I'd Rather Be Writing » jason van orden

When Social Media Becomes Hollow

Tom Johnson — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 03:09:02 +0000

I attended Podcamp Salt Lake City (Podcampslc.org) on Friday for the third year in a row. The attendees have fluctuated. The first year, about 30 attended. The next year, about 90 attended. This year, the attendees decreased to around 45.

Sometimes events just suffer from poor timing. We are all so busy. But I noticed another trend: more and more sessions focused on social media, almost as much as podcasting. Here are a few of the session titles:

Client Attraction with Digital Media
Using social media to promote your content
Leveraging New / Social Media for Personal Branding
5 Killer Press Release Strategies For Your Podcasts

At one point I wondered if the social media club had infiltrated the podcasting crowd. Among the audience, it seemed everyone was genuinely interested in using social media to grow their business.

Thom Allen, the organizer of PodcampSLC, is even considering changing the name and focus of the conference to broaden the scope next year. I mentioned that we could change it to a “Social Media Camp” and include podcasting as a subtrack, fitting it into the larger trend of social media. If we changed that focus, I’m confident we would have 95+ bouncy people attending.

Many of the topics around social media included strategies for increasing your visibility and followers. One presenter laid down a social media methodology: get the reader’s attention, ask permission to interact (via a newsletter sign up), build trust with content, and then use that trust to influence decisions. It’s the same strategy Jason Van Orden teaches.

Other social media tips recommended by presenters included registering domain names in every social media space available, responding to every Facebook, Twitter, and email reply you receive from readers, and maintaining a presence in all major social media spheres, even the untrendy MySpace.

I’m not a huge social media fan, and during one IM moment with Jane, at home with the kids, she said, “I hate social media.” She says she uses Twitter because she wants to interact with her friends, not to “promote her brand.” She wants any “fame” to follow naturally from the content she produces rather than from spending 10 hours a day doing social media networking.

Me too. It’s not that I dislike Twitter or blogging or podcasting or Facebook or the infinite number of new social sites. For me, it’s the idea that social media’s only purpose is to grow your business and readership. I dislike the idea that it’s all essentially a business motive. You build trust so you can influence others and get them to follow you and subscribe to your newsletter. You engage in social media so you can increase your visibility, so people will link back to you, buy your products and services, and so you can take in more money and increase your product offerings. You engage in social media so you can expand your reach and little by little dominate the world.

When the discussion about social media revolves around this end game, I start to feel uneasy. It’s the same ill feeling I had in college when I would speak with business majors. Whereas most of us were engaged in literature or science, business majors seemed to focus only on schemes to make money. Is that how they interpret social media? As another scheme to make money?

I didn’t tweet much during the first half of Podcamp because I simply didn’t feel like it. After my presentation, I was a bit more relaxed and exhausted at the same time. My brain was numb from having stayed up too late the night before preparing my presentation and fulfilling other assignments. But after I ran into an old mission buddy at Podcamp, things started to turn around. I found a second wind and became much more alive. I started asking questions to the presenters, began posting a few tweets, and overall became more engaged.

When I post a tweet, publish a blog post, record a podcast, or engage in any other form of social media, I don’t consciously do it with the intent of growing my readership and increasing my brand or business. I don’t engage in social media for the business-motivated end game. I’m not trying to build trust with readers so that I can later influence them with product or service decisions. I’m just expressing and communicating about things I’m interested in. If the consequence is that people follow me and we interact, great. But my actions aren’t a ploy for influence. Influence comes from being passionate about something that captures you entirely, not from calculating SEO techniques to maximize visibility on every social media platform.

This year may mark the end of PodcampSLC and the genesis of a “Social Media Camp” of some kind. Businesses looking to increase their social savvy will send their marketing team to learn all about the rules of transparency and authenticity. They’ll discover the need for openness and unfiltered interaction with readers and clients. But if the entire social media strategy is built up with an end game of increased sales and customer followers, it will be a hollow endeavor.

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The Long Tail of Online Profitability

Tom Johnson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:27:11 +0000

Last week I listened to David Peralty give feedback to Jeff Chandler about his WordPress Weekly and WPTavern.com projects (see episode 75). David praised the community and visibility that Jeff had created through his weekly podcast and forum, in addition to his WPTavern.com site, but noted that he was aware Jeff hadn’t reached the monetization goals he hoped to achieve.

