Karen Rubin's Ramblings

Ah spring! It's been a beautiful week here in Boston, in fact it's been the first week where I was able to bike to work every day. You might ask, "Karen, what does this have to do with business cards?" Being the first week where I biked to work, also meant I moved from my winter bag to my summer bag, and thus cleaned out all the junk I had accumulated throughout the winter. 

 In that junk, was a pretty significant pile of business cards. I get, and give business cards everywhere. HubSpot.tv on Fridays, customer interviews, as well as various Boston networking events - they are more popular than candy on Halloween. 

As I took that pile of cards, and added them to the box in my desk with all my other cards, I realized I should just throw them away. I never, absolutely never, go back to my business cards to look up contacts. Business cards have become completely useless.

 If I meet someone at an event that I want to keep in touch with, I reach out to them on LinkedIn or Twitter. If there is someone I want to reach out to that I am not connect with, I Google them. I never pull out that box of business cards and go through it trying to find their contact information.

My question to you is, why do people still hand out business cards? Do they still add value to you in your world?  

I don't spend a lot of time paying attention to the traditional advertising industry. In my world, it is an old school, outbound marketing, TV and magazine ad producing, industry that doesn't understand much about inbound marketing.

As a result, I was impressed when I learned that agency Crispin, Porter and Bogusky is releasing (it hasn't actually launched yet) a beta site that is very inbound marketing focused.

 The site, beta.cpbgroup.com, does a couple great things. When you arrive, there is a spunky, short video explaining the site. In it @Bogusky explains that they hope the site will be "a giant digital fishing net that gathers everything that is relevant about us and out clients."

Great Thing #1: The intro video is short and not over produced. I can't imagine it took them long to pull together. Video doesn't have to take forever!

@Bogusky goes on to explain that there is only one section of the page where CP&B controls the content, the rest is auto generated coming from blogs, twitter and other news sites. 

Great Thing #2: CP&B has accepted letting go and losing control. By using content created by others, CP&B opens themselves up to whatever the loonies that inhabit the internet want to say. They also make their site a great hub of information for the industry and create a cool site that doesn't need a ton of management to keep running. 

I clicked around the site, and realized the home page is all about CP&B and the ad industry.  Then I noticed the true brilliance, at the top there are 9 tabs each going to the same type of page for a different big name customer. This means, I can go check out the latest TV ads from VW, Burger King or Hulu and read the buzz about them on Twitter, in the blogosphere and in the news. 

Great Thing #3: There are really two great things here. First, GP&B is doing something @mvolpe and I talk about on HubSpot.tv all the time. They are using the information and data they have as part of their business to create a cool/fun tool online. HubSpot does this with the State of the Twittersphere and Technorati does this with the State of the Blogosphere. If you have interesting information that people want, you should use it to your advantage!

Second, they have pulled the site together for themselves AND ther customers. This will help their customers (see Great Thing #2) and shows their prospects that they are an ad agency that understands this new inbound marketing thing. Brilliant!

The other morning my father sent me an email that said "If you do nothing else today watch this." Being a normal well adjusted child, I did not listen and waited 3 days to watch the video. By doing so, I once again proved that Dads are always right. (Does that ever stop? So annoying!)

 The video is a TED talk posted earlier this month (and included below) and as promised was well worth the 15 minutes. It will also be for you, if any of the following are true,

• You use social media in either your job or your life

• You use the internet in either your job for your life

• You have ever wondered what this interweb thing is and why it matters (in which case, I am thrilled you read MY blog!)

I had no idea who Clay Shirky was when I started the video, but clearly he is one smart dude. His talk is about how the internet has changed the way the world works by allowing people to consume and create content. Something that no other form of media had managed to do thus far. My favorite analogy was, "It would be as if you were given a printing press when you received your first book."

It is remarkably well done and very enjoyable. I recommend you either watch it today while you think about your plans for the 4th of July and procrastinate so you don't have to work, tomorrow while you enjoy the 4th from inside as it pours, or on Monday when you are bummed to be back at work and again looking to procrastinate. 

Have a great 4th of July!

Sanoma wine vineyard, Murphy-Goode, has launched a AReallyGoodeJob.com to find someone willing to live the wine life for 6 months, for $10K a month while doing social media marketing for the vineyard. Sounds like a pretty good gig to me!

