For learning to use one of these sites, it’s not really a matter of how, since they’re all pretty easy. They may have their own set of normal practices, and you may look like a terminal noob if you don’t adhere to them, but how much you care about that is driven by your own practices. You either think and act like Google+ or you don’t. If you do, you’ll focus your efforts on that site. If you don’t, you’ll drift away.

Within the next year, I think the shakeout will begin in earnest. When the dust clears, we won’t all be using every tool in a way that is ravenous toward some and pathetic toward others. I’d make the soft drink metaphor but it’s been done.

So it’s time to lay down the cards. Which is best for you?

First the Times claimed it was spam, then blamed their email service provider Epsilon, and finally fessed up; The Times did it themselves.

As I’m sure we’re all wondering: How exactly did it happen? And how can you avoid it? Only people at the Times know for sure, but it’s possible, in fact easy, to guess. In fact, it’s a worthwhile exercise, because it may help you to avoid copying their mistake.

Let’s consider what we know:

• The email itself is of the ‘transactional’ variety, designed to be sent to people who canceled their subscription recently, supposedly about 300 people, not 8.6 million.
• It is very likely that the emails were triggered to send immediately after some change in the database, like an upload of canceled subscribers. This may have been automated or transferred as a .CSV or some other kind of data file compiled by the circulation department.
• It is likely that the Times uploaded, updated or moved their entire subscriber database, changing the field that is used to trigger the cancel emails, which is how 8.6 million people would wind up in the ‘Canceled’ category.
• If the database driving the auto-trigger is part of a web analytics platform or the site’s backend, it could have been altered by another department doing something that was considered purely technical and unrelated. This could mean the marketing and circulation departments had nothing to do with this. The database update was made by people whose primary focus is elsewhere, and whom are not familiar with the email system.
• Or, it is possible that someone in the marketing or circulation department was playing with the database, maybe ‘cleaning up’ fields, without considering the consequences.
• Finally, while it’s interesting to imagine that someone pressed the wrong button somewhere. It may have been an automatic change triggered a long time ago, when somebody set a transactional mailing to run for a very long time, like 24 months, before expiring and throwing the emails into the regular queue.

What doesn’t seem likely is that someone manually set up the ‘Cancellation’ email and selected the entire database by accident. I’d like to think the people at the Times are beyond that.

The bottom line:

Today’s most advanced email systems have a lot of moving parts, including triggers and filters, database connections, hundreds of fields, countless segments, dynamic content, differing browser compatibility, myriad admin levels, and multiple departments with people of varied experience. How many marketers have made manual uploads, global field changes, or set up automated systems and made a few compromises?

It isn’t just a matter of testing the content and using a browser with your email platform (though these measures help). You have to run all the scenarios. You have to think about the worst case outcome before uploading a file, integrating a database, eliminating or merging a field, or setting up a trigger.

Somebody within the New York Times is being called onto the carpet, where the explanation may be too technical and complex for the bosses to understand. That somebody, who may or may not even be at fault, is headed for the door. Don’t be that person.

Email is an extremely powerful communications tool. And remember, with great power…

Crossposted at The Net Atlantic Email Marketing Blog

Why do social media marketing ideas sometimes fail so grotesquely? Sometimes the idea is truly idiotic, or malformed, or naive. #McDStories is different. It actually seemed like a good idea for a well-known brand like McDonalds, which trades on convenience, cost, speed and a chipper all-American wholesomeness. The problem is that McDonalds is well-known to different people for different reasons.

Creating a hashtag is like naming a child. You’d like him to get through kindergarten without being tormented because of his name. But you’ll never know if the name you give him at birth will be considered wierd by the other kids, or so popular that he sinks into a sea of Coreys or Parkers. If an infamous criminal or Hollywood star arises with the same name, you can’t control that. So you choose a name and bear it. That’s what McDonalds did.

So what was the mistake?

In using the #McDStories hashtag, their first few posts were about the people who provide the restaurant chain with raw materials, such as farmers. The genesis of their error resides here, because it led Twitter users to align the campaign with where McDonalds gets their food, not the family-friendly sappiness the brand offers to the public.

