Don't get stuck in a social media rut

Disruption vs. Innovation

In Poke The Box, Seth Godin says, “The only thing missing is your ability to provoke, instigate and discover.”

Well, I have a question for you all: Are you willing to invest the time it takes to discover new opportunities, instigate new ideas, and provoke change? I know, it seems as if some of us have had this conversation before - three years ago.

How does this (recent) blog comment make you feel?  Do you agree? Disagree?

“…better to spend the limited amount of time to marketing and leasing on tools that are 100% up and running. We need to remind ourselves that new technology and platforms are disruptive and disruption can be a groundswell for great outcomes, but more than likely tends to just be disruptive.”

The first thing I thought was that I know plenty of individuals within property management that STILL believe Facebook is a disruption and that it will not lead to any leases or renewals. That belief is rooted in fear – fear of change, fear of disruption, still holding out for the 100% proof. Our friends at RentMineOnline have proven that Facebook DOES work for referrals and leases. Ed knew it would work, even when most of our industry couldn’t believe it!

Innovation leads to disruption, disruption leads to evolution.

“Innovation is not an event, it is a process.” – Guy Kawasaki

The process of innovation is disruptive – especially to those unwilling or unable to invest their time to learn something new. We must ask ourselves if spending a little bit of time to research new ideas, new concepts, innovative technologies and popular programs is worthwhile. I believe that the answer will vary from company to company; but personally speaking, if I am educated in a new tool or process, then that effort is not a waste of my time.

Leaders and early adopters will be the first to fail and the first to succeed. Some people become leaders simply by taking a risk and some require proof. Where do you fit in?

ROI shouldn’t be the ONLY cause for implementing a social media strategy.

Guy Kawasaki has stated that if you wait until everything is perfect, the market may pass you by. Can you afford to wait for perfection? How long is long enough? How much proof do you need? Is it really all about the leases? What about customer service? What about SEO? What about name recognition, PR and branding? Is there any value in having a sense of community?

Case in point: DELL initially focused on customer service when they started using Twitter. They later adapted their strategy to include sharing products and now they have over $6.5 million in sales! DELL isn’t the only company making money from what used to be an unproven new technology. (I realize that comparing DELL and your property management group is apples and oranges, but the concept of trying something new applies to all industries.)

My point is this: Don’t get stuck in a rut – rise above Facebook and try something new. You’ll never know what will work until you try it!

Image Credit: Fit2Play.com

Disruption vs. Innovation in Apartment Marketing originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on January 9, 2012.

Thank you to all of our Facebook fans, our friends, and our customers for helping us achieve this very special milestone! We have a ton of great things coming up in 2012 – stick around and have some fun with us!

Socially Engaged Marketing’s 1st Year In Business originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on December 8, 2011.

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I rarely learn anything new from a social media event anymore. Usually I attend for the opportunity to network, to help connect like-minded friends, or even to speak. But I have to say I really enjoyed the Social Media Masters: Atlanta event yesterday and I left with a list of ideas!

What is Social Media Masters, anyway?

For those of you that haven’t heard about Social Media Masters, you are missing out. This event was produced by Social Media Club and Sensei Marketing and included brilliant speakers like Sam Fiorella from Sensei Marketing, Jonathan Copulsky the author of Brand Resilience and Matt Hicks from Facebook.

I give kudos to Kristie Wells! Kristie puts on a professional, organized event; and all the while shows no obvious signs of the stress she must be feeling. When things didn’t work out as planned she brushed it off with ease stating “We’ll just push through that!”

Anyway, let me share with you a few of my favorite lessons of the day, if you have a few more minutes to spare. If I learned something, hopefully you will too!

7 Take-aways from Social Media Masters:

1. Only 22% of people are passionate about their job – so roughly 80% of people are not. Who is representing your community online? Let us hope it is one of the 22%!

Note from me: If the person isn’t passionate, consider using a different person or inspiring passion in the one you’ve assigned to your social media. BTW: when you outsource your social media, try to find someone who is as passionate about your company/product/brand as possible.

