Monthly Archives: November 2013

Twitter, why would you bother? #retweet…

25 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in BIG DATA, Content Marketing, Customer Service, Digital, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media

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Twitter is one of those digital things that creates a great divide within business people and the general population. On a ratio of roughly 99 to 1, the comments I hear about Twitter are against using it – “why bother” or “why should I waste my time?” or “I just don’t get it“.

I rarely hear or read why it is worthwhile following Twits or being followed. Certainly the eBooks and Twitter experts rarely discuss the cost to tweet or the financial benefit. They just focus on tweeting for tweeting’s sake.

In fact, nobody I know in business has given a good argument for its use, yet I know many people who use it to some degree. This blog is automatically linked to Twitter, but I gave up using my Twitter account months ago due to the overwhelming amount of spam.

I get hundreds of fake posts daily from people/names I’ve never followed. I changed my password a number of times, but over 90% of the feeds in my account are spam. So I just don’t look at it, as my time is worth more doing things other than sorting through tweets.

Here’s a screen shot from today for example – I have no idea who this Twit is:

Twitter screen shot

Once again the DIY weakness of the internet. People have to sort out every digital glitch themselves, from email problems, to pages not loading, to spam in everything. Most suppliers of digital technology avoid providing customer service in the form of humans on the phone to help users. They force users to solve it themselves online via FAQ,s alleged help sections on sites, and in some cases live chat. And this DIY help takes so much time it’s often easier to stop being a user.

13 countries account for 74% of users

This infographic – I had to drop in a marketing buzzword – shows the breakdown of Twitter usage.

Twitter infographic

5 countries account for 50% of users and 13 countries account for 74% of users. The graphic is interesting given that China and India, the number 1 and number 3 users of the internet, aren’t represented. Tweeter isn’t allowed in China and India just doesn’t seem interested. Given there are about 200 countries on the planet, then less than 2.5% of countries account for 50% of usage, while 7% account for the majority of Twitter usage.

Countries in the developed world are by far the biggest users of the internet – 77% according to this list. So the only anomaly in this infographic is Saudi Arabia. It is the 34th biggest internet user, all the others are in the top 25 users.

Twitter is dominated by US “celebrities”

tweet by Bill Maher

If you review the Top 100 global Twitter accounts by number of followers, it reveals even more about the users, or more importantly the messages. I may have allocated the odd account to the wrong celebrity segment, but here’s how they stack up:

  • US celebrities: musical, television, movie and vacuous – 58%
  • Non-US celebrities similar to US ones – 15%
  • Websites such as YouTube, 2 Twitter sites, MTV – 10%
  • Football clubs, footballers, basketball players and NBA – 8%
  • News sites – 4%
  • Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Dalai Lama – 3%

There isn’t a single consumer brand in the Top 100!

The biggest users in my country, Australia, are quite insignificant in the number of followers relative to the global Top 100. We only have 2 accounts over 1 million followers and one is of a failed Prime Minister whose account will significantly decline now he’s no longer in office. I think the other is an actor. I have no idea who she is and she probably doesn’t know me either:)

Australia has a larger percentage of sports people in its Top 100, which reflects our society’s high involvement in sport. Every live sports coverage now invites 140 characters of input from viewers. There are even plans to have Tweet screens spread around stadiums so fans can share their Tweets with each other as the game is played. Most live TV shows (eg the News) and many print journalists offer hashtags for readers and viewers to “join the conversation”. Am not sure how many viewers will be “conversing” with a journalist as said journo is reporting a cat stuck up a tree, but that’s just me.

The really interesting thing in the global and local rankings is the almost complete lack of consumer brands in the Top 100. The Aussie list has airlines and a telco. They use Twitter as a customer service tool, due to the problems with delays, flight cancellations and technical issues. This is a very good way to use Twitter if you have a very large customer base and you need to reach them quickly.

But generally speaking, the leading Twitter accounts are not brands or corporations, rather they are individuals or media properties. So why should a company bother with Twitter you ask, particularly given its churn rate?

Twitter churn rate is one of the highest of any service in history

Depending upon the research you read, the churn rate of Twitter users varies from 30% to 80+% within the first 30 days of usage. In 2010, RJMetrics claimed “Twitter’s rate of churn isn’t 60% as Nielsen found, it’s 80%+, with only 17% of Twitter accounts sending a single tweet over the past month“.

Where is the value for companies – apart from using it as a customer service tool to monitor complaints? It costs money to have Twits posting and monitoring tweets, money that could often be better spent elsewhere.