No doubt McDonalds was hoping that the campaign would morph into people posting about the time they took the kids’ soccer team out for burgers, held a birthday party, found a much-needed rest stop on a long trip, or shared moments after a fun day out. In other words, they needed parents; People like me, who actually have stories like this but have no time to tweet about it. Why? Because we have kids.

So they reached a different audience instead; Socially plugged-in, cynical, humorous young adults without kids, who do have time to tweet about an unethical brand they abandoned long ago and don’t believe in.

Could it have been avoided?

It actually could have been, if McDonalds used their legendary brand awareness acumen to appeal to their traditional audience with a broader campaign. In other words, soften the ground with radio, television, and parent-oriented websites, infusing the hashtag with the kind of stories they want their audience to tell, and invite them to use it on social media platforms. McDonalds is not grassroots, and can never be. Even parents like me see it as a necessary evil. It can not drive a social campaign that is not top down. Period.

Here’s the worst part: This social campaign was clearly attempted without any such strategy, and #McDStories backfired, so there’s that. But this is really a tragic double-fail. Here’s why: the notion of using real customer stories to strengthen McDonalds’ community relations, a very powerful idea that is well-aligned with their brand, is now dead. Not just the hashtag; but any stories at all.

There is one silver lining: Clearly, McDonalds has learned that it should never, ever, remind people that its food once ever existed as chickens, beef steers, or potatos.

SCENE I: Malden, MA, 6:17 AM 

A corridor in a suburban home. A banister extends most of the way across the room.  There is an alcove and a window on the left end. A low table with a lamp and a telephone is on the right. Various multi-colored polyester clothing is draped over the banister. TOM enters and starts to laboriously pull on a wetsuit. Fade music.

(Phone Rings)

TOM stumbles to the phone, legs stuck in the wetsuit. He answers.

TOM: Hello?

GOD: Just what in my name are you doing?

TOM: Uhh…

GOD: Do you have any idea who this is?

TOM: Umm—

GOD: It’s God, stupid! Listen. Every weekend I check in on you, and up ‘til now I’ve been generally pleased. But this is idiotic! I gave you all this stuff to do, and all this time to do it in. I gave you seasons. Don’t you have any idea what seasons are for? Kid, didn’t you load your kayak into your truck a few minutes ago? Did you notice the two inches of snow on the ground? Wasn’t the door stuck? Wasn’t your tie-down rope frozen? Couldn’t you see your breath? I gave you common sense, with the stipulation that you use it regularly. You are completely ignoring me!

TOM: Uhh, but—

GOD: But what? I know what you’re going to say; I put the rivers there. And I made them run in the spring. No kidding! Ya think the world revolves around you? There are fish and stuff that need the water, too. So the rivers run in the spring. That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to be on them! Listen, I can send you all kind of hints: snow, cold, dead batteries, flat tires. I’ll just let you know one thing… You’re on your own here, kid… Go ahead, paddle the Quaboag. See if I care. Go. Go! Just don’t come crying to me later. Some folks pity fools. I do not!

(Click!)

TOM slowly hangs up and gathers his gear. He exits.

SCENE II: Warren, MA, 9:39 AM

Chuck and I entered a town grocery store/post office/bank/shoe repair/church/gun shop.  What wasn’t it? A restaurant. The lady at the counter said the nearest breakfast could be had ten miles away in East Brookfield. Out of time, we procured some granola bars and escaped to the putin described in the guidebook. Everything was there, the island, the class II rapid. The headstone reading “Lucy Stone Park”, the snow on the ground. But no other paddlers. It was the right time, everything was in order, but where was the rest of the trip? Had they ditched us? We looked at our watch, the guidebook, the empty parking lot, and began to realize we would not be paddling. I figured maybe God was right.

Then, as if on cue, two trucks drove up with boats loaded, and we told the occupants of our predicament. They informed us, “Oh, there’s another putin at the factory.” We would have to ask the author why it wasn’t in the guidebook. Heading downriver to the other putin at a factory below a 20’ dam, we found our group already dressed, and told them about the mixup. We didn’t hold them up, so they were on their way. We drove further down to the takeout, and discovered four guys with three playboats and a C1.

The guys asked if we wanted to join them. “What?” we said, “But you have playboats and all we have are these lowly gaper boats.” They didn’t care. They said our stupid boats could handle this river by themselves, we may as well be in them. Who could argue with that bulletproof logic? Then we asked them where they usually paddle.

