In cliff diving, there are no silver medalists. There are those who win and those who go to the emergency room. The same is true when using social media as a marketing tool. People either are embraced by the social network community because of their contributions, or they are shunned for being too commercial and pushy. There’s not a whole lot in between.

As a user of social networks myself, I have discovered that there is far more to social media than tweeting and liking. It’s not about how many times you update your status or tweet your company’s Web site. It’s about the quality of those communications and adding value to the community. That’s why I believe that a good PR campaign is the engine that can really drive social media marketing.

To understand all the moving parts, let’s remember that these networks were not set up so you could use them to market your company. They were set up as social tools, so friends and family could keep in touch with everyone in their network with a single message. Of course, this means the communication lines are used for every kind of message, from the ridiculous to the sublime. Some tweet about their morning commute, their dog soiling their slippers or their birthday plans, while others send links to breaking news or ways to help during crises, like the Japan earthquake. Keep in mind their goal isn’t to sell, it’s simply to stay in touch and be helpful.

When using social networks for a commercial purpose, like promoting a company, product or service, you have to recognize that you’re twisting the original purpose of the network to suit your business needs. If you’re too overt about it, other users may feel you are hijacking the network as a sales tool and they can be very not nice about how they express their displeasure.

The key is to seize upon the tone touched upon earlier, being helpful. Obviously, tweeting about what you had for breakfast—while perfectly compatible with social media—doesn’t do much for your business. Your other option is to use your social-network outreach to just be helpful. And, when you use your company’s expertise to provide tips and advice to social network users, that actually brings you a step closer to being in the sweet spot. However, you can’t always link them to your Web site or company blog, because the social network audience is savvy. They’ll know your advice is just a Trojan horse to get them to your corporate Web site. So, how do you thread the needle of being helpful, but not promotional?

That’s where the value of a PR campaign comes in, especially when it comes to print media coverage where your spokesperson’s advice and expertise may appear in columns and articles published in news outlets. Keep in mind, just about every article that appears in print is repurposed online by the news outlet’s Web site and there are dozens and dozens of outlets that are Internet-based. Writing bylined articles for a publication or being quoted as an expert in a news story establishes your spokesperson’s position as an opinion leader in your field and lends great credibility to your company’s products or services. It builds a bond of trust between you and your social media followers, and that’s a prize you cannot buy with any amount of money.

Of course, the obvious question I always get is, “Well, when do I promote my company?” That’s my point, you already are. The fallacy in that question is that many marketers believe they have to be constantly pushing the company line in the media, in order to attract potential clients and customers, and that is patently not so. The key is to show your expertise in a venue that holds the quality of third-party verification. When a news outlet quotes you, they are essentially endorsing you because they believe you are smart enough to give advice to their readers. Once you’ve established trust, they see your company name and most consumers are smart enough to take that information to the Internet, where most everyone begins their research that leads to key business decisions.

Most importantly, the news story generated from your advice gives you the most common tool used in social media, the newslink. Millions of tweets and status updates are written every day that link to an article in the news. When you can send links to news articles, even if they are about your company, it is not seen as being contrary to the culture of social media. It is seen as being a thoughtful and active participant in the social network community. Finally, it enables you to give the good media your campaign generates, a life after the placement initially hits. It allows you to take the article that you know will help establish you or your spokesperson as an expert in your industry and then put it directly in front of the eyeballs of the people you most want to read it.

That’s how PR helps you thread the needle of social networking.

That is why I jumped on board the social media marketing train over a year ago…it has been a huge boon to my performance-based PR business.

But in spite of the many extraordinary opportunities in social media marketing, one drawback I’ve found is the speed with which one can be forgotten. Even the social-media savvy may struggle to stay in front of and remain memorable in the minds of their friends, followers, connections and fellow group members.

