Social Traffic | Social Media Marketing

With Social Traffic’s EDBD campaign weeks behind us now it can be said that this campaign is well and truly over. Some of the relationships established across Social Media throughout the campaign are stronger now. My courses are still being made available to people who came through the EDBD campaign or may have learned about them through my other campaigns or social networks. Either way the conversations surrounding these courses, the exercises and discussions are still ongoing and there is little doubt the courses have delivered fantastic value to the active participants (people who made the most of this opportunity by participating in it). Nothing can go without being measured.

Just like you would in any venture, I’d like to go over Social Traffic’s original campaign (STi EDBD campaign) to see how much of a success or failure it was. We can’t expect to learn from anything unless we are willing to stop and evaluate our actions with an open mind.

This is going to be another somewhat long post, but we need to get this out of the way before moving forward. So bear with me today… keep your mind and eyes open… most of you were a part of these campaigns as much as I was, so if you disagree at any point let me know. It’s not a debate, it’s just an evaluation.

Background standpoint:

We’re not running a charity organization, nor were we ever here for the purpose of making friends or having fun. I am confident that the people following me do not mistake my belief in “building quality relationships” with “making friends”. I am not in Social Media to make friends. I am in it to build ideas into valuable assets through start-up companies. Valuable quality relationships to me are ones that represent opportunities to leverage success. These are relationships where individual entities can come together to achieve common goals whilst working towards individual accomplishments. In saying that, I have a lot of great friendships born from shared success in business. I also have two good friends through a failed business, because we earned each others respect for the way each of us handled failure. My point is this: Business is business. Good business breeds respect. Respect leads to friendship. I don’t go into business with established friends, nor am I using online platforms to meet new friends.

All of the people involved with the Social Traffic EDBD campaign are respectable people with good jobs and busy family lives. None of them really need to take hours out every day just to bond with people over the internet. Things aren’t so random in life, everything has a defined purpose. For some it might have been the feeling of self-actualization to get involved with something bigger. For some it might have been the challenge of learning new things. For some it might have been the chance to explore social networks from a different angle. For some it might have been to connect with like-minded people. For some it might have been the opportunity to lead. But all of these are just personal individualistic value outcomes. Nobody does anything without reason.

Criteria:

The value in any organization must lie in the collective force of the accomplishments and goals it set out to achieve. The ultimate true measure of success for different participants from the STi EDBD campaign must be how big of an audience were we able to pull through our efforts for Earthday Birthday…. how many Earthday events were we able to schedule on Eventslisted… how many good causes did we shortlist to raise money for… how many people did we push into one of these causes to donate their money to… how much money did we raise…  and most importantly, how many people see Social Traffic as an authority on not just Earthday related events but as a Social Media Marketing agency for hire? These are the only measures that will distinguish our success against failure, without allowing emotions to get in the way of measuring our performance as a start-up venture. The accuracy of this measurement is paramount for round 1 investors (human capital) to be able to make measured decisions as to their continued investment in this opportunity moving forward. So as you will agree, being objective is critical.

Note: Now these are tangible, trackable, actionable items that can trace back the success of the STI’s EDBD first public campaign. The evangelists were sourced to be trained on social media before they could assist STi to build an audience on Earthday. All the materials and guidance was there.

Results:

So according to this measure and criteria for success, do you think the Social Traffic EDBD group has been successful in their first public SMM campaign? Has Social Traffic reached all that we set out to as a company who aimed to sell this service to other companies? If not, can we specifically identify the problem areas? Just like self evaluation is important for beautifying our characters, its as important for organizations to look at themselves and analyze their situations. I know that Social Traffic has come a long way since the EDBD campaign, with a new team leading a business focus, incorporation and structure. What it is doing now is nothing short of brilliant. But the question remains,.. how much of what is being achieved now can be attributed to the phase one team, many of whom I have not seen nor heard from since Earthday and some of them 3 weeks before Earthday.  If the current team is still working hard to build the companies opportunity in a completely new direction to what we set out to build what shares should be allotted to the STi EDBD team,…our original intention was to have members of the shareholder team vote on each others performance each week but that plan folded 3 weeks inn because only two or three people would vote when sent the link. We need to see how much of a bearing that phase of our companies history had on what we are doing today before allotting shares to the members of that team.

As you know, I have launched many marketing campaigns, both across social media and offline. The aim of any campaign is to build momentum that gets people talking about what you’re doing and leading the focus into a sales funnel that narrows into a specific call to action on launch. The STi EDBD call to action was always going to be for our audience to; a- attend an Earth day event and donate $10 towards an Earthday Charity, b-  network with 10 people who they could move into doing the same thing (the audience was coached by shareholders who were lead by a leadership group over 12 weeks to know how to). Leading into this call-to-action, we launched a Facebook group that was established for the sole purpose of seeing who in our shareholder and evangelist teams had been doing their bit to help reach the organizations objective leading into the campaign.  The numbers we attracted into this Facebook group was to be the culmination of three months campaigning where the hundreds of trained evangelists were lead in teams of 10 by shareholders, to mirror a group down to 6 degrees.

