As millions of people use the web for conducting detailed research on products and services, getting involved in political campaigns, joining music and film fan clubs, reviewing products, and discussing hobbies and passions, they congregate in all kinds of online places. The technologies and tools, which many people now refer to collectively as social media, all include ways for users to express their opinions online:

• Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn help people cultivate a community of friends and share information.
• Blogs, personal websites written by somebody who is passionate about a topic, provide a means to share that passion with the world and to foster an active community of readers who provide comments on the author’s posts.
• Video and image sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, SlideShare, and Instagram greatly simplify the process of sharing and commenting on photos, graphic images, and videos.
• Chat rooms and message boards serve as online meeting places where people meet and discuss topics of interest, with the main feature being that anyone can start a discussion thread.
• Review sites such as Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon, and TripAdvisor are places where consumers rate products, services, and companies.
• Wikis are websites that anybody can edit and update.
• Social bookmarking sites like Reddit allow users to suggest content to others and vote on what is interesting.
• Mobile applications with GPS-generated location services add the component of identifying exactly where each user is in the world.

What Is Social Media, Anyway?

Since social media is such an important concept (and is so often misunderstood), I’ll define it:

The best way to think about social media is not in terms of the different technologies and tools but, rather, how those technologies and tools allow you to communicate directly with your buyers in places where they are congregating right now.

Just as a point of clarification, note that there are two terms that sound similar here: social media and social networking. Social media is the superset and is how we refer to the various media that people use to communicate online in a social way. Social media include blogs, wikis, video and photo sharing, and much more. A subset of social media is social networking, a term I use to refer to how people interact on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and similar sites. Social networking occurs when people create a personal profile and interact to become part of a community of friends and like-minded people and to share information. You’ll notice throughout the book that I use both terms. This chapter is about the larger concept of social media, whereas in Chapter 14 we dive into detail about social networking.

I’m fond of thinking of the web as a city—it helps make sense of each aspect of online life and how we create and interact. Corporate sites are the storefronts on Main Street peddling wares. Craigslist is like the bulletin board at the entrance of the corner store; eBay, a garage sale; Amazon, a superstore replete with patrons anxious to give you their two cents. Mainstream media sites like the New York Times online are the newspapers of the city. Chat rooms and forums are the pubs, saloons, cafés, and coffeehouses of the online world. You even have the proverbial wrong-side-of-the-tracks spots: the web’s adult-entertainment and spam underbelly.

Social Media Is a Cocktail Party

If you follow my metaphor of the web as a city, then think of social media and the ways that people interact on blogs, forums, and social networking sites as the bars, private clubs, and cocktail parties of the city. To extend the (increasingly tortured) analogy even further, Twitter can be compared to the interlude when the girls go to the ladies’ room and talk about the guys, and the guys are discussing the girls while they wait.

Viewing the web as a sprawling city where social media are the places where people congregate to have fun helps us make sense of how marketers can best use the tools of social media. How do you act in a cocktail party situation?

• Do you go into a large gathering filled with a few acquaintances and tons of people you do not know and shout, “BUY MY PRODUCT!”?
• Do you go into a cocktail party and ask every single person you meet for a business card before you agree to speak with them?
• Do you try to meet every single person, or do you have a few great conversations?
• Do you listen more than you speak?
• Are you helpful, providing valuable information to people with no expectation of getting something tangible in return?
• Or do you avoid the social interaction of cocktail parties altogether because you are uncomfortable in such situations?

I find these questions are helpful to people who are new to social media. This analogy is also a good one to discuss with social media cynics and those who cannot see the value of this important form of communication.

The web-as-a-city approach is especially important when dealing with people who have been steeped in the traditions of advertising-based marketing, those skilled at interrupting people to talk up products and using coercion techniques to make a sale. Sure, you can go to a cocktail party and treat everyone as a sales lead while blabbing on about what your company does. But that approach is unlikely to make you popular.

Guess what? The popular people on the cocktail circuit make friends. People like to do business with people they like. And they are eager to introduce their friends to one another. The same trends hold true in social media. So go ahead and join the party. But think of it as just that—a fun place where you give more than you get. Of course, you can also do business there, but the kind you do at a cocktail party and not at the general store. What you get in return for your valuable interactions are lasting friendships, many of which lead to business opportunities.

