The Power of Confident Writing 9 March, 2010, 7:29 am
There’s a wonderful European-style market and bakery in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas. They serve everything from made-to-order salads and sandwiches to chef-prepared, ready-to-eat meals.
But what I love most about the place is the sign on the door when you leave. It’s classic.
The sign doesn’t read “Please Come Again” or “Thank You for Your Business” or some other typical exit sign platitude.
It says . . .
“See you tomorrow.”
That kind of confidence is compelling and downright sexy. Sure, a fantastic product, service, or experience is the starting point from which confidence comes, but too many people play it scared and safe even when what they offer is truly great.
I’m not talking about arrogance. Arrogance is an indication of fear, not assurance.
Too many people, however, approach copywriting from a defensive mindset. You’re already back on your heels from the start, instead of proudly sharing your excellence with the people who can benefit most from it.
After all, if you’re not confident in your product or service, why should anyone else be? Confidence is a strong attractor because it assures people they’re making the right choice.
So, check out these tips for confident writing.
And we’ll see you tomorrow.
About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and wants you to know that Thesis + Scribe = SEO Made Simple. Get more from Brian on Twitter.
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What Do You Do When You Run Out of Knowledge? 8 March, 2010, 9:12 am
Bloggers have a distinct disadvantage.
When someone hires an expert in — oh, let’s say marketing — that expert can dispense the same information she did for the last client.
And the client before that one. And the one before that.
Not bloggers. Blogging is about breaking down everything you know into bite-sized chunks so that people can learn it all over a period of time. If they look back through the archives, they can often see the entire breadth of your knowledge.
Then one day, your well runs dry.
This is a scary moment for any blogger. It’s not like running out of inspiration or having writer’s block. This is when you’ve said it all. Your blog contains absolutely everything you know.
And let’s be fair — it’s a lot of knowledge. But you simply don’t have anything new to say.
What do you do?
Go get yourself some new knowledge
I’m always amazed by how few people continue to educate themselves on their topic after they’ve become an acknowledged expert in it.
Hey, everyone knows me as the number one guy on naked mole rats! Clearly, I know everything there is to know!
But as an old coach of mine used to say, you’ll never know everything there is to know in your field of expertise, and there’s always something new to learn. People make new discoveries and innovations every day. You have opinions about those innovations. You agree or disagree with them. You try them or manage to take them a step further.
Of course, if you don’t find out what those discoveries and innovations are, you don’t have anything to say about it. No wonder you’re stuck for posts.
Actively pursuing new knowledge about your area of expertise has a side benefit: it provides more value for your clients. You may find the inspiration for a new ebook or web course to help newcomers understand and benefit.
New knowledge could be the next big thing for your business — if you go out and find it.
Doctors are one of the few professions actually required to update their knowledge of their field of expertise continually. If a doctor doesn’t know the latest innovation in surgery, his next patient might die from the lack of that knowledge. That’s a huge incentive for the doctor to always be learning and for the patient — and the medical board — to insist on that continual education.
No one is going to force you to attend conferences or read books or take courses, but you’ll be much more respected as an expert if you continually update your knowledge. Your client’s life may not be on the line, but their business, their financial goals, and their happiness probably is — at least, their happiness with your products and services.
Where can you find new knowledge?
Well, you may not have heard about this gizmo called the internet, but it’s pretty handy for that sort of thing. It seems silly to mention using the internet to upgrade your knowledge on an online blog, but shocking numbers of people don’t use it for this particular purpose — even those who practically live online.
Libraries are an awesome (and free) resource for new knowledge too, and so is your local bookstore. Go pick up some new literature and get someone else’s perspective on what you do.
Magazines and trade journals, of course, are terrific for more recent innovations and information. Find ones that focus on your area of expertise and stay on the lookout for new ideas that sound interesting or innovative. Once an article grabs your attention, go do some independent research on that topic and find new resources to pursue.
Actively pursuing new knowledge won’t just make you a better businessperson — though that’s reason enough right there. It’ll also pretty much guarantee that you’ll never run out of blog topics ever again.
About the Author: For new knowledge that makes you a better businessperson — and that helps you hit the bullseye of success for your freelancing career, check out Men with Pens — or better yet, grab the RSS feed here.
10 Proven Steps to Snag a Guest Post on an A-List Blog 5 March, 2010, 7:44 am
Guest posting is the “in” thing. It’s the newest craze. All the kids are doing it!
You’ve heard it time and time again — guest posting is the best way of promoting your work. So why haven’t you become part of the hip crowd yet?
I know why. You’re scared of rejection. You’re not sure if you have the chops.
I can understand these feelings, but don’t get yourself down just yet.
I’m going to show you a surefire, bulletproof, unshakable, watertight, virtually guaranteed (insert as many hyperboles as you see fit) method of putting together a guest post . . . and it getting accepted.
But wait, there’s more! (Here comes the added bonus sales pitch.)
Not only will it get approved on just any two-bit blog in your niche, but on the most highly subscribed top A-list blogs themselves!
OK, let’s begin.
1. Visit your favorite A-list blog and read their guest posting guidelines
They’re at the top of your RSS reader and you read their posts every day, but did you even know there were guidelines for submissions? It might be a good idea to check them out before you do anything else. You never know what type of obscure archaic rules have been handed down by the high and mighty overlords.
Like proper grammar. Spelling. Having a clue. You know . . . really weird stuff.
