Every time someone brings up the term “social advertising” the anal retentive word smith in me starts picking it apart. Social advertising doesn’t accurately describe banners or images that appear based on what the site knows about you. An ad for Seth Godin’s latest book showing up on my Amazon.com login screen because the site knows I dig marketing stuff is contextual or what I would term false-intuitive advertising. (False because no matter how much database you have on my brain, you don’t have my brain which at that moment might be on a Terry Pratchett kick.)

And, no matter what Mark Zuckerberg says, what Facebook tries with friend-spy isn’t social advertising. At its worst, it’s privacy invasion. At best, it’s tattle-telling.

Further, an advertisement that is so compelling, so unique and so engaging you would tell your friend about it over lunch (”Dude! Did you see the new GoPhone Meat Loaf ad with his teenage son lip syncing and head bopping? Glad I wasn’t eating when I did. It’s like an invitation to vomit.”) isn’t social advertisement, either. It’s word of mouth marketing.

Oh, it’s online? Then it’s word of mouse marketing.

But still, people are trying. MediaForge has a fairly neat development they claim puts conversation in conversational media. It’s a display ad (a banner or box advertisement) that on roll-over becomes an interactive widget. The example shown here is one for Skullcandy headphones and related accessories. It’s pretty cool and fairly useful. You can even clickety-click and the widget is on your desktop so you can track deals, always have the search function handy, etc. Other uses include tabs for the widget that contain video players, interactive games and so on. In addition to pulling the widget onto your desktop, you can also place it on the profile pages of your social networks.

Pardon the interruption for a moment, but would someone please tell me why advertisers think anyone is going to muddy up their Facebook or MySpace profile with a flippin’ advertisement for them? Are you giving me money for me hocking your wares? No. So stop acting like this is a selling point. If I’m a brand enthusaist of yours, I’ll put your logo, or product shot, tastefully done, on my page, but that’s it. Give me a badge to wear that makes me proud, not a flashing neon light that says, “I’m a big dope who LOVES this crap so much I’m gonna try and hock it to my friends.”

Sorry. Get carried away sometimes. (And yes, I know I just embedded one in my blog, thus defeating my argument. No one said I was always smart. But I’m the only one with the password!)

MediaForge claims this nifty little gadget adds a social dimension to banner ads. It doesn’t. But it could.

First, let’s define social. According to Dictionary.com, the top definition is, “pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations.” The other definitions all say essentially the same thing.

Where is the friendly companionship or relations in MediaForge’s nifty widget ad banner clickety thing? I can send it to my friends? Then I’m social, not the ad. That’s word-of-mouth (or mouse). So what would make this little number truly social? If the pop-up either is or contains a tab for a live chat with a customer service rep or even other consumers logged into that companies chat rooms, then the ad is social.

But there’s still the interruption mechanism that drives it. I don’t have to roll over the ad. I don’t have to even notice it. In fact, because I’m a savvy web user, I probably wouldn’t if I happened on a page containing one. So there are social elements happening within this little micro site the ad brought me to, but the ad still has to get me there and isn’t social.

Can an advertisement be, at it’s base level, truly social? Maybe one day.

Imagine logging on to your favorite blog. Its server knows your IP address and reads your cookie. Based on public data it has gathered, it displays a banner advertisement that is a chat window with a picture of a laptop computer, let’s say it’s a Mac. The prompt, both text and voice then says and types, “Hello Jason. Welcome back to ReadWriteWeb. We noticed from your Twitter feed you’re shopping for a new laptop. We know you’re a PC guy, but we think you would love the experience of owning a Mac. Can we answer any questions for you?”

And, being an ad for Mac, the damn thing would spit out a plane ticket to Guyana and serve you the Kool Aid right there in the comfort of your own home.

(I’m kidding. I love Macs. I just like to kid. Please stop trying to burn down my house. I have the license plate numbers of all the Volkswagens in town.)

Until the technology and/or the staffing is available for highly interactive, highly personal experiences within an advertisement, they won’t be social. But just in case I’m wrong, please pass this blog post on to your friends.