“Oh, Hubbard Brook, Roaring Branch, Bull’s Bridge, stuff like that.”

“Oh. I see. We’re dead.” It was really starting to become apparent that God was right. The dude just knows.

So we paddled the river with them and it was really fun. Watching from the eddies, that is.  Those guys spent a lot of time going vertical. Given the freezing temperatures of both the water and the air, I decided there was no way I was going to tempt fate by sticking my bow into a wave. Of course, this conviction lasted about 10 seconds from putting in, and I was soon surfing everything I could find. A soccer ball followed us for part of the way, and we hit it back and forth while spinning down some of the class III rapids. Another installment of Stupid Kayak Tricks.

We eventually ran into our original trip, and told them we had changed our minds, but I think it was apparent. We reached the takeout without much trouble and were soon on our way to Zoar Outdoor, to buy paddle porn and gear. I wanted to see how the heck to get some of those moves that the playboaters were doing. Not that it will matter until July.

SCENE III: Charlemont, MA, 4:22 PM

Zoar Outdoor has a new entrance, still under construction but looking really cool. Bruce Lessels, the owner, and author of our guidebook was there. He asked if we had paddled, and we told him that indeed we had, on the Quaboag. Then we told him about the mixup at the putin, he informed us, “Oh, there’s another putin at the factory.”

To which we asked, “THEN WHY WASN’T IT IN YOUR BOOK?”

Yeah, like we really said that to Bruce Lessels. We obviously aren’t qualified to read his guidebook, much less talk to him in such a tone of voice. Instead, we curtseyed and told him of our plans to go scout a class VI rapid in the guidebook called Tunnel Vision. Did I say “scout”? “Scout” implies that we would ever possibly run it. It was more like “gape at in disbelief”. We weren’t qualified to look at this rapid either.

On the way home, we checked out a new bistro in Greenfield with an eclectic menu of fine Mexican, Southern, and Italian cuisine, served so quickly that you’d swear the food was already prepared. That is, unless you were Chuck, who waited 20 minutes for his fried chicken value meal. The kitchen staff gave him an extra wing for his trouble. I guess they’re still working out the kinks.

So we were on our way home, warm and dry in the car, with boats intact and new paddling videos and magazines. It was March 18 for crying out loud! We discussed whether paddling was becoming some kind of cult addiction. Who cares, it had been a really cool day. God was wrong.

SCENE IV: Malden, MA again, 11:02 PM

A corridor in a suburban home. TOM enters and starts to hang pieces of paddling gear on the banister to eventually dry (they will have to thaw first). The phone rings.

TOM: (picks up phone) Hello?

GOD: You were right, kid. But you’re still an idiot. (Click!)

Fade to black. Close curtain.

So I’ve been spending a lot of time in the library picking out books that are mostly about the Himalaya. Believe me, I will never set foot in the mountains of Asia, so I’m reading these mainly in disappointment that there’s hardly anything to read about the mountains I am familiar with.

But I’m becoming fascinated not only with the stories and the peaks, but in the personal dynamic between the mountaineers themselves and the people who support them. The factions and arguments that surround these guys (and they are mainly guys) are worthy of any soap opera about Kardashians:

There’s Dead Lucky by Lincoln Hall, who was rescued after a night out on Everest, but only after another climber, David Sharp, was left for dead a week earlier, causing an international wildfire of online accusation that did not go unnoticed in base camp.

There are several books about K2 in 2008, which killed several climbers in a series of overnight avalanches, causing a rash of heroism from the climbers and second-guessing from their aficionados around the world.

Some rise above the fray, like elite mountaineer Ed Viesturs, who in No Shortcut to the Top covers his own life and his successful climbs of all fourteen 8,000 meter peaks without oxygen. He also explains why he considers it dangerous not to use oxygen when working as a guide.

The 1996 Everest disaster is covered in numerous books, and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is only one of them. As a journalist, he is partly blamed for the event itself, in speculation that his very presence on the mountain caused the leaders of the two largest expeditions to test their luck further than their normal sensibility would have allowed them. He also blames climber Anatoli Boukreev, for guiding without oxygen, thus speeding up his own trip, leaving the summit and reaching camp IV before nearly everyone, including his clients. Yet, Boukreev is the only one in camp who is able to go out into the blizzard later to rescue others.