Whoa! Let’s back up a small step. Do they even accept guest posts? Oh, good. They do. Let’s move on.
2. Study the focus of their content and the target audience of the blog
Your favorite blog covers the movie industry. You write about ice fishing. It’s a perfect fit, right?
Of course not.
Before you put pen to paper (virtually, of course), figure out the type of reader your favorite blog attracts. Generally, successful blogs try to serve content that’s consistent.
How does that blog fulfill their reader’s needs? Focus your guest post idea on what matters to those readers.
Your favorite blog may or may not be in the same niche you are. If not, what specific expertise do you have that fits in and would be useful? Find a way to bridge this gap between the two worlds.
Has there ever been a movie released about ice fishing? Wait . . . actually, it looks like there has been.
3. Skim through the past 2-3 months of posts
No one likes reading about the same exact thing every day (unless you’re a tech blogger). Writing about a subject that has been handled ad nauseum won’t add much value to the readers at the current time.
See what specific topics the blog has been hitting recently. See which areas in which they’ve been lacking the past few weeks. Read some comments and find out what their readers want to know more about.
Mold your idea by focusing on the blog’s immediate needs. You’ll have a much greater chance of hitting a nerve and having your guest post accepted.
4. Write the guest post. Don’t ask. Just do it
I’m serious here. This is the most important step. Take your idea, sit down and write the post. Yes, in full.
Don’t pitch the idea. Don’t ask for permission. Don’t solicit. Just write the best post you can.
It’s a very fast-paced world of short attention spans. A-list bloggers are extremely busy.
The whole process of submitting your idea, exchanging pleasantries, getting correspondence back, creating the post, submitting that, sucking up a bit, receiving feedback, editing a final draft, submitting again, sucking up some more, having it approved, formatting sub headers, adding links, inserting an image, entering a bio, final suck-up, and scheduling the post . . .
It’s really time-consuming.
Eliminate more than half the chain of events by simply writing the post as if it’s getting published as is. The A-list blogger will highly appreciate the fact that you’ve made it easy on him or her. If your content is indeed useful, pertinent and written well, you’ll dramatically increase your chances of it getting green-lit.
You’ve given the blogger all he or she needs to do besides e-mail you back with a resounding “yes!”
What’s the worst case scenario? It’s declined. Pfffft! Your work still has value. Submit the guest post elsewhere or put it on your own blog.
5. Come up with a creative post title that looks appealing and clickable
We all remember some of your last few gems: Stuff I Like, Where I Had Lunch, and Things to Do.
Let’s not repeat those failed post title attempts.
Numbered titles work. Hyperboles work. Questions work. Action words work. Utilize a highly recognized and search-heavy keyword or two if you can.
If you need some inspiration, the best method is to look at the blog’s past post titles, especially those listed as the most popular. Get a sense on how the A-list blogger prefers to title his or her posts and take their lead. Imitation is the best form of flattery, right?
6. Search your favorite blog’s past content and link it to your post
Old blog posts are so . . . yesterday! The world changes quickly, so why would any of your favorite blog’s past 728 posts even be considered relevant today?
You might be right, but all I know is that Google loves ancient history.
I just realized this today . . . all the search results that come up are from the past!
According to many SEOs (yet not others — apparently, the acronym SEO stands for “Seriously, Everyone has an Opinion”), it’s beneficial to link to old posts in new content for search optimization purposes.
More important, it provides proper context to the ideas included and gives readers a sense of back story on a topic. Help them understand the subject in greater depth.
Throwing in some links to the blog’s cornerstone content helps the A-list blogger as well. It saves them time (as discussed in step 4) so they don’t have to miss a second away from the secret ninja meetings conspiring with all of the other A-listers.
7. Add your own short byline to the bottom of the post with a link to your blog
Why bother? A prominent back link from a PR6 site with 100,000+ subscribers probably doesn’t mean much to you, right?
Oh, I forgot. That’s one of the primary reasons you’ve written the guest post in the first place. Silly me!
You can always just have the A-list blogger write the byline. They have tons of time to check out your site and figure out the best way to describe what you do. Maybe they’ll even get your name right.
Or you could play it safe. Write a short sentence or two that simply describes your blog and who you are. Nothing outrageous or over hyped. Unless you’re Johnny B. Truant.
Shamelessly self-promoting yourself is fine, but making it out that your blog “ToTaLLy roXorZ 4 LiFe!” is overdoing it just a bit. Remember, it’s going to be perceived by the reader as the A-list blogger’s voice — so if you can’t imagine him or her saying it, then you’ve gone too far.
8. Submit your guest post via the preferred method of contact
Using the A-list blogger’s geotagged location and delivering the post via bike messenger as they’re walking back from lunch — that’s just a bit too forceful downright creepy.
There’s no need to try and surprise the blogger in your creativity in getting the post to them.
This is where the guest posting guidelines come in handy. It’s very likely they’ll tell you exactly where to submit the post. When in doubt, the contact form on the blog itself is always the best bet.
Include nothing extraneous to the actual guest post content, other than a very short introduction showing your intentions.
Remember step 4? Of course you do. Don’t take the A-lister’s time for granted by droning on for 17 paragraphs about yourself, your blog, your thought process, your broken childhood, your aversion to baked beans, or your last trip to the Andes when you survived 72 days in the frigid cold by feeding off the dead bodies of your fellow Uruguayan rugby teammates.
Sucking up, on the other hand, is okay. Trust me.
