Will Marlow

"Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war."

Marketers can learn from ancient mythology.

For example, we learn from Joseph Campbell that in just about every culture, a God cannot be reduced through multiplicity.  The God can show up in thousands of places, and in thousands of forms, simultaneously without diluting its power.  This means that whether a God appears in a burning bush, a bowl of cereal, or descends from a cloud, the God always carries the same meaning and power.

This should be the aspiration of every great brand.  Whether your brand appears on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, fliers, in print ads, on TV, or elsewhere, it should carry the same standards of excellence.  This also means that one of the biggest threats to brands these days is the pressure to do too much (and to be too many places) in the social media space.  

But you can look at one of the 21st century's greatest marketers, Seth Godin, for an example of how you can successfully resist the pressure to overextend yourself.  Seth Godin didn't get on Twitter until last year.  He didn't get on Facebook until last year.  And once he finally adopted those platforms, his first order of business was managing his fans expectations.  He makes it very clear that he only uses Twitter and Facebook to post his new blog entries, which is where he spends his time.  He doesn't try to halfheartedly interact with people, to respond to comments, or to post interesting observations.  This ensures that when people experience the Seth Godin brand, they never get a diluted version.  Whether they experience him on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else, they always get the same thing.  This means he may miss some opportunities by not using Twitter or Facebook to their full potential, but it also means that he doesn't diminish his own message, just like one of the Gods in Joseph Campbell's books.

Will Marlow is a PR specialist, marketer, and amateur photographer who lives in Northern Virginia. You should follow Will Marlow on Twitter.

People often think that social media is attractive because it's free.  But this is a simple misconception.  Social media isn't free.  Social media simply scales for free, but it won't scale at all without an upfront investment.

Just look at Rebecca Black, who is famous for performing what many people think is the worst song ever written, and the worst music video ever produced.  Her mother invested $4,000 in making the video, and now it has made more than enough money for her to pay for college.

If you want sensational results with social media, you need to invest whatever is necessary for your particular social media program to begin to scale, because scaling happens for free, which means you can reach far more people than you'd be able to pay to reach through advertising. 

The key question on everyone's mind at this point should be: how much does it cost for content to scale?  The answer depends entirely on who you want to reach with your content, and the nature of the content itself.  Proctor & Gamble has probably spent millions of dollars by now on its successful Old Spice Guy campaign, and they will probably continue to spend, because even though it may not be as successful as Rebecca Black's $4,000 video, it is no doubt generating more exposure than they could have paid the same amount of money to get.

At the other end of the spectrum, many people choose to go with a content only marketing approach on social media.  This is similar to Seth Godin's "drip marketing," where you create new, valuable content on a daily basis for your audience, eventually building an online portfolio of compelling content that draws your customers into your universe and earns their trust.  CopyBlogger is hands down the best source of information on content marketing, and despite never having spent a dime on advertising, the CopyBlogger Media company is generating seven figures in revenue with well-over 50% margins.  Their upfront investment was in the form of design, hosting, travel, and conference costs.  At this point, however, after six years CopyBlogger is now built on a solid foundation, and they benefit tremendously from free scaling.

For those of you who choose to pay for advertising in addition to having a social media program, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is treating those two programs as completely separate.  I've worked with a number of clients who started by separating the two programs completely.  But your goal should always be to bring in only NEW people through paid advertising, and once they know you, you should be able to interact with them freely via your preferred social media channels.  If this isn't a part of your marketing strategy, then you're going to pay too much for your advertising over time, and your social media program will probably never scale.

I think that some people have resisted social media marketing all along because they instinctively believe that there is no such thing as free ice cream.  For those of you who feel that way, I'm on your side.  Social media marketing is fantastic, but only if you're willing to make the investment in time and resources to start to scale.

Will Marlow is a Public Relations and digital marketing specialist. The photograph of the salivating dog above was also featured in this week's issue of the A-Town Dog Blog.

This post could also have been named, "Why Twitter is the Ultimate Tool for Personal Branding." 

I've been on Google+ since it's early beta days, and I like the social network very much.  It's a fantastic system for sharing information, and connecting with people.  I am being followed by 2,400 people on G+, and although I'm being followed by 7,200+ on Twitter, it took me a lot longer to reach that level of influence on Twitter (I've been on Twitter since 2006).

