Answer Guy Central

Thank you, Federal Trade Commission. Just when I thought the FTC was doing something potentially useful, they’ve decided that their own regulation providing for fines of $11,000 each time someone tweets or otherwise blogs for payment without disclosing that payment isn’t worth enforcing.

Last year, The FTC created a regulation that was designed to make knowing what was trustworthy amongst all the stuff you read on the Internet easier. If you blog, tweet, or basically say anything and are paid for doing it you have to disclose the payment. Failure to do so carries an $11,000 fine.

Soon after the regulation was enacted I mentioned that one Kim Kardashian was shilling for Carl’s Jr. over Twitter and that her tweets weren’t marked. I presume Ms. Kardashian hasn’t been fined.

Yesterday, the FTC gave me good reason for that presumption. A public relations firm that placed many uncredited reviews for their clients’ music on iTunes has reached settlement with the FTC, and will be removing the offending posts. And that’s it; there’s no fine. It’s kind of the equivalent of this short conversation:

• “You’ve made a mess of this wall, young lady, please clean it up”
• “OK, Mommy”

But on the Internet, nothing ever gets erased. Sure, the PR company might be able to “remove their reviews from iTunes”, but those words have already been stored in thousands of other places; they aren’t going away.

The business change lesson in this is simple. Just as Google and Verizon understand that the real impact of their pact on Net Neutrality is control, on the Internet, you’re in control. All you need is a clear understanding of how the things you say impact the space.

I’ll make the offer again: For $11,000.01 I’ll blog about you, and I won’t disclose that you paid me.

Yesterday I picked on my buddy Chris Brogan. Again. A genuine social media guru and one of the great successes in the field, Chris, like wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk, has become so much a victim of his own success that his missives lately have been reduced to Tony Robbins-like epithets:

Do Good Things, People

Yikes.

Now I swear I don’t actually want to pick on Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, or anyone else; that’s just not productive. And let me repeat that I believe that both Chris and Gary’s recent pablum is more about feeling a need to KEEP PUBLISHING!!!! now that they’re so successful, their followers expect/want more and they expect the same from themselves—and because they preach continuous communications as their gospel.

In fact, I agree with them. You have to keep getting your message out there to be successful in social media.

But there needs to be a message. “Do Good Things People” is no more a message than “just ate a sandwich“. These are the experts?

Yesterday, I came across a couple of messages by Jeff Jarvis. Jeff is another one of those “man of the moment” types, and has a long impressive pedigree suggesting enough common sense about publishing and social media and behavior that when I saw these I cringed. In order:

• Darn, I do like Canadians.
• Ottawa cabbie really did say “eh?” in every other sentence. I wanted to ask whether he knew he was a cultural cliché. But he was too nice

Dear Jeff Jarvis: I agree. Canadians, as a group, are nice, especially when compared to arrogant, judgmental Americans. And they know that we think they’re way cute. And they just don’t care. They have better things to do than worry about people from The States making jokes about them. YA HEAR ME, DUDE?

Once again, though, there’s no message, other than one that sounds like “Jeff Jarvis is an ignorant American” . . . which I know isn’t the case.

On to business change:

Social media serves one of two purposes, and if you do it right and are lucky, both. It’s either about getting a message out (lets call that the business part), or it’s about embracing a new way to make and maintain friends. I don’t believe Jeff Jarvis’ on-line friends, social network, or whatever are of a mind to hear him sound ignorant about Canadians. So was he going for funny?

Yes, I believe he was. And he missed.

Jeff’s  a frequent guest on the Howard Stern show. He’s a funny guy, or The King of All Media wouldn’t keep asking him back. But 140-character Tweets aren’t the same thing as being on the radio. Or writing articles.

Social media isn’t going away. And Jeff Jarvis, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Chris Brogan have achieved critical mass, so they aren’t going away either, even if what they say is no more meaningful than what comes out of Kim Kardashian. YOU, on the other hand, have to do the social media thing, but not tick anybody off. It’s work. It’s hard. It’s Business Change of the highest order.

I’m neither a famous actor/celebrity type nor a dictator (although my kids might argue with the second half of that statement). But I use Twitter, and by now I hope you do, as well. There’s really no more effective way for a business to stay in touch with its customers, and thus bring about business change in a constantly evolving world.

Hugo Chavez, the dictator president of Venezuela, agrees. Mr. Chavez turned on his Twitter account less than two weeks ago, and is already has the most-followed account in his country.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, and given Venezuela’s small size the fact that Hugo Chavez sits at number one with only a couple of hundred thousand followers shouldn’t come as too much of a shock, either. And never mind the ridiculous number of followers that a B-movie actor like Ashton Kutcher or a celebutante like Kim Kardashian can rack up.

