Back on November 6, I had the pleasure of joining Scott Clark and Jason Falls to provide a basic overview of social media and online marketing strategies to a group of more than 60 people at an event called “Digital Dialogues” hosted by Bill Dotson and sponsored by the Lexington Advertising Club.

The slides we used in our presentation can be found at slideshare, though I think there is more interesting dialogue in the video below in which we address questions and concerns of the audience:

I tried to create a leave-behind document that maintained a logical crawl-walk-run progression of involvement in social media; the introductory copy is below:

Social media strategy uses objectives, tools and outcomes to serve as your road map for navigating a journey. Social media – much like any journey – requires attention, decision-making, and pace. Social media should be treated not as a bolt-on solution, but more as a set of tools, ideas and methodology which combine to facilitate your ultimate goal: first-person insights and interactive dialog.

Just as in the off-line world, social media relationships and conversations can be nuanced, require undivided attention, and may ebb and flow over time. At its core, social media makes it easier to discover, preserve, extend and interact with conversations already taking place about you, your brand, and your interests. It is not a panacea or plague of any sort, so we offer these objectives and these recommended tools to begin your journey of discovery, connection, and interaction.

For the entire document that discusses a few examples of how to get started with social media, please download the PDF.  I welcome any feedback, suggestions, ideas these resources may generate.  Thanks a million to Bill Dotson for putting together this event and attracting its attendees!

I’m thrilled that Social Media Club’s new Louisville chapter is already attracting a lot of people and discussion. Big ups to Falls and Earwood for executing on an idea which was destined to blossom among the digerati in the ville. Before our last meeting, Jason Falls asked me to fill in as a featured speaker for the evening. Normally not too many people derive value from anything featured or spoken by me. Thankfully I had the great fortune of playing clean-up after outstanding presentations and discussion led by Brian Wallace of NowSourcing and Aaron Marshall of DBSinteractive. Both offered great overviews and angles of selling social media to execs and clients, as well as some best practices and caveats. Honestly, I don’t really have anything to sell since my ‘vendor’ days are indefinitely on hiatus, so I wasn’t sure what compelling reasons anyone might have to listen to me. So I volleyed an example of selling lemonade as a child and how it might apply to social media to marketers. Since I hadn’t prepared one iota before the meeting, the concept wasn’t exactly developed when I lobbed it to the crowd. So I’ll give it more thought and detail here:

Marketing a product, idea, or whatever ‘viral’ ‘microsite’ for which your client wants to use to social media to ‘increase awareness’ only works as well as your efforts to sell lemonade would have when you were a kid.

{{diddly-doot, dream sequence}} So you spent all morning mashing hundreds of lemons into deliciously sugarfied juice, making pretty posters to hang on the neighborhood stop signs, and even got a nice comfy chair to sit in while you waved and screamed at the passing cars. Dozens, no, hundreds of neighbors and passersby see your lemonade stand, honk at your cuteness and a few even make time to buy a refreshing glass.

After your long day of hawking the citrus grok, your mom comes outside to help you tear down and revel in your success as a budding entrepreneur.

Mom:”So how’d it go today? Sell a lot of lemonade?”

Kid:”OMG mom! Like a bazillion of people came by and waved and honked and a ton of people said they’d come back to buy a LOT later on cuz they didn’t have their wallets on them.”

Mom: “So exactly how much did you sell?”

Kid: “Well, not much since this busy intersection doesn’t let most people stop to actually buy the stuff. And the rain kinda sucked. But like SO many people saw us and honked.”

So flash back to the present… {{doot}} this analogy reminds me a lot of what I’m observing as more and more marketers attempt to embrace this new-fangled-social-media-magic-pixie-dust to enhance the spread and velocity of any sort of message.

For far too long, traditional marketers and advertisers have gotten away with using hollow but hard-to-replace metrics like impressions and awareness. When we apply empty metrics like those to the childhood lemonade stand, we’d jump with glee at the 87% awareness at that busy intersection and even doubly so at the tens of thousands of impressions we may have received that day. The more sophisticated and refined analytics that can be applied to social media marketing initiatives, however, tell a story that most marketers might not want to hear:

Something about your efforts might really suck: your location, your timing, your message, or – gasp – maybe even your lemonade.

Is there a correlation between awareness, impressions and increased sales? Absolutely! But the days of listening to, “half of my marketing budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half,” are far behind us. New tech and tools provide us elucidating insights into data-driven interactions, conversions, and subsequently customer loyalty. Tech-based media also allow these campaigns and relationships to be measured and managed more effectively. A significant hurdle associated with tech/social/new media, however, remains the scary proposition of what messages can be enabled and propagated rapidly. No one wants to hear that their lemonade sucks.

We all agree that social media offers no panacea for marketers. Here’s what it does do:

• Technology accelerates the consumption and spread of media.
• Conversations and multi-channel media are not new or unique. Technology, however, makes our interactions more transparent, transportable, and enduring. And therefore more influential and authoritative.
• Technology provides new ways to interact with people that may have otherwise never found you.
• Technology-based media both initiates and perpetuates the conversation among and between individuals and people that represent brands. As in other areas of life, follow-through is often more powerful than the first impression.

If your marketing efforts indicate abysmal redemption / conversion / loyalty rates, maybe you should look at the way you’re making and selling your lemonade. More posters and honks aint gonna cut it, junior.
To put a bow on all this, I’ll summarize by suggesting to both marketers interested in social media and little Louie the lemonade mogul:

• Understand that your lemonade better taste good. So good that people gush about it or chime in when others are.
• Understand that some people won’t like your lemonade no matter how hard you try. How will you accommodate or otherwise satisfy these people?
• If you really want to sell some lemonade, you should probably do more than slap up signs and hope that awareness and sales maintain a positive correlation.
• Understand that only a small portion of your customer base is loyal enough and excitable enough to actively engage with your product in socially influential way. i.e. You don’t want BIG numbers, you want meaningful interactions.

The most successful purveyors of lemonade might use word-of-mouth marketing (testimonials, brand ambassadors, guerrilla marketing) to make sure their product breaks through the clutter no matter where they are situated. Interconnected masses can surely drive rapid and extensive awareness, but it is the personal – or trust-based – relationships that create engagement.

For instance: I love all my Sony stuff. So much so that I’d consider myself a Sony bigot of sorts. But I won’t be caught dead playing a ‘viral game’ or responding to an ‘innovative’ video ad unless it engages me in precisely the same way Sony products make my life easier, faster, and more enjoyable. Sony will have nailed marketing with social media when they send me an opportunity [not an 'ad'] that invites me to recruit my friends into the Sony family in exchange for some exclusivity, exceptional value, or genuine entertainment. Presently, I am only passively enamored with my array of Sony gear, quietly waiting to buy something else I think it cool. But that won’t happen until I become actively engaged with the brand again.

What are you doing uniquely to sell your lemonade? How are you deriving benefits from listening and responding to your customers and fans? Media are inherently vocal and social by definition – remember to take advantage of that.