And here’s a fact. If your company never used Twitter, nothing would happen. Your business would not go broke, your share price would not decline and you wouldn’t lose profit. Customers wouldn’t be complaining “Brand X doesn’t tweet, so I’m not going to buy it“.

So relax. Twitter is a nice-to-have not a have-to-have media channel. It’s head-hour intensive and depending on what/how you are tracking, can also involve significant software costs. So it’s not cheap. But it’s here to stay – as it does work for certain niche categories.

As a business owner or marketer you have to decide “is Twitter essential to make and keep customers, or can I make and keep customers without Twitter?”

The answer is simple really. Run a test. Measure the cost of Twitter versus the benefits. This small data, about a BIG DATA product, will paint the picture and make it very easy for you to make the decision.

Hmmm – I wonder if this will be retweeted?

twitter retweet logo

How real fans celebrate – free porn, nude news and some email marketing

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by in Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Social Media

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Australians are all too familiar with sudden death football when qualifying for the World Cup. But it’s not something the French experience too often. So this week the fans of Les Bleus were on the edge of their seat as their team tried to overcome a 2-0 deficit against Ukraine – something not previously done in World Cup qualifying.

So passionate were they about the cause, that French Weather presenter Doria Tillier said she would present the weather naked if France qualified. I played football all my life, even got paid for the privilege, but I’ve never experienced an incentive like Doria’s. The best we could manage was the odd free beer from a fan if we won.

Doria Tiller

Obviously Doria thought her offer was not going to be redeemed, because when Les Bleus scored their second goal the former model tweeted. “F**k. France 2-0 Ukraine. I start to get stressed”

In case you don’t know, France won the game 3-0 and qualified on aggregate 3-2, so the whole country went into celebration – as only the French can. In the National Assembly, a debate on pension reform was briefly suspended to allow deputies to release their inner footballer and punch the air in delight at the news. Am not sure what Doria’s decided to do though?

French team

And as reported on news.com.au, it was an expensive night for Marc Dorcel, a hardcore France fan in more ways than one. One of the world’s biggest producers of pornographic films, Dorcel offered free access to his online videos in the event of a French triumph. Within a minute of the final whistle his server was overwhelmed by fans eager to take him up on the promise.

There has to be something we can learn from the French response that can be used to help struggling economies, but I won’t go there today…

Instead, I will continue with a French theme and segue to some blindingly obvious French research results released by eMarketer. Apparently the preferred method for receiving marketing messages online is email.

French preferred method of marketing

Consider this for a minute. Your customers and prospects opt-in to receive sales messages from you by email. And when you send them sales messages they buy from you. Sacre bleu! (That’s “bloody amazing” for you Aussies).

Yet despite this knowledge – supported by research from esteemed organisations like eMarketer – there are still those followers of marketing fashion who claim other digi-wonders like social media will replace what has always worked and will continue to work – direct personal communications.

As I’ve mentioned before, if you have a retail store or website you only need the Essential Four weapons to succeed with marketing in a digital world.

Here they are again, in case you’ve misplaced them, but be prepared as they are quite radical:

1. First and last name
2. Postal address
3. Email address
4. Telephone number

The eMarketer research also revealed that social networks are preferred by a measly 5% which I suspect is over-stated, particularly given Forrester’s research based on real links and sales.

And given most people’s ASS Time is shrinking – thanks to the Connection Paradox – social still struggles to be a worthy media for business. It’s obviously a neat customer service tool and helpful for sales promotions, but not cheap.

Apparently the France V Ukraine match is worth watching. I might just check out the French news on cable TV to see what they are covering, so to speak…

Stupidity – the only skill you need to succeed…

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Advertising, Customer Service, Marketing

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Yesterday a friend shared her local post office experience with me. Here’s what she said:

“So I’m at the post office and my bill comes to $11.20. I don’t have a $10 note so I hand over $21.20. The guy stares at me for a second, then walks over to get a calculator to work out my change!!!! I’m standing there slightly bemused that he needs a calculator to work it out…then he hands me $7 change??????? I’m not sure what he typed in but… So I told him he needed to give me $10 change but he doesn’t believe me and calls over his supervisor. Oh dear. I don’t think this guy believed his parents when they told him he would need to use his school maths later in life!”

2+25

I shared this with my bride, who told me she had a similar thing occur when buying a BBQ chook last week. The bill came to 12.20, so she gave the customer service person (the chook seller) $15 while she rifled around for an extra 20 cents. The chook seller entered $15 into the cash register just as my bride gave her the extra 20 cents. Stunned, the chook seller became confused and started to panic.