9. Find a friend with a connection
If you’ve been a good little blogger, you’ve been using social media platforms to connect with peers in your niche. Although you desperately try to get attention by retweeting every single post of the bigger fish, it’s better to aim for someone lower down in the food chain.
B and C-listers love helping out the “small fries” because it makes them feel like an A-lister!
Skim through the target blog’s last few months of guest posts and see if there are any familiar names as authors — ones who you have developed a relationship with online. Well, now it’s time to call in a marker.
Don’t be shy, but don’t be pushy either. Tell them you’ve submitted a guest post to the blog. Simply ask them if they wouldn’t mind giving the blogger a quick “heads up” about it. There’s no need whatsoever for a glowing endorsement.
Popular bloggers are pitched post ideas all the time — a majority from people who are complete strangers (many they’d like to keep that way). Your goal is to just have your name recognized and stand out a little from the pack. That’s all.
10a. Bask in your glory
If you were able to pull off the first 9 steps, congratulations! You’re one of the few people who actually implement what they read. Of course, the A-list blog will probably publish your guest post on a “filler” low-traffic day. C’mon, you’re a blogger — you always need something to complain about!
10b. Live to fight another day
The A-list blogger still passed on your guest post? Don’t worry, you can always pitch it somewhere else or put it on your own blog.
First though, you must write an inflammatory post that knocks the A-lister off his or her fancy pedestal. They obviously don’t appreciate their community if they’re unwilling to accept your undisputed brilliance.
[Editor’s note: You guys do know he's kidding, right?]
While you’re at it, send me a really nasty e-mail bemoaning my advice. As a concession, I’ll put up your work on my blog. I’m sure my visitors would love to read your guest post titled: “7 Things I Like To Do When Ice Fishing For Dead Bodies In The Andes”
About the Author: Jordan Cooper is a 13-year professional stand-up comedian who showcases his sarcastic humor with videos and written rants about blogging, social media & marketing at Not A Pro Blog.
How to Give Yourself a First-Class Online Business Education 4 March, 2010, 8:05 am
When I first had the insane brilliant idea to start a business and get out of the alleged safety of the corporate world, I started by reading everything I could find.
I wish I could remember where the thread started for me. It might have been Dan Kennedy, it might have been Michael Port, it could very well have been the Personal MBA.
Each good resource led to three more. At some point, I found Copyblogger and Problogger and Seth Godin.
Hundreds of books and thousands of dollars in information products later, I’ve given myself an education. Was it expensive? Sure was.
But no more expensive than anyone’s education. Even an education that’s completely free is expensive in time and effort.
And just like a college senior ought to be able to get more out of a class than his freshman counterpart, I’ve gotten very good at efficiently extracting the information I need, leaving aside what I don’t, and avoiding the information that’s just not worth my time.
(Because yes, I still study compulsively, all the time. There’s always more to learn.)
Most of us who run online businesses get an education pretty similar to mine. We get some free stuff from our favorite blogs, we might pay for some information in a home study course or an ebook, and we cobble together a lot from pure observation.
Today I’m going to talk about what I’ve learned, so if you’re a little earlier on the path you can avoid some blind alleys.
It’s always about the fundamentals
Maybe you’ve heard of the Pareto Principle. (It’s also called the 80/20 rule.) It’s the observation that, in an amazing variety of circumstances, 80% of the output comes from 20% of the input.
Which means that 20% of your customers provide 80% of your revenue. 20% of the time you spend behind your computer provides 80% of your best work. And 20% of that great meal you had last night provided 80% of the pleasure. (It was the chocolate mousse cake, wasn’t it?)
Because of the Pareto Principle, there’s always a “20%” you should be spending your time on. And in just about every discipline, it’s known as the fundamentals.
Most people race through the fundamentals so they can get to what they consider the fun stuff — the esoteric, “advanced” weird material that no one knows.
Do you think the fundamentals in your topic are kind of boring? In that case, how do you feel about mastery?
The fact is, real masters of any endeavor get scary good at the fundamentals. Read the biography of any massively successful person you admire, from Michael Jordan to Warren Buffett, and you’ll discover someone who got freakishly good at what the wannabe hot shots look down on as “the boring basics.”
Understand Pareto’s 20% in your field, and work on it over and over again.
Then work on it some more.
Inspiration is great, but execution pays the bills
There’s one guy in particular whose stuff I find wonderfully inspiring.
I always feel energized after reading his paper newsletter or listening to his CDs. I’ve got a renewed sense of enthusiasm for my profession, I’m filled with hope and energy, I’m ready for anything.
And all that is fine. The problem is, it lasts about 20 minutes.
Enjoy the inspiration, but don’t stop there. Instead, use the energy from all that inspiration and translate just one idea into an action (it can be incredibly small) you’re going to take to move your business forward.
Then take that action. Really take it, don’t just intend to.
Which leads to:
Just one thing
If the book, membership site, ebook, or home study program you’ve got is any good, you’ll probably have more to act on than you can actually get done this week, this month, or possibly this year.
It may be helpful to remember a piece of advice given by David Allen. You can’t do a whole project. You can only do your next action on that project.
Whether or not you’re a devotee of Allen’s productivity cult Getting Things Done (I am), the idea of the “next action” is critical if you want to move forward on anything complex.
Writing a rough first draft for your email autoresponder is a next action. Spending 20 minutes brainstorming ideas for cornerstone content (and putting them someplace you can find them again) is a next action.