2. Corporate blogs are a MARKETING function… not Public Relations. The goals of PR and Marketing departments for social media use are very different. The Marketing team focuses on leads while the PR team focuses on reputation management. Marketing teams focus on metrics like followers, fans, and the number of comments while PR teams measure by % of positive vs. negative comments and trends in tone concerning brand mentions.

Another note from me: PR departments are great at distributing a properly written branded message across multiple channels. Personality and conversation appear to be discouraged unless “pre-approved.” After what I learned today at Social Media Masters, I can see that others share my opinion that PR has very little place in the social media arena other than observation and measurement. Give your social media over to the marketing team.

3. The main purpose of most blogs is to sell more. “More stuff to more people more often for more money.” This indicates to me that sales should be somewhat involved in the social media process.

4. The top ways you can build success with your corporate blog are to:

• Write compelling headlines. Don’t use “I” or “my” to prevent confusion on Twitter and keep them short for re-tweetability.
• Bring an original viewpoint to the table. Regurgitating other people’s work is boring.
• Have the courage to be imperfect. (Perfect example of why PR shouldn’t be writing your content.)
• Place your name, picture and your own opinions on the blog so people can get to know you as an individual. Businesses don’t blog, people do.

5. Believe it or not, only about 2% of your blog readers will comment. This is why you need to have a large network of readers if you want to inspire conversation. Encourage employees to contribute to your blog via comments and guest posting.

6. People who use Facebook spend 27% of their time on their own news feed. 4% of all time spent online is on the Facebook News Feed. Be creative with your content to attract the attention of your fans by writing compelling updates, putting people FIRST, telling stories, and speaking like a person (ahem, not a press release).

7. The more “likes” a brand has on their page means the more eligible the brand is to appear in news feeds. So get busy creating content worth liking!

Looking back, I cannot remember when I left an event with so many take-aways! I even had to leave early and missed the last 3 sessions! Imagine how much longer this post would’ve been. *wink, wink*  However, I am keeping a few lessons and thoughts to myself for the exclusive benefit of my clients. I need to keep them ahead of the curve!

Let me know what you think in the comments below and please share this post with anyone managing a social marketing strategy. I welcome differing views and opinions as long as they are respectful of others.

7 Things Learned from Social Media Masters originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on August 26, 2011.

Confession: I was personally involved in a Facebook contest.

I’m usually working on the business side of a contest. Here’s my story on what it was like from the other side. The experience taught me several important lessons that could be educational for others as well. This is the longest post I’ve done, and it’s complete with personal insights, timeline of events, the evolution of my thinking and the end results. What this post does not have is ROI, real measurable data or solutions for running your future contests. If you’re not up for a little bit of reading, let me stop you now.

Backstory: How in the world did I get involved in this?

During the Atlanta Apartment Association tradeshow a company, The Bid Shop, asked to take my photo. They said they were having a contest for a $400 gift card. I didn’t really pay much attention at first, and they had a cute logo, so I said sure! Why not, right? I’ve run a Facebook contest before, how hard could this be?

On Thursday I received an email with instructions. Basically, the person with the most likes by next Wednesday at noon wins the $400 gift card. Cool! I actually joined the competition thinking that I would win based on the size of my network. The fact is that I’d established a significant amount of good will over the past 3 years and I planned to cash in. After all, I’ve voted on countless contests and have dedicated so much of my life and time to helping others use Facebook. I thought I would need about 100 votes.

Boy… was I WRONG! (WRONG, WRONG, WRONG)

Evolution of my thinking and contest experience.

In the beginning I posted the link to my wall and sent mass direct messages to all of my Facebook friends with all of the details. At first everyone thought it was spam. No one was “liking” the page or replying to messages. By the end of Thursday I only had 25 likes but no one else had even started yet. But how could I lose, right?

Well, good morning Friday and my new competition had soared past me with 50 “likes.” I checked out her profile and she only had about 140 Facebook friends but that was deceiving.

This is the point at which I realized I wasn’t a shoe-in for this prize. I started putting a little more effort into campaigning and researching my competition. My best results came from trolling the chat feed and going after friends as I saw them come online, “Hey _____! Can you do me a quick favor?” or “Hi ____! I’m in a Facebook contest, can you help?” but many people ignored me.

