Blog Metrics | One By One Media

Someone Has To Pay For Free

January 28, 2010 By Jim Turner 1 Comment

I have been writing this post in my head for a while after I was catching up on the drama that unfolded with Jason Calacanis and the people at Comscore. If you have no idea what I might be talking about, you can read all about that flap on Jason’s Posterous blog, and certainly the echochamber that ensued following as compiled by Techmeme and listed out by Jason.

In the tech world online and in social media circles we have been trained that we can do a whole lot of things for very little, and in most cases, everything we want to do has a “Free” application associated with it. Things like YouTube, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and a plethora of other things we “sell” to clients and companies that come in our toolkit we obtained for free or for very little investment. Our investment at this point has been the time it takes to understand and implement the use of such tools. This has been a very lucrative part of being a social media consultant and I suppose why you cannot swing a dead cat in a room and not hit one or two of the “experts” in our business. Free is always easy to sell.

I have talked before about “The Problems of Free“, and I also talked about how companies are using free as a business model. I want to turn back to the discussion or debate related to Comscore. We have begun to expect companies to provide services online for free or for very little cost, and as I see it that proposes a problem somewhere in the chain. Comscore cannot compete with Free. Someone has to pay for free.

If you are providing a service online, or if you have the latest cool application and you offer it to your users for free, how do you make money? I often ask many of the startups that come to me what their revenue model is and how they plan to make money. This is usually followed of course with “How are you going to pay me?” I am not yet providing “Free” for my own services. Many companies have long drawn out plans with “ad revenue”, affiliate marketing”, or worse yet I get a blank stare of “we have not yet come to that part of the business plan.”

In the end, you have to pay for the service you provide, be it your time, servers, salaries, and long lunches at In-N-Out. Comscore is having the problem explaining that they have to pay their bills. We have to give our stockholders a piece of the pie and we have to pay our salaries and everything associated with the costs of giving you what you want. They are not able to barter it all and they certainly cannot ask their employees to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, so they have to charge. I am not sure whether Jason or anyone else has really come up with an alternative to charging for Comscore’s services, other than perhaps the aforementioned ad revenue or the like. Someone has to pay for the free in the chain of the exchange. The problem that I see is that Comscore is asking the customer to pay when others are offering it for “free”, but even in that instance, someone is paying for the free.

Photo via Photos8.com

Filed Under: Advertising, Blog Metrics, Blog Revenue, Media, Services, Social Media Tagged With: Business Models, Business/Finance, ComScore, Facebook, Facebook Inc, Free, Jason Calacanis, Money, Social Media, Social Media Consultant, Spyware, Startups, Twitter, Twitter Inc, Web 2.0, World Wide Web, YouTube Inc

The Social Media Revolution

November 11, 2009 By Jim Turner Leave a Comment

I am behind the times on this one but I wanted to get it on my site to refer to it later. This is a great video and worth the watch.

Some of the information in this video is already obsolete. Social Media is moving at a rate that none of us can keep up with, and I for one sometimes must take a step back to look at the big picture to keep up with the rate of growth.

Filed Under: Advertising, Blog Consulting, Blog Metrics, Blog Tools, Bloggers and Blogs, Blogging News, Business Blogging, Marketing, Media, Services, Social Media Tagged With: Business, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Consulting, Social Media Marketing, Technology/Internet

Old Media A Job and New Media A Hobby: The Problems of Free

July 28, 2009 By Jim Turner 2 Comments

I was reading through an article on Spiegel Online International and an interview of Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired magazine. The article goes into detail as to the thoughts of Anderson and how he perceives the idea of new media. I wanted to pull out some of the quotes from that article and comment on them. The first of the comments that jumped out and smacked me across the face and it should others in the print media world was his take on the San Francisco Chronicle:

SPIEGEL: Your local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is fighting for survival. If it was to disappear tomorrow …

Anderson: … I wouldn’t notice. I don’t even know what I’d be missing.

In a word, OUCH. Up to this point I was forming an argument in my head that the print media was another form of consumable information we all rely on for another take of a news story, but to say that a newspaper’s disappearance has not bearing on your world is a mind-numbing thought. I wondered what Anderson would think if a statement about Wired would make him have talk differently if it were to shut down tomorrow? I think he goes into the real reason why that wouldn’t happen, and a take similar to what I inferred with the remaking of BusinessWeek. His take on the cost of old media:

Anderson: The math of profit is pretty easy, revenues minus cost. You do your best on the revenue side and if you are not making money you lower your costs. The problem is not that there isn’t money to be made online, it’s just that our costs are too high.

This seems like a no brainer but for some it seems that this is the mountain they cannot climb. The problem is that there are people out there giving away the cow for free which is of course the book Anderson released. He goes into the economy issue:

Anderson: Attention and reputation are two non-monetary economies. The vast majority of people online write for free. We’ve tried paying some of our bloggers and they thought it was insulting. They’re not doing it for the money, they’re doing it for attention and reputation, or just for fun. For example, two years ago, I started this Web site called geekdad.com. It’s about being a dad and being a computer geek. We’re writing about how to do things that are fun for kids and fun for dads. It’s a community project, everyone contributes for free but we now have an audience bigger than many newspapers. And there are an infinite number of sites like this out there.

Not only are there an infinite number of sites out there that are doing just as he states, but they are doing it on budgets that most expense accounts could not cover in the traditional industry. They are providing the news and they are doing it with close to nothing, which is completely game changing in this economy.

I do like the end of the interview when Anderson is asked about charging for his book and they talk about "time is money." This is somewhat of a dichotomy since nothing seems to be actually free. This could be part of the reason we are in this situation to begin with, someone did it for free.

[photo via LA Times]

Tags: Spiegel Online International, Chris Anderson, Free, Old Media, New Media, Traditional Media, Newspapers, Blogs

Filed Under: Advertising, Blog Metrics, Blog Revenue, Marketing, Media, Social Media

Want To Be Heard On Twitter? Get Added To A Twitter Roll

July 21, 2009 By Jim Turner Leave a Comment

It used to be that in order to be seen as an influencer or to be really taken seriously in your niche or genre, you had to be on someone’s blogroll. Being added to a blogroll gave you some credibility and it also helped you get read by others in your group. You got to be one of the cool kids if you were recognized on a blogroll. The goal was to get listed on a blog roll by someone with lots of readers as well. It also helped you get read by others, or it helped your voice get heard. Being on a blogroll was the gold standard.

Now with the likes of Twitter we get more of a situation of more noise less signal. It is difficult to be heard. 25 Million people all hoping their 140 characters get in front of someone to read. You may have the best ever 140 characters in the history of the world, but to broadcast it to Twitter is to cast it into the sea of information hoping to find a home. I liken it to casting an SOS note in a bottle into the ocean and hoping someone finds it. Chances are it may never get read by the person that matters. Twitter can be the same way. It seems that many online marketing types believe this a great way now to broadcast their message. They think a message in a bottle is a good way to broadcast. Cast a net big enough and sooner or later someone may hear what you have to say. This is not the best case scenario unless you get on someone’s list or in a group. Instead of blogrolls, we now can put our Twitter friends or followers into groups. I use the popular application Tweetdeck, and I have many groups of my followers distilled into readable tweets. I have my social media colleagues and I have technology people and parenting bloggers and no, even though I joke about it quite a bit I do not have a "Hottie" Twitter group. This is how I track what is being sent via Twitter by those I want to listen to and want to hear. I want to hear all 250 Million people out there but I have yet to figure that out sans some special paid for application.

This is how I read most of the important stuff on Twitter. I go through a specific group and see what they are talking about and what they have to say. It may be an hour after the fact when I re-tweet something or I comment or take notice, and the reason is, I don’t have time to scan the river of noise going by at 10,000 people a minute. In the instance I am talking about you get added to my group if you provide me good thoughts or value. I don’t want to miss your tweet. The only thing is, my groups are not public. I need to find something that allows me to show you my groups. I need a public app that shows my Twitter groups, my blogroll of twitter friends. I need to develop this as a widget for blogs or web sites. You can get on my group in in my Twoops (URL taken I checked)? Anyone?

Photo via Mykl Roventine

Tags: Twitter, Blogrolls, Web Apps, River of News, Noise vs. Signal

Filed Under: Blog Metrics, Blog Mining, Blog Tips, Blog Tools, BTW, Findability, Marketing, Media, Social Media

Living in a Facebook World?

June 24, 2009 By Jim Turner 1 Comment

For a long time I have been touting that we all live in a Google world. We cannot seem to leave our house without first checking directions on Google, or order Chinese food without getting the local menu and number from Google, etc. Many companies have come to us and asked, "How do we get on page one of Google’s search results?" That has been the mainstay of my presentations about why companies need to get into blogging and other forms of social media. I have yet to figure into the mix, Facebook.

Reading the article today that Wired put out about the "Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out", I began to think of living in a Facebook world. I never really considered these to be rivals in the big scheme of things as Facebook is a social network and Google a search engine, but I see now that there are many players all jockeying for position in world of the Internet.

I also think there is another small player that might be making things interesting and that of course is the social media darling of the bunch, Twitter. They can help perform the function of both search and of the social network. All of it actually has to do with data. As we begin to see the emergence of what I call 2009 The Year of Listening, more and more companies are concentrating on brand monitoring and reputation monitoring and how they can get into community and infiltrate them with their brand, their message and their mission. Yes, it is all about the business after all and that is the company that will win. Which one will provide the best of all worlds? Right now we are still living in the Google world, but there are some other players in the Internet solar system.

Tags: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Networks

Filed Under: Blog Consulting, Blog Metrics, Blog Revenue, Marketing, Media, Search Engine Optimization, Services, Social Media

A Test For Monetizing Your Blog With Qumana

April 16, 2009 By Jim Turner 1 Comment

As a social media consultant, I don’t actually rely on ad revenue from my blog, i.e. Google Adsense or the like to pay my bills. If I did, I would have gone back to working in the law as I was before. I am helping out the folks at Qumana, the blog editor I am testing, with a revival of an old feature. I used to be back in the day when I was first introduced into Qumana that we had ads that were served using the blog editor and that no longer became viable. For a little bit I am going to feature some ads here in the posts, not because I want to make the big dollars and show you my six figure check the likes of a Darren Rowse at Problogger.net or like Shoemoney. I am doing it to help out a company that will help out bloggers. We are always here to help bloggers become better bloggers. That in turn helps companies that want to hire a blogger or bloggers that go on to get real jobs as bloggers. I will let you know more as they are ready to launch these things again and will let you know my review of their service and offering.

Tags: Employment, Jobs, Social Media Jobs, Monetizing Blogs

Filed Under: Advertising, Announcements, Blog Metrics, Blog Platforms, Bloggers and Blogs, Business Blogging, Media, Professional Blogging, Social Media

New Media Marketing? Is it taking a backseat?

April 9, 2009 By Jim Turner 1 Comment

Just reading over at Profy and Svetlana Gladkova asking the question, "Twitter is a Popular Marketing Tool?". The analysis is interesting on Svetlana’s piece and I think you should read it. The thing that caught my eye was less about the written words and more about the graphic she had in the post.

The thing that made me note this graph was the far right three forms of online tools being used, blogs, podcasts and Twitter. I preach of course that these are the "new media" and that companies should be embracing them, but it is nowhere near the use of direct mail. I was amazed at the lopsided view of this. Twitter is the new media darling and blogs are making somewhat of a comeback since breaking on the scene at the beginning of the century. I am curious how the study was conducted and as I understand it it was conducted by WebTrends. The study appears to address only the European companies but I think that the results can be indicative of what is happening here as well. As the economy keeps dipping and we go back to the "what works" idea of marketing, I see the testing of social media to be take a backseat to the more measurable results of the past.

Tags: New Media, Twitter, Twitter Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Filed Under: Advertising, Blog Metrics, Blog Mining, Blog Platforms, Blog Revenue, Bloggers and Blogs, Blogonomics, Business Blogging, Marketing, Media, Search Engine Optimization, Services, Social Media

Budgeting Social Media Management

December 4, 2008 By Jim Turner 1 Comment

Reading Marketing Profs Paul Dunay’s post regarding the company budget for social media I found it interesting specifically about the idea behind content creation. Paul states:

Ok but the real cost (again unlike the traditional media stuff) is in Content Creation to fill up those social media / new media channels – here is where the cost can get large. I happen to think I am very fortunate since I work at a consulting firm where many people are thought leaders – so we have no shortage of opinions

He does not get into the costs specifically as he does with pricing the actual tools of social media. The tools he itemizes are:

A Blog;

A Podcast;

A Video;

A Wiki; and

A Community.

I refer to these things as tools as I also believe that applications can be used in a social media planned budget as well. The applications are mostly free to very inexpensive. I did notice he did not budget for the activities surrounding the likes of Twitter or other which enhance the above tools. Basically, they are free. He is correct however when he states:

So unlike traditional media â€“ Print, TV and Radio – which can cost big money. Social mediaâ€™s upfront costs very little…

You have to read through his original post regarding the overall budgets to get an idea of the numbers, but I wanted to wrap my mind around the budget ideas first and foremost. The low cost of social media is right now making it a hot and much sought after way of accomplishing a company’s advertising, marketing and public relations strategy.

The real cost is the people that can manage this strategy, someone that can understand the uses of each tool and application and how to make it work for its intended use. This is where the budget has to be difficult to nail down. The person that is responsible for this doesn’t even have a job title or description these days. Is it the marketing person, the advertising person or the public relations person that handles this? What department do we charge for the implementation of this new way of handling our media? These are some difficult questions to answer. I am personally seeing many more job openings on job boards, and seeing recruiters provide the answers to the question of who to place in the position. The real question I have for Paul is the budget for the wage for this person. How much does your company expert in the leadership of social media get paid? Do you have a budget line item for a social media manager?

Filed Under: Blog Metrics, Blog Revenue, Blog Tools, Bloggers For Hire, Blogonomics, Corporate Blogs, Marketing, Media, Services, Social Media Tagged With: Budgets, Marketing, Marketing Profs, Media, Paul Dunay, Social Media, Traditional Media

Winning The Web Traffic Lottery

November 19, 2008 By Jim Turner 2 Comments

I continue to explain to people that this social media thing is not the quick fix, not the get rich quick and not the answered prayer or the be all and end all of business revival medicines. Every time a story hits the Internet that gets a viral following, or a YouTube Video goes crazy, or something happens that causes a server somewhere to crash from the load of traffic to a company blog or website, I know I’ll be getting an email or a call. The question first out the mouth of the caller or the subject line of that urgent email:

“How can we get a viral component planned for our company?”

My response is something less than jovial, and sometimes it is met with sarcastic responses like “I wish I could bottle that”, or something along the lines of “Better yet let’s go buy that winning Powerball lottery ticket!”

I recently read a post from a blogger that talked about those social media people that you need to run away from. He hit the nail on the head when he said to run away from a consultant that says:

â€œWe will implement a viral marketing strategy.â€
Uh, no you wonâ€™t. Viral is the effect, not the cause. If someone says, â€œI can make a viral video,â€ please show him the door.

Yes, I completely agree. Not only show them the door but make sure to report them to the social media police.

I tend to cringe when I see things like the company that somehow “positions” itself on page one of various networking sites. The stars aligned well for them and they got a bump or large spike in traffic. Then I see them as they are bragging to all of their friends how their servers crashed under the weight of traffic that came to see their product. Yes, it is pretty cool to watch and I have seen it happen first hand.

After that traffic spike honeymoon is over however, they don’t talk about the return to normalcy as they continue to struggle to get those much needed conversions. In fact, they soon find that their conversion and other numbers have been skewed by the strange anomaly that occurred. At this point, all we can really do as consultants is to tell you where and how to buy your chance at the golden lottery ticket, but I cannot tell you which one of those tickets will crash your server.

Technorati Tags: Social Media, Viral Campaigns, Social Bookmarking, Tagging, Website Traffic, Metrics, Viral Video, Viral Strategy

Filed Under: Advertising, Blog Consulting, Blog Metrics, Blog Tips, Blog Tools, Marketing, Services, Social Media

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