online footprint, and the quality of your online presence. Are you findable online? Are you where your clients are, online? And if they search for you, do you have both a big enough and targeted enough Google footprint that they can easily find you?
Your online success, and increasingly your business success, relies on the answers to those questions.
Just saw this via Twitter from Bluefur.
He’s talking about a “special offer” MasterCard sent him for being a “most valued” cardholder:
The special offer was for a Garmin 250 GPS system. I got this exact same GPS navigation system on Boxing Day in 2007 for $150. Even today, you can find it at a variety of retailers for under $200. That’s the standard going price. How much was my credit card company trying to sell it for as a “special deal”? The asking price was a whopping $299.95 or you could split that up into five monthly payments of $59.99.
You might have thought this was obvious by now. But apparently, to many marketing drones at BigCorp™s around the globe, it’s not. THE WORLD IS NOW A VILLAGE.
The points are obvious:
- Google exists
Amazingly, people (or as you probably refer to them: “consumers,” or “the market”) know that Google exists. This means they might just check out your “special offer” and find it’s one of those Products For Dummies Who Don’t Pricecheck offers.
- Harry will meet Sally
… and then they’ll talk. But instead of talking in a cafe, where no-one hears them except the wall and Bob the panhandler, they might just talk on Twitter, or Facebook, or MySpace, or … you get the picture. People have megaphones these days, and they use them.
- Suckers are not your market
When people search and people talk, they get smarter. And when they get smarter, they hate being taken for fools. Treating your clients like idiots might not be the winning customer relations strategy that it appeared at first glance.
Smart marketing is honest, funny, interesting, and relevant.
Maybe your over-priced GPS can help you find the Cluetrain.
There are good reasons for some start-ups to run in stealth mode for months or years of their early existence.
I was reminded of a few as I was reading Chris Maxcer’s review of Joost for the iPhone. Check out this gem, about the desktop version:
I had briefly used Joost’s client-side Mac video viewing application in its early days, back when Joost had very little content … then forgot about it.
The dilemma is harsh: you want to launch as early as possible to:
- start the buzz machine
- stake your claim to the space
- tantalize current and potential investors
- maybe, possibly, potentially, hopefully start to pull in some small amount of revenue
- and, of course, reassure your mother that you have a real job, actually work, have prospects, and aren’t aimless, drifting, shiftless, and just too stubborn to admit it
But the problem is obvious: launching too soon can blow your buzz as users eat your dogfood and throw up … never to arrive at your dinner table again.
That’s exactly what happened to Chris. In this case, however, Joost is lucky enough (and, frankly, has enough market momentum) to warrant a second look – occasioned by the release of their app on a new platform: the iPhone.
The question is: have they learned their lesson? Apparently not, as Maxcer reports:
The 1,813 reviews on the Apple App Store seem to agree with me: Joost has lots of promise but it fails miserably. The average rating is two stars. Many users, though, noted that they were basically waiting for a non-buggy updated version from Joost.
I saw this on Clientside SEM’s website this morning:
SEO up to now has been mainly technical (and tactical) in orientation. But as basic SEO skills become increasingly commoditized, SEO will require more than just technical ability to grow brands and companies on the Web — it will require a keen understanding of business, marketing, risk management, resource allocation, and creative problem solving.
This is bad news for SEO professionals who are simply technical, blackhat, or who have come in from the quasi-developer side. It’s great news for traditional marketing firms who have understood these things for decades … but only if they can also pick up new skills and techniques.
I’ve come to believe that marketing is easy.
This perhaps somewhat astonishing idea came to me as I was leafing through some personal archives as I search for just the right items to place on my new portfolio site. Some of my company’s old brochures are in the box, and I remember the struggle we went through at times to find the right words, present the right image, frame the right message.
All of that could have been so such simpler … if we had just built our product with more compelling points of differentiation.
Products with compelling points of differentiation sell themselves. Not that you don’t have to do the marketing, create awareness, sell the idea, and all that. But they write their own story.
A good example is the iPhone. If you’ve seen any of the ads, you know the deal. An iPhone ad never says buy me, or iPhone is better than X phone, or heaven forbid, the either of the words “solution” or “device.” All an iPhone ad does is show you capabilities and possibilities. The rest of the pitch happens inside your own head.
The marketing, in other words, ought to be embedded in the product.
When I see this Ford skyscraper ad, I’m assuming that mousing over the ad will show me something about the people.
