The Rantings of an Advertising Lunatic

When I say can social media benefit companies, I mean companies that add social media as part of their marketing strategy. The companies that set up Facebook pages or Twitter accounts are the ones that I am talking about here.

Talk to anyone who has any knowledge of social media and they will say that you have to create a personal identity in order to promote your business. My question is if you establish a connection with all these people and you move to another company, will they move with you? Hmmm. Can the company just plop someone in your place? I think not.

I don’t think that vehicles like Facebook, Twitter and all their offspring are bad. I’ve seen many of the people I follow get new jobs and new opportunities because of the work they do with social media. What I do think is that for companies who are trying to catch lightning in a bottle with social media, they will find only limited success.

It really is about good products and people who believe in your brand. These are the companies that benefit from social media. Let’s look at Apple. How may Facebook pages does Apple have? Or blogs? Or Twitter accounts? Exactly. They are the most tight lipped corporation out there and they are kicking every one else’s butt! Is there a company who “embraces” social media that has that kind of following? Google? Maybe, but is it the company or the people who use their products.

Social Media is for people interacting with people. To try to make that connection as a company just doesn’t make any sense. It is like socializing with a piece of paper. I believe that you can promote a company that you are not affiliated with via social media, but to pay someone to do it is only giving that person credibility. That person will develop a personality and make “friends”. If that person says “I’m moving on”, I’m nearly positive that the questions will be “Where are you going?” and not “Who will take your place?”

To force your influence on people as a company will not build brand loyalty, only their belief and their trust in the product will. I feel that companies engaging in social media are putting window dressing on a dilapidated ranch and calling it new and innovative. If they have products that are good enough, there will be no need to engage in social media, social media will engage you.

I was reading my copy of The Week and in a matter of a half-hour I was “caught up”. I realized that this is a printed version of a RSS aggregator. Could this be how printed media survives in the next ten years? Taking the most relevant from many different sources and collecting them together in a summary of the days or weeks events? Yes, it could put a whole bunch of columnists and beat reporters out of work, but will it? I say that the cream will always rise to the top. These same writers will set up their blog and continue doing their work. The best writing and the most insightful will get paid to have their work syndicated. The caveat is that they can work for not just one but many different papers.

I understand that the top columnists can do this same thing now, but usually columnists have a very narrow focus of expertise. To get variety in their paper, these newspapers will acquire news from different writers to fill out the paper. The best part about it is that most blog posts are short. Most bloggers know that reading a long post on-line can be hard. Writers will be trained to get to the point faster and more concisely. This will give more opportunity for contrasting views on a story as space won’t be as limited. The winner will be the reader and the papers will benefit as well.

The papers will be able to sell more targeted ads as Google takes over their advertising sales. A whole new way of selling ads will begin. I can already place ads in local newspapers through Google. The papers can eliminate staff which will increase profits immediately. Content will also get better which means more demand.

The idea of bringing a laptop on a train or in the bathroom, for that matter, and reading different blog posts can be cumbersome. The idea of holding a printed piece of paper has its benefits. Knowing that you can have delivered to your doorstep quality concise news will be appealing to most. I like the Wall Street Journal but I don’t have time to read it. The articles tend to be long tomes on a topic. I usually only have about 30 minutes at most to read anything. If I can get the whole newspaper in 30 minutes of reading then I am good. If I can get the best of the the Journal, the Star Ledger, the New York Times and other local newspapers in an easily digestible, 30 minute read then you can have my money.

So my prediction is that the newspapers are the last to the party, but they will find a way to monetize all the content that we get for free. I know it seems ironic, but as much as we are becoming an on-line, always connected society, there will always be those times when we want to unplug but still stay informed. This is where the newspapers will always fit in. I love my laptop but I highly doubt that I will bring it to the beach to read the headlines. Sure I can get an iPhone or Blackberry but if I set it down to take a swim I will much more upset if it gets taken than my $1.00 newspaper. Besides, I can always pick up another copy for $1.00.

Microsoft, Verizon Gunning for Apple Marketshare with New Hardware Releases

I saw this article today and it made me think that sometimes these companies don’t think about their consumer. They offer different features, but is it what the consumer wants? The answer is, quite frankly, no.

Microsoft released it’s version 2 of the Zune and Verizon announced that it will go head to head with the iPhone with it’s new, LG Voyager. All I have to say is whoopee do! Microsoft adds Wi-Fi into the mix and Verizon added a QWERTY keyboard. OK, I say wrong and wrong.

Microsoft, if you can here me, we don’t care about wi-fi, we want DRM free music. We want ease of use and we want to own our own music. We want a standard format that we don’t have to repurchase every piece of music we just bought because we just switched and your flavor of the month DRM scheme is different from the next guys. I don’t care to share with my friends if they have to buy the music eventually. Let me spread the excitement about an artist easily. Free samples equate to purchases just ask any bakery this side of Redmond. I’m not suggesting that you can share a whole library but a few songs can’t hurt.

As for you Verizon, I have one word for you… applications. Most people who have an iPhone don’t complain about the keyboard, they complain that they can’t install third party applications. By adding a QWERTY keyboard, you are not answering the real need, customization. If you want an iPhone killer, open your product to application developers. Scratch that, romance these application developers. Why are the Treo and Blackberry so popular? Because you can customize and install the applications that you need to be productive and/or entertained. A closed system is a dead system.

Verizon and Microsoft please see Amazon for your next lesson in iKillers. They got it right. Create a music store that is compatible with any player on the market, make the quality better and just for kicks, make the product cheaper. I’ve already bought an album that is not on the iTunes music store and the experience was great. The songs downloaded and went right into iTunes then onto my iPod. Bang! Make it easy, make it simple and most of all give the people what they want. Then and only then can you beat Apple at their own game.

Must I think of everything?

You ever have one of those “Duh” moments? Thanks to a Tweet from Chris Penn of the Financial Aid Podcast and a follow up post, I finally figured out what is missing from RSS… email client integration.

Yes, I know that there are plug-ins for Outlook and Thunderbird does it automatically, but it needs to be integrated at the system level. For example, like the mailto HTML tag automatically opens the default email client when you click on it. RSS needs to be a built in, don’t have to think about it, one-click solution… click…subscribed. Downloading a plug-in or using an open source mail client is not for the technotards of the world. When a person clicks on the little RSS icon, it just has to happen.

Here’s a another idea, feeds can come pre-installed. A whet the appetite type of thing. How about a RSS basics feed that people can read? It could even be a revenue generator for Apple or Microsoft. How much would you pay to be on millions of computers when they boot up?

The other issue is sharing. You should be able to click on a forward button and the link and RSS feed gets sent to another email client that knows what to do with it. The great thing would be if you wouldn’t have to upgrade the RSS standard to achieve this.

I look at my Google Reader and it is at a constant (1000+). Why? Because I sometimes don’t think to look at it. If it was in my email client which is always open, I could easily sift through the feeds. Heck, take it a step further. How about Smart Folders that filter content that I want to view? My point is that RSS needs to be treated like email or it will continue to be the bastard stepchild of social media, which is a shame.

So Apple and Microsoft, I look to you to help save RSS. It is your duty as a creator of operating systems. You hold the power and I implore you to use it.