Matthew Burgess

Thanks to Run Level Media, you and I can watch Chris Brogan’s recent presentation at New Media Atlanta. It’s just over an hour long, but well worth a watch if you’re working in-house and at all interested in “selling social media to the higher-ups”. Below, the video embedded…

Some of the highlights, for me? (times are approximate, blip doesn’t exactly cater to those looking to jump to a certain time point in a video)

– 7m30: Chris mentions a brand who “dedicates” “50% of one person, and 3 interns to managing their social media presence”. This situation just resonates with me. I’m glad to hear others are in the same boat. The cost of the fallout of only allocating a makeshift resource could be far more than paying a full time wage. Just sayin’ is all.
- 16m30: “We’ve all been in the bullhorn business. It’s time for the telephone”.
- 19m20: “Not every company has to blog. Not every company has to be on Facebook or Twitter. Stop saying that”.
- 21m35: Don’t get too caught up in these “games” (facebook, twitter, blogging etc). “It’s all chips. When you get a win in these games, pick up the chips and bring them to the next table. Stop playing the little game”.
- 26m30: “Be at the elbow of every deal… You know who gets a lot of business opportunities? The person who is known for connecting people”.
- 30m30: “Give your ideas handles… make it easy for other people to pick your ideas up, and make the their own ideas” (something I’ve discussed before)
- 45m00: Bring ROI back to a $ amount. Don’t fall into the “shiny sword” syndrome.

Q & A Section
- 49m00: “How do you stand out when everyone is shouting ‘Look at me, look at me!’? Don’t be the same. Say, ‘Look at them’ (connect people) or ‘Look at this cool thing I made that is going to benefit you’.”

Those are just a few of many highlights, but I’d really suggest watching the whole thing of you have the hour to spare. You won’t regret it. While there were a few points (particularly how to demonstrate ROI) that I wish had been devoted more time, but you take what you can get, y’know?

So, recently I was looking through my Google Webmaster Tools account (which you really should be using you know, if you want to learn more about how Google views your site), and came across an interesting URL in my “404s” list. I’ve blanked out the name of my domain, but the URL that threw up the 404 was as follows:

http://www.xxxxxxx.com/warning_this_is_english_domain_to_solve_this_problem_submit_site_in_atoall.com.html

Now, this concerned me… because I had never, never heard of this URL on my site before. Where the heck would that have come from? So I went and started doing some searches… and this is what I found:

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22warning_this_is_english_domain_to_solve_this_problem_submit_site
_in_atoall.com.html%22&pws=0&hl=en&num=10

So, to me, there are some warning flags being thrown up here. There are over 15,000 indexed pages showing up with that URL string. And something about that simply doesn’t sound right.

I threw this out on Twitter last night, and the always helpful Angie (@AngsCopywriting) pointed out to me that if you looked at the Google cache of the site “SpeedTV.com” (one of the sites effected) and scroll to the bottom, you can see a link containing the offending anomaly (click to see larger image)…

Also, if you go to the site mentioned in the URL (Atoall.com), you can see that it looks… well, less than savoury. Actually, you know, I was going to just nofollow the link to it, but I’d rather not even go that far… I’ll just paste the address here in plain text: http://atoall.com/New.html… up to you whether you visit or not. That page is SFW, but I can’t guarantee the same for the rest of the site, especially with links like “Hot Girls Pics” and “Hot Cute Boy Images” linked off of that page. Use your own discretion.

So, here’s my question: Have you checked into your Google Webmaster Tools account recently? Seen anything suspicious like this showing up? I know of at least one other friend who has had the same 404 show up on his site, so I’m thinking there’s a good chance if you’re reading this, you might have found it looking for answers to the strange “Atoall.com” query. If you have had experience with it, please share your insights below. All I know is… something doesn’t smell right here.

This probably won’t make sense to anyone else reading this. While blogging is all about sharing, if we’re honest, it’s also often a selfish act… recording thoughts to reaffirm our own existence and own memories to ourselves, if not others.

This is probably one of those posts. Like I say, it’s not likely that it will make sense to anyone else. But, to me, I want to put this down in case I ever forget it again. Because this memory, for whatever reason, popped into my head the other day, and it’s making me smile like I haven’t in quite some time.

