Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category
By John Foley, Jr., Chief Executive/Marketing Officer at Grow Socially
Much like any other marketing campaign, Twitter shares one critical ideology—maximum exposure. When you tweet, are as many people seeing it as possible? If we put in the effort to carefully craft influential and noticeable tweets, we certainly would want to make sure they are being sent out at the times of day that will have the most impact.
A blog post on The Social Media Guide says the best time to tweet, as a general rule, is 9:00 a.m. Pacific time. This is because west coast workers are just arriving, east coast workers are on lunch break, and the work day is ending in Europe, specifically London. If you have that much reach, this certainly sounds like an effective time to tweet.
Of course, there are many other theories, studies, and statistics on this topic. For example, this graph posted by Fast Company indicates the best time to be retweeted is at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. It may be worth taking the time to review tools such as WhenToTweet.com for possible suggestions as to when you personally should be tweeting.
Social media guru and author Guy Kawasaki has also had many things to say on this subject. Here’s one quote: “Try this experiment. Take your most interesting tweets (as measured by how many people retweet them, perhaps) and post them again three times, eight to twelve hours apart. I used to think people would complain about repeating tweets, but I’ve never had a complaint. My theory is that the volume of tweets is so high, and most people check in at about the same time every day, so people don’t notice repeat tweets.”
Mediabistro.com offers another perspective on the subject. “Of course, often this stuff is more art than science, and you could argue that it’s more important having the right people reading your content, inasmuch as influencers and power retweeters, and they might be active at a completely different time.”
If you thoughtfully select who you follow on Twitter, then that may alleviate some of the stress of this notion. If you follow professionals and influential personalities, then someone of value may see your tweet no matter what time of day it is.
Take note of when people reply to your tweets and when you are retweeted, and take these figures into account when you are planning out your tweeting schedule. You may want to save certain tweets for these certain times, depending on how much you want it to be seen. A consistent and steady Twitter stream is always your best bet for reaching the biggest audience, but it might work to your benefit if you know when your audience is most engaged.
Posted in Engagement, Guy Kawasaki, Influence, John Foley Jr., Marketing, Twitter | Comments Off on When is the Best Time to Tweet?
By Jeff Schick, Vice President, Social Software at IBM
Investments in IT have long been the domain of the CIO, but all of that is changing as CMOs increasingly impact IT investments in today’s social and digital world. Given the business realignment between marketing and technology, the CMO and CIO can no longer afford to operate on separate stages. To succeed, they’ll have to forge a shared agenda to deliver business results through innovation and efficiency.
CMOs: imagine your job, but with next-generation skills, expanded peer networks, and the tools and technologies to transform your profession. CIOs: think about sharing your expertise in enterprise IT integration and expanding your horizons further outside the firewall. Together you can approach marketing as an essential enterprise system that delivers innovation, business results, and better customer experiences.
One area challenging both CMOs and CIOs is how to leverage the growing social sphere.
Today’s CMO is struggling with how to better reach and engage with customers. According to the 2011 IBM CMO Study, 82% of CMOs say they plan to increase their use of social media over the next three to five years. We know today’s consumer has unlimited access to information and can instantly share it with the world. This immediacy has raised consumers’ expectations for 100% personalized communications and top-notch service.
At the same time, CIOs are facing a similar struggle within the organization’s walls. That same empowered consumer is today’s empowered employee striving to meet deadlines and deliver superior results at an even faster pace. According to IDC, employees typically see up to 30% increased productivity using social tools internally to complete their work. With a workforce that is socially oriented and geographically distributed, CIOs today are struggling to provide company data on every type of device for their on-the-go, highly motivated employees.
While social is a common denominator for today’s CMO and CIO, what does it look like when they come together to achieve their goals and in the end realize business value for their organization?
Here are some examples of organizations across the globe that are leading the charge, pioneering this C-suite social agenda, and as a result, delivering a superior social, digital brand experience for their customers and employees:
- Taking advantage of cutting edge digital experience and social technologies, Wimbledon has transformed its web presence to meet the needs of the 16 million people who tune in online to the annual tennis championships. By visiting its website, www.wimbledon.com, fans can share information, interact with, and connect to The Championships as though they were actually there.
- Cars.com is similarly embracing web experience technology to provide a 360-degree view of its entire business operations, enabling dealers to examine current inventory, change pricing, and manage photos, among many other business activities—ultimately providing better services to its customers. Today, Cars.com has scaled to support 200 million unique visitors a year, an increase of 145 million visits since 2007.
- Gruppo Amadori, a wholesale distributor of quality foods in Italy, has improved its online presence, enabling the company to communicate more directly with younger consumers and increase consumer loyalty. The organization can create new mini-sites up to 40% faster, saving time and costs. Amadori has also created an up-to-date database of consumer details, helping the company better understand the needs of its customers.
- The region of Windsor-Essex, Ontario, Canada has created a community portal built to provide the region’s government and related organizations with the tools to help citizens with emergency and community services, transportation, health, utilities, and life events, such as getting married, having a baby, or retiring. Through the region’s innovative use of IBM technology, asthma attacks have been alleviated, a local automobile manufacturing plant diversified into the aerospace industry, and 250 tons of waste materials from a road construction project was made into new housing for those who needed it the most.
Despite a few trailblazers, like the organizations listed above, this collaboration between CMO and CIO is the exception and not the rule, but it’s clear that if your organization is looking to gain an advantage over the competition, this relationship is the ticket to success. It’s time as a marketer to knock on your IT department’s door and get collaborating!
Posted in Alignment, CIOs, CMOs, Collaboration, Community, Competitors, Customer Experience, Customer Retention, Customers, Employees, IBM, Innovation, Jeff Schick, Loyalty, Marketing | Comments Off on Blending the Art of Marketing with the Science of Technology
By Eric Fletcher, Chief Marketing Officer at McGlinchey Stafford
All listening is not created equal.
Consider how a physician uses the stethoscope in order to measure the activity of the human heart, or how a mother calibrates her ear to detect the faintest whimper of a newborn, or how a conductor trains the ear to pinpoint the one-out -of-a-hundred instruments slightly out of tune.
Compare these with the ability to tune out a barking dog, or half listen to the rant of a coworker, or subconsciously mix the rhythm of the rain to the precise sleep-inducing decibel. Now consider how we interpret tone, process innuendo, translate vernacular, and compose a whole new message—all while we (theoretically) listen in the context of conversation.
Indeed, all listening is not the same.
Listening is done at many levels. But as we become skilled at reactive listening—mixing to a manageable level everything we’re taking in—we’re inadvertently contributing to the demise of effective communication.
What’s missing? Intentional, proactive listening.
Intentional listening reveals the voice of those with whom we want to connect. And by voice, I mean the cares, aspirations, and concerns of your target audience. It’s the key to the most basic principle of effective communication—that connection takes place in the context of shared experience.
Put another way, intentional listening will identify, outline, and define the language of the closest you will ever come to a can’t-miss message. And it’s the key to the instigation of a whole new brand of experiences—those uniquely shared by you (or your business) and your most coveted customer.
Translation: the shortest distance between where we are today and a relationship that results in the development of stronger brands and better business is less about the construction of a long list of capabilities and more about one or two questions that instigate dialogue. It’s less about what we do and more about where our clients live each day. It’s less about what we know and more about what we can learn if we’ll listen first—and then build experiences that center on ways to continue to listen.
Game-changing social media marketing plans and strategies—not to mention the path to lifetime customers—just might be less about beginning with a compelling marketing message and more about intentional listening.
(This is an excerpt from Kent Huffman’s new book, 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success.)
Start at the Beginning: 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success—#1: Start Listening
Posted in Customers, Eric Fletcher, Kent Huffman, Listening, Marketing, Messaging, Relationships | Comments Off on 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success—#8: Continue Listening
By Kent Huffman, Author of 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success
Building a loyal community of fans and followers is not a snap-your-finger deal. You have to put the “right stuff” out there to attract and grow an audience, and you’ll have to continually nurture the crop before it bears any fruit. But the payoff for that investment can be significant.
Where to begin, you ask? Start by identifying key influencers and cultivating individual relationships with them that you can later aggregate into a group of people who share common interests. This is your foundation—the heartbeat of your social media marketing activity. These relationships will become the core of your community and will help you expand its reach and contribute to its growth and influence.
The key to aggregation is providing quality content to your community that interests your target audience—content that’s informational in nature, not a sales pitch. And make sure that content is always relevant to your strategy and your followers. Effective connections with your audience are built when you provide information that’s based on understanding your market segment and your community’s needs, and by presenting those relevant morsels in a concise, easy-to-digest way.
And make it easy for your community members to share your content with their other communities. This will help dramatically expand your reach. Also, you don’t have to create all the content yourself; instead, promote the submission of user content from within your community, so everyone who wants to get involved is able to do so.
Yes, community building can be difficult, mainly because it requires determination, dedication, and grit—and a lot of time. But it’s key to your longevity in social media.
(This is an excerpt from Kent’s new book, 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success.)
Next: 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success—#7: Ensure Value
Posted in Community, Content, Influence, Kent Huffman, Marketing, Relationships, Strategy | Comments Off on 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success—#6: Build Community
By Kent Huffman, Author of 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success
Too many marketers jump right in and start using various social media tools and technologies—such as Twitter, Google+, and blogs—before they’ve even developed a strategic plan or thought about how those activities might impact the rest of their marketing initiatives. Don’t make that mistake! Take a little time to determine how to best integrate social media into your existing marketing strategy and mix. It’ll pay off for you.
Step one in the planning process is to nail down specific social media objectives, based on the listening activities detailed in Mandate #1. Now that you know what your constituents care about and are discussing on social media, how does that impact the messages you need to communicate to them? Step two is to integrate your social media strategy into your overall marketing strategy to ensure your resources can be leveraged most efficiently and effectively and that common goals can be more easily reached.
If you work for a large enterprise, you have two significant advantages over a small business when it comes to planning and budgeting for a social media marketing program. First, your company’s DNA most likely has a built-in “think strategically” strand, and second, it also probably has a fairly large wallet. If, however, you work for or own a small business, you have an advantage as well. You most likely can make strategic decisions and launch new marketing programs fairly quickly. That can be a huge benefit in the fast-paced social media world.