In other words, Jeff has done a tremendous job at creating a community and audience for his site and podcast, but he hasn’t found a way to make real money off his activities. If you monetize your online activities, you can then justify and devote more time to the activities to establish and grow your community.

But if you can’t make any money, it’s hard to justify spending so much time online. And if you can’t spend the necessary time online to build your community, your site or podcast won’t take off.

Although David was critiquing Jeff, I felt like he could have been equally speaking to me. I listened carefully, waiting for the key ingredient Jeff was missing. What was he not doing? What was he not seeing? How does one move from a hobby site/podcast that has a growing enthusiasm to one that makes enough money to sustain you full time?

I have a few notes, gathered from anecdotes and people I know:

Just recently Cameron Moll, a well-known web designer whose blog is Authentic Boredom, quit his job and turned to freelance full-time. He sells posters and job listings on his site and does some freelance work, I believe.
A basketball buddy of mine explained that, according to Jason Van Orden (who creates the Internet Business Mastery podcast), I should be making $1 per month for every follower I have with my site. Translating that, I should be pulling in more than $2,000 + every month.
My former brother-in-law taught me that information products about making money online are more profitable than selling regular products. He’s an eBay mogul who earns thousands of dollars teaching people how to drop-ship products on eBay. The business of teaching others how to drop-ship is more profitable than actually drop-shipping.
About a year ago Jane kept prodding me to sell some ads in my sidebar. I finally did, mostly by contacting companies separately and pitching ads, and it worked. But ad revenue doesn’t scale. I only have about 12 spaces there. (By the way, there’s an empty spot, if you’re interested.)

Lately I have been mostly resigned to the idea that “information wants to be free,” and that the real benefit of having a blog or podcast is the capitalization on the attention economy of my audience, as cool and unprofitable as it sounds.

But the other day I was talking with Sean, my brother-in-law (a different one), who is an interactive programmer and runs his own company, HD Interactive. Sean manages a successful online business, so I asked him what I am missing. What is that missing element that I could adjust so that I would be profitable? Create a premium version of the podcast? An online site with video tutorials for WordPress or other software? Sponsored posts? WordPress blog design projects? T-shirts? Webinars? e-books? A forum?

As I talked with Sean, it became clear to me that no single product would provide an online revenue model of the sort I’m searching for. There is no missing ingredient. Rather, the revenue model of the Internet is the Long Tail. Of course! I should have seen it coming.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Long Tail, it’s a model by Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson and purports that online stores such as Amazon.com make more from long-term sales of their niche products than they do by selling mainstream products. For example, the Grateful Dead Mug from 1979 that someone purchases from your online store for $5 combines with a thousand other low-selling, inexpensive niche products to surpass the income that you make from selling top-of-the-chart music CDs or other mainstream products.

The neat thing about the Long Tail is that it seems to apply to so many phenomenon online, not just revenue. There’s a long tail of participation. A long tail of travel. There’s even a Long Tail blog, where all of this is discussed. I never thought the Long Tail could apply to my attempts to make money online.

But as I spoke with Sean, I realized that the revenue stream for online activities really is the Long Tail. You won’t make your fortune selling one product or service (even though some have). Instead, it’s the combination of various revenue streams, of selling a variety of products, that combines to create an income to equal your goals.

For example, you sell a premium and paid version of a podcast, and maybe 50 people sign up for the premium version. You sell ads in your sidebar, and maybe a dozen sign up. You create a forum and offer a tiered membership, and some more sign up. You sell T-shirts, mugs, and other paraphernalia, and some more sign up. You sell video tutorials and e-books and print books, and more sign up. You present at conferences and coordinate webinars, and more sign up. You offer one-on-one tutorials and online training, and more sign up. Any of these methods alone would produce income that is weak and unsustainable, but the combination of them all accrues a revenue stream that is substantial.

Now that I think about it, this is also the strategy Jason Van Orden recommends in a podcast with a hobby geneologist (though I didn’t realize it at the time).

The Long Tail may be the model underlying a number of phenomenon on the Internet. It may also be the best answer to the conundrum of making money online from a popular blog or podcast.