By Saturday I discovered that my competition had 5 children. Although the size of her online network was small, she was asking for the sympathy vote and it was a hardcore challenge! You could read about it all over Facebook “She needs this, she has a new baby.” “She has 5 kids, help her.” You know, I didn’t want to put myself out there as needy, because I’m not. Maybe I should’ve? Naaahhh… no regrets.

Anyway, this may come as a surprise but I have three teenagers and they really don’t have very large networks. When I tried to remind my oldest daughter to ask her friends to vote, she said, “I did already. Jeez Mom, quit spamming me!” So, I stopped asking my kids for help and switched tactics. Back to the chat I went! All day long I worked at this silly contest.

By now it wasn’t about the money. There is no way that $400 could compensate me for the time I’d invested thus far. This had become a full-fledged experiment and challenge for me; the point at which I went from “I’m in this for the $400.” to “Now it’s an experiment because I won’t be able to keep this up.”

How could I learn from this? What lessons can I share from this experience? What could motivate others to help? How many friendships would I lose in this process? I just couldn’t understand how she could be winning!

I tried copying/pasting a standard greeting and message but that was also ignored by many. In order to be taken seriously, I had to have a conversation with each person that I wanted to vote for me, and start the conversation by asking about them first, “How are you?” “What’s up?” “Hi ___! How’ve you been?” and then wait until it was my turn to tell them what I was doing. Sneaky, I know. It felt wrong, manipulative; I felt dirty. Why continue? Well, I was too far in to give up.

In some cases, I was having a conversation with 5 people at once. I copied and pasted the instructions, but pretty much everything else was manual work. I started asking questions like “Would it inspire people to vote if I shared my winnings?” The resounding answer was “NO!”

My sister sent emails to 50 people, my friends posted on other networks, I was moving along and by Saturday night I was ahead again. Whew! Right?

Ugh, not so fast! Sunday morning I awoke to being behind again. “Who are these people? Vampires?” They’d spent all night collecting votes from people listed in high school and college networks. Well, I have to sleep so that wasn’t an option for me!

I thought I’d try one last tactic. I tried to inspire new likes by proposing to donate 25% of the winnings to a pet rescue charity for a momma doggie, Cupcake, and her 5 puppies. (They’re my favorite charity). I changed my profile picture, posted on Facebook and various other sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Craigslist!

I did see an improvement in responses, but not near what one might expect. By now I’d received a solid “No,” from one friend and a “Please quit soliciting,” from another. I responded to both with a thank you and an unfriend, and a rather frank post to my profile that tells people to unfriend me if they didn’t like my updates.

On Sunday I became moody, feeling a little rejected and hurt by those that ignored me or lied to me about “liking” the page. I realized I was taking this too personally. People have their own lives, right?

So by Sunday night I knew I was done. I had work to do for 2 new clients on Monday and there was no way I could spend all day campaigning. I wish I had the time to learn more and try new tactics, but by now I’d already learned the most important lessons and it only took a weekend of my life…. and I was irritating my network. I sent The Bid Shop notice that I was done on Monday morning.

Results of the contest.

Today at noon the score was 251 to 214. I didn’t win the money but I certainly won an education and experience.

Oh, and please don’t worry about Cupcake. She and her five pups were already sponsored so I donated $100 to the pet rescue charity to use as they need.  Please go “like” their page and donate as well. In hard times it is very easy to forget the animals that get left behind.

Lesson 1. The value of your network may not be the value of your net worth after all.

In reality, it is all about relevance…. not friendship. I was in a personal competition and I was going to win money, but what did that do for my friends?  I used to think that if I had a large network of friends that they would help me in the same way I’ve been helping them. Many of them did, but I had over estimated the value of my relationships online. Subsequently, I have evaluated my network to determine if those relationships were worth the effort I’d been making… but that’s another blog post.

Your lesson: I’ve read this before, and understood it, but I can really FEEL it now, on a personal level – It’s the quality of your relationships online, not the quantity.

Lesson 2. Facebook has reached it’s saturation point.

Facebook users, in general, resent any intrusion into their news feed and feel overwhelmed by the number of requests by friends, games, ads, businesses and brands. When one of my friends said just that, I countered with “You can unlike the page after you vote. The “like” will stay.” Her response was “You should’ve put that in your message.” Sorry about that Bid Shop, but I later started telling everyone to do just that.