This chapter is an introduction to the concepts of social media. In subsequent chapters, I go into much greater detail about blogs (Chapters 5 and 15), video (Chapters 6 and 17), and social networking (Chapter 14).

“Upgrade to Canada” Social Program Nabs Tourists from Other Countries

The travel market is crowded. Consumers have lots of places to find information about places to visit. In this environment, the best content and the companies that are most engaged with social networks can win the day.

Canada Tourism engaged travelers with a terrific social networking program called “Upgrade to Canada.” Representatives from Canada Tourism intercepted travelers at the Frankfurt and Lyon airports and tried to persuade them to switch their holiday plans, on the spot, to visit Canada instead. People had only a few minutes to consider the offer. Fortunately, many of them were open to the serendipity of a real-time travel change, and they spontaneously changed their travel destinations.

Canada Tourism then created real-time social content about the travelers and their experiences once they arrived in Canada, and the tourists themselves eagerly shared on their own social networks, including Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

“The results were extraordinary,” says Siobhan Chrétien, regional managing director for Canada Tourism. “Not only were we able to share firsthand the travelers’ stories with the world, but online we received further upgrades from over 100 countries by travelers who switched to Canada.” Social networking drove awareness of Canada as a destination. Canada’s share among competitive destinations increased by a remarkable 21.5 percent.

I love the idea of requiring people to make a decision in just a few minutes. The real-time nature of how people then share their experience separates “Upgrade to Canada” from other social media campaigns from tourism organizations.

“No matter how sexy a destination is, promoting a country for tourism purposes has its challenges,” Chrétien says, “especially with the world now being a smaller place with many travel options and competing experiences and destinations. The traveler of today and of the future has a vast array of options. It is not enough to run slick ad campaigns or hope that price alone will drive a sale and convert a tourist. The traveler needs to be inspired, motivated, influenced, and in some cases convinced on the spot that the time is now to make the trip!”

Smart organizations understand this new world and build a buying process around the realities of independent research and the power of social networks. Instead of generic information dreamed up by an advertising agency, they tell authentic stories that interest their customers. Instead of selling, they educate through online content. Instead of ignoring those who have already made a purchase, they deliver information at precisely the moment customers need it.

It’s not just travel destinations that can benefit from social engagement. Every market is influenced by what people are saying on social networks: the good, the bad, and, in some cases, nothing.

Social Networking and Agility

Social networking allows companies to communicate instantly with their existing and potential customers. That Canada Tourism built an entire awareness campaign around real-time strategies shows the power of instant communications. Yet many organizations don’t respond to people quickly on social networks.

I’m a “Pro” user of the Hightail file sharing and storage service. I’ve been a loyal customer since January 2009, paying more than $100 a year for my premium services. I received an email offer from Hightail with the subject line “Complete your list with our great discount.” The offer promised if I would “Upgrade to Hightail Professional” that day, I’d get 50 percent off the annual subscription price. Hightail subscription plans had confusing names: Hightail Professional is an upgrade from the Hightail Pro service I was using at the time.

The offer sounded good, so I clicked the “Get the deal” button.

However, when I logged into my Hightail account to complete the transaction, I got a nasty error message: “Your account does not meet the prerequisites for using this SKU code.”

This was frustrating, so I tweeted a message to Hightail (@HightailHQ) and waited for a response. And I waited some more. When I didn’t hear from them for three days, I chose to look into competing product offerings from other companies.

Not responding quickly is a huge missed opportunity. When you reply to user messages in real time, not only do you keep the customer up to date, but you also show the world through your public feed that you’re engaged. When customers are happy, they keep their product longer, they spend more money over time, and they share their happiness with others, either in person or on social networks. Hightail missed an opportunity to engage with me. And there’s no doubt that some of my more than 125,000 Twitter followers noticed Hightail’s lack of interest in responding to a customer.

The team at Hightail did finally get back to me and worked with me to solve the problem. I remain a customer, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Contrast the long delay at Hightail with an experience around the same time with @JetBlue. In this case, I received a reply in just two minutes. Talk about speed! No wonder JetBlue has nearly two million followers on Twitter—it communicates in real time.

