Jim Murray

7 years ago · 4 min. reading time · ~100 ·

Blogging
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Jim blog
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Fishing Where The Fish Are. Or How I Ended Up On beBee & Loving It.

Fishing Where The Fish Are. Or How I Ended Up On beBee & Loving It.

The Op-Ed Waiters FOVIf you know me, you know that I have been writing since before a lot of you were even born. I have been writing and devising communication strategies and art directing and producing for almost as long as I have been writing.
I have seen the rise and leveling off of digital marketing. And I am now starting to see what I believe is the beginning of the decline.
9006

Jim Murray, Strategist, Writer
& beBee Brand Ambassador

I work with small to mid-sized businesses,
designers, art/creative directors & consultants
fo create results driven, strategically focused
communication in all on & offline media

       
       
       
      

 

| am also a communications mentor, lyricist

& prolific op/ed blogger. Your Story Well Told

      

Email: onanc

 

mail com | Skype: jimbobmuré1
In the advertising world, digital advertising is in a lot of trouble. I know this because Bob Hoffman, a world famous ad contrarian and owner of the Type A group in San Francisco, sends me an email every Sunday that outlines this bullshit and reinforces it with facts that are hard to dispute.
This information puts the digital marketing industry in the very bad light of a business that it basically selling snake oil, and providing agencies with substantial financial incentives (kickbacks) for buying it for their clients.
Of course, every scam has it’s own half life and it looks very much like the internet advertising scam is nearing the end.

Different Side Of The Same Con

This same industry is chock full of so called digital marketing experts who, for a fee, of course, will help you build your brand on line. It could be a small business brand. It could be a personal brand.
But it’s all the same bullshit.
The simple fact is that no matter how you slice the digital marketing pie, the ROI for those fortunate enough to have done some things right, tweaked a few nerves, got some attention and had the stamina and the skill to keep their program going over a protracted period will, if they’re lucky, end up with maybe a 1% ROI.
In many cases this is at least 100% less than they need to even cover the time and effort they have put into it, not to mention the fees they pay to digital marketers who keep telling them it’s a marathon and not a sprint and other glorious but hollow epithets.

Lower Your Expectations & Alter Your Rationale

According to an article I read yesterday, LinkedIn has lost close to $100 million in revenues since the acquisition by Microsoft. The main reason cited for this was a dramatic increase in people cancelling their paid memberships.
The perfectly valid assumptions here are that they have either run out of the energy required to keep their branding programs going on LI, or that they have been just not able to attract enough business in this particular medium to make it worth the expense.
Either way, this is, for all intents and purposes, the beginning of a huge period of reckoning for LinkedIn.
And a very strong signal that there really needs to be a better way forward for a lot of people.

One Way Forward

It’s important to note that while $100 million is a substantial number, it really is a relatively small percentage of LI’s supposed worth.
But what it does represent is a small dip in the needle that many of us happen to believe is the foot in the door for many smaller, more focused and organic growth based social and business media sites like BeBee.com.

My Story In A Nutshell

My main online marketing tool is my blog. My main reward is followers, a few of which will eventually hire me to write stuff for them or help them plan out their marketing for a venture they may be developing.
I don’t rely on social media or business media to generate business. I do that, mostly off line, through meeting people, and referrals from people I have done work for.
But bloggers gotta blog, so about three years ago I started blogging intensely on LI. And it was great up to a point. That point was when they tweaked their algorithm and stopped providing notifications to the vast majority of the 2400 followers I had painstakingly gathered.
LinkedIn basically took away the only thing I wanted from them in return for providing them with lots of professionally written content.

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After a period of raging against the machine, which is always fruitless, I was invited by a fellow blogger, John White, to move my blogging HQ to a new site called BeBee.com.
Since I had nothing to lose, I packed up my close to 400 LI posts and moved on over to beBee.
What I found here was, quite literally, the polar opposite of LinkedIn.
• Lots of human beings
• Relatively few trolls and scammers
• A management team that was very hands on and appreciative of having some pro writers posting on their site
• An interested and engaged audience
• The ability to direct my posts into special interest groups (hives), where I could be confident of finding people who shared my interests
• The ability to easily share my posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google +. (This actually turned out to be a much more effective way to reach my followers on LI than publishing on LI Pulse)
• A lot of interesting articles to read and comment on
• A much more dynamic site format
As a marketer, I got very excited about beBee and of course wanted to share this excitement with a number of people, especially those on LI who were as frustrated by thier experience as I was.
So I started creating posts and memes that extolled the positives of beBee. This was a hell of a lot of fun, and it was seriously appreciated by beBee’s management.
After a while I was invited to join the beBee ambassador program and was simply encouraged to keep on doing what I was already doing. No sweat.

Post Script

Today, as I look out at the world. I see the landscape changing. I see the affinity based engine that beBee runs on, not necessarily as the next big thing, but certainly a powerful new thing with that potential.
And I see people dropping out of LinkedIn like flies, simply because they are frustrated and disappointed. So I keep up a constant barrage of pro-beBee messaging on LinkedIn and encourage all the other ambassadors to do the same.
It’s called fishing where the fish are. Or in the case of beBee, buzzing where the bees are friendly.