Thanks to Lee Odden of Online Marketing Blog for the inspiration for this post.

I have a bone to pick with my social media and marketing brethren. Stop making fun of people because they’re on MySpace. It’s unbecoming and shows that you’re so overwhelmed with your own smarts that you’re stupid. It’s the same smugness some Mac users generate despite the fact their beloved, intuitive machines account for a whopping three percent of the personal computer market. If they’re so great, why don’t more people get it?

According to Compete.com’s numbers from February, MySpace accounts for 66 million monthly visitors and almost one billion visits. Facebook isn’t too shabby, either, but at 28 million monthly visitors, it’s less than half the exposure opportunity MySpace is. According to USA Today, there are over 110 million registered users on MySpace, making it the equivalent to the 11^th largest country in the world (bigger than Mexico, slightly smaller than Japan).

The problem is that those of us inside the bubble and hip to hardware, software and online trends grew tired of MySpace. When Facebook opened its doors to the general public, then started experimenting with social advertising models, we all got hot and bothered by the chic, clean, open API network. We left MySpace, or conveniently forgot to check in for messages there more than once a month, and declared it dead.

But it’s only dead to us. The rest of the world still digs the ‘Space. And those 66 million monthly visitors aren’t high school girls, either. According to Quantcast’s estimates, 62 percent of MySpace users are above the age of 24, they have a higher than Internet average concentration of both Hispanics and African Americans and 49 percent of users live in households making $60,000 and up.

Frankly, I made a mistake last year when I began to migrate most of my attention from MySpace and a healthy network of friends and contacts I’d made there to the chosen networks of the Internet marketing elite. The mistake wasn’t in building contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. It was abandoning MySpace because those inside the bubble think it to be pedestrian. It might be, but there’s a hell of a lot of pedestrians there, if you haven’t noticed.

Marketing through social media is most effective when brands and companies put themselves on a personal plane with consumers. But you still have to reach those consumers. Turning our backs on MySpace, even belittling those who play there, is like calling Budweiser stupid for advertising during the Super Bowl.

Ignore MySpace because of its gaudiness and free expression and, “that is soooo 2006,” if you like, but ignore it at your own peril. That’s where the majority of the world is and will be for the foreseeable future. MySpace is gobbling up content deals with mobile networks, continually expanding their offerings to engage their users and, like them or not, they’ve got Newcorp’s pocketbook. They do music and video better than other major social networks, connect people with bands, comedians and filmmakers in a way that should make brands jealous and have a thriving subculture of niche blogs within their system few of us pay attention to. Shame on us.

Ironically, the advertising agencies and interactive firms we take such pleasure in mocking because they don’t get social media are the very ones benefiting from our short-sightedness. They’re so dumb, they only know to go where the most people are. In the end, crappy MySpace campaigns or not, they don’t look so dumb after all.

Wise up, kids. Just because you don’t personally like to play there doesn’t mean it’s a barren wasteland of marketing abyss. The rest of the world isn’t like us. And that, my friends, is often the only thing that keeps us from being successful.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. MySpace’s Growth Curve: Over?
2. Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
3. Diagnosis: Facebook Syndrome
4. Social Network Wars Are Over; Now The Fun Begins
5. A Successful MySpace Social Media Campaign

Technorati Tags: MySpace, Facebook, social networking, marketing, strategy

Is it really the 10^th anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto? Actually, it isn’t. The book was written in 1999 by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. It was published in 2000. I suppose then that John Cass’s meme inspired by the upcoming 10^th anniversary of the book is meant to borrow the quality of being ahead of its time.

Nevertheless, Valeria Maltoni nominated me as someone who should participate in the meme and chime in on the five questions Cass poses about where we are today with respect to the 95 theses that begat social media. Before I respond to the specific questions, though, a raw perspective:

We’re nowhere. Social media and true consumer-centric brand behavior is prevalent in the technology bubble and few other places. While adoption has been steady and progress has been made, the premise of the book hasn’t exactly “gone viral.” Businesses in general still think bottom line and “what’s in it for me,” first. Advertising still sucks, is loud and intrusive. And consumers still have little reason to trust brands, companies and even folks like me – marketers trying to connect them with products and services that fit their needs.

