socio-lazy beings

How many phone numbers can you say you actually know by heart? If you are like me, you probably remember your home number, maybe your office number and your direct extension and perhaps a few 1-800 branded numbers from the radio jingles you hear in the car.

Today, everything is geared towards saving time, making things easy and convenient. But at what cost?

Most people hardly remember their wife’s number. There is no need to with cell phones and their digital index card. There is no need to memorize anything but your wife’s name. Actually, you don’t even need to remember that, you just need to make sure to remember what icon you’ve assigned her or have her photo appear when she calls you.

Cell phones have made us irreversibly lazy and changed basic human interactions forever.

And what about location based services? More and more people tell me “just give me the address and I’ll get there.” Unfortunately, it is not because they are so geographically adept. Quite the opposite. With a GPS, they still need directions from the parking lot to the meeting room, but that’s about it. They are “geo lazy” and that is having a significant impact on behavior. They drive today with tunnel vision unaware of what road they are on, not noticing much about where they are going since they feel no need to take mental notes. The GPS will get them to their next destination and they are free to think about other things. Some would say that is great – a more efficient use of time. I say it lends to making people less aware and dulls their common sense. Roads and human behavior are dynamic. When someone arrives late to a meeting with me with a lame GPS excuse, I tag them as geo-lazy and they automatically lose a lot of points with me.

So what about Social Media? Those who use it think they are oh so cool. Those who don’t think those who do are oh so smart and savvy. But are we all becoming socio-lazy beings? Our kids get are like addicts seeking a constant feed of Facebook, IMs and SMS’s. Research shows that there is a surge in dopamine with online interactions and activity, almost like in real world interactions. However, the confined, inhuman Facebook environment make this social experiment scary. Millions of people, right now, are neglecting a legacy of thousands of years of face to face interaction shaped through evolution. They have traded it in for “like” buttons, smileys and LOLs. Should we care? Can we fully comprehend the impact of this social laziness on society yet?

Before we wait for the research, which I promise will point to the need for balance in our life — at least until we eventually evolve into beings that do not need muscle tone, human touch or other sensory stimulations — then we should ensure our kids have that balance and not leave them to figure out the limits on their own. As digital natives, they are not aware there is another world out there. Leading technology tools are already available to help us contain online social time. Shouldn’t we assure our kids Facebook diet is balanced socio-lazy beings with some real face to face interactions before social interaction is changed forever ?

On the other hand, it seems like there is a belief that anyone can go online and reach their goals if they just spend a few months learning, reading and hiring some reasonably priced developers, designers, writers – or whatever. The modern day gold rush.

I meet lots of  people from the latter group (#2). And it never ceases to amaze me how naive they can be. To be fair, in many cases they are simply highly budget sensitive and trying to bootstrap on a shoestring. On the other hand, there are still companies in Israel, who seem to think that they can compete internationally with companies that take their Internet planning and marketing seriously.

It’s not just that these companies don’t take their online marketing seriously enough, they actually believe that running forward, saving a dollar here and there and not spending any time to plan, is the way to go. They give the online marketing to their MarCom manager to handle. They raise their eyebrow at him or her if he has the hutzpa to suggest he may need some outside help to plan their online strategy and then they wonder why, if they have their very own Twitter account, Facebook fan page, blog and $15,000 web site — business isn’t booming. Some will actually conclude that the Internet is just not the right place to invest – since they already spent a whopping $25,000 and leads and sales did not come pouring in. Others, just may realize they need to get serious.

I get calls all of the time telling me — “I hired this guy to program, the other guy to SEO and whats her name to design my site. But its all a mess. What should I do?”  I’ll usually ask — can I see the spec defining what you wanted? Who managed the project? There is usually silence at the other end. Then I explain that it sounds like they need some serious damage control but there are not many people out there willing to take such work on — cleaning up someone else’s mess. Why? Because it usually involves more work than starting over and the client who gets himself into such a mess is usually not the kind of client who understands that he has to pay for that.

Bottom line – if you don’t plan your online presence and align it well to a real internet marketing strategy, and hire a team that knows what you expect of them, managed by someone who has the ability to see the big picture . . . you will run into problems.

Still don’t believe me? Think of it like building your own house in Israel. You need to understand the bureaucratic process that is required to get permits. You need to have a blue print of the house plan. You need engineering plans. You need interior decoration plans. Etc. You can hire a project manager – someone who knows how to coordinate all of the needs, hire the right people, ensure the contractors are synchronized, etc. And it will cost you more. Or you can do what lots of Israelis do and save money. I can pick out those houses from a mile away. We have friends who did this and you can actually smell their house from a mile away — no one made sure the plumber put any ventilation in. Each contractor they hired did not work according to a professional plan – each one did what was easiest for them, knowing there was no one overseeing their work. Water enters the house through every light fixture, doors don’t close properly, an iron beam stands in the middle of the house to support weight from the second floor that was not planned for . . . Does this sound like your web site?

