DISQUS

Hi Chris - Thanks for the hat tip. I think the response is interesting, especially if you compare it with the responses of other people who got called out for their uses/abuses of social media. Matt Bacak comes to mind - he came out and apologized for the incident that led to him being called a "social media douchebag" on the Digg homepage (I won't link, but you can google it). While I thought Bacak's apology wasn't a great one, he did seem to have a bit of a sense of humor about it. Responses to being called out publicly like this can be tricky.

I wouldn't fault someone in Andrews' situation if their response was a little annoyed/defensive.... except in this case (or both cases, actually) the person in question is identified as a social media professional (who, in Andrews' case represents a large agency). That changes the dynamic. The standards to which he is/should be held is higher; not to mention that he should know that since the original story has already gone "hot" his response would probably get some play too. Contrition could help stop the story in its tracks and make him look like the gracious party. Defensiveness could come back to bite him and end of generating a lot of "self-proclaimed social media experts are snarky jerks" comments (because that, as you know, is a recurring theme that a lot of people enjoy perpetuating).

FWIW, I think the amount of flak he's getting is probably unfair, and the FedEx exec probably overreacted a little bit. But the story is what it is now, and you can't unring the bell. As a "social media pro", Andrews should to assess the situation and realize that he probably needs a strategy to deal with the fallout. An off-the-cuff response on his blog might end up backfiring. He has two audiences, and one of those audiences wants an apology, not an excuse or deflection (e.g., "these guys got offended because they misunderstood me")

p.s. To be fair, I believe the story first "broke" here (based both on the timestamp and the number of times this link has crossed my Twitter stream in the past week): http://shankman.com/be-careful-what-you-post/

I recently gave a presentation on this subject at a Media Future Now lunch. I made the point that SEM and Social Media (or rather Social Media Marketing) are two separate, but increasingly overlapping, disciplines. You can do them separately, but that can be inefficient.


On the flip side, it's important to recognize that they are not the same thing. Neither is one merely a subset of the other. They both require specialized skills, and just because someone can do one, doesn't mean they're prepared to do the other well. The important thing is to recognize what each discipline is, educate yourself on what it can achieve and how, know what it can't accomplish, and be honest about which you are good at. Then, hire an expert to work with you to fill in the gaps if your skillsets aren't enough.

Mistake #12: Putting your house on the market before you've tidied it up. Don't start promoting your blog until it's ready to share.

That means before you start promoting: Make sure your blog design doesn't stink of amateurism (e.g., default theme, broken graphics, etc). Have more than a few quality posts up so your visitors know you're serious. Don't allow spam and pingbacks to dominate the "discussion" in your comments section under the mistaken belief that it makes you look more popular than you are. Etc.

First impressions matter. If you promote too soon, the traffic you do drum up won't return and you'll have taken steps backwards not forwards.

I'll participate and would love to be included. (But does this mean that I'd be expected to actually update my blog multiple times within that two-week period? ;))

Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a HUGE growth industry right now. It's almost as hot a topic as social media marketing in SEO circles.

Managing the top 10 results for a branded ORM search is actually much harder than optimizing for a single commercial term. Not only do you have almost no control over on-page factors on 8 out of 10 of the results, but you have to do link building for multiple sites, not just your own.

But SEOs tend to focus too much on managing the SERPs -- i.e., pushing negative results down and off the front page -- not on actually managing client reputations in the more traditional sense, IMHO.

The point is not to simply to push down bad results, but to fill the top of the SERPs with credible results. That's harder than it sounds.

Tell 'em to kill the Flash intro, it's unnecessary and annoying. And to add a sitemap. It should not take 15 minutes to find their site in a search engine :)

Haha! I just wrote a blog post about important lessons you learn as a Cutco salesperson. The #1 lesson: it doesn't count if the sale gets canceled. Sorry to hear about your medical problems - definitely takes priority over kitchen gadgets. The product is good though, if that makes a difference =)

Don't you mean "between Streko and me"? =) LOL

Amen to #2. Thankfully, since most Flash designers don't ever bother to think about search, this little piece of news won't even register. In the mean time we can all just pretend this never happened.

Those are great rules of thumb. A few of my own also include:
- Retweet good stuff and give credit where due.
- One thought/one tweet. Don't stretch one message out over multiple posts because you can't fit it into 140 characters. As much as possible, each tweet should make sense on its own.
- At least occasionally, make sure you show some personality.

Thumbs up to the comment "it is incredibly hard to scale "being real"

I think there's something to that. If marketers are concerned with the "scalability" of being real (or can we call it "being sincere"?) then I think they're still stuck in the wrong mind set. Being real is being real - it doesn't have to be scaled, no?

I can identify with this. That morning I was on my way to a doctor, which required a subway trip and then transfer to a bus. I ended up at the bus stop waiting for 45 minutes before the bus arrived. Less than 10 minutes later I get off the bus and see a giant plume of pitch black smoke down the road. I walk inside the doctor's office to find out a plane had crashed into the Pentagon minutes earlier...just on the other side of where I'd been waiting at the bus stop. The Pentagon subway stop is directly underneath that building. Every time I drive past the Pentagon now (which is often) I still feel my stomach clench a little.

I hear Comcast is doing the same thing (i.e., monitoring Twitter for CS-related issues). I wonder how long a strategy like that is sustainable. Once word gets out that all you have to do is complain online to get tier 1 service, everyone will start expecting responses that way. As a consumer, of course, I think this is fantastic.

I wonder what it is about Twitter that is making corporations more eager to join the conversation in a way they never were/still aren't with blogs and consumer forums.

If you add me to the list, you'll have jumped the shark... but c'mon I dare ya ;)

http://twitter.com/melaniephung

I *like* that I have to use my own critical thinking powers to determine for myself if I find something to be credible in the Blogosphere -- I like discovering "no name" bloggers based solely on the quality of their writing. The fact that some big name bloggers are immediately thought to be more credible than the average Joe -- and therefore generates a ton more attention/reaction/commentary -- even if they don't have anything better to say, seems to go counter to the blog ethos in the first place. We already have plenty of media spaces where credentials are everything... do we really want or need blogs to follow that model?

Congrats again... though a pending redesign is no excuse for leaving us hanging :)

Well, looks like I can't digg you, so I had to settle for sphinning you instead. Oh, how unsatisfying.

Reasons 2 through 5 are why I call myself an "online marketer" instead of an SEO. And it's not like "online marketer" has a good connotation among the general public either. The SEO community is so insular and self-congratulatory sometimes that we just don't comprehend how the rest of the world sees us -- it's not a question of "unethical" SEOs tarnishing our reputation. It comes down to the fact that most people don't like marketers, even the squeaky clean ones.

I think your point #1 is really part of #2.

When I'm truly participating in a community, I'm NOT an ambassador of SEO. I'm not an SEO period. If i don't have an agenda, if I'm not there to promote something, I come across like a real person. The problem is how do you participate in a community without looking like a marketer if the only reason you're there is as a marketer? That goes double if you're trying to build links. Authenticity is pretty hard to fake.

Hi Michael. My work is moving towards social media much more than in the past, and what you describe is absolutely part of my strategy. My new employer does a ton of social media/conversational marketing stuff, but so far they haven't leveraged all that activity for SEO purposes.

Would love to read more of your thoughts on this topic.

Melanie