Of course, Boukreev has his own book, The Climb, covering his own side of the Everest disaster. I am currently reading Above The Clouds, a collection of Boukreev’s diaries from his numerous ascents, postumously published in 2001 (he died in a Christmas Day avalanche on Annapurna in 1997). This book opens with forewords and introductions by his defenders, scratching raw the disagreements that seem to be a lot more plentiful than oxygen on the high peaks, and perhaps always have been.

So here I am, fifteen years later, catching up on these events and finding myself unable to avoid passing judgment on these people, despite the fact that I would rather be reading stories about the Whites.

If only somebody would write a book about an epic adventure in the Pemigewasset wilderness, or a traverse of the southern Presidentials after a hurricane tore through the forest. How about a book with a collection of tales that end with prime rib at the Common Man or a burger at the Red Parka, or getting turned around by the maitre’d at the Mount Washington Hotel because you looked like you just crawled out of the backcountry (which you did).

I’d read all of them. Maybe that’s why I’m so looking forward to reading UP by Patricia Ellis Herr, about hiking New Hampshire’s 4,000 foot peaks with her five-year-old daughter. It will be available in April 2012.

Then I can return all these Everest books and start reading about peaks I can actually visit myself.

When Google announced its very own social platform earlier in 2011, the theories abounded: First, there was “It’s a competitor to Facebook and Twitter.”

Nope.

Then we heard “It’s for the geeks who use all of Google’s unique applications.”

Not quite, unless Google really wants to hang its future on all three of those folks.

Finally, “It’s a way to gather activity data that can be used to drive search.”

Now we’re talking. Google realized that SEO has changed severely because of social activity, and it happened while they were sitting around tweaking their obsolete code.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh. After all, Google’s algorithm includes user behavior data. The company pioneered true organic search technology, and is still the standard setter that every webmaster strives to please. Content-based SEO strategies have long been a thing of the past, thanks to Google.

But there’s no doubt that Google noticed that more and more web activity was based on social sharing, and the associated data was owned by others. Google had your IP address and pretty detailed click data, but Facebook had your name, favorite rock bands, activities, brands, and list of friends, among other items, much of it volunteered. The segmented advertising power this provides is staggering, and Google didn’t have any of it.

Can you say “Writing on the wall?”

In January 2011, Facebook was valued by investor Goldman Sachs at around $50B. Many wondered how the hell a startup with a bunch of pointless time-wasting apps led by a megalomaniac geek could be worth anything like that. For some of us in marketing, it was easy to understand. It was the data.

For the folks at Google, who know marketing better than just about anyone, it was a drop-dead cinch: Get Google+ out there, and quick.

So now here it is: The New SEO. You want inbound links? Social platforms give you an endless supply of them, should you be able to sway crowds to your cause. Which platforms should you use, you ask? How about “As many as humanly possible?”

Are you producing a ton of content on your website and blog but not getting it out there using social tools? Keywords alone won’t cut it anymore. You need activity, so use your content to create buzz.

Are you getting buzz, but it’s not all positive? Such is life, but you need to be online and ready with a social fire drill strategy. And you need to be thick-skinned but able to tread lightly in the social realm.

It’s the customer’s world, you just live in it.

Google will be the search engine of choice for some time to come, so we’re all settled in for a long winter’s night with their rules, but if you’re sitting around waiting for content keywords to work their magic, you’re old school.

We’re long past the “Why should my company get social?” discussion by now, anyway. If your dead-in-the-water SEO strategy isn’t impetus enough, nothing is.

Plus, sign up for the MyLeftOne Newsletter. The first edition is our Holiday Greeting!

Why was I nervous? For a few months, I had begun to realize our family business, a hair salon, wasn’t going to make it. After a year and a half, revenues were still rising, but not quite enough to cover costs. The writing was on the wall, so I hit the pavement.

My first run went a quarter mile, down to the corner store. I got to the corner and doubled over in exhaustion. Oh my God, I wondered as I bent staring at the sidewalk, was I just going to be unable to run? Were some people naturally athletic while others, myself included, just naturally… not?

