Stop Marketing & Start Engaging – takeaways from @unmarketing book tour Detroit

It all starts like this on UnMarketing. “Scott Stratten is the president of UnMarketing. Between blah blah blah and blah blah blah…..”

If you haven’t had a chance to read this Canadian guy’s marvelous insight about social media and modern communication, please read on my takeaways from his presentation last night. Scott is great, sharp, insightful, and…hilarious. And he absolutely shake my head with his ideas of social media and how to communicate.

Here are some ideas Scott threw at Detroit last night:

• Social media ROI – “Forget about ROI. Social media sucks in conversion but rocks in building relationships & engaging conversation.”Takeaway: You have to watch Scott’s animation when he talks about ROI. Besides laughing at the idea of companies or #sm gurus using statistics to prove how important this new communication medium is, I was sort of relieved the concept Scott proposed, that neither Twitter nor Facebook is a shortcut for relationship. The 140-words-limitation might force us to make content more effective, but the key lies in how you use these social media tool, not to sell, not to blast, but to engage and talk.

  But again, as an in-house marketer, I get freaked out while being told the ROI is going to suck at any tool or medium being used. So there, I contribute to one of my favorite article about social media analytic tools http://www.dailybloggr.com/2010/03/social-media-monitoring-tools-analytics/ (sorry, Scott!)

• All the social media channels should enhance one another. Build platform first, and establish individual stream for each platform.Upon writing this, I can still hear Scott screaming in my head, “Please, do NOT feed your tweet with Facebook status!” The difference between each platform (limitation of words & how people use it) reflects the complexity (and beauty) of communication. Some people like to read concise & straight-forward messages, (Scott’s recommended tweet length: 120 words) So when the person sees the unfinished tweets and has to click on the link, then being directed to facebook status, the communication flow has been interrupted.

  Takeaway: create unique content & feed the platform on purpose. Nobody likes to go through more than one platform to have a normal conversation.

• Consistency is the secret of success in social media
  
  Again, among all the content frequency myth, Scott points out he hasn’t blogged for more than a month (confirmed. His last blog is back in Aug 2010) and he doesn’t want to blog for any of the SEO purpose. “Want best SEO for your blog? Then write awesome content!” Hopefully my blog about UnMarketing book tour is qualified as a half-awesomeness 🙂

• Sometimes you just have to polarize
  
  I guess the concept scare lots of people as we all try our best to manage our online reputation. As we cater to more readers, customers, the core value of products or services gets diluted. This is a scary part for me too but I guess practice makes perfect. If you have some advice taking a stand and embracing all the feedback, please do share

• Liking auto-tweets? Please don’t.
  
  We all want others’ attention or feedback but that doesn’t mean we can manipulate the way how communication works. True, if you set up your tweets to go out 3AM in the morning, people in the other side of the world more likely to read your blog or even comment on it. And chances are they will retweet or exchange ideas. But what happens after 5 minutes (action taken time after a tweet)? Nothing. (because obviously you’re asleep) This kind of communication drop does more harm than help to your content strategy because it ruins the flow. You may still be able to follow the stream and answer the questions, but the vibe has already been missing.

Overall, quite an eye-opening experience hearing a successful tweep talking about his strategy and passion. I remember times I tweet like a maniac and then just wait to count followers or Klout. Those times have gone, gone to the fundamental idea Scott has been pounding us on, again and again, that social media doesn’t speed up the purchase cycle, doesn’t all of a sudden win you a thousand new customers, it’s simply a great channel to start relationships.

How do you like to use social media engaging your readers?

Social Media for a Good Cause

Let’s start off with a question: What do you use social media for? 

I believe we all have different reasons. While some people, like me, use it for information and engagement, others use it for a better cause. Like Mark Horvath (@hardlynormal) use his TV blog & tweets to shout out voices in our society that are rarely heard or gotten any attention.

Quite a few media & companies like Ford and YouTube have already jumped in sponsoring Mark’s roadtrip. Hoffington Post yesterday wrote an article about Mark empowering homeless people with social media. Mark’s presentation at Metro Detroit also had tremendous feedback. All in all these responses meant one thing – people, including you and I, are using social media for a good cause – to make the world better. 

While few are as talented as Mark, we can still contribute our efforts or influence for a good cause 🙂

• Food Banks: There are quite a lot of food banks around. The one I started going to is called Gleaners– they bag hundreds or thousands bags of food each week and distribute them to families who can’t afford buying food for their children. Use your foursquares checking into these places and invite your friends to serve.

• Retweets: Mark has now set up a site called “We Are Visible”with a list of “How To’s.” Read his article, RT those invisible people’s voice, and spread the words.

• Slow Down, and Explore: There are many things / people in our society that need our attention. And you’d be surprised how much impact our little effort can bring if we are willing to explore and listen. So next time, instead of rushing into metros heading home, try to take a walk in the neighborhood and talk to people. If they have a story that needs to be multiplied, write a blog about it or tweet it. For social media is more than just a channel, it should be a connector bringing people’s distances closer.