The Pros and Cons of Self-Censorship Online

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Will Gallahue in Social Media | Leave a comment

When I first started my Twitter account 3 or 4 years ago I was excited to start tweeting and interacting. I had no real plans for my account and my early tweets consisted of rants and usual early 20′s recaps of drinking, celebrity encounters and pop culture reactionary word vomit.

Maybe three months in I started to ask myself whether I should continue to tweet an eclectic mix of industry news and views along with rants, one-liners and references to the night before or whether I needed to censor myself.

So I started looking at similar people in SEO / online marketing and discovered that people in my industry fell into one of four groups each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages:

A. They protected their tweets
B. They just tweeted @ messages and industry news with an occasional reference to their outside life
C. They had multiple accounts to distinguish personal and business
D. They had a balance similar to mine of industry / outside life / commentary

Protecting Your Tweets
Pros: Protection from the general public, you feel like you’re able to speak freely, lots of control over who sees your tweets
Cons: People can still take screenshots if you bad mouth a competitor or say something really inappropriate, harder to build authority and become an influencer

Industry Content Only
Pros: Easier to build authority, relationships with other marketers while staying on message, lends itself to community interactions
Cons: Hard to see any personality, followers get a constant stream of banal minutiae

Multiple accounts
Pros: Gives users an option of whether they want to follow your company or the person behind it, ability to tailor content and interactions to followers of individual accounts
Cons: Tweets may be broadcast from the wrong account, additional management time

Balanced Approach
Pros: Ability to be eclectic, manage personal and professional interactions from one account
Cons: People may not want to hear about your night out, people who follow you for a specific reason may be turned off (especially if you tend to go on tangents)

This is by no means a comprehensive list of pros and cons or a definitive study of online interaction but hopefully this will help you figure out where you want to be and how you want to market yourself online.

Spirit Airlines and Why You Can’t Ignore Social Media

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Will Gallahue in Social Media | Leave a comment

Add Spirit Airlines to the list of brands that made a poor decision, ignored outrage from social media and then had to relent as a result of public pressure. It’s a lesson that many big brands from GoDaddy to Kenneth Cole were forced to learn despite the fact that controversy could have easily been avoided in the first place.

The latest example involves discount carrier Spirit Airlines which refused to refund a plane ticket purchased by Jerry Meekins, a Vietnam veteran dying of cancer. The man purchased a non-refundable ticket and the company publicly refused to issue a refund because it would be unfair to other customers. This is perfectly fine from a business perspective but showing zero compassion for a dying veteran is pretty much the worst possible thing you can do from a social media perspective.

Over the next few days, outrage grew and the company continued to stand their ground on the issue. However as public pressure, stock price declines and a planned boycott began to materialize, the company was forced to make a 180 with CEO Ben Baldanza claiming he would personally refund the $197 ticke fee in addition to a $5,000 donation to the Wounded Warrior Project. All of this because they failed to show compassion to a dying customer.

Brands need to understand that social media allows stories like this to not only receive coverage but spread rapidly through the online community. Before social media if a brand did something stupid or downright heartless a person would have to contact a reporter and hope that a hard hitting story would be able to rectify the situation. Now every rude employee, wrong order and poor decision can be documented and distributed to thousands, if not millions of people in a matter of hours.

Does that mean that big brands are essentially walking on egg shells every time they have an unhappy customer? Not necessarily. Only the most egregious problems or issues are going to gain traction in social media. Thus it is important that companies identify situations that could potentially flare up online.

If Spirit Airlines had used common sense they would have lost $197 … instead they’ve lost hundreds of times that amount in lost business.

Caine’s Arcade or How to Successfully Exploit a 9-Year-Old

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Will Gallahue in General | Leave a comment

I can’t take it anymore. I’m tired of people failing to see what’s happening to Caine’s Arcade. Everyone has their arms around this child and his story but the sad thing is that the people around him are getting ready to cash in on the child DIY genius.