“What’s that for” she asked? My bride said “well now you can just give me $3 change.” The chook seller became agitated, “but I’ve entered $15” and stared at her chook selling supervisor. The chook selling supervisor came over and asked the chook seller, not my bride, “what’s the problem?”

My bride explained that 20 cents seemed to be the problem. The chook selling supervisor didn’t know what to do and the chook seller refused to accept the 20 cents. She demanded my bride take the $2.80 change and became quite flustered. She was probably working out how to apply for mental health leave from PTCSSD – that’s Post Traumatic Chook Selling Stress Disorder.

My bride started chatting with another customer whom she knew. The chook seller started shouting “number 71, number 71“. Eventually my bride asked if it was her order. The flustered chook seller, seeking her chance at revenge spat out “yes it’s your order, number 71“. My bride replied, “you didn’t give me a number because you were too confused over the 20 cents” grabbed her BBQ chook and departed.

Last week, while being served in a local restaurant and despite pointing and stating the number of the dish I wanted, the waitress had to get someone to assist her to take my order.

It seems that to succeed in today’s service industry you don’t need to be able to write or add up without a calculator. Stupidity rules! Maybe there’s a generation too influenced by that brilliant philosopher, Homer Simpson:

Homer simpson never-try

But stupidity is not restricted to the humble food industry. The marketing industry is the same. A colleague with almost 30 years experience in marketing, including 18 in digital channels applied for a senior digital role in an agency. She’d done the same job very successfully at other agencies.

The first thing the CEO said when he learned this person was applying was tell the recruiter “she’ll want my job“. How do these people get to the top? What kind of CEO is that paranoid and gutless they won’t hire someone with the experience to help grow their business, not to mention their own career.

Apparently the CEO wanted someone with only a little experience, who was on their way up – which means ‘on their way out in 18 months’. It’s one of the reasons there is so much marketing garbage being created online. Inexperienced marketers and agencies who don’t know what they don’t know, because they are so limited in their marketing knowledge.

Wanna buy some used customer engagement?

Another colleague has left the agency he was working with, as the agency was uncomfortable with his constant requests to create digital marketing messages for their client which had measurable objectives. The agency just wanted to create anything that made the agency money – management kept claiming “it’s about customer engagement” without ever measuring what the hell “customer engagement” meant. This conflicted with my colleague’s belief of doing what’s right for the client, so he is looking for a new job.

Now the client has lost an account handler that had their interest at heart and the agency has to find a replacement. I’m not sure who is more stupid – the agency or the client for buying what the agency is selling?

I think Forrest Gump explained it best when he said “Stupid is what stupid does”.

An intelligent person who does stupid things is still stupid. Just as a stupid person who does stupid things is still stupid. You are what you do.

Sadly, intelligent people and those who use common sense, seem to be few and far between these days.

forrest gump

I have smart phone, therefore I am… a photographer

18 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in Content Marketing, Copywriting, Marketing

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I know a number of professional photographers – most are working as couriers, limo drivers, handymen, or anything other than photographers.

That’s because the bean counters and bureaucrats in our life believe that all you need to take a decent shot, is to point your smart phone and click. So they assume there is no need for professional photography anymore. And they’d know wouldn’t they? Not!

The most stunning example of this is in the news media, where journalists are being told to take their own shots with their phones, as they take on the role of journalist and photographer – with no increase in pay by the way. The majority of press photographers have lost their jobs.

I can understand the benefit of the public supplying photos to the news media to add to a story. But the naivety of not using professional photographers was exemplified by the newly appointed CEO of Yahoo – Marissa Mayer – when she apparently said; “There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because [with so many people taking photographs] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore.”

This is after she had herself plastered across Vogue in August this year, complete with art direction, make-up and Photoshop – all shots taken by a professional photographer of course. I doubt she would have trusted a staffer with a smart phone to manage her image.

I type therefore I am… a copywriter

And this problem is not just with those who create images for a living, but also with those who write the words we read online. Just because people can type on a keyboard, they assume they can write interesting prose.

I type therefore I am… a copywriter. The content marketers believe have no need for professional copywriters to create their wonderful content, because they can use a keyboard – most likely at 20 words a minute.

Yet just try to read your typical Tweet, infographic, or white paper and you’ll see how illiterate the majority of content marketing authors really are. These people probably think you can become a brain surgeon by hanging around the casualty ward.