A good few years back… ooh, I guess we’d be saying at least 6 or so… Rita Marley and the I-Threes came out to tour South Africa. At the time, things in South Africa were changing. If I’m right when I say this was 6 years ago, that would make it 2003, which would have been 9 years after the ANC, and with it, South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, came into power. While it had nearly been a decade, South Africa was still struggling with integration.

All this is a preamble to saying that when my mother, her partner, my sister, myself and my girlfriend at the time went to the Bat Centre at Durban Harbour to watch Rita and the I-Threes, we were the only white faces there.

Now, to set the scene… the Bat Centre at the harbour was one of my favourite places. You wouldn’t know it, going by the surroundings. The harbour was dirty as hell, rubbish littered the parking lots, used condoms and mountains of cigarette butts were everywhere, there was the pungent stench of urine from pretty much every corner where a human body could sleep the night away… and then there was the Bat Centre. Amidst all the squalor, was this Centre where the arts thrived. There were art workshops every weekend, and throughout the week you could see artists like Syd Kitchen (whom I’ve mentioned here and here before) expanding your mind.

In short, I loved the place. But it wasn’t exactly a place where you could forget the issues in your country’s past.

The Bat Centre in Durban

So, we’ve gone along to watch Rita. She was performing an outside show for National Woman’s Day, and the car parking lot for the Bat Centre was chock-full with patrons coming along to watch.
Now, at that time in my life, I was slightly unsure of myself. Not so my girlfriend at the time. It seems, looking back throughout my life, I’ve always been attracted to strong, confident women. Perhaps that says something, but that’s for another post. Getting back to the point, my girlfriend at the time was a swedish girl called Teddie. The typical Swedish stereotype… aryan looks, long blonde hair, crystal blue eyes and tanned year round, no matter what. And as Rita and the I-Threes kicked into their first tune, Teddie jumped right into it, and dragged me along into the whirling masses of bodies. Within a few seconds, we were jiving around hundreds of rastas to the sounds of some of Bob’s best tunes.

And soon, Teddie and I were separated. And there I was, this slightly uncomfortable white kid, dancing in amongst a sea of black faces. And I don’t say that for any kind of shock value (gasp! mentioning race?!), I mention it to give some context to the time. It might be hard to understand for those of you who weren’t in South Africa at the tail end of Apartheid, but the fact is that even if you yourself weren’t a “racist”, the history of racism had bred an uncomfortable “difference” between South Africans.

But music, man… music was different. Exceptions could be made for music.

At that time, Teddie had been carried away, and I was slightly worried. Would she be ok? And then this rasta came over to me, and said, “You’re doing it wrong man”. To which I shyly asked, “What are you talking about bru?”. The rasta smiled at me and said, “Your dancing. You’re doing it wrong. You’re thinking. Stop it mlungu” (side note: mlungu is the zulu word for “white person”). “Stop thinking. Don’t care. Just move”.

And for the first time in my life, I managed to. I stopped thinking, and just bounced. I was a madman, limbs flying everywhere, grabbing hands with random strangers and we whirled around in ecstasy, losing ourselves in the music. And throughout it all, this random rasta who had come out of nowhere was laughing. And not laughing at me – although there was some teasing at first – rather he was laughing with me.

It was one of the happiest times in my life, and I’m still not sure why… but it was some of the purest, most unfettered joy I’d ever felt.

The next thing I knew, these arms wrapped around me, and I looked back into Teddie’s eyes. “All ok?”, she asked, with that accent of hers.

“Fine,” I replied. “I think I’m going to be just fine.”

This isn’t a story about Teddie. In fact, looking back at it now, I think that day was the last day Teddie and I were truly happy together… or the last happy memory I can remember sharing with her, at any rate. It’s not a story about racism. In fact, I’m not even sure this is a story at all. But it is a memory, of me being happy. And it means a lot to me.

I said it wouldn’t make sense to you.

You can read Part 1 of this series here: “Things I find hard about Social Media #1“. Now, I present you with “Things I find hard about Social Media #2″

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Demonstrating ROI on Social Media. ‘Nuff Said.