The truth is that being an active and diligent social media marketer, posting and participating with consistent frequency, does not guarantee your messages are going to be seen by everyone you would like to reach. And it’s understandable…people are busy. Some log on to their social networks at different times of day than when you happen to be on, others get involved only sporadically, while some group participants may only check in to see what’s happening in their group every few weeks.

Tweets are here and gone in a flash. If your posts are not showing up in someone’s news feed or social network home page when they happen to log on, your only hope for that person to see your communication is for them to find you interesting and memorable enough to regularly visit YOUR profile to see what you’re up to. Sadly, more often than not, the majority of your prized connections are probably missing your posts.

My solution for this dilemma is to support my social media marketing with traditional email marketing activities. This one-two punch has been a very valuable approach for me: social media marketing has enabled me to increase my email list by thousands with those on the list continuously receiving my newsletters that carry my message.

Each week I email my newsletter containing my articles with tips on how to use PR to promote your business to my mailing list. (I have actually been sending these weekly emails since email became a common means of business communication and prior to email I was sending faxes!)

Unlike my social media efforts, I know that everyone on that mailing list sees my email in their inbox, at the very least. Some read and respond with feedback or a request for information about our services, while others forward it to their own lists.

My newsletter helps my social media contacts remember me and what I do, and this has led directly to many new business relationships. Indirectly, I frequently receive referrals from the members of my opt-in list. And I always enjoy the times when someone from my list, who has been quietly receiving my emails for years without responding, finally reaches out for my professional help and becomes a client!

That is the real reward of combining your email and social media marketing efforts.

So how do you do this? The trick is a strategy to turn your social media followers into opt-in newsletter recipients.

Here are five tips for using social media to build your opt-in list:

1. Join Targeted Groups and Post Effective Discussions. Within your social networks, choose the groups wisely in which you will participate, focusing on groups that are active and contain your target market. You should post discussions to demonstrate your professional expertise and drive people to your website, taking care to make your headlines short and interesting. Making the headline for your post a question is an effective attention-getter, or using wording containing phrases like “tips for” or “strategies for,” also works very well. Be sure to post a paragraph-long teaser in the discussion body telling people what helpful information you have to share and include a link to your website where they can read it in full. Close with a question for the reader or a statement soliciting feedback. When readers comment, your post will remain at the top of the group list where more people can see it.
2. Make Sure your Website is “Opt-in” Friendly. Make sure your opt-in form is prominent throughout your website, with a message telling visitors that when they sign up for your list they will receive helpful information as opposed to spam. You can also include incentives to help encourage people to opt-in. E-books work nicely.
3. Invite Every One…But Don’t Pester! Every time you get a friend request or a new follower, send a message introducing yourself and include an invitation (with the link to your site’s opt-in form) to sign up for the helpful information you send to your list. If the new connection does not immediately respond, don’t message them again with a repeat of your invitation. If they didn’t take the bait through the initial invitation, you’ll have plenty of chances to win them over as they continue to see the wealth of information you have to share.
4. Be Direct…But Not Too Often. If you have a helpful and valuable incentive to offer, occasionally post updates inviting your friends and followers to go get it! Keep in mind you are treading a thin line with this type of post, so make sure they are infrequent and are mixed in with many posts that are completely non-promotional in nature. You don’t want to be considered “that guy” who’s just there to promote to people.
5. Be Consistent in Your Social Networking! The key to making points 1 – 4 above really work for you is to stay active in your networks and groups. If you are only an occasional visitor, you might as well “stay home.” In order to reap the rewards of these strategies, post often and wisely, and pay attention to your group members.

Participation in social networks can be enjoyable and rewarding, so start posting and have fun!

David is an internationally recognized viral marketing strategist and speaker at conferences and corporate events around the world.

If for some reason you missed part 1 or part 2, please let me know and I will forward them to you right away.

David Meerman Scott: The EMSI Interview

Part 3

MF: David, I would like to ask you about video. What do you think the value of an online video is to creating a World Wide Rave?

