Derek DeVries – Imprudent Loquaciousness

Perhaps summer isn’t the best time to schedule a learning opportunity for education professionals.  Unfortunately the Paperclip Webinar on Community Colleges and the Impact of Social Media has been canceled and will be rescheduled for a later date.

As soon as we have a new date, I’ll post it here.

Community colleges across the country are finding ways to teach, market and communicate using various forms of social media. In this rapidly changing environment it is challenging for professionals to stay up to date on the latest trends and functions of a social media landscape.

In many cases, higher education has led in the adoption of these new tools and technologies. Much more can be done, however, both inside the classroom and outside the college engaging publics.

Join me for an interactive webinar where you will learn how to develop a greater awareness of hot trends in social media as they relate to community colleges and begin the process of creating an effective social media marketing plan.

Register Here: http://bit.ly/ccsandsocialmedia

In the kampy 70s-era Batman TV series (and movie), Adam West’s titular character was always trying to extricate himself from a supervillain’s trap by “reversing the polarity.”  It’s one of those pseudo-sciencey terms that pre-teen kids find believable (even nerdy kids who like Dr. Who).

Colleagues and I have joked before that the marketing budgets of some projects would be better spent bribing the very small target population than trying to break through the deluge of noise consumers encounter each day by paying for mass media channels (the very entities creating the noise).

Twitter.  Facebook.  Pinterest.  Linkedin.  Blogs.  RSS.  SMS.  Foursquare.  Google Places.

Thanks to social media there are enumerable ways for any organization to broadcast messages to its publics.  There are so many channels with such low cost barriers that the decisions marketers and PR pros need to make are all about how many to spend time on.

However, the focus on broadcasting often overshadows an important and underutilized feature of the Internet-connected world: the ability to reverse the flow of information to focus laser-like on a very tiny population.  I’m not talking about Narrowcasting.  The “casting” part still implies a lack of a quality relationship with each of the unique people you’re trying to enlist.

It is increasingly easier to be successful by focusing solely on good customer service or by serving a very specific clientele.  That’s the Long Tail at work.  Creating relationships.

Rather than spending resources buying access to a megaphone could you reallocate those resources to, one at a time, find the 25, 50, 100, 1000 people you actually need to make your campaign a success?  I bet you could … if you can just “reverse the polarity.”

On March 11, 2012 I did a pre-conference workshop at the 2012 Conference of the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations (NCMPR).  It’s an organization for marketing and PR professionals in higher education at 2-year colleges.  Below you can find the resources from that presentation (the slides, handout, audio, and some video).

If you found the materials or the workshop to be helpful, I’d appreciate a review on Linkedin.  Hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to do more workshops like these.

Video:

Handout:

• How Not to be a Social Media N00b (.pdf) [I essentially crammed a variety of social media resources into this handout with brief descriptions so that attendees wouldn't have to scramble to take notes while I blathered on.]

Slides:

• How Not to be a Social Media N00b [This was the main set of slides I used.]
• Tutorials / How-tos [This was a second set of slides walking through how to accomplish a variety of useful tasks in social media.]

Audio:

By now everyone with access to the Internet (and even a lot of people who don’t) are aware that Facebook filed for an Initial Public Offering.

If every other social networking platform in the history of the web is a guide, this signals the beginning of the end for Facebook.  Private corporations are freer from the pressure to drum up wads of cash in the short term than publicly-traded companies.  They are also more resilient in the face of economic challenges than private companies because they can absorb a period of shrinking profits instead of scrambling to implement drastic measure (like mass layoffs) to quickly cook the books for a pennywise short term jump in profits.

Here’s why Facebook will suffer from the rush to monetize the gigantic community of users it has amassed: Read more…

[Updated] It’s 2012, and the presidential primary season is upon us.  In reality, it’s been upon us for the past year – the news media seems to have the same proclivity for stretching out presidential campaign season as retailers have for stretching out the holiday gift buying season.

Plenty of others have written about our arcane and stupid primary process, but I thought I would put a different spin on the argument that Iowa should not be allowed to screen the roster of presidential candidates:

From a Marketing/Public Relations/Advertising perspective, the population of Iowa makes for a terrible focus group.

Iowa is completely unrepresentative demographically of the diversity that exists in the US.  In fact - it’s such a skewed population that it doesn’t even have a test market in the top 50 (unless you count markets shared by other states).

No marketer would risk taking a product to market nation-wide based on how it plays in Iowa – so why do we let them vet presidential candidates?  Check out this selection of demographic indicators: Read more…

Since it launched in 2007, Twitter has gone from a single utility to a full-fledged social networking site.  Just like Facebook and Google+, it’s now launched “brand pages” that allow owners greater flexibility in controlling how their Twitter page appears.

Meh.

Don’t worry too much if you can’t rush right out and develop a gorgeous customized Twitter profile.  Most people won’t see it. Read more…

The answer is you wouldn’t.

Yesterday I received a spam email from “Paul” at “Social Brand Online” in my Linkedin inbox.  Here’s the text in it’s mass-produced, cut-and-paste glory: Read more…

Here’s the evolution of the average viral video in 14 stages…

[This post is featured at Grand Rapids Social Diary as a guest editorial for May 24, 2011!]

QR or “Quick Response” codes have been around Asia since 1994, and a few years ago they finally started to pop up in the US.  There was a brief period a couple of years ago where they were a fad (a way for the tech savvy to show off).

Sadly, just like the ascot or Hammer Pants, that time has passed.  If you want to use QR codes now, you’ll want to have a very specific, well-defined strategy that makes use of their unique properties.

Here are some questions you’ll want to ask yourself: Read more…

Every time OK Go releases another “viral” video, a new crop of marketers sets to work reverse-engineering it and trying to identify the magical keys to producing the same type of success for breakfast pastries or real estate services.  This phenomena happens with alarming regularity, and I’ve already commented on it (Be Careful of Broad Strokes).  It’s the wrong approach, and it’s the reason there are so many “also-ran” campaigns (like Orbitz attempt to repeat Old Spice’s success).

The idea of “viral videos” and trying to understand works of art and culture that the masses embrace highlights the problem I have with marketing as a discipline.

My beef with marketers is that they’re all about doing anything to avoid the real work of engaging people one-to-one and instead trying to game the system.  Marketing has its place (and always will), but in the era of social media it’s on the decline because it doesn’t suit the medium (which grew, in part, out of a rejection of the advertising-saturated, over-marketed traditional media).

Videos don’t go viral; ideas do.

If you don’t have an idea worth sharing, you can’t have a viral video (or a viral anything).  Marketers ignore the videos OK Go has produced that haven’t been wildly-popular.  ”Here it Goes Again” notched nearly 54 million views, but “Do What You Want”? – 2.6 million.  “WTF”? – 808k.  Even “Last Leaf” has only hit 215k views this far.

OK Go produces music for themselves and their core fans – so they’re not worried about pleasing everyone.  That’s what gives them the intangible and invaluable quality of AUTHENTICITY.

OK Go Pink EP

I should disclose that I feel a certain overprotective obligation to OK Go; I’ve been a fan since I blundered up to their merch table at a show in Ann Arbor and asked to buy both of their three-song EPs by mispronouncing the band name as “Ock-go” as a result of their logo smashing the words together.

They hooked me by choosing an obscure B-side (“Kiss me, Son of God”) from They Might be Giants “Lincoln” album to play as a cover tribute when opening for TMBG at that first show.  Since then, I’ve seen them spontaneously break out into an a Capella Les Miserables performance, invite the entire audience up on stage to dance with them, and publish a kampy boy-band dance video.

In the space between those performances, they kept me hooked by staying in contact with me online and hitting the pavement (I was at a Tenacious D show in Grand Rapids and Tim Nordwind, bassist for OK Go, handed me a flyer for an after-show performance at a local bar).

The success OK Go has experienced is primarily because they’ve rejected the traditional marketing dogma:

• They labored for years creating interpersonal relationships with fans centered on their unique, catchy alt-pop and the performance art that goes along with it.  The creativity in their videos is the same creativity they bring to live shows (fortunately now they have more resources with which to express themselves).  Their videos are spread so quickly because their rabid fan base forms a strong platform of TRUSTED NETWORKS who share them.
• They left EMI Records because the company (among other things) refused to allow their videos to be posted to YouTube so that they could be embedded anywhere (ie easily-shared).  The company thought it was more important to drive traffic to the band website. (Sound familiar?)
• When their album “Oh No” was released, part of the promotional campaign included a racing video game where players retrieve kidnapped members of the bands amid references to lingonberries (a nod to Sweden where the band had recorded the album).  They’re not afraid of aiming small with the audience.  They don’t want ALL the ears to hear their music – they want the RIGHT ONES.

Here’s a perfect metaphor for where marketers usually get things wrong:

The Rube Goldberg-esque video for “This Too Shall Pass” STARTED with the idea for the video, and the sponsorship by State Farm Insurance came after the idea (as a means of realizing the idea).

If you START with the advertisement or the money and try to add the idea after – you’re bound to fail.

It’s the same with creating an audience for anything; you have to do the hard work of earning trust one-on-one before you can expect financial returns from that trust.  Since when is anything “worth doing” easy?