PR 101

My dog, Chester the Wonder Dog, is an alpha male. According to the online magazine Dog Owners Guide, an alpha dog is the leader of the pack, “the dog that dominates and leads the other members of the pack. The alpha is the boss that makes decisions for the entire pack.”

The same kind of “alpha dogs” exist in social media. They are the leaders of the pack, the first adapters, the ones who influence where everyone else goes on the net.

I discovered Chester was a leader the first time I took him to the dog park. Other dogs were coming up and sniffing him as he sat there. Some actually lay down in front of him. He would give each a very brief sniff and then somehow send them on their way. When Chester wandered around checking out various things, the other dogs followed and checked out the same areas.

I asked our vet why Chester wasn’t that interested in other dogs’ scents. The animal doctor explained that as an alpha dog, Chester didn’t care what the other canines smelled like. It was more important to Chester – and to the other dogs – that they knew what he smelled like. In that way they could follow his lead.

Social media “alpha dogs” act somewhat the same way. They are the first ones to “wander” around social media sites, picking out the best ones. They are the ones that post about the best restaurants, the hottest clubs, the best movies and everything else.

I am lucky enough to know some of them – Sarah Evans and Jason Kintzler are two who I greatly admire. Both have carved unique niches that I check out daily. I often follow their leads.

How do you identify those leaders? Look for the people who are on Facebook who make recommendations first. Check their blogs; follow them on Twitter and YouTube. They will always be at the front of the pack, telling others what’s cool and what’s not.

This brings me to my second point. Marketers have to find these people. You want to sell a product today; you need to build some social media cred. The best way to build cred is to find these leaders, these alpha dogs, and bring your idea or product to their attention.

However, you cannot pitch them. Going back to Chester the Wonder Dog, he rarely takes any interest in any toy I just give to him. I have to give him a reason to latch on to it – it is filled with treats, I will let him chew on it or it does something that interests him. He particularly likes to pay tug-of-war, if I take the time to wave the rubber rings in front of him. I have to be patient. He will play when he is good and ready.

I also know enough not to try to give anything he doesn’t like. For instance, he hates squeaky toys. We found early on that he would immediately destroy any toy that made noise.

The same rules apply to those media leaders. You cannot pitch them directly. It won’t work. You have to entice them, give them reasons to take an interest in your product. If there is something they don’t like, they will ignore it. If continue to try and get them accept your idea, they will tear it apart by telling others not to use the product.

There are no guarantees though. Alpha dogs make their own decisions. They will decide on their own what route they and the pack will want to take.

There has been a debate raging over the future of the Internet for the last year or so. However, I don’t most people have even heard the term net neutrality, let alone had the time to delve into the subject. Yet in my opinion, if the debate goes one way, it will change the way all of us use the Internet. It will divide the web into groups of haves and have-nots.

Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) want to create a two-tiered web. According to Wikipedia “neutrality proponents claim that telecom companies seek to impose a tiered service model in order to control the pipeline and thereby remove competition, create artificial scarcity, and oblige subscribers to buy their otherwise uncompetitive services. Many believe net neutrality to be primarily important as a preservation of current freedoms. Vinton Cerf, considered a ‘father of the Internet’ and co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web, and many others have spoken out in favor of network neutrality.”

Wikipedia goes on to define net neutrality as follows: “Network neutrality (also net neutrality, Internet neutrality) is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and governments on content, sites, platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and no restrictions on the modes of communication allowed.” Ian Paul wrote in the online edition of PC World that “Network neutrality is the principle that broadband providers should not be allowed to discriminate or restrict Web traffic based on its content.”

The bottom of those advocating net neutrality is that the Internet should remain like it is currently. Open access and no restrictions whether you are paying $10 a month for your access or $100 a month.

Paul goes on to note that what ISPs are asking for is the right to maintain a so-called private Internet to provide new services. Some examples of what private broadband services could be include health care monitoring, educational services, gaming and other forms of entertainment. This private service would be separate from the regular Internet.

What that means in practice, at least to me, is that some people are going to find that they cannot afford the new services. And that ain’t right.