DMS: I think they can be huge. Remember though, there are two main uses of video. One use of video is sort of something that might become a World Wide Rave. In other words, you post it on YouTube and then maybe people will talk about it. A great recent example that has all of the classic elements of a World Wide Rave is “United Breaks Guitars.” It’s absolutely fantastic.

Basically, “United Breaks Guitars” is a country music singer who is in a band called Sons of Maxwell. They’re out of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

And so this guy, Dave Carroll, looked at the window of the airplane on the tarmac and they’re throwing his guitar case and his guitar broke, a $3,000 Taylor guitar. And he tried for six months to get United to do something about it and they didn’t. So he decided he was going to write a song about it. And he wrote a song called “United Breaks Guitars” and in a week, it’s had 2.8 million views on YouTube.

MF: Wow — almost 3 million in one week!

DMS: It’s huge. So that’s one use of online video and it’s a fantastic way to get people talking about you. However, a lot of people underestimate the other great use of video. Video is a terrific element to help with the sales process. Imagine the effect of a compelling video on your website that people can watch while they’re investigating as to whether they want to do business with you. So let’s say you’re a professional services firm of some sort: doctor, lawyer, whatever it is. You can have a short video talking about you or your philosophy or some other element.

I went to a chiropractor last week, and he has a series of videos which he sends to his patients. He goes, “Okay, so for that back, I want you to do these exercises at home. I’m going to send you a link to a video on YouTube and that will tell you how to do it.”

So I think there are those two uses of video.

MF: Do you feel like a professional video company is appropriate, or not?

DMS: It can be but it doesn’t have to be. There are a couple of different ways to create a video. Of course, you can bring in the pros, but I don’t think it’s required.

I’ve personally done some great videos just using a $120 Flip video camera. I’m a huge, huge believer in the marketing use of a very, very simple video camera like the Flip.

But you can go all the way up to spending $100,000 with a professional firm to shoot a really slick video for you. It’s not really that big a decision point until you get a sense of what story you want to tell using video, who you’re trying to reach, and what that means in terms of how you need to create it.

MF: In your book there is a chapter entitled “Think Like a Venture Capitalist.” You wrote that the best way to begin a marketing initiative that has the potential to become a World Wide Rave is to think like a venture capitalist or film producer. Can you explain what you mean by that?

DMS: It’s a really quirky thing to try to come up with something that will potentially spread like wildfire on the web. So I recommend people to not think like a traditional marketing person.

A traditional marketing person says “I’ve gotta launch a book” or “I’ve gotta launch a product” or “I’ve gotta increase sales for the last six months of the year” and then do one big marketing campaign. This is not the correct approach when you’re talking about creating a World Wide Rave.

The right approach is to create 10 different things and hope that one or two of them become extremely popular…and you don’t necessarily have to put a huge amount of effort into each one!

Basically, that’s the way a venture capitalist invests in companies. As you can never know if a company is going to become extremely successful, venture capitalists invest in a bunch of different companies. This way they increase the odds of making money because hopefully one or two of them will either go public on the stock market or be sold.

MF: I couldn’t agree with you more. In the process of a world wide rave, is there a formula for how many posts or articles or updates somebody should be doing daily or weekly?

DMS: No, not really. Although I think what’s important is consistency. I think it’s fine if you only want to update your blog twice a month. It’s fine if you want to update your blog twice a day. But what’s not as appropriate is building up an audience based on blogging twice a day and then suddenly going to twice a month. People will think you’re dead.

So generally speaking, the more often you post, the more followers you will get.

MF: That brings me to another question, as CEO’s are so busy in today’s economy trying to keep their company alive, how do they keep up with the wave of the social media?

DMS: I don’t know that the busy CEO or executive has to keep up with everything. However, I think an executive or CEO needs to understand this. There are four ways that their organization can generate attention, and for decades companies have been generating attention using just three ways.

