Trust me, I’m as skeptical as anyone when it comes to social media. But that makes me even more attuned to seeing it done right. And here, I also saw it done right before my eyes, as Cafe Novo is about 20 steps from where I live. When it began its metamorphosis from an abandoned restaurant, I saw the kraft paper signs on which Elizabeth and Sadie drew pictures and encouraged people to follow their story on Twitter, Facebook and their blog. And I did.

Since it opened, I’ve been a regular. So Elizabeth and Sadie were kind enough to endure me asking about their success. Just how did two women with—in their own words—”little to no”  digital marketing background use social media so effectively? Here’s what we can all learn from them:

Be passionate and personal

If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this point: passion is infectious. In fact, I’d argue that passion is the most viral of all viral marketing. Elizabeth and Sadie exude passion, and the cafe reflects it. They serve organic and fair-trade drinks, and homemade baked goods, with an emphasis on vegan and gluten-free items. Why? Because it reflects their beliefs, with Sadie being a vegan and Elizabeth gluten-free. ”We want to keep it simple and make damn good coffee, tea and treats,” says Elizabeth. Their passion comes through in their tweets and blog posts. Takeaway: passion and personality matter. Not everyone will like the owners’ style. For those people, there’s a Tim Hortons or a Starbucks nearby. But people who resonate with Elizabeth and Sadie’s passion will be loyal customers.

Be engaging and interactive (online and off)

When Elizabeth (right) and Sadie (left)  found their cafe space and moved in, they covered the windows with kraft paper, wrote their names and a blurb about their favorite drinks, and encouraged people to follow them on Twitter, Facebook and their blog. Then they asked people questions—such as about their best and worst cafe experiences—and put their suggestions into practice. “Most effective was engaging people,” says Elizabeth, with tactics that also included giving away free samples, and alerting followers on Twitter and Facebook to those samples as well as freshly baked goods. (Example tweet: “SPECIAL TREAT ALERT !!!! Chocolate brownie truffles just put out – folks I’m ready to close the cafe and just eat these all afternoon they are so ridiculously good. Come get some!”) “If you think it’s too trivial to post about, it’s probably not,” says Elizabeth. “Also, most important, reply to people! If they comment, email you or otherwise engage you, talk back!” Takeaway: don’t lecture people; have a conversation.

Don’t worry about inexperience

Elizabeth and Sadie didn’t take courses in social media or read books on the subject. And they’re by no means technophiles (I endured Christmas music one morning as they’re apparently, and endearingly, more adept with Twitter than iTunes playlists). Elizabeth started the blog to keep her family in the loop, and was encouraged by a mommy-blogger cousin to get on Twitter.  ”She gave me the nudge to get Twitter going,” says Elizabeth, “telling me to just tweet what I was thinking, doing, etc., in regards to the cafe.” Sadie took charge of Facebook and ran with it. “Our only real plan was to keep everyone interested as much as possible by telling our story and keeping it personal,” says Elizabeth. Takeaway: just do it. Speed of implementation is important, and if you’re inept with the technology, be open and honest as it may actually endear you further to your audience. “Admitting you don’t know something and want others’ advice is a pretty great way to connect with people through social media that you wouldn’t otherwise have access too,” says Elizabeth. “And go all out! Be real, and people will appreciate it.”

Just one week in, that approach has already given Cafe Novo a massive following. ”For sure our opening was hugely impacted by what we’d been up to online ,” says Elizabeth. “One in three customers would come in saying, ‘I’ve been following your blog!’ or ‘I was the one who commented on your Facebook post about such and such!’”

And there’s no sign that initial success is wearing off.  ”So far today I’ve had three people come in and say, ‘I hear you have great muffins—any left?’” says Elizabeth. “All from two or three days of me posting on Facebook and Twitter what muffins are coming out of the oven in the mornings.”

Which reminds me: I’m hungry. Time to head for the cafe.

Images by Amanda Faig for BlogTO.com. Images published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 (Canada) license.

But it’s really only a matter of time before marketers begin to figure out the social media conundrum and actually make it pay off. And we might have those first glimmerings in the “State of Inbound Marketing report” released this week by HubSpot and reported by eMarketer.com.

HubSpot’s study indicates that lead generation spending is 60% less among companies that dedicate at least one-half of their budget to inbound marketing tactics like search, blogs and social media.

Now, this doesn’t surprise us—at least, not the part about search. We’ve had a lot of success using cost-effective AdWords campaigns leading dedicated landing pages to generate leads for clients. Pay-per-click ads and SEO strategies fell below or near the average cost-per-lead 65% or 83% of the time, respectively.