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Ok, ok, maybe a bit more needs to be said. Now see, here’s the thing. I’ve definitely been doing a fair amount of reading on “ROI and Social Media”, so I’m not one of those guys who complains about the rainy clouds before even looking outside at the weather. I know that there’s a lot of unfair discussion about Social Media ROI from those who just assume it’s impossible to measure, when it clearly is possible. I mean, just read KD Paine’s blog, or Jeremiah Owyang’s and you can see that some brands are not only measuring Social Media ROI, but kicking ass and taking names at it.

Tracking social mentions isn’t hard. Time consuming, yes (if you can’t afford to pony up for services such as Radian6, anyway), but hard, no. There are numerous technologies available for tracking mentions, most of which are ably summed up by Jye Smith over at his blog, so I won’t bother to rehash that here.

Apart from that, there are no end of people displaying test cases for Social Media ROI… not least of which is Chris Brogan with his “success stories” in his Delicious tags.

My problem comes in that most of these cases are written from the point of view of people who create content on their own sites. So often they can use simple metrics as page views, RSS subscribers, unique visitors, returning traffic, etc etc. But what about those sites that don’t have that business model? That simply want their site to remain a “no nonsense, in and out, complete the transaction” site? (whatever that transaction may be). In other words, I’m talking about the brands who DO want to engage with their customers… but because excessive engagement on their own site might be against the “business model” (and I know most of you smartasses are going to say “change the business model then”), they are forced to use outside properties for that engagement.

So we’re talking forum discussions, twitter, Facebook pages etc. You know the type.

Now, my main bug bear here is measuring interaction with (for example) Twitter users. Obviously there are certain things you can measure, such as customer service tickets handled through twitter, collaborative innovations initiated through open conversations on twitter and the like… but up until now, I’m still struggling to find a sure-fire way of tracking commerce initiated through twitter.

Now, before any of you say, “But bit.ly and cli.gs and the like all give you stats for your Twitter links! If you put a link out on Twitter to your site, you can track how many people clicked on it. Hell, you can even track WHERE those clicks came from!”… yes, I’m aware of that. I heart cli.gs in a way that a man should never love a free online service.

BUT, while bit.ly and the like can do a great job telling you how many people clicked on your link, that’s pretty much where the helpfulness ends… after all, they can’t track what those people did once they landed on your site… they can’t track the path of their visit, so to speak.

And people are now going to say, “Yes, but that’s where analytics like Google Analytics & Omniture etc are your friend. Use those, and you’ll be able to track all you like”. Well, not really. Usually, yes, but if a visitor clicks on a bit.ly link in a third party client, such as Tweetdeck etc (which I think most Twitter users would be using, as opposed to the web), then those clicks are attributed to your “Direct” traffic, which means you can’t measure your income generated by your Twitter traffic.

Here’s the thing: For links that you yourself put out, there’s a way around this… use your own tracking codes. There’s a great article on this over at the More Visibility blog.

That takes care of that. But how do you track links from other people? That’s the bit that gets me. I mean, let’s say as part of your “Social Media Campaign”, you’re going out there and getting people talking about you. You’re entering into conversations, you’re finding out what customers are looking for, you’re listening and you’re acting to make yourself better. And then, because of that, your brand starts going wild on Twitter (side note: excuse the constant use of Twitter here, it’s just the easiest example given the current climate).
So you’ve done a great job, as I say your brand’s going wild on Twitter, for some reason people are sharing links to your site left right and centre, people are clicking on those links and gosh darn it, they’re transacting on your site. Who’da thunk it, right?

Well, actually, I would have. Or, in keeping with the narrative, you did. You went out there, you saw the benefits to actually listening to your customers (imagine that, right?), and as a direct result of all the goodness that you’ve done out there, you sales are going gangbusters. You should be on top of the world.

BUT, those links that people are sharing out there? They won’t have those tracking codes we discussed a few paragraphs earlier. Those were honest to goodness natural links that they just shared themselves. And because there’s no tracking code on the link, every. single. one. of those sales that should be attributed to the social media campaign is tracked as a “Direct” visit, and not notched up to your work.

