Anonymous Social Collaboration and the Disposable Network

Recently I posted my fave SXSW start-ups. These included Color -- which had barely started up at all before raising $41M in VC funding -- and instant messaging mobile apps such as GroupMe and Beluga.

Color has continued a slow road to hype. Beluga sits patiently waiting for its new owner Facebook to make the next move. GroupMe hit the PR circuit to convince advertisers to sign on.

These companies have more in common than just being group collaboration mobile apps. All have a finite dimension to their social communication. Your Color experience is defined by your location (up to 100 yards around you), while GroupMe/Beluga limit the number of people participating in group pods. This provides an automatic filter to the social experience, preventing the amount of content / communication from getting out of control. It is a nice dose of order to the usually chaotic never-ending social sprawl.

Color's localized photosharing premise is useful within personal social environments: backyard barbeques with friends, in the office with coworkers. Not so sure about using it for bachelor parties. I also see an opportunity for larger public gatherings, such as sporting or music events. These provide context from a location standpoint (everyone physically around you) and a moment-in-time standpoint (everyone at the same event as you).

One drawback is that it's all (literally) crowdsourced content. Sure it might be interesting to see everyone's photos from the south stage at Lollapalooza, at least the first 50 of them. But what if you throw in some backstage photos from the bands? Then you have content with high social currency, plus a nice call-to-action for concert goers to download the app. Don't forget, Twitter seemed to have little redeeming social media value until the famous people started using it.

GroupMe is already taking this approach:

The company created a product called Featured Groups, which works a bit like Twitter's promoted trends in that it suggests topics around which groups can form -- such as Coachella or Bon Jovi -- and appears under a "featured" tab in the GroupMe app. If users form a group around those brands, they can opt in to get special offers, enter contests, sneak previews and event reminders. Since GroupMe's group limit is 25 members, group size stays manageable and based on a user's real-life friends, an important distinction from Facebook pages and Twitter follows, which can grow into the millions depending on the brand's popularity. 

GroupMe/Beluga's main issue is that you are constrained to communicating with people you already know. Your established social networks (Fbook friends, iPhone contacts) are the starting point for creating these small groups. Which works out great if your Lollapalooza friends are all off watching different bands. Not-so-great if you they are standing right next to you the entire time at a baseball game.

These apps have one other thing in common: they are disposable experiences. Color's photosharing stops after the last Lollapolooza encore. GroupMe/Beluga chat pods deteriorate once the group doesn't need to communicate as frequently. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The interactive space set a premise long ago that content should be immortal, even in social media. Every Facebook photo, witty tweet, building check-in, and restaurant review is archived indefinitely. Sure you could delete them anytime, but there seems to be inherent social pressure to keep them. It will be refreshing to leave your social media activities behind with your ticket stubs and used beer cups, guilt-free.

Unfriending the Social Media Director

I love it when fuzzy Dotcom buzzwords become the recruiting job title du jour = New Media Director, Emerging Media Specialist, Technology Evangelist, Digital Innovations Manager. The variations are endless!

I have nothing against specific 2.0 job descriptions. Community managers, mobile marketers, and new channel analysts all have important duties to perform. It is the job titles that don't convey a sense of purpose that drive me crazy.

Currently the most overused title being tossed around is Social Media Director. I stopped counting the number of recruiters pushing this over the last six months. Every company seems to have realized that they can't function without one, must have one, and need them right now.

Here's the most interesting issue: none of them can find qualified candidates. The recruiters are certainly confused. Should they find them at digital agencies? PR agencies? Client-side marketing departments? Is it a strategic, executional, or technical role? Do they report into the PR Director, the VP of Marketing or (God forbid) IT? Senior or mid level?

I love asking exactly what the position manages. The most popular response: "Well, you know, the company really expects this person to define that as part of their on-boarding." Runner up: "Well, um, you know, Facebook and things like that."

Therein lies the issue. If you can't explain the job title's responsibilities, then the title itself is too vague. It reminds me of the Days of the Webmaster (for those of you as old as Interweb dirt). Back in the early Dotcom years, anyone involved with a company's website could be the Webmaster. It didn't matter if you were the technical guy in IT who ran the site, the quasi-artistic woman who designed and hand-coded it, or the poor deer-in-the-headlights project manager who had to keep it updated.