In my opinion, Twitter is enormously valuable for personal branding because it is optimized for delivering crucial information after a brief glance, in under ten seconds.  This is why Twitter can serve as a "living resume" that constantly keeps people updated on your real priorities.  Google+ fails at this.  And it fails badly.  But all hope isn't lost.  G+ is still useful, and if you're interested in this topic, you should read this to the end, and I'll make sure to explain why Google+ can help you accomplish some key branding and communications goals in the last paragraph.

Here are the three reasons why Twitter is better than Google Plus for personal branding:

1. Twitter allows only one type of posting.  You post to your timeline on Twitter, and it doesn't matter if you're responding to someone else's post, or if you want to make a comment on something you've already posted.  You can only post to YOUR timeline on Twitter, and you can only do so in reverse chronological order.  On Google+ it is very different.  You can post on your feed, or you can make a comment on a post that you've already made, or you can make a comment on someone else's feed.  This means that a quick glance at your Google Plus profile doesn't reveal much about you.  It doesn't tell someone how often you post, or how often you interact with others, and it doesn't reveal what's most important to you.  Twitter, due to its rigid, top-line posting format, immediately reveals what you care about.  Chris Brogan cares about talking to people.  Guy Kawasaki cares about posting interesting things.
2. Google+ let's you hide key information about third party validation.  On Google+, you can hide how many people you've added to circles.  You can also hide how many people have added you to circles.  You can't do either of those things on Twitter, which means that a quick glance at  a Twitter profile will reveal how much third-party validation the person has, based on how many people are following them.  **In fact, the only third party validation that is automatically available on G+ is the number of times people have +1'd your posts, and the number of times people have commented on your posts.  Coupled with the first point I made above about the ability to make non-top-level comments on G+, this actually creates a perverse incentive for people on Google+ to prolong stupid conversations to boost the number of comments that are made on their posts.  This incentive is absent on Twitter.
3. On Google+, you can selectively hide your posts.  This creates a huge amount of uncertainty for anyone who takes a quick glance at your profile.  Unlike on Twitter, Google+ reveals nothing about a person's priorities after a quick glance.  On Twitter, you can make ALL your posts private, or ALL your posts public, but there is no uncertainty about a users posting habits, because private accounts are clearly marked.

The power of Twitter is that you can get a lot of value out of it in a short amount of time, and by spending more time, you can get more and more value out of it.  This means that people have an incentive to find and follow new people on Twitter, because they feel like they can rapidly AND accurately assess a new Twitter user.  (Contrast this to the pre-Twitter world: no one wanted to sign up for E-Newsletters because they were afraid that they would be inundated by spam from the company.  The perceived cost of taking a chance on receiving information from an unknown company was much higher.)

So what's so good about Google+?  Google+ is optimized for allowing you to share rich experiences with people, like photographs and videos, and long-format comments.  This means that Google+ can be a great supplementary social media profile.  After people get to know you elsewhere, like on Twitter, you may benefit tremendously from giving them the option to engage with you on G+, just like photographers often give people the option to engage with them on Flickr.

But don't expect G+ to perform the revolutionary role that Twitter has performed since its creation, which is its role as the ultimate tool in personal branding.

Will Marlow is a PR specialist, blogger, and amateur photographer who lives in Northern Virginia. The dog in the photograph above does not need your pillow, just his paw.  You should follow Will Marlow on Twitter. 

A big mistake that startups make is thinking that a company needs to be a certain (specific) size before it should begin investing seriously in public relations. That's the wrong way to look at it.

Instead, you should ask yourself: what does our company care about?  What do we need to accomplish, and how does PR fit in?  For example, most startups care about three things: (1) finding new customers, (2) retaining more current customers, and (3) shortening sales cycles.  PR can help with all of those things, but you need to know what you care about most before you pick a strategy, and certainly before you pick tactics.

Public relations is never a one-size-fits-all discipline.  Some companies need to invest in PR before they earn their first dollar in revenue.  Other companies are better off spending their resources elsewhere until they're ready to scale their operations.  So don't wait until you hit some magic revenue number. 

Invest in PR at the moment when you're ready to benefit from shining a spotlight on your website / product / company / idea.  (By the way, asking the question, "What do we care about" is a good idea no matter what type of organization you work for, and it'll help you avoid making lots of bad decisions, with PR or anything else.)

