PR 101

Like most of you who are heavily involved in social media, I get lots of emails. I divide that mail into three categories: ones I read right away, such as those from clients or friends; ones I put off to later, such as links to white papers I want to read; and finally ones that are obnoxious. While not quite spam, they dance right on the edge of that designation.

Among that last sheaf of messages is a group that is really starting to bother me. It has gotten to the point that I have been flagging them as spam and blocking the senders.

Who are these annoying senders? Are they insurance salesmen, Nigerian widows offering me millions, or schemes telling me how I can make millions while working only 20 minutes a day? Nope, not one from one of those groups.

Where that email is originating is from so-called social media “experts.”

These are people who you would think would know better. After all, they claim to be social media experts. But apparently in their effort to learn about social media, no one explained push vs. pull marketing to them.

In brief, social media’s foundation is pull marketing. What that means is a company provides evidence that it is an expert at what it does or how it makes quality products. It does not send that information out itself. Rather satisfied clients spread the word around the Internet. That builds positive word-of-mouth, which in turn builds engagement and eventually sales.

What that means is one notice sent out. If it is worth reading, or attending, people will. It is more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.

What is not done is acting like a used car salesman and bombarding a potential customer with a dozen or more sales messages.

That’s exactly how I feel when I receive one of these emails telling everything they can do. I don’t care. When I help on something, I go looking for it.

One English-based trainer has sent me seven emails in the last two weeks touting her social media training systems. If an email can be described as breathless, these would fit that description. The subject line on one read: “complete social media course – last remaining places!”

Another group I joined (now that was a mistake) keeps urging me to post on Craigslist. I get one of those about once a week. I tried it once – it didn’t go well.

Then there is my personal favorite. I keep getting emails from people asking me to endorse them. If I do that for them, they tell me they will reciprocate and endorse me. Now mind you, I don’t even know these people, let alone worked with them.

I have a very firm rule about endorsements. I will only do it if I actually know you and worked with you. What value is an endorsement from someone who knows nothing about you? I also never ask for endorsements. If somebody likes my work, they can feel free to endorse me. But that’s up to them.

I am currently taking a sales training course from Westboro, Mass.-based Kurlan & Associates Inc. One of the first lessons we were taught is that people hate sales calls. When you connect with a potential customer start off just saying your name. Then discuss how you can help them. Don’t go on and list all the things you can do. At that point, they don’t care.

So when I get an email or a call from so-called “social media expert,” I immediately know they are not. The step is to hang up or hit the delete button.

One of the Cole family Sunday morning rituals is to peruse our local newspaper over breakfast. Like every other Sunday paper around the nation, it’s stuffed full of ads and inserts from what seems like every company that does business in the Milwaukee. Something I have noticed in the last couple of years is that on the front page of all the circulars is a Facebook logo. Some of the ads also contain a Twitter logo. Once in a very great while there’s a YouTube logo.

So it would seem at first glance that these companies are starting to embrace new ways of marketing. As most of you know, I firmly believe in melding traditional marketing and public relations with social media. That trilogy of marketing methods is the most effective.

However, I always dig a little deeper. I track these companies’ efforts. What I often find is that instead waltzing with social media, these companies are doing the “Zombie Dance.” All of you remember the Zombie Dance from the first dance you attended. The boy holds his rigid arms straight out and places them on the girl’s shoulders. Because of the distance created by the boy’s arms, the girl is forced to do the same. The pair then moves in a circle, barely lifting their feet off the ground and not bending their knees. It looks like the undead dancing.

That’s what a lot of social media attempts done by large companies especially remind me of – a stiff-armed dance that is about as a rhythmic as a drunk trying to play drums. These companies just don’t get it.

Now I know many CMOs would argue social media is not as important as search for attracting clients and customers. Current research would seem to back this contention up. For instance Google Inc.’s dominant search engine supplies about 30 percent of traffic to the top news sites, according to a study done by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. I would argue that same currently holds true for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business sites.

I know when I am looking for something in particular, I usually turn to Google. It is still one of the best ways to conduct research. However, the Pew study also found that “Facebook and other sharing tools, such as Addthis.com, are empowering people to rely on their online social circles to point out interesting content.” Although I do search for news, more and more I find myself reading stories friends have suggested or Linkedin. The same true when I shop. I will now often respond to tweets or Facebook friend pages when I am looking for a particular item.

This is where a lot of companies fall down, I feel. They are not integrating their social media efforts with their regular marketing efforts. Just having a Facebook page is not going to cut it. There has to be integration of all the marketing efforts. In this many companies are falling down.