I’m still a used car salesman to a lot of people. Companies are still monolithic, smoke and mirrors, money hoards with automated phone systems and customer service that has nothing to do with the customer and scantly qualifies as service.

For a market-changing, environmental-shift of a document The Cluetrain was, either it actually wasn’t or the majority of American businesses and consumers are just plain dumb.

To me, The Cluetrain is logical. Be nice. Expect it in return. Why can’t we get this, people?

That said, some people are getting it. More every day. It’s a fight worth fighting. We’re trying to teach business and industry that they should do right because it’s the right thing to do. And someday, we’ll win. When we do, we all will.

1. What does The Cluetrain Manifesto mean to you? How has the book and theses influenced or not influenced you?What The Cluetrain Manifesto did is put the core values of basic human decency back into business. Growing up in the shadow of small-business owning parents in a small town, I heard people talking about business ethics, particularly with respect to how to use Christian principles in one’s business approach. The corporate scandals of the 1990s seemed a sort of Sodom and Gomorra moment in business. The Cluetrain simplified the way brands – both large and small – should act. It put being human back in business. It whittled the mega-corporation down to its basic asset – its human characteristics, or more succinctly, it’s people.

   There’s more than an odd coincidence that the 95 theses were modeled after Martin Luther’s. In this case, consumers are protesting the smothering suffered at the hands of brands as opposed to similar behavior from the Catholic church. Through these, we can now visualize having a conversation with a company. This forces consumers to view them in a much different way. Those companies that participate in the conversation reap benefits. Those that don’t … or don’t very well … are earmarked for failure.

2. Which companies have best implemented The Cluetrain Manifesto in your opinion and how were they effective?While the smart ass in me can’t resist the temptation to think John Cass is somehow being rewarded by Dell for starting this meme – they are, after all, the tech crowd (i.e. meme participants) defacto answer here (and not undeservedly so) – I will offer Southwest Airlines as my example. I may not be the first and probably won’t be the last to do so. Southwest has continually engaged consumers, fostered employee education and outreach using social media tools, reaped the benefits of praises for their openness and suffered the setbacks of dissatisfied customers out in the open. But what they’ve really done is simply opened the lines of communications with their customers. They didn’t just start a blog, they read it. They read the comments. They responded, both on the site and through actions. And they keep doing it.

   Perhaps it’s a coincidence, perhaps not. But there’s a strange parallel between Southwest’s post-9/11 success and its willingness to listen and respond to consumers. Sure price is a differentiator, but take away money and there’s still lots of reasons to LUV Southwest.

3. In thesis 57, The Cluetrain Manifesto states, “smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable happen sooner.” In light of that thesis, is encouraging employees to use social media and blogging a good idea? Is it really effective, when an employee is encouraged but not directed?Encouraging employees to use social media and blogging can be a good idea, but it can also be a bad one. With everything, these determinations have to be made on a case-by-case basis. I don’t want the dipshit who forgot to put a burger patty on my wife’s hamburger last week blogging on behalf of anyone. But when you Tweet something about Nielsen, two or three people who work for them normally respond and offer to help find information if you’re looking.

   To answer the question, you have to assess your employees and whether or not you trust they can be good representatives of your company. Certain ones will, others won’t. If the majority of them concern you, I recommend one of two paths: 1. Don’t expressly encourage them (understanding they might on their own, regardless of your consent). 2. Reassess who and how you hire.

4. How can companies encourage employees to use social media, empower them to answer customer questions and learn from customers?

   The only way a company and its employees can be open externally is if they’re open internally. By openly talking about the employee’s responsibility to represent the company’s interest on- and off-line, giving them the training and the tools to do so and clearly illustrating that mistakes don’t come with retribution but only thorough discussion, you empower them to speak on your behalf. Once your employees believe in you, they’ll make others believe, too.