Website Owner = Webmaster

Back then it wasn't embarrassing to have Webmaster printed on your business cards. Trust me, I was one of them. But it also was a pain in the ass explaining to your co-workers exactly what you did all day. "You know, website stuff." It was soon replaced by a variety of titles that actually explained your role = Website Technologist, Web Designer, Content Manager. I am waiting for this evolution to hit the whole Social Media job market.

For instance, Director of E-Commerce is more than a job description. It also explains how your employment success is measured = sell stuff online. There is no reason that these social media job titles can't perform the same duty. Social Commerce Manager makes a lot more sense.

Sure it still may require you to oversee all the quasi-social platforms that can't find a home within your organization. But at least you establish a context for how they should be utilized. Twitter unable to generate revenue right now? Maybe you don't need to worry about tweeting so much.

My bet is on a completely new title = Director of Advocacy. This role definitely expands beyond social media. However, its core essence is rooted there. Why do most marketers find promise in Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and niche community web sites? Why do they spend money on social media listening and flood any industry conference session with the word Social in it?

We are all chasing the same Marketing Holy Grail = consumer word of mouth. The chance to influence consumers, have them talk about us, and track the impact those conversations have on our brands (and sales). Social media has become the easiest way to participate in this magical process.

But Word of Mouth itself is a fuzzy marketing term. I believe it is the bastard step-parent of Viral Marketing. Both promise "free" promotion of your product or brand. Both require a cross-your-fingers-and-hope-they-do-spread-it approach. True, WOM can be jump started with marketing programs. But as many of us interactive marketers have been saying for many years = You can't make something go viral. Just like you can't make something go word of mouth.

But I believe Advocacy is more than just a word of mouth initiative. It is a formal strategy encouraging consumers to say positive things about your products and (more importantly) generate positive content that can be leveraged in marketing programs. Online is a very efficient channel to identify the consumers most willing to talk about you positively. It also is an efficient channel to aggregate the content that they create. Most importantly, it is an efficient channel to promote that content and reach non-users who may be influenced by it. This Advocacy Loop can be built on the backbone of social media properties and consumer behaviors.

I recently presented a case study on Brand-Distributed Consumer Advocacy that demonstrates just that. It is a small example, but enough proof that social media has a very important role.

The best part is that the Director of Advocacy cannot be pigeonholed into just being the Social Media Guru. To be successful, advocacy must be leveraged throughout your owned/earned/paid programs online. It should be utilized across not just online channels, but offline as well. All with a very specific goal in mind.

At least that is my current pitch. It usually results in very short recruiter conversations. But eventually companies will realize it as the natural next step. If not, then I already have my Social Webmaster business cards ready to send to the printers.

The Interweb Unanchored – Decentralization of Brands Online

My parents are from the generation of Americans who still use the Yellow Pages. Not YellowPages.com or the mobile app, but the actual physical printed Yellow Pages which is as thick as… well… a phone book. Ask them for a neighbor’s phone number or local restaurant address and out comes the Big Book of Information.

They aren’t Luddites. They have a computer and online access. If I offer to look it up on my iPhone, it’s almost a race to see who can find the answer first. And to be honest, the yellow book is fairly effective. It may not always be up-to-date, but it is faster than walking to the computer and looking it up online. It is just about as fast as typing into a smartphone. Same content, different access points.

Despite its efficiencies, most people younger than my parents would never think of pulling out a printed resource = phone book, encyclopedia, dictionary. I have been thinking about this a lot recently as I contemplate the future of the Interweb, specifically the role of branded websites. 15 years ago every brand needed a web destination. In the early days there wasn’t a solid rationale, but everyone was doing it and those URLs were going fast. The Dotcom Virtual Land Rush from 1995 – 2000 saw most companies establishing their online turf, investing a significant amount of money into making them a nice place to visit.

People looking for information about your company/product/service? Send them to your website. Want consumers to enter a sweepstakes or get a coupon? Promote that URL on the package. Selling stuff? Remember to add the https to your links. Running online banner ads? Better have a place to send people if they click on them.

The last 5 years has seen a decentralization of Brand Spaces online = social networks, user-generated content, mobile devices, networked TVs and video game systems. These force companies to contemplate life beyond the grounded, controlled brand website. First step was creating mini-brand destinations = Facebook fan pages, mobile sites, Twitter feeds, Youtube channels. But the amount of user-generated and socially-connected content is quickly overwhelming brands and paid search keywords won’t fix it. Brands cannot just stake out land plots and hope consumers stumble onto them. Relegating consumer conversations to your Facebook tab will have limited impact.