Actually, I am not a social media consultant or social media expert, at least I would never introduce myself that way. I know a whole lot about social media and how it can fit in, or not fit in, to an overall Internet marketing mix. And Dror knows even more than I do.  But when a company jumps on the bandwagon and without any clear goals or strategy, decides it needs a Facebook fan page or Twitter account, count me out. It’s probably not a client I could end up pleasing. Why? Becuase I would be honest with them, even if it cost me getting a job. Ween a CPA tells me he wants his own Fan page, I am compelled to tell him that CPA’s don’t have fans. Sorry to all the accountants in my family. But I could probably come up with some much better ways for him to achieve his goals

When a company is seeking how to leverage the internet for risk management, media exposure, standing out from competitors, improving and expanding message delivery, etc. etc. count us in.

I’ve been saying it about SEO and now I’ll say it about social media — these are all tactics and without an overall, solid, well thought out online marketing strategy, nothing much will come of it.  It’s great that today you can readily higher a guy in Pakistan to SEO your website by writing to everyone and his mother to place a link to your site from their site. Heck, you can hire a woman in Southern Spain to create a Twitter account and tweet your content in Spanish all day (I’ve done it when an LA Medical institute we worked with needed to reach out to the large Spanish speaking population of LA). But at the end of the day, you need to be sure that it is somehow serving your goals and that it is doing so effectively.

So when should you jump on the social media bandwagon? When you have some goals for what your Internet marketing efforts should bring you and you can use the social media tools that exist today to help you achieve those goals. Imagine that you can use social media to understand where a certain customer group is most sensitive and then provide them with the solution they were seeking from your competitors. Imagine that you can use social media to get the word out about a new beta release.  Or imagine that you establish a devoted fan base who love your music that is not yet available to the general public. Some CEO Tweeting what he did this weekend may have been novel for about a day, maybe longer if your CEO is Steve Jobs.

What do banks, realtors, accountants, law firms and your mother in-law have in common?

The answer  – you don’t want to join their Facebook Fan page!

Hold on  - before you start accusing me of being socially-media incompetent, hear me out. I am not a hermit, I do have friends, and some of them are even real. I even admire some people. But only for a very small select group of people (such as Michael Jordan and Sting), would I ever consider to be a devoted fan.

The dictionary defines fan as “an ardent devotee; an enthusiast which is short for fanatic”.  When Facebook designed the “fan” page functionality , they probably had in mind a nifty little feature designed to help their ongoing battle with MySpace, which had experienced great success among artists and musicians. I cannot imagine they envisioned scenarios that included banks, accountants and furniture stores. Their attempt later to correct this with an “official page” and “community page” just proves my point.

Fan worthy example

There is pressure on marketers to create fan pages for their brands today even if their gut feeling tells them there is no added value to do so. I feel the pressure from clients and I want to speak out before the sh*t hits the (Facebook) fan.

What is so wrong with “fanning” your CPA – after all, the guy got you a nice rebate last year? Well, it’s a bit like running into him at the pool. Without his suit and pocket protector, as he stands there toweling himself off and his wife smears Coppertone onto his back, you are standing there thinking, “This guy is incredibly white and out of shape, and now that’s what’s stuck in my head – not his great tax planning skills.” You realize that you were no not supposed to see each other like this

Next time, when you debate whether your brand should have a fan page or not here are some suggested guidelines to consider:

Does your brand have real fans, or at least enthusiasts that can get excited about your stuff? If you are a Coke, Apple, Gap, Carlos Santana  or Green Peace, the answer is easy. However, if you are a mortgage bank during a recession or a mother-in-law or a jewelry store – think twice. There are many other platforms suitable for this type of activity such as Linkedin and Linkedin Groups, professional forums and cafes.

Here are some good examples for appropriate Fan pages:

I thought this fan page is “sponge worthy !”

Well that’s a no brainer

Just trying to plug my favorite musician

Dror worked together with Yagil of in- Design. Yagil has cooperated with WebWhile on several projects over the years and always manages to understand our crazy  thinking and to breath graphic life into our creative concepts.  WebWhile and Coca Interactive are now cooperating on the redesign of the leading web filter software web site and it should be up and running in the coming weeks. Looking forward to reporting on the improved results for bounce rate, click through and conversion on the Optenet PC web filter site as well.

And for all of you still looking for “the best’  SEO companies in Israel because you think you can zoom in on one tactic to solve your online marketing challenges, feel free to talk to Itzik at Interspace. He’ll explain why you need Internet Marketing consulting from experts with lots of experience, a wide understanding of business and how to do business on the Internet and a solid grasp of the web technologies (not hype) that are available and can enhance what you do.

I clearly remember the impact the first time it happened to me. The day Michael Jordan and Spike Lee, sorry, Mors Blackmon, challenged everything we knew about advertising in the early 90’s TV-30-something-landscape, with a pair of Air Jordan Nike shoes. It was fresh, transcended over the early 90’s and took branding far beyond everything I knew about being unique and attention grabbing. The ad stood above every other commercial just as MJ leaped above every opponent, leaving them all in dismay.  It pulled us into Spike’s Lee’s “do the right thing” world, emphasizing black and white, challenging the rules of gravity in TV advertising.

Is it the brand? Is it the brand?