After all, it says “rollover to see their stories.” So that’s the expectation I have – that I can find something out about two real people who really bought a Ford who really had some experiences with it and really are telling them to me.
It looks like an instance of social media marketing: marketing that uses connecting web technologies and real stories from real people to demonstrate how a product or service might be something that I might want to buy.
So far so good …
But when I rollover the ad and see this, everything changes:
Suddenly I feel misled, even lied to. Instead of a story, I’m looking at an ad. A very standard, old-school ad.
Score -1 for Ford.
The moral: don’t mislead customers, and most importantly, don’t raise expectations of A but provide B.
(Unless, of course, B is obviously better and more wonderful in every way than A. And even then, be careful.)
How do you brand yourself for career success? The answer in 24 slides:
(I saw this first on ReadWriteWeb.)
I just spent 20 minutes prepping a no-longer-needed-textbook for sale. One of the places I thought I might sell it was Amazon Marketplace, only to be presented with this:
Obviously, Amazon Marketplace is not looking for your average Craigslister, and probably not your media eBayer as well. Rather, they’re looking for bookstore owners, high-volume eBay retailers, and so on.
It’s an interesting strategy – definitely designed to capture the fat front end of the long tail and not the thin whippy extremity. It probably results in a lot less hassle for Amazon.
But it also does leave a significant portion of the resale market for eBay and, increasingly, Craigslist. And it leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth of loyal Amazon clients, such as me, who have bought thousands of dollars of books and other products from Amazon, but can’t use the same service to recycle redundant items.
Here’s a response I posted this morning on a Seeking Alpha story on Apple’s brand that seemed to imply it was all about marketing:
“All Day Breakfast” hit the nail on the head.
What people who don’t really understand branding don’t understand is that the best branding, the longest-lived branding, and the most financially remunerative branding is branding that is a result, not a cause.
The brand is authentic because it first arises from actual value and actual experience.
Brands that are invented via marketing alone are typically short-lived, expensive, and doomed to crash and burn. The product and the client experience need to be what the branding says in order to generate long-term value.
(The comment’s not showing up yet on Seeking Alpha … I had to sign up … they have an email authorization … I haven’t got the email yet … )
UPDATE Feb 21: pls note Trisha’s gracious reply below …
I can’t believe believe people are still sending out link exchange requests:
Hello,
Recently I contacted you regarding a link exchange request. I was hoping that you’ve had the time to review this request and consider my proposal. We are developing a reciprocal link area on our website and would be happy to trade text links with your website. You links will be on the PsPrint.com website, although we are not entirely sure where at this point in the project.
Please let me know if you are interested in discussing this further. You can contact me at trisha@psprint.com or 510.224.2106. If you are not interested in a link exchange, please let me know and I will discontinue contacting you regarding this matter. Thank you for your time.
Trisha Fawver
Marketing Manager
PsPrint.com
510.224.2106
Create. Print. Mail. Faster.
This is now the third email I’ve gotten from Trisha, which is starting to approach spammishness. Note the veiled threat in this statement:
If you are not interested in a link exchange, please let me know and I will discontinue contacting you regarding this matter.
In other words, I’ll continue to receive unsolicited emails until I say yes or until I waste my time composing an email saying no.
Yesterday I met Joe Laudenbach, a Bellingham, WA realtor who is wondering how blogging might be something he could use in his business. As I prepped for the meeting, I jotted down some thoughts on how blogging will fit into his business.
Note: my goal was not to get him blogging, but to give him information that will help him make an informed decision whether or not he wants to start.
Why to blog
- Better SEO
Because blogs are more frequently updated, they’re a major benefit to your site’s search engine optimization … the factors that help you rank higher in search engine results pages.
- More interesting site
A blog is usually much more interesting than a website … it’s not corporate, it delivers content in quick hits, it’s more accessible …
- More human face to potential clients
Building on the “not corporate” theme, a blog is where your personality comes through – which is attractive (unless you’re Attila the Hun)
- Learn and develop more as a person and as a realtor
I learn more from blogging than just about anything else. Simply the process of thinking and writing and writing and listening and linking makes me much more consciously aware of trends and opportunities. The same is true for realtors or virtually any occupation, I believe.
- Creative outlet
People who blog regularly come to love blogging as a creative outlet. And I don’t believe there’s a single person alive who isn’t creative to some degree, in some way. Feeding this impulse has personal and professional benefits.
