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

Love, Love, Love - All You Need is Love

All You Need Is Love Image courtesy of Willie Simpson

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.

Deep down, when an ad agency’s client asks them about including digital, Social and anything else Internet into their marketing mix what I believe they’re really asking, and they just may not know it, is, how can you, the ad agency, help us earn a seat at the Social Media table so we can show our customers we “love” them in ways that traditional advertising just can’t.

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. Here’s why I think that is. And it has 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 angle 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

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 something again, 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.

2012 The World Ends: Will Your Facebook Page Be Ready?

Update Your Facebook Page Before The World Ends in 2012

Ok everybody, swallow hard, cause’ we all know what’s coming - Dec. 21^st, 2012 it’s the end of the world. Basically, we’re all gonna’ be toast – real soon like. I figure about a week before the grand finale it’ll be total mayhem, people loading up on Slim Jims, Red Bull, some damn good cheap booze and all kinds of other stuff to make that “last hurrah” easier to take, and lets not exclude cats and dogs living together.

This is a big day for all of us – the end of the world - lots of things to think about – or not. Me, personally, I’ll regret not getting to see the latest James Bond, which I’m sure will be due for release probably on Dec.22^th 2012. That’ll be just a bit too late I believe. I always dug the James Bond movie endings when it says “James Bond will return” well, this time he won’t – bummer.

I’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg here. You get the picture. It’s not going to be peachy.

So let’s get down to brass tacks. What’s really going to be important when the world ends on December 21^st 2012?  You know it, I know it, and just about everybody else knows it – so it’s unanimous - and that is will your Facebook page be updated and ready for the mother of all events?

You can forget everything else, even Pittsburgh Internet Marketing, and here’s why; Facebook has given us all a reason to live again by helping us magnify our most cherished and addictive subject – ourselves. But now this is all going end. These things happen.  So, since Facebook has given us the means to “embrace and extend” the ultimate importance of us, it stands to reason that when the end comes - and need I remind you it’s real soon, the only thing that’s really going to matter is us all having our Facebook pages nice and spiffy, updated and ready for the big “Check In” (or would that be “check out”). Because, when the world ends on Dec. 21^st 2012, and it isn’t on Facebook, how in the hell will anybody know?

But hey, look on the upside, everyone’s going save money on Christmas gifts, and the best part is you can let everybody know that – on Facebook.

Like us on Facebook before the world ends, would ya. It would mean the world to us.