After seeing that commercial for the first time, I was obsessed about trying to re-capture that cool sensation, the excitement that makes you realize that the rules have changed and you are no closer to Kansas than Morris Blackman.

It doesn’t happen every day.  I can think of only a few brands that introduced a new dimension to the way we experienced their vibes. Brands like Apple had success even way before the iPhone, Seinfeld is another one, Google search results,  and of course the movie Avatar. I call these winners “Brands of the New Dimension.”

Marketers have always tried to decipher the formula for recreating Brands of the New Dimension. The truth is that sightings of such success are so rare that it’s almost impossible to recreate them. When my clients ask me what is the formula for creating a killer Brand of the New Dimension I am tempted to tell them that if I knew, I would be too busy drinking tequila on my private Island to answer their silly questions. But since I am not busy on that Island just yet, I can take a moment to point out some common denominators. And I promise not to use abstract words like “vision” or “creativity”.

Brands of the New Dimenion – What Do They Have in Common?

1. None of the Brands of the New Dimension surrender to the “me too” temptation. Instead, being so much ahead of the curve gives them the leverage to ride the wave all the way until the novelty wears out.

2. A strong business model to follow the brand’s promise must be in place. Otherwise the novelty can easily slam into a brick wall faster than you can say “altavista.”

3. Another common attribute is guts. To come up with something that has never been seen before takes balls (ask Michael Jordan).  I can only imagine the creative meetings that took place at Nike during those “30 Something” days and the eyebrow raising and conviction of the gutsy executives entering a new marketing frontier.

Pursuing Brands of the New Dimension is a little like the NASA space race. The huge investment in trying to get far out has many unplanned side benefits for other brands and markets. The new technologies, the new way of looking at things . . . broadens everyone’s horizons and gives us the guts to take our own brands far and beyond.

We’ve been pushing the need for good video to our clients for years already. Just 3 years ago, I recall a large Israel based client saying something like, “Video? Do you really think our clients will want to watch videos on our website?” The answer was – “Yes!!!” The qualifying statement was, “If they are good.”

There is an abundance of really bad video content being uploaded to YouTube by companies. It’s not surprising – look at all the awful written content those same marketing managers are pushing out (many because of some SEO expert telling them to do so or doing it for them). But it’s not just a problem of bad video content. In the many instances where the content is quite good and interesting, it still has no strategy behind it and so does not do as much as it could do to contribute to the marketing goals.

When we built the video strategy for the Aviisha Medical Wellness Institute in Los Angeles
, our goal was to generate awareness and thought leadership for this new venture in the American healthcare market as quickly as possible on a tight budget with limited human resources — in a very, very competitive sphere.

In the case of Aviisha, we found their unique niche, which was to focus on the need of good sleep for overall health. We found that most Americans do not get enough sleep, that sleep disorders are a fast growing problem in America due to changes in lifestyle and weight gain and that most Americans and even many physicians, are not aware of the importance of quality sleep and the symptoms and conditions that can appear as a result of sleep problems. What better way to promote the brand and the position then with educational, informative and entertaining videos?
So as this new company’s management forges forward in establishing itself as a major player, we set ourselves the task of building the foundations for making that a reality. One important element, of many, is the Aviisha YouTube Channel.

We are just at the infancy stage – most of the animation series we produced just went up in the last 24 hours, so we will be closely monitoring the metrics on those. The animations are particularly entertaining and highly professional -thanks to V. Builder, a California based animation company.

Everything is tagged and set up to maximize SEO. But note, first we thought about the content our audience wants and will appreciate – then we thought about the SEO. Not the reverse! And for the most part, the SEO comes naturally, as it does for all the projects WebWhile strategizes for — more on that in another post when I get some time.
These videos will be fabulous linkbait (a good thing). You know how your SEO expert is telling you that they will run a link campaign and you trust him/her to be out there bringing you all kinds of links back to your website? Some of you ask how and what he is doing and others close their eyes and trust. Well, start asking. Because without good content that is truly worth linking back to – then you ain’t gonna get wonderful backlinks, no matter what any SEO consultant or link campaign service is telling you. There is no free lunch. CNN, Fox, major portals in your industry, halfway decent bloggers — none of them are going to link back to you because Makesh or Raji, the sub-contractors hired to get you links – asked. Would you link to something mediocre or awful just because someone asked? And don’t get me started on “link exchange”! Those days are looooong gone.

A great example of a YouTube channel belongs to the Mayoclinic. BTW, most of the videos are made with a flipcam and are not scripted. The now famous piano concert in the Mayo clinic achieved over 5 million views and countless backlinks for the Mayo Clinic lucky social media team – filmed from a patient’s cellphone!

More consumer oriented success stories can be seen on the Harley Davidson channel or Clinique makeup for example. A good failure example? How about the department store, Macys? I can’t believe this is all they could manage since going live 3 years ago!

We still have plenty of work to do, but I’ll try to keep you posted on how it contributes to our overall efforts and the progress we make as we grow the channel.

Just remember, that while lots has changed in the online marketing world in the last few years, the “content is king” motto still holds true today. You want your visibility to grow, your brand recognition to increase, relevant traffic – focus on good content developed under a sensible, solid strategy.