As I said in my previous post, my criticisms aren’t directed toward Caine. I think he’s an awesome kid who deserves the praise he’s received but I’m worried about the people around him that are suddenly in a position to make life-altering decisions that may not have his best interests in mind.

So what set me off? Why write this? Two things:

The New Yorker published an article rehashing the backstory and checking in on the cast of characters. When you read between the lines, you begin to see what’s really happening.

Naturally, there’s a TV series in the works, which will document young kids who make things, and match them with storytellers and entrepreneurs. … Hollywood studios have started circling for the film rights. A major studio has proposed that Mullick, whose longest film has a running time of eleven minutes, make a hundred-million-dollar, live-action feature based on the story of three characters in the film who were destined to meet.

When you read through the article, you realize that the movement is no longer Caine’s Arcade, it’s the Nirvan Mullick show featuring Caine Monroy. Like I said in the previous post, people are putting a lot of pressure on Caine and no doubt a TV show and movie could make that pressure grow exponentially. The fact that they are already discussing a movie and TV show, even if they fall through, shows you how little consideration people have for Caine’s future. Those endeavors will eat up valuable years that kids his age need to spend playing with friends, riding bikes and running around the neighborhood.

Of course the person behind Caine’s success knew this was going to be big. Long before the 11-minute movie was published on YouTube and Vimeo, the goal of sending him to college was already in place along with a slick website. It was all planned and Nirvan knew what he had come across when he played at Caine’s Arcade that fateful day: a paycheck.

Caine already has a foundation, whose cryptic mission statement of “Discovering, fostering, and funding creativity and entrepreneurship in more young kids like Caine,” makes the organization sound like a venture capital firm. How exactly will they accomplish their goals? Does Caine have any input? Probably not.

Or maybe Caine is getting 100% of every dollar collected and the people around him are working for free. That might be true considering they put out a job posting today looking for an unpaid intern (which may violate labor laws).

I won’t go through every detail of what they were looking for but essentially someone with that skill set would make 40-50k working at an agency in Austin.

You’d think with a tv show in development and movie rights likely to be auctioned they could afford to pay someone. You’d think that people would realize he’s a kid who isn’t ready for the pressure of adult life. You’d think the people responsible for making sure Caine goes far in life wouldn’t make shortsighted decisions.

But that’s the problem with adults. A child sees a cardboard arcade, adults see a million dollar franchise. Does Caine deserve to earn money from his work? Of course he does but how much of the pie will go to the people claiming credit for making him who he is? Stay tuned.

The Darker Side of Caine’s Arcade

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Will Gallahue in Social Media | Leave a comment

Let me preface this by saying that I’m not criticizing Caine at all, rather this post is looking at how he is being managed and whether expectations are being set too high for someone who a week ago was just an average kid.

Caine’s Arcade has become the feel good story of 2012. For those who don’t know, a 9-year-old boy in East Los Angeles constructed a cardboard arcade one summer in his dad’s auto parts store. The only problem was that no one played it because there wasn’t much foot traffic in the area. That all changed during a chance meeting when a young filmaker came to the store looking for a door handle, saw the arcade and became Caine’s first official customer. Last week an 11 minute short film was released online showing the arcade and how they setup a flash mob to give Caine the best day of his life.

It’s nothing short of heartwarming and when you see him light up at the sight of a large crowd wanting to check out his arcade, it gives you a great feeling, a validation of all those childhood ideas and play projects that never became reality.

Over the last week, Caine has become a celebrity and that bothers me more than other child viral video stars. The problem is that Caine now has a big college fund and now the aptly named Caine’s Arcade Foundation which in my opinion is putting a lot of pressure him to perform. We’re forgetting he’s a 9-year-old kid, not an engineer – yet we’re already looking at him and imagining the possibilites of him designing mile high skyscrapers, Fifth Element type cars or figuring out perpetual motion.

That’s not to say it isn’t possible and with the right mentors he could very well build amazing machines or design works of art but the most likely scenario is that he won’t be the next Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison and I worry that people will be disappointed if he isn’t solving the great engineering dilemmas that will confront mankind.