Finally, be sure you’re prepared to monitor and measure your impact and progress. Establishing benchmarks and other metrics that can be tracked over time will help you better understand what’s working and what’s not, and thus be able to make whatever adjustments are necessary to ensure the success of your social media marketing activities.
(This is an excerpt from Kent’s new book, 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success.)
Next: 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success—#3: Develop Relationships
Posted in Blogs, Google Plus, Kent Huffman, Marketing, Measurement, Monitoring, Small Businesses, Strategy, Twitter | Comments Off on 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success—#2: Plan Carefully
By Kent Huffman, Author of 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success
I believe that listening is the single most important key for marketers who want to be successful in social media.
Although the average person spends about 45% of his or her waking hours listening, most of us are simply not very good at it. Various studies conducted over the years have shown that we comprehend and retain only about 25% of what we hear!
With that challenge so prevalent, applying good listening strategies and skills in the social media environment becomes even more critical. “Intentional listening,” as my friend and colleague Eric Fletcher calls it, should be front and center in your social media marketing strategy, as it plays an integral role in ensuring that you can find your target audience, hear and understand their wants and needs, and then effectively communicate with them in such a way that establishes trust and strong, long-lasting relationships.
At the outset of your social media marketing program—even before implementing your listening tactics—do your homework. Conduct surveys and focus groups. Gather responses and evaluate. And spend some quality time “lurking and learning” on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media channels to find out what your target audience has to say.
Finally, make sure you’re carefully monitoring your competitors as well. Are they listening to their constituents or just broadcasting marketing messages? You’ll have to do a little old-fashioned detective work, but remember that with social media, the playing field truly has been leveled. You don’t have to guess about who’s doing what—just listen.
(This is an excerpt from Kent’s new book, 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success.)
Next: 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success—#2: Plan Carefully
Posted in Competitors, Eric Fletcher, Kent Huffman, Listening, Marketing, Messaging, Relationships | Comments Off on 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success—#1: Start Listening
By John Foley, Jr., Chief Executive/Marketing Officer at Grow Socially
Twitter can be a mighty tool in your social media arsenal. You can reach a specialized audience with carefully constructed tweets, relevant links, and engaging material. Of course, you can maximize the effect of those efforts by having a solid number of followers.
Here are five quick ways you can legitimately increase your Twitter following:
- Follow other people. Unless you’re a celebrity, there may not be hordes of people taking the time to find and follow you on Twitter each day. Thus, you need to engage other people by following them. Find users with a similar industry background who would be interested in the content that you’re sharing.
- Retweet. Another way to get attention on Twitter is to put in the time and effort to retweet great content. Retweeting can increase engagement and awareness. Also, it may even flatter the original tweeter! Making someone feel important is normally a good thing.
- Be interesting. People see thousands of marketing messages each day. How can you make yours stand out? One way to do this is to provide a variety of content. This applies to the topics you tweet about and the format as well. Don’t be afraid to share some personal items (favorite bands, sports news, etc.) Also, don’t simply post links to articles in every tweet! By sprinkling in photos, videos, and conversations, your Twitter profile will become more attractive to others.
- Participate in hashtags. When it comes to Twitter, hashtags can be a great way to group people around a certain event or topic. Find ones that are relevant to your industry and take the time to participate in them.
- Fill out your bio. Make sure your biography is filled with pertinent information that your prospects and customers may be searching for. And as things in your industry change, make sure your bio adjusts with them.
Posted in Awareness, Content, Conversations, Engagement, Events, Hashtags, John Foley Jr., Marketing, Personality, Photos, Relationships, Twitter, Video | Comments Off on 5 Ways to Legitimately Increase Your Twitter Followers
By Kent Huffman, Chief Marketing Officer at BearCom Wireless and Co-Publisher of Social Media Marketing Magazine
It seems that everyone claims to be a Twitter expert these days. Of course, most are not. But several of the real Twitter pros I know—including those who have written books about using Twitter as an effective marketing and public relations instrument—have figured out how to best leverage the 140-character microblogging tool to promote themselves, their books, their firms, and their clients. And some of them actually follow their own advice!
How Smart Marketing Book Authors Use Twitter
For example, Mark Schaefer of Schaefer Marketing Solutions is the author of the book The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time. He and his firm provide affordable outsourced marketing support to address both short-term sales opportunities and long-term strategic renewal.
Mark uses Twitter to help deliver on that promise for a number of his blue-chip clients, including Nestle, AARP, Anheuser-Busch, Coldwell Banker, Scripps Networks, Keystone Foods, and the U.K. government. He also very effectively promotes himself and his book on Twitter as part of his own marketing, branding, and relationship-development strategy.
“I’ve literally built my business from networking on Twitter and connections from my blog,” Mark said. “That’s what most people miss. Twitter can be a powerful business networking platform. It’s so much more than ‘what you had for breakfast!’ ”
Hollis Thomases is the CEO of Web Ad.vantage. She is also the author of Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day, a book that offers marketers, advertisers, brand managers, PR professionals, and business owners an in-depth guide to designing, implementing, and measuring the impact of using a complete Twitter strategy.
Hollis uses Twitter to generate qualified website traffic that gets converted into actions, leads, and sales for her clients, most of which are challenger brands or large non-profit organizations.
Much like Mark, Hollis’ strategy includes using Twitter as an effective promotional tool for her book and firm. She also leverages Twitter to expand her speaking engagement schedule, which features topics such as “Social Media 101,” “Twitter Automation,” and “Social Media Etiquette.”
And finally, Laura Fitton, co-author of Twitter for Dummies and founder/CEO of oneforty, has been an active Twitter user for some time. She has amassed approximately 80,000 followers and engages with them daily.
Laura’s firm helps people get started with Twitter, organize the chaos of their daily social media routines, and connect their social media efforts to their core business to drive ROI.
“The single most important thing is to make yourself useful, which you can do by curating great content, answering questions, shining a spotlight on others, and trying to turn everything inside-out to make it more about your readers,” noted Laura. “I tell people to ‘Listen. Learn. Care. Serve.’ (in that order), and then keep cycling through that process.”
Twitter’s Impact on How Journalists Search for SMEs
In an environment where fewer and fewer journalists are covering more and more stories than ever before, media members are increasingly taking a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” approach to finding sources and stories to cover. Rather than waiting around to be pitched by traditional PR reps, many media members are looking for their own sources—not only Google and HARO, but Twitter as well—to search for and connect with subject matter experts (SMEs). Book authors and other experts who have built digital platforms that showcase their credentials and provide valuable information on their topics have widened their nets to catch such queries on Twitter.
Beth Gwazdosky is the Vice President of Digital Marketing at Shelton Interactive, an Austin-based firm that works with its author clients to create social media and interactive marketing/PR strategies and platforms that generate attention—online and off. “We help our authors understand how best to use Twitter and other social media channels to stand out in this new environment,” said Beth. “Creating strategies to organically pull media hits, speaking opportunities, and client relationships has proven to be much more efficient than trying to pitch our way onto the air.”
So if you’re interested in promoting yourself, your book, your organization, or your clients, why not use Twitter to your advantage? But don’t jump in without a well-thought-out strategy. Pay attention to the real Twitter pros who are actually practicing what they preach, and then emulate their approach.
Posted in Blogs, Branding, Channels, Content, Customers, Demand Generation, Engagement, Google, HARO, Integrated Marketing, Interaction, Journalism, Kent Huffman, Lead Generation, Listening, Marketing, Promotions, Public Relations, Relationship Marketing, Relationships, ROI, Sales, Strategy, Twitter | Comments Off on Using Twitter for Marketing and PR: Do the Pros Practice What They Preach?
By Michelle Manafy, Director of Content at FreePint
Between all generations lie gaps. Yet in the course of some generations, major events occur that cause tectonic shifts. The fact is that many individuals and businesses today face a massive and growing generation gap. As this digital native generation—which has grown up immersed in digital technologies such as the mobile phones, gaming, and social networks—becomes our dominant employee and consumer base, those in older generations must learn to navigate a radically altered landscape in order to succeed in business going forward.
Here are five key insights into the digital native generation that will help you understand how best to leverage their distinct worldview to achieve your business objectives.
- They live publicly online. Without a doubt, the notion of privacy didn’t change overnight with the advent of the Internet. For better or worse (or for lack of a better word), we’ve seen an evolution of privacy. It was once the norm to keep one’s dirty laundry tucked away out of site. This gave way to a generation that would share from the relative privacy of a therapist’s couch. More recently, we have witnessed the era of trash-mouth talk shows and reality TV. However, with the digital native, businesses must address the expectations of a generation raised in social networking environments, in which they routinely share every detail of their activities and opinions with a potentially limitless group of friends. Tip: Often, businesses are hamstrung by outdated notions of privacy. They fail to recognize and capitalize on the digital native’s openness. We need to understand the native’s natural inclination to live publicly to guide these activities so that they are consistent with our business objectives. We can also build business models that leverage on this openness, both in the way we structure our employee activities as well as customer interactions.
- They share knowledge. Once we recognize that the natives are living their lives out loud, we can begin to understand how this behavior is shapes all aspects of their lives. Despite a good deal of hyperbole about social media and marketing via Twitter and social networks, as many as 50 to 75 percent of organizations limit or ban the use of social networks while on the job. What this demonstrates is not simply a fear of exposure through inappropriate use of social technologies, it shows a distinct lack of understanding of how to effectively manage and channel the knowledge sharing inclination of this generation. Tip: Beyond crafting guidelines to regulate the appropriate use of social networks on the job, proactive use of socially mediated, open, collaborative ways of working can help companies capture otherwise transient knowledge assets. The old adage was that knowledge is power; for the digital native knowledge shared is power.
- They believe transparency yields trust. Because digital natives live publicly and value knowledge sharing, organizations that demonstrate a similar level of openness will be the ones that attract and retain them as employees and customers. Digital natives make new friends, followers, and fans every day. However, it is important to keep in mind that it takes a lot of work to maintain the kind of genuine relationship required with the digital native. If digital natives dislike your brand, they will make it publicly known. Luckily, the reverse is also true. Today’s ultra-connected consumer, raised to share and monitor sentiment, may seem like a fickle friend, but that’s only if organizations don’t stay involved by listening, responding, owning up, and doing the work it takes to maintain a genuine, long-term relationship. Tip: When it comes to attracting and retaining this generation as employees, it is essential to recognize that today’s best employees are also monitoring opportunities and discussing employers online. For recruiting, this can provide insights into who the best, brightest, and most social media savvy are. And for employee retention, employers can leverage these same tools and tendencies to make sure they are competitive in the market and respond to concerns in order to attract and retain the best and brightest.