Think about this from a social media point-of-view. A lot of social media involves video. What happens to a small company who finds that video is the best way to get out their message? Videos take a lot of bandwidth. A lot of ISPS don’t like video because its bandwidth demands. There are discussions about charging more for sending large files. Could a new company afford to market itself with a higher priced web?

One of the great things about the Internet is how it has given people who have never had a voice before a chance to say something. Think of all the governments that have been overthrown because people had ways outside of official channels to communicate. Look how people in this country has used the ‘Net to make themselves heard.

Or it could be as simple as finding out it will cost you more to download music because of the amount of bandwidth it takes. Online gamers might find themselves paying more to access such things as World of Warcraft.

What is particularly scary to me is how wireless access is being left out of the discussion. Earlier this month Google and Verizon released a proposal to maintain an open Internet while creating room for a broadband network of premium services. (my emphasis.) It left wireless out of the verbiage.

Doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Morgan Stanley analysts predict that in five years more people will be going line via wireless access (smart phones) than computers. As the New York Times reported, as ISPs earn more revenue from private services, “they might have less incentive to invest in Internet capacity, pushing more content providers to these special services and creating alternative networks that look similar to cable TV.” And cutting many people out of the best parts of the Internet.

This scares me. It should scare you too.

It surprised me to find out our institutions of a higher learning are just now diving into the social media pool. It’s true that social media as a separate marketing method is only about five-years-old. However, I always look to college campuses as the earliest of adopters. I find it odd that universities are currently almost last to climb into the cutting edge.

Still, although they are late to board, the institutions of higher learning haven’t missed the social media train,  a recent study found.

The study, “Marketing Spending at Colleges and Universities” found that higher education institutions’ interactive and social media budgets are increasing. Between fiscal year 2008 and fiscal year 2009, 55 percent of the institutions allocated more of their budgets to interactive media and 52 percent allocated more to social media.

The study was conducted by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and Lipman Hearne, a marketing communications firm with offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

“People really want to know what kids are reading and how they spend their free time – what is capturing their attention,” Lipman Hearne’s COO and director of research, Donna Van De Water is quoted in the report. “They’re trying to figure out what kinds of communications should move from print to the web. And they’re wondering what kind of language to use. They’re asking, “Should we use a student voice or our own voice?”

It is important to remember almost college students first used every social media application I know of. Student, for goodness sakes, developed Facebook at Harvard for use by other students.

Yet, colleges and universities are just now catching onto the fact that they need to be recruiting using social media?

Of course, people who demand facts and figures run most universities. They want definite empirical proof that something is working. The study does bear that out. It found that institutions that use social media report positive incomes in website hits, search engine positioning and, most importantly, rates of alumni donations.

The study also found something that should be music to a university comptroller’s ears: moderate-to-heavy users of social media spend less per student on marketing. The moderate-to-heavy users spent an average of $83 per student as opposed to the $121 per student that light-to-non-users of social media spent. In addition, 71 percent of those institutions who invested in market research and strategy reported those efforts have a positive effect on the quality of their applicants.

“Students tend to say that they want to hear the university’s voice,” Van De Water said.  “Students know if they’re being talked down to, or if their own voices are being mimicked. That said they still do want to hear a student’s perspective. So an institution needs to know what its own voice is, yet also allow students to represent the authentic student voice. Alumni want to hear a range of voices: faculty, students, other alumni, and the university’s. They understand and appreciate the complexity of the institution and welcome the various perspectives.”

In addition, the increasing use of social media has allowed colleges and universities to cut the amount of money they spend on traditional advertising. Of those institutions that are moderate-to-heavy users of social media, 42 percent spent less on traditional advertising in fiscal year 2009 than in the previous year. Of the overall survey group, approximately one-third spent less on traditional advertising than in the previous year.

So as I long as I am continuing in cliché mode, I guess it is better late than never.

I had an amazing response to the two-part guest blog on why executives hate social media. My weekly readership more than doubled. I did have a few complaints that it was too long or needed better editing. Both are good points.

Nonetheless, it raised a lot of provocative points about the C Suite and social media. I appreciate that all of you took time to read through it. Plus, I had a lot of comments. It was a good debate. Thank you all.