What matters is this: social media and social networking work. Invoking my kids again, I’ll point out that they’re shocked to hear how many people follow me in one way or another on social networking and social media sites. I’m just not important, right?

But whether you’re Ashton Kutcher / Kim Kardashian, Hugo Chavez, or just Jeff Yablon / The Answer Guy, you can be using tools like Twitter to get your message out. And the world wants to hear your message . . . or at least some world wants to.

Hugo Chavez has found his world. If you like we’ll help you find yours. But please: if you don’t already have a strategy for social media and social networking, create one. Now.

FOLLOWUP:

It’s less than 48 hours since this posting went live, and while looking at the traffic reports for answerguy.com I notice that we’ve become Google’s second most important site for the search term “what works well in a dictator“.

If you still aren’t sure about the importance of search engine optimization, this should seal it for you.

Now of course, I don’t care about ranking high for the word “dictator”, or more specifically the word dictator in the context of that phrase. But because we drink our own SEO Kool-Aid, we’re there, and we got there fast.

Thank you Hugo Chavez, dictator President of Venezuela. And thank you, Twitter.

So it turns out that nobody cares what you say on Twitter.

OK, so that isn’t true. But if you’ve been wondering why the more influential people you follow never retweet (RT) your words, the answer is simple: they don’t do that. You’re not surprised, right? The more “important” you are, the less incentive you have to care about the people you know peripherally. Ever been to a book signing and see how little real connection is in the eyes of an author signing copies of his latest masterpiece?

Of course, there are exceptions. I’ve seen authors exhibit real empathy, and professional athletes, too. But by and large we’re all creatures of habit and when more people are looking for our attention than we have time to give it to we fall into the habits that make the most sense—the ones we use to protect ourselves.

On Twitter, though, aren’t we all supposed to be bringing something “real” to the table?

The answer is yes, but the issue is how you define real. My kids use Twitter as kind of a big bulletin board on which they tell their closest friends what they’re up to. Anyone who walks by can read the board, and they’re OK with that. Celebrities use Twitter to increase their brands. And those of us in the middle? We wish we were celebrities.

While it’s statistically unlikely that you’re ever going to be HUUUUUUUGE and command hundreds of thousands of followers who genuinely look forward to and digest your words, the story on Twitter isn’t really that, anyway. For those of us who are brand building or marketing, or just trying to be heard by three more people today than were listening yesterday Twitter is one more way of grabbing the long tail.

That may seem unexciting, but the business change we’re all going through really is one where each of us is building a brand, and some brands are simply not as large as others. I’ve written a couple of time about Kim Kardashian, for example, and there’s genuine question about whether she qualifies as brand or not. Her three million Twitter followers suggest that she is, but when you analyze what that number means you might conclude otherwise.

And Ms. Kardashian’s a celebutante. We ALL know who she is, right?

Well, no. And Kim Kardashian isn’t going to retweet you, either. So unless you’re really buddies with Bill Gates, don’t expect his help getting famous on Twitter. But keep on tweeting, anyway. That long tail can be whipped into amazing results.

So it turns out that young people have stopped blogging.

Really? When were they?

It was only a few months ago that kids thought Twitter was stupid, and unsafe. Now, young people are embracing the world’s hottest social networking site in droves. But the impetus for this change isn’t that Twitter has become any better; the deal here is that regular blogging takes too long, while just spewing your thoughts 140 characters at a time is easy!

When I told you a few months ago that Miley Cyrus had stopped using Twitter, my commentary ran toward how bad a business decision that was. My recent comments about Kim Kardashian and her $10,000 Titter posts have been about business change in the advertising world and how things that look unimportant can be huge.

Then, there are my own recent thoughts that blogging, as important as it (or something like it) is to your future business success, might be “over” if only because there are so many blogs being written, often about the same thing. Clients ask me about that idea all the time. Is it too late to blog?

All of this ponits, ultimately, in the same direction: the amount of business change we’re going through at this moment in time might be unprecedented, and unique or not is a lot to manage. But manage it we must.

“Young people have moved from blogging to Twitter“? Then if you want to do business with them you’d better be there too, and understand how it works. Or, just do nothing; your competitors would love that.

Yesterday I came across an absolutely fascinating article about how much your Twitter Follower Count “matters”. It’s conclusion? Not at all. The article is ten months old, so this is a guy who was way ahead of his time in asking the question, witnessed by his reference to Ashton Kutcher trying to be the first person on Twitter with one million followers (he’s approaching 4.5 million as of today). That rate of increase, by the way, is a business change we could all live with.