The first way is buying advertising: Yellow Pages, magazine, radio, television, newspaper advertising, billboards, trade shows, direct mail list, whatever. They can buy attention. The second way is that they can beg for attention with the media. They can hire a PR agency or use a team of in-house PR people that will get them media attention in talk radio, television or print. The third way that they can generate attention is one person at a time by hiring a big sales force and having them reach out to people, one at a time.

So for decades, those have been the only three ways that people can generate attention. Buy it, beg for it, or bug people one at a time.

What the social media and social networking sites do is that they allow companies for the first time to earn attention by creating something really interesting on the web. You can earn attention by doing a YouTube video, by creating a blog, by being on Twitter, by being on Facebook.

You can earn attention. And what CEOs and executives should understand is that there’s a fourth way now to generate attention that didn’t exist when they were coming up through the ranks. And they need to understand that there’s another way to generate attention, and it doesn’t always come down to hiring more sales people or spending more money on advertising or firing the PR agency and getting a new one. There’s this fourth way of generating attention, which is earning attention.

Related to that is another very important thing that CEOs and executives — all business owners, entrepreneurs, business people — need to understand. And that is that today people go to the web first when they want to solve a problem.

They don’t go to the trade show first, they go to the web first. They don’t go to the trade magazine first, they go to the web first. They don’t necessarily wait for a sales person to call them; they’re out searching themselves when they’re ready to buy something.

And what that means is that if you’re not out there, you don’t exist. And those two things that I just mentioned are converging now. Number one, more and more people are going to the web to solve their problems. And number two, companies have this unbelievably great opportunity to earn attention by creating stuff on the web.

Now what I see is that a lot of CEOs and executives just don’t understand that. Or if they know it, they don’t want to think through what that means for them. And that’s critically important. Does that mean you have to understand what Twitter is? Of course not. But you do have to understand that you can earn attention of people who are solving their problems by going to the web.

MF: David, the last question I have, and I think it’s really important for business, how do you see phenomena like the World Wide Rave changing the marketing and advertising industry as we move forward in business?

DMS: Well, I think that it’s a separate thing. And I’ve kind of said this now a couple of different ways when I was talking about how people go to cocktail parties. I think that public relations agencies are incredibly skilled at what really should be termed “media relations.” They’re really skilled at trying to get the media to write or broadcast about their companies or clients. And I think that advertising people and advertising agencies are really skilled at buying attention, placing ads or doing billboards, or whatever it might be. The skills that are required to be successful on the web are different. They’re the skills of content creation. And generally — although there are certainly a bunch of exceptions — generally, most PR people that I know and most advertising people I know aren’t good at creating great content of the sort I’m talking about.

Sure they’re great at creating pretty advertising, 30-second commercials, or display ads in magazines. Or they might be good at writing press releases and pitching media, but they don’t have the skills of being able to create a content-rich website for a company or being able to credit a 5-minute YouTube video or being able to create a Facebook presence necessarily. Now can they develop those skills? Sure. But I think that advertising is not going away. I think that public relations is not going away. I think direct sales is not going away.

Those skills will always be in demand, but there’s a new set of skills that are required to be successful with all the things that we’ve sort of talked about. And I think that the organizations and the agencies that are developing those skills are the ones that are understanding that it’s about content creation.

MF: Exactly. What I see is that it really adds so much value to a PR campaign. I can no longer imagine in any sense not having both. It adds great value to advertising and to PR campaigns.

DMS: They all come together. These things aren’t happening in vacuums. I would like to say that these ideas are unbelievably liberating and exciting for us as either business owners or marketers or communicators, we never really had these opportunities in the past. And it’s just exciting that all of a sudden we can create these exciting pieces. And again, it makes marketing and communications fun again. It hasn’t been fun for a while for a lot of us, and all of a sudden, it can be fun again. So it’s all good stuff.

MF: I can’t agree with you more. It’s been a wonderful experience for me too. Being a marketer and a communicator and a PR professional, I mean, for me, it just combines the best of all worlds.