When Social Networking Doesn’t Work: The Cannabis Business in America

In this chapter and throughout the book I talk a lot about how social networking is a great way to reach buyers. But occasionally a market exists where social networking is not appropriate.

As American voters pass referenda permitting the use of medical marijuana and legalizing it for recreational use, many businesses have cropped up to service this emerging market. As I write this, 33 U.S. states have legalized medical marijuana, while 11, plus Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational use. However, because it is still illegal at the federal level, laws often forbid the use of social networking to market products from this fledgling industry.

“Marijuana from a marketing perspective is fascinating, because you can’t market in the usual way. It’s illegal,” says Larry Schwartz, president of Cannabiz Media, the most comprehensive source for U.S. marijuana licensing information. Data from Cannabiz Media helps journalists, regulators, researchers, businesspeople, and investors understand and operate confidently in the evolving U.S. marijuana marketplace.

When Schwartz first started to market his business, he tried to run Google AdWords and Facebook Ads but was quickly rejected by both companies. Twitter and Instagram also forbid such advertising.

Google’s representative emailed Schwartz: “Thank you for calling the Google AdWords Welcome center. I looked into and tried to see if there was a way that I could help you to be able to advertise with AdWords. However I was unsuccessful in my pursuit. Google won’t allow your website to be advertised with AdWords. While your Business model is solid and company is legal it does fall into Dangerous products or services. With that being said, your ads can show organically. The Search Console will assist you [sic] Organic ad results.”

“We realized we had to go the old-fashioned route,” Schwartz says. “In the marijuana business, believe it or not, print magazines are huge. I think there are about 20 magazines in this space, titles like Cannabis Business Times, Marijuana Business Magazine, and Marijuana Venture. So for us, our marketing strategy quickly became trade shows, getting out our own email list, and bartering with these magazines and trade show providers. We’ve got deals with all the big guys now where we trade them our database for free ads and trade show booth space. This was the way everyone marketed 15 or 20 years ago!”

Most of the online action happens on more specialized marijuana search engines and review sites. “Dispensaries are the ones who need to advertise to consumers,” Schwartz told me. “And each state has different laws regulating marketing. For instance, in Connecticut and Massachusetts if you put a website up, the state has to approve it. It gets complicated and there are a lot of really strange laws. Now people are bypassing Google and the other traditional search engines and they’re using weed search engines like Leafly and Weed Map to find dispensaries, strains, news, all sorts of information. These are big marijuana search engines, and that’s where consumers are going.”

Schwartz’s business is booming. Whenever companies want to enter the cannabis business in a new state, there is a whole new set of laws to deal with. And those laws are constantly changing. Schwartz’s business tracks all of those new and changing laws and regulations.

“This business is going to go through a gold-rush mentality,” Schwartz says. “It’s like the dot-com boom starting in 1995. When California legalizes marijuana it will double the size of the market. And then we’re going to have a big bust. Then we’ll come back again, just like the Internet business over the past 20 years.”

As new states permit medical marijuana or legalize cannabis for recreational use, there are more and more people who want to grow the plant as a business. And with that an entire industry has grown to service cannabis entrepreneurs. As a marketer, I am fascinated by the business-to-business marketing strategies these companies must use.

“We are witnessing a dramatic shift within the USA. Cannabis can now be grown out in the open and with commercial greenhouse methods,” says Tom Springer, founder and president of NurserySource. Springer’s company has been selling RediRoot root development containers and GroPro root development fabric bags since 2010. The products help growers’ profitability by increasing their yield due to root health.

“The changing state laws have certainly encouraged us,” Springer says. “But since we manufacture an agricultural product, we have needed a few years of field testing to make sure our products worked as well in developing cannabis roots as they do developing shade tree and conifer roots.”