Will Marlow is a PR specialist, blogger, and amateur photographer who lives in Northern Virginia. The dog in the photograph above would like you to rub his tummy.  You should follow Will Marlow on Twitter. 

Most people have heard about Google+ by now, which is Google's latest attempt at launching a social network.  Whenever a major new social media product is launched, I publish a guide explaining the most important eight things you need to know about it.  I did this for Google Buzz, and I did it for Facebook's Open Graph, and those were two of my most popular posts.  Now that I've had about a month to get to know G+, I wanted to share the Eight Things You Need to Know About Google Plus, and I hope it's helpful to you.

1. Why is Google Plus important?  It's important for lots of reasons, but here's the most significant: Google is directly tying its new social media platform to its search results, and Google search is the most important search engine in the world.  Google Plus influences search results in two important ways: (1) it lets Google deliver more personalized results to people who use G+, and (2) it influences aggregate search results delivered to users everywhere by helping Google understand which websites are spammy and which ones are popular and relevant.  If you have NOT created a Google Plus account, you can see an example of the first point right now.  When you are logged into Google (not Google Plus, but just regular Google), you'll see a +1 next to all search results in the Google results page.  When you click the plus one, this is basically like casting a vote in favor of the page, and Google will use that vote as part of its famous algorithm for delivering search results and advertisements.  So right off the bat, forget the significance of Google+ as a social network.  Think of Google+ as a key component of the Google search product that drives $20 billion a year in advertising revenue.
2. Is Google Plus REALLY that important, or is it just marketing hype?  As a trained marketer myself, I DO admire the excellent job that the Google team has done in selling this social network to the public. But don't be cynical: it IS important.  Here is the proof: Google is like Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest person in the world, with $50 billion in personal wealth.   Warren Buffett's biggest challenge at this point is identifying opportunities that are worth his time.  This is also Google's biggest challenge.  A $100 million opportunity isn't worth his sweat, and it's not worth Google's sweat either.  They can't waste their time on small potatoes.  And Google Plus is driving A LOT of energy of Googlers.  It's huge.  They are investing their brand, their engineering talent and time, and their marketing dollars in pushing this product.  That means that they see a big opportunity.  Now, they might be wrong, like they were with Google Buzz, which is probably NOT a multi-billion dollar asset, but for now, marketers and PR folks like you and me need to take this seriously, because Google is taking it seriously.  
3. So how do you use Google Plus?  This is where Google Plus is winning a lot of praise.  Using Google Plus is pretty easy.  You create an account, and you add people to different circles that you want to receive information from, and you can easily switch between multiple streams to see information on different topics.  G+ provides very few restrictions on how you share content and information.  This post is NOT a tutorial on using Google Plus, so look elsewhere for that -- the focus here is on WHY Google Plus is important.  Point number three is simply that Google Plus is important because it's intuitive, easy and fairly enjoyable to use, and this is driving a lot of its usage right now.
4. How Is Google Plus Different from Facebook?  I love this topic, but I know a lot of people disagree with me here.  In my last post I wrote that Google Plus is an information-centric social network, whereas Facebook is a relationship-centric social network.  Think about it: with Facebook, you get zero value until someone acknowledges and agrees to have a relationship with you.  You need reciprocal friendships on Facebook. But on Google Plus, you can get value without a relationship with someone.  I can add people to circles without their approval.  To me, this is the defining difference between Facebook and Google Plus, and I think it's the reason that Google Plus doesn't compete directly with Facebook.  I think that this difference is Facebook's defining attribute, and key strength.  The growth of a reciprocal network like Facebook is going to be slowed by the very fact that connections are made in two steps: (step 1 = friend request and step 2 = friend acceptance).  Google Plus grows through a one-step process: friend request.   Asynchronous networks like Twitter and Google Plus are trying to compete on different terms: they want to be the best places to curate useful information, and to deliver useful information to tribes of followers (my apologies to Seth Godin, for borrowing his term). 
5. So who does Google Plus compete with?  See point #4, but I think that Google Plus competes directly with any asynchronous social network, primarily Twitter.  Google Plus is in the information business, and I am surprised that so many people disagree with me on this, because Google itself has a global mission of organizing the world's information.  So why wouldn't they create an information-centric social network?  Google Plus sees a multi-billion dollar opportunity to do two things: (a) create a great social network that people spend lots of time on, and (b) protect the integrity and value of their search engine results.  Both of these goals are key to Google's motivation here.  Killing Facebook is not on Google's mind, and if it were to happen it would be a secondary benefit.
6. Why do people want to USE Google Plus?  This is a complicated question.  Different people want to use it for different things. A professional "search engine optimizer" wants to use it to influence search results for clients.  Most PR pros want to use it the same way they use Twitter, to share information with their personal network, and to expand their personal network.  (On that note, you should add me to your circles on G+.) Casual users want to share photos, videos, and long-form writing.  The casual user is the greatest mystery in the world to me, because I am not one of them.  I use social media platforms for targeted purposes, like driving traffic to websites, creating sales leads, establishing new relationships, strengthening existing relationships, and for deepening my understanding of best practices when creating new web experiences on my own. 
7. How is Google Plus different from LinkedIn?  Simple: LinkedIn (and Facebook) requires a reciprocal relationships before you get ANY value.  Stop right there.  This is the only difference that really matters, because it defines how you use LinkedIn, as well as Facebook, and thus it also defines how you use Google Plus.
8. How is Google Plus different from Twitter?  Both Twitter and Google Plus are asynchronous social networks, which means you don't need a reciprocal relationship to follow someone on Twitter or Google Plus.  To me, this is the defining similarity between Google Plus and Twitter.  Following this similarity, there is ONE KEY DIFFERENCE between Google Plus and Twitter, which is that with Twitter, everything you say is chronological, and all posts on Twitter are equal.  If I want to make a comment on someone else's Tweet, I need to make a new Tweet myself.  That is to say, the concept of a sub-level comment or a second-tier comment does not exist in Twitter.  There is a democracy of posting in Twitter, because before I post anything I need to ask myself whether it is something that I want EVERYONE to see.  Google Plus, on the other hand, let's you comment on someone else's post without adding anything to your own G+ stream.  Huge difference there.  Following this key difference, you need to look at differences at the feature level, like this: Twitter has follow limits, which Google Plus currently does NOT.  Twitter has character limitations of 140 characters, which Google Plus does not. Twitter has much more severe limitations on how "rich media" like videos and images are displayed, and Google Plus tries to outdo Twitter here by presenting media in a more intuitive, richer way.  I'm not here to make predictions about whether G+ will last or not, but I will say that people CLAIM that they don't like limitations on social media, but I think the built-in limitations of Twitter are a strength, and help explain why it has been such a powerful communications tool.