Their website explains the position in detail (what you would be doing, how you are compensated etc.) and urges you to apply by submitting a 60 second video. 

 What a cool way to market what sounds like an awesome position. If I was one of the 80%* of undergrads coming out college without a job right now, you better believe I would be applying for this!

* I think Katie Couric said this was the number when she was on the Daily Show, but I can't find the numbers online. Whatever it is, this year I am sure a lot of kids need jobs! 

I don't follow a lot of people on Twitter. It's not by design, it's just because I find the twit-o-sphere overwhelming. No wonder, look at my TweetDeck!

I didn't have time to carve out a community on Twitter, HubSpot.tv threw me out there and suddenly I was overwhelmed by emails (which I then turned off) telling me people had followed me. I'm not complaining, I love having followers (in a totally non-religious way :-) but it all came awfully fast and fell behind in my follow-backs.

Last week I got the following tweet from @SarahMerion and I realized she was right!

I barely follow anyone! It's time for me to get back out there and conqure the twit-o-sphere!

I started this the other day and realized how I was selecting people was interesting and probably says a lot about how people (or at least how I) use Twitter. 

This is not by any means and exhaustive list and if I am not following you, the best way is just to send me a tweet and let me know. I do hope these tips help you get other followers and enjoy Twitter a little more. 

1. Say something interesting

The second column in my TweetDeck is where all my @ replies are located, and where I start looking for people to follow. I did a webinar with Mike the other day and had a lot of @ replies. I figured I wasn't following many of the people so I scanned through my @ replies for people who said something that caught my attention. 

2. Make sure you have an good photo that shows your face

I don't even clicking on people's profiles that didn't have a photo of them. If it was a logo or something obscure, I went right over it. I want to know you are a HUMAN!

3. Fill out your bio with unique information

When I did click into someones profile, I first checked out where they are from and what they do. If they are from the Boston area, I pretty much always follow them. If their profile only says is "social media expert" I generally don't follow. 

4. Don't only send @ replies 

You are in the Twit-o-sphere to contribute and join the conversation. If you only converse with people you know and follow, your stream is a pretty un-interesting series of half conversations that I don't understand. I look for the articles you share and the things you put out there for everyone and see if those appeal to me.  

5. Have followers

I know this seems weird but you have to have followers to get more followers. That's not to say I didn't follow people with only 27 or 62 people following them, but if I did they really had to excel at the points above. If someone has over 1,000 followers, I assume they are interesting and tend to follow more quickly. 

Mike had been planning this for months, or at least since his wife kicked the puppet out of the house. He grabbed me last week around 4:30 in the afternoon and asked if I wanted to tape an interview with the Pet.com Sock Puppet. Who am I to turn down the chance to be in a video?

 The whole thing took us about 2 hours to complete. We figured out what questions I would ask and his general responses. We then took 1 tape and got some feedback from the all star marketing team. They said it was too long and not funny enough, so we cut a bunch of stuff and tried it again. 

 I think that this is exactly how video should be done. If you over think it, it will take way to much time. We didn't edit the video, we didn't spend hours on a script. We just figured out the key points we wanted to make, took a couple takes and got feedback. 

 Who knows if it will be a viral hit, but didn't cost us a lot to produce, so there isn't a lot to lose. The more we produce, the higher chance of us making a hit that spreads like wild fire. The secret is to keep it simple and easy!

Last week on HubSpot.tv we discussed Brian Solis's article Twitter Visits Surpass New York Times and Wall Street Journal and I have to say when I looked at it for the first time, my jaw dropped open. Look at this graph!

 All I could say was WOW! The big question is if this is just a bubble of popularity because of Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN and Oprah or if this is sustainable growth that actually means something. A couple weeks ago some numbers came out saying that 60% of people who sign up for Twitter don't come back the next month. That pretty much sucks. It will continue to be interesting to watch Twitter grow and see if will be something awesome, or just another fad.

Girls in Tech Boston last night was a fantastic event. @just_kate did a great job of the preparation and execution, major kudos go out to her.