5. Do all employees want to talk with customers? If not, what percentage want to internetwork and converse?Surely not. I can think of a couple Doe-Anderson employees who don’t want to talk with co-workers. What percentage want to internetwork and converse? To date, a relatively small percent, mostly in the marketing department, but unfortunately under the influence of stayed marketing techniques. What the social web is doing, however, is gradually moving both consumers to engage with brands, but also brands to understand engagement is a two-way street and someone needs to talk back. Say what you will about the echo chamber, but what it has done is forced the hand of corporations to move from a brand-centric perspective to a consumer-centric point-of-view. Add the flavor of scalability to the equation and companies have to use more than just the customer service team or PR department to engage.

   The percentage that want to internetwork and converse is probably still small (less than 30 percent) but is the exact percentage of employees who implicitly understand the individual customer is their most important asset.

Valeria asked who could enrich this conversation when she honored me with a tag. For me, enrichment comes from very smart people. So I hope that Cam Beck, Geoff Livingston, Eric Eggerston, Becky McCray and David Finch will participate.

Here are some others who have thus far:

Valeria Maltoni, Richard Binhammer, Michael Walsh, Phil Gomes, Mack Collier and of course, John Cass.

I joked via Twitter Sunday evening that my 2,000^th tweet (Yes, that’s what we call it and yes, it’s ridiculous.) was upcoming and for a mere $5.00 sent to my PayPal account, I would pimp your wares. Part of the reason I use Twitter is to bring a smile to people’s faces with my odd-ball sense of humor sometimes, so I figured I’d get a laugh or two.

Then someone took me up on it. Turns out @metromapper, A/K/A Michael Schnuerle, reached out and said he would take me up on the offer because Monday was the last day of the NetSquared Mashup Challenge and with a few more votes, he may make the top 20 projects. (They’ll be announced tomorrow. Good luck, Michael!) Those winners are invited to a conference where both interest and funding could be found. In an initial round of voting, Michael’s Your Mapper finished fifth out of 122 projects from around the globe.

MetroMapper^TM, a Louisville-based service, serves as a test market for the overall Your Mapper project. From the website:

Metro Mapper is an online news organization that provides interactive maps for the Louisville Metro area, Kentucky, and the nation. Our desire is that residents and visitors will become more familiar with their neighborhoods, streets, and locations.

It currently has maps with overlays of crime reports, registered sex offenders, health reports for restaurants, homes for sale and more. It’s a handy resource of information about neighborhoods both near and far. (There’s one registered sex offender on my street, but several blocks away. Good to know.)

Your Mapper is an aggressive project aimed at taking that model to every community. From the project descrption page on NetSquared’s site:

Three major empowering things would be improved in the world if this project happens.

One: Empowering local public citizens to learn about their neighborhood and take action when they identify a need. Citizens can view interesting things happening around their home and office on a map, and get notified when new things happen.

Two: Empowering local people to collect information that is currently locked up in government databases, and use our toolset to load that data and make it geographically and visually accessible to the public.

Three: Empowering local websites, blogs, news organizations, and companies by allowing them to embed searchable, interactive maps on their site as a service to their site audience.

Your Mapper is an online news organization that empowers people to obtain and load information in their home town, and make it available to their neighbors. We provide the tools that make this happen.

Having met Michael earlier in the week at our local Social Media Club chapter meeting and having an interest in local project, I thought, “If it will help this project get in front of some funding possibilities, I’ll most definitely Tweet the contest.” (And yes, before I did, I went and voted my ownself. You were able to pick other worthy projects as well – 10 total – so there was a lot of potential social good to do by participating.)

And so, I sold my 2,000^th Tweet. Fully aware I was selling a Twitter entry and would, thus, be advertising to my followers there, I built up several preceding tweets to explain it all. I couldn’t betray the trust of my friends by not being transparent of what I was doing. I also knew this would make for a good case study for the blog and fully intended from the start to poll my followers and see what they thought of me selling the right to talk to them via this social media tool. That said, lack of transparency would have led to a public crucifiction of yours truly. Not it!

And so, PayPal payment received, here are some selected Tweets leading up to 2,000:

JasonFalls So I’ve got my 2000th tweet upcoming today and it’s been sponsored by a cool social good project. I’ll tell more through the day. Head’s up.