This experience has taught me that my customers are truly going to struggle with reaching their audience on Facebook. We will have to be creative and thoughtful, work together even harder to build strategies that are relevant to their target audiences.

Your lesson: The same-old-same-old isn’t going to work. Even though Facebook marketing is fairly new, it has been seriously over-done in a very short period of time. (Like the Macarena.)

Lesson 3. If you’re going to run a contest, make the prize be something relevant to your product.

Let’s calculate.
I’m not sure what their fan count was prior to this contest. Based on the votes in the photo album, I think they gained about 600 new fans. If you take new fan count and divide by the expense of the contest ($100 admin + $400 prize) to get the cost per fan, I’m guessing they spent about .$0.80 per fan. I’m not sure, but perhaps they’ll tell us?

This contest was a success.
The “likes” they received from industry-related personnel that fall within their target audience are valuable, if they can keep them. Right now their feed is full of tweets and I may have to “hide” their updates. Many of my industry friends meet the criteria for what I would consider to be valuable fans, but when they’re filtering out their Facebook news feeds will they still like the page?

This contest was a failure.
Yes, it was both. There are at least 150 middle school, high school and college kids that have “liked” this page. There are plenty of friends and friends-of-friends that also aren’t within the target audience of The Bid Shop. These voters do not know or care about this business they have “liked.” This shotgun audience will hide posts or unlike the page over time.

Your lesson: Evaluate your target audience. What can you offer that will appeal to the audience AND be relevant to your organization? What are you willing to pay per-fan?

From the management side of a similar Facebook contest

I’ve run a similar “liking” contest before, on the Apartment Internet Marketing Facebook page. Each competitor was to upload a testimonial-type video to explain why they wanted to win an all-expense paid trip to the Apartment Internet Marketing Conference. Our four primary goals were to (1) receive videos that we could use in the future to market the conference, (2) to build our fan base and (3) engagement on our new AIM Facebook page and (4) to increase conference registrations.

We succeeded on all four of our goals. We received multiple photos and videos, three of which may be used to promote the 2012 conference during the year. We went from zero to 800+ fans. Industry, conference, and contest related posts were made daily to the page. As for registrations, we can’t credit the contest alone for the 19% increase because there were other marketing initiatives at play, but we do feel the contest significantly contributed.

Side note: both winners of the contest offered monetary rewards, in some fashion, for contributing voters. Perhaps they’ll tell us below how they did it?

But what about terms of service?

Yes, there are rules and regulations regarding Facebook contests. Facebook calls them “guidelines” and we see them broken daily. Enforcement of all Facebook rules seem to be arbitrary. Accounts are deleted simply because someone has a similar name to the future Queen of England. Pages are removed without warning.The rules change on a dime and without warning. This is Facebook’s site and we have zero control.

In the case of the AIM Conference contest above, there was no third party solution that met our needs. We needed simultaneous registrations and voting.  The solutions I found required a lengthy process of submit… wait a week… start voting. We just didn’t have time for that. Next year we’ll be good citizens and follow the rules.

Here is my humble opinion regarding Facebook rules: If you’re fairly new to the site and you haven’t invested much into the page, you may consider taking a gamble. You may win or you may lose, but it isn’t going to break you. However, if you’ve built a page and established an audience over the past year that you cherish, my advice is to NOT take a chance. Only you can evaluate your current situation to determine if the gamble is worth the risk.

In the end…

I cannot complain. I’ve learned a lot, as you can see, about Facebook contests and online relationships. Thank you for taking the time to read about my personal contest experience. I hope this adds insight into your future contest plans and helps you decide, personally, if a participating in a contest will be worth the investment. Thoughts are welcome below.

Case Study: The Other Side of a Facebook Contest originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on May 25, 2011.

First, what in the world is a content farm? According to Wikipedia, a content farm is a company that employs large numbers of  writers to generate content. Although the content is generated by humans, it is typically low in quality and created for the sole purpose of generating higher search engine rankings. This type of content has been compared to fast food, as it is typically produced quickly and made to order with little passion and lack of knowledge of the topic at hand.