I watch people younger than me interact online and it seems the very idea of brand destinations are alien to them. They still want to interact with brands, but on their terms via some type of marketing osmosis that we are just starting to decipher. But it is apparent that they expect brands to find them, not vice versa.

Although there is still a need for branded areas to aggregate content, distribution of that content is becoming crucial. Social networks have paved that path. At some point search engines will have to focus on delivering content to users, not sending users to the content. Mobile and other access devices in the home don’t require entire websites formatted to fit their screens, just their content. Your brand site will transform into a data repository feeding the rest of the Interweb.

Brand sites are destined to become Yellow Pages 2.0. Many companies will fight this trend and pump dollars into maintaining them, redesigning them, and attracting people to them (and wondering why their traffic continues to decline). Your Facebook tabs and Youtube channels are next. I give it 5 years for the transition to become apparent. In 10 years, the only people visiting brand sites will be old people like me. Start planning your exit strategy now.

Celebrating a Shark-Free SXSW 2011

So I finally recovered from SXSW -- an entire week filled with meat, free beer, marathon interactive sessions, and great loud music. I was a bit concerned going into this year's festivities. Attendance for the interactive portion was up 40% to 18,000 people, anyone reserving a hotel room starting in January was stuck staying 30+ minutes out of town, and big brands were sponsoring everything from the convention center to free taco trucks. If SXSW was going to jump the Miller Lite shark in a Chevy Volt full of Pepsi Max, then this was the year.

Fortunately Austin didn't disappoint. More crowded? Yep. More parties with free music and beer? Yep. More trouble finding a lunch spot that didn't require a 30 minute wait? Yep. The only thing geekier than walking around Austin wearing a SXSWi lanyard? Wearing one while standing outside the pop-up Apple Store to buy a brand new iPad2.

I found the conference sessions just as stimulating and interesting as 2010. The post-session beer sessions with my interactive peers were the perfect nightcap as your brain swelled from innovation overload.

For the second year in a row I avoided most of the advertising/marketing sessions and went for the fringe topics = nonprofit social advocacy, location-based APIs, user-generated gaming. Discussions about crowdsourced digitization of historical photos -- in a room full of museum curators and librarians -- was relevant to any marketer: How do you manage user-submitted content efficiently, without micromanaging the process but ensuring quality?

Sometimes you ended up debating sock puppet-based transmedia marketing experiences (Ethics of Pervasive Fiction). Or enjoying IT banter around cloud computing services (who knew Salesforce.com was so funny?) The most annoying emerging trend was digital slackers taking pictures of PPT slides via their cellphones. Too...hungover...to...write...things...down...

Most of these sessions provided unique insights into how non-marketers are using the Interweb. Many which can actually be applied to marketing strategies. You realize that a whole bunch of people still leverage the interactive space for non-advertising purposes. It was nice to gaze at other industries' digital navels for awhile.

So here's my roundup of the cool hip new start-ups, trends, and movements. Impossible to uncover them all, but enough to reassure me that innovation has not stopped at Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare.

Geo-Event-Based Anonymous Social Media

Color (iPhone / Android) is part of a new emerging social category. Here is a summary:

“Rather than friending or following people, a Color user simply posts pictures. Users see pictures posted recently and nearby their current location. This concept seems fitting for events -- say, a sports game or a wedding -- where lots of people who don't necessarily know each other are taking photos of the same thing. If Color is used by a statistically significant percentage of folks, nearly every location that matters on earth will soon be draped in an ever-growing tapestry of visual cloth."

They caused a minor disturbance due to a recent VC infusion of $41 million.

Group Instant Messaging

A new make social networking simple movement is brewing. These apps allow you to create group message lists that don’t require sending/receiving SMS texts (they are sent via the apps). You can easily add people from your Facebook/Twitter/phone contact lists. Sounds really basic, but I found they were useful in Austin to keep track of people and coordinate meet ups. They also allow group members to invite others into the "pod," thus allowing an interesting two degrees of separation social network to form.

Probably not something you would use all the time. Can suffer from “chatroom clutter” if too many people are invited to participate. They require everyone to have the app installed, which is the biggest weakness. The leaders:

Beluga
“Beluga offers a mobile app and web service that enable simple, instant, and rich group messaging from your phone. Use Beluga to plan a night out or just share updates and photos with your close friends and family. Like SMS, it’s instant. Like email, everyone’s in on the conversation. Best of all, it’s private.”