JasonFalls The Tweet will be a link to a page asking you to login and vote for a social media-based project in a grant/funding competition.

JasonFalls And while I’d love for you to vote for the project that leads you there, you can vote for up to 10 — all fantastic social good projects.

JasonFalls So with my 2000th tweet, I’m asking each of you to take a few brief minutes to vote for some great ideas that will help improve our world.

JasonFalls Okay, the 2000th tweet is next. Please take a moment to click through, consider socially-valuable mashup ideas and help them get funded

JasonFalls Vote for Metro Mapper in the NetSquared mashup contest, today (Monday) only! http://www.metromapper.org/… (Sponsored Tweet)

Late Monday night, I decided to ask my community of friends their thoughts on what I had done. I asked them what they thought of a sponsored Tweet, whether or not the social good cause behind made a difference and so on. A sampling (Edited for space, not for content, but note that @jonburg’s Tweet was a reply to @ScottMonty and me.):

shey @JasonFalls Twitter is one of few places (so far) that we can get away from advertising — i’m not for it no matter what the agenda

__nateritter @JasonFalls I’m ok with selling your tweet for advertising, as long as you’re transparent about it.

ericeggertson @JasonFalls: Selling your 2000th Tweet for $5.00 is more of a lark than an egregious breech of etiquette. If you sold every 5th Tweet…

OracleJulio @JasonFalls so where is the Twet? I see nothing wrong with you selling it, regardless of the cause. U are the publisher and I’m the reader

WarrenWhitlock @JasonFalls marketing today is all about being authentic. (learn to fake that and you can fake anything). just be honest and open

earwood @jasonfalls I think you’re completely within your rights to get a sponsored tweet AND you disclosed it. You’re good.

remarkablogger @JasonFalls Everybody’s got diff. ideas of what’s a good cause. Ppl think themselves are a good cause. Still, I thought it was cool.

JonBurg @scottmonty, @JasonFalls - interruptive paid messages pollute Twitter. shills for cash are never acceptable. Occasional real advocacy is totally ok. Transparency on twitter is sticky.

ScottMonty @JasonFalls Nothing wrong with selling a tweet if you’re honest about it. Even better = yours was a good cause. You shoulda gotten >$ …

rslux @JasonFalls As a disclosed one-off, it’s no big deal, but if you sold Tweets regularly or without disclosure it would be evil and spammy.

nateritter @JasonFalls I’m ok with selling your tweet for advertising, as long as you’re transparent about it.

darrindickey @JasonFalls You know what? It’s your tweet and it didn’t offend me at all. You can do what you wish with them and I don’t have to follow. If I don’t like it. But it didn’t bother me in the least.

newmediajim @JasonFalls you got $5 for your 2000th tweet?? atta boy!

As with previous pollings, there are no hard, fast rules surfacing from the community reaction. It’s worth noting the acceptance of my actions seems to indicate such because A) I don’t do it often and this was isolated and B) The social goodness intended somehow makes it less of the snake oil ilk. I was applauded for transparency and, sans Mr. Burg and @shey, no one seemed bothered by it. It’s also fair to note I noticed no followers dropping me in protest, either.

Still, if I were to continue to sell Tweets, my guess is the tone of the responses would change. To @shey’s point, Twitter isn’t really a place where advertising is all that kosher. Yet, as Scott Monty pointed out in an off-line conversation Monday, @DellOutlet, @hrblock and others are there, too. And, while behaving within the appropriate confines of the community, they are ultimately there to market to consumers, or at least keep tabs on them.

My pursuit of the sponsored tweet was a joke that turned into an experiment. My hope is this post will generate continued discussion among the social media community of sponsorship, advertising and where the line should be drawn, not just with regards to Twitter, but other networks and tools as well. Are Chris Heuer’s airport Utterz more likely to be skipped if they’re brought to you by Swiss luggage? Robert Scoble’s shows are, to a certain degree, Seagate billboards, but what if a no-namer (say … me) slapped up a billboard ad on my little SME-TV interviews?

Advertising will always be a part of our existences, on-line and off. However, where does it fit in our social media life?

