Speaking of perfection, remember “excellence”? That was the big thing businesses were supposed to achieve back in the 90’s. After all, the pursuit of excellence made Japan the rising sun in the global economy. Then Japan’s economy sank and that sun, set – and the “excellence” fad went with it. Today, there are gurus who’ll tell you that blogging, Twitter, Facebook, mobile, video or the social media app du jour is the must-have thing for any with-it marketer. Now, I’m not saying any of these things are bad, just watch the bullshit. In business, the real question isn’t whether a given thing is worth doing, but toward what ends and at what cost? If you’re not weighing costs against benefits, you’re just following a fad, not leading a business.

So what makes these people social media experts, other than spending a whole lot of time on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, what-have-you?

I’m reminded of an anecdote my wife shared with me regarding a recent guest lecturer at Boston College. The speaker, a noted author famed for her salty language and realistic take on hard issues such as faith and alcoholism, told a story about the time she announced her conversion to Catholicism to her ex-husband, a professor of comparative religions.

He scoffed at her, saying that in his position as an academic expert on religion, he knew what was worth knowing about any religion — and there wasn’t anything to her faith. Her comeback: “That’s like a guy who spends all day watching porn thinking he knows the first thing about p****y.”

Well put. And that, in a nutshell, pretty much sums up my opinion of so many self-titled “social media experts.”

I met Chris Baggot at a content marketing summit organized by Joe Pulizzi for OpenView Venture Partners’ portfolio of B2B software companies. Chris was one of the featured presenters and I was impressed by his controversial take on blogging — forget about subscribers and building relationships, the real game is SEO. I followed up with an email question to Chris asking for further explanation, and this is what he had to say:

The overall point for business bloggers is that if you are measuring your success based on subscribers or regular readers you are probably going to be disappointed. And worse, all that focus on the myth of engaging regular readers (as if you are building a community) takes the eye off the ball that the vast majority of people coming to business blogs are first time visitors.

If you look at the sources of that first time visitor traffic you find that most of it comes from either referrals or search. In fact, most consultant-type blogs l get most of their traffic from referring sites. Businesses usually have a higher percentage of traffic coming from search.

My argument is that first time visitors are a gift that is often completely abused by most business bloggers. First time visitors are the one chance you have to make an impression and drive a conversion to expand that relationship.  When you think in that context you start to appreciate business blogging as a superior acquisition tool.

The whole case for Compendium (www.compendium.com) is that search is really the only traffic source that you can control. You can “hope” to get lots of referral traffic. You can put up great content that gets passed around and over a period of years if everything goes well, odds are that more people will link to you and maybe people will hit those links and find you. But you can’t “make” this happen.

Search, however, is the one traffic source that is completely in your control. If you want to increase your search traffic (and I’m talking about well qualified traffic) it’s simply a matter of expanding your blogging program to target more relevant terms with additional blogs and writing more content aimed at those terms.

Search marketing is about solving problems. People go to search engines with the intent to find a solution to whatever they are searching on. Businesses exist to solve problems in exchange for money. It’s win-win and the primary reason search is the most important marketing channel of our generation.

The thing to appreciate about search is that for almost every business, potential search volume dwarfs anything that could come from other social network activity. This is easy to research right? It’s easy to see the total number of keywords that your prospects use and at what volume.

Imagine you were in the toaster business. Every single month there are almost 3,000,000 searches for toasters across about 250 different terms. Compare that volume of people actually looking with the intent to buy vs. anything you could do attracting customers via Twitter or Facebook. It’s not even in the same universe.

Think if you were a ski resort. Now sure you could probably build a robust community and run a successful Facebook or Twitter program…but compare that to almost 2.8mm monthly searches on “ski vacations” (plus another 60,000 on “ski vacation”). There are 9mm monthly searches on “ski” and a million more between the two phrases “ski resort” and “ski resorts”: 301,000 searches on “ski resorts,” 823,000 searches on “ski resort,” mountain resort gets “386,000.” In this light, where should the primary focus of your social media strategy be? Well search of course.

If you have a blog targeting each of these terms (title matching keywords) and populate those blogs with the stories that show how you solve the problems the prospect is articulating…well you stand a very good chance of showing up more frequently in search results around those keywords, and more importantly, converting more of those searchers into the most critical asset in any business….happy customers.