They were just bought by Facebook

GroupMe
“Start groups with the people already in your contacts. When you send a message, everyone instantly receives it—it’s like a private chat room that works on any phone.”

The Democratization of Video Game Creation

GameSalad
GameSalad believes that video games have become too complex and expensive to create. They developed a visual game builder that allows anyone to make their own video games, without understanding programming and graphic production -- object-oriented gaming. Could result in a new breed of amateur games that redefine the industry. Or just a bunch of crappy games that no one wants to play.

Crowdsourced TV

CurrentTV's Bar Karma is a fully-produced TV show whose episode plots are determined via crowdsourcing:

“You decide the creative direction for Bar Karma, and that process starts right here. You can contribute to anything from the episode's overall story down to what the characters are wearing. It's up to you. Impress the Bar Karma producers and community with your suggestions, and your name just might end up in the credits.”

The plot is developed based on user submissions and alterations. CurrentTV then selects the final plot and produces it. The Storymaker plotline builder was developed by the guy who created The Sims and Spore.

Geo-Location Mobile Gaming

I found the start-up mobile game company Dokogeo really exciting. They hosted the session titled Beyond Check-Ins: Location Based Game Design (presentation audio).

They have two games that mash up physical space with game play, in ways that are much more interesting than a basic Foursquare-style “check-in for points” game. Both utilize Google Maps and your phone’s GPS to incorporate your physical location into the experience.

Seek N Spell is an app that mixes up Scrabble, scavenger hunts, and tag. After downloading a Google Map of your immediate location, the game drops letter tiles around the area. You then race from spot to spot, picking up the tiles and spelling words. The person who spells the most (and longest) words wins.

Dokobots could define a huge new “endless game” trend. It is a geocaching Tamagotchi game that covers the entire earth with game pieces. Here are two good summaries = 1 | 2.

You walk around collecting robots and batteries from the live map based on your actual GPS location. Your robots travel with you, you can take pictures with them, mark locations that they have “visited”, etc. Then you can drop them off at any time. If someone else picks up that robot, then they can see all of its pictures and travels. You can also track the robots that you dropped and see how other people used them (like those traveling garden gnome photos).

I found it easiest to pick up objects while driving around in a cab, but walking is just as rewarding. It just launched three months ago. I find the concept fascinating and something that my kids would become instantly addicted to.

Collaborative Creativity

4Chan creator Christopher Poole's keynote speech also made your brain hurt (summary | presentation audio). If you haven't checked out the site, then do it from home. It's not safe for work, kids, small animals, or anyone on probation. But the idea of real-time user-generated disposable Internet memes is about as pure as the Interweb gets. He also unveiled his new slightly-less-likely-to-get-you-arrested collaborative site called Canvas, which is currently in invite-only beta.

A bit more safe for work is the collaborative time waster Fridge Magnets. It is a visual chat room where you try to build words out of letters, while others on the page try to do the same. Sometimes playful, sometimes aggressive, sometimes downright creepy.

The Music Industry Isn't Dead Yet

Yes, there is still music at SXSW. You have to tolerate stepping in drunk hipster as you rush from bar to bar, but it is worth the hassle to see awesome bands who you have never heard of. Here's my shortlist of great live shows:

1. Typhoon
2. David Wax Museum
3. A Place to Bury Strangers
4. Local Natives
5. Gold Panda
6. Surfer Blood
7. Pains of Being Pure at Heart
8. Casio Kids
9. Strfckr
10. Night Beats
    

Without a doubt the event will be even larger next year, but I still recommend attending. Just bring your shark jumper, book your hotel room this July, stay away from the street pizza, and see a couple bands while you are there.

Need More Puppies!

2011's Mobile Killer App

It's the time of year when everyone publishes their 2011 Internet Predictions. I might as well start with Mobile.

2010 has actually been the Year of Mobile. First, this requires that we stop making fun of everyone who predicted it last year. Second, it requires that we actually figure out how to fit mobile into our marketing programs.

The Mobile Hype of the Year award was easily won by location-based social networking: Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, Twitter Locations. Some marketers experimented with it, while the majority waited to see if anyone would actually use it.

