Interview with Marty Weintraub (aimClear)

Marty Weintraub is not your typical agency type: he’s a passionate, sometimes outspoken, social marketing maverick. Whether or not you agree with everything he says… it’s hard to deny that he’s got some brilliant insights, or that he’s more innovator than follower. Marty pushes limits and explores dimensions of social media marketing that most professionals don’t talk… or even dream… about.

Tell us about your marketing background?

“In the 90′s I was part of the team that helped create kiosks in retail stores like Target, where as customers walked by, motion detectors chirped.. and wolves and dolphins ‘yelled’ at passerbys – engaging them to buy CDs of recorded nature sounds and new age music.”

Are the rumors true that you were an actual (musical) rockstar?

“I’m a piano player. I’ve played in every kind of nightspot or stadium you could possibly imagine. Everything from VFW bands to internationally known acts.

In the 80’s I looked like a nasty version of my mother.

In the 90’s I worked for Polygram International Publishing as an A/R person to sign people to publishing careers. Also, I became semi-known for blending CDs of dolphins with acoustic music. I had a wonderful 25 year career as a musician, but social media is better. If you drive 200,000 people to a blog today because you wrote 200 words… that’s cool like a hit record. You’re moving whole populations. You’re touching people. You’re using technology and touching people with things you have in common with them, or triggering their emotions – moving them psychologically. So, I don’t miss music. Social media music is just as cool – I like it more than music. And that’s saying a LOT.”

What do you do now? What kind of projects does your company excel at?

“aimClear is a search engine marketing-focused advertising agency in Duluth and Minneapolis Minnesota. Our clients range from really small and intriguing entrepreneurs with a better mousetrap, to some of America’s larger brands. Among other endeavors, we specialize in best practices for ethical use of avatars in social media – to both holistically uplift communities and to serve our clients’ needs.”

You’re pioneering a SMM technique called ‘persona blogging’.. can you tell us what that is?

“Persona blogging is when you carefully craft an avatar to participate in social communities – based on a derivative of who your client is and who the actually blogger really is. We currently work with a number of companies where we have brand ambassadors participating on their behalf in social communities. Those avatars range from absolute transparency (‘My name is Marty Weintraub and I represent XYZ Corporation’ ) to the polar absolute opposite – where we don’t say anything at all and we report back to the company about what’s happening.

“The real question is: ‘Who am I? Am I only Marty Weintraub?… Or can I also be a guy named ‘Bruce’ the community manager?’ Our perspective is that you can do whatever you want so long as your goal is holistic, authentic and real participation in the online community you traffic your avatar in.

Our persona blogging avatars participate more fully, and in a more nurturing and supportive way ,than almost any users we ever see. We’re not talking about creating 70 StumbleUpon profiles, we’re talking about sculpting a personality that is driven, in large part, by the blogger who is managing that persona.”

You think that online personas are no more deceptive than the wholesome facade a CEO presents on a company ‘About Us’ page?

“The big question in social media marketing is ‘Who are you when you represent yourself or a company?‘ Back in the 90’s, did you embellish your Yahoo! Personals? Did you say that you weighed 164 pounds instead of 165 pounds? The anonymity of the internet allows people to be slightly more than they really are – OR create imprints for who they truly want to be. This happens both on a microscopic level and on a gross level – I mean, If I go on the internet and say I’m a 9′2″ gorilla named Charlie… that’s one thing… but if I subtly embellish an emotional character or a personal proclivity, then that’s a really different thing.

So when we create someone named ‘Suzie Lipstick’ who posts a lot of great comments, articles, pictures and content – that’s NOT unethical because we don’t outright say ‘My name’s not really Suzie – it’s a team of three people who are dedicated to the longevity and success of this Suzie, or Billy, or Fernando or Malinda in the StumbleUpon and any other appropriate community.’”

So, social media is just an illusion? Like Hollywood or Milli Vanilli?

“Well, if I met you on the street and you looked hungry, and I just do a random act of kindness and give you a hamburger or 50 bucks… is that hamburger any less filling or appreciated because I didn’t tell you my full life story and history? The line is drawn for us when it comes to overt selling. We NEVER overtly sell. We just report and participate. We never breadcrumb our own content to be discoverable by the people we network with more than once in like every 25 times. So for every time we put a piece of content we hope someone will discover – 24 times, we don’t. We’re thinking about the community. We’re thinking about sharing.

The big question is: are you manipulating people? Yes, of course you are. What marketing isn’t? Last night I watched TV and I counted 64 political commercials for Minnesota-based and national candidates – and at least 40 of them were nearly TOTALLY full of shit.”

Some professional marketers freak out at even hearing about anything grey area or aggressive. Why?

“Not everyone does these sorts of tactics with the level of expertise and sensitivity that aimClear does. At the end of the day, a lot of social media marketing is pulled off by a bunch of hacks and spammers. They ‘pee in the pool.’ We learned how do do this by making mistakes.