“Learn how to start an online business” is not.
Don’t neglect little things because you’re looking for big results. Big things are made up of the execution of many, many little things.
Education for its own sake can be inspirational and fun (and I would have happily stayed a college undergraduate forever if that had been an option). But if you have practical goals beyond learning, remember to keep those goals front and center.
Revisit the most valuable stuff
Human beings are a novelty-seeking monkey. We’re so attracted to what’s new and different.
But keep an eye out for those rare resources that are worth visiting again and again.
When I had a commute, I used to listen to the same marketing CDs over and over again. They burned a neural pathway in my brain. The information became second nature, as automatic as changing the channel when Leno comes on.
Reread the classics in your field. For me, it’s Robert Cialdini’s Influence, Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, Eugene Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising, and a handful of decidedly old-school books on copywriting.
When you can get unabridged audio versions, pick them up in addition to the print versions, and listen to them when driving or on the train.
In the digital realm, I keep going back to Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets, our own Teaching Sells (I was a student before I ever dreamed of being a partner), and Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula.
I’m not looking for radical new insights. I’m looking for one small thing I can add to what I’m doing now.
Be ready to get bigger than you thought you would
When I started out with all of this self education, all I wanted to do was to convince people to hire me for copywriting gigs. I was good at that and I liked it, and I was itching to get out of that corporate job.
But by the time I figured out how to market my freelance writing, I realized that copywriting was a small subset of what I really enjoyed doing, and I wanted a bigger picture.
So if you’re going to expand your thinking, build new skills, take on a new mindset, and start making new neural (and social, and financial) connections, you may find your life shooting off in an amazing new direction that you never really thought was possible.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Ready for some high-quality free information? We’ve got you covered. Check out our newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People. It’s a crash course on the fundamentals that will let you build a better online business.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and a co-founder of Inside the Third Tribe.
Give and Grow Rich: The Power of Focused Generosity 3 March, 2010, 6:52 am
There are two kinds of people on the Internet: the greedy and the generous.
The greedy want you to pay for everything. Every link is an affiliate link. Every recommendation has a profit motive. The really good content is locked away until you fork over some money.
The generous want to give you everything free.
It never occurs to them that their time or expertise has value. They’re kind, selfless, giving, and (too often) dirt poor.
But there’s a third kind of person on the Internet. And yes, they belong to the Third Tribe you’ve been reading about.
This person understands that you can’t be greedy and build a following. But you also can’t just throw all your treasure to the wind. This is the person who understands the power of focused generosity.
To help understand this and get a little perspective, let’s look at how this works in the real (non blogging) world. It’s an idea that has been used by savvy marketers forever. Here are just two examples.
Example 1
The first act of generosity happened one December. I had recently ordered holiday gifts from Amazon. A package arrived in the mail from them, with a letter inside signed by Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and CEO:
Dear Friend,
With the holidays approaching, I wanted to thank you for making this year such an exciting time for Amazon.com. We really couldn’t have done it without you.
As a small token of our appreciation, we’d like you to have our special coffee tumbler (I’m particularly fond of this year’s quotes). May you use it in good health.
Thank you again for all your support, and best wishes for a holiday season filled with family, friends, and happiness!
I don’t drink coffee very often, but this little thank you struck me as particularly effective. You’ll notice that nowhere is there a solicitation for more business, but I felt so good about Amazon, I wanted to immediately log on and order a book . . . or anything.
Example 2
The second act of generosity came in the form of unexpected customer service from Current, a printer online that specializes in bank checks.
For some time I had been struggling with an ancient, plastic checkbook cover which was slowly deteriorating from hard use and age. (My wife is responsible for most of the “hard use,” but that’s another subject.)
It was a small thing, but I didn’t know how to go about getting a new one. So I wrote a note to Current explaining my problem.
To my surprise, a brand new checkbook cover arrived a few weeks later with this note, signed by the customer service manager:
Dear Check Buyer,
Thank you for your recent inquiry about Current Check Products. Enclosed are the materials you requested.
Current offers a full line of check products including checkbook covers, address labels and stampers. We also have a complete line of business checks — 3-on-a-page, laser/ink jet, continuous checks, and more. Call us for information.
If you have any questions or would like to place your order by phone, please call us TOLL FREE at 1-800-204-2244, Monday through Friday, 5 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and Saturday 6:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Mountain Time.
Once again, thank you for your interest in Current Check Products. We look forward to serving you in the future!
Cool! I had expected them to send me a web address or catalog so I could order a new checkbook cover. The fact that they just sent me one — placing my problem above their profits — impressed me greatly.
The note was clearly written for general inquiries. That suggests that sending my checkbook cover wasn’t part of their corporate policy, but instead a judgment call, a pure act of generosity for a loyal customer. A personal letter would have been a smart addition, but the gesture on its own works pretty well.
The power of focused generosity
You might shrug off these two small acts of generosity. But there’s something important going on here. And it’s related to the principle of reciprocity. Someone does something for you. Then you feel obligated to do something in return.
It might or might not translate immediately into a purchase. Instead, it could be tweeting your content, recommending your email newsletter, linking to one of your blog posts, or otherwise getting the word out about what you have to offer.
Researchers — and yes there is an entire field of study dedicated to such matters — have referred to this idea of doing for others and getting something back in return as a “web of indebtedness,” a form of social interaction that is “central to the human experience, responsible for the division of labor, all forms of commerce, and how society is organized into interdependent units.”