It wasn’t like I was a cow. I was an expert skier and a whitewater paddler, though I’d been out of those sports for a couple of years while opening the salon. But now that things there were in flux I wanted to get back into shape. Even the running was supposed to be a precursor to something I really wanted to do; join a gym. But first I wanted to see if I could lift my fitness to a point where I could walk into a gym without looking and feeling like a charity case.

So this first quarter mile wasn’t all that encouraging. I walked the rest of the three-mile course I’d mapped out and got to it again the next morning. This time making it another block before walking.

Before long I learned to pace myself, and was able to run the entire thing within two weeks. My time improved to the point where I could actually start caring about it. I joined the gym in June and enjoyed the best ski seasons I’d ever had.

The running continued. I entered races. By 2007 I was putting in a 7 minute pace for shorter (<3mi) races and a sub-8 minute pace for longer ones. I was starting to run 10k and 10 mile courses, and enjoying it. At some point it’s not exercise anymore. It’s fun. There’s simply no way around it.

In late 2007, the gym went on hold. The reason? Riley. Riley is a little blond girl my wife Lisa and I met when she was 3 days old, lying in a hospital bed. It’s a vapid cliche to say she changed our lives, but she did.

Early parenthood is when everything kind of pauses so you can focus on a little one. But before long, I think most parents are determined to get back to to the glory days, only this time sharing them with a child. That’s where I am now, back on the roads pushing the pace. There are the obvious reasons: I’m trying to keep in condition for hiking with the kids and get in shape for another great ski year.

And now there’s something even bigger: I’m proud and honored to have been invited to join the Team Playworks Run for Recess, which is running the Boston Marathon on April 16, 2012. Playworks is dedicated to increasing and improving recess in schools across America, which is a very important part of childhood learning.

And I’m raising money for Playworks too.

So why run? For fitness, for training, for a great cause, and for my kids.

And I might add, for fun. That’s why.

By that I mean the questions that are being asked of those who support the Occupy Wall Street movement (as I do). We are asked “What is your message?” “What are your ideas?” “What are your demands?” “What is Occupy Wall Street about?”

The implication is clear: #OWS does not have a mission statement or a vision, and therefore cannot be legitimate. That’s irony.

The irony is that the Occupy movement already has a mission that runs so deep, it can’t be put into words. It has what many giant corporations spend decades building. It has the intangible brand value that Coca-Cola, Apple, Google, McDonald’s and yes, Citibank strive to cultivate and maintain. Those brands aren’t only about cool designs, tasty food and low prices, they’re about people who share beliefs and want to be part of a community.

“We are the 99%.” Madison Avenue couldn’t have said it better.

Occupy Wall Street is being mocked by those who own, run, and shill for big brands, but #OWS is what all brands want to be.

Another staggering irony is that this initiative was created pretty much out of whole cloth by a Canadian magazine, Adbusters, that built its organization in the opposition of giant corporate brands. If you’ve never seen (or even heard of) the magazine, it commonly runs articles about things going on in the globalized corporate world that you’ll never read in the mainstream press, interspersed with mocked full-page advertisements from big companies with scribblings such as “The CEO of this company has 14 houses.” or “This company’s products killed 4,300 people in South America last year.”

It’s truly counterculture. And now its mission has become mainstream. That alone should scare the bejeesus out of America’s corporate leaders. That people are flocking to the movement, and that it is growing around the world, are the reasons corporate and government leaders are pulling out all the stops to shut #OWS down.

Great brands are dangerous. How many corporate marketing executives in second-tier companies ask “Why can’t we be Starbucks?” or “What is it people love about Ikea?” over and over? How many clients of brand B gripe that so many of their friends prefer brand A and its ‘obviously’ sub-par products? It’s brand envy. Everybody wants to be the hip new thing. Everybody wants to capture lightning in a bottle. Everybody wants to be part of something huge.

That is what drives the Occupy movement right now. It has a powerful brand message; “Change The Way Things Are”. So many companies aspire to make their audience feel like part of something that changes the world. The #OWS phenomenon is destined to actually do that. It makes Apple’s groundbreaking 1984 ad look like a lame, pretentious approximation of a real movement.

The irony.