Why are people complaining?

Well, one reason is because people like to complain. But there are legit reasons as well. This year, SXSW crowd-sourced some of the sessions topics and speaker choices, so people voted on some of the sessions and we ended up with some weird titles and topics. That’s ok though, because with 10 or sessions going on simultaneously, you always have a lot to choose from.

Apparently a lot of these weird titled sessions sucked. I don’t know, I didn’t attend any of them. I think the problem is actually a little deeper, it’s with the audiences that attended them and what they are trying to learn.

The tale of two conferences…

Interactive / UX / Design Conference

This was my first time attending SXSW and I had a great time. I learned a lot and it was a whirlwind of amazing activity. If registration for next year was open right now, I’d book it. Yes, I was that impressed. I attended several great sessions, one or two good sessions, and one truly awful session.

First and foremost, I’m an interactive director at Spoke, I manage design, brand and user experience for the sites and campaigns we build. Being a geek, I attended tech, interactive, user experience and designer type sessions that appealed to my geeky nature. Overall, my goals in attending SXSW were:

• To learn things I can use for our clients at Spoke, both in interactive marketing and social media.
• To meet people that I’ve only talked to through twitter and deepen relationships that were established online.
• To recap my experiences on this blog and drive traffic to this site.

I had a great geeky time and from a random sampling of comments on twitter and friends there with me who do what I do – I think they did too.

Social Media Conference

I’ve read and heard complaints from people who attended social media discussions, panels or crowd-sourced sexy titles that failed to live up to the hype.

I think there is an obvious reason that the Social Media sessions suffered – the people complaining are probably doing it right to begin with. They have either heard the content before, or they think they know it all already. Let’s face it, there aren’t a lot of new tricks in social media day after day. Some general rules apply (and don’t change very often):

• Engage with people.
• Interact.
• Don’t be a jerk.
• Don’t use it as push marketing tool.
• Have compelling content.
• Have a consistent brand voice.
• Gain an audience, not just followers.
• Try to get stuff to go viral (those sessions always crack me up, because viral usually happens organically and no one can predict what will and what won’t and every expert I’ve met has said the same thing).

Do these sound familiar? They should, because interaction on social media is pretty much the same as interaction in the real world (make it personal, develop relationships, don’t just yell at strangers and hope they listen).

Sure there are case studies to learn, funny stories to share, adversity to deal with and plenty of other reasons to go to social media sessions, but these topics can be less compelling if you’re a professional. Maybe experienced social media session gurus, jedis and ninjas don’t get as much out of the sessions because the content is often just preaching to the choir?

The Alternative?

A few friends who purely work in the social media world went to SXSW to meet people, make connections, blog and party and didn’t attend any of the sessions. Guess what, they got exactly what they wanted to out of SXSW, had a great experience (unless they got turned down for a VIP party) and will be back doing the same thing next year.

So if you find the content of sessions not up to your high standards, blow the sessions off and go to the blogger’s lounge and meet some people. Hopefully you’ll gain some new insight.

As for me… next year I’ll be learning about some geeky new way to control your mind using only a browser… and at the end of the day we can meet up at the next party.

Unfortunately, the material was nothing new, was presented in a non-visual way and became very sales-y, very quickly. Almost instantaneously the tweets started out about the presentation:

Fail

The exodus began and everyone started ganging up on the guys who presented on twitter. (Don’t believe me, see for yourself here, the results are funny and sad).  I ended up feeling bad for the presenters… because they were unable to stop the onslaught (presentation was built already and underway, the only feedback they were getting at the time was the people leaving the room). But online the slaughter was on and has continued since it ended. I felt bad, but in the end their session should have been better. So it truly was a mistake.

This experience got me thinking about the type of effect a failed brand touch can have on your business.  This could be a bad presentation, a failed webinar, a buggy product launch or any other number of things.

In the ‘old days’ if you make a presentation and it doesn’t go well, you chalk it up as a learning experience, your audience chalks it up as a waste of time and you both move on, probably to never interact again. Prior to social media if you had a product that failed to deliver, people could call or email you (or the Better Business Bureau), but rarely did they have the means for public, instant feedback and an audience of interested readers.

Since the dawn of social media, feedback is instantaneous and often it’s brutally honest. What can you do to protect your brand reputation in the days of social media (besides not giving horrible presentations)?