Springer faced a number of marketing challenges. “Suppliers who service cannabis growers are quickly learning how to service full-scale and open commercial enterprises who are paying hefty tax rates,” Springer says. “This is entirely different than servicing a more clandestine, black market group of growers utilizing cash for all their supplies. Cannabis farming is maturing at a rapid rate, and grow equipment suppliers are watching margins shrink and sales channels constrict. The market is hyperdynamic, and numerous people will be getting rich over the next few years. And a ton of people will go broke. Companies wishing to stay in this market long-term must utilize good business principles to survive.”

It’s rare that a market emerges from nothing and grows into a multibillion-dollar industry in a few short years. And just as we saw in those early Internet days, the rules of marketing in this industry are still being written. I expect that over time the cannabis business will be marketing via social media like so many other industries, but for now marketers like Schwartz and Springer must use more traditional marketing strategies.

The New Rules of Job Search

Company lost its funding. Outsourced. Caught in a merger. Downsized. Fired. It seems like every day I learn of another person who is in the job market. Usually that’s because when they need a job, all of a sudden people jump into networking mode, and I hear from them after years of silence. Hey, I’m okay with that; it’s always good to hear from old friends. And I’ve been fired three times, so I certainly know what it’s like to be in the job market.

Since looking for a job is all about marketing a product (you), I wanted to include a section in the book for those of you who are currently in the job market, soon to graduate from college or university, or otherwise looking for a career opportunity.

If you’re like the vast majority of job seekers, you’d do what everyone knows is the way to find a job: You prepare a resume, obsessing over every entry to make sure it paints your background in the best possible light. You also begin a networking campaign, emailing and phoning your contacts and using networking tools like LinkedIn, hoping that someone in your extended network knows of a suitable job opportunity.

While many people find jobs the traditional way, social media allows a new way to interact and meet potential employers. The old rules of job searches required advertising a product (you) with direct mail (your resume that you sent to potential employers). The old rules of job searches required you to interrupt people (friends and colleagues) to tell them that you were in the job market and to ask them to help you.

As people engage with each other on social media sites, there are plenty of opportunities to network. Just like at a physical cocktail party, if you are unemployed and looking for work, the people you meet may be in a position to introduce you to that perfect employer. The converse is also true: Smart employers look to social networking sites to find the sort of plugged-in people who would fit in at their company or in a certain job. In fact, on the day that I wrote this, a friend asked me to tweet a job opportunity. Had you been watching my Twitter feed that day, perhaps you’d have a new job now.

So you want to find a new job via social media? Offer information that people want. Create an online presence that people are eager to consume. Establish a virtual front door that people will happily link to—one that employers will find. The new rules of finding a job require you to share your knowledge and expertise with a world that is looking for what you have to offer.

How to Find a New Job via Social Media

It’s not just travel destinations, cosmetics, and air travel that can be promoted via social networks like Twitter. It’s also you and your career. Let’s look at how people use social networks in the job market. David Murray (@DaveMurr) says that after being laid off, he immediately did the traditional things, updating his resume and calling a bunch of contacts. But he eventually realized that he would also have to change gears and pay attention to blogs, social networks, and online communities. Murray already had a Twitter account, so he reached out to his Twitter followers and publicly announced that he was looking for work.

“I guess you could say I used a new tool for old-school networking,” Murray says. “The response was overwhelming, and I received several leads and opportunities that were far more fruitful than my previous attempts.”

Murray then hit on a creative way to use Twitter Search¹ in his job hunt. “I came across a comment from Chris Brogan [@ChrisBrogan] on how he used Twitter Search to keep track of his tens of thousands of followers using RSS feeds,” Murray says. “So I simply began entering keywords in Twitter Search like ‘Hiring Social Media,’ ‘Social Media Jobs,’ ‘Online Community Manager,’ ‘Blogging Jobs,’ and so on. I then pulled the RSS feeds of these keyword conversations and made it a habit to check these first thing in the morning every day.”

Bingo. Murray came across lots of conversations related to his keywords, and if something sounded like a good fit for him, he took the liberty of introducing himself via Twitter. “Many times, the jobs had not been officially posted,” Murray says.

How cool is it that on Twitter you can express interest in a job opportunity that hasn’t even been announced yet? It’s like getting inside information!

Hired. It didn’t take long at all for Murray to land the ideal job. His example is of someone who had already established himself in his career; he was looking for a new job because of a layoff. But what about new (or soon-to-be) university graduates searching for an entry-level position?