- Contacts, conversations, communication
Through blogging I’ve had email contact with Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, and many other major, well-known technology, business, and marketing leaders. They’ve made me smarter. Plus, I’ve had many more contacts with many more people who aren’t so well known … and that’s had even greater benefits. The same can be true for real estate agents or any professional/business people. Jobs, work contacts, and just plain interesting people: blogging can bring all that. It has for me.
Why not to blog
- If you can’t write
Don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to be Hemmingway. But if you absolutely cannot string 2 words together intelligibly, forget it. Find some other way to engage your clients.
- If you won’t keep it up
Don’t start if you won’t keep it up. Few things are more pathetic than an orphaned blog. However, don’t get too worried, either. One post a week is not ideal, but it’s perfectly fine for many, many professionals.
- If you’re just marketing yourself
If your blog is only going to be about how your company and you are incredibly, stunningly great (not to mention handsome and wealthy) forget it. No-one’s going to read it – one Paris Hilton is enough, thank you very much.
- If you’re looking for a quick fix marketing hit
Blogging isn’t a quick fix solution. It’s about telling stories and developing relationships, and those don’t form overnight. Even the blogosphere success stories such as Thomas Mahon blogged for months and months without seeing major results. The good news: all your work is always paying dividends. Old blog posts never die, they just keep attracting hits.
- If you’re not comfortable being authentic, real, and non-corporate
Don’t be a stuffed shirt – let your hair down and be real. If you can’t tolerate the slightest mistake, if you can’t speak with anything other than the traditional marcom voice: forget it. It’s boring. It’s just advertising … and people are more adblind now than they’ve ever been.
What to blog about
Note: these are tailored for Joe, who’s a real estate agent. But they’re adaptable to different situations.
- Why people move to Bellingham/Whatcom county
There’s probably 10 or 15 blog posts right here … as many as there are reasons.
- What areas are great for kids|seniors|adults
Another 5-7 posts …
- Things to do in Bellingham
- Seasonal events
If you do to a harvest festival, blog it. Christmas candlelight parade? Blog it.
- House-hunting tips
Keep it to one tip per blog posts … there’s probably an indefinite number of tips here. Organize them in a category so that visitors can see them all.
- Top ten house-hunting gotchas
I know I’d love to know what to watch out for when moving … and I’m probably searching for this type of information when I’m about to move, too.
- Things you realize AFTER you move in
Wouldn’t we all like to have known this – about a month before moving in.
- Stressless moving
How to blog
- Intentional keywords
Be intentional about the keywords you use. Know what people will be searching for when they’re looking to find a home in Whatcom County, WA. Niche it out to the max if you want to rank in search engines, and make sure you use those keywords in titles and posts.
- Regularly (at least once a week)
As mentioned above, don’t make an orphan out of your blog.
- Naturally
When you’re blogging, you’re a person. Not a company. Talk to people who are also persons as you would talk to someone on the street. Anything else is disrespectful, stuffy, and annoying.
- Interview people
Interview key people in your community. This is a great way to expand your circle of contacts, blog about interesting valuable topics, and grow your readership.
- Talk to clients
Clients will give you all the blog fodder you need, if you just ask.
Other things to consider
- Other social media
Over time, as you become established in your blog and comfortable with the technology, why not explore other forms of social media? Upload a house video or a neighborhood drive-through to YouTube. Then post it to your blog. Or …
- Podcasts
Create a couple of podcasts so that people can hear your voice. This can really give people a sense of who you are and that they know you.
These are a few of the suggestions I had for Joe. I hope that they’re applicable to whatever situations you’re in, whether you’re a small business blogger, a corporate blogger, or a social media consultant. I’d love any feedback you might have, positive or negative.
Questions/opportunties? Looking for help in your social media adventure? Let me know.
So: Steve Rubel and Richard Edelman have both issued a mea culpa in the Wal-Mart flog saga. Is it enough? For a number of reasons, no. Not even close.
Dave Taylor certainly doesn’t think so. He blogs on Business Blog Consulting and The Intuitive Life Business Blog that Edelman’s getting an easy ride – they’re getting off the hook (almost) scot-free:
I’m just amazed at what an easy ride Edelman is getting with this significant and notable error of judgment on their part. It’s not about apologizing for a screwup, it’s being accountable to a code of ethics, having consequences for violating it, and having a sufficiently transparent internal management structure that lets experts like Steve Rubel at least know about all the blogging initiatives happening at the firm
Others agree. Check out the comments on Matthew Ingram’s Edelmam/Wal-Mart post. One poster in particular, Dominic Jones, feels that the apology is at best tainted, and certainly not adequate. (Dominic has blogged about transparency and PR.) As he says on Matthew Ingram’s blog:
So how do you explain three days before there was a response from Edelman? Either they are very slow thinkers and have great difficulty telling right from wrong, or they were doing something else.