So it was fascinating to see the French newspaper Libération, remove all images from its 14 November issue in a bid to show the power and importance of photography – thanks to Michael Rhodes in the UK for sending me the link.

liberation-04

Check it out here. It’s not really surprising how much you lose in a story when the images don’t accompany the words. But when you see a publication without the images in place, it puts the issue in perspective.

One of the problems associated with this “we don’t need trained professionals in the online world” attitude, is the impact on the income of said professionals. Hourly and project rates have declined in real terms. In Australia, copywriters are charging the same hourly rates they were charging 30 years ago. Photographers are working for a pittance.

Worse still, everyone is now a critic – you work in digital marketing so you must be an expert. Any fool can criticise copy or shoot an image, and many fools do – regardless of their level of work experience.

The last decade has seen an exponential rise in content being published, most of it online. Yet there has been no increase in the number of people studying copywriting or communications at tertiary level. And literacy rates in the OECD have continued to decline. So you can understand why so much of what is published is a complete waste of both the writers’ and the readers’ time.

One can only hope that the dumbing down of the skills of writing and photography do not destroy their craft. Computerisation has helped humans connect like never before. But the old adage still applies; garbage in – garbage out.

garbage in garbage out

The problem is that many digital marketers don’t know the difference between quality work and garbage. They believe it’s online so it must be true.
And it doesn’t really matter if it’s not the best it could be. It’s usually not their money they are spending – only their clients’ or their shareholders’. And there’s always another sucker waiting around the corner wanting to get rich online.

Are your prospects complete drips?

14 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by in Content Marketing, Copywriting, Email marketing, Marketing

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Session Spotlight: Prospect engagement – one drip at a time…

The headline above was the subject line of an email I received yesterday. My first reaction was to ask “why would you call your prospects drips?”

Then I realised it was another typical case of marketing jargon gone wrong. It also reflects the lack of basic reading and writing skills across OECD countries – as demonstrated in the International Adult Literacy & Life Skills Survey of 2006.

I used these literacy facts two years ago in the social media truth video.

I opened the email to learn what was meant by “one drip at a time”. The email is an invitation to a Virtual Trade Show for Marketers. I think that means it’s a webinar?

stupid people

Here’s the content of the message:

“Staying engaged with prospects and leads over time, from the first touch to closing the deal, is always a challenge. The correct drip program approach will help with this challenge, supporting and driving engagement through the sales funnel, to the closed deal and beyond!

Join Mathew Sweeney, Marketing Automation Evangelist with Pardot, as he addresses the challenges sales and marketing teams face in staying connected with prospects and leads. Learn how to incorporate the correct drips at the correct times, helping your teams gain a powerful and distinct market advantage through drip engagement – one drip at a time.”

I was curious. What’s a correct drip program approach? Is it the same as a drip program? How does one incorporate drips at the correct times and what is drip engagement? In fact, WTF is a drip? So I decided to check out the speaker as I’m also fascinated to know what a Marketing Automation Evangelist with Pardot, does for a living.

Is Pardot a physical ailment, or maybe a qualification? Does he work in a large tent with a southern gospel chorus, singing evangelical songs about drips? The mind boggles.

gospel singers

Given Mathew works in B2B sales, I checked LinkedIn first. But he doesn’t exist on LinkedIn. There are only 4 people named Mathew Sweeney. The computer asked me did I mean “Matthew Sweeney?” I checked the email and given I’d copied and pasted his name, I had the correct spelling.

I tried again but it yielded the same result. Something wasn’t right. So I looked at his mug shot lower in the message and guess what? His name under the mug shot was spelled Matthew Sweeney – and it turns out he works for Pardot. He doesn’t have Pardot, as described in the introductory sentence. So I entered the alternate version of his name and 201 results appeared.

mathew sweeney

I couldn’t find him despite an advanced search using drip and Pardot as key words, so I can only assume he’s among the 201 somewhere. But he needs to fire the copywriter, because if they get the name of the speaker wrong, it doesn’t really instill confidence in those looking for insights into drips.

I’ve worked in B2B, B2C, and BS all my life. B2B marketing has always involved a process of creating prospects, keeping in contact with them and gradually converting them into customers. This can take anything from 2 minutes to 2 years depending upon what you are selling and the needs of the buyer.

Using mail, telephone, email, events and other tactics, you regularly keep in touch with your prospect database, in the hope your prospects will contact you when they are ready to buy. In the online world, there are numerous software programmes that automatically track prospect behaviour on websites, building profiles and lead scores to help sales people identify when said prospects are in the market.