When Lindsey Kirchoff was a graduating senior at Tufts University near Boston, Massachusetts, she started a terrific blog called How to Market to Me.² In her blog, Kirchoff offers her opinions on how to market to millennials like herself. “The blog is my opinion,” she says. “It’s about the advertisements that ‘get’ me as a collegiate and 20-something consumer—the companies that understand my values, participate in my humor, and reach me when/where I’m most likely to need them. It’s also about companies that don’t do any of those things and how they can better reach me (and people like me) in the future.”

She used her comments on other people’s blogs, her Twitter feed (@LindseyKirchoff), and other social networking tools to share her ideas about how companies should market to people like her—a focus that also served to showcase her understanding of marketing.

At the time, Kirchoff was on the hunt for a job upon graduation, hopefully at a mid-to-large marketing firm with a strong entry-level program. Soon her active social networking led to discussions both online and in person with marketers at a Boston-based software company. Partly based on her solid understanding of social media as demonstrated by her blog and use of Twitter, Kirchoff was hired full-time and started working soon after graduation.

What Kirchoff and Murray both did was to show potential employers that they were available and ready to contribute. They put their enthusiasm and expertise out there to make themselves stand out from the other candidates, who would simply send a paper application or CV.

Some people might argue that this technique works only to find jobs related to social media and marketing (like Murray and Kirchoff did). While it’s true that social-media-savvy people are often the first to use these techniques, I’m convinced that they would work for many other kinds of job seekers. These days, Twitter is used very widely, and tweets like “I’m looking for an accountant to join my London office” appear frequently. You should be monitoring what people are saying in your field. Plus, if you’re an accountant, salesperson, or production manager looking for work, then you’re really going to stand out from the crowd of 1,000 resumes if you use social media to find a job.

As long as we’re discussing social media and job searches, here’s an important consideration: What comes up when you Google your name with the name of your most recent employer? Potential employers do that all the time. And you can influence what they see! Remember, on the web, you are what you publish.

Social Networking Drives Adagio Teas’ Success

As social networks become more important for organizations of all kinds, the challenge becomes how to integrate them effectively. Adagio Teas,³ a family-owned gourmet tea company founded in 1999, has used social networking to become the most popular online destination for tea enthusiasts. Social sharing and crowdsourced product creation aren’t “bolted-on” strategies at Adagio Teas. Unlike at most companies, social networking is a critical component for driving business.

I learned about Adagio Teas from my daughter, Allison. She’s a loyal customer and eagerly shared with me how the company works. As of this writing, Adagio Teas sells a remarkable 68,050 blends of tea. The vast majority of blends are created by its customers either for their own enjoyment (think private blends) or as a blend that is sold to others on the site. Creating blends via crowdsourcing is a brilliant strategy for driving social interaction, because people are eager to share their creations on networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

“The idea of customer-created blends came from growing up in a Russian background,” says Ilya Kreymerman, chief technology officer and member of the family that founded and runs Adagio Teas. “Tea was always something that was in the house, and when my mom and dad had company over, they would always drink this blend of tea that my mom made herself. So the idea of having people create these unique blends was second nature to us. We found a way that people can not only make it but also share with friends, the same way that my mom would share it when people came over. The idea is not just making it for yourself but making it for yourself and for a large community.”

Avid tea connoisseurs can search the database for a perfect blend, or, as with Amazon’s bestseller list, browse teas based on popularity and customer reviews. That’s another important social aspect: Like popular authors on Amazon, those who create delicious blends build a following with Adagio Teas customers, driving sales with their ratings and reviews. If you like a blend, you can see what other blends that creator has made. Repeat customers can create a profile to keep track of teas they enjoy most, and they can also add teas they want to try.

For example, a top-ranked tea as I write this, Sherlock, is a blend by Cara McGee: “All at once exotic and mysterious and perhaps a little bit insane, with a lingering hint of smoke. Inspired by BBC’s Sherlock, which I am in no way affiliated with. This is created purely for my own enjoyment. Ingredients: Lapsang souchong, Assam melody, Oriental spice.”