He came to the conclusion that your follower count doesn’t matter. His point, well-taken as it was, was limited, though: the larger your follower count gets, the higher your percentage of not-real-people “followers” becomes.

A while back, I told you about Kim Kardashian ‘s deal to be paid $10,000 per tweet by certain advertisers. I suggested that paying that amount of money to reach 2.8 million opted-in receivers of an advertising message was a relative bargain. Now, in light of the story I read yesterday I ask: what’s the real number of people being reached?

And the answer is: nobody knows.

There are services that will look at your followers and offer an opinion on how many are garbage, but that’s the easy part; if it turns out that 80% of her followers are garbage does that mean that the other 20% actually read what she writes? No; and . . . we don’t know how many DO, and as far as I know there’s no tool that will tell you that.

In fact, even if Twitter wanted to try to answer that question, it couldn’t.

wI follow only about 50 people. Their tweets show up on my Droid. I scroll through them and scan for useful information, but let’s be honest: I miss a bunch. AND I’M ACTUALLY ONE OF THE PEOPLE WHO GOES THAT FAR. My fifty people, by the time I pick up my phone each morning, generally create about 200 stacked up tweets; people who follow lots of big names can’t possibly keep up!

Twitter is in no position to say anything meaningful on the subject, so there’s truly no fix. So can you even get a meaningful CPM figure to decide whether paying for access to Kim Kardashian ‘s 2.8 million followers is worth it? No.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t invalidate the importance of social networking. Get on Twitter, and wherever else makes sense to you. Follow only people who are genuinely useful to you (ask us for help if you aren’t sure who that is).

And remember that business change, by its nature, is change. So don’t try to apply what you already “know”.

Does it matter if Bill Gates follows you on Twitter? You’d best hope not, because as of this writing he’s being watched by just under 200,000 people, but following just 40 in return. Here’s what DOES matter:

Bill Gates started tweeting just yesterday. He had 30,000 followers after fours hours, 100,000 after eight, and now, at approximately the twenty-hour mark, that number has doubled again. So the growth has slowed, as it does for everyone.

Most of the people Mr. Gates follows are not people at all, but charitable foundations. Makes sense; he’s the world’s largest philanthropist, and people watch those who are like them.

Bill also follows Steven Levy and Kara Swisher, technology journalists from way back. I’m a little jealous, since I actually dined with the then-Microsoft-Chairman twice back in the day, but Steven and Kara have stayed on the same path they were on once upon a time, while I went in a different direction.

And he follows Ashton Kutcher and Ashley Tisdale, which makes my head hurt.

Since the closest I’ve come to Bill Gates since about 1993 is when he and I went back-and-forth on LinkedIn last year I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m not in “the 40″. What I’m surprised at is that many otherwise-smart business people who tell me they understand the need for business change and the use of social media still aren’t doing this newfangled Twitter thing.

No, you aren’t likely to score 200,000 followers in twenty-four hours, and the chance of Bill Gates ever being one of yours is slim. But if that many people are looking, then you need to be in the place where they look.

The Business Change of Twitter, and social media. What are you waiting for? Lessons? Help? Guidance?

Please. You know where to look for that.

Old saying: those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.

Aside from the value that old axiom has with keeping young children in line and in school, it carries a business change lesson, too, and I’ll phrase it as another old saw: if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.

Henry Blodget is one of new media’s superstars, and with his business pedigree he has the right to boast. But Henry’s made a mistake this morning in looking at the words of Bo Peabody and laying them out as an example of business sense. And Henry had better be wrong, because his own business will fail otherwise.

Peabody made a large fortune selling early social networking company Tripod to early search engine Lycos in 1998 and has been a venture capitalist since then. And he’s arguing that Facebook and Twitter are doomed to failure. I really do want to agree, but here’s why that’s wrong:

Many earlier Internet properties were never monetized. That includes Tripod, and it includes Lycos and the many other search engines that you’ve likely never heard of. Facebook is making serious advertising revenue. Twitter is . . . going to.

Bringing up the other side of this: advertising revenue isn’t enough.

That argument falls flat when there’s ENOUGH ad money. Sure it’s harder to survive on just advertising revenue in the narrowcasting era (just ask the big television networks), but Facebook and Twitter are about as broad as you can reasonably ask for. Remember the Kim Kardashian / Super Bowl / Paid Twitter story? Look at the numbers again.

Remember that Google was nothing but an advertising company for years, and the other things they are adding that create revenue are just now happening. If Facebook and/or Twitter and/or whomever can get big enough and generate enough ad revenue, there’s no reason to consign them to the same junk heap as Mr. Peabody’s examples.

Today’s Business Change Lesson is this: you will repeat history if put lipstick on your pig. And both Facebook and Twitter could still turn out to be examples of exactly that. But if you see new ways to do business and carry them out, business change will make for real success.

Heads Up: I’m about to tell you more about business and this web site than you wanted to know. Please pay attention, because your business survival in the 2010′s depends on it. Your next business change could be “no more business”.

On Christmas, I received a gift that I’m going to share with you. It’s this blog post. Read it, right now. I’m serious.

Here’s why that post is so important: it shows what’s about to happen on the internet, and if you aren’t committed to enacting real business change, you’re about to get lost.

Have you ever wondered why this web site is arranged the way it is? We gets lots of compliments from writers, graphic designers, and business types, and thank goodness, because as business change consultants we’d better look good to lots of different types of people. Go a step further: we don’t only do business coaching and change management, we also do technology and computer support, hire out virtual assistants to do pretty much whatever your business needs done, and even produce some media. And Our Virtual C.O.O. Services will run your entire business for you.

It’s a tall order, and we need to appeal to lots of people and come off as the experts we are in several seemingly disparate fields. And while the exact talents needed differ, the things we do are tied together by our clients need for a way to get real help simply in an ever-more-complicated world.

So now look again at that post I mentioned above. By all means think about how good it looks. Or if you’re like me, react instead by noticing that it’s highly stylized—maybe too much so. It’s like . . . a magazine. On paper, remember those?

We’ve all spent the last few years trying to figure out how to do things differently, and that post . . . that one darned post . . . says something else. We need to be doing exactly what we did for years, and it has a lot to do with the way we present ourselves.

Think about the other web sites you visit, and how much alike they all look and feel. How can someone who doesn’t know the difference tell one from another? The great content or writing? Hopefully, but there are literally millions of those “me too” sites out there, so you need to have something else.

Something tangible, but not easy to describe.

“Feel”.

For the third time, I’m telling you: look at this post. Look different. Sound different. Be different. Because all the big companies who can afford to do things the way this article suggests are doing so, and you need to figure out how to survive in a world where the big guys are communicating like little guys.

Wow. Two Kim Kardashian references in one week. I’m getting ready to call a moratorium on celebuntantes.

A couple of days ago I pointed out that Kim Kardashian might be in hot water with the FTC over her non-disclosed paid-endorser schtick for Carl’s Jr. on Twitter. The topic of business change is even more germane with today’s news that Pepsi is abandoning its long-held position as an advertiser on the Super Bowl.

Remember: in the earlier piece I pointed out that Twitter would reach people for about one-third the money that a Super Bowl advertisement costs, and that the eyeballs being delivered were of a higher quality because they had opted-in to Ms. Kardashian’s messages.

Seriously: why spend $4 million per thirty seconds of exposure plus pay for production costs and inflated salaries for people like Britney Spears? Social media lets you spend way less, and get more. Done.

Of course, if you’re still looking to “throw everything against the wall to see what sticks”, ads in the Super Bowl could be the right way to go. But fewer and fewer smart businesses see that as the right answer, and now even Pepsi is on board.

Merry Christmas. Now go commit some business change.

OK, so that hasn’t happened yet. But it should.

Kim Kardashian, one of those famous-for-being-famous celebutantes we just can’t get away from, has a new income stream. Tweeting. And get this: Ms. Kardashian’s rate is $10,000 per.

It shouldn’t surprise you that Kardashian gets paid to tweet, any more than it would if you found out that any message to 2.7 million people (her following as of December 20 2009) was compensated.

Now do the math: a television ad during the Super Bowl goes for about $3.5 million, and reaches about 400 million people. Paying Kim Kardashian $10,000 to put a message in front of her followers, who wish to hear what she has to say, is a bargain. The Super Bowl ad reaches 148 times more people, but cost 350 times as much. And a bunch of the potential viewers walk away from their TVs to get snacks while the ad is running!

Still think social networking doesn’t matter to the way you manage business change?

Point #2:  a couple of months ago the FTC made it illegal to blog for pay without disclosing that you were being paid. And let’s be clear; both by function and frequently being referred to as a micro-blogging service, posting on Twitter is blogging. So when we see this . . . :

. . . where’s the disclosure?

It’s coming, and soon. To be fair, Kardashian claims that when she posted that Tweet she hadn’t yet signed as a spokesperson for Carl’s Jr., so maybe there’s a loophole to wriggle through. For you though, the message, again, is clear: ignore social networking at your own peril.

Oh, and by the way: The fine is $11,000. This tweet could actually cost Ms. Kardashian money.