By combining all these tactics, sales people are able to manage their lead pipelines and hopefully eek out a living by converting enough prospects into customers and then keep them coming back for more.

sales leads

One can only assume that the word drip in the context of this webinar, refers to the process of regularly contacting your prospects. Drip-feeding them so to speak. Given that this is 101 sales lead management, I’m sure it doesn’t need its own buzzword.

If you search drip marketing, you will find some lame attempts to justify the term as a special type of marketing magic. I’ll leave you to decide if it designed by drips or for drips. Why do we do this? What’s wrong with stating the bleeding obvious? It’s a prospect contact strategy, plain and simple.

But maybe I’m the drip?

Maybe I should just run seminars and webinars around buzzwords – using the mystery and curiosity factor of a new buzzword, I’ll convince the punters to part with a few shekels and attend.

Hmmm, I could run a strategic virtual customer journey event titled – “Content marketing for drip engagement lead nurturing in social media and native advertising“.

Step right up folks…

stupid people 2

Nespresso should read their tea leaves…

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by in BIG DATA, Branding, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing

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You have to hand it to Nestle for creating Nespresso. The insight was simple – coffee without mess. That is, provide a coffee that doesn’t require the drinker to clean up after it is made, particularly in all those workplace kitchens. They are selling clean kitchens, not coffee – and they’re doing it using traditional mail-order techniques!

Over the years I have sold three office espresso machines because my staff wouldn’t use them. It wasn’t because they didn’t like the coffee, but rather they hated cleaning up afterwards. It was too much of a hassle to throw away the coffee grounds, wipe the bench, clean the machine, not to mention washing and drying the cup.

All over the world there are messages in office kitchens warning people about keeping the kitchen clean. What is it about going to work that causes normal sane humans to refuse to keep their workplace kitchens clean? I assume they keep their home kitchens clean? What happens in our brain to change our behaviour at work?

kitchen cops 4

kitchen cops 1

kitchen cops 3

kitchen cops 2

But back to Nespresso. I became a customer, not for the coffee, but for the convenience. Staff could have a cuppa that tastes marginally better than instant coffee, but with less effort than making instant coffee. Just stick a capsule in the machine, press a button and in not much time you get a fresh cup of java – without the mess.

While we weren’t a large customer, we ordered about once a month. One of us just rang a phone number, placed a repeat order, paid by credit card and the coffee was delivered within a couple days. The staff probably drank 50% Nespresso and 50% real coffee from cafes.

Last year we shut the office and went into the cloud – that’s another blog. We sold the coffee machine along with the remaining coffee capsules. We haven’t placed an order for over 12 months. Yet each week I get at least one email from Club Nespresso as well as the occasional mailing in the post.

Here’s yesterday’s email.

Nespresso 1

As you can see the people who are designing it don’t appear to understand email technology. Messages that are dominated by images are way more likely to go into spam filters and those that do make it through the filters, rely on the lazy punters to right-click to see the content.

And given we humans prefer the path of least resistance (which is why Nespresso coffee capsules work) very few people right-click to see the images. It’s one reason so much email marketing is not as successful as it should be. (Well maybe some people right-click, in the hope of sighting a candid image of George Clooney?)

Here’s the email message after right-clicking:

Nespresso 2

The element that’s obviously missing in the club is a layer of human intelligence analysing the customer data – the SMALL DATA as I call it. Because if they were using their data to drive their business, someone should have called to ask why we had stopped being a customer. Were we unhappy with the service or the coffee, for example? Had we switched to a competitive brand?

If they just invested in spreadsheet jockeys to read the tea leaves for insights or trends – simple things like “customers who stop buying” would be one insight they would find useful. I’m sure the loss of my business will have no impact on Nespresso, but how many others are being ignored and at what cost?

tea-leaves-in-cup

The reliance on advertising messages delivered by mail or digital channels, at the expense of human interaction, damages brands. Or at least it limits their revenue potential. Using people to talk to customers, particularly those who have ceased to be a customer, always pays for itself.

I’m off to make a cuppa. First I grind the beans, then I empty the old grounds from the machine, then I put the new grounds in the espresso machine… I know this takes a little time, but it’s worth it, if you like real coffee:)

Oh and here’s a token shot of “George, I’ll flog anything for money, Clooney”…

george clooney

Careful, don’t mention the “P-word”…

07 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by in Branding, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

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Now that the world is choc-full of more marketing experts than ever before, I use a number of marketing education sites to read what these digi-legends preach. After all, with so many self-proclaimed luminaries, it’s just so easy for anyone to succeed with digital marketing these days.