According to Pew, only 7% of mobile users check-in anywhere. This isn't the mass audience required for mobile to be an effective marketing tool, although it hasn't stopped the Location Czars. Yelp now allows businesses to offer special promotions/offers to users who check-in. Foursquare is playing the loyalty card angle. Gowalla offers custom sponsorships of digital rewards. Facebook is testing Deals.

What about QR codes? These are the little square symbols showing up all over magazines and outdoor advertising. They are big in Japan. The idea is simple: take a picture of the symbol with your phone, send that image to the Interweb, and receive specific content back (video, text, link to mobile site). At least it sounds relatively simple until you realize that you first need to download a QR code reader to your phone -- of which there are many apps to pick from.

It doesn't help that Microsoft developed their own custom QR code format requiring their own proprietary mobile app, which they are aggressively promoting through print media partnerships. Anyone who lived through the Netscape/IE/AOL browser wars in the 90s knows how this will end. Nothing drags out technology adoption and stifles consumer usage like competing technologies that all do the same thing.

Consumers are Technolazy. They don't want to learn how to do something new. They don't download and install things without a real good reason. It isn't a surprise there are no published case studies on QR marketing programs. Its most effective result is freaking out your competitors and making them spend time rushing to launch their own QR-enabled print ads.

Mobile commerce has its place for some marketers, but only 20% of retailers currently offer it. Recent research shows that mobile has its largest opportunity in the aisle as a final point of purchase influence:

• More than one third of smartphone-carrying consumers (who represent 24% of all U.S. consumers) are ready to use their mobile devices in ways that transform how they shop everywhere and, in particular, how they shop in retail stores.

• New behaviors facilitated by mobility, all of which can take place in stores, include searching for price and product information, checking merchandise availability, and comparing prices at nearby stores, browsing product reviews, and purchasing goods.

• Consumers using multiple channels sequentially as they move from Web to store will give way to concurrent omnichannel behaviors as consumers bring their comfortable use of m-commerce with them into the store. These new behaviors will exert pressures that weaken the store's immediate influence on purchase decisions "at the shelf."

Influencing in-aisle purchase decisions is the Holy Grail for marketers and the reason so much money is spent on shelf talkers, hang tags, and end caps. Mobile offers the ability to deliver content to consumers in-store, without being subjected to the retailer's promotion restrictions and costs. Marketers should focus their mobile efforts on delivering branded content in this environment.

The majority of mobile users plan to leverage their phone to compare prices and read product reviews. This could provide enough value for even the Technolazies to try it out. There are already a couple apps available to scan UPC codes and receive competitive pricing, although they also suffer from the QR Code Clutter adoption barrier.

Amazon just upgraded their iPhone app with UPC scanning/price checking capabilities. eBay recently acquired RedLaser, which will allow their apps to do the same thing. Enabling existing apps with these features will be much more successful, since users won't need to download anything additional. Their success is only limited by the number of users who have them installed.

Which brings me to the Killer Mobile App for 2011 = Facebook. Yeah, I know, Facebook was the killer mobile app of 2010. They already have the largest penetration and usage of any mobile app. Their users are already accustomed to interacting with the real world via their phones (taking pictures) and uploading images via the app. Introducing new techno-functionality is as easy as the next app upgrade.

Facebook is in a unique position to push any mobile technology they want. It doesn't mean everyone will use it. How many of your Fbook friends have checked into a Place recently? But enabling a consumer behavior that is already ingrained -- in-aisle mobile information -- is much easier than trying to create new ones.

In order to avoid being trumped by the Next Big Internet Thing, Facebook must expand their reach beyond a big website. Don't scoff, AOL, Yahoo, MySpace, and GeoCities all thought they were irreplaceable also. Mobile is a natural for reaching consumers beyond their computers. Facebook is a natural for reaching consumers with mobile.

Facebook has been very public about their intent to not rely on advertising dollars as a revenue source. Even less so for mobile advertising. Mobile commerce could become Facebook's killer revenue stream. Maybe direct sales (but probably not). Maybe commissions based on mobile shopping referrals (more likely). But offer marketers the opportunity to influence purchase behavior in-store? That provides a social ROI that would actually be worth spending money on.

Relegating Banners to the Kids Table

My former colleague Scott Johnson and I have an ongoing competition to determine who hates online banner advertising the most [Scott's latest volley, mine]. We love online media. We just think banner ads are an archaic format for advertisers. It's amazing how little they have evolved since 1994.