The  companion piece to this post can be found at: https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/the-futile-practice-of-banging-your-head-against-the-wall

If you liked this post, let me know. If you liked it enough to share it, please feel free.

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If your business has reached the point where talking to a communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.

Download my free ebook Small Business Communication For The Real Worlhere:
 https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/

All my profile and contact information can be accessed here:
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/this-post-is-my-about-page



All content Copyright 2017 Onwords & Upwords Inc.



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Comments

Paul Walters

5 years ago #13

Jim Murray Boom !!

Jim Murray

7 years ago #12

#19
Phil, I would suggest doing a HSHS on this topic, but I don;t think it would work because we both feel exactly the same way about the issue of sellers v buyers on social media. Which is exactly why I have joined a group called Meetup, which houses hundreds of different vertical networking groups. I'm going to my first event next week. Not only will it make me some valuable local connections, it will also give me a better feel for what makes this area tick and where the good opportunities really exist. Phil Friedman

Phil Friedman

7 years ago #11

#13
Sandra, with all due respect, pointing to the success of companies that market social marketing services only reinforces what I see as the main lesson to be drawn from Jim's post. Instead, please show me companies that successfully market non-social marketing goods or services successfully via social marketing. Granted, there are some biggies, most notably in the field of travel and accommodations brokering -- although there are some interesting and surprising facts to be learned from their P&Ls, as many of them operate at a loss in the hopes of exiting after a successful IPO. Cheers!

Phil Friedman

7 years ago #10

Jim Murray, I always like your The-Emperor-Has-No-Clothes pieces. Or in this case, perhaps, better described as "The Emperor Has No Close". My experience is that social media TO DATE is replete sellers, but has precious few buyers. In my own case, the ROI (ironically, mostly on LinkedIn) has been acceptable -- but the investment has been in terms of "sweat equity", my own sweat. If I had to hire someone to do it for me, then I doubt the outcome would have been the same. I also had 30 years of industry-specific contacts built up, and for the most part, use social media to stay in touch. The core problem is that, on social media, anyone with access to a computer can sign up to a platform for free and immediately become (allegedly) anything he or she wants to be -- limited only by his or her imagination and level of tolerance for intentionally scamming or for self-delusion. I saw a post the other day that spoke of the great possibilities of "partnering" globally via social networking and social media. In my experience, the chances are infinitesimal, precisely because virtually everyone you talk to is looking to sell services or product and wants to "partner" because they think YOU may have customers or clients. Continued Pt II...

Phil Friedman

7 years ago #9

Jim Murray -- Part II - For example, I almost daily receive queries from project managers who want to help me with managing my projects. Well, here's some news for all of them -- and any of you out there with similar aspirations -- I don't need help with managing projects. On the other hand, if YOU have a customer or a client or a prospect whom you are struggling to close on a large project and could use the extra muscle and credibility that 30 years documented experience provides, then AND ONLY THEN do we have something to talk about. And if you don't understand that selling and marketing are the hardest part of business, then you'd better just go to work for someone else -- and stop wasting your time trying to "partner" up. IMHO -- dispatched from Kaohsiung, Taiwan. PS – The ownership and management of “business” oriented social media platforms (including beBee) would, as I see it, do well to pay some attention to improving their landscape for potential B2B BUYERS of goods and services, and to marketing to such business people. For without an appropriate mix of B2B buyers and sellers, all the talk about any platform being business-oriented is, as you are wont to say, BS.

Wayne Yoshida

7 years ago #8

Great testimonial, Jim. And I also appreciate John White, MBA and all the beBee Hq staff for creating something fresh and new.

Jim Murray

7 years ago #7

#12
I think your points are all valid for a relative small percentage. But to the larger percentage who have been led down a garden path by digital marketers who promise them everything and give them nothing but excuses, that's how it is perceived. It may be a bit different in England, but here, digital marketers of the scammer variety are all over the place. Thanks for your comments Sandra Smith

Milos Djukic

7 years ago #6

Fishing Where WE Are WE.

Milos Djukic

7 years ago #5

Magic by Jim Murray. Priceless...

Jim Murray

7 years ago #4

#7
@Todd Jones. 1. I don't think there is anybody who gives a shit over at LinkedIn anymore. Heck, they just gave some kind of an award for Networking and most of what he dies is promote beBee over there. 2. I don't really know how they make their money. No my department. I'm sure they have rev streams ready to be activated however. Just remember this site is very young still.

Bill Stankiewicz

7 years ago #3

Nice post
Juan Imaz
thanks Jim Murray. I love this What I found here was, quite literally, the polar opposite of LinkedIn. • Lots of human beings • Relatively few trolls and scammers • A management team that was very hands on and appreciative of having some pro writers posting on their site. • An interested and engaged audience • The ability to direct my posts into special interest groups (hives), where I could be confident of finding people who shared my interests. • The ability to easily share my posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google +. (This actually turned out to be a much more effective way to reach my followers on LI than publishing on LI Pulse). • A lot of interesting articles to read and comment on. • A much more dynamic site format.

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