McGee uploaded a video where she talks about the blend. There are also customer reviews and social sharing tools that include Facebook (with over 1,000 likes), Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest. The Sherlock blend is part of a theme that Adagio calls Fandom Signature Blends, which also include such teas as Avatar, Big Lebowski, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and many more blends based on popular movies, TV shows, and books.

“A lot of what drives people to buy the tea is not really the tea itself—it’s this story around the tea,” Kreymerman says. “You take a pot of tea and infuse it with a character or TV show or video game and suddenly people have an attachment. You’re piggybacking on their love for a specific character. Instead of it just being a cup a tea, it’s now got all of this background and emotion baked in.” And people are naturally eager to talk on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks about tea that has a connection to the books, movies, and TV shows they love.

Another social aspect kicks in when customers add friends to their profiles. If you log in to Adagio Teas with a Gmail account, you can instantly find out whether one of your contacts also has an Adagio Teas profile. Or if you’re reading a review and like someone’s taste in tea, you can friend that person.

With all the sharing going on with customers at Adagio Teas, it’s no surprise that the company itself is active on social networks. It has an excellent Tumblr blog⁴ (“The official blog from the people behind Adagio”), and is active on Twitter (@AdagioTeas, 29,000+ followers), on Facebook (72,000+ likes), and on other social sites.

“People historically have spent a lot of money to advertise products,” Kreymerman says. “But we never use traditional marketing, advertising, things like that because it’s incredibly expensive. You’re kind of shooting in the dark. I think the more interesting thing is to provide customers with value by putting the money towards a really interesting site or really interesting idea or making their experience better instead of just kind of directing them towards your store. We listen to the audience, and a lot of our good ideas come from listening to what people are talking about on Twitter and Tumblr. And once in a while, we hear the same question coming up over and over again and realize that we have to address it.”

And Adagio Teas really is active, using social networks to communicate with customers. The mistake made by so many other companies is just using social media like Twitter as a one-way broadcast advertising channel. For example, @AdagioTeas tweeted: “We are developing a wish list feature & would love feedback. Would you use it as a bookmark for yourself, or as a list to help guide others?” A follow-up tweet thanked customers for their suggestions, announced the launch of the wish list, and prompted further discussion.

People love this kind of interaction and happily talk up organizations that provide it. For example, @jamieworley tweeted: “It’s so cool that @AdagioTeas sends me twitter DMs to let me know where my tea shipment is!” And it is cool. I wish some of the companies I frequently do business with used Twitter Direct Messages (DMs) to communicate.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Allison made her own blend because she wanted to have interesting Christmas and holiday gifts for family and friends. The “Create a Blend” widget is really easy to use. Many people love mixing teas, and Adagio has made it fun and easy to mix different flavors to create a unique and tasty blend: You name your creation and choose the types of teas and the percentages of each. You then have an opportunity to create a custom label, either simple text or something much more elaborate.

Here social networking pops up yet again, because you can upload a Facebook photo to be part of your custom label. Instead, Allison made a hand drawing for her label, which she scanned and saved as a JPEG and then imported into Adobe Photoshop. There she added text before uploading the image to the Adagio Teas app. Her “scottea dog” blend is “Just a cute jumpy Christmas blend of assam melody, hazelnut, and peppermint.”

Another fun social aspect of Adagio Teas is that the creator of a custom tea earns points whenever a customer buys that blend. Points can be used to get discounted or free tea. This encourages social sharing by people who create blends—when their new blends are ready to be sold, many people will tweet about them, or post an image of the label with a link on Facebook, or make a Tumblr post talking about the blend. After all, it’s in their best interest to do so.

By building social networking features into all aspects of the customer experience, Adagio Teas drives business success. As customers talk about teas on social networks, fan their favorite blends, or even create their own to share with their friends, new people learn about the company. It sure beats traditional advertising to get the word out.

Social media sites are places where people congregate to discuss things that are important to them. Where are people discussing your industry and the products and services you offer? If that place already exists, you should monitor it and participate as appropriate. If it doesn’t yet exist, consider starting a place for colleagues and customers to meet and revel in information that is important to your market.

Now let’s turn to blogs, another form of social media.