- They are timely, not time managed. While most people are painfully aware that the line between “at work” and “off duty” is increasingly blurred, for the native this will be taken to a whole new level. The digital native will move beyond what previous generations called a work/life balance to a new sort of work life integration. For the digital native, work and social activities are ever present—they travel with the native anywhere and anytime. Digital natives may log more hours at their computers during the course of a day than those in previous generations, but they switch back and forth between work and leisure in short bursts. Though this may strike some managers as inappropriate, it helps to realize that while an older worker might head to the break room or a co-worker’s desk to clear his head, natives are more likely to “info snack” or catch up on a quick burst of Facebook updates. Tip: Moving forward, companies that emphasize collaboration, learning, and socialization will see key benefits in comparison to companies that focus solely on productivity. The native doesn’t need to play all day to be happy. However, there’s no reason that work inside an organization can’t be constructively influenced by the expectations of our younger workforce.
- They believe in interactions, not transactions. Social networking, social media, social . . . with all this socializing, one might begin to wonder how any business ever gets done. Suffice it to say, it does, and it will continue to do so. However, organizations that develop good social skills will have a competitive advantage over those that remain socially inept. One quality that will be essential for business success going forward is recognizing that this generation is not interested in traditional transactive business models, which are based upon exchanges of money for goods annd services. This is a generation that is interested in interactions. Tip: Unlike a transaction-based system, an interactive one is based upon social currency. The fact is that all aspects of business will need to embrace interaction, from marketing and CRM to product and content creation. This generation doesn’t just want to do business with companies it views as friends; it wants to do business with itself and expects to see its ideals and objectives reflected in the companies it chooses to do business with.
While there are many digital immigrants who are wholeheartedly adopting digital tools, it is not simply emerging technologies that must be mastered. A lifelong immersion has affected the mindset, behavior, and expectations of the digital native generation. To succeed in business with them, we must understand it and build models based on this new native culture.
Posted in Branding, Collaboration, Content, CRM, Culture, Customers, Digital Natives, Employees, Engagement, Facebook, Interaction, Listening, Marketing, Michelle Manafy, Networking, Privacy, Relationships, Social Currency, Transparency, Trust, TV, Twitter | Comments Off on The Digital Native: 5 Things You Need to Know
By Jeffrey Hayzlett, author of Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change, and Grow Profits
If you are a marketer, I can almost guarantee that one of your goals for 2012 is to figure out your mobile strategy. You’re not alone. Everyone is talking mobile, but very few have figured out how to integrate a mobile strategy into an existing marketing plan. I found an answer to this dilemma, and it’s called “SnapTags.”
SnapTags are similar to QR codes but way sexier, offering more options for the user and a wider reach (SnapTags have capabilities on 88% of mobile phones, compared to 13% with QR codes). I’m encouraging marketers to integrate SnapTags into all their existing marketing campaigns. It’s a low-cost solution that bridges the gap between your physical marketing campaigns and your mobile and digital marketing goals.
In my case, I’m using SnapTags in my new book, Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change, and Grow Profits. Readers can “snap” a SnapTag at the beginning of each of the 37 chapters to view the video that accompanies each section of the book. This creates a more personal connection with my readers, as they get to see and hear me introduce each chapter on their mobile phones! Plus—and this is the best part—the reader is provided with links to my Facebook and Twitter pages each time they “snap.” I’m bridging the gap between the physical book and the digital relationship I’m building with my readers through social media.
The advantage of this strategy is that your brand can create more than a simple piece of print media. SnapTags enhance simple print media to:
- Forge a digital connection across social networks
- Drive new customers through your digital sales funnel
- Create a point of purchase through virtually any placement
Some of the largest brands in the world are already using SnapTags, like Bud Light and Coca-Cola. Most recently, SnapTags were deployed in the September issue of Glamour magazine, being featured on the cover and across both editorial and advertising pages. This campaign netted Glamour more than 100,000 consumer activations and more than 500,000 consumer interactions (includes scanning the codes with an app, texting a picture message, taking subsequent actions such as agreeing to “like” an advertiser or article, signing up for the deal or sweepstakes being offered, or sharing the offer with friends).
Mark my words—in 2012, mobile integration will play a critical role in your overall marketing plan. The key to bridging the gap between your traditional and digital marketing campaigns is the mobile device. SnapTags Founder and CEO, Nicole Skogg says, “In 2012, you will see shopping SnapTags create a new way for consumers to buy whenever and wherever they encounter a brand message. Anticipate seeing SnapTags in some transformative brand marketing campaigns.”
I’ve already integrated SnapTags into my big marketing campaign for 2012. Have you?
Posted in Apps, Customer Experience, Customers, Engagement, Facebook, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Lead Generation, Marketing, Mobile Applications, Mobile Marketing, Promotions, QR Codes, Retail, Sales, Smartphones, SnapTags, Strategy, Twitter, Video | Comments Off on Bridging the Digital Gap with SnapTags
By Emily Johnson, Media Relations Specialist at Walker Sands Communications
The photo-sharing site Flickr is a valuable but often overlooked social media platform. Here are six reasons why marketers and communications professionals should add Flickr to their campaigns:
- People are visual. With Flickr, you’re able to tell a story in a way you can’t through other mediums. Let’s face it—people like to look at pictures. Plus, the change of scenery images offer is nice. We stare at text all day; mix it up to create more ways to engage with and inform your audience.
- You can share your photo stream. The Flickr community is not the only place where people can see the photos you post to the site. Flickr makes it easy to share photos across all social media platforms.
- It’s good for searches. The tags you assign to your photos are used in search, allowing people with your interests to more easily find you, enabling your audience to grow beyond those who already know about your brand.
- Higher picture quality is important. Photo quality is much higher on Flickr than any other social media platform. On Flickr, you will have fewer grainy images, and your presentations will be much sharper.
- Creative commons provides protection. Flickr offers a safe platform for images via creative commons, which means you pick the stringency of your copyright. This feature can give you peace of mind that others aren’t using (or misusing) photos without your permission, which is something you don’t always get with other social media platforms.
- You can start discussions. Flickr allows you to create groups and comments, just like all other social platforms. Although the focus is photographs and videos, people are still interacting with each other and could be interacting around images and videos of your brand or client.
So the next time you plan a social media marketing campaign, don’t forget the value that Flickr can bring!
Posted in Emily Johnson, Flickr, Interaction, Marketing, Photos, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Video | Comments Off on 6 Reasons Social Media Campaigns Should Include Flickr
By David Bell, Lawyer and Chair of Social Media Practice at Haynes and Boone, LLP
Perhaps you’ve heard about Chick-fil-A’s recent “oops” moment. The company fired off a cease and desist letter to a Vermont artist over his use of and trademark application for EAT MORE KALE. The chicken eatery sent the letter in an effort to protect its EAT MOR CHIKIN tagline, but the letter sparked an outcry throughout Facebook and the blogosphere. It also led to an anti Chick-fil-A petition that has already garnered tens of thousands of signatures and a CNN feature story mocking the company.
Marketing professionals know that protecting a brand can be vital to its continued success. Cease and desist letters aim to persuade someone to stop brand misuse, without having to resort to a lawsuit. In the past, letters might fall on the desks of just the recipients or their lawyers. Social media now spreads many of these letters like wildfire. One overly aggressive notice could land a full-page blog post, thousands of re-tweets, and negative publicity. In some cases, this is unavoidable, and a strongly-worded letter is simply needed. In others, the public relations risk should be more heavily weighed.
Tips and questions to ask before sending a letter:
- Research the individual or company to whom you plan to send a cease and desist notice. Who posted the content—a current or former employee or vendor, a company critic or competitor, or a well-intentioned consumer or fan?
- Consider how a proposed notice will be received. Think about how it would play out in the press or before a judge. The additional time researching and writing an appropriate letter is well spent. It can help to avoid a PR fiasco or positive to the receiving party, as in the Vermont kale enthusiast’s case. In some cases, you can also lower the risk that the recipient will file a preemptive lawsuit, asking a judge to rule that there is no infringement occurring.
- Consider whether sending a letter is even appropriate. If no action is taken, the brand misuse might not create much true harm. For instance, if it appears in a single blog post, it might be deeply buried on the website after another day or two. And if on an unpopular website of social media account, few eyes may see it anyway—again, assuming you don’t fuel the fire by unnecessarily upsetting that person.
- Use a tone appropriate to the situation. It should parallel the company’s level of concern, speak appropriately to the person who will receive the notice, and reflect the company’s values. Polite requests can be more effective than aggressive letters. Of course, the result that your company is seeking, and how quickly, is important. If the situation involves truly abhorrent behavior by an infringer, then a letter should more likely be sent by outside counsel. Among other advantages, this allows the company to distance itself somewhat from any harsh tone necessarily included in the letter.
- A cease and desist notice is almost never confidential or privileged. It is very possible that a notice will end up on the recipient’s blog or website, or in the news, and the sending company will likely have no legal recourse.
- Spin your wins. Use your company’s blog, social media outlets, and website to educate the public that you are shutting down frauds because you want to protect customers against malicious activity and work to keep costs down. When communicated with care, this can leave a favorable public impression, not to mention advise customers to beware of unauthorized products, vendors, social media pages, apps, and other Internet and mobile content.
In short, to avoid the “fowl” attention that Chick-fil-A landed, before sending out cease and desist letters, brand owners should weigh PR risks against business and legal considerations, think carefully about whether a letter should be sent, and match the tone and language of a letter to the circumstances at hand.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the law firm with which the author is associated, or its other lawyers or clients.
Posted in Blogs, Branding, Buzz, Chick-fil-A, David Bell, Disaster Management, Facebook, Marketing, News, Public Relations, Reputation, Social Media Law, Twitter | Comments Off on Tips for Addressing Brand Misuse While Mitigating PR Backlash
By Debi Kleiman, President of MITX (Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange, creators of FutureM)
The very foundation of marketing is transforming before our eyes, and social media is playing a bigger and bigger role in the way marketers communicate.