Want to hear more from Chris? Visit his blog at: http://blogging.compendiumblog.com/blog/blogging-best-practices/

She’s asked me for a favor that I’m passing on to you. Please visit www.clicktoempower.org, a site dedicated to fighting domestic violence, and cast your vote for the YWCA in the check-off column on the right. When you do, you will help the organization win a $100,000 grant from the Allstate Foundation to help domestic violence survivors achieve financial independence.

Please pass the word along to others! And thank you for your help!

Instead, surfers uphold the values of respect, community and “sharing the stoke.” 

In Ocean City, NJ, The Surfer’s Code is literally posted at the access points to the town’s dedicated surfing beaches. My fellow dudes and dudettes, I submit to you that this code could serve as a social media web surfer’s code as well. Here’s what it says (with my personal annotations in [brackets]):

Respect the beach, ocean and others [respect the web, communities and others]

The surfer closest to the peak has right of way [the netizen who hosts the community has right of way]

First to her or her feet has priority [first to post has priority]

Stay out of the way of riders on waves [don't spam -- period]

If in doubt, don’t paddle out [get to know the community BEFORE leaving comments]

Be aware of currents, jetties and other riders [listen, read and learn]

Hold onto your board [hold onto your web identity]

Clean up after yourself and others less thoughtful [be the peacemaker in forums, blogs and communities]

Always aid another surfer in trouble [defend community members from ad hominem attacks]

Share the water, your knowledge and your stoke [share your virtual space, your knowledge and your enthusiasm]

Give Respect to Gain Respect ['nuff said!]

What do you think? Is this a worthy code for social media practices?

Obviously, I’m very excited about the opportunity. But as I advise my clients, it’s important to step back and reflect: What happened and why?

In this case, landing the gig involved a combination of social media, traditional networking and content development that merits reflection. Here’s what happened:

On May 19, 2009, I gave a presentation at the NE XPO for Business about attracting and keeping customers called, “Lure ‘em, Hook ‘em and Hold ‘em.” One of the attendees, Stephanie Tilton, approached me after the presentation to express her appreciation. A little later, as I was about to buy a sandwich, she invited me to sit with her and her colleagues for lunch; our conversation led to an exchange of information, stories and business cards.

Once in my office, I checked out Stephanie’s Savvy B2B Marketing blog; she and her compatriots (known as the “Savvy Sisters”) maintain a terrific site all about content marketing strategies. Impressed and eager to join the conversation, I started leaving comments on various Savvy B2B posts. These caught the attention of another Savvy Sister, Michele Linn, who downloaded an ebook I had written about case studies.

A couple of weeks ago, Ambal was preparing a blog post about case studies and invited Michele to contribute her thoughts. When asked to share additional resources, Michele mentioned my case study ebook.

Next thing I know, I see a flurry of tweets between Michele and Ambal about the ebook. I follow up with Ambal via email and our conversation extends beyond case studies to content in general. Once Ambal learns about The eBook eBook, she ups the ante: Would I become a regular on ClickIdeas?

As the former governor of Alaska might say, “You betcha’!”

What can we learn from all this?

What I like about this ancedote is that it’s NOT  a simple-minded, social media “build it and they will come” success story. In fact, what this case reinforces is the importance of multiple, integrated efforts. Consider the pieces:

1) Public speaking: I made myself visible to a live audience with a well-received presentation on a topic that mattered to them.

2) Personal interaction: Stephanie and I talked, broke bread, shared some thoughts. We got to know something about each other under the most optimal condition: face-to-face.

3) Reciprocity: I didn’t use Stephanie’s (and her Savvy Sister’s) blog to trumpet my services. Instead, I left comments that respected their work and added something meaningful to the conversations they had initiated.

4) Content: Ultimately, the ebooks I had written on case studies and ebooks convinced Michele and Ambal that I had something to say — that I was a worthy collaborator.

5) Social media: A combination of blog post exchanges and Twitter tweets helped us find, connect and work with each other.

The point?

It’s not about being on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever. It’s about HOW you use the social media tools — in combination with other efforts — to build relationships. That’s what matters, that’s what works.