This is my early analysis of Google Plus, and I hope you found it useful as you try to get value from Google's new social network.

By the way, as a bonus tidbit, if I were smarter about SEO, I would have formatted this post differently.  You see, the web "likes" short content for search engine optimization purposes.  The reason why academic websites and newspapers get killed in SEO by websites like About.com and Wikipedia, is that Google wants to deliver the EXACT answer to a searcher's question, it doesn't want to give someone a ten page article that may or may not contain the right information buried inside for the individual to sift through and discover. 

So, if I were trying to optimize my blog for search engine optimization, it would have been a better choice for me to publish eight different posts that each focused on eight different things you need to know about Google Plus, instead of firing off all eight in a single post.  My outlook on this, however, is that you can break the SEO rules as long as you KNOW the rules.  In this case, I'm breaking the rules because I think this topic holds together much more strongly as a single, cohesive post, rather than eight separate posts.  In this case, I choose to "write for humans" rather than writing for Google, which is important to do, even if you care about SEO.

Will Marlow is a PR specialist, blogger, and amateur photographer who lives in Northern Virginia. The photograph above is a hand-held shot at the WWII Memorial in DC, and it's part of a series he's doing on the monuments, memorials, buildings, and historic places in and around the District of Columbia. You should follow Will Marlow on Twitter.

Whenever a new social networking product is launched, the question of whether it will KILL its rivals always comes up. 

But for those of you who are loyal to Facebook, never fear.  Google+ will NOT kill Facebook.

Here's why.  Google+ is not in the business of being the virtual glue that holds together your real world relationships.  That's Facebook's mission.  Facebook wants to make your real world relationships richer by letting you share, chat, and interact in a safe place online.

Google+ doesn't do that.  It doesn't even TRY to do that.  Instead, Google+ wants to be the catapult that helps you launch your message/product/company/idea to greater and greater numbers of people more effectively.  It also wants to be the net that you use to pull in the best information from the people you respect.  That is Twitter's business, and my guess is that Google has a weakened Twitter (there are no full-time founders left at Twitter day-to-day) in its crosshairs right now, but most people are missing that story.