MITX’s FutureM offers the community a week of events exploring the future of marketing and media, designed to promote innovation and bring the community together around the biggest and most exciting topics facing marketers today. FutureM events address the changing role of social media in marketing, so we reached out to our socially savvy event partners to find out their answers to the following question: “What is social media’s role in the future of marketing?” Here is what they had to say:
- Ian Cross, Professor of Marketing at Bentley University
“Social media is woven into the fabric of social discourse and upending conventions about what should be shared, discussed, and presented to society. But the medium is not the message; the message is defining the medium. Technologies will come and go, but the free exchange of real-time information is exciting, and it is challenging organizations and consumers. Tricky questions of censorship, organized riot and revolt, and online identity will need to be resolved. But right now, let’s embrace the unfettered exchange of ideas and technology that bring us together and resist efforts to command and control.”
- John Fichera, Boston University student and intern, The Castle Group and CMO, FutureM Student Committee
“Social media makes marketing personal. For example, if you see that one of your friends is into a certain product or brand (e.g., via Facebook), then this can spark your interest to at least research the product, raising name recognition.”
- Chris Pollara, CEO of Convertiv
“As adoption continues to grow, social media will become the preferred connection point and education vehicle between brands and consumers. Leading organizations will need to adopt and scale accordingly. Well-executed campaigns will motivate your community by fostering natural, self-sustaining conversation centered on consumer-generated media.”
- Matt Rainone, Manager of Strategic Marketing at AMP Agency
“The future of social is less about the channels and more about how, when, and where we’re accessing them. Our emotional connections to our devices point to a future where our social profiles, location-based services, and mobile payment systems converge to create an always-connected, one-step-from-purchase lifestyle.”
- Marty Watts, Director of the Meltwater Group
“In the future, social media will alter the role of (PR, advertising, and digital) agencies, and more importantly, how these service businesses are run. By leveraging the slew of new social media technologies, these organizations will be able to drive down fixed operating costs while generating net new revenues through digital client work. It will be exciting to watch which agencies embrace this sea change and succeed and those that cannot adapt and go the way of the Dodo.”
Social media is evolving as a force—if not THE force—in modern marketing. As e-commerce and social grow together, websites like Twitter, Facebook, and the young Google+ are becoming the playground for experimental marketing. This is creating new challenges for marketers, buyers, sellers, and others within the social ecosystem. As innovations—such as Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories”—show, there are plenty of up-and-coming ways to turn social media into a powerful marketing medium.
The modern social media strategist must be part technologist and part behaviorist. As marketing leaders, we must be willing to experiment with and implement technology while studying the changes in human behavior that come with new and evolving social media adoption. As our experts stated above, we are in the midst of foundational change. Who’s brave enough to create social media’s future?
Posted in Advertising, Advertising Agencies, Branding, Community, Debi Kleiman, E-Commerce, Facebook, Google Plus, Innovation, Interaction, Marketing, Networking, Public Relations, Relationships, Strategy, Sustainability, Twitter | Comments Off on Will Social Media Change the Face of Modern Marketing?
By Amy Howell, CEO of Howell Marketing Strategies
Social media has been a game changer for PR folks across the board. No matter what type of business, industry, or organization you are in, social media means you can run for a minute, but you sure cannot hide.
I have been in PR and marketing for more than 20 years, working mostly in B2B organizations, and I have witnessed the drastic shift in how we communicate the corporate messages—good, bad, and ugly. I think that in order to appreciate and use what we’ve learned, it’s sometimes important to look back and think on what worked then, how things have changed, and what lessons we can carry forward to improve our role as PR professionals.
In the “good ole days” when agencies had fat budgets and big offices, often the PR strategy was crafted to “spin” a story a certain way to try and control the outcomes. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it would not. Either way, that control is largely gone with the use of social media, smartphones, and mobile communications.
I hear and read often that companies can’t control their stories. That’s only true if they let it get out of control in the first place. Sometimes it gets out without anyone doing anything. An explosion or fire would be this type of crisis. The media is relentless when it comes to a crisis, and a company has to be ready to be totally “bombarded” and handle all inquiries. A very tough skin is needed for this, as dealing with a heady crisis and doing good PR is not for the weak or inexperienced.
I have only had two really bad crisis client PR projects and—though we got through them as well as we could have under the terrible circumstances—it’s highly stressful and downright scary work. I’ve had CNN, AP reporters, international calls, and the local media all on my back at once, and there is no class or training that can prepare you for the actual day that happens. But I learned a ton, didn’t sleep much, and added great depth to my experience in PR under pressure.
Now, onto the three main points I would like to make. Corporations with big news to tell (good and bad) need to understand a few key points:
- The art of being proactive and always anticipating what can happen: When crisis comes—often by surprise—you must immediately be ready to anticipate what will happen next. I cannot stress enough the importance of having a crisis PR/communications plan ALREADY WRITTEN before something happens. The most common thing to anticipate is that people love to talk about a crisis, which means you will have two major projects: one is dealing with and getting accurate information to the media (you want them on your team, and they can make or break you) and dealing with comments that are posted on the Internet. Immediately, you need a team that’s social savvy to monitor what’s being said, and you will need this 24/7. How you handle these steps is critical. In dealing with the media, you must be fair and straightforward, and you must set the pace. When we had crisis #1, I set up a system to communicate with all the media and used different tools to post information. The first was the posting of updates and statements as they became available to the top of the client website. This helped us do two things: control information in written statements and mass distribution (we didn’t have time to do press releases). The second tool was the use of the wire; we monitored the Internet. It took a team of four to six people dedicated to this, and I worked remotely in the client’s conference room for days.
- The discipline and intelligence to use confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements: I hate to say “duh,” but I said it. Companies and organizations that can’t keep information from leaking out deserve what they get. And I would fire any communications staffer immediately if I found out he or she talked about highly confidential information. Rumors cannot exist if you want good PR results. For example, last year, one of my clients (and large employer) announced the decision to relocate its corporate headquarters to downtown Memphis. The CEO, COO, CFO, and legal team made everybody—including me—sign a non-disclosure. I had the pleasure of coordinating the press for the announcement and the event we held onsite. That was a difficult “secret” to keep quiet, but we did it, and that’s proof that companies can indeed control when big news gets announced, how it’s announced, and to whom it’s announced.
- Telling a story well through both traditional and social: I think social media has given us the transparency we need to find real, truthful information and has forced companies and organizations to be more diligent about being truthful. My dad always told me that if you tell the truth all the time, you never have to worry about telling a story—a powerful lesson. Social media gives us great channels to be truthful and to be transparent. Social media has changed PR in many positive ways, and I think that the positives far outweigh the negatives. All of this is why companies need to already be “in” the game of social. Establish your footprint and tell your story, so that when you have to defend yourself in a crisis, you can. As my good friend and social media consultant @GlenGilmore says, “Build your tribe before you need it.” And believe me, one day you will need it.
Thanks for reading this, and I’d love to hear how social media has helped or hurt you in a crisis.
Posted in Amy Howell, Authenticity, B2B, Confidentiality, Crisis Management, Honesty, Marketing, Messaging, Mobile Marketing, Monitoring, News, News Releases, Public Relations, Smartphones, Stories, Transparency | Comments Off on When Crisis Knocks: Being PR Savvy through Social Media
By Phyllis Zimbler Miller, co-founder of Miller Mosaic
Have you recently found yourself standing in the checkout line at a chain drugstore hearing an ad for a product that includes a reference to social media? For example, you may hear, “Follow us on Twitter or ‘like’ us on Facebook to learn about our new products.” And you say to yourself, “I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about those things for the marketing of my company’s products and services.” If you’ve been reassuring yourself thusly, you’re dead wrong.
Social media is here to stay. And if you don’t want your competition to trample you into the ground, you need to get with the program right now!
The irony is that, once you admit you don’t know enough about how your company can benefit from social media, and you resolve to learning more, you’re already on the way to harnessing some of the power of social media. Why? Because the most effective use of social media is sharing information with others, as opposed to selling your products and services.
A little secret that makes a big difference: when it comes to social media marketing, almost everyone has to start at zero. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve grown up with Facebook or without computers, the concepts of using social media effectively for marketing have to be learned. Why is that? Because effective social media marketing goes against the grain of traditional advertising/marketing. Instead of pushing out our company’s messages, we have to share information with our prospective clients and customers, be responsive to answering their questions, and think of the benefits of our products and services from their perspective and not ours.
For example, consumers in the age of Facebook are probably not very interested in how many employees your company has or what your headquarters looks like. But they probably are interested in how much easier or more fun their lives will be if they use your products or services. And you can show rather than tell this by sharing information on social media sites.
Let’s say you manufacture a revolutionary new food blender. Besides sharing the revolutionary benefits of the new features, you can also sponsor a food blender recipe showcase in which people share their own recipes on your company’s Facebook page. Your food blender gets publicity created by its own fans. And those fans can share their enthusiasm for your new blender with their friends on Facebook, who can share with their friends on Twitter, who can post videos on YouTube, etc. And the concentric circles get bigger and bigger.
It’s okay to start at zero knowledge regarding social media marketing, as long as you commit to moving forward to an ever-increasing knowledge base. If you do this, you and your company can look forward to connecting with your prospective clients and customers in ways you never could have imagined possible only a few short years ago.
Posted in Advertising, Competitors, Customers, Facebook, Marketing, Phyllis Zimbler Miller, Twitter, YouTube | Comments Off on How to Overcome Your Own Fear of Social Media
By Amy Howell, CEO of Howell Marketing Strategies
Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t ask me about social media for business. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are all new media tools that can help bolster your Internet or digital “footprint.”
You can read all about how social media is ramping up the conversation by doing a simple Google search. But the more important question small business owners want answered is how to use social media to boost sales and get the phone ringing. I call it “turning on the water faucet.” Social media for businesses should mean one thing: free tools that can strengthen your organization’s SEO (search engine optimization), help get your message out, and engage with customers and prospects.
Now these tools may be free, but the time you must spend executing the work can be extensive. A lot of writers just re-hash what’s already been written, so what I find most helpful is to share what we help clients do in the trenches every day. Below are the main barriers to using social media and why it remains a mystery, followed by how to get started and what to do first.