But we were a little surprised to find that 63% of companies rated lead generation through social media as below average in cost-per-lead. And being skeptical journalist types, we wondered about the quality of the leads (leads mean nothing unless they turn into customers, after all)—until we looked at the chart that showed that, for business-to-consumer businesses, seven out of 10 companies had found customers through Facebook. (For business-to-business companies, LinkedIn was the most effective social media customer acquisition tool.)

So, apparently, there’s hope for social media as a marketing tool. But the lessons we’ve learned along the way—that campaigns that can’t be measured against concrete business objectives aren’t worth the investment—still hold true. If you aren’t realizing a positive ROI from your online marketing—or if you aren’t tracking your ROI in the first place—you’re wasting money, regardless of whether you’re investing in PPC ads or Facebook fan pages.

There are many reasons. One is that I find the term “social media” poorly defined; it’s become a catch-all for anything digital, personal and interconnected, yet sending an email to a group of friends or contributing to a forum discussion rarely qualifies.  (And if you think the definition is clear, try reading the Wikipedia entry on social media.)

Another challenge with what usually qualifies as social media is unrealistic expectations. When we parse web analytics data, for example, we often find that Facebook and Twitter raise awareness but rarely send a high ratio of qualified traffic—people most likely to buy.

All of this said, while I’m a skeptic, I’m not a cynic. I believe there’s value to tools like Facebook and Twitter. So I was happy to see a recent post by Jakob Nielsen on distributing content through social networks and feeds. Here are some of the top tips for business users:

1. Post moderately. One of the biggest frustrations that users report with following businesses through so-called social media tools is excessive posting.
2. Use the right tone (most often, a casual one). Generally, users prefer a casual and personal tone. But not always. For example, people want items in RSS feeds to be more straightforward, and for some organizations, such as news outlets, people want a more professional tone.
3. Cater to greed and exclusivity. Your friends and followers will typically like getting a deal, as well as being the first to know. It’s a reward for following your feed. But beware of aggressive selling; it’s an overt reminder that you’re trying to move product rather than maintain a relationship.
4. Prompt people to follow you. Because they won’t do it of their own volition, even if they know your brand. For example, email existing customers and prompt them to follow or friend you—and make sure your website links to your various accounts.
5. Post substantive, timely and relevant messages. They get rated highest by users. Add value, make the value relevant to your business, and give followers the scoop rather than an afterthought.

A few other likely obvious tips to consider: pick a good username, use a good logo, and write for the medium (rather than shovel from other sources).

And now back to my skeptical perspective, here’s one point worth printing and sticking on your monitor: Feeds (such as RSS and Twitter) are less powerful than email marketing for customer relationships. Why? Because users have to manually delete an email to remove it from their inbox (if they requested it and it’s not spam). Feeds, however, just keep coming, and few people read beyond their first feed screen. So if they missed a post when it first went up, they’ll likely never see it.

So definitely experiment with new tools, social or otherwise. But don’t give up on the classics so quickly.

Like everyone else (it seems), I’m on Facebook now and enjoying it tremendously. As Simon Smith recently noted, it has a killer UI and is far, far too much fun to use. Users can provide an endless barrage of information about themselves which in turn appears instantly on their friends’ news feeds.

You are now tuned into the George News Network: All George, all the time:

George has joined a new group.

George has been tagged in a new photo.

George has edited his relationship status and religious affiliation.

George is brushing his teeth.

George should probably be using his time more productively …

Exciting stuff, to be sure. You’re watching me and I’m watching you. It’s a thrill a minute.

Personally, I’m getting to the point now where after I successfully add a new friend I can actually feel the release of dopamine in my brain. Mmmm, new friend … that’s the good stuff …

In addition to all the masturbatory self-affirmation that goes on in Facebook, however, there are some broader social issues to consider. I’m speaking specifically of the rapidly evaporating phenomenon of anonymity. You remember "anonymity?" There was a time not too long ago when barely anyone knew who you were outside of your family and immediate group of friends.

Today, social networking sites allow users to post as much information about themselves as they want—everything from who they’re currently dating to their favorite book. This could eventually come back to haunt them on account of unscrupulous individuals or Big Brother.

Take, for example, the ability to tag photos; if your image is on the web, chances are your visual anonymity has been lost forever. Facebook lets you upload images, drag a square cursor around your friend’s face, and with a click of the mouse tie that person’s image to his or her profile. Eventually, given one’s visual prominence on the web, these sites will use photo recognition software to automatically tag a photo with your name. In fact, Google is already using this technology on Picasa.

But when taking the Facebook phenomenon into consideration, and seeing how unabashed people are about sharing their personal information, this appears to be a non-issue. At least at this point in time anyway. Those who partake in social networking are a select group of individuals who, for the most part, don’t care or don’t realize that they’re putting themselves "out there."