Facebook is not the be all or end all. Blog, videos, and many other tools have to put to work. Yet which some notable exceptions – Dunkin Donuts and Southwest Airlines come to mind – most companies are doing all they could do. And I think I know why.

At major companies, people look at social media and consider it just too much work. Too many marketing departments are too used to using traditional advertising and public relations. It’s inertia. They want to move out of the ruts they are in. And then they wonder why they lose business to their smaller, more nimble competitors.

A couple of weeks ago, ABC announced it was canceling the soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live. Both had been on the air for more than 40 years.

The cancellation of both shows marks the continuing decline of a once powerful marketing machine. I think social media is doing the same thing to conventional marketing. It won’t happen overnight – and traditional marketing and public relations should still be part of any marketing plan. However, it is going to happen.

What many people don’t know anymore is that soap operas were started in the 1930s on radio by Proctor & Gamble to sell soap and other products – hence the name. According to P&G’s corporate history in 1933 “‘Ma Perkins,’ a radio serial program sponsored by P&G’s Oxydol soap powder, aired nationally. Its popularity leads P&G brands to sponsor numerous new ‘soap operas.’ Faithful listeners become loyal buyers of P&G brands at the grocery.’” The soaps helped P&G get through the Great Depression. When radio gave way to television, the soaps easily made the jump.

The soap operas came to dominate daytime television. Soaps were “once considered the stable revenue generator of the broadcast television model: the consistently popular daytime staples that helped fund primetime experimentation,” Fast Company Expert Blogger Sam Ford said. But not anymore.

There were once a dozen soaps on the air. There are now just four. Ford wrote that many in the television industry feel those four on their last legs. I think the demise is inevitable.

Like medicine shows and Burma Shave Road Signs, soaps apparently just don’t move product anymore. And that is the ultimate aim of most television shows and other marketing mediums. If it doesn’t sell something, it isn’t going to stay around. The audiences went elsewhere for any number of reasons and the advertisers saw that.

In the case of soap operas, “Many may say it’s because the fans abandoned the genre,” Ford wrote. “The story you often hear from fans is that it’s because the shows lost their way and their interest. As soaps tried to battle over the dwindling daytime audience as if ‘soap opera fans’ were all fans of the genre more than fans of the show, little thought was put into a sustained effort to bring lapsed fans back.”

Does this sound familiar? Let’s look at what’s happening to some other mass media.

“The Audit Bureau showed that average weekday circulation at 635 newspapers declined 5 percent compared with the same six months last year,” the New York Times reported last October. “The decline last year was more than twice that, 10.6 percent, as newspapers struggled through the recession and more readers abandoned print copies for the Internet.” (emphasis mine.)

Just like in soap operas, the advertisers are going away. “Newspaper publishers are still laboring to reverse a massive decline in advertising revenue – the Newspaper Association of America reported that total industry ad revenue fell 6% in Q2,” the Reuters blog MediaFile reported in September.

The same thing is happening in television advertising. “Advertisers are losing confidence in the medium,” respondents to the Association of National Advertisers/Forrester study of national advertisers said. The survey respondents said they have “a lack of confidence in TV ad effectiveness. Sixty-two percent of respondents think that TV ads have become less effective in the past two years.”

So, where are these advertisers going? You know the answer – they are heading to the Internet, of which social media is a part. I could fill this blog with the statistics – 740 million Facebook users, 100 million-plus Linkedin members, Flickr now hosts more than five million images and so on.

Mashable predicts that in 2011, $3.08 billion will be spent on social media in the United States.

“That’s a 55% increase over the $1.99 billion U.S. advertisers reportedly spent on social networking sites in 2010, and nearly 11% of what they are expected to spend on all online advertising in the U.S. in 2011, eMarketer says,” Mashable reported. “Worldwide spending on social networks is expected to rise 71.6% to $5.97 billion, approximately 8.7% of the total amount advertisers are predicted to spend online in 2011.”

Online advertising, which includes social media, is starting to snowball, the Economist reported. “Global spending on advertising will grow by 4.5% in 2011, double the rate of the previous year, according to ZenithOptima, an ad agency,” the Economist said. “This will be led by online advertising which will increase by 16%.”

Look at the Economist chart below. Online advertising is the largest, but it’s the fastest growing.

Chart courtesy of The Economist

So like medicine shows, Burma Shave Road Signs and now soap operas, conventional marketing is slowly going away. It will take some time, but just like those other things, it will happen.