In other words, being generous is a very big deal indeed. It’s the ultimate in guerrilla marketing. Much more than simply being nice, it’s a central, essential, and incredibly potent way to do business.
You might say that there is a “payback” urge hardwired into our brains. And it’s very difficult to resist. Remember the last time a friend insisted on paying for lunch? (No? Maybe you need new friends.) When it happens you immediately swear you’ll pay for the next one, don’t you?
Which is why you should spend more time thinking about how you can be generous on your blog or other online ventures, and a little less time thinking about how to bludgeon people to death with requests to buy, buy, buy.
Those who get the most tend to be those who give the most, while also keeping a few desirable items that they aren’t afraid to sell.
Making generosity work for you
Okay, so how does this work as a business strategy online? Here are a few pointers.
Offer something free. It can be an ebook, a blog tool, a product sample, a subscription to a genuinely terrific newsletter, or any form of valuable information. It can be anything really, as long as it’s free and relates to your core product or service.
One newsletter I subscribe to used to barrage me with products to buy. I was just about to unsubscribe when suddenly the publisher started being generous, sending occasional emails with valuable information and tips with no hard sales pitch. That made the other more product-focused emails a lot easier to swallow, and I remain a loyal subscriber to this day.
Give something beneficial. Of course you have reasons for being generous, but don’t make people feel manipulated. Do something for the recipient’s benefit. No conditions. No self-serving verbiage.
Allow the “payback,” if and when it happens, to come naturally.
Not only does this make you more likable, it can actually change the way you think about people. They stop being “marks” or even “prospects,” and start being real people you honestly care about. And that will come through in your content.
Give something of value. What you give should have real value for the person on the receiving end. If you run a blog on financial planning and want to “upsell” your readers to a paid online seminar, don’t just give them a self-serving “tease” that piles on the sales patter . Offer an informative sample of the course with solid value even for those who don’t sign up.
Put a personal face on your gift. Take off the corporate suit and tie. Don’t have the gift coming from your “business.” It should come from you personally. It is much easier to feel indebted to a person than to a faceless, formal company. And people are more likely to be loyal to you as a person than to your business empire.
Nice guys finish first
Here’s another classic example from the offline world, and this one may be revealing my age.
Ever heard of Amway? Years ago, some bright business person got the idea to have distributors go door-to-door and give homeowners a package stuffed with cleaners, deodorizers, and other product samples.
They called this package the “BUG.” The distributor would leave a BUG with a homeowner for up to three days with no cost or obligation. They only asked that the homeowner try out the products.
Later, the distributor would come back to pick up the BUG and, of course, to ask for orders. By this time, having used the products for free for so long, the homeowner felt obligated to buy something from this generous distributor who seemed almost naive in his trust and generosity.
Just how successful was this nice guy approach? As one Amway distributor put it, the response was “Unbelievable! We’ve never seen such excitement. Product is moving at an unbelievable rate . . . .”
The point is that you should consider what people really care about. Instead of always asking yourself, “How can I squeeze more money from people?” occasionally ask yourself, “How can I help people?” In most cases, focused generosity ends up being more profitable in the long run.
About the Author: Dean Rieck is one of America’s top freelance copywriters and publisher of Pro Copy Tips, a blog that provides copywriting tips for smart copywriters.
Final Lessons Learned from One of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters 2 March, 2010, 8:28 am
This is the final installment of a three-part series on how to translate advice from marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment.
One of the smartest thing any online marketer can do is to study the “old school” guys who wrote direct mail, magazine ads, and other artifacts of advertising history.
Why? Because it took a tremendous understanding of the psychology of persuasion to make those tactics work.
When you pair shiny new communication technology with tried-and-true methods to persuade and sell, you hugely increase your odds of success.
So let’s continue exploring what old-school guru Dan Kennedy can teach us about 21st-century marketing. This week we’ll cover lessons 11 through 14 from Kennedy’s book The Ultimate Marketing Plan
I can’t promise these tips will make cash start spewing out of your laptop. But they do represent a lot of sound business thinking.
(Incidentally, the links to the book are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you buy it, I’ll be able to buy a pack of gum! Put any of this advice into action and you should get quite a lot more out of the deal.)
11. Create a short-term sales surge
One of the factors that plagues most small businesses, especially when they’re starting out, is a shortage of cash.
Creating quick “sales surges” is one of Kennedy’s specialties, and he has a lot of suggestions for how to do that. (For more ideas, I can strongly recommend picking up his book.)
Essentially, though, all the variations come down to one basic strategy:
Make a great offer.
Limit it in time, number of copies you’ll sell, or both.
Make sure you come up with a good story or reason for the promotion.
Kennedy, as you can imagine, gives some rather old-school ideas like red tag sales or “My accountant thinks I’m crazy!”
He also likes to pluck interesting themes out of current events. For example, at a recent conference he invited loyal customers to bring old copies of his products in a “Cash for Clunkers” promotion.
Kennedy’s creativity is mostly involved in coming up with a reason for his promotions. But if selling information is part of what you do, you can also create a brand-new product for your “cash surge.” It doesn’t have to be extensive (it’s annoying how often we’re short on both cash and time). In fact, you can offer something that you develop over the weekend.
These “surges” can help any business, small or large, get through the lean times and amplify earnings during the best. And not only do short-term surges bring in cash, they also build your list of customers, strengthening your business for the long haul.