Surely the number of people listed in this group or the amount of money raised for charity by those in it through this campaign was the ultimate yardstick of Social Traffic’s success as a SMM company. I mean what we set out to prove was that our new marketing company was a viable option that other companies could employ to market their products and services across social media for them. Surely our ability to raise money for a worthwhile charity like Earthday is directly pertinent to our ability to generate new business for prospective clients. If you were a shareholder and you didn’t list yourself on the group wall at all or if you didn’t get ten people who trust you to do the same, I would like to ask you how you think our campaign went?

Despite the efforts, their commitments to get 10 followers to act fell short. To me, this result represented Social Traffic’s failure in this campaign and the inability to add value to a client. The group was meant to become the foundation of a rolling campaign where we would funnel people into a list of participants who actually attended an Earthday event and donated $10. Using it we could launch our 2010 Earthday campaign under a plan that would run for the next 10 years. The number of people who signed up to this list as those who were “touched” by STi was lower than expected. It’s a sad result for me because I lead this campaign.  However, I do know that with the restructuring of STi we are well on its way to becoming a lot more than what we set out to become all be it in a completely different direction.

Based on EDBD alone though, if I was to take my Social Traffic hat off and you were to ask me for a referral for Social Traffic as their beta client (Events Listed). I would owe it to my reputation to warn anyone interested in hiring STi to reconsider. How could I? According to an internal survey, a lot of Social Traffic shareholders actually said they would pay $25,000 to have Social Traffic market their website launch for them. The fact so many of our key people valuate the businesses potential as a marketing solution that high after seeing its performance in terms of tangible results, was reason enough for me to question the group’s ability to succeed as a business as a business team beyond the EDBD campaign. Honestly, if you’re one of the shareholders willing to pay STi $25,000 to launch your campaign… then let’s see your opinion materialize. Put your money where your mouth is and give the organization a $25,000 budget to launch your business campaign for you. The fact is that none of you would step up and pay that sort of money to STi – at least not until STi completely revamped into what it is now.

Rationale:

You see, the more you have invested into an opportunity the more diligently you evaluate the performance indicators, when it comes time to put up or shut up. It’s easy to say you would give $25,000 of your own money as a budget to a marketing company when its just words. You can afford to base your performance indicators on emotionally-charged ideals but when it comes to actually putting your money where your mouth is you will assess Social Traffics performance to date on the cold hard facts. And the fact is that STi EDBD didn’t achieve its goals.

If I am to put my Social Traffic founders hat back on I am surprised by the results, and feel that as the founder and leader I am accountable for such poor results. It was my responsibility to evaluate what had been achieved with the investment of all phase one shareholders time capital in terms of business growth so they could make a measured decision as to whether or not they would want to  risk more of their time into the STi start up company beyond Earthday. The EDBD leadership team chose not to reinvest any more time into STi beyond Earthday and so did half the EDBD phase shareholders. In the face of poor results a group of shareholders and some evangelists from the EDBD phase saw new opportunities looking forward and so stepped up to take the rains and they are now reaping the benefits of a stronger collective through what has been achieved since throughout the STi VIP phase.

Moving forward:

Social Traffic reached its cross-roads recently before moving into Round 2 with a structured business focused management team. Social Traffic’s phase one team is a great group of  people who had an amazing experience together learning heaps about the business of SMM and start-ups throughout the journey. Knowledge and experience is always the best asset that we take away from our failures, and you will have heard me say this many times before. My greatest assets in my business career have come through my failures, and this venture will be another rich experience that adds to that mantra.

Do I think everything we have done to date is wasted. Absolutely not. The community we built around the process of teaching and supporting people into the Social Marketing space was an insight to new opportunities that could amount to much more than our initial plans could ever have.

The question is, what’s the Social Traffic opportunity worth as an organization today. What was it worth at the beginning of round 1 before shareholders committed to investing their time into it. If its worth the same, what allotment of shares do round 1 shareholders get who are not prepared to re-invest more time into round 2? Half? If that’s the case what shareholder is going to risk their time re-investing it into making Social Traffic worth something as a business throughout round 2 knowing they have to give half of what they build to a group of people who they have not seen for months. A team who left the opportunity without a first client, without a cash flow, no assets more than half the original shareholders withdrawing any support what so ever  and a poor track record in terms of its first campaign. Surly the group willing to pursue new opportunities together would be better served taking the lessons learned and starting over again.

All hopes are not gone for EDBD shareholders – like I mentioned earlier, this may come off as a harsh post, so I apologize in advance. The point of this post is not to lay blame because if one person is to blame for the EDBD campaign failings it’s me. I lead it. This post was important for everyone to understand where we are at before we define our plans for the next phase of STi… as well as the share allotments Doug and I have agreed to allot the initial group. Remember I founded this opportunity with the intent of leveraging a brand new company off the momentum I had funded through my other start up. Shares were offered to people in good faith on the basis of them adding value to the opportunities growth. I made the offer with intent to secure peoples commitment towards realizing  and growing the opportunity. I didn’t offer them as gift.  Keep an eye out for my next post!

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

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