Supporters of the persuasion possibilities of Web 2.0 (twitter, Facebook, marketing as relationship, etc.) insist that there is something strong and supernatural to their New New Thing.  Consider this story from Google Fast Flip (more about that later).

Has your company spent seemingly countless hours tweeting on Twitter, networking on Facebook and writing the company blog? Have you found yourself wondering if it’s all a waste of time? Maybe that last Facebook fan page contest saw fewer entries than you’d hoped for, or that last Twitter-only coupon had fewer redemptions than you’d expected, but perhaps that’s not all that matters.

According to the the latest report by analyst firm Forrester, many people are looking at the face-value dollars and cents of social media marketing and, put simply, they’re doing it wrong. Beyond clicks and coupon redemptions there lies a case for social media marketing that shows its value is well beyond what we see on the surface.

Yeah, It Works, But You Can’t Count It (with Money).  And, if you do Count It and It Doesn’t Count, You’re Wrong!

Where to begin.

Persuasion is an obvious and countable thing.  It changes people.  And change can be as simple as “Yes or No.”  Realize the Rules.

If You Can’t Count It, You Can’t Change It.

Any persuasion agent who claims otherwise is deluded, untrustworthy, or perhaps both.  You cannot sell Change to clients if they don’t get any Change from what you sell.  And, if your client’s counting shows no Change, then what you are selling as persuasion did not work.

Think about it.  You cannot sell Change without getting Change.  Yet, some 2.0 folks will assert:

Many marketers can draw a straight line between investments in social media marketing and financial results, but many more cannot.  This doesn’t mean social media marketing is ineffective; it just means that marketers have to recognize benefits beyond dollars and cents.  Facebook fans, retweets, site visits, video views, positive ratings and vibrant communities are not financial assets — they aren’t reflected on the balance sheet and can’t be counted on an income statement — but that doesn’t mean they are valueless.  Instead, these are leading indicators that the brand is doing something to create value that can lead to financial results in the future.

And, then to tell them that they did it Wrong after you promised Change, is at best a short term tactic that holds clients at the front door as you make a hasty exit out the back door.  Claims of client error destroy your credibility.  You showed them how to do Persuasion SureShot Tactic Twenty Two.  They did it.  And It didn’t Count.  Blaming the accounting department or the guys in research is older than Exodus, but not Genesis.

Consider, too, . . .

Great Persuaders Don’t Need Rich Uncles, Kindness from Strangers, or Third Party Vote Splitters.

Hey, if Web 2.0 is the New New Persuasion Thing, then what It is, is what It does without any help.  It will not need a new system of accounting, ROI, or mathematics.  It will not need a Maven 2.0 in a corner office.  It will work.  Yet, articles like this always seem to end with something like, “Yeah, it’s 2.0 plus Fill In The Blank While I Cash Your Check.”

Look, if Web 2.0 is persuasive, it changes people in a direct, reproducible, and countable way.  Otherwise, it is a short term way for a few people to make a little money.

Web 2.0 reminds me of Web 1.0 when Pets.com was going to have a greater market capitalization than Microsoft one day.  Sure, there were a few big winners (Amazon, baby), but most were losers.  The Web changes neither the Laws of Thermodynamics or the Rules of Persuasion.  The web is just a technological device that transmits messages.  Yes, it is groovier than the town crier, but it still just carries messages.

P.S.  Is Google Fast Flip going to make Google relevant again?  Yeah, add a cut and paste of the news page and that groovy rotator interface.  Folks, I’m calling it.  We’re into the middle of the beginning of Web 3.0 – the age of information irrelevance.  Where’s the exchange of meaning?  Of value?  Of substance?  I know there’s a lot of glitter and glitz with persuasion, but Sweet Clara Peller, where’s the beef?

Noted:

In its May issue, Playboy magazine named Texas the No. 1 party school in the nation, followed by West Virginia and Wisconsin-Madison.

Of course, that’s just Playboy.  What about the Princeton Review for 2010?

1. University of Georgia
2. Ohio University, Athens
3. Pennsylvania State University
4. West Virginia University

Doesn’t this help destroy all those hillbilly stereotypes?  Of course, at the risk of producing other stereotypes, but . . .

And folks wonder why I made Coach Don Nehlen nervous back in the day.  I had most of the starting lineup in my grade book, baby.  Fortunately I am nothing but Sincere.  They all actually passed!

Let’s Go!  Mountaineers!

P.S. That late 1980s group was nothing but crazy good fun.  AB.  Major.  Reggie Rembert.  Eugie.  An O-line of seniors.  A nicely mean-spirited D with Renaldo and Steve Grant.  Glad to be a part of it all.  Sports Beat, baby.

A consumer research firm, My Type, has broken through the chatter today with its scientific conclusion that iPad owners are “Selfish Elites.”  Of course, this conclusion is probably not true, but it’s a great headline that hits a prejudiced sweet spot.  (And, while I’m probably a Selfish Elite, I don’t own an iPad.)  Let’s look at details.