 I really liked how Kate included a couple of case studies during the panel. They were of two Boston companies, Generation Progress and Shoestring Magazine, who each had some great social media questions. They each explained their business and situation and got to ask the panel some very specific questions.

 The advice from @rhappe, @MikeLangford, @CappyPopp was fantastic and if you want a rundown of everything, check out @jmaver and his twitter stream from the event. Below are some of my suggestions.

Shoestring Magazine - Shoestring is an online magazine that has been up since the fall of last year. They offer the "good life for less" and are working on building their revenue model and readership through social media.

1. Join the conversation! - The two co-founders of Shoestring have been on Twitter since the early days, have a blog and utilize Facebook. My recommendation to them was to not just use social media to push out their content, but to engage in the conversation. They need to find the influencers in the budget and eco-friendly online communities and join the conversations. Comment on their blogs and interact with them on Twitter and Facebook. Doing so will get the influencers involved in Shoestring and their support will be invaluable.
   


2. Use the team - The full time team at Shoestring consists of just the co-founders, Melissa Massello and Meghan Udell, so having enough time is always an issue. I think they should leverage their freelance writing team to help them engage in the community more. All writers want their work to be read, so give incentives based on links to their articles, number of comments and visitors or other metrics that would encourage them to participate in the community and build a following of their writing.  

Generation Progress - GP is a political action committee that raises money through events to support political candidates. They are working to build their community and bring more engaged people to their events.

1. Twitter - GP is on Twitter, however I recommend that they expand the focus of their tweets. There is so much good content that would appeal to their target audience. They have the opportunity to tweet about all things political and appeal to the very people they are trying to reach. By building a content stream that is not so focused on what GP is doing, but focused more broadly on what GPs followers are interested in, they will gain more followers and hopefully more engaged attendees.
   


2. Community - GP has a great community that discusses political issues and encourages debate. Unfortunately this is all through a private email group and it's difficult to get new people to sign up. They recognize the need to open this up, but have struggled to move it to a different medium. I think they should come up with a number of different solutions such as a blog with open comments for discussion, a forum or a Twitter handle, and ask the community which they would prefer. It's important with communities that you don't force a decision on them, this would help them find where their users would be willing to move, to help have more people join the conversation.
   


3. Quality vs. Quantity - GP asked a great question about joining more online communities to expand their reach, or focusing on a couple and having higher quality conversations. I think the panel agreed that quality should definitely be their aim. The concern with spreading yourself to thin across a number of communities is that you won't actually engage because you don't have the time. If you don't engage in a community, you won't get the benefit of being on it at all! You should pick one or two to start with, where you know your audience is, and then expand if and when you have time to grow additional communities.
   

I am going to be speaking on the Girls in Tech panel about Using Social Media in your Organization on Wednesday evening. I am super excited about it because it's the first panel I have been on!

The other folks on the panel are all rockstars who, no doubt, will have great things to say. They include Rachel Happe of The Communiy Roundtable, Mike Langford of TweetWorks and Cappy Popp of Thought Labs.

If you are thinking about using social media in your organization you should sign up to come join the fun. If you aren't headed in that direction (first question, why?) you can still come along and check out the Microsoft offices at 1 Memorial Dr in Cambridge. I hear they are beautiful!

Marketing Pilgrim shared with us last week that Forrester is predicting huge long term growth for social media spending in online advertising. They even shared this pretty graph (ok I added the commentary,) 

Social media is a really small portion of the pretty chart because social media is largely free. Sure there is the cost of execution, but you don't pay money to be on Linkedin or Facebook. What I found amazing are the predicted growths of display advertising (banner ads) and search marketing (PPC) of 17% and 15% respectively. 

As we have learned over at HubSpot, leads that you find through inbound marketing are cheaper than those you find through outbound marketing. While Mike tells me you can get really good deals on banner ads and such, I think the rest of the world will catch on to what a good deal inbound marketing is in the next couple years. 

 Once they do, I think they are going to stop spending so much money on search marketing and display advertising and start spending more on creating great content and pushing it out through social media.  I am no marketer and I don't know where content creation cost would fall under the online marketing budget segments, but I do think inbound techniques are going to prove to be significantly more effective than the old school outbound approaches and will change the spending landscape.

 Forrester and I will be sure to keep an eye on this for you!