“Why your social media marketing campaigns aren’t working” is the title of this must-read blog post from The BrandBuilder Blog. Olivier Blanchard starts with this:

Your marketing department or agency might be telling you that you have a social media program, but you don’t. You might be paying for “social,” but that isn’t what you are getting for your money. What is really happening is this: You are buying the same digital marketing campaigns you were buying five years ago, except now, they also include Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

You can call it “social” all you want, but it isn’t.

Then takes it to 11.

Damn, wish I’d written that post.

Takeaway for marketers: Don’t just read it, take it to heart.

My dear friend, the brilliant and perceptive TV junkie Joe Bua, alerts me to 10 reasons why you shouldn’t ignore your blog for Facebook. It’s hard to quibble with any of them.

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re blogging and Facebooking, keep blogging.

That refrain from the weary salesmen of Glengarry Glen Ross came to mind the other morning when I received an email from someone at LocalVisibility.org, which purports to be:

a service for local business owners who are interested in understanding and improving their online visibility. The service shows how visible any given business is to potential customers, compared with its direct, local competitors. By covering millions of web pages on the leading search engines, yellow pages directories and popular local search sites, localvisibility.org provides the most comprehensive analysis of local businesses’ online visibility.

Sounds terrific. After all, every small business wants to stay a step ahead of the competition … and Local Visibility was even kind enough to send along a copy of their “visibility report,” which listed keywords I’m missing for my business that included “nitrogen,” “aquariums” and “restore” — hardly the kind of specific, targeted long-tail terms that apply to CKPcreative.

Then I took a look at my competition, as defined by Local Visibility. In the “Communications & Public Relations Consultants” category, they listed Universal Space Network, Inc. (which provides services “used by satellite owners and operators for world-wide, ground station coverage supporting both Telemetry, Tracking & Control,” according to their site) and a 7-Eleven about 20 miles away.

Later the same day, I received an email from one of my clients asking me whether Local Visibility is a service worth exploring.

Of course, the answer comes from the call to action on their site: “Fill out the form to have one of our experts* answer your questions on how to improve your online visibility, and what it will cost.” That asterisk leads to this footnote: “*We partner with highly-qualified local web marketing companies.”

It’s a pure lead-generation play, and while their About Us page says nothing about who specifically is behind Loal Visibility, some additional digging indicates that it’s these guys.

For my $.02, I find this sort of broad-based cold-calling obnoxious, especially when their market analysis is showing 7-Eleven as one of my direct competitors. The targeting they provide is clearly anything but targeted; it might draw in an extremely naive client or two, but it makes me incredibly doubtful about their ability to generate quality leads.

Oh, and one more thing: It turns out that when you buy leads from them, you’re one of many companies buying the same leads from them: “Leads are typically sent to 2-3 lead buyers simultaneously,” says the general overview they send out when you fill out the form on their site. Good for them; not so good for the lead-buyer.

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re going to deal with a lead generator, make sure you’re getting the Glengarry leads, not the weak leads.

Over on ClickZ, Erik Qualman answers a quartet of common social media questions. There’s a lot of wisdom in this brief article, and I really like this bit:

It’s also important to note that social media requires more of a cultural change in companies than a strategic change.

Bingo. Companies, particularly large companies, are all about command and control. In the world of social media, however, you can’t control what people are saying about you, and being exposed to sometimes negative comments from people who are looking for real answers can amount to significant psychological sticker shock.

Takeaway for marketers: You can’t control what people are saying about you … but you can control whether or not you get involved in the conversation.

To quote a question asked by Peter Griffin: You know what really grinds my gears?

Lots of things, actually, but today my gripe is about digital agencies who financially rape their clients.

I’m talking about charging unconscionable fees for blitheringly simple things.

“But Craig!” you may protest, “it’s the fair market at work!”

No it’s not, it’s taking advantage of clients in an extreme way, and it’s wrong.

Here’s an actual example from this past week:

A client of mine has a fairly robust site. There’s a content management system in place, but either the system isn’t flexible enough to handle absolutely everything or no one in my client’s company has the time or expertise to figure out absolutely everything. Because here’s what I heard from the client: “Yeah, Agency X is gonna charge us $1,400 to change the graphic on the home page, but then when the graphic needs to be changed back to what it is now, it’s another $1,400.”

Really? Okay, I took a close look at this work and maybe — maybe! — it’s a half hour, tops. Graphics and programming combined. I wish I could provide a link to the specific site in question, but you’ll have to trust me on this one: We’re talking very boilerplate stuff here. Create the graphic, name it and upload it to the server so the current graphic is overwritten, ba-da-bing, ba-da-bum. Done.

To change it back is even easier: Nothing new needs to be created. Upload the old graphic. That’s what, a minute or two?

And the agency is raping the client $2,800 for what amounts to less than an hour’s worth of work, all told.

That’s about as reprehensibly scummy as it gets.

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re screwing your clients to this degree, remember: Karma’s a bitch.