My view, based on my experience both as an investigative journalist and a PR consultant, is they were waiting to see what would happen, hoping it would blow over.
Robert Scoble, on the other hand, is among a group of others that are more inclined to be forgiving. Lance Knobel, Li at Search Marketing, Pleon, and even Shel Holz (to a degree) seem to take that tack. As Scoble says in the comments to his post:
Personally if I ever screw up I hope people forgive me, especially after I recognize that a mistake has been made and I’ve apologized for it and made strides to make sure it never happens again.
Great point. I fully realize that people make mistakes. I do too – every day. If we can’t forgive each other, we’re in for very unhappy lives. If I can’t forgive people, I have a problem … and if others can’t forgive me when I screw up, we both have a problem.
The challenging thing for me on this forgiveness thing with Edelman is the following:
- It’s happened before
As Jaffe Juice pointed out … this is the second time Edelman has done this: just with Wal-Mart, that is. PR Squared says it’s actually the third time. And those are just the ones we know about! And just with one client!
- The apology is short on details
A few more details would be very welcome. Richard Edelman’s post was a couple of paragraphs, Steve Rubel’s just one. When there’s a public screw-up affecting your credibility, you need to say what happened, why, how, and, most importantly, how you’re going to ensure it will never happen again.
- It’s part of a pattern of shady PR tactics
Maybe it’s just me, but I consider other sites and campaigns like PaidCritics to be shady PR as well. PaidCritics is not a grass-roots operation (do they think we don’t know that the people behind that site are paid too?!?), and neither is the Working Families for Wal-Mart site, which is supposedly “giving voice to millions of Americans.”
Come on. Both of these are astroturf. Astroturf is shady.
IR Web shows us how corporate community-building can be done correctly, transparently, with sites like Ford’s Bold Moves website, Chevron’s Will You Join Us site and Allianz’s dropping knowledge.
So – forgiveness is necessary and good. But so is proper openess and discussion of what when wrong and how your going to fix it.
And I haven’t seen that yet from Edelman.
. . .
. . .
Update:
Tara Hunt has an excellent post on fake blogs that mentions the Edelman issue … and delves into why it happens: because PR agencies put their clients ahead of their clients’ clients. And you have to see Hugh McLeod’s Edelman/Wa-Mart cartoon.
Update: October 26:
Strumpette has a follow-up on the WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) and their non-discipline of Edelman. Worth a read.
Update Oct. 16. Edelman has finally broke the silence: Steve Rubel’s post; Richard Edelman’s post. No word on what exactly went wrong, or why the “process” that Steve talks about took over a week. More later …
It’s been almost a week. The blogosphere is talking about Edelman, Wal-Mart, and the fake blog. I added my three cents a few days ago.
In short, we’ve been waiting, listening, and watching for the explanation. Or the mea culpa. But none has been forthcoming.
Steve, you need to speak up
I hate to put this all on Steve, but sorry, you’re the best-known highly-placed Edelman blogger. And it’s not like you haven’t posted recently.
Your blog’s about page identifies that you are Edelman’s thought leader on social media:
Rubel is charged with helping Edelman identify, test, incubate and champion new forms of communications that get people talking across new platforms and channels.
Well guess what – no one needs leadership when everything is fine. Leadership is required when the smelly stuff hits the fan. And yes, right now it is hitting the fan – hard.
Yeah, it is conversational media
Steve, your blog also claims that you are “widely viewed as an expert on conversational marketing.” I think most people in the blogosphere would agree wth that assessment.
But what happens to the conversation when one participant doesn’t speak?
When that happens, there is no conversation. There’s no communication. And you have no chance to even influence or affect the thoughts and actions of your potential clients, your potential allies, your potential listeners.
We’re making it up as we go along
Just because you’re not talking doesn’t mean we won’t talk. And if you won’t tell us your side of the story, it won’t be told. This is strikingly similar to the Marshall Manson incident, which raised questions about Edelman, Wal-Mart, and proper disclosure of interest.
In response to that incident, Richard Edelman said the following:
Let me get the disclosure out of the way. Edelman is the PR firm working with bloggers as part of a Wal-Mart corporate image campaign. Edelman is transparent about its relationship with Wal-Mart in our communications to bloggers. It’s clear who we represent.