Every. Single. One.

Now, as I say, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, but for the life of me, I just haven’t come across an answer to this yet. And, again, while I used Twitter in this case, there are many other “channels” out there where the same problem in principle applies. And it’s one of the most frustrating things to me about justifying social media to businesses. If you can’t put a dollar value to it, no matter how wrong it is, it’s often dismissed. If you’re limited to participating in conversations on properties that you struggle to track properly, how can you really measure a ROI to take to the boss and say, “Hey, you know what? We did good“.

Anyone out there able to educate me?

So, lately I’ve been delving ever-deeper into the world of social media. [If you follow any of my social profiles, you might have seen that lately (and don't even get me starting on measuring metrics of social media... that's going to have to wait for another post)]. That’s not to say that I haven’t been involved in it before now; but lately I’ve really been studying the dynamics of it a lot more. And, predictably, there are a few things that I’m struggling with. So I now present to you, “Things I Find Hard About Social Media #1“.

The first thing I find difficult about “Social Media” is the tenet of “Don’t Be Afraid to Let Other People Take Your Idea and Run With It“. (or, as Rohit Bhargava termed it, “Don’t be afraid to let go of a message or idea and let others own it“).
Now, don’t get me wrong here, I can definitely understand that in a world made for sharing ideas and collaborating, this is a belief that should basically go without saying. That said, it’s my sheer human nature that I get… well, let’s just call it slightly protective over things I consider “my baby”.

I’ve always been like that, even in my old band days… songs that I wrote were “my babies”, and accepting others had ideas about those songs always made me slightly agitated. Most of the time they were great suggestions, but all the same, I selfishly wanted it to be known that these were my songs.

Stupid, huh? But that’s me.

Or, I suppose, it was me. I’m trying to change that. Where I can, I’m collaborating with people online to try and further ideas, to further learning, and, ultimately, that furthers my own education. But, when it’s an idea of mine that gets picked up and run with, ultimately being claimed as another’s, I admit to still feeling a pang of… pettiness, about it.

As I said, I’m trying. Not always succeeding, but it’s a journey, no? But that’s #1 in a series of things I find difficult about social media. What’s yours?

Yes, I know it’s been a while. Here, I’ll distract you with beauty. Below, Tim Burton’s “ALICE IN WONDERLAND” Trailer.

You can forgive me after that, can’t you?
No? Well… suit yourself then.

… oh, here and there. Sorry for the lack in posting lately, but things have been uber-busy, both on the professional front and on the personal front. If you’d like an idea of what kept me busy last week though, then I’d suggest you head here: SMX Sydney 2009 Recap & Review.

And yes, this is a test. We now return you to your regularly programmed viewing…

Simply because it’s very, very, very cool… and because Vincent Price himself narrates. So really, it’s the ultimate coolness barometer.

I’ve just found out that the Daniel Johnston DVD, “The Angel and Daniel Johnston – Live at the Union Chapel”, is now available for purchase in Europe.

Daniel is an artist who has always intrigued me, ever since his infamous shot to fame when Kurt Cobain wore a t-shirt featuring a picture of Johnston’s “Hi, How Are You?” album. For those who aren’t aware of Daniel’s background, I’ll let the below trailer for “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” speak for itself…

It’s not easy to always watch Daniel Johnston. Throughout his live performances, it was always clear that there were demons with which he was struggling to deal. Diagnosed as bipolar, Daniel’s mind always appeared to be one step away from breaking completely. So when news of “The Angel and Daniel Johnston” DVD reached my ears, I was quick to start looking into it.

The below video is one of the trailers for the DVD. It features Daniel Johnston singing one of my favourite songs of his, “Grievances”. It’s clear that Daniel still struggles, and it breaks me every time I watch the man… but the key thing is… Daniel’s still here. Despite all else, the dude abides. And that’s f*cking awesome.

It’s coming on to rain, with perfect timing. The first drops running down my face so that from a distance you could mistake them for tears. Don’t you believe it, mate. Don’t you fucking believe it.

- John Constantine, “RSVP Part II” by Mike Carey.

Sometimes we just balls things up, you know? Sod it.