12. Take Advantage of New Marketing Technologies
As you might imagine, readers of Copyblogger are well ahead of the curve here. If any of these are missing from your current communication mix, you can very profitably add them to make your business stronger.
Audio, Video and Webinars: Record a meeting, training or presentation and post it to the web where you can repeatedly benefit.
Autoresponders: With a great autoresponder series, you can write copy which is delivered in a sequence, regardless of when a prospect signs up. This will enable you to automate your marketing and free up time to refine other aspects of your business. And they’re great for creating rapport and trust with your customers.
The next hot communication technology. Kennedy is a notorious technophobe; he doesn’t personally use email or the web at all.
But like many smart businesspeople, he’s willing to make money with new technology even though he personally dislikes it. In fact, Sonia seemed to have experienced a warm reception when she recently spoke at one of his conferences.
As long as a marketing tactic is ethical, be willing to consider it even if you aren’t personally a fan. If you hate Facebook but that’s where your customers are, you may want to suck it up.
13. Avoid employee sabotage
For those who use VAs or other employees (whether they’re on a contract or a regular payroll), there are some special areas to watch out for.
Employees are a reflection of both you and your business. Whether they are ringing up sales or answering email, they are ambassadors for your policies, and for how you feel about your customers.
In my first business, there were times when I would leave my shop on an errand only to come back to a rather unpleasant surprise.
“You said WHAT?”
“To who?!?!”
Delegating is a great thing (and usually necessary if you want your business to grow). But you must be the captain of your own marketing ship, as well as the navigator and the crew.
Even the most valuable employees are still just that — employees. And no one will ever care as much about your business as you do.
This is one reason the Partnering Profits model makes so much sense in the online world. Small businesses are easier and easier to create. It makes perfect sense to partner with people to run them with you, sharing the workload and the profit.
14. Hiring and firing experts
Learn from the best, but take everything with a grain of salt.
I’ve bought and absorbed numerous info products over the last year. Some were good, some were great, and a few were barely better than lousy.
Nevertheless, even the worst has taught me something.
You won’t learn it all in a day or a download, nor should you expect to. Someone asked an awesome question in Sonia’s Remarkable Marketing Blueprint forum the other day. They wondered, “What’s the point in having memberships in different sites, like Lateral Action, Third Tribe Marketing, and the Blueprint?”
I’m a member of all three, so I’m happy to share my thoughts on that.
There isn’t a single download that holds all the answers. Like life, we pick up a bit here and a bit there, all of it blending to make us who we are. We experience things differently at different times. True success is a slow and steady climb, rung by rung.
When you involve yourself with quality people who are putting out quality information, you get a better ladder. You still have to do the climbing yourself..
There is no guru or authority who can give you all the answers.
Not Dan Kennedy, not Brian Clark, not Sean Platt.
That said, you want to make sure you’re taking advice from someone who’s walked the walk.
In Cameron Crowe’s much-quoted movie “Say Anything“, there’s a scene where the hero, Lloyd Dobler, is standing at the gas station listening to a handful of lonely men handing out relationship advice. To which Lloyd says:
If you guys know so much about women, how come you’re here at, like, the Gas ‘n’ Sip on a Saturday night, completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere?
Good question.
I would strongly recommend Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Marketing Plan as a powerful resource that should be in any copywriter’s toolbox. He’s “walked the walk” and advised thousands of traditional businesses. And with a little creativity, his advice works just as well in the new online environment.
Obviously, the book contains more information than I could squeeze into a few thousand words. But I hope the “Cliff’s Notes” version has been useful!
Read the other posts in this series
Lessons from one of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters: 1 – 5
Lessons from one of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters: 6 – 10
About the Author: Sean Platt writes direct response copy, as well as helping authors write, publish and promote their book. Follow him on Twitter.
The Critical Mistake that Keeps Bloggers Broke 1 March, 2010, 7:40 am
How I used a blog to attract thousands of subscribers my first week.
Why I make six figures and you don’t.
How I quit my day job and now I work all day in my robe and slippers while my wife brings me lattes.
Ever seen headlines like these before? Find them at least a little compelling?
Like every good headline, they exist to attract attention and convince you to keep reading. They’re trying to get you thinking about how to use a tool like blogging to make lots of cash.
But there’s something in those big promises that misses the mark.
Now that I have some experience under my belt as a blogger making an online income, I’d like to talk about the missing ingredient of those pitches.
It’s not about your blog
Lance Armstrong has a great book out called It’s Not about the Bike.
In his case it’s about one of his testicles. To be more specific, the one he no longer has.
The book is about how his bike became a vehicle in a bigger race than the Tour de France or his Nike deal, how his bike is a metaphor for life.
Lance and his tragic disease wouldn’t be famous without his bike. And as an online entrepreneur, you won’t be famous, either, without your blog.
That said, it’s still not about the blog. Not at all. The day you realize that fact is the day you’ll turn an essential corner toward reaching your goal of making a living online.
So what is it about, if not the blog?
It’s about your business.
Your blog and your business are different, yet related, things. The former is a sub-set of the latter. The difference is sometimes subtle, but it’s a critical one.
Your blog is a strategy, a branding and marketing vehicle, a means toward an end.
Your business is the money-making model. A product or service for sale.
Your blog isn’t for sale. It may be of service, but it’s a service you’re giving away for free.
Which means, if giving out free content is all you’re doing, or if your blogging has become the core deliverable of what you believe to be a business, your strategy is upside-down.