The barriers for most small businesses using social media are:
- Time and education: It takes time to read and learn about the ever-changing, growing tools online, and most business owners don’t have extra time to devote to this. I hear it every day, and as a small business owner myself, I certainly understand this constraint. Small businesses have limited resources and must focus on revenue development and all that comes with running a business. Social media can help a small business tremendously, but most owners have not had time to get up to speed.
- Lack of resources: It takes a dedicated effort to employ social media tools. Most companies can hire help, but many simply don’t have the extra resources to do so.
- Reluctance to embrace new media: A lot of people are just flat out skeptical of social media. There are legitimate reasons to ignore it, especially if you are in a regulated industry (banking, insurance, finance, etc.), as some governing entities such as the SEC have policies against any use of social media for work. I think that will change soon, as I’m already seeing some large organizations issue new policies on social media use.
- Generational: Most people would be surprised to know that the average age of a Twitter user is between 40 and 55. Age isn’t an excuse to avoid social tools, but it is often an explanation.
How to get started if you want to add a social media strategy to your marketing toolkit:
- Read, read, read. There are some excellent blogs (like this one) and other resources online that can tell you all you need to know. There is no “magic wand” that will do this for you. If you really want to jump in, you have to do the reading yourself. You can hire it out of course, but the ideal results spring from the business understanding social media and embracing it, even if it means only monitoring at first. Let’s take the Judy McLellan Team for example (@JudyMacTeam on Twitter). Judy hired my firm to help with a real estate marketing and PR strategy that included the use of social tools. At first, we did some of the tweeting and posting. But now, you can find Judy out selling homes while using her iPad and iPhone to tweet and spread information about her listings.
- Pick one tool and learn that first. For me, it’s Twitter. Once I understood Twitter, I moved on to learning about some other tools. I think by mastering one tool, small businesses can see results faster. Let’s take Cheffie’s Cafe (@Cheffies on Twitter) as the next example. We helped Cheffie’s Cafe spread the word by using Twitter, along with traditional PR during the previous few months. A good Twitter strategy is key to a successful PR campaign.
- Look at what your competition is doing. Get online and do a little research to see what your competition is up to in the social space. Let’s take OrthoMemphis, a successful orthopaedic practice in Memphis that adopted social media long before its competition did. We have helped OrthoMemphis (@OrthoMemphis on Twitter) use social media tools to not only market their sub-specialists (knee, hips, and shoulders), but also to launch OrthoStat, its acute care walk-in clinic. Combined with direct mail, PR, and patient communications, Twitter and Facebook have been tremendously helpful.
- Get a social media policy in place and communicate it to your organization. There are some great examples online and free resources available. I suggest any small business that wants to use social media tools have a policy in place just like a media policy. Talking online is like talking in the newspaper, and it’s important to have a strategy and know the dos and don’ts of posting online. Good examples are Coca-Cola, Kodak, and Intel. (A list of these can be found on my blog.)
The smaller the organization (or flatter), the easier it is to employ social media. Even though they may have more resources, larger companies are often more bureaucratic and have more red tape. Larger companies are also usually slower to “get it,” and we have found that companies without all the red tape can move faster and are often more decisive. Social media gives the little guys a leg up and is a great way to have a big voice online.
Posted in Amy Howell, Blogs, Commitment, Competitors, Customers, Engagement, Facebook, Finance, Google, iPad, iPhone, Lead Generation, LinkedIn, Marketing, Prospecting, Public Relations, Retail, Revenue, Sales, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Small Businesses, Social Media Policy, Strategy, Tools, Twitter | Comments Off on Social Media: Still a Mystery to Most Small Businesses
By Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likeable Media and author of Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks)
You wake up one morning and your back really hurts. You’ve been putting off finding a new doctor ever since you moved to town, it’s been forever since you’ve had a check-up, and now you’re paying the price.
The pain is too much to wait any longer, you’ve got to find a chiropractor now. So you grab your computer, go to Google.com, and enter “back doctor” and your town’s name. You see a list of a ten chiropractors who have paid Google to be listed there and dozens of others who come up in the organic search results. But do you really want to trust your throbbing back to a complete stranger in an emergency?
Then you think of another idea, and you head to Facebook and again search “back doctor.” At the top of the results is a doctor’s listing with a sidebar telling you that three of your friends “like” this chiropractor. “Sweet,” you think. “Someone I can trust, because my friends like him.” You make a quick call, and you’re off to get your backache taken care of by a recommended doctor, a professional your friends “like.”
This scenario and scenarios such as this aren’t happening en masse quite yet, but the use of Facebook and the social graph for search and commerce isn’t far off. Think about it. Why would you possibly make a decision about a doctor, an attorney, a mechanic—or any important product or service for that matter—based on advertising or Google placement when you can make that decision based on the preference and recommendations of trusted friends? Facebook and social media have made it infinitely easier to do the latter. It’s nothing short of a gamechanger for marketers and businesses of all sizes.
The great news about the new world of communications we live in today is that everybody has a shot. Build a great product, get the word out to a few people, make it easy for people to share with their friends, and you can win without spending a boatload. Just five years ago, for instance, if you went to a new restaurant that you loved, you might have shared your thoughts with a few of your friends, family, and/or neighbors. Perhaps if you really loved the restaurant, you may have raved about it for a week to as many as 10 or 15 friends. Today, you can share those thoughts with 200 Facebook friends, or 300 Twitter followers, or 150 LinkedIn connections—all with one click on your computer or smartphone!
No matter what the size of your organization or client’s business, you too have the ability to follow the simple rules of social media to reap the rewards. Senior management—and anyone in a communications position for that matter—needs to know that marketing in a social media and Facebook world is not about broadcasting your message and getting the largest reach and frequency, it’s about tapping into the conversation by listening, engaging, and empowering. The loudest, biggest spenders don’t win anymore—the smartest, most flexible listeners do.
Posted in Advertising, Conversations, Customers, Dave Kerpen, Engagement, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Listening, Marketing, Relationships, Search Engine Results Pages, Smartphones, Social Search, Social Shopping, Twitter | Comments Off on “Like” is the New Link: How Facebook is Reorganizing Google’s Web
By Jeffrey Hayzlett, author of The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing?
Traditionally, ROI means “return on investment.” And that’s a very important component to consider in any marketing strategy. However, it can be difficult to track when it comes to zeroes. In the absence of hard numbers, ROI becomes something I call, “return on ignoring.” It’s especially relevant in your social media strategy.
Social media is happening with or without you, so what’s the worst that can happen? Most likely nothing, but consider that via Twitter and Facebook, the worldwide impact of the death of Osama bin Laden was readily apparent. The leading social analytics company, PeopleBrowsr, demonstrated these results in a recent blog post. There were more than three million mentions in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands of mentions in countries like Brazil, Venezuela, and Canada in the 48 hours after the news hit.
Another great example: during the Super Bowl, folks were tweeting and commenting on the commercials. The reach and impact of companies advertising during that event was just as important and viable via social media as it was through traditional commercials during the game.
Five tips to leverage your social media strategy:
- Overcome the challenges and capitalize on opportunity
- Set a policy for engagement
- Decide who speaks for your company and make sure they speak with one voice that represents your organization and brand
- Get out there—establish and protect your brand
- Quality over quantity—your message must have value and impact
Even if you’re a small company with a limited budget, you can still achieve big impact. If your message is relevant and genuine, and you listen to your customers, they will often sell your product or service for you.
Posted in Authenticity, Brand Champions, Branding, Customers, Engagement, Facebook, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Listening, Marketing, Messaging, Osama bin Laden, ROI, Small Businesses, Strategy, Super Bowl, Twitter | Comments Off on Five Tips to Leverage Your Social Media Strategy
By Nina Buik, Chief Marketing Officer at HP Connect
I admit that I’m a fan of Lady Gaga’s music, but even more a fan of her marketing strategy:
- Creates a globally recognizable brand image
- Creates edgy, compelling headlines
- Is “virtually” ubiquitous
- Fearless of putting herself “out there”
- Has built an incredibly loyal following
You don’t have to be “born this way” to be successful at social media, but you do have to have a successful strategy, or you may simply end up in a “bad romance.”
The social media explosion has proven that like-minded consumers/people like belonging to a group (e.g., ski club, track club, Lady Gaga fan club, etc.). They want to know more about the “thing” that makes them like-minded, and they want to communicate with one another. Thus the advent of social CRM.
So what is your strategy? Is it measurable? Is your entire organization part of and supportive of your strategy? What is your organization’s “love game” with your customers? Here are a few tips:
- Other than your product or service, identify what your customers have in common.
- Identify where your customers hang out—online and offline.
- Take a good look at your brand image/messaging. Make sure it is current/relevant and “fits in” these virtual groups and/or physical locations.
- Define measurable outcomes.
- Assign passionate “owners.”
- Provide tools to your foot soldiers (tweetsheets, blog templates, etc.).
- Encourage your team to find the “edge” of their message (staying just within the guidelines).
- Use a hub/spoke model (your website is the hub, and all external spoke messages refer the reader back to your site).
Lady Gaga has it right. Whether you enjoy her music or not, stop “dancing in the dark” and take note of her successful marketing strategy.
Posted in Analytics, Blogs, Branding, CRM, Lady Gaga, Marketing, Measurement, Messaging, Nina Buik, Strategy, Twitter | Comments Off on Going Gaga!
By Marci Reynolds, Director of Operations for Global Help24 at ACI Worldwide
Business blogs have become critical tools in any social media marketing tool box, and they are an excellent medium to share expertise and build your business brand. But just creating a blog is not enough. You must also focus on blog SEO (search engine optimization) to ensure that it receives top placement in Google, Bing, and the other search engines.
I began blogging in 2009, when I launched The Sales Operations Blog, and in 2011, I launched a second blog called Rat Terrier Mom. What do the two blogs have in common? They both appear on the first page of Google for multiple search terms and get the majority of their traffic from organic search engine links. Social media marketing nirvana!
