The Joy (and Pain) of Social Networking

I've been increasing my online presence this year, and it's going quite well.  I've made friends on Facebook.  I've connected with colleagues on LinkedIn.  I have a few of tweeps on Twitter.  I have a handful or regulars that read this blog (thank you, by the way).  Recently I started a website and a Facebook fan page.  I've enjoyed it much more  than I'd expected.  I love reading tweets from @iannarino, blog posts from Seth Godin, and status updates from my friend Tracey. 

There have been a few people along the way that make the experience less enjoyable, particularly on twitter.  You know who I mean: the people who follow your tweets hoping that you'll follow theirs.  The ones that send a personalized message that is clearly scripted.  Those who send several updates a day with a link to their website hoping to drive traffic.  I quickly remove them from my contacts, but in doing so I usually notice something disturbing: they have thousands of followers!  Thousands of people who are bombarded with spam from their "friends" because they are trying to make new contacts.

I'm currently following 6 people on twitter.  Only 6.  But I find them all interesting, and I enjoy getting new tweets.  I only have 34 friends on Facebook.  But I know most of them personally, and I love seeing how life is treating each of them.  I follow 15 blogs, and I look forward to new posts appearing in my reader (a list of the blogs I currently follow is on the home page). 

I purposely keep all of my social networks small so I can manage them.  I keep them small so I can be more social.

Are Superbowl Ads Worth The Cost?

A 30-second commercial slot during this weekend's Super Bowl broadcast will cost $3.01 million (excluding production costs).  The USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter ranks the commercials for each year’s game by how much viewers liked the ads as they aired.  First place on the Meter for 2009 went to a Doritos commercial, a surprising upset over Anheuser-Busch that broke their 10-year winning streak.  

PepsiCo, Doritos’s parent company, spent millions on Super Bowl commercials for other products as well.  Despite the entertaining advertisements PepsiCo experienced a 1.5% decrease in overall sales between 3^rd quarter 2008 and 3rd quarter 2009 (Q4 has not yet been released).  To be fair the Super Bowl commercials weren't directly responsible for PepsiCo's disappointing year, but did they help in any way?  Did they increase brand awareness?  Did they attract customers that otherwise would not have been drawn to Pepsi or Doritos?  Probably not.  

At least PepsiCo can afford it...

Marketing Doesn't Mean Much If You Lack Substance

Whenever I tell someone that I started a blog a month ago I get all kinds of advise on what to do, most commonly

• advertise with Facebook
• advertise wth Google AdWords
• join every social networking site possible

All of these pieces of advise have merit, but I can't help but notice they have a common theme: advertising my blog.  What about content?  A few people gave me advice on SEO tactics without even asking what this blog is about or why I wanted to start it in the first place!  This brings to mind two problems in the way many small businesses try to generate new business:

1. Far too many small companies believe marketing means advertising
2. Far too many small companies focus on finding customers before they have a product or service to provide them with

I will focus more on increasing traffic to this blog soon, but my first priority is making sure it's worth reading.