One of the sites I use is Marketing Professionals www.marketingprofs.com – usually a very good source of reference material. It claims to serve a community of over 656,000 entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and professional marketers at the world’s largest corporations.

This week I downloaded the latest eGuide from marketingprofs: “Marketing Kits 2013 – Social Media“. It has at least 15 pages with over 4,531 words, an infographic, images and more. In fact there’s loads more words when you include those in the images and infographic. Unfortunately it says on the front of the eGuide “Republishing or redistribution is prohibited” so I cannot link it – you know how litigious the Yanks are:)

The wrong path to success…

But I can share some of it with you as I enthusiastically consumed the content. Well I started too. The first section is titled: Path to Social Media Success in 2013: A 12-Month Plan. The first sentence says: “Often, the best way to reach a huge goal is to break it down into small, less intimidating goals.”

Immediately, I knew further reading was probably useless. Another piece of content published for content’s sake. I’m sorry, but the first way to reach a goal is to make the goal measurable within a specific time-frame. For example in a social media context; “to grow a database of 5,000 active followers by 31st December”.

Although this is what’s known as a ‘lettuce-leaf‘ objective – it’s very limp and provides no sustenance to the business. A better objective would be “to grow a database of 5,000 active followers who generate at least $100,000 in measurable sales from social media posts, by 31st December”. But you’ll never see this type of objective – it’s much easier to be gutless and avoid accountability in social media.

The limp lettuce objective...

The limp lettuce objective…

I then decided to check for some key words that I know all business people – particularly those who spend their own money, not their client’s – like to use. For example, given this document includes a path to social media success, I searched for the “P-word” that people in business tend to use when measuring success – “profit“. After all, most businesses that spend money on marketing activity, like to generate the odd bit of profit as a result of their investment.

I couldn’t find it… anywhere. Not one of the 4,531+ words was “profit“. Maybe there’s a new digi-word for profit of which I’m not familiar? Please let me know folks, so I can tell my bank manager.

Psst...don't mention the P-word

Psst…don’t mention the P-word

Then I tried “return on investment” and “ROI” as we all like an acronym. Nothing – not a sausage. Desperate, I typed “bottom-line” but to no avail. So I was forced to read the document. To my delight, I found a headline in the infographic: “Establish ways to measure success“. Woohoo! This was supported by an infographic-subhead: “Top 5 measurements for establishing a brand’s effectiveness on social media“.

Here they are folks, the top 5 – drum roll please:

  1. Social presence – number of followers and fans
  2. Traffic to website
  3. Social mentions across platforms
  4. Share of social conversations
  5. Social influence

At last I was enlightened – even though the author obviously isn’t. In summary these 5 measurement criteria say “those who spend the most money making the most noise, win – regardless of cost.” Sort of like the loudest drunk in a bar or sports match who won’t shut up. But hey, they say more than anyone else, so they are successful according to these criteria.

Bollocks such as these 5 criteria, have been debunked so many times by such organisations as eMarketer and Forrester for example, I’m stunned they have the gall to continue to publish it. But maybe they’re true? Maybe business people who spend money promoting their businesses are wrong to want to get a return on their investment?

If so, I can’t wait to tell my bank manager. From now on I’m going to pay my loans and creditors in batch-loads of followers and fans. Instead of paying cash, I’ll just send the bank a link to my fans. Am sure 500 fans is the equivalent of one month’s mortgage payment? I could be independently wealthy in a few months – all debts paid just by my social presence.

These should pay off the mortgage...

These should pay off the mortgage…

And I no longer need to know all that old stuff about marketing – like objectives, strategy, tactics, budget, measurement – and forget sales. We no longer need to sell anything folks – just talk about stuff online. In fact, let’s shut down the business and marketing courses at university – they’re obviously a complete waste of time, as they focus on the business world, not the social world.

Sadly the Clearasil Kids believe all this crap being published online. They are being educated to think that success has nothing to do with performance. If only I was 21 again – life would be so easy. No accountability, no measurement criteria, just type stuff on a keyboard and business will happen automatically. Though it does sound a bit industrial age to me – repetitive mundane tasks sitting at a keyboard.

I’m off to sell something. Hmmm, maybe a social media guidebook? Wanna buy some used Likes?

A few shekels for your guidebook sir?

A few shekels for your guidebook sir?