~~ End of Interview ~~

Well, I found David’s remarks to have incomparable value. And from the feedback I’ve been receiving from part 1 and part 2, it seems that many of you have enjoyed this interview as well.

It has given me great pleasure to be able to share this with you, and I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t also urge you to read David’s recent bestsellers, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” (Wiley) and “World Wide Rave” (Wiley). If you found the information in this interview useful, you will love both these books.

Below is Part 2 about the marketing value of social networking, which I hope you will enjoy as much as I did! Next week we will conclude the series with Part 3.

David Meerman Scott: The EMSI Interview
Part 2

MF: David, I know you probably get this question all the time, but how does someone best utilize the social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter? It can be overwhelming for somebody who’s just starting or for a busy executive with little free time. With all of the different formats, group applications and constant notifications, how would you recommend they best utilize it?

DMS: Ok, I’m going to take you through my tortured analogy. I think this is a great way to explain how the tools of social networking — by the way, there’s a difference between social media and social networking. Social media defines any online content that people can participate in. So a newspaper website that allows comments is social media.

Social networks are sites that are specifically created to encourage people to network on those sites. And that includes Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and literally thousands of others. But I think those terms are often used interchangeably and they’re not really the same thing.

MF: I think many will thank you for that clarification!

DMS: The confusion is very common. So anyway, getting back to my tortured analogy. Think of the web as a city and think of each activity that happens on the web as being an analogy with what’s going on in an actual physical city.

So in a city, you’ve got the book store, which is Amazon.com. You’ve got Main Street that has stores and shops, which are the consumer-facing websites of the web. You’ve got B2B websites, which are the office buildings. You’ve got the bulletin board when you walk into the supermarket, which is Craigslist. You’ve got the underworld of p*rn and sp*m going on both on the web and in the city, the physical city. You’ve got eBay, which is the garage sale. And so on and so on.

The social media are things like the private clubs; the bowling leagues, the golf clubs, the churches, the bars, and the pubs of the city. These are places where people meet and congregate to share like-minded interests. And just like in a real private club, you join and hang out with people who you like. If you like bowling, you join the bowling league. If you like bowling, you become interested in somebody’s bowling blog. I look at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all the others as the cocktail parties that are going on in the city.

So think about a cocktail party. You walk into a cocktail party, you might know a few people there, but a lot of people are strangers to you. And the way that you participate in that cocktail party, the physical cocktail party, is very similar to the way that you would behave on a social networking site like Facebook. So the question then is how do you decide if you should become involved in Facebook, and what you do.

MF: I love your analogy…thinking about it that way makes the web seem like a “real” place. So which cocktail party — social networking site — should someone get involved with??
?
DMS: I think it comes down to the same deciding factors you make about whether you’re going to get involved in a cocktail party. If somebody invites you to join Facebook, it’s kind of the same as if somebody’s going to invite you to come to their cocktail party. You need to make a decision. I’m really busy but Friday night I’ve got time, but what’s better, watching the Red Sox on TV or going to this cocktail party? And that’s the same point you make about joining Facebook.

For a lot of people who are looking to use the social networking sites for business you have to decide “Am I going to go to this cocktail party because I’m simply going to have fun and meet interesting people?” or “Am I going to go to this cocktail party because I’m going to do a lot of business there and maybe make some money as a result?” Some people do only one and some people do only the other, but a lot of us — me included — go to physical cocktail parties and go into social networking sites because it’s likely we’re going to do both.

We’re going to meet interesting people, have some fun, maybe make some friends, but there’s also a decent chance that we will meet somebody who might ultimately be able to help us in business in some way. If you come in with that healthy attitude, sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and whatnot can be extremely valuable.

So the decision point becomes what cocktail party you go to. Do you want to go to the one that’s on the other side of the tracks and in a dirty sort of dungeon-like old warehouse where they’re playing house music that starts at 1 o’clock in the morning and everyone’s got black t-shirts and tattoos?

Or do you want to go to the one where everyone’s got coats and ties and speaks with clenched jaws and talks about their summer homes in the Hamptons?