So get the disclosure out of the way
As I noted in my first post on Edelman and Wal-Mart, Jaffe Juice has said that “this is the SECOND time they’ve been outed for lack of transparency with the SAME client.”
How transparent is Edelman? How much disclosure is there? How clear is it who you represent? Your silence is deafening. The answers to those questions is unclear.
My suggestion: make it clear. Now.
Consequences: blowback
This will hit TechMeme, and the consequences could be severe.
For example, how effective do you think any further social media campaigns sponsored by Edelman will be if bloggers don’t trust you? And how successful will Edelman be if it cannot deliver social media PR results to its clients?
The answer to both questions is, obviously: not very.
. . .
. . .
Other blogs discussing this issue:
Update Oct. 16. Edelman has finally broke the silence: Steve Rubel’s post; Richard Edelman’s post. No word on what exactly went wrong, or why the “process” that Steve talks about took over a week. More later …
If Edelman is the PR agency that “gets it” about blogs and social media, why did they set up a fake blog for Wal-Mart?
Blogs are weblogs. Splogs are spam blogs. Flogs are stealth PR blogs. And as far as we can see today, Edelman set up a flog for Wal-Mart that has now been outted: Wal-Marting Across America.
It’s a sweet story about Jim and Laura RV-ing across America from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart – staying in store parking lots overnight. The only problem is that Jim and Laura don’t exist … at least not in the way presented in the now-closed blog.
“Laura” is Laura St. Claire, a freelance writer. Jim is James Thresher, a professional photographer and Washington Post employee. Freelancing, apparently, is against his contract with the Post, which has ordered him to return Wal-Mart’s money and remove his photos from the flog. According to that AP story:
Wal-Mart outfitted the RV and turned it over to Thresher and his partner, Laura St. Claire, who drove it cross-country,
What’s shocking is that Wal-Mart is a client of Edeleman, which is the PR agency is supposed to be the one that “gets it” with regard to social media. But this isn’t “getting it,” and in fact is causing the worst kind of nightmare for a PR agency: blowback on its media-bending efforts.
Not only is the Examiner writing about the issue, so is MediaPost and Editor & Publisher. And the bloggers are not being silent.
What are bloggers saying?
In a word: lots. Here’s a sampling …
Jaffe Juice:
This post is not about Wal-Mart. They’ll figure out social media sooner or later.
This post is about Edelman. I’m kind of surprised and a bit amazed quite frankly…as this is the SECOND time they’ve been outed for lack of transparency with the SAME client.
Strategic Public Relations
I’m giving Edelman the Goofus and the Gallant on furthering the use of social media in the public relations industry. This tactic could have worked using full disclosure, just interview the customers and get their stories. It might not have resulted in effusive praise for the giant smiley face, but it would have been interesting nonetheless.
On Message from Wagner Communications:
Pro-Wal-Mart Travel Blog Screeches To A Halt.
Toughsledding:
International social media champion Edelman Public Relations finds itself the target of accusations it created “a phony blog” as a front for client and retail giant WalMart … Arrived home a few minutes ago (8:45 EDT) and have been unable to find a response on the Edelman website, or any of Edelman’s numerous bloggers.
PR Squared:
This is wrong on so many levels. And it is Strike 3 for Edelman (not Strike 2, as Joseph Jaffe suggests). Edelman, the self-described leader in me2, in transparency, in Social Media PR strategies. (Or, maybe not.)
Thunderous silence from Edelman
Richard Edelman says that “the business community … must recognize a new axis of communications, the horizontal peer to peer conversation.” How peer-to-peer was the Wal-Mart blog? And why is he not responding to the issue?
Steve Rubel is probably the best-known Edelman blogger. He posted twice today … but not a word about the Wal-Mart account.
The Edelman Landing Blog appears to be a conglomeration of all Edelman blogs. Once again, not a word.
Summing it up
Learn the lesson of Scoble, who humanized Microsoft while being honest about the fact that Microsoft paid his mortgage. Learn the lesson of all the other successful corporate bloggers.
- You want to start a corporate blog? Great. Be upfront about it.
- You want to start a marketing blog and get paid for it? Great. Be honest about who you are.
- You want to start a PR blog for your client? Great. Tell us who you are and who your client is.
You want to do that fake stuff? Keep it where it belongs, in mainstream media.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