It’s really easy to write about ‘ethical’ so long as you receive no checks that you buy food for your children with from real companies that are concerned about their social media presence. The irony of all this is that aimClear is, like, squeaky clean. 90%+ of the avatars we deploy disclose everything. But there are times you need to embellish to ‘move things along’ a little.”

What are the common mistakes you see people making in social marketing?

1. Overt selling.This is the first big no-no. Social media is not about selling. Social media is about serving your friends. At the most, you want to use profiles as a conduit to your products and services by people who are truly interested and discover it because of who your avatar is…
2. Being insensitive to the vernacular and public expression of behavior in a social community. You have to know about the communities you’re in and behave in a way that lifts them up. My friend Tamar Weinberg, who is social media blogger whose ethics I really respect, writes about this. A savvy attorney once told me an incredible piece of advice once: If you every disagree with your wife, tell her that she ‘might be right.’ If you make a non-binding statement like that, it doesn’t give anything away except respect. RESPECT community members and prove it with your behavior.
3. Not respecting users as people.Your social media effort
   will never work if you don’t approach users with the respect they deserve. These users are real people, who fall in love, who become angry. We had a client with a serious product recall. There were tens of millions of searches we and our partner agencies needed to handle, in a matter of days, with paid search and organic tactics. The first and foremost thing was how to get people the right safety information.

What mistakes have you made personally?

“The biggest mistake ever personally make is when I bash the hornet’s nest. My friend Lyndon has used that expression when describing me. I’ve learned you can’t feed the trolls. You can’t argue with these phreaks too hard because everyone gets hurt in the end. You don’t have to go to every fight you’re invited to. Social media marketers are people artists, by our very nature. We tend to react emotionally.”

How is social media different than other media?

“I see social media as a place where people do what they’ve always done. When there were cave people, we were trying to communicate something that mattered to other cave people who walked by. Social media is the modern way ‘cave people’ communicate.

Social media mirrors physical life.  It doesn’t matter if someone is being a dick to you in Times Square, of if someone else is planning an evil way to ruin your domain’s reputation – the bottom line is that humans are humans. They’re either creeps or not…”

How do you leverage volatile stuff emotions and politics without things backfiring on you?

“It’s really important to fight fire with water – not fire. If some social media idiot slams you or your client unfairly, it’s SO tempting to nuke em’. Because we’re search marketers and we have a good understanding of what it might take to trash someone. HOWEVER – it’s really important to take a minute to think out the degree of response required. If there’s a disaster or your client accidentally kills (God forbid) somebody – it might well require quick response, but usually you can afford 5 minutes or even two hours to think things through. It’s normal to feel hurt or really pissed off – so count till 350 or eat some mashed potatoes (with sour cream and chives) and wait till tomorrow. Just chill.”

Sometimes you can be so respectful that others see the folly of their ways. You know you’ve done something right in social media when the provocateur comes up to you in a thread and says ‘Well, you’re really making it seem like I’m being stupid about this.’ And all you’ve done is thank them for their involvement and said ‘We understand that you feel this way.’”

Sounds like social media marketing can be pretty edgy. How do you handle the ups and downs of it all?

Edgy is an understatement. Social media is good like sex. And it’s bad like sex, too. It’s really important not to take things too seriously when it’s all going to crap. And it’s just as important not to get too worked up when things are really going great. Yeah I celebrate going hot on the home page of Digg, and I cry if someone says something really wicked mean. Don’t deny your emotions but try to keep things in perspective. Understand that in your professional life, and especially things like music or marketing, are cyclical. For every disaster there is a high point, and the universe basically evens out.

Success is ultimately defined by the panache with which you handle the highs and lows. When I was playing music in stadiums, there was a lot tempting things that happened. I didn’t handle some of it perfect as I… umm…might have liked to, in retrospect. That had more to do with my grounding as a person and as a spiritual and soulful being – than my ability to say ‘No!’ to crack or groupies.”

What are your professional goals for the future? At what point in your career will you say “yes, I’ve finally made it!”

“Because I’m a cancer survivor, I understand that this is all we get. I’ve had doctors look at me and ’say there’s a reasonable chance you’re gonna die soon.’ I tend to live in the moment and take what I can from life in this moment. It was my 2008 goal to speak at a mainstream conference and write for national trade publications. It was a total joy to speak at SES New York, Toronto, SMX Mobile, Advanced, SMX East, SEMpdx in Portland.. and also to write for Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch and meet amazing people!

I look around search engine conferences and I go ‘these people are SO beautiful!’ Such amazing people like Matt McGee, Chris Winfield, or Lisa Barone, Li Evans, Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, Kevin Heisler, Rebbecca Kelley,  or Lee Oden… such an amazing community I’m privileged to be part of.

At the end of the day, I feel really grateful for the ability to be a publisher and have a voice in this world.  It’s an incredible privilege.

When I go to work in the morning, I feel like I’ve reached my professional goal. There doesn’t have to be more than this. It would be great to sell AimClear to an advertising agency that needs our capabilities in house. It’s a blast to work with big brands and to make a little money and all that.. but I get my satisfaction and find my peace in this world, today.”

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