I cringe at the thought of the internet 9 years from now should Caine choose not to go to college or ends up taking classes at a community college. I can only imagine the teasing and backlash of an internet community that was expecting accomplishments he’s all too human to deliver.

But that’s just one component, the second side is the people that are managing him and setting up foundations and international interviews. Looking at how his Facebook page and social media accounts are being handled, I get the sense that there is a sense of entitlement by the people who “made” Caine and thus believe they should profit. Yesterday for example Toyota ads began showing up on the Youtube video for Caine’s Arcade and his Facebook page was shaming Toyota and asking the company to donate all ad revenue to Caine’s Foundation ASAP. They also called Google to the carpet demanding a full explanation and immediate removal of the ads. To me that sounds like a PR professional wanting to stay on message more than trying to keep things ad free.

Most commenters agreed that they were overstepping their boundaries and it was mentioned multiple times that bandwidth and servers cost money and that YouTube was just trying to cover costs on a popular 11-minute HD video. They later backed off but it really made me wonder whether Caine has a voice in anything that’s going on. Does a 9-year-old really need a foundation? Is he really comfortable suddenly appearing on the news and answering questions? Does Caine have the power to take a day off?

Furthermore what will he do for Act II? The arcade is going to get old and the media and internet will inevitably want the sequel. We’ve already indirectly set expectations through his college fund and some are already clamoring for another hit. There will be pressure to come up with the next great DIY project that’s both cute and innovative but he’s lost the appeal of a young kid that made an arcade on a dream. He’s now a stock and he needs to continue to perform.

I know this is a poor analogy but I can’t help think of Jessica Dubroff, a 7-year-old whose love of flight was pushed too far by handlers and a media that wanted her to set every aviation record imaginable and in doing so led to her tragic death.

Don’t forget … he’s just a kid

A Great Way to Steal Identities and Build an Email Marketing List

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Will Gallahue in Security | Leave a comment

During South by Southwest this year, I RSVP’d to a number of events and I’m pretty sure all of them were real except for one which promised to be an after, after-party that well never seemed to happen. I don’t think anything malicious happened, I simply believe they were unable to secure a venue and sponsors.

That got me thinking though, what better way to gather authentic personal information than to make a bunch of fake events and depending on what your fake event would require, you could conceivably steal a person’s identity.

Let me give you an example of what could happen, suppose I go on Eventbrite (or better yet self host event RSVPs and have people create usernames and passwords which are likely recycled combinations from Facebook, gmail, bank sites) and make a bunch of super secret after parties based on tour dates for a major act like Jay-Z, Radiohead, Kanye, etc … I would say that venue is TBA and to give authentic contact information so you can get the low down on where the party will be at.

I could ask for your name, email, phone number (in case we need to send a text verification or venue announcement), birthday (under the guise that the party is 21+) and if I wanted to be really sneaky I could ask you to make a special code word for additional verification (might be going a bit too far but you see what I’m doing, right?).

Assume I got 1,000 RSVPs per party and if the performer is doing a 30 city tour, I could literally create a list of 30,000 identities and I’d be willing to guess that 95% of the data would be correct. The scary thing is people would fork over their information because they want to be on guest lists for exclusive super VIP whatever after parties and wouldn’t want their night ruined because of some technical error (as opposed to their credit score).

If I didn’t feel like identity theft, I could sell the emails and phone numbers to spammers and profit that way and who knows people might already be doing this. So to end this post, here is the how to protect yourself section:

- Double check the information if you are wary of RSVPing to an event. Is the venue real? How about the promotion company? Are there previous events? Does the event make sense? (Radiohead won’t DJ at Pure and provide free bottles of Grey Goose)
- Never use a personal email when RSVPing, always use a junk account you have access to
- If you are required to provide more information than your name and email, that should be a red flag and you should really consider whether you are comfortable with a third party holding your information
- If an event requires you to agree to any kind of TOS agreement, it probably means your information is being sold

A New Job and The Next Big Challenge

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Will Gallahue in SEO | Leave a comment

“The first rule of any game: You can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent“
- Revolver

It was the summer of 2006, I was running out of money and after responding to a Craigslist ad, I took the South 1L to the 30 on my hourlong foray into Westlake. I had never been to Westlake even though I moved to Austin three years earlier and during the trip I was wondering how I would make rent as I was about to start another semester of college. I was quietly optimistic about my job prospects but kept telling myself the part time online marketing position was going to be above my head.

I had done web design at some really questionable firms and had worked on some data entry projects for e-commerce sites but I knew very little about SEO beyond the fact that you needed a good title tag. I stepped off the bus and crossed the street to get a smoothie from Trianon (where I would make some great friends over the four years that followed).

I walked about half a mile to the office and pressed my hands against the inside of my shirt to soak up some of the sweat. I stepped in and a week later I was learning SEO. Little did I know I was working in one of the most difficult verticals, asbestos litigation, and I would not be where I am today had the company not taken a chance hiring me.

After four years and one company name change, I moved into the world of local business marketing and now I’m starting on the next phase of my career at the aptly named 58Phases. They operate a network of sites in the very competitive coupon / promo niche and it’s going to be exciting working with their international network to deliver results.

I’m excited to see what happens next and look forward to revisiting this post a year from now.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation and Why You Need a Rep Management Crisis Plan

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Will Gallahue in Management | 1 Comment

Every business and non-profit needs a social media disaster plan, case in point the Susan G. Komen foundation and their deafening silence during a major brand crisis.

For those of you who are unaware of what I’m talking about the organization decided to cut funding to Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings. The move has touched off a huge online debate and their brand is being hammered in the court of popular opinion.

Rather than try to diffuse the situation with a release to clarify what happened or a blog post with links to other resources, they have instead decided to remain silent as the negative @messages and vitriolic Facebook posts pile up.

Are they panicking? Sure. Are they probably holding midnight meetings and 4am conference calls to their PR team, sure. But with every minute that goes by their brand is eroding and their foundation is taking a beating. Even a tweet saying “We plan to clarify the situation with a full explanation” is better than silence.

So what should your crisis plan include?
- Before you reach the disaster stage, if you know an upcoming decision will be controversial prepare releases and coordinate with your social media managers to respond if they are able to address users individually (TSA actually does a great job of this)
- Speaking of responding, have a guide in place for how to respond (language, tone, etc …)
- Make your PR team available because media requests will pile up fast
- Be prepared to change permissions if you have online profiles where users are allowed to create content directly on your page
- Have monitoring software in place, look for inaccurate information to shoot down anything blatantly false
- Diffuse and try to shift the conversation if possible (in this case list of cancer screening resources)
- Respond to anyone who makes the top tweet list through @ messages and even personal contact
- Be prepared to launch PPC campaigns / sponsored content to tell your side of the story
- Only use the nuclear option (deleting your online presence) if the crisis is likely to result in the permanent closure of your business

Don’t Respond With Free Food for Bad Yelp Reviews

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Will Gallahue in Local | Leave a comment

Business owners who actively monitor their reputations are making a mistake when offering free food to people who leave bad reviews on Yelp and other local business sites. The knee-jerk reaction for many businesses who receive a bad review is to offer free food / services as a strategy to try and make up for the original visit and if possible get someone to remove or upgrade their review to improve their reputation.

However I think that offering free food / services is the worst thing you can do if you’re failing to address systemic problems within your business.

To date I’ve written more than 20 reviews on everything from plumbers to pizza and burgers. Most of my reviews are in the 3-5 star range but on a few occasions I’ve had to give a one or two star review and I’ve had business owners follow up on about half of those reviews.

But the problem is the response always follows this almost template like format:

Hi,

Sorry you had a bad time. We try to treat all of our customers well and I’m sorry to hear you weren’t satisfied when you visited. I hope you reconsider (business name) and the next time you come in, the order is on the house.

Sincerely,

Blah blah blah

The problem I have is that there is never any acknowledgement that they read and understand why I gave them a poor review in the first place.

If I give you low marks because the food is woefully overcooked … tell me that you plan to speak with the kitchen manager about making sure that burnt food doesn’t go out.

If I give you low marks because service took forever … tell me that you will look into it. Service is the most complicated component because it can be a combination of individual attitude, number of tables someone has to cover, communication between kitchen and server or a slow kitchen that can’t put out food in a timely manner. Avoiding poor service complaints is the easiest way a business can fail.

Don’t avoid addressing systemic problems by offering free food. A broken system will remain broken unless you fix it and treating me to a free meal won’t do anything to help future customers.

As a Marketer is it Smart to Criticize Google?

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Will Gallahue in Google | Leave a comment

I’ve had a rough week with Google. To make a long story short they put my agency’s Adwords account under standard review during a critical phase in the holiday season and it’s been frustrating seeing how they are treating their valued customers. I was debating whether to criticize Google under my name for two reasons: the first is whether it’s appropriate from a business point of view and the second is whether Google might look at your sites and client sites in a negative light.

The first option involves your professional appearance online. I make myself accessible and don’t block most of my social accounts so for me it’s not an issue because I don’t consider my online persona to be the most professional among marketers. However if you are actively trying to get clients, do you want their first impression to be set by an angry blog entry against Google?

I would think that it would work both ways in the sense that if you criticize Google in an intelligent manner (presenting a logical argument vs whining) I believe it shows a level of familiarity with the deeper concepts of search. However complaining about a policy could imply that you’ve been unsuccessful in recent work.

The second option is whether Google will use your complaints to penalize any site that is connected to you (through analytics, webmaster tools, rel=author, etc …). I generally don’t buy into conspiracy theories but I have heard first hand accounts of SEOs who believe their site is having difficulty ranking because they are on bad terms with Google (previous black hat practices, public criticism).

While I think that can probably be explained by outdated tactics it certainly isn’t out of the question. Let me honest, I have no verifiable evidence but if you write a marketing blog, it might be best to avoid inflammatory language just to be safe.

Don’t avoid criticizing Google but do it in a way that doesn’t make you sound like a five-year-old.

If I Ran Groupon: 5 Ways I Could Save the Company

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Will Gallahue in Management | Leave a comment

Groupon recently revised its financials revealing the company is headed for a severe crisis if they are unable to go public and secure much needed capital. If I was in charge, here are 5 things I would do to immediately work on getting the company stabilized financially.

- Immediately drop the term “daily deal” … it’s lost its value and for some people it’s toxic in the way that they look at businesses that have run daily deal promotions. There are 660 daily deals sites currently in existence and I would work to focus consumers back on the idea / terminology of a Groupon and work to promote Groupons as superior to offers they can receive on competing sites.

- I would work to secure brand level deals. Every daily deals site has spas, massages, restaurants but no one has daily deals for Apple, Nike or Adidas. If Groupon could promise me that at some point over the next 6 months they would do a deal for Adidas shoes I would sign up for their mailing list right now. LivingSocial recently did a mega deal with Whole Foods and the space is really going to see more mega deals as companies work to secure brands like the Yankees and Red Sox compete over free agents.

- Stop sending daily emails. I think consumer interest gets lost if you receive an email every morning you check your mail. I think that even if the deal is desirable it’s loses luster because it feels ordinary. I would use a random frequency everyday then two days or maybe one awesome deal for an entire week … make a Groupon something people urgently wait to receive.

- I realize the above item would severely cut into already shaky revenue but focusing on fewer, better deals would allow the company to shed 50 percent or more of their employees. I know that sounds really mean and perhaps heartless but if they don’t save some of the jobs now, just wait until the company goes bankrupt and everyone gets laid off.

- Try hourly deals … imagine if national / regional businesses could pick slow times during the day and have a Groupon only valid during that period. Let’s suppose that Subway is essentially dead between 2 and 4pm because it falls between lunch and dinner, what if the company ran a $2.50 sub promotion valid for just those two hours. I realize the argument is that there is no opportunity for long term sales growth during that period but I could definitely see brands working to boost revenue near the end of quarters or extend seasonal items.

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