Back in September, 2007, I posted the now infamous Cadbury gorilla ad. The folks behind that video just released their next attempt at viral video gold: the eyebrow dance kids. I thought the use of the balloon was especially creative.

I love Superbowl Sunday as a social media marketer because it's the one day every year when even the staunchest traditional advertiser agrees with me. They agree with my philosophy that advertising (and marketing, PR, etc.) must have value for the people they want to reach. It's on this one day every year the really good promoters realize they're not in the advertising business. They're in the entertaining or inspiring (or outraging) business. All of those have value to people, and value earns attention.

I believe content is the best marketing strategy. It takes the focus off the advertiser and puts the focus on the audience. When you focus on meeting the needs the audience has, you stand the best chance to gain and retain their attention. That fundamental shift changes everything. It forces the marketing minds to put more thought into their actions and create something actually worth the time they're going to pay so much for anyway.

Social media tools are content creation and distribution technologies. They just happen to be really cheap and really easy to use. Creating good content is the hard part. Creative people who get it win. Traditional, arrogant, old marketing mindsets lose.

I'll be enjoying the affirmation this Sunday. It's a shame we'll have to endure another 364 days of ads that won't have any value for us, but I'll leave you with this encouragement: when it's game time, it's pain time.

Go Steelers.

I think it's time to make a call on something: LinkedIn isn't necessary anymore. Why? You don't need it. I don't have anything against LinkedIn, I just don't think it's needed anymore, and I'm even wondering if it ever was. I wasn't convinced of this until recently, but I have had so many conversations with professionals who say the same thing. To the person they all say, "I signed up for LinkedIn but never use it. It was just something I felt like I needed to do." Personally, I fall into that category as well and I think I know why.

A Little Social Networking History
LinkedIn was created as a social network for business professionals. It emerged as MySpace was on the way down and Facebook was on the way up. Most professionals weren't about to get into the spammy world of MySpace, and Facebook was just graduating from being a social network for students. LinkedIn filled the gap. It was poised to be the ultimate social network for professionals and it would have worked, except a funny thing happened. Actually two things happened: Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook quickly grew out of the student-only status and emerged as the definitive network to find or connect with just about everyone. Twitter provided another level of connection and conversation for the people who didn't want their coworkers accessing pictures of their vacation or seeing status updates from the New Kids on the Block reunion tour.

Facebook emerged as the social network instead of just a social network and Twitter allows broad connections without as much self revelation if a person so chooses. Facebook and Twitter combined are the double punch in LinkedIn's stomach and together they undermine everything LinkedIn could have hoped to become.

LinkedIn Gets Left Out
LinkedIn says it has three purposes:

1. To let you connect with past and present colleagues,
2. To find answers to your questions,
3. To "discover inside connections when you're looking for a job or new business opportunity."

As you look at the three purposes, you can see that Facebook pretty well has number one covered. There's a reason Facebook is now twice the size of MySpace worldwide. The bottom line on connection is that if someone wants to be connected, they're on Facebook.

Twitter is pretty good at connections, but it's lesser known quality is information. Many people are just now waking up to the fact that Twitter is the first place where news breaks. Not convinced? Just ask U.S. Airways. Twitter breaks news, makes news, and with a few good friends, can get you speedy answers to your questions. It's pretty amazing.

That leaves us with item number three: the "inside connections" benefit of LinkedIn. To some degree you can see this with Facebook and enough observation in Twitter. LinkedIn beats them both in the ability to display this information. What this doesn't take into account, however, is the human factor. The idea of asking a friend of a friend for a favor (let alone a job) is a little uncomfortable for everyone. Sure, there are people who don't mind it, but the average person is pretty protective of their relational equity, and you generally don't want to spend it just because Mike from middle school saw you know someone who knows someone who he wants to meet. Just because you can see who your friends are connected to doesn't mean they want to facilitate a forced interaction. They know their own reputation is on the line too. This was always LinkedIn's biggest promise and weakest point. No amount of technology can overcome social etiquette and relational capital.

The bottom line is that LinkedIn isn't necessary anymore. Everyone you're going to want to connect with is on Facebook or Twitter (or both) and unless LinkedIn has something more to provide, I don't know why you would need to use it.

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NOTE/IRONY: As I was about to post, I considered killing my LinkedIn profile altogether, but then I realized I probably shouldn't. It turns out my LinkdedIn profile is the fourth entry on a Google search for my name. Since I'm not a fan of killing things off when Google's indexed them I decided to leave it up. Guess LinkedIn has a little benefit after all.

I have fond memories of playing the arcade game Street Fighter in the local mall when I was growing up. Street Fighter went on to be a successful game on various video game consoles, but now you can play it on YouTube...sort of.

Now that links can be embedded into YouTube videos, some creative people are showing how this feature can be used for something other than advertising. Links within video create a very different kind of online video experience. You'll see it's not an ideal video game platform, but I love the fact that we see what a video is like with a of interactivity where the viewer calls the shots. Sounds kind of like another pasttime from my youth.

In the latest episode of The New Mediology, Nathan and I discussed the need to understand transparency in social media. Two weeks ago I talked about the right mindset needed to use social media well. Though I didn't focus on transparency in that post, it is also very important to social media success and one that can be easily overlooked.

The fact of the matter is that people's expectations have changed. They welcome candid communication now more than ever and social media tools are proving to be the best platform available for this.

You can listen to the podcast online (in just under 20 minutes) or download it in iTunes.

Last month I wrote a post about the common strategic mix up by organizations who don't understand that the two great strategies of social media, content and conversation, take different priorities depending on the tools you use.

When you choose social media tools like blogs, podcasts, online video, etc., you should lead with content and conversation is secondary. When you choose a social networking tool like Facebook or Ning, you should lead with conversation and content is secondary. Though it's probably still too early in the game to say there are "laws" of social media/new media marketing, these seem to hold true.

Last week I found a great example of this. According to a NewTeeVee post, CBS is changing its strategy for TV.com away from an online community with videos, to one that is focused on the video content itself like Hulu and Fancast have done. Apparently when TV.com was created, the focus wasn't on content. TV.com was focused on conversation for a community. The problem with that strategy, however, was that people were a lot more interested in the videos themselves than conversations about the videos. TV.com was (and still is) an online video site. Online video is a social media platform, not a social networking platform, so content should be the leading strategy. Ultimately, the people using the site proved this point and CBS has appropriately changed course.

The good news for CBS is that they should be able to make the switch successfully because they have content people want. The bad news is they're now playing catch up to Hulu because of this strategic mistake.

Don't make the same mistake TV.com did. Lead with content when you use social media and lead with conversation when you use social networking.

This week's video of the week is quite possibly the longest video I've ever posted here, but it's well worth the 16 minutes you'll need to watch it. It's a short film called "Validation." Just give it three or four minutes. If you don't like it after that, turn it off...but I suspect you'll want to see it through to the end. You may even take a little something away from it as well.

Perspective is an interesting thing. Perspective lets us make sense of things we don't otherwise know how to process. Perspective shades our views on things so the hues are more pleasing to our tastes. But when people with competing perspectives converge upon the same thing...then...BOOM! You have quite a situation. Perspective is an interesting thing.

Depending upon your perspective, you'll either love or hate the five statements below. Depending upon the perspective of others in your organization, they'll either love or hate these five statements. If their perspective doesn't line up with your perspective, you have quite a situation. Take some time to see what the perspective is of those around you...particularly those you hope to influence.

1. With social media you can see what anyone may be saying about your brand, company, service, products, employees, or you personally.

2. With social media, anyone can be a publisher, director, producer, broadcaster, or marketer.

3. With social media, money isn't the most important currency. Time is.

4. With social media, branding, reputation management, public relations, and engaging customers are forever changed.

5. Social media changes the way marketing has been done for a very long time.

I try to keep current stats on all areas of social media and last week I updated a social media handout I give at my presentations and seminars. Three areas I just updated were the number of blogs worldwide, the continued growth of online video, and Facebook stats. Here are the updated stats:

Worldwide Blog Growth (source: Technorati)

• January 2004 ñ less than 2 million blogs
• January 2005 ñ 6 million
• July 2005 ñ 12 million
• January 2006 ñ 24 million
• July 2006 ñ 50 million
• March 2007 ñ 70 million
• December 2007 ñ 100 million
• February 2008 ñ 112 million
• September 2008 ñ 133 million

Online Video Continues Growth (source: ComScore)

• Total number of online videos viewed in March, 2007 : 7.1 billion
• Total number of online videos viewed in March, 2008 : 11.5 billion
• Total number of online videos viewed in November, 2008 : 12.7 billion
• The average online video view in March, 2008, was 2.8 minutes.
• The average online video view in November, 2008, was 3.1 minutes.
• In March, 2008, 74% of Internet users were watching online video regularly.
• In November, 2008, 77% of Internet users were watching online video regularly.

Facebook (source: Facebook)

• Facebook has more than 115 million active users.
• People of all ages use Facebook in more than 35 different languages and 170 countries and territories.
• More than 70% of Facebook users are outside the U.S. and almost half are using Facebook every day.

Gotta love The Onion and their spoof of a "new" Apple product, the MacBook Wheel, that replaces the keyboard with a wheel.

Many companies seem to be looking to change their marketing these days. Actually, that's not true. A lot of companies are considering trying some new marketing approaches these days. They have become enamored or curious about the new social media tools that are widely publicized and are trying to determine how it can work for them. This is a good spot to be in, but I've realized something is still missing. What's missing is the appropriate mindset needed to use the social media tools, techniques, and stategies well. The old mindset won't work with the new tools. They don't mix. Seth Godin wrote an entire book about that called Meatball Sundae.

New marketing only works with the new mindset. Simply using the new tools with the old mindset won't bring about the marketing change you need and want.

The old marketing mindset can be summed up with these five traits. I referred to them as the characteristics of an arrogant marketer yesterday:

1. Arrogant marketers assume consumers are interested in their products or services.
2. Arrogant marketers assume consumers care about whatever they have to say.
3. Arrogant marketers donít care that they completely interrupt peopleís lives.
4. Arrogant marketers tell consumers their product or service is the best even when they know it isnít.
5. Arrogant marketers are willing to sit back while bad marketing ideas are discussed and ineffective campaigns are created. They know better but remain silent.

The new marketing mindset consists of these five traits. If the old marketing mindset is arrogant, it's fair to consider these the characteristics of a humble marketer:

1. Humble marketers know consumers are already bombarded by an average of 4,000 promotions every day and therefore don't want to create marketing campaigns that consumers won't pay attention to anyway.
2. Humble marketers assume the consumer is smart, saavy, and knowledgable. They speak the language of smart.
3. Humble marketers try to add value to the people they hope to reach and understand that by adding value they earn the attention they desire.
4. Humble marketers know they're violating a trust with consumers when they interrupt their lives and that interruptions become annoyances and annoying companies don't succeed.
5. Humble marketers are just as interested in protecting the interests of the people they want to reach as they are protecting the interests of their company or client.

The Two Things You Need

If you really want to change your marketing, you need to do two things: adopt the new mindset and then (and only then) begin to learn how to use the new tools. As you can see from the image to the left, that's where change happens.

There's hope for the people who make the mindset shift and haven't gotten the new tools yet. They're so close to change. They just need to get started with the new tools.

For the group that has the old mindset with the new tools, prepare to be disappointed. You won't see the change you're looking for. You can only get what you're looking for with a paradigm shift. Perhaps you've tried a few things and they didn't work like you thought they should and have determined the tools don't work. That's not the case at all. The tools work fine, just not with the old mindset.

And finally, for the those using the old tools with the old mindset. First, let me welcome you to this blog. You probably haven't been here before. Second, I hope you'll consider what's here. It's not that what you're doing doesn't work. It does. It just doesn't work as well as it used to and it's continuing to be less effective every year. At some point the tide will turn completely and then what will you have?

For anyone who knows my work history, you know that I spent many years in the traditional marketing world. It's only been since my switch to social media marketing two years ago that I've fully realized a dirty little secret about myself: I was an arrogant marketer. As I look back, I know I'm guilty of these five traits of an arrogant marketer:

1. Arrogant marketers assume consumers are interested in their products or services.
2. Arrogant marketers assume consumers care about whatever they have to say.
3. Arrogant marketers don't care that they completely interrupt people's lives.
4. Arrogant marketers tell consumers their product or service is the best even when they know it isn't.
5. Arrogant marketers are willing to sit back while bad marketing ideas are discussed and ineffective campaigns are created. They know better but remain silent.

I'm guilty of all of these.

Why this post? Why now?
I've been chewing on this post for a long time and feel like it's time to finally write it because I recognized the arrogance in my own marketing approach and I believe other marketers are guilty as well. I don't hope to convince you if you're guilty of arrogant marketing. I only hope you'll realize yourself if you are. My desire is that this post will challenge at least one marketer, PR pro, business owner, or organizational influencer to reconsider why he or she approaches marketing the way they do.

I should probably give a few disclaimers here too. First, this has nothing to do with former employers, clients, or projects I've participated in. It has everything to do with me and the kind of marketer I chose to be in several jobs I had and projects I participated in.

Second, this isn't necessarily about traditional marketing verses social media marketing. It's about a mindset and approach to marketing. For me, the switch from traditional to social media revealed the arrogance because arrogant marketers can get called out and/or fail more easily in social media. There are traditional marketers who aren't arrogant and social media marketers who are. It's not about the tools, techniques, or strategies as much as the fundamental mindset upon which everything else is built.

Apologies
Since I've confessed to being guilty of the things listed above, I want to apologize a bit more specifically:

• To book buyers across the country, I apologize for subjecting you to ads that didn't provide any value at all. I participated in the development of many vague and meaningless ads that I knew you wouldn't pay attention to.
• To the millions of people who were on a dirty email list that a client purchased, I apologize for standing by while you received one more spam email in your inbox.
• To the people of Houston, Texas, I apologize for subjecting you to radio, television, direct mail, and billboards that you really didn't care about. You couldn't avoid it and that was on purpose. I'm sorry.
• To former clients, coworkers, and bosses, I apologize for being quiet when I disagreed with your campaign or strategy. You were paying me to tell you what I thought and I didn't do it all the time. It may not have changed anything, but maybe it would have. Now we'll never know.
• To several authors I worked with, I apologize for developing or going along with marketing plans that didn't help your sales or your brand. We could have spent that money many other ways that would have been more effective.
• To the people in a small New England town, I apologize that you were subjected to years of loud, unhelpful, annoying marketing campaigns and I didn't do much to fix it. It's what the client asked for and that's all that mattered. I'm sorry.

Now what?
Well, I feel better for one. I'm glad this is out there. I'm glad I'm aware of this and have been working on being a less arrogant marketer for the last two years despite the temptation to be drawn back in because it's all I knew.

I also can't help but wonder if someone else needs to confess or apologize for being an arrogant marketer. If you do, feel free to put it in the comments. If you happen to be a blogger and do a post about it, please let me know or post the link in the comments. Who knows what a few former arrogant marketers can do to change things around them?

It's been a little more than two weeks since I posted something other than a video of the week here on the blog. I had planned to take some time off for the holidays, but a semi-serious back injury before New Years delayed everything longer than expected. Thankfully, my back is on the mend and I'm ready to restart blogging again.

If there's anything I've learned about blogging for almost three years now, it's that these ebbs and flows in posts are nothing to worry about. I used to get nervous if I got way off my blogging schedule and going two weeks without blogging would have been unthinkable. I'm not sure if I was more nervous about losing readers or more nervous that I wouldn't know how to restart...or maybe it was a little of both. I have a different view on it now.

If good content is really the key to blogging success (and I believe it is), then any readers to your blog will rediscover you after a break. It may take a while to get your readership back to where it used to be, but that's all right. You're probably a little rusty anyway.

There are three things to remember when you restart your blog. This is where I'm starting today as well.

1. Start with something easy for you. Whatever is really easy for you to talk about (and fits in with your blog content) is the best topic for your restart. Just pick a topic that fits your blog topic(s) but is really easy for you to talk about. You just want to get back in the flow of blogging right now and the biggest barrier to getting restarted can be finding something to talk about again. Start with something you know really well and is easy to write about.

2. Start with a short post. My wife ran a half-marathon a few weeks ago. That's 13.1 miles. She took a week off and then ran only a few miles her first time back out. That's how you should restart your blog. Don't feel like you have to restart with a long post. A short one is just enough to get you going again. In fact, all the posts you'll do for the first week or two may need to be short just to get you back. If that't the case for you don't worry about it. It's more important that you post something good and short than something long and meaningless because you feel like you need to make up for lost time.

3. Start with consistency. The worst thing that can happen is that your restart your blog and post a time or two and then take another break. Readers will accept a break. They understand everyone needs a break from time to time. When you're ready to return, however, be ready to return to your previous blog schedule. If you're not quite sure you're ready to restart, it would be better to delay the restart another week or two rather than post once and let it sit again for several weeks. Readers have a sense of a blogger's post frequency so don't toy with them. The break isn't what will hurt you, a bad restart will.