Everyone seems to take it for granted that banners must be the cornerstone of an online campaign. Media agencies assume they are expected to buy them, marketers assume they are expected to pay for them, creatives assume they have to animate them. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, they are like the guy who keeps showing up at family holiday gatherings over the years. He's always been there so we keep letting him in the door, even though he may not be related to anyone and we really hope he doesn't sit next to us.

It doesn't help that our industry is built on the backs of banners: publisher site revenue, 3rd party media reps, ad networks, rich media vendors, measurement companies, behavioral targeting specialists, real-time reverse-auction bid systems run by rocket scientists... The list goes on. Heck, even Google recently placed bets that banners will drive their business forward.

All in the face of declining clickthrough rates (see Mr. Johnson's bashing) and plummeting CPMs. According to Adweek, 1.3 trillion banner impressions in Q3 this year? That's a whole lot of clutter. It is good to know that the "success" of this influx of banner media is exactly why CTRs are so crappy:

According to “Standard Banners—Non-Standard Results,” it was the success of online display ads that caused the drop in clicks to begin with. As users saw more and more ads across the internet, many continued clicking, but not fast enough to keep up with the expanding inventory. Clickthrough rates fell steadily until reaching an equilibrium.

This is the most blatant banner denial that I have seen in a long time, but at least the research report came with charts. I still hold to my theory that the majority of online consumers ignore the non-clicked banners anyway.

Behavioral targeting has long been touted as the savior for banner media. Hey, if we can at least serve you banners that we think you are interested in, then maybe you will actually acknowledge their existence. Unless, of course, we aren't allowed to (courtesy of the NY Times):

After “do not call” lists became popular, more than 90 percent of people who signed up reported fewer annoying telemarketing calls. Now, privacy advocates are pushing for a similar “do not track” feature that would let Internet users tell Web sites to stop surreptitiously tracking their online habits and collecting clues about age, salary, health, location and leisure activities.

Online privacy issues are as old as the banner ad. They have been a constant drone in the media and something most consumers claim they are concerned about. Facebook's recent user data leaks only add fuel to the topic. For most of us, the need to delete browser cookies or reject Facebook application requests is greatly outweighed by our desire to play Mafia Wars and not have to remember website passwords.

But give me a chance to opt-out of having anonymous site usage info collected by marketers? Not exactly sure what that means, but I also hate telemarketing calls so sign me up! Those ad units would probably set a record for engagement rates. Which in turn would guarantee the death of behavioral targeting and all the companies whose revenue flow depends on it.

But what to do with all those media dollars? How about using it to pay media sites to create branded content for you. Not just sponsored content, but content created from your creative brief. And guess what? Those same media sites are pretty good at distributing that content for you as well, which gives new meaning to the term added value. I hate banners less if I'm not paying for them.

The demise of banner advertising is coming. Scott and I aren't the only ones who think so (requisite Wired link, read the last paragraph). You can huddle in your bomb shelter with your stockpile of backup GIFs and pretend it isn't happening. Or join us in our revolution. The future will not be clickable.

The Simple Challenge

Pssst! Listen up. Here's the most important lesson that I've learned in the last two years on the client side:

Interactive marketers make things
way too difficult for themselves

We have a tendency to put together complex digital strategies that beget complex user experiences, which in turn beget complex creative solutions, which then require complex measurement programs. All in a channel that is already overwhelming for the traditional marketers who pay most of our bills.

It's no wonder brands haven't migrated more marketing dollars online. It is just so damn complicated to explain. I worked with a great offline GCD awhile ago, who I started dragging to client interactive presentations. His summary of our Interweb world converted me:

When I present a print ad concept, I don't have to first explain
how paper is made, how a print press functions, and the

200 different ways someone might read a magazine.

If you can't present your digital strategy in 5 PPT slides, then it is too complicated. If it takes 10 minutes to describe how an interactive ad/game/viral social app will work, then it is too complicated. If your online promotion requires more than 2 clicks to engage with, then you need to make it more simple. If your measurement dashboard is set at 8 pt type to fit on the screen, then simplify it.

Don't worry, simple doesn't mean you aren't doing your job. Your clients will love you for it. It makes their lives more simple as well: They can actually explain it to their boss. They can cut the creative review meetings in half. The odds of consumers actually engaging with it (and not publicly bashing it on the brand Facebook wall) will be much better.

As an agency, your life will be more simple also: Less production hassles, less account management anxiety, 10 minute measurement report meetings. And you will probably get paid the same amount for the project.

Here is my ultimate personification of simple. No instructions required. Takes 30 seconds to figure out. Completely addictive.

Try it out

Public Displays of Promotion

There are a few common truths when it comes to social marketing promotion programs:

1. Consumers love free stuff
2. Free stuff is a great way to attract consumers to your social spaces and reward those already connected with you
   
3. Consumers get mad when they can't get their free stuff
4. Social media is the perfect place for them to complain about it

There is nothing more painful than watching a brand's social promotion go awry. Between my own programs -- and following other marketer's promotions -- it seems any type is fair game. Online coupons, sweepstakes, and contests all have the potential to attract the haters.

Sometimes online coupons don't print correctly. Sometimes consumers are too dumb to enter a contest correctly. Sometimes (actually more frequently than you expect) your well-planned and orchestrated promotion is just too complicated for consumers to interact with.

Whatever the cause, social media provides a very public space for them to express their outrage. It doesn't help that places like the Facebook Wall overtly encourage other haters to pile on the criticism. Misery loves company, crowdsourcing becomes crowdcomplaining. Compounding this is the fact that your VP of Marketing can watch it unfold in real time. Assuming they even know that you have a Facebook page.

These Public Displays of Promotion require marketers to take extra care when planning and executing programs. You must be ready to deal with the vocal minority of complainers. They will show up eventually.

The following are my Guiding Principles for Managing Social Promotions. They are tuned towards Facebook, since that is where we execute the bulk of our programs. They can be adapted to any place where you can be publicly flogged.

Preparing

1. Your program will spawn haters. Doesn't matter how simple or straightforward it is. Someone will find something to complain about. Ensure you have clear user guidelines and T&Cs on your Facebook page that state what types of user comments can be deleted.
   
   
2. Prep your Consumer Relations team about the promotion, even if they are not involved in moderating your Facebook Wall. A pissed-off consumer's resourcefulness is amazing when it comes to getting free stuff. 1-800 numbers or Contact Us email addresses are only a quick Google search away.
   
   
3. Pre-announce a promotion start date at your own risk. You will quickly attract an angry mob if that sampling form isn't ready at 6 AM on the day you promised.
   
   
4. Establish clear roles for watching your Wall after a promotion starts. Especially over the weekend. Murphy's Law states all online coupon inventory shall be depleted on a Saturday afternoon.

Activating

1. If you pre-announced the promotion date, then launch it at midnight the night before. Seriously. Making it live "sometime that day" won't cut it. There must be a promotion countdown ticker synced with the atomic clock somewhere.
   
   
2. Don't launch it on a Friday, unless you have a robust process for managing issues over the weekend.
   
   
3. Keep It Simple. No multi-step processes or fancy interactive modules.

Managing The Impending Chaos

1. Be prepared to address common user issues or complaints. Deputize the person or agency managing your Wall to respond immediately to these. It often will halt comments from other upset users.
   
   
2. Don't delete any complaints unless they violate your user guidelines (see Preparing above).
   
   
3. Often the community will police itself, and other users respond to complaints before you do. Watch these conversations to ensure they don't turn into a good old fashion flame war.
   
   
4. If complainers pile on, then limit the public exposure on your Wall:
   --Change the Wall default view to Brand Only until the fury dies down. Users can still select the option to also view what other Fans have posted, but this will limit most of the views.
   --Prepare a group of new Wall posts to flood it after the conversation dies down. This will push negative posts off the first page view. People can still view them, but they need to make an effort to see them.
   
   
5. Remind your boss, Consumer Relations, PR agency, and family members that this is only short term and will pass. Usually in a day or two. If they really freak out, then find a couple other marketing promotions on Facebook where the exact same issues are occurring. It happens on almost all of them.

Closure

1. Write a status post announcing the promotion is finished. This helps prevent late comers from posting about how they can't find it. This happens often when coupon blogs continue linking to your page post-program.
   
   
2. If late comers do complain, then respond with a comment explaining it is finished. This can help prevent piling on.
   
   
3. If you are announcing the winner of a contest, then be prepared for the entire complaint process to start all over again. Some people just hate it when others win free stuff instead of them.