Here are four strategies that I recommend and have leveraged to get my blogs listed on the first page of Google:
- Focus and differentiate the content on your blog. There are thousands of blogs on the Internet, so if you want yours to stand out and appear on the first page of Google, it must offer something unique. Before I started The Sales Operations Blog, I did some research on blog competition and the popularity of search terms related to my content. I found that there were thousands of blogs on “how to sell” but very few on sales support. I also discovered that the phrase “sales operations” was one of the more frequently used search terms related to my topic. So before launching your blog, check out the competition, do some research on how potential readers search for your content, and attempt to focus and differentiate your blog.
- Include a power search term in your domain name. Google does not like cute, it likes relevant. For this reason, I chose the domains SalesOperationsBlog.com and RatTerrierMom.com. (Okay, Rat Terrier Mom is a little cute.) When choosing your domain and blog name, select a frequently used search term that aligns with your content. In my domain research, I have found that many of the most popular words or phrases alone are already taken, but if you add the word “blog” at the end, most of them are available. For example, B2Bemail.com is taken, but B2BemailBlog.com is still available. Check out GoDaddy.com to research domain options.
- Identify and leverage the top 20 search terms in your blog content. Use Google Adwords or a similar tool to identify the top 20-ish search terms that readers use to find content like yours, and then use this intelligence throughout your blog. This includes your post titles, post content, categories, HTML image labels, and in-post HTML tags. Note that the search terms should enhance your high-quality, interesting blog content, not actually make up your blog content. In addition to using the Google Adwords tool, monitor the “real time” search engine terms driving traffic, as reported in your WordPress dashboard. Copyblogger is an excellent resource for tips on keyword research and blogging SEO.
- Keep the content fresh. As part of your social media marketing plan, publish high-quality, relevant blog content, ideally once per week. There is a direct correlation to the frequency in which you publish content, your ranking on search engines, and your website traffic. Add your Twitter stream or another user’s topic-relevant Twitter stream to the home page of your blog. Every time a tweet is posted, your blog home page will get fresh content. Add a specific page to your blog that includes links to other similar, recent online content. Refer to the Other Sales Ops Articles page on The Sales Operations Blog for an example.
If you focus and differentiate, choose a powerful domain name, include popular keywords in your content, and keep your content fresh (and high quality), there is no doubt that your blog popularity and traffic will climb.
I wish you good luck in your adventures in blogging and social media marketing!
Posted in Analytics, Bing, Blogs, Branding, Competitors, Content, Exclusive Content, Google, HTML, Marci Reynolds, Marketing, Metrics, Sales, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Strategy, Twitter | Comments Off on Four SEO/SMM Strategies to Get Your Blog Listed on the First Page of Google
By Diane Hessan, President & CEO of Communispace and co-author of Customer-Centered Growth: Five Proven Strategies for Building Competitive Advantage
Would you post a Facebook status update containing your thoughts about innovative ideas for a brand? Most of us would not. But would you join a Facebook fan page to get a sneak preview of new offers from the brands you love? I bet you would.
Two recent studies from our research team help to shed light on this. In the first, we found that in the eyes of consumers, public venues are primarily for hearing from brands—and having their loyalty rewarded—whereas private communities are more conducive to advising them. In the second study, we found that participation rates in public social marketing sites still tend to follow the “90-9-1 Rule:” 1% of people create content, 9% respond to it, and 90% view the content without contributing. In contrast, participation rates (people creating content) in our private communities averaged 64% each month.
What accounts for that discrepancy? In the first study, entitled “Like” Me, we found that people mostly join social marketing sites and Facebook fan pages in order to get product information and promotions. Brands are “liked” in order to learn about sales/discounts, new products, and interestingly, local events. These tangible, “pushed” offerings are more important to them on fan pages than having their voices heard.
And it isn’t just our own research surfacing these trends. Our data complement findings from a December 2010 study by SSI which determined that the relatively small population of Facebook users who are willing to participate in surveys is skewed towards 13-17 year-olds, and it also noted that those willing to participate in surveys are not interested in participating in public discussions, thereby limiting the range of consumer input available to marketers and market researchers. Also, recent studies by Razorfish and ExactTarget found that consumers do not view Facebook and Twitter as proper places for having conversations and building relationships with brands. That conclusion was echoed in a study released by iVillage which found that women, in particular, are “more inclined to have serious discussions on focused community sites than on venues like Facebook.”
In contrast, consumers prefer private communities for giving their feedback and opinions on new products and brands. 92% of members in our study of 246 private communities and more than 86,000 members said they feel their opinion matters in private online communities, as compared to only 66% of members who said they feel their opinion is being heard in the other brand-sponsored websites. In private communities, they feel the brand is actually listening, and this makes them feel more invested in the community sponsor.
But it’s not just about feeling heard. What makes private or highly targeted public communities such gold mines lies in what people are willing to share. Five times more people are comfortable sharing pictures of the inside of their medicine cabinets in a private community than in any of the social marketing sites they visit. Four times more are comfortable sharing the details of their holiday shopping budget. And so on.
And why? Precisely because unlike a social network, in a small, private, password-protected, recruited (vs. self-forming) community, their friends and colleagues aren’t there. Private communities provide a sanctuary from the daily, real-world relationships that can inhibit sharing as much as support it. (See the second study, The 64% Rule.)
So as you refine your own social media strategy, step back and evaluate your objectives. Don’t abandon your fan page—it’s a powerful channel to consolidate your brand fans and win an even larger share of their wallets. But recognize that if you want to learn what makes your customers tick and want to engage them in a constructive, ongoing dialogue, you may be better served by providing them a safe haven, away from the prying eyes of their thousands of “friends.”
Posted in Branding, Community, Community Sites, Conversations, Customer Experience, Customers, Diane Hessan, Engagement, Events, Facebook, Interaction, Marketing, Opinions, Promotions, Relationships, Research, Strategy, Surveys, Trust, Twitter | Comments Off on Freedom from Friends?
By Chuck Martin, CEO of the Mobile Future Institute, Director of the Center for Media Research at MediaPost, and Co-Publisher of Social Media Marketing Magazine
The trend of the move to smartphones in the U.S. continues, with penetration now reaching 30%, based on the latest data from comScore. The research firm found that 234 million Americans 13 years or older use mobile phones, with 69.5 million of them owning a smartphone.
This is not a surprise, considering the increasing capabilities of smartphones. We still expect the penetration of these devices in the U.S. to be around 50% by the end of this year. This has many implications for marketers, since the market then will be split with half owning smartphones and half not.
This of course means that half the market can use apps, and half can’t. About all can send and receive text (SMS) and multimedia (MMS) messages, and web access will increase. And then there are the platforms.
The comScore findings, based on a large sample of more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers, shows Google’s Android operating system with exactly a third (33%) market share, followed by Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry with 29% and Apple at a quarter (25%) of the market. And the apps-rich Android and Apple environments continue to gain share while RIM’s declines.
The issue for marketers here is that the behaviors of users of phones on different platforms are different, as several studies have shown. Some companies we speak with don’t even know what types of operating systems their best customers are using.
One of the key drivers of the conversion to smartphones is behavioral—the actual activities that people are doing with mobile phones. Mobile phone users are texting (69%), browsing the web (38%), using apps (37%), accessing social networks (27%), playing games (25%), and listening to music (18%), according to the comScore study. And every one of these activities increased from the previous three months. We expect these types of mobile behaviors to continue to increase as more people move to smartphones and more features and capabilities continue to be added by the mobile industry.
The consumers are there, as is the mobile industry. Still missing from the mix are many companies not yet committing the necessary resources to mobile, mobile marketing, and mobile social marketing. Is your business sitting out the mobile revolution?
Posted in Android, Apps, BlackBerry, Chuck Martin, Customers, iPhone, Marketing, MMS, Mobile Applications, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Search, Smartphones, SMS, Text Messages | Comments Off on Conversion to Smartphones Continues
By Kent Huffman, Chief Marketing Officer at BearCom Wireless and Co-Publisher of Social Media Marketing Magazine
If you’re a small business owner or manager—or even a corporate marketing executive with a very limited budget—and you’ve been wondering how you could leverage social media to help grow your business, you’re definitely not alone. Almost every marketer I know is having to deal with limited financial resources in 2011, primarily because of the challenging economic times we’re facing right now. So what do you do?
No Money? No Matter!
In most cases, success in social media marketing doesn’t necessarily require a large financial investment. But depending on your level of involvement, it may demand a significant commitment of time. Jessie Paul, author of the book, No Money Marketing: From Upstart to Big Brand on a Frugal Budget, says, “Unlike media such as TV, radio, print, or even Google Adwords, which are capital intensive (i.e., the more money you have, the more successful you are likely to be), social media in its current form is labor intensive.” But because of the magnitude of the potential opportunities presented by social media marketing, that investment is often a wise one. Jessie goes on to say, “Social media gives marketers a chance to be in direct contact with customers. That is very hard to get in any other media and is worth quite a bit of experimentation to achieve.”
I’ve been active on various social media sites (including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) since early 2009 and have been amazed at the benefits and opportunities that activity has brought to me and my company in a relatively short period of time. As Jessie suggested, I didn’t have to invest very much of my marketing budget to reach my social media marketing goals, but I did spend a lot of time developing strategy, content, and most importantly, relationships. I have to say it has been worth every minute.
Key Social Media Channels and Sites
If you’re just starting down the social media marketing path, an important first step toward making the most of the online social scene for your business is to select the right channels and tools to use. Robbin Block, author of the book, Social Persuasion: Making Sense of Social Media for Small Business, says, “Knowing your own abilities and the impression you’re trying to make can play a big part in the types of sites you choose. There’s a big difference between creating original content and simply participating. For example, posting a response or voting is much different than writing an article. If you’re a creator—that is, you have the time, talent, or inclination to create original material—then content sites are a good choice.”
“Whether you choose to be a creator, a participant, or a blend of both depends on your strategy,” adds Robbin. “Certain types of small businesses are a natural fit with particular social media categories. For example, a speaker might post a video on YouTube, list events in online calendars (like Yahoo! Upcoming), and upload presentations to SlideShare. If you’re short on budget but long on talent, that may help you decide. Writers may choose blogs, videographers may choose content sites, social animals may choose networks, and subject experts may choose Q&As.”
Reaping the Benefits of Conversations
Once you’ve selected the right social media channels and sites for your individual situation, you’re ready to join the discussion, build relationships, and ultimately reap the benefits.
Recently, Network Solutions and the University of Maryland (UM) conducted a compelling study about the use of social media in small businesses. “Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service,” says Janet Wagner, Director of the Center for Excellence at UM’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “Time spent on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete.” Connie Steele, Director at Network Solutions, added, “Tough market conditions mandate small businesses to think and act creatively to sustain themselves. Social media can be the best friend for small business owners who constantly seek new ways to maximize productivity while keeping costs low.”
And those same challenges apply to most every marketer, no matter how small or large his or her organization may be. Eric Fletcher is the Chief Marketing Officer at McGlinchey Stafford (a commercial law firm based in New Orleans) and is one of the most popular CMOs on Twitter. He frequently writes about social media marketing-related issues. Eric says, “The ultimate goal of any social media marketing effort should be to enhance the brand and move forward on a continuum that leads to a new or deeper relationship with the target. Nothing accelerates the establishment and deepening of relationships like the give-and-take of conversations on social media.”
Eric is also acutely aware of the budgetary challenges marketers are facing today. “In an environment where marketing budgets are frozen (if not shrinking), a robust social media strategy is based more on the investment of time than dollars,” he notes. “We have always understood two things: the value of word-of-mouth marketing and the need to ‘fish where the fish swim.’ In social media, those two essentials come together—giving any enterprise, regardless of budget, a way to have a daily conversation with a world of prospective customers.”
Posted in Blogs, Budget, Channels, Content, Conversations, Customers, Facebook, Kent Huffman, LinkedIn, Marketing, Relationships, SlideShare, Small Businesses, Strategy, Tools, Twitter, Word of Mouth, YouTube | Comments Off on Social Media Marketing on a Shoestring
By Margaret Molloy, Chief Marketing Officer at Velocidi
Since attending the SXSW Interactive Festival in March, a number of CMOs have asked me for my key takeaways from the event. Articulating these succinctly has not been easy. After all, SXSW provided such valuable insights into new technologies, inspirational speeches, and fantastic networking opportunities. Upon reflection, I can summarize my key learning in a few words: get back to basics.
The pace of the technological evolution is dizzying—racing to keep up with it can cause us CMOs to lose site of the big picture. Digital platforms are not an end in themselves, they are tools that help us more efficiently do what we’ve been striving to do for years: engage customers, know them, guide strategy, and achieve growth and influence in our markets.
Based on this premise, here are eight imperatives to guide us through our rapidly evolving digital landscape, garner internal support, and achieve growth:
- Align all digital marketing activities with your company’s business goals. Focusing on the bottom line will help you choose the right platforms to engage your customers and build the digital initiatives to help you achieve the right results. (Remember that innovation and learning can also be excellent desired outcomes.)
- Manage your brand’s digital presence (web, social) with the same vigilance as your CFO manages cash flow. A well-executed digital presence—and the appropriate investment in it—will yield the customer data and engagement required to drive business strategy and impact your company’s valuation.
- Know your customers in a better, deeper, more textured way than your competitors do. Leveraging social media platforms to understand your customers’ personal interests, preferences, and motivations can provide you with data required to drive powerful new marketing campaigns.
- Embrace customer segmentation and pricing with discipline, or risk margin erosion. Given the degree of price transparency and ease of information sharing online, your margins need constant vigilance—not all customer segments require discounts to establish loyalty, referrals, advocacy, and repeat purchases.
- Channel your inner educator, specifically your economics 101 professor, when addressing digital marketing tactics with management. Train your executives on the strategic metrics for your business, or risk them defaulting to the popular definition of ROI (number of followers, website impressions, etc.). If management doesn’t know how to assess and measure the effectiveness of digital marketing initiatives, it’s not realistic for them to fund the programs.
- Strive to balance long-term customer relationship building with lead generation, activation, and sales objectives. Avoid the temptation to jump in and close a prospect on the first signs of potential interest, or risk losing them.
- Consider your brand a publisher and be clear on your content goals—education, entertainment, community building, etc. Draw on the entire spectrum of content (brand-generated, partner-created, user-generated, curated, etc.) to select the right mix to cost-effectively engage your customers.
- Be authentic in your customer engagements through all communications channels. Customers are smart, well connected, and can easily identify insincere behavior and expose questionable tactics—honesty remains the best policy.
Focusing on these imperatives will ultimately provide you with a compass to guide you through the evolving digital landscape and toward the digital programs that will help you achieve your business goals.
Posted in Branding, CMOs, Competitors, Content, Customer Intimacy, Customer Retention, Customer Segmentation, Customers, Engagement, Honesty, Innovation, Loyalty, Margaret Molloy, Marketing, Measurement, Metrics, Monitoring, Pricing, Relationships, ROI, Strategy, SXSW, Transparency | Comments Off on SXSW: 8 Essential Takeaways for CMOs
By Gary Schirr, Professor at Radford University
Like many of you, I sign up for the free influence-measuring sites. I am skeptical of all of them but check out my scores and those of online friends. I am well aware that I am no Justin Bieber (Klout score 100) or Barack Obama (Klout score 87) in online influence. But I take comfort if I am near the scores of tweeters I admire, such as @CKBurgess, @KentHuffman, @ChuckMartin1, @DavidAaker, and @WareMalcombCMO.
I find early efforts to measure influence interesting, but I am concerned that parties are taking these fledging measures seriously and making decisions based on them. Some tweeters choose who to follow by their influence score. A recent Wall Street Journal article discussed the importance that businesses are assigning to Klout scores: marketing freebies and even job offers may be tied to Klout scores.
Although I am not concerned that my tenure committee will pass me over for Justin Bieber or Britney Spears, I worry whether the influence of the influence measurers may impact SM communities. If tweeters believe that their online status, likelihood of being followed, and even employability may be affected by these measures, they will adjust how they act. A well-known management dictum notes that nothing can be managed until it is measured. The relevant corollary is that what is measured will affect behavior: bad metrics can lead to bad behavior!
Will the clout of Klout cause loutish behavior in social media? @Econsultancy summarized the flaws of Klout’s measures in a recent blog post. And in one study by @Adriaan_Pelzer, a bot achieved a 51 Klout score in 80 days simply by 1) tweeting gibberish once a minute and 2) not following back new followers. Senior officers at Klout responded to that study (and similar ones) by noting that they were working on algorithms to spot bots. Klout proposes to attack the symptom head on (who wants to be fooled by a bot?) but downplay issues of the metrics themselves.
What kind of “community” will Twitter be if everyone follows these “winning” behaviors? Do you judge tweeters by quantity of tweets? Is it optimal to have 10 times as many followers as people followed? Phillip Hotchkiss, Chief Product Officer at Klout and a serial start-up entrepreneur, commented on an earlier post I wrote on this issue. His most interesting observations are that Klout’s metrics are always being modified to measure influence, and that Klout is trying to differentiate between “bad bots” and “good bots.” It is good to know that Klout is constantly evolving in pursuit of good influence measurement. Phillip’s “good bots” are a little scary. Maybe there is a good science fiction story there!
Be wary of even well-intentioned measurers. For example, many researchers believe that U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings hinder educational innovation by focusing on reputation and resources that please faculty, rather than cost/benefit measures that apply to most services. Similarly, focusing on factors such as tweets that generate action (regardless of content) and on follower/followed ratios could impair Twitter’s evolution.
Be wary of these developing measures. Do not let the measures affect your behaviors or enjoyment of social media. Do not make hiring decisions based on Klout, unless you honestly believe that Justin Bieber is the perfect 100 and the most influential person online! And please, please don’t start tweeting every three minutes!
Posted in algorithms, Analytics, Bots, Community, Engagement, Gary Schirr, Influence, Klout, Marketing, Measurement, Monitoring, Research, Twitter | Comments Off on Influence Measurers: Will Klout Kill Community?
By Luis Gallardo, Managing Director of Global Brand & Marketing at Deloitte
“Think global, act local”—commonly referred to as “global-local” or “glocal”—is more than just a tagline describing the cross-border pollination of ideas and products of today’s global economy. It was originally used as a rallying cry for people to consider the health of the entire planet and take action in their communities. Today, it takes on a much broader context. From environmental to public policy to business, many have even embraced the “think global, act local” mantra as the philosophical foundation of running a successful global brand.
But why exactly are political pundits and global economists drawn to the ideals of this ubiquitous framework? Does it really provide the context for which organizations and businesses of all sizes can respond to rapid shifts within our economies of scale?
From my point of view, up to now, “think global, act local” has only scratched the surface of this tremendously complex issue. What we need now is a 360-degree view of how we can best prepare businesses for sustained, long-term profitable growth. What we need now is to “think holistic, act personal.”
Global vs. Holistic
Simply put, global is too broad and undefined. It implies that we should standardize and lead from the center, so that we can better drive efficiencies that meet the burgeoning demands of local markets. This is in stark contrast with thinking holistically, which I define as the ability to take into account complex linkages and interconnections in order to facilitate decision making of the highest order.
It is no longer enough to “think global.” We must:
- Gain appreciation of the world at large, and in turn, know how to best position organizations to win the supreme jackpot of sustained profit and growth
- Capture interlocking elements, interdependencies, and synergies of the commercial environment
After all, with brand as the pathway to value and gaining the recognition organizations deserve in the marketplace, what better way to drive that distinction than by thinking holistically about business?
Local vs. Personal
Similar to thinking globally, acting locally does not touch upon the essence of human behavior—what we do or don’t do in response to change, challenge, and the status quo. Acting personal, however, mirrors human dynamics and the multi-dimensional profile of each individual. Acting personal allows you to engineer communities, making messages and actions a relevant and timely response to the big picture needs of people.
At Deloitte, we see the benefits of acting personal in our social media efforts every day. Addressing the individual concerns and aspirations of our stakeholders—talking to them about what they really care about—drives the engagement to boost client and employee satisfaction, retention, profits, and multi-stakeholder advocacy. It has the capacity to not just act but to deliver “happiness” with each experience.
Thinking holistically about the recent tragedy that occurred in Japan, we can’t forget to consider how one tsunami has caused nearly half of the world’s most developed countries to reassess their nuclear strategies. The need to act local must be replaced with the need to act personal in order to go beyond action in our communities and address the specific needs of human suffering and post-traumatic stress.
