Pittsburgh SEO – SEM – SEA | Internet Marketing and Website Design | Blackball Online

Love, Love, Love - All You Need is Love

I don’t know if you saw the Sci-Fi flick Serenity with Nathan Fillion. Anyway, at the end of the movie Mr. Fillion tells his co-pilot, River, what it really takes to pilot a ship. Here’s how he put it; “Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse... but you take a boat in the air that you don't love... she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down... tells you she's hurting before she keels.”

Mr. Fillion may have just described what’s at the heart of the potential Social Media presents and what it offers to help keep your (brand) “boat in the air” – nothing guaranteed mind you, but a good shot - and that’s love.

If this sounds corny, think a minute, how many times in business have you heard somebody say, “Hey, we need to show that client some ‘love’ or “that customer needs some love,” and blah, blah, blah. Maybe you consider this “figurative,” but really, is it? One thing’s for sure, if you’ve been in business a bit, you’ve heard it, and maybe said it yourself more times than you care to remember.

Companies hear the success stories, so, when a client asks "how do we go Social?" from our experience (and, we're just scratching the surface) we've found there's a question behind the question, and, what they're really asking is: "What's the secret?" - with the answer starting with the title of this post.

(There's always a "secret" when you're interested, but don't know. I'll refer to the Pacino / Keanu exchange in the Devil's Advocate; Pacino said: "... That's our secret, we kill you with kindness. Whats your secret?")

You can show a client the metrics, measurements, reports, and connections, or “all the math in the ‘verse,” and that’s all good, but it’s not going to mean much without that little 4 letter word. Besides, this is Charlton Heston – Biblical – Matthew stuff, which, of course, he made sure was on record… “And the greatest of these is love.” So there you go. If you want argue with him on that, be my guest, I’m not.

This can be pretty scary for some enterprises - and it has a lot to do a lot with the word "distance." Automation, mass production, and mass media, introduced by the industrial revolution has incrementally put up a healthy sized chasm between brands and the people they want to talk and sell to. As a result, for the past who-knows-how-many-years, brands, for the most part, have had the luxury of selling to people at a distance, with their advertising strategies coming along for the ride.

A brand didn’t have to get “that” close – only perceive to. We all got used to being sold to at more than just arm’s length. All of a sudden the Internet, with its Social Media sidekick shows up, and subtly and methodically hands people the means to close that distance. And close it well. Power to the people, and all that jazz you could say.

Peeking at the brand/Social Media situation from a familiar lens might go like this; how many marriages or relationships have broken up because one party felt that the other became “distant” – even when the other party was there.

Brands have to genuinely get close now - or again – if they want to compete and grow. Just showing up and expecting your message to be heard doesn’t cut it anymore. Every day it’s getting more and more difficult for brands to sell at the distance they’ve been accustomed to. And brands are feeling it.

Ford, Dell, Zappos and Starbucks are some examples of brands that know and go all out to understand this. Enjoying more than just reasonable and continued success, these brands use Social Networking outlets to help them close that gap, build faith, and invest in their customers – their true capital. And, like what love can imply, these are brands which apply their Social Media efforts with a seemingly genuine no-strings approach.

Moral of this story: if you’re going to take a crack at Social Media, maybe start with a little John Lennon and add some Social Media Love to your marketing.

http://www.williesimpson.com - Credit for image

What I Learned From the Kids at the Lemonade Stand

Lemonade Stand Marketing

The funniest thing happened to me today which embodies the theory of why people are very different in their marketing methods. I was driving down the road on the way to a clients business and passed some children selling lemonade. All fine and a typical summer activity which is why I love Pittsburgh.

Memories came back to me remembering doing that same thing. Of course we drank all the lemonade and strong-armed some sympathetic parents to buy. That’s what kid marketers do I guess. I then began thinking about why as humans we are really just oversized children. Those same techniques are used every day by some of the largest companies in the world. Google ring a bell?

In the course of driving up to these kids, some stood up when they noticed my lone car turn on to their secluded suburban street. With their little marketing minds at work having planned their location, their price points, their signage, and their secret blend of lemonade that only a parent could love; you get the point.