And because I believe in the economy of free and the because effect of Doc Searls, I can’t feel good about taking Michael’s money for my 2,000^th tweet. I would have Tweeted it without the payment. Instead, I’ll not only return Michael’s $5.00, but add my own in a donation to the Frozen Pea Fund.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. Is Twitter About To Have A Big Spam Problem?
2. 5 Tips To Selling Sponsorships In Web Videos
3. 12 Sponsored Reviews Blog Monetization Tips
4. Creating Barriers Between You And Your Readers
5. Reading Minds: Neuro Persuasion

IMAGE: “Money!” by Tracy Olson on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, sponsorship, advertising, marketing, ethics

H&R Block started following me on Twitter. I didn’t think much of it. I’ve been followed by Spiderman before. (I assume the movie, though they never reached out to me.)

A couple days later, I got an email from a person named Michelle asking me if taxes and social media mix. Here we go again. But she started the email with, “I see you’re getting ready for SXSW. I’m so jealous.”

(Thank you, Lord, for at least one PR pitch person who isn’t a freakin’ idiot.)

Now I’m intrigued. This gal’s done her homework, wants to know if I’ll take a look at H&R Block’s social media campaign, leaves me a ton of links and background info in the email and even admitted it was her as The Block following me on Twitter.

I was going to write something, even if it was just to compliment her on the pitch. Turns out she (and by association, H&R Block) get it. We’ve communicated primarily through direct Tweets this week. Take that, other tax preparer people!

As it turns out, H&R Block not only gets the outreach portion of it, but has figured out a way to be 100-percent, totally marketing/advertising to people using social media tools and somehow pull it off. No, I wasn’t sure if it was possible, but I’ll be damned if I don’t like this campaign.

I just spent an hour discovering Truman Green, H&R Block’s “Biggest Fan” who has goofy YouTube videos, an interesting, if not engaging, MySpace page and a MySpace blog that, while obviously served as a clever story-to-marketing message, is full of first-person narratives from the goofball Green character.

Now, the blogs may not be all that effective. There are no comments on any of them and not getting a comment on a blog in MySpace is like not getting zits in high school. There’s always a wing nut ready to yell “First!” or call you a name. Truman has his comments limited to just friends, but with almost 3,000 of them, you’d think someone would pipe up if they were being read.

The campaign includes a Facebook page, presence on Second Life, widgets and gadgets you can put on your blog and profiles (not sure why you would want to, though), a website for tax discussions which includes Podcasts of tax tips and, of course, the Twitter account, which doesn’t just serve up branded messages or leads to their website. I saw this one on their timeline, indicating there’s both responsiveness and personality mixed in:

@JillFoster We’re sending you calming vibes, and some tips on relieving tax stress- http://tinyurl.com/ynskgf
06:56 PM February 22, 2008 from web in reply to Jillfoster

What H&R Block has done is create an obvious fake persona for a social media campaign, but done so transparently. They’ve nailed a fun, off-beat spokesperson who is over-the-top corporate shill, but still engaging and entertaining. They’re providing valuable content, not just in entertaining videos and silly blog posts, but in tax tips, count down clocks and valuable link resources, even if most of them are directly to H&R Block. (I mean, I’d trust something found on their site. Wouldn’t you?) They’ve even asked for user-generated content with an idea of showing them your tax refund face, though I saw it on a Twitter post with no apparent official place to participate.

But perhaps the most refreshing part of this whole H&R Block thing? This line from Michelle’s email in reference to Truman Green:

“He’s obviously a corporate shill …”

So here’s to H&R Block, which figured out a way to be:

1. Honest/Transparent
2. Human
3. Fun
4. Engaging

And still try to sell me something. If I weren’t married to a smart woman who does our taxes each year, I’d totally be down with the Block.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. H&R Block Gets Social
2. H&R Block’s Tango In Plain English
3. H&R Block Launches An Island In Second Life
4. A.G. Brown Files Injunction Against H&R Block Over “Rapid Refund”
5. Ross To Buy Block Service Mortgage Unit

Technorati Tags: social media case study, H&R Block, Truman Green, social media, advertising, marketing