Make Sure You Know You Failed

Sure there were clues during the presentation (people leaving and potentially chuckling quietly), but the folks from Archetype probably didn’t know how bad it was until they look at the twitter hash tag search results. You need to make sure you know you failed and are being flogged online, to do this you need to:

• Monitor the results of brand searches – use twitter and google searches (or a twitter tool or client, rss feader, google reader, etc) and save searches for your company name and key terms.
• Solicit feedback from others at the event. Hopefully you have people at the presentation who will give you constructive criticism (if you don’t, you should, this will help you improve your public speaking and presence).

You Know You Failed, Now What?

1. Publicly acknowledge your mistake(s). This is important and should be through a public forum (blog post, tweet, press release, web page, etc). Once acknowledged, start reaching out to the people who are publicly pointing a finger at you and apologize that they had a bad experience and insist you’ll try better next time. Honestly most people will stop publicly flogging your company if you just acknowledge the source of their frustration, sincerely apologize and tell them you strive for improvement.
2. Strive for improvement. Fix the problems and try to prevent them from happening again.
3. Move on to hopefully bigger and better things.

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FYI: I have a lot of other posts queued up and will be publishing them daily for the next few days. This one came out first since it was the most timely.

Also a great summation by Ike:

This reminds me of an earlier post of mine about why you don't need a blog – If you don't have anything (or the right things) to say, don't say it.
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Quick Spoke update – We're busy! Sorry for the lack of posts the last few weeks.  Look for exciting news about new clients and our Sprockets program soon.  Also, you may have seen our building on the cover of the St. Louis Business Journal recently, but don't worry, we're not going anywhere (and we didn't and don't own the building).

Cheers,
Brian

If you are considering blogging because you’ve either been told or believe that it will help your search rankings, it will help personalize your business or drive traffic to your site.  I’m telling you that you don’t need a blog. 

Yes, if done effectively, blogging can improve your search rankings, generate traffic and help put a personal face on your business, but so can more effective web design and copywriting and yet most people are smart enough to outsource those two, but try and fail at blogging  (a point we will come back to later). 

Be Consistent or Be Dead

The web is littered with the broken remains of dead blogs.  Blogs that were started years ago when the craze first began. These sites launched with internal fanfare, a few well-thought out posts, some that may have even generated traffic or comments and ended up with a last post date of 2006 or 2007.  This looks far worse for the business that if the blog hadn’t been created at all.  With that in mind, here is a list of reasons of why you shouldn’t blog:

• You are not a writer
• You will struggle to find new content and therefore your blog will become stale
• People really don’t care what you have to say
• Your company or industry is boring
• You are afraid of writing anything controversial (for examples, see the previous two bullet points)
• You don’t understand “technology” and haven’t figured out to how to post from your typewriter (OK, it’s unlikely that you’re reading this if you are still using a typewriter, but you know what I mean)

“I want to do it anyway”

Good for you.  You have tenacity. I admire that. If you can do it without worrying about the bullet points above. Go for it – and send me the URL so I can track your success (or say I told you so in a year from now).

Here’s a tip if you think you can pull it off (and your company is big enough), use multiple authors, it will increase your number of posts and make it easier for each person to have post ideas.

“Hmm, I like the idea, but you have me concerned”

If you think you like the idea of a company blog and the items on the list above are a problem, consider another option – outsource it.  I’m sure there are several freelance writers out there who can create content for you at a reasonable price (and even do it in your voice). If you don’t know any writers, email me at brian at wearespoke dot com.  I’ll send you some names.

Another Option – Try Social Media First

If your goal is to make your company more personal – other options to consider are social media tools like facebook or twitter (micro-blogging). Like blogs they can make your company seem more personable and they can generate traffic to your site. If you can make the commitment and keep the statuses of those items up-to-date, start a blog. 

Don’t Put Lipstick on a Pig

If you have an ugly website, don’t drive traffic to it. It’s not going to help generate new business.  Focus your energy on a new website design instead, then focus on blogging. By the way, ugly doesn’t just mean the design – If your site is pointless (no clear call to action other than listing your information in a brochure like fashion) and you think it will generate business, you are mistaken. The first thing you need to consider when someone visits your site is what are they for.  If you are driving traffic to a site, have a reason – (e.g. Learn more about my time saving product, learn about how I can save your business in the failing economy here). 

Tell Me What You Think

If you think I'm right or wrong, let me know in the comments below.  If you have any questions or want to learn more about how to improve your blog, website or social media offerings feel free to email me at brian at wearespoke dot com.  Thanks for reading – Brian.