And I’m certainly a member of this group. I could avoid these sites and leak agonizingly little information about myself to the web, or I can share the most trivial details of my life with others, form new friendships and connections, and have fun.

I’ll gladly choose the latter.

Originally posted on Sentient Developments.

To some, the connection between a strong brand and the repetition of sounds might seem farfetched. But researchers have studied the impact of alliteration and found that it may indeed aid memorability. In fact, studies have shown that alliteration is such a powerful mnemonic that providing students with alliterative sentences can help them more easily learn a new language.

Then there are the real-world examples, which include such well-known brand names as Gold’s Gym, Dunkin’ Donuts, Weight Watchers, Volvo, Palm Pilot and Krispy Kreme.

Clearly, something is going on here.   

Stick it in your ear

Of course, alliteration’s just one approach to branding. (And product naming’s not the focus of this post. For a good recent book on that subject, check out Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words Into Big Business.)

The point is to demonstrate the power of alliteration in creating copy that infects readers’ minds, slips past their conscious filters and recurs later like a catchy tune they can’t forget.

To demonstrate, consider these fictitious marketing slogans that express the same core concept:

1. Your path to personal power
2. Your road to personal strength

Or how about these:

1. Find your freedom 
2. Discover your  freedom

Which one sticks in your ear? While word length and rhythm play a role in memorability, alliteration can often m

Imagine getting paid to socialize. At first, sounds great. Sort of like politics. You earn money meeting people, having drinks with friends, calling to wish happy birthday. But slowly, your behavior changes. You start socializing in the most financially rewarding ways. You call people excessively and leave long-winded voice messages when they ignore you. Suddenly, you can’t have real relationships. You commodify your friendships. And when your friends get offended, you blow them off and look for more financially rewarding relationships.

Then your boss sweetens the pot. Rather than just pay for your social activity, she starts paying for the social activity of people you refer to the company. So you’re even less interested in real relationships. You focus on referring people—friends or not, who cares—then kick back while they monetize their friendships. Suddenly, it’s not about friendship at all. Your social life becomes a line item in a spreadsheet.

It might sound far-fetched. But if a new social networking site called Yuwie succeeds, that’s exactly how the future of online friendship might look. Started in May 2007, Yuwie is similar to MySpace and Facebook, with one big difference: it pays users for generated activity—views of their profile and photos, for example—and that of people they refer. Sort of like a pyramid scheme. And it threatens the foundation of social networking: the whole "social" part.

A recipe for spam

Getting accurate information about Yuwie from users is a challenge. Most reviewers have a vested interest in its survival—and in referring you to sign up. So even a site called Yuwie Scam includes a banner with a link containing the site owner’s referral code.

What most report, however, is needing to refer lots of "friends" to make money. Yuwie pays users a portion of advertising revenue, and as anyone with a web magazine or blog knows, online advertising revenue isn’t the ticket to financial freedom. In fact, Yuwie notes that if you refer 19,683 friends, who in turn generate about 19.7 million impressions, you’ll still make just about $984 a month.

Seems like lots of virtual birthday cards for little money.

Or maybe just lots of spam. Because that’s the other, obvious impact of paying for impressions. First, people will embed their referral links in spam around the web, trying to entice others to register and bring them ever closer to the 20,000 friends they need to pay the rent. Second, people will post spam to Yuwie itself, trying to increase their impression count to jack their earnings.

Don’t add me

Now, I’m not against affiliate marketing or paying for user-generated content. The former rewards people for promoting products with less risk to marketers and, in best-case scenarios, helps users by aligning ads with relevant content. The latter encourages online efforts; people who place Google AdSense ads on their blogs, for example, can benefit from visits, encouraging them to post better content and increase their readership.

Yuwie, however, doesn’t appear to be a viable long-term model. First, it turns something people don’t want to monetize—their friendships and social life—into a commodity. Second, it rewards people for referrals regardless of their relationship. Third, it threatens to create more useless impressions for advertisers, at a time when many advertisers already doubt the value of advertising on social networking sites and sites with user-generated content.

Of course, none of this has stopped Yuwie from growing faster than an online hoax. The promise of free money has that effect. And so Alexa reports that the reach for Yuwie has grown 92,900% in the past three months, making it the 5,547th most visited website on the internet.

But are users of social networking websites, advertisers, those seeking financial independence, or your friends any better off? Unlikely. And if you think I’m wrong, please create a Yuwie account and refer 20,000 friends to prove it.

This article was first published in One Degree.

ke a meaningful difference.

So next time you’re preparing to name a product or tackle a new tagline, spend some time carefully considering your consonants.