I Said, OK

I was on a panel earlier this week about Social Media at an offsite for senior executive at one of the world’s largest media companies. It was an extremely interesting session and particularly interesting to be on the panel with Dennis Crowley of Foursquare and Jordan Glazier of Eventful.

The last question that was asked was: Tell us what we don’t know. What’s coming around the corner? What’s the future?

I was initially stumped by the question. How do you tell the future to a room of media bigwigs, some of who were in the industry when TVs were hitting living rooms for the first time? There’s so much that could’ve been said and yet, so much of that would also have been pointless. I mean, who knows, right?

Here’s what I get excited about. We’re going to figure out how to make sense of all the data that’s being created out of interactions with content, activities and people via the Social Web. We haven’t even scratched the surface of this yet. At best, we’re starting to get decent at creating experiences which people want to interact with.

Making sense of the data will allow marketers to communicate more effectively with consumers. It will enables us to program and deliver more relevant content, activities and connections to people. It will make advertising more effective and thus, more efficient and more valuable. It will take the guess work out of product development and messaging. It will make PR less of a bullshit discipline.

The list goes on.

When I talk about this to people the first thing I always hear is: it’s really hard.

This is true. Technology and the people that use it have a long way to go. Sentiment analysis is what people keep pointing to now. It’s a start but is very limited.

The key to all this comes down to a few things:

1. Language analysis. Yes, very hard to do. I mean, how the hell do you extract meaningful insight from Tweets, status updates, comments, etc.? You’ve got to look at aggregates and trends as well as meanings and use of words. My friend Frank Speiser is doing some very interesting work at his company Social Flow on this. I can’t claim to understand much of it right now (Frank has a much bigger brain than I do), but he’s onto something.

2. Profiling. This isn’t about the profile information you enter into a social network. This is about creating a profile of people based on all the data that they’ve willingly put out there about themselves. Every field in a public social network’s profile, photo or video upload, blog, comment, like, fan, prop, vote, etc.

3. Predictive placements and conversations. Again, from some of the conversations I’ve had with Frank, there will be a way to remove the guess work around when and how to reach people so that they’ll respond favorably.

4. Scale. Technology and tools aren’t there yet but neither are the people that use them. It’s still very labor intensive but this will change. We will blend human creativity with tools that enable us to get out there efficiently. It’s the only way this will work, otherwise we’ll be stuck dealing with pebbles and ripples as opposed to Tsunamis.

What’s the goal?

For consumers, better products and services that are more relevant and valuable.

For brands, finally seizing the promise of the Social Web.

I got a kick out of Sandy’s headline. I’m as far from Social Star as possible, so it was extremely humbling to be interviewed by Sandy for her blog.

I met Sandy a few years ago when I was working at KickApps. We were both invited by Jeremiah Owyang, who at the time was working at Forrester, to attend a day long roundtable about the Social Web. Sandy’s one of those people that you can’t help but listen when she talks. More importantly, she makes you think. She’s also been a terrific pioneer of social marketing at IBM and has written several books about her experiences.

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated the blog. Mainly because the last few months have been pretty busy. I left KickApps in January and joined Deep Focus, an interactive agency in New York City. I’m still gathering my thoughts about the move and also about the future. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about it all.

About a month ago, I had a conversation with a friend who doesn’t work in the same industry as I do about a phrase that she noticed is quite pervasive amongst the social media set.

“They don’t get it.”

This is used to explain the ineptitude and shortcomings of my brethren in marketing who work at brands, enterprises and agencies or all shapes and sizes, and pertains to their lack of understanding about social media and engagement marketing.

As an outsider, that phrase just sounded condescending, at best, and arrogant and obnoxious at worst, to her.

I tried to explain, as earnestly as possible, the context in which I’ve used that phrase to describe these small minded people. I’m sorry, I mean marketers. There are, after all, so many examples of marketers at brands and agencies that don’t get this new world of transparency and authenticity. Truth is, even when they try, most attempts at engagement marketing by seasoned marketers are true fuck ups and one can only conclude that they just don’t get it. Right?!

I mean, they just don’t seem to get that the world has changed. They’re obviously just freaked out and desperate to hold on to their old ways of doing business in the same ways that Conservatives talk nostalgically about the good old days of oppression and slavery (well, you get my point).

After awhile though I started listening to what she was saying (usually a good idea in a conversation). It wasn’t whether or not people get it, rather, this industry that I work in seems to be really caught up in its own bullshit. That got me thinking. Maybe I’m living too much in my little bubble of get-it-ness and I’m missing something.

A couple of weeks after this conversation I met a guy who works at one of these ‘don’t get it’ big agencies. This guy is a classic ad guy. Knows the traditional ad business inside and out. He seems to be really good at his job and he immediately earned my respect.

We had a conversation about the transformation of the ad industry. We talked about their existing business and the fact that doing 30 second spots for TV remains their bread and butter.

Wait, hadn’t he and his Mad Men friends heard about what we in the social media industry know to be Gospel? Isn’t TV dead? Aren’t million dollar ad campaigns dead? Isn’t it all about the social web? Ugh, another guy who doesn’t get it.

But here’s the thing, I think he does.

The fact is that any big brand (the ones that my industry cohorts bitch about) are faced with a reality of today’s business. Would you throw away millions of dollars that roll in the door today to jump on a bandwagon that, yes, will become THE way of marketing in the near future but isn’t quite there today? Any executive worth anything would not say yes to that. If they do, they’re idiots.

Rather, wouldn’t you just send your best and brightest out there to learn and experiment as much as they can with these new methods, knowing full well that you’ve got to very quickly develop an expertise in this new approach to marketing?

The measure of that executive is how quickly they understand and act on the balance of allocating resources between maintaining your existing business and ensuring that the company is ready to move in a new direction when the market conditions are right.

This is exactly what my new friend appears to be doing.

So, when I was asked tonight whether I thought he ‘gets it,’ I had to think about it for a second. My answer now is, yes, he does.

More importantly, I think I finally get it too.

A few weeks ago my co-worker Maliki told me to check out a blog called CSS Tricks and to consider placing some banner ads on the site about KickApps. CSS designers, and web designers in general, are a major audience/customer for KickApps. Afterall, we’re essentially a software solution which designers and developers use to add cool features and functionality to their websites, such as social networking, user-generated content, video and widgets.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about banner ads for KickApps. I think they do help with awareness and brand building but for the most part we’ve had trouble measuring the effectiveness of some early campaigns we ran. Overall though, I’ve been hesitant to spend on this type of marketing unless it produces a direct and measurable result. Our strategy with online display advertising has been to only do it on highly targeted web design and development websites.

Following up on Maliki’s advice, we started a campaign on CSS Tricks a few weeks ago. The blog is run by Chris Coyier. He does an excellent job all around, and man, I have to say, the results for us have been tremendous. We’re currently running a banner on the homepage and we’re sponsoring his RSS feed and have sponsored two video screencasts. I’m not going to go into detail about the traffic stats and conversion rates but all I’ll say is that the results have been extremely impressive. Check out the short video screencast that Chris produces which we sponsored.

I still have mixed feelings about the effectiveness and ROI of display advertising for KickApps but when it’s something as targeted as CSS Tricks, the results have made it worth every penny.