Just look at the reviews of Google+.  My hero Thomas Hawk wrote a great analysis of why Google+ is great for promoting photography.  He's mostly correct in what he says, but the very fact that Google+ is great for photographers is evidence that it is NOT competing in an area that Facebook cares about.

By the way, if anyone wants an invite to Google+, just let me know in the comments below, by email, or send up smoke signals.

A lot of people say that content is king in social media marketing.  I've been guilty of saying this myself.  But the problem is, it's not true.  

The social media landscape is a pretty messy place.  Your job, as a social media manager or digital PR pro (or whatever you call yourself) is to organize things, and clean them up.  How do you do that?  You make lists, lists, lists, and more lists. 

Lists are something that come naturally to PR pros, and they need to start coming naturally to social media marketers.  Think of it like this: if there are 50 million people who post 5 million photos every day on Flickr, only 250,000 of them leave comments, write testimonials, or Fave the photos that they like.  And, of those 250,000, there are probably just a few thousand that care about the same things that you care about.  Just by realizing that, you have cleaned up the Flickr universe tremendously, reducing it from 50 million people to 250,000, to a few thousand, or preferably a number small enough to fit on your list.

Your job is to edit, edit, edit, until your lists are small, manageable, CLEAN, and powerful.  Before you can accomplish anything as a social media manager, you need to clean things up first.

Will Marlow is a PR specialist, blogger, and photographer who lives in Northern Virginia. The photograph of the Golden Retriever above will be featured as the lead photograph on the July 18th edition of the A-Town Dog Blog.  You should follow Will Marlow on Twitter.

One thing that bloggers struggle with is the challenge of making their blog more memorable to first-time visitors.  One of the most useful metrics you should be tracking in Google Analytics is how many "return visitors" you are getting.  If you aren't getting many return visitors, you're probably also failing to grow your blog. 

Most people focus on making their blog STICKIER, and this is generally a good thing.  You can make your blog stickier by optimizing the structure of your blog, and having strong, well-placed calls to action that lead visitors to provide you with their contact information, or by offering multiple convenient ways for people to subscribe to get updates from the blog (RSS, email subscription, Twitter links, newsletter options, etc).  Don't get me wrong: stickiness is important, and you need to nail down all of these things in order to make sure you convert a good percentage of visitors into repeat visitors/subscribers/customers.

But making a blog stickier isn't the only thing you should do.  You should also try to make your blog more memorable.  This takes creativity, and it requires you to think like a marketing pro.  Here's what you do: you need to identify some key messages and metaphors that crystallize the reason that your blog exists in the first place.  It's not easy -- this is how marketers make their money.

Here's a great example.  A few weeks ago I did research to identify the best photography blogs, and I looked at about 20 different photoblogs.  The next day, without consulting my notes, the only two blogs that I was able recall were Digital Photography School, which I was already familiar with due to its connection with Darren Rowse, and Thomas Hawk's photography blog. 

Why did I remember Thomas Hawk's blog?  Because on his About Thomas Hawk page, he says that he has an obsessive compulsive goal of publishing 1 million photographs before he dies.  That qualifies as a BHAG, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal, which Jim Collins talks about in Built to Last. 

According to Jim Collins, almost all of the world's best companies embrace BHAGs that seem impossible at first, but that serve to push the company to greater and greater levels of success.  In the case of blogging, however, a BHAG can also be like a "handle" that a first-time visitor can get her hands around to pick up the blog, and carry it with her.  In a world of 150 million blogs, you need to find lots of ways to crystallize for your readers exactly why your blog exists, otherwise you'll be forgettable, even if you have high quality content.

A Big Hairy Audacious Goal is just one way you can make your blog more memorable, but it's something that has probably never occurred to most bloggers like it did to Thomas Hawk, and hopefully it will get you thinking about all the different ways you can differentiate your blog, like a marketer works to differentiate any product or company.

Will Marlow is a PR specialist, blogger, and photographer who lives in Northern Virginia.  One of his BHAGs is to take at least one high quality photograph of every monument, memorial, statue, and iconic building in Washington, DC.  Here are some of those photographs.  You should follow him on Twitter.