These are both fine — there is nothing wrong with either of those things. The point is you need to get a sense of where the people are at that you would be interested in hanging out with. Where are they? And where are the people that I might want to do business with hanging out?

After all, a real estate agent can absolutely do business in their city by going to cocktail parties and joining the bowling league. Absolutely.

The same thing is true of these social networking sites. And by the way, the tortured analogy goes even further with Twitter, which is when you’re in a cocktail party and the girls go to the bathroom and talk about the guys and the guys stick around and talk about the girls when they’re gone!

So anything you want can fit this analogy. And I think also that what this analogy does is allow people to get a sense of the right behavior if they’ve never experienced a social networking site.

MF: I’m glad you brought that up David. Can you share with us some of the agreed-upon etiquette for the social networking world?

DMS: You know, a lot of times people who are new to social networking sites tend to behave in ways that aren’t really that well accepted when they first jump in. For example, if you have a sales background, your natural tendency in social networking sites is to sell. But can you imagine if you’re a sales guy, you go into a cocktail party, go into the middle of the room, and scream at the top of your lungs, “Buy my product?”

And some people who have an advertising background, their natural tendency is to buy advertising space. So you don’t go into a cocktail party and then paste posters onto the wall of the cocktail party room that talks about your products and services, do? Of course not!

So I think it’s just a matter of being human, wandering in, seeing who you can meet, being friends with people, being helpful, being interesting, offering to provide advice. And sooner or later, you’ll meet people, you’ll make friends, and all kinds of interesting opportunities will come your way exactly the same way as if you’re on the cocktail party circuit.

MF: Now, I want to talk a little bit about Twitter. I have had clients ask me why someone on Twitter — someone who doesn’t really know them — would even care to read tweets about them, their day or their message.

DMS: Typically what happens is there are three main ways people discover somebody else on Twitter and decide if they want to follow them. One way is if you do a Twitter search. If you do a Twitter search (search.twitter.com is the URL) you do a search under company name, your own name, the category of product you sell, your city and you can find people who are talking about things that are interesting to you and you can choose to follow those people.

Another way is if somebody who you follow all of a sudden is pointing to you and maybe pointing to a blog post that you wrote or one of your tweets. Then other people see this and say, “Oh, that sounds like an interesting person. I’ll try to follow them.” The third broad way is that if somebody starts to follow you, you find out who they are and follow them back. So again, in my earlier analogy, why would someone want to talk to you at a cocktail party? Because you’re interesting!

If you’re not interesting, maybe they won’t want to talk to you more than a minute. If you bore them to tears, they’re going to make the excuse that they need another drink and they’ll go away. But if you’re interesting, people will want to engage with you.

MF: Now, all of the responses can’t be positive in the social networking world. What’s the protocol when you get a negative response?

DMS: First of all, it happens a lot less frequently than a lot of people think…it’s actually quite rare. I’ve had something like 5,000 comments on my blog and probably fewer than 20 have been truly negative. Ultimately, you want to engage the person who has been negative and reply politely saying, “Gee, I’m sorry you feel that way” and go on to explain why you said what you said, and that you hope they can see your side of it. Typically, that’s enough.

But if you really get someone who’s just out of control bent on trying to hurt you, then you just disengage. Again, that’s exceedingly rare. I think that’s only happened to me one or two times. People make it out to be much, much more common than it is. Now of course, there are exceptions. If you work in the banking industry or the airline industry, maybe you’ll see it more often than not. But for most of us, it’s very, very rare.

MF: You know, that’s been my experience too. There’s a really small percentage of people who go out of their way to be rude or difficult, but most people are great! And one of the lessons you (hopefully) learn early in your life is to ignore the jerks and spend your time with the positive folks.

~~~~~ End of Part 2 ~~~~~

I certainly found David’s comments illuminating, I hope you did, too!

Click here to view the David Meerman Scott Interview, Part 1, or Part 3.