Regurgitating content and sharing brief updates will no longer help with search engine rankings on Google. Because Google is determined to reduce the amount of content spam, they are releasing a new on-page spam detection technique. They are targeting sites with duplicate content, shallow or low-quality content.

So, prepare yourself if you have a site that produces low-quality content. Even if you’ve previously established stable Google rankings, you may be just about to lose them. Some companies are reporting 40-60% drops in traffic from Google already.

Image Credit: Taras Kalapun

Google Declares War on Content Farmers originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on January 30, 2011.

Announcing the new brand of Socially Engaged Marketing, LLC.!  More updates on the way soon!

BTW: Please don’t forget to Like SoEngaged on Facebook for social media news, tips, tricks and how-to’s!

You can also follow me on Twitter @SoEngaged or @CharityHisle.

SoEngaged has a brand! originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on December 28, 2010.

Hi everyone!

Times are changing and it’s up to each of us to decide the paths that take us on our journey. I’ve made a decision to move forward and I hope you’ll all come with me!

I’m happy to announce that I’m working on a plan to take everything to the next level. I’ve purchased a new domain: sociallyengagedmarketing.com (currently forwarding to this blog) I’ve also reserved the Twitter handle @SoEngaged.

As you can see, I’m expanding out of apartment marketing. I believe that my experience lends itself to a variety of business models, and I look forward to sharing my journey with you.

Thank you all so much for reading. Be on the lookout for upcoming changes in 2011!

A wind of change is coming… SociallyEngagedMarketing.com originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on December 8, 2010.

If you’re a Linchpin, you probably know that now is your chance to connect with the other members of Seth’s tribe.

On Tuesday, December 7th at 8 pm there will be 500 (as of today) Linchpin meet-ups taking place around the world. If you live in the Atlanta area, there are several to choose from. It just so happens that I live north of Atlanta and prefer not to travel into the Perimeter. If you’re like me and would like to participate, we have reserved a room at Los Reyes in Kennesaw. If you’re not in Atlanta, please organize or attend a meetup in your local area.

Please register in advance and don’t forget to tell all of your Linchpin friends! Our local hashtag is #latl2.

Los Reyes is pretty neat, we should even have free wi-fi! Although they have mixed reviews, I’ve eaten there several times and had great experiences.

I’m very lucky to have a co-organizer for this meetup, so if you have any questions feel free to ask myself or James Ball (@NotEasyToForget).

777 Townpark Lane Northwest
Kennesaw, GA 30144-5821
(770) 420-9181 ‎

*Image Credits to John Bickford

Are you a Linchpin? Wanna Meet? originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on November 23, 2010.

WordCamp Atlanta 2010

The very first WordCamp (#wcatl) in Atlanta is taking place this Friday and Saturday, January 8-9 at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I admit, I am very excited about this event! In fact, I was so excited that I registered during the first few days as a personal sponsor.

I think it’s important to not only attend these local networking events, but support them when we can.  WordCamps provide an opportunity to learn about blogging, from beginner to expert. But it’s also an opportunity to network with other people in and out of your industry. There is so much to learn from other industries and their use of social media tools like blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

I am also attending SoCon this month! SoCon (#SoCon10) is a Social Media and Social Networking Conference at Kennesaw State University on January 29 – 30. It is my first time attending this conference, and I look forward to hearing from Coca-Cola and Obama’s social media team.

Keep an eye out on Twitter and Facebook for local networking events and please consider attending and/or sponsoring. Even if you cannot attend yourself, please share the event information with your friends.

Are you coming to WordCamp and SoCon? I hope to see you there!

WordCamp ATL & SoCon Jan. 2010! originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on January 5, 2010.

MultifamilyPro’s Brainstorming Session: Uncover the Secrets to Using Craigslist and Other Classified Sites

For those who couldn’t attend or if you attended and need more information, below is the Prezi that Allison and I presented today at 10:30 in Houston, TX.

The only thing not included in the presentation is my biggest statement: Only post 1 time per day per property!

A special thank you to everyone who waited patiently in the hall until we could open up another room! Be on the lookout for a recap of the event, from my perspective!

Did you miss the Craigslist Presentation? originally appeared on Socially Engaged Marketing on November 19, 2009.