My Type uses a research method that is not scientific, but sounds like it is.  It’s kinda like kids dressing up in their parents clothes and playing Mommy and Daddy.  My Types dress up like scientists by using science sounding words, but all they are doing is poaching Facebook.  For example, they offer free Personality Quizzes that require you to give them complete and eternal access to your Facebook profile.  They save this information in a huge database.  Then they do “research” by comparing different groups – say Facebookers who own an iPad versus Facebookers who do not own an iPad – on the Facebook profile data.  In fact, this particular “research” on selfish iPad owners is done exactly like this.

Thus, if you want to be honest rather than cunning, you’d have to say today’s infamous results are based on:

1. people who’ve taken a My Type Personality Test (or other such product) and;

2. who’ve given permission to My Type to access their Facebook profile data.

Not exactly what you’d call a random sample or even a representative sample.  Now, it is a big sample.  My Type says they looked at data from over 20,000 people.  A number that big sounds useful, but it is not.  First, even stupidly small differences from foolishly big samples are “statistically significant” but practically useless.  Second, a big and biased sample is not better than small and biased sample – the sample is still biased.  And third, there’s no replication other than the pinging sound you hear when a dishonest shot hits the prejudiced sweet spot.

If you look at the “report” from My Type which is available from my old friends at Scribd, you’ll find tables and figures and numbers.  Download them.  Study them.  Repeat them at parties.  Just don’t bet any money, reputation, or consequence on them, because they are not honest, accurate, reliable, trustworthy, scientific, . . . gee, you get the point.

Now, even more interesting is how My Type is reacting to the coverage of this contrived report.  They are clearly monitoring the conversation and jumping in to clarify as needed.  Here, for example, someone claiming to be with My Type offered comment and amplification to the Wired reporting.  Let me quote:

3) We’re not claiming to be ultra-scientific here. The data is rigorous, the interpretation of the data is up for debate. Again, look at the report, lots of the raw affinities are given there (and “affinity” is defined). You can come to your own conclusions.

Ultra-scientific?  It that like Ultra-Pregnant or Ultra-Cool?  I haven’t taken or taught a research methods course in ten years, so is Ultra maybe a new technique?  And the “data is rigorous” but the “interpretation . . . is up for debate?”  Huh?  This sounds like an answer you write on an essay exam you forgot was scheduled for today.   (It’s also fun to read the rest of the comments from Wired readers.  Many of them smell the rat.)

Now, are there demographic and personality differences between people who own iPads and those who don’t?  Sure.  And can you market iPads differently for different people?  Sure-sure.  And, can you believe My Type’s results to guide your marketing?  No-no-no!

On this one, I’ve got to hand it to the folks at My Type.  All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere and there is absolutely nothing Sincere about this “study.”  But it brought them attention which might mean clients which might mean money.  However, I wouldn’t hire them to research anything beyond their own foolishness.

All Bad Poetry Is Sincere according to Oscar Wilde (as artfully compressed by Harold Bloom) and, thief that I am, All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.  In the release of Mark Twain’s unabridged Autobiography, we see evidence of the operation of both Rules.

Twain dictated his autobiography during the last four years of his life, then arranged it as a book.  He, however, left explicit directives for the publication of his life story.

“From the first, second, third and fourth editions all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out,” Twain instructed them in 1906.  “There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now.  There is no hurry.  Wait and see.”

At the risk of stupendous simplification, when Twain says to cut “. . . expressions of opinion . . .” he is saying to cut the Sincerity.  Both as poetry and persuasion, Twain understands that sincere expression is bad art and worse rhetoric.  And, as described in the NYT review, one should admire Twain’s restraint in sharing his sincere opinions.

He notes of his youth that “In my schoolboy days, I had no aversion to slavery.  I was not aware there was anything wrong about it.”  He hates the military and views soldiers in the then contemporary wars in Cuba and the Philippines as “uniformed assassins.”  He despises the Rockefellers and robber barons for their low tax bills.  The Times reviewer also observes that, “He complains about his lawyer, his publisher, the inventor of a failed typesetting machine who he feels fleeced him, and is especially hard on a countess who owns the villa in which he lived with his family in Florence, Italy, in 1904.”  And, critics?

“I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value,” Twain writes. “However, let it go,” he adds. “It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden.”

Considered in brief, Twain’s opinions are categorically just like mine and yours – all our own and best left out of the marketplace if you aim at poetry or persuasion.

Hello Prudie,

Jamie T. from Philadelphia recently inquired about proper footwear in public. You observed, “The idea of entering a place of food service without shoes (or a shirt) seems vaguely Appalachian to Prudie.”

I have visited many places of food service across America in my 45 years, and since I moved to Appalachia in 1985, I have continued the practice. Oddly enough, I have never observed anyone entering an Appalachian eatery barefoot.

Since your Appalachian epithet would seem authoritative (I cannot imagine Prudie substituting a different ethnic group in her admonition), would you please document the claim? Prudie, your behavior here is incorrect, impolite, and unjust.

–Steve Booth-Butterfield,Morgantown, W.Va.

Dear Steve,

Prudie is contrite and apologizes profusely for the slur. As penance, she promises to retire the hillbilly stereotype from this day forward.

–Prudie, repentantly