There’s nothing magic about a blog
When I started out, blogging not only seemed like a good idea — especially with all the voices that suggested you could get rich doing it — it was also incredibly rewarding right out of the gate.
Not monetarily. It was rewarding because of how it felt.
Connecting with people. Helping them. Sucking up all that nice feedback. Participating in a community, being part of a meaningful dialogue.
Those are, and should remain, part of the reasons you blog.
But if they aren’t your real objective, your end game — if making a living is an element you want to add to that mix — it’s time to take stock. Because it’s so easy to get lost in all that community stuff, the warm and fuzzy elbow rubbing, the sense of doing something helpful and worthwhile.
Which doesn’t pay you a dime until you actually sell something.
There will come a day when it hits you
You’ve been getting up in the middle of the night to perfect a post that will go out via Feedburner at dawn. You’ve sweated the syntax of your opening line and polished those nouns and verbs until you found yourself dreaming of your old high school English teacher.
You really care. You’ve become your blog. Just possibly, at the expense of your business plan.
It hit me recently in a post from David Risley, who is one of those “pro bloggers” who, if you don’t read him closely enough, or if you only hear what you want to hear, could lead you to believe that blogging will be the source of your new income, and sometime soon.
But on this day I did read closely, and what I saw there rocked my blogging world.
David, in essence, said this: blogs don’t make money. Businesses make money.
(You’ve seen that message here on Copyblogger as well.)
Your blog is the face of your business, the voice of your brand, the bait that attracts a following.
And yes, you give away as much as you can with it, selflessly and abundantly.
But until you have a product or service to sell, and until the blog connects to that enterprise in a way that actually begins to generate actual revenue in addition to pumping up your online reputation and ego, your blog is nothing other than you expelling positive energy into the universe.
Or, to put it another way, just so much hot air.
Looking for a free online resource that will teach you to think like a businessperson, not just another struggling blogger? Check out Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter.
About the Author: Larry Brooks is the creator of Storyfix.com, an instructional resource for novelists and screenwriters. His book, The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling, will be published by Writers Digest Books in early 2011.
The Mr. Rogers Guide to Blogging from the Heart 26 February, 2010, 7:56 am
As bloggers, we put a lot of effort into telling our readers how to do things.
We believe that if we can just give them enough informative content that they’ll subscribe to our blog and never leave. We try to become the best teacher we possibly can, instilling wisdom down into short, usable posts that our readers can put into action right away.
But what if that’s not what they really want?
What if they don’t want a teacher to tell them what to do?
What if all they’re looking for is a warm and understanding person who understands what they’re going through and is willing to love them, no matter what?
Someone like (you guessed it) Mr. Rogers.
Do you care how they feel?
Being a kid can be tough.
Everyone is always telling you to be quiet. No one wants to listen to what you think. Your parents make you go to bed, just when all of the fun is starting.
But not Mr. Rogers.
Fred Rogers made you feel like it was just you and him hanging out. He respected what you thought. He loved you, not because he had to (like your parents), but because he genuinely believed you were special.
After a while, you believed him. You felt special. You came back to the TV, day after day, just so you could feel that way again.
The best bloggers do that too. I read Copyblogger everyday for years before submitting this guest post, and it wasn’t just the information that kept me coming back. It was because, when I was done reading, it made me feel smarter, like I was one of the few people on the web who was truly in the know.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that’s a part of our job. Our job is bloggers isn’t just to inform our readers, but to make them feel special.
And yes, I realize it’s a little hokey, but I think Mr. Rogers can show us how. Listen to some of these quotes:
Lesson: For your audience to love you, first you have to love them. And they have to know it.
You know, I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is lovable. And, consequently, the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they’re loved and capable of loving.
How much do you care about your readers? I mean, really care?
Mr. Rogers didn’t just talk to children on television. He also visited them in person. On a regular basis, he would go out into public and ask kids about themselves. He would bend down and look little boys and girls straight in the eyes, so they knew he was fully focused on them. Then they poured their hearts out to him right on the spot.
No, he wasn’t compensated for that time, and neither are we. Most popular bloggers spend inordinate amounts of time reading every comment, responding to every email, and watching what people say on Twitter. None of this has any direct effect on traffic, but what it does is build goodwill. One at a time, your subscribers find out that you really care, and it transforms them from readers into raving fans.
Lesson: Before you can be a leader, first you have to be a neighbor.
Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal.
Mr. Rogers didn’t pretend to be better than the children who watched his show. He didn’t point out how young and ignorant they were. He didn’t appoint himself as an expert and command them to listen.
Instead, he decided to be their neighbor: someone just like them, who knew what they were going through, and was ready to help in any way he could, not because they were defenseless children, but because that’s what good neighbors do.
The same is true for bloggers. If you really want your audience to listen to you, you need to take the time to tell them your story, pointing out the ways you’re similar to them and inspiring them through your example.
Lesson: Create an environment where it’s okay to be imperfect.
I like you just the way you are.
Most kids are terrified, not just of getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar or their parents finding a bad grade on their report card, but of the possibility that they’ll do something so bad that their family will stop loving them. They believe that love is only for “good” children, and they worry that they don’t deserve it.
This quote was Mr. Rogers’ gentle way of correcting (and comforting) them. Over and over again, he would tell them that, “I like you just the way you are,” not just because it sounded good, but because it was what they needed to hear. They needed to know that love wasn’t conditional, and that they were safe enough around him to make mistakes and learn how to improve.
