Randy Duermyer » Randy Duermyer

Will Google for Non-Profits Save Google Grants Frustration?

Randy Duermyer — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 19:04:05 +0000

I was contacted by a client 9 months ago seeking help with Google Grants. Today, I’m pleased to say, the account has finally been activated and ads should be running. But it’s been a difficult journey to say the least.

The Google Grants program allows approved non-profits to advertise with Google AdWords for free for an indefinite period. Google provides $10,000/month of free advertising for those accepted into the program. The main requirement to keep the account active is someone must log in to the AdWords account at least once per month.

The Agony that was Google Grants

When I was first contacted by the client in December of 2010, he indicated that the non-profit he works with had been accepted into the program. In reality, the Google Grant had been applied for but had not been finalized. I’m not sure if the AdWords account had been set up by then or was set up shortly thereafter as I wasn’t involved with the original account.

At any rate, I agreed to help in whatever way I could.

In May, 2011, I received a copy of an email from the Google Grants program to the affect that the campaign was ready to go. All the client had to do was resume the campaign as it was currently paused.

False hope number 1.

Unfortunately, the previous provider the client used was not responding fast enough to the Google Grant program and wouldn’t respond to the client’s request for access to the account after the client couldn’t locate the password. A new password for the AdWords account had to be created.

Once I was able to log in, I could see that the existing account didn’t comply with Google’s requirements for Google Grants ad campaigns. I made what I felt were the necessary campaign changes, put all of the offending ad groups and ads on pause, and then reached out to the Google Grants review team for direction.

At that point, it looked like the only thing preventing the campaign from starting was the lack of billing information. But in all of the previous correspondence from Google it was made clear that billing information should NOT be provided. Once Google was satisfied the campaign met their requirements, the red billing warning would be removed from the account (we hoped).

Questions Go Unanswered

While I was waiting for a response from the Google Grants team, I discovered a link where the campaign needed to be submitted for final consideration. Because some of the information on the form about the non-profit organization wasn’t known to me, I had the client complete and submit the form in mid-June.

I found this requirement not from direct information provided by Google, but after perusing many entries within the Google Grants online forum. In that forum I discovered that many of the grant applicants who were posting had been facing the same frustrations as I.

Unfortunately, the only answers they got were from other forum members, not from Google. I later learned that some answers were accurate, some were just misinformation. What was most disturbing was the number of submissions on the same issues – the vast majority of which went unanswered.

Was anyone from Google even reading this stuff? I had to think, “Nope.”

Hurry Up and Wait

The response to the client’s form submission in mid-June from Google Grants was, in part:

Because of the high level of interest in our program, it may take up to three months before we notify you by email about the status of your account. In the meantime, we’re not able to respond to requests for information about the status of your account. Please do not resubmit your account during this time.

So, in effect, you’ll probably have to wait about 3 months for a response. In the meantime, we can’t give you any information on the status of your request.

Wow.

You’ve Been Approved – Or at Least, Someone Has

On June 26th, I received an email from the Google Grants team in response to my inquiry I mentioned earlier (sent on June 6th), which said in part:

Your client CID no is xxx-xxx-xxxx which is activated and I just made the campaigns live for you.

Wow, so now the organization could start running its ads, right, or is this just another load of…?

False hope number 2.

The Client ID number they sent didn’t look familiar. It certainly wasn’t the account I just worked on and not the one the client just submitted via the online form, so I went into AdWords’ My Client Center and added the ID to my managed accounts.

(For those who aren’t familiar with Google’s My Client Center, it’s an AdWords feature Google provides to those who manage other people’s AdWords accounts. It’s a nice feature too, because all of the managed accounts can be accessed with one AdWords login. I can add any client’s ID number, at which point AdWords secures the client’s permission that allows me to manage their account and add it gets added to My Client Center.)

I never received a response for this Client ID number (it never showed up in My Client Center), so I couldn’t access the approved campaign. My non-profit client never received notification that I wanted to manage the account.

So who the heck did the so-called “approved” Client ID belong to? That’s still a mystery.

You’re Rejected. Start Over.

On July 2, the client received a response from the Google Grants team to the campaign that he submitted (via the online form). That campaign was rejected. The reason they gave?

Your account is currently set or was previously set to include a Placement Targeted campaign on the Display Network. We cannot activate accounts that have applied these settings, so you’ll need to create an entirely new account and submit it again for review. In your new account, please do not target the Display Network, Google Search partners and do not add any placements (only add keywords).

At least they gave a reason, and a clear one at that. No mystery here.

The logical thing for Google would do would have been to require that the offending ad groups/ads be deleted from the account and then submitted for reconsideration. But what part of this story has been logical so far?

Instead, an entirely new AdWords account had to be created from scratch and we had to go through the campaign approval process starting from square one. This would make the 3rd account for the same non-profit: 1) the one that was approved (which we couldn’t access), 2) the one that was rejected, and now 3) the new account.

That didn’t seem very efficient to me.

So I created another new AdWords account and set up the campaign (again). Then it got even more frustrating.

Google Grants Becomes Part of Google for Non-Profits

Once the time came to submit the latest AdWords campaign for Google Grants’ approval, I used the old link I had to the submission form we used for the previously rejected account. This time I had all the info I needed from the nonprofit and thought I would take the task off the client’s shoulders and complete and submit the form myself.

By now, I’m thinking, everything is set up correctly. We should get quick approval.

False hope number 3.

When I used the link for the submission form, I was taken to a different page. The old page no longer existed.

From this point forward, the Google Grants program would be part of Google’s Google for Non-Profits Program. In order to take part in Google Grants, the non-profit has to be accepted into Google for Non-Profits first.

Several locks of hair were pulled from my scalp and thrown on the floor to add to the pile of hair previously thrown there in the months prior.

There was conflicting information on whether the non-profit would have to apply all over again to Google Grants once accepted into Google for Non-Profits. I figured, the information I’d seen hadn’t been very reliable anyway, so assume the worst. Because I was thinking we’d have to apply all over again, and what I read suggested that the AdWords account shouldn’t be set up until we were approved for Non-Profits, I canceled the 3rd AdWords account I created. Safe bet, I thought.

(You can’t delete an AdWords account – you can only cancel it. Once you do, you’ll be given reminders to go back in and re-activate the account, and you’ll be told you can do that at any time. )

False hope number 4.

The Google for Non-Profits application was submitted on August 2. The auto responder promised a decision within 30 days.

In the meantime I re-read some of the program information. I started to get the impression that the last AdWords account I just canceled would have been okay. So I went back in and tried to re-activate it.

After 3 separate attempts to do that, receiving error messages to the effect the account couldn’t be reactivated, try again later, I set up a 4th AdWords account with yet a different email address and configured the campaign all over again.

Then I sat tight and hoped my hair would grow back in.

Welcome to Google for Non-Profits

On August 25th, the non-profit was accepted into the Google for Non-Profits program. The acceptance email included the following advice:

Now that your organization has been approved, you can now start enrolling in the products of your choice.

Please understand that there may be another waiting period while you wait for each product enrollment to be activated. You will be notified as each of your products is approved.

So I’m thinking, “Now we have to apply for Google Grants all over AGAIN and wait ANOTHER 3 months?” But before reaching for my scalp, I read on to what seemed even more interesting:

Additionally, if you are already a grantee of a product offering, please know that your enrollment is still active and you do not need to re-enroll for the product. You are still a confirmed registrant of the special product offering (emphasis added)even if it does not appear so on the enrollment page.

So maybe Google is finally admitting that the information it presents isn’t always accurate and can be confusing and a bit misleading. And it was, because at first glance it seemed like we would have to re-apply for Google Grants.

But at least they admitted it was misleading, and that certainly seemed like a step in the right direction! Maybe there’s hope after all!

Suddenly, It Gets Easier

After going to the Google for Non-Profits page, logging in and going to the Google Grants subsection, I saw that all I had to do was enter the client’s AdWords Client ID number (good luck with keeping track of the right one by now) and submit the AdWords campaign for approval. And so I submitted the 4th AdWords account campaign on August 31st.

The auto responder promised:

Our team will be reviewing your account shortly and will be in touch with next steps via email within 30 days.

Well that’s certainly an improvement over the “up to three months” promise from before.

Real hope number 1.

Within 72 hours, we received campaign approval from Google Grants. The red billing notice has been removed from the account. The campaigns have been enabled. After almost 9 months of aggravation (I don’t know how long the client’s previous provider spent on it), we’re finally on our way!

Yes, non-profits, there IS a Santa Claus!

Conclusion

I admit, I haven’t done much work for non-profits in the past. It’s certainly rewarding work when you do something good for a good cause. Not so much financially rewarding, but rewarding in an altruistic sense.

The fiasco I went through in getting Google Grants approval was one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve encountered in my business. But I’m probably one of the lucky ones as it improved while I was in the middle of it.

I wouldn’t have wanted to try this a few years ago.

I can see now, that it’s easy for service providers to brush off charities. After all, the Google Grants program provides $10,000 worth of free AdWords advertising per month indefinitely, so don’t kick a gift horse in the mouth, right?

The other part of that is the previous provider’s treatment of this charitable organization seemed deplorable to me, but I don’t know both sides of the story, so I’ll withhold judgment. Still, their refusal to cooperate (or even correspond with a password to the client’s own account) created additional aggravation.

I have no argument that Google Grants is a great program for many causes. I think it’s downright awesome. But the examples I’ve seen and what I’ve had to endure first hand shouldn’t have to be endured by anyone. I get this is for charity. I don’t get where worthwhile causes have a right to be ignored or that they should expect deplorable customer service and requests for help to go unanswered. And I still feel for all those working with charitable causes who are so confused by Google Grants they have no idea what to do next.

Certainly, the idea of a $10,000/month free Google AdWords account could be a game-changer for many worthy causes. But in the past, the devil has been in the details.

My hope is that putting the Google Grants program under the umbrella of Google for Non-Profits and paying some attention to it will result in faster response times and much better service. And a much better public opinion of Google. I can honestly say that’s the case in my eyes.

I’m very encouraged by the turnaround I witnessed first-hand with Google. If this is really the light at the end of the tunnel (that’s not a train coming), it would be:

Real hope number 2.

What have your experiences been with the Google Grants program? Have you seen improvements since it became part of Google for Non-Profits, or weren’t you even aware that had happened? Has the forum response improved? I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment.

WordPress Platform Grows in Popularity

Randy Duermyer — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:07:24 +0000

In State of the Word, WordPress reports that the WordPress platfrom now powers 14.7% of the top one million websites in the world, up from 8.5%, and that 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress.

That’s good news from my viewpoint. WordPress is a great platform that not only allows you manage you blog, but you can build your entire website on the WordPress platform. While doing so is not really for dummies, it’s far easier than trying to build your site from scratch.

The number of plug-ins (mobile users, think “apps”) available for WordPress allows you do just about anything you could imagine to extend the usefulness of WordPress.

Over the years, the basic WordPress platform has become increasingly SEO friendly, and its SEO plugins have also improved. And the real beauty of WordPress for small businesses is that it’s open source software (aka free). True, you may want to pay for a premium theme (Genesis and Thesis come to mind as two of the most popular premium themes), but I’ve yet to pay for a plug in. Compare that to Joomla where the plug-in I’m about to use for SEO on a client site will cost me $25.

WordPress has certainly been a game changer in the world of web publishing and maintenance.

Do You Have a Content Strategy?

Randy Duermyer — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:45:37 +0000

This post on Social Media Examiner talks about creating a content strategy for social media.

If you think about it, you need a content strategy for anything you do when it comes to marketing your business online. Having a good strategy in place will help keep you on track so you can be sure you’ll have content that’s valued by your prospects throughout the year.

Keyword Research and Content Strategy

The SM Examiner post correctly points out that the best place to start in mapping out a content strategy is with keyword research. Having your targeted keywords mapped out will drive great ideas for your content.

That’s not to say that ALL of you content throughout the year has to be keyword-focused. Yes, it’s better that way, but you’re bound to hit times when you just want to discuss something that’s newsy or that really doesn’t fit with your targeted keywords.

Don’t try to force it. If you have something important to say, go ahead and say it. Maybe it won’t get search traffic for your keywords, but, if the content is interesting enough it can still get shared and bring you traffic.

Using an Editorial Calendar in Your Content Strategy

Setting up an editorial calendar is also a great way to keep your content strategy intact as it acts as a guide for topics throughout the year. It’s a great planning tool that can help you address seasonal content and see if you have gaps in your coverage.

By keeping to a theme within your editorial calendar – say a different topic area for your content every month – you can also create a monthly email newsletter that fits in with the theme-of-the-month.

An editorial calendar makes a whole lot of sense, but it takes some discipline to actually get it done. There are tools and templates available to make it easier, including an Editorial Calendar plug-in for WordPress blogs that’s pretty nice to use.

It’s Not Just About Social Media Content

Why not integrate your content strategy into all of your online marketing efforts – your website content, blog content, Facebook fan page and other social networking content, email newsletters, etc.?

Again, by following an editorial calendar you can keep all of your efforts theme-based throughout the year. You can always throw in an extra piece of content on a different topic here and there as the need arises. Occasional spontaneity is a good thing.

Nowadays, It’s All About Content

Whether the focus is search engine optimization, social media, your website or blog, today, getting found and building traffic is all about providing useful and interesting content that people want to share.

Consider it all part of a content marketing program where you provide valued content throughout the year. In time, those interested in your products or services will come to rely on you for trustworthy information and will build confidence that your products or services are exactly what they and their friends need.

Planting a Content Strategy Seed for Business Growth

Now that we’re near the end of the year, it’s time to start thinking about business goals for next year, if you haven’t done so already. Making a content strategy part of your overall goals for the new year can really help to take your online presence to a whole new level.

Having a content strategy is a great way to grow your business. Think of it as planting a seedling that you’ll nurture and grow throughout the year. Delivering on a good strategy all year long will help you earn the trust of those who consume your content and help you to start getting some word-of-mouth business. It’s a great way to grow a business!

Facebook Success Summit 2010 – Been and Gone!

Randy Duermyer — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:56:29 +0000

Holy cow! I can’t believe it’s been so long since I actually took the time to write a post for my own blog!

In the meantime, the Facebook Success Summit (#fbss10) has totally come and gone. It was an awesome Summit chock full of info on getting the most out of Facebook for your business. Compared to the Social Media Success Summit earlier this year, I’d peg the Facebook Summit as intermediate to advanced. I think some might have been lost who had not attended the intro sessions that were part of the Social Media Summit.

At any rate, my congratulations go to all of the presenters, especially the venerable “Pied Piper of Facebook”, (@MariSmith and to the sponsors – Social Media Examiner (@smexaminer, the brainchild of the equally awesome @Mike_Stelzner.

It was a truly great experience, capped off by one chop-busting certification exam, which contained 100 questions, some of which were ridiculously difficult.

At any rate, I’m glad it’s over and that I can take my newly enhanced Facebook marketing knowledge to my clients for their gain. As I did with the Social Media Success Summit, I posted takeaways from each of the sessions from the Facebook Summit on Market it Write’s blog. If you take a look at the Index of Session Takeaways you’ll get a feel for how much information the Summit covered.

I also wrote a post for Market it Write that recaps the entire Facebook Summit: 30 Key Takeaways from the Facebook Success Summit. That post in itself could be a great resource for anyone looking to create or enhance a Facebook presence for their business and I hope you’ll share it with your friends and business associates.

At any rate, it’s good to be back writing on my own blog, which wouldn’t have been possible had I not resigned as the Guide to Home Business on About.com.

While I really enjoyed writing for them, I was finding that I didn’t have enough time in my 7-day week to be as responsive to my clients as I would like. I hope that my fans there will continue to enjoy and share my existing content, which will remain on About.com indefinitely – at least for now.

Do you find it challenging to have enough time to promote your own business when you are trying to give your customers and clients the attention they need? How do you deal with it? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

8 Possible Marketing Manager Titles. What’s in a Name?

Randy Duermyer — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:36:18 +0000

What’s in a name? A strategic partner (copywriting agency) of mine recently agreed to allow me to manage both internal and client online marketing initiatives. But what to call myself?

A Plethora of Options

I had several choices for a suitable title and pitched a few to her. I could be known as the:

Manger of iMarketing
Online Marketing Manager
Web Marketing Manager
Interactive Marketing Manager
eMarketing Manager
New Media Marketing Manager
Digital Marketing Manager
Internet Marketing Manager

Does it really matter? For one, agencies seem to prefer New Media, Interactive or Digital Marketing over Web, Online and Internet. At least that’s my perception.

Secondly, over the past few years, the term Internet marketing connotes (to me at least) someone who has a web-based business. That could be an affiliate marketer or even someone who monetizes a blog with AdSense. Lately, online marketing seems to command a slightly higher level of status. Again, that’s my opinion and I’m stickin’ to it.

So what did we end up agreeing on? Digital Marketing Manager. After all, this is an agency we’re talking about. And “digital” is certainly broad enough to grow as digital technology grows. My thinking is, there’s no denying mobile marketing and I’m getting my feet wet in that area now, so there would be no real need for a title change down the road.

As it is, my duties encompass website marketing, social media marketing, blog management, search engine marketing and email marketing. So you’d need some kind of general term to snare all of those in order to avoid confusion on the part of a future client.

In general conversation, when someone asks me what I do I tell them “I’m an online marketing consultant and writer.” They seem to get that the first time, so I think it would work well in an elevator. I think most of the general public wouldn’t quite get “Digital Marketing” as well as agencies and their clients seem to.

What are your thoughts? Do these titles have different meanings to you? Do you have a preference, or do you have other ideas on the title one should have who takes on these roles today?

Day 7 of the Social Media Summit and Overall Takeaways

Randy Duermyer — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 14:28:54 +0000

Wow. What happened?

I was moving along pretty well there, at least through day 6 of the Social Media Success Summit, then blam! No posts ’til now.

I’ve been busy and the Memorial Day weekend didn’t help, but that’s no excuse. After all, the Summit ended before Memorial Day. I did manage to snag one full day away from the computer though.

At any rate, the Social Media Success Summit 2010 has come and gone. To say I learned a lot would be an understatement. I can now understand the value of conference attendance. It was like a year’s worth of study completed in less than a month.

Here’s what I’ve written up over on the Market It Write blog:

Day 7 Social Media Summit Highlights

Day 7 Social Media Success Summit Wrapup. Day 7 actually discussed blogs. I was wondering when they were going to get around to that, but finally there was a discussion on blogs. So my gripe in my Day 6 post became moot. In addition to blogs, the final session was meant to be a wrap up that pulled all of the sessions together.

To satisfy the need to pull everything together on my own, I then posted a complete summary of the important takeaways over the course of the Summit.

17 Crucial Must-Knows for Social Media Success

I titled this post, “17 Crucial Things You Must Know for Social Media Success”. It’s a post that was intended to pull everything together. I think it succeeded – it’s been a popular post and has drawn some great comments.

For the most part, all of the Summit coverage on Market it Write was popular. It resulted in a surge of new Twitter followers for Market It Write and for my own accounts, including some well-known and respected bloggers. We saw some good traffic spikes on the blog.

The challenge now is to keep the momentum going. The real way to do that is to keep posting strong content that people want to share and comment on.

More Value-Adds for Conference Blogging

My blogging activities during the Summit helped me in a number of ways, perhaps the most important of which is it forced me to think about what was really discussed every day. It was difficult to avoid getting too wordy with the daily session posts. There was just SO much information to digest.

Because I knew I was going to post about each session, I had to pay close attention and take good notes. It took a few days for me to discover the best method for note-taking without paying more attention to my notes than the active session.

The second value-add of documenting what happened at the conference was that it forced me to post on this blog on a more frequent basis. That’s always a good thing and it’s something I try to drill into my clients every day – you need to post frequently and on a consistent basis.

What happens is that your posts get indexed, so you get more visitors. Most of whom are new to your blog. Some of whom decide that either they’ll subscribe to your posts or RSS feed or come back again to see what else you have to say. At that point, you need to keep the momentum going or you lose your hard-earned audience.

And that’s what I did – something I tell clients you absolutely cannot do: Let your post frequency drop away to nothing. But I’m back now and I’m gong to fight like mad to keep the posts coming. Not crappy filler posts that go up for the sake of posting. But posts you’ll find informative enough to share and are worth coming back for.

Share your thoughts and comments. About the Summit, social media in general and about blogging. I’d love to hear them and connect with you.

Day 6 of the Social Media Success Summit – What About Blogs?

Randy Duermyer — Sat, 22 May 2010 17:07:11 +0000

Day 6 of the 2010 online Social Media Success Summit included 3 more great sessions to help attendees make the most of their social media efforts.

It’s always great when you can hang with guys like Chris Brogan, Brian Clark and Dareen Rowse and Mari Smith’s Facebook presentation was awesome, as expected.

The three sessions were:

Facebook Engagement: Advanced Strategies for Building a Loyal Fan Base (Mari Smith)
Using Social News Sites to Grow Your Audience & Improve Your Search Engine Optimization (Muhammad Saleem)
Twitter Power Panel: Tips & Insights From Twitter Superstars (Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Dareen Rowse)

Once again, I’ve published a detailed wrap up post on Market it Write’s blog with the main takeaways of the 3 sessions as well as some closing quotes from Brogan, Clark and Rowse.

It’s not easy to say which was my favorite presentation of the day. In her first presentation Mari Smith went a bit fast for me, but this time her speed was perfect. She’s an incredible person and probably the foremost authority on Facebook. She’s also very friendly, open and genuinely likable. Of course, to say that Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse and Brian Clark weren’t likable would be an injustice.

While I appreciated their insights on using Twitter, I’m thinking I would have enjoyed hearing them talk about blogs and blogging even more. After all, blogs are part of social media and can act as the home base to which you can draw people in from outposts like Facebook and Twitter (and Digg, for that matter). Plus, these 3 guys are probably the “go to” of blogging around the world. But SMSS 10 is not focusing on blogs this year.

~~As much as I’m loving the Summit, I think that may be an oversight and perhaps contributes to some overlooking blogs as an important part of the social media marketing mix.~~ (My oversight – Tuesday’s first session is Making Your Blog a Social Media Destination with Denise Wakeman – Yay!) What are your thoughts?

Day 5 of the Social Media Success Summit

Randy Duermyer — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:04:16 +0000

Day 5 of the 2010 online Social Media Success Summit included 3 more information-packed sessions.

Unfortunately, the last session seemed very rushed (it ended in under 18 minutes) and it was probably a good topic for further discussion.

The three sessions were:

8 Steps to Creating a Winning Social Media Strategy
How Mobile Marketing Can Improve Your Social Marketing
The Future of Social Media

Once again, I’ve published a detailed wrap up post on Market it Write’s blog with the main takeaways of the 3 sessions, so I’ll just provide a few highlights and observations here.

I never realized that just by participating in social media marketing and email marketing, you are also participating in mobile marketing. Why? Because people interact with their social networks and email from their phone. As the popularity of smart phones grows, this will be increasingly important. In fact, it may be an important trend to watch when it comes to the future of social media. Yesterday’s presentation in that regard was about focusing on trends and not specific technologies.

An eye-opening example of that were the stats on search engines from 1999. Back then, Yahoo was the big Kahuna of search. Google hadn’t even emerged yet. Today, Google dominates the market. It’s a lot like how MySpace shrunk and Facebook grew dramatically. What new technologies and platforms will be out there just a few years from now? It’s mind boggling.

What are your thoughts on mobile marketing and the future of social media?

Day 4 Takeaways – Social Media Success Summit – #SMSS10

Randy Duermyer — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:04:50 +0000

Day 4 of the 2010 online Social Media Success Summit included 3 informative sessions.

Unfortunately, my PC froze up during the final session, but I did jump back in as soon as I could. I’m confident that I was still able to capture the essence of the final session.

The three sessions were:

How to Bring Raving Customers to Your Local Business with Foursquare and Groupon
5 Social Media Case Studies Worth Close Examination
Creating Buzz With Social Media Contests

I’ve published a detailed wrap up post on Market it Write’s blog with the main takeaways of the 3 sessions. Unfortunately, my PC froze up during the final session on Social Media Contest, but I did jump back in as soon as I could and with the help of the slides and recordings of the sessions, I think I’ve captured what was important. Here are a few personal observations and highlights from the day.

I’m beginning to see a continuing theme throughout the Summit sessions. Essentially:

Be yourself and be friendly.
Listen to your customers and prospects.
Don’t butt in or push your products or services too hard. Let your community do that for you, as their word is considered much more credible than yours.
Social media is not a quick fix. I think most businesses start out thinking social media will bring them traffic and sales in droves, and when they don’t see that right away they get disheartened and give up too soon. Even though with some viral campaigns activity may be front-loaded, over time your customers will spread the word about you and you need to be listening to what they say. However, you don’t always need to respond.
Social media offers great potential for viral marketing; however, not all social media efforts go viral.
There are great opportunities to reuse you content on various social media outlets.

What are your thoughts? Did you attend any of the sessions? Are you enjoying the summit as much as I am? If you weren’t able to attend this year, do you see yourself attending next year’s summit? Have you tried Foursquare or Groupon?

Day 3 Takeaways – Social Media Success Summit – #SMSS10

Randy Duermyer — Wed, 12 May 2010 17:08:42 +0000

Day 3 of the 2010 online Social Media Success Summit included 3 information packed sessions:

Getting the Most Out of LinkedIn
How Whole Foods, Best Buy and Home Depot are Leveraging Social Media
3 Reasons You Need a YouTube Strategy

I’ve published a long wrap up post on Market it Write’s blog with the main takeaways of the 3 sessions, but I’ll make some personal observations here and give you a feel for what was discussed.

It wasn’t really too easy to summarize the panel discussion that talked about how Whole Foods, Best Buy and Home Depot are using social media because I thought there was too much important first-hand information that really shouldn’t be left out.

I think the main takeaway from the case studies is that they all agreed that social media marketing is NOT a campaign (temporary initiative) for them. It’s more like a long term strategy that they intend to build and grow.

I think the other common trait I noticed among the 3 big companies is that they have a lot of grass roots involvement in social media throughout the organization. I think that’s what makes social media somewhat unique. While they have a few people in a central corporate location driving things, much of their social media interaction is taking place in the field.

The LinkedIn and YouTube presentations were interesting, although the YouTube presentation seemed a bit short. Of course, that session was the last of the day, I was getting pretty tired and by then I considered a short presentation to be an asset.

I think the best thing I decided to do this time was to try not to keep an eye on the tweets coming out of the session and just give my undivided attention to the presentations.

The other smart thing (for me at least) was to tile the windows on my screen and type my notes during the session, instead of trying to write them out by hand. It was easier to make sense of them because if the speaker is moving along at a pretty good clip, it gets to the point where I can’t read my own writing (maybe better classified as scribble). I will probably continue doing that for the remaining sessions.

What are your thoughts? Did you attend any of the sessions? Are you enjoying the summit as much as I am? If you weren’t able to attend this year, do you see yourself attending next year’s summit?