Share with me your thoughts on “think holistic, act personal.” Follow me on Twitter or post a comment below. Do these terms help sustain growth and eradicate major challenges such as poverty, education, or sustainability related to business or the environment?
Posted in Community, Customer Retention, Engagement, Global, Glocal, Happiness, Holistic, Local, Luis Gallardo, Marketing, Relationships, Twitter | Comments Off on Why “Think Global, Act Local” is No Longer Enough
By Sam Mallikarjunan, Chief Executive Officer of Mallikarjunan Media Group
Part 3
Facebook Profiles for Brands
There are some cases in which profiles are very appropriate for brands, such as personal or celebrity brands. My profile, for example, is much more useful for me than a page would be, since it chronicles my personal life and allows for deeper levels of engagement with my friends. Also, profiles provide the unique ability to invite users to events, organize them into convenient lists, tag them in posts and photos, and interact on a far deeper level by commenting on their posts, links, walls, etc.
However, we must be mindful of the fact that many consumers still resent the intrusion of marketers into social media. Many of them find it bothersome enough that we have paid ads and pages. The fact that we’d intrude into their lives with profiles of our own may offend some.
Also, there’s an issue of scale when choosing between pages and profiles. It’s not Facebook’s intent that profiles be used for marketing businesses; therefore, they reserve the right to prevent you from making additional friend requests, which can severely limit the potential reach of your Facebook marketing efforts. So while Facebook profiles have some engagement features that may be more useful than pages, you must balance the advantages of pages and decide which is better for your company or brand.
Are you a personal brand, or do you want a deeper level of engagement with a smaller number of people? If so, consider a profile!
Facebook Apps
I remember when Facebook first opened themselves up for third-party application development. For a while, I checked every day to see what was new and what was the latest and greatest. Now, with countless apps being added every day, it’s almost impossible to keep up with them all.
Facebook apps provide a fascinating opportunity for marketers. If you can create an application that is useful to your consumers, whether they’re already your customers or not, you can create your own phenomenon to help put your brand in front of a massive audience of potential customers. If you can create a tool, game, or other system that builds value relevant to your consumers, you can do amazing things.
Can you think of any kind of neat app or game that would make using your product or service easier?
Tips and Tricks
Here’s a neat trick on how to use Facebook PPC for B2B sales: If you’re targeting a specific company, find out what city its corporate headquarters is located in. Then target fans of its page who live in the same city as the company’s HQ. Odds are, most or many of their employees (including senior management) are fans of the company page. This gives you a unique opportunity to put your ad right in front of their faces, and even create custom landing pages to capture their e-mails or phone numbers for follow-up campaigns.
What about you? If you know of other ways to use Facebook for marketing, or if you have any questions on what I’ve written here, feel free to comment below!
Posted in Apps, B2B, Branding, Content, Customers, E-Mail, Engagement, Facebook, Games, Marketing, Sam Mallikarjunan, Scalability, Social Games, Targeting, Tools | Comments Off on The Practical Marketing Applications of Facebook (Part 4 of 4)
Part 2
Personal Information
Interestingly, Facebook recently went through a big “scandal,” where applications such as Farmville and others may have compromised users’ IDs for some people on Facebook. Facebook’s history is fraught with concerns of privacy violations and what they’re willing to share with marketers. As a marketer who spends a lot of time trying to squeeze demographics data out of Facebook, I can assure you that gathering your personal information isn’t as easy as it sounds.
However, Facebook does allow sites and applications to request “extended permissions” to access additional personal information, such as e-mail addresses, birthdays, photos, and more. Facebook users can revoke these permissions, and for the most part, Facebook users seem very willing to grant extended permissions to applications. Again, though, you may want to build a basic and extended application that can utilize different levels of personal information. That way, users who are nervous about granting extended permissions can still register on your site.
Is there any information you’d like to gather? Birthdays? E-mail addresses? Locations?
Facebook Pages for Brands
Formerly called “fan pages,” Facebook now allows users to “like” specific brands, which connects them to the page that they’ve set up. These pages are the bread and butter of marketing on Facebook. However, they have advantages and disadvantages.
Traditionally, the consensus has been that “profiles” are for people and “pages” are for businesses. However, the functionality of Facebook has blurred those lines to a great extent, since pages and profiles each have unique features.
Users can “like” your page, and the information that you can gather about them is very limited. Your connection is also fairly limited. It shares some of the same features as profile pages, such as the ability to share photos, post status updates, share links, etc. It has some very unique advantages as well. It has a fairly robust reporting system, which gives interesting information on demographics. It also has the feature of FBML (Facebook Markup Language), which allows you to code custom HTML landing pages. This is very useful for creating vivid landing pages to capture e-mail addresses, show off special offers, and anything else you can imagine in HTML.
Facebook also has a very interesting pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system with which you can advertise your page. Also, users can “like” it with a single click. This is fantastic for getting off the ground and building more fans. In also has a very unique target system. Since Facebook’s PPC ad system is technically paid traffic, I don’t classify that exactly as social media marketing, and we’ll have to discuss that in its own article.
Do you want scale of interaction or quality? If you have hundreds of thousands of consumers to connect with, consider a page.
Part 4
Posted in Advertising, Demographics, Facebook, FBML, HTML, Interaction, Marketing, PPC, Privacy, Sam Mallikarjunan, Scalability | Comments Off on The Practical Marketing Applications of Facebook (Part 3 of 4)
By Sam Mallikarjunan, Chief Executive Officer of Mallikarjunan Media Group
Part 1
“Like” Me!
The most well-known is the Facebook “like” button. Whereas Facebook used to give users the option to become “fans” of something—be it a brand or company or person—they can now “like” something with a single click. The “like” button is easy to install on any website. If used properly, it allows the owner of the page to publish updates into the news feeds of all the users that “like” that page. This is incredibly valuable, as it makes it easy to turn a single visitor into a returning one without having to capture an e-mail address. Whereas e-mail marketing has long been the predominant information-capture focus of most websites, gathering “likes” is quickly gaining in importance. The Facebook “like” button should be on every page of your website, and you should use the people that like it to create sticky traffic by publishing relevant updates into their news feeds.
You can incentivize people to “like” your posts and pages using different methods. First and foremost, organic “likes” will be the most valuable. People who genuinely appreciate your content are more likely to be great customers, brand loyal, and engaged on your page, as well as share the content with others. However, you can stimulate activity with incentivized contests and games. A favorite strategy of mine is to make a post (either on the brand’s Facebook page itself or on a blog) and say, “‘Like’ this post for a chance to win (insert something somewhat valuable here).” For example, if you’re writing an article about a cool inbound marketing service, you might offer a free consultation, a free month’s service, or even just a free T-shirt to a random winner from those who “like” the post or publish an update back into their news feeds to come back and win the prize.
Facebook also has an incredibly useful comments module which will allow people to leave comments on your website while logged into Facebook. Since there’s a small probability that some of your visitors may not have Facebook accounts, I’d strongly recommend that you create a back-up comment module, similar to the one on the CigarRobbie.com blog. This useful widget allows your users to carry the conversation about your page or brand back to their networks of Facebook friends, since by default, it will post back to their profiles. Essentially, comments now have the power to share your content far beyond just your own visitors and into each of their social networks. This module also includes a “like” button with the same features and flexibility.
Add a Facebook “like” button to every page on your site, and decide what relevant content you want to share with those who click it.
Easy Logins
There is a great deal of value in having users be able to login and register at your site. It can create unique user accounts for them or create a unique experience. The need to identify one user from another is as fundamental to any other site as it is to Facebook itself. Many sites, such as Formspring.me, now allow you to register for their sites with a single click rather than the formerly arduous process of registering at a site by entering your name, age, state, zip, e-mail, gender… you get the idea.
Remember that Internet marketing is much like electricity. Users will take the path of least resistance, but the more resistance (i.e., steps) in the process, the more people that you’ll lose—whether it be user registrations or value conversions. By making it incredibly simple to register an account on your site by using Facebook’s one-click login, you’ve instantly created a system that’s easy to use with low resistance. Also, by integrating it with Facebook where users can revoke access and permissions, you’ve made people feel more comfortable than they may have been giving you their personal or contact information to begin with.
Keep in mind that not everyone has Facebook, so you should offer other registration options on your site as well.
Decide if there is any reason to have a visitor register with your site. If so, make Facebook a one-click option.
Part 3
Posted in Blogs, Content, Contests, Engagement, Facebook, Games, Marketing, Networking, Promotions, Sam Mallikarjunan, Social Games | Comments Off on The Practical Marketing Applications of Facebook (Part 2 of 4)
By Sam Mallikarjunan, Chief Executive Officer of Mallikarjunan Media Group
Any business owner, from the Fortune 500 to the corner liquor store, has heard about the tremendous potential of social media for Internet marketing. However, although everyone acknowledges and accepts that social media has great potential, and many of them know they should be involved, few people understand the specific, practical marketing applications for social media sites.
In this four-part blog post, I’m going to profile one such social media site: Facebook. I’ll also share some data that I’ve aggregated through my research. Keep in mind that there are many third-party applications that make using Facebook easier that I’ll profile as well.
What is Facebook?
Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla in the social media marketing world. The brainchild of Harvard geek Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook now has more than 500 million users (yeah, that’s about seven percent of the population of the entire planet) and has created a phenomenon of unprecedented scope and scale.
Hundreds of millions of people spend huge segments of their daily lives on this single site, interacting with friends, sharing content, playing games, and scheduling or organizing their social lives. It’s become a venue for collective action, knowledge, and an incredibly detail-rich (if personally detached) social environment. Users willingly share an incredible amount of personal information, and they greatly trust product and service recommendations made by members of their network.
Facebook has also created a incredible scale of off-site integration. Although many social sites—such as Twitter, Digg, Buzz, and others—have buttons that allow you to share content, Facebook has created a phenomenon with its social plug-in applications. Facebook’s Developers Guide is probably the best way to find out more about what options it offers and how to install them.
If you haven’t already, go to the Facebook site and create a personal profile for yourself.
Part 2
Posted in Buzz, Digg, Facebook, Interaction, Marketing, Networking, Sam Mallikarjunan, Social Games, Third-Party Applications, Twitter | Comments Off on The Practical Marketing Applications of Facebook (Part 1 of 4)