Some were there because that was the place to be and couldn’t be bothered about the lemonade. Some budding capitalists were already counting their piggy bank retirement 401K and mutual fund contributions – those were the kids seated in the chairs behind their stand. Others were beginning to shout as if I’d miss 20 kids with a lemonade stand on a quiet street in the suburbs at 2:00pm.

So as a consumer, and a thirsty one at that, I had that fleeting second of contemplation. And I actually considered stopping. As I drove closer the kids were in full wail and one of the kids shouts, “Just Buy It!” in a voice that sounded as if it came from pure frustration that he wouldn’t be meeting with Donald Trump tonight if I drove by. I knew right then and there that he was the marketer of the bunch.

I drove passed. Why? Why hadn’t I stopped? It was drive thru service. The conditions were right for them to all go to Harvard on my lemonade sale split 20 ways. It wasn’t like there was a lemonade stand on every corner. What where the circumstances that precluded me from stopping. Was the memory of the taste of our lemonade we made as kids that bad? Maybe. Or was it the situation? The timing?

Given different circumstances I would most certainly have stopped. The screaming and yelling kids’ trying to coerce a sale was what did it. That and I’m a cappuccino guy. Screaming wasn’t enough for those kids. Yet many marketing and advertising agencies still do this. Search Engine spamming ring a bell? Article marketing with nonsensical posts? Is bombardment enough for me to be persuaded to buy something? Am I willing to buy from a brand that screams at me? How long until Google invents a shower radio called Google Wet to sell me ads?

If I post, “Just Buy It” will the masses come in droves begging for our Pittsburgh Web Design? For our Pittsburgh Search Engine Optimization Services? For our Pittsburgh Internet Consulting? If I corner prospective clients with all that jazz about top Google results and a pushy tone will it help? Probably Not.

Thanks kids for providing me hours of thought. A special Thanks to the,”Just Buy It” kid for the fodder for this post. I should probably drop by and give him a royalty on my next sale.

The Church of Me

The Church of Me Where I Can Worship Myself

We love talking about Facebook, not to discuss the DNA or the atomic structure of a “Like,” or dissecting the value proposition of a “Comment” with a UNIX 8-cylinder engine slide rule, or the square root of a Facebook “Hug.” Oops, Facebook doesn’t do hugs, at least not yet. No, we love talking about FB because it’s just fun.

A nerd comes along, builds a run-of-the-mill simple upload, post, edit and submit Website which acquires the popularity of Star Trek’s “where no man has gone before” mantra, and the rest is history. Not to mention a little luck, like being in the right place at the right time, (remember our bumper sticker post). So, what’s not to talk about?

All I can say is “only in America.” Maybe you kind of see it like this too, but you just don’t want to say, and that’s Cooley and the gang with us - we respect that.  We respect all living creatures, and some dead - what the hell. By the way, how many other nerds are out there, right now, who are writing an app with fingers crossed, hoping it’ll “catch fire” too? Hell, we might be one of them. Nothing could be more American.

But let’s get back to the matter at hand, and what on earth has made Facebook as popular as the Beatles during the UK’s second invasion of America? I’ll tell you what I think it is, and it’s not the FB user interface, and how it does this, that or the other. What I’m seeing is that nobody, but nobody, at least so far, has cast the perception of something being entirely devoted to “me” better than the Facebook guys.

The FB “Like” is genius, it is so very, very human - who doesn’t want to be liked. And who out there that’s on FB so much that they forget to go eat are thrilled to the point of hyper-ventilation when somebody “Likes” them. You just have to post back, because one “Like” is just never enough, and you got a taste – and it’s good.

With over 700 million users itching to be “liked,” it’s no wonder FB has advertisers drooling. But the thing about FB is this; it's all about me - squared, not the advertisers, and not anyone else. FB’s “gift” to us all is the perceived ability to “enshrine” one’s self – Vatican style. Good luck with diverting eyeballs around that. The advertisers are trying though.  But they’re finding it’s doubly tough to break the preoccupation we have from our most alluring and captivating subject - ourselves.

As a side note, here’s what I ponder during meditation in my lotus garden; when will someone come along, and cater to the “all about me” perception better than FB? We all pretty much know it is only a matter of when, not if.

Contact Pittsburgh Social Media Marketing for your small business by Blackball Online Marketing where it's all about you.