I believe it’s important for us to create the same environment for our readers. You may not realize it, but lots of your readers are probably intimidated by you, believing that they can never be as good as you are, and they’re afraid to reach out to you for help.
It’s important to remind them that you like them just the way they are. Maybe you don’t have to tell them as often as Mr. Rogers, but take a moment every few weeks to mention how impressed you are with the creative ways they’ve implemented your suggestions and how are honored you are to have them as readers.
It’s a small thing, but it matters.
Lesson: Keep what works, throw out what doesn’t, but always know what and why.
Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, existence is simply illusion.
Every day, Mr. Rogers honed his craft, paying attention to even the smallest of details.
One time, he asked a fellow actor to say “the dog is going back home” instead of “the dog is going back to his owner.” He didn’t like the word owner because it was too possessive for the children viewers.
He also stuck with what worked. “Won’t you be my neighbor?” wasn’t just the theme song for the show; it was a way to set the tone at the beginning of every episode, getting children ready to listen. And so he repeated it, show after show for years.
It’s our responsibility as bloggers to hone our craft in the same way. You should experiment, not just with headlines or post ideas, but with new openings, new closes, new pictures, and even new words. It’s how you improve.
And at the same time, take a lesson from Fred Rogers and don’t be afraid to repeat what works.
Lesson: Seize your opportunity
When will your opportunity be?
Every day that communicate from the heart, you have a chance to change the world.
Back in 1969, Nixon proposed cuts to PBS, leading the Senate to hold a hearing that would decide the future of the station. And who do you think appeared before them and melted their hearts with words?
Mr. Rogers.
He wasn’t the CEO. He wasn’t a Washington insider. He wasn’t even well-known to the committee. Yet he showed up, spoke from the heart, and transformed some of the toughest, most hardened politicians in the country into raving fans.
It was the opportunity to create change that many of us dream of, and he seized it. But here’s the real question:
When will your opportunity be?
Watch this video, and think about it. Because when it comes, we’ll be counting on you.
About the Author: Karl Staib writes about building stronger relationships and being happy at work: Work Happy Now! If you enjoyed this article, you may like to subscribe to his feed, follow him on Twitter, or read one of his most popular articles: How to Write a Career List.
Check out this preview of the Scribe SEO web-based application 25 February, 2010, 1:54 pm
This is a quick reminder that the Scribe introductory offer, where you get our most advanced plan for the Starter price, ends tomorrow, Friday, February 26, 2010, at 6:00 pm Central.
But I also wanted to share a video with you. It was created for current Scribe customers to let them know what’s coming next month, but I’m going to hook you up too.
It’s a preview of the Scribe web-based application. So while you can use Scribe right in your WordPress interface, you will also be able to use this web-based version to analyze any content before posting it online on any platform. Or analyze and optimize older content for any platform. Total freedom.
This is especially useful for professional web writers who create content for clients. The Scribe web version even generates an SEO analysis report that you can deliver to your clients along with the content.
This video preview was made by Sean Jackson (one of the technology ninjas behind Scribe) for our current customers. So trust me, it’s not a sales pitch. But it’s very useful for getting an idea how the Scribe web-based application works.
And if you decide to hop on board tomorrow with our great introductory offer, you’ll get Scribe Web during your very first month as a customer at no extra charge. You’ll also get every other version of Scribe we develop, all inclusive.
Check out the video preview of the Scribe web-based version here.
Take the Scribe for WordPress tour
Frequently Asked Questions
Take Scribe WP on a Free Test Drive
About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and wants you to know that Thesis + Scribe = SEO Made Simple. Get more from Brian on Twitter.
What Belly Dancing Taught Me about Personal Branding 25 February, 2010, 8:11 am
I’m learning to belly dance.
Okay, that’s totally overstating it. I’m wiggling to music in what is labeled a belly dancing class.
I’ve found that I enjoy the constant movement, manipulating my limbs and taking any excuse I can to be silly. But more fun than the belly dancing is the instructor.
She loves this stuff. Her eyes light up when she enters the room, her voice changes pitch, and she hops around throwing out euphemisms that make even the bravest people blush. She’s a complete fruit loop. And she’s loved for it. It’s her schtick.
Or, in marketing terms, it’s her personal brand.
Oh no, not another post about personal branding
We’ve been hearing about personal brands ad nauseum for the past year. Even if you’re not sure why you need one, you’re certain that you do. It’s like a 401k. Or a spouse.
The trouble is, most personal brands make everybody else want to jab forks straight into their eyes. They’re based on egos, false promises, and personalities so obnoxious that you’d never be friends with this person in real life.
But as my belly dancing instructor has taught me, you don’t have to build a personal brand on being an egomaniac. You can build your brand on simply being human. Or better yet, you can build your brand on being your favorite version of yourself.
How do you create a personal brand that will garner attention instead of hate? Here are some tips I’ve picked up from my experience on the Web.
And belly dancing.
Claim your niche
My belly dancing instructor doesn’t teach the hip hop class that takes place after her session. Nor does she teach the weekend kickboxing class. She’s limited herself to belly dancing because she knows that’s where she can offer the greatest value.
Trying to teach everything would undermine what she’s about and the tribe she’s looking to attract. She sticks to what she does better than anyone else.
Think niche. You can’t be known for everything. Pick what’s most important to what you do, break it down to its simplest core, and be it.
While Copyