Opinions And Ramblings By Adam Kmiec On All Things Media

There are days when The Onion just nails it. Yesterday they posted an article titled, “Local Fabric Store Urges You To Check Them Out On Twitter.”

The sarcasm of the article hits on the idea that every company these days seems to be asking you to follow them on Facebook and Twitter. Restaurants, dry cleaners, grocery stores and others are posting signs in their windows that let customers know they have a presence on Facbook and Twitter.

In theory that’s great. I love seeing business realize the need to create awareness around their social real-estate. Unfortunately, too many companies simply think if they create Facebook and Twitter accounts, they’ll magically get followers. As a marketer first and an interactive practioner second, I can tell you that offline marketing and awareness tools are critical to driving social success.

Ok, off the soap box. Here’s the thing that’s missing. That sign in the window is a great first step, but rarely are the reasons why I should follow you included. Think about it. Why am I going to seek you out on Facebook or Twitter if I don’t know what I’m going to get from it? It just doesn’t make sense.

We need to be smarter about our offline marketing. The real magic starts to happen in the social space, when our offline marketing is working hard to support our online initiatives. Dare I say…our marketing needs to be more integrated? I know that’s a marketing buzzword, but I think you can see in this case, why it’s so important.

I’d love to see examples you’ve come across of companies doing it right.

On April 19, 2010 Facebook introduced and launched a new set of pages called “Community Pages.” For the past few months I’ve been studying the new pages and working with Facebook to understand their potential. Prior to this announcement, Facebook offered 5 core types of pages:

Personal Profile Pages: These are pages for individuals who are using Facebook to connect with other people and not for business purposes. If you have a Facebook profile, this is your page.

Fan Pages: These are pages created by people that covered content ranging from activities (eg Running), people (generally celebrities) or things (eg pecific book).

Business Pages: For the most part these act just like a combination of personal and Fan Pages. They are for companies only and provided a means for aggregating information about a specific company and connecting with fans of a brand.

Group Pages: This was a catch all that allowed people to create pages around a specific interest that was generally tied to a common shared experience (eg breast cancer survivors) or as a rallying area for a common local interest (eg Chicago Lake Shore Running Group).

Event Pages: These were used just like an invitation. They contained all the information about a specific event and generally offered the ability to indicate if you would attend the event.

Please note, there are several other type of pages, but these are the major ones.

While these pages all existed for different reasons and served different audiences, there was one key element that made them all very similar. All of these pages allowed for a specific owner or set of owners for the page. As a person, you own and can therefore manage your personal profile page. The same holds true for Fan Pages, Business Pages, Group Pages and Event Pages. The content on the page was editable because there was a clearly defined owner. That owner could update photos, bios, and descriptions. They could also manage access to pages and control what features (eg discussion boards) would be included.

Community Pages are the first type of page that has no owner. The owner is Facebook. You can’t transfer ownership of the page from Facebook, edit the content or even formally request that the content be changed (even when it’s in accurate). This is because Community Pages are organic. Facebook creates them automatically and the content on the pages are derived from a collection of sources internally and externally. The biggest information provider is Wikipedia.

Facebook claims that Community Pages are meant to be, “the best collection of shared knowledge on a topic.” This is really up for debate. After all one could easily argue that a single person or company has the best collection of shared knowledge.

Community Pages are currently in beta, but my guess is that they’re here to stay. Why? Because Community Pages do 2 very important things for Facebook:

1. The make it easier to understand what users really like? For example if I had running in my user profile, this will now be linked automatically to a Community Page on running. This makes it easier for a company like Nike to target me. Prior to Community Pages I could have updated the interests area of my profile to read “running through the mud and getting dirty.” While that may be true, it’s more complicated for Facebook to understand if that means I like running or I like mud or I just like getting dirty. In short, Community Pages create a smarter, simpler and better-organized tagging structure for what people like, by forcing people to customize their profiles based on the available community pages that exist. This ultimately makes it easier for marketers to connect with users.
2. Community Pages are 100% public and exposed to search engines. This inherently will drive more traffic to Facebook.com and begin to position Facebook as a threat to sites like Wikipedia.

WHAT THIS NEWS MEANS FOR YOU AND YOUR CLIENTS

• You now have another page to monitor as part of your Social Business strategy. In addition to your business, events, groups, etc. pages you’ll need to make sure that your Community Page (assuming one exists) is being monitored.
• It will become more challenging for users to find your official business page. It’s possible that they’ll end up at the Community Page and assume it’s your Business Page. The need to tightly integrate social into your other pieces of real estate has become more important. For example providing a simple link from your website to your official Facebook Business Page could make all the difference.
• Your Wikipedia page just became one of the most important pieces of interactive real estate. Making sure it’s updated, current and accurate can make a big difference in the accuracy of the Community Page
• Each Community Pages does ask for your help to improve it. This is currently being down by allowing you to suggest the “Official Facebook Page.” It’s a fairly simple process and something you should do in every applicable instance. Unfortunately, right now, Facebook has not made it clear what the impact of doing this has on the Community Page or your Official page.

SO NOW WHAT

I can’t stress enough that these pages are currently in beta and may end up evolving over time. However, even as they evolve it’s clear that the need to treat social as a holistic entity instead of a platform specific one is a must. Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, your official Company Page, etc. will all play a role in shaping the content of Community Pages. To make Community Pages work hard for your brand you’ll need to do 3 things:

1. Ensure that you have an effective monitoring program in place that includes sites like Wikipedia.
2. Proactively monitor the Community Pages for your brand and when possible suggest the official Business Page.
3. Invest in social curation. This is a relatively new phenomenon, but a very important one. Social curation is the habit of making sure your content across social sites is well organized, accurate, tagged appropriately and linked to the right sites. Many companies are hiring the role of “Community Manager” to handle social curation or asking their agency partners to include it as part of their social business monitoring/engaging scope.

Fun time ahead. As Facebook says jump we all say how high.

I came across this today while trying to read Peter King’s always fantastic, Monday Morning Quarterback (yes, I know it’s Tuesday).  My initial thought is that it’s very smart.  You only get the savings when you order a subscription and it’s pretty damn easy to earn the cash.  For something like twitter, it would only take 2 clicks.  That’s a great mutual exchange.

I have a feeling we’re going to see a lot more of this in the near future.

I love the book and the movie, Animal Farm. Early on in the story, right after the animals take over the farm they erect a sign that states, “All Animals Are Created Equal.” I love the sentiment. By, the near end of the story, after the pigs have taken over control of the other animals, that sign changes to “All Animals Are Created Equal, Some Are More Equal Than Others.”

As many of you know, I’m a huge Southwest Airlines fan. I often opt to fly them knowing a connection is needed, than take a direct flight. Sounds crazy, I know, but that’s how much of a believer I am in their brand. It’s been well documented that they’ve really nailed customer service in the age of the real-time web. I’ve always been impressed with how fast they’ve addressed feedback.

When the Kevin Smith situation popped up a few weeks ago, I took Southwest’s side. I genuinely felt they handled the situation appropriately. In the face of tough feedback from a very popular and influential traveler, the stood their ground and didn’t bend to Kevin Smith’s pressure. As the Kevin Smith situation was blowing up, I again, couldn’t believe how quickly they were addressing the situation. From tweets, to apologies, to phone calls, to even a blog post, they were Johnny on-the-spot.

Last Thursday, March 11th, I had a very uncharacteristically negative experience with Southwest. I was flying my seemingly weekly flight from Chicago to Minneapolis. The arriving airplane that we were to use was coming from Florida. Unfortunately for me and the other flyers it was more than 2 hours late because of weather, which I never hold an airline accountable for. Look, weather problems happen and you definitely want to be safe up there in the sky. The situation got worse though. After the flight landed in Chicago, there was a maintenance problem. Apparently the forward lavatory “spilled” or “over-flowed” (both terms were used) and maintenance would need to clean things up. Again, hey, mistakes happen. And I can completely understand the need to clean up something as unsanitary as bathroom “waste.”

Well, unbeknownst to many of us sitting in the first few rows, the spill/over-flow didn’t just stay contained to the galley; it went as far as the first few rows of the plane. The carpets underneath the seats were soaked. But, you couldn’t really tell this unless you looked very closely. Unfortunately, I looked closely, far later than I should have. I had put my Timbuk2 bag that contained my laptop and some documents under the seat in front of me. That makes sense right? You always put your smaller bag underneath the seat in front of you…at least that’s what the flight attendants encourage you to do.

When we arrived in Minneapolis, 3+ hours later than scheduled, I we pretty beat. When I reached down to grab my bag, I noticed the entire bottom was soaked. The spill/over-flow had soaked through my bag, thus ruining it and the documents it contained. Thankfully, the laptop was ok. To make matters worse, you can’t wash this Timbul2 bag and there was no way I was going to keep using a “waste” soaked bag. Sorry, but that’s just not very sanitary. So, for the first time ever, I tweeted something negative about Southwest. To their credit I instantly received a direct message stating “Uh oh! I’m so sorry! I hate hearing that…what happened? Anything I can do? Feel free to email me: xxxxxxx.xxx@wnco.com.” Literally within an hour of receiving it, I sent an email to the Southwest employee that explained a shortened version of the above. I proactively included my Rapid Rewards Number (I’m an A-List member) and my confirmation code for the flight. After I sent the email I sent a direct message back letting them know I sent the email, per their request.

It’s Sunday and I still haven’t received a response back. I’m bummed, but I’m not surprised. Where as Kevin Smith got a formal apology, a flight credit, a blog post and a whole lot more; I’ve gotten nothing. But, you know what? I’m ok with it. Why? Because, I’m not silly enough to think that I matter as much or more than Kevin Smith. It would be nice if I did, but I know that I don’t. Southwest has less to lose with me than they do with him. As they’re prioritizing who to respond to and how quickly, I’m sure that Adam Kmiec is further down the list than a celebrity like Kevin Smith.

If you will, “Some Animals Are More Equal.” As paying customers, we sorta need to remember that, even though it kinda sucks.

It’s not secret that I think Chris Brogan might be the biggest snake oil salesman ever to walk the land.  The other day he might have jumped the shark.  Chris shared with the world his “day rate.”  Are you ready for what it is?  Sit down.  Get comfortable.  Please don’t have any water in your mouth as I am not responsible should you choke on it.

Ok, here we go.  Chris Brogan’s day rate is $22,000.00.

Did you just say WTF?  I know I did when I first read it.  Let’s break this down.  At $22,000.00 a day, he’s worth $8,030,000.00 per year.  What does that really mean though?  Let’s add some context shall we.  That annual “salary” would make him 2x more valuable than Drew Brees, 8x more valuable then Evgeni Malkin (and only 1 million less valuable than Sindey Crosby) and roughly the same cost as having both Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis on your team.  You might ask why I picked professional athletes as a comparison point.  Well I did it for two simple reasons

1. The public often complains about the skyrocketing and out of touch with reality costs of super star athletes
2. We’re passionate and attached to our super star athletes

Usually with athletes we have a way of comparatively reviewing them against their competition.  Whether this as at the contract negotiating table or the arbitration table, this happens all the time.  Athletes and owners will often lament that it’s not personal, it’s business.

Heck, even Chris argues, “Pricing. This isn’t black magic. It’s business. It’s commerce. It’s fairly basic.”  Well, he’s right about it not being black magic.  He’s right about it being fairly basic.  Let’s see how basic it is:

Price: Price is the starting point for what the owner/author/provider/etc. thinks something is worth.For example, the suggested retail price of Trust Agents is $24.95. That’s what Chris thinks his words are worth on a per book basis.

Value: Value is what the market deterimines something is worth. For example, this copy of Trust Agents currently being sold for $6.00 on eBay.  Hmmm…$6.00 sure doesn’t seem like $24.95.  Actually it seems like people value Chris’ words 75% less than Chris does.  Well it’s like Chris said, “This isn’t black magic. It’s business. It’s commerce.”  Well said.

I don’t begrudge Chris charing $22,000.00 a day for his “services.”  On multiple occasions I’ve asked him what those services are and what he’s actually done, but he’s yet to respond or provide any real backup to substantiate he’s capable of doing what he says he can do.  And it’s for that reason, that while Chris’ price is $22,000.00, I value a day with him at $1.05.  That’s the cost of a McChicken + Tax.  It seems appropriate, at least with the McChicken I know what to expect from the experience.

So, Chris is right, he charge what he wants and I can pay what I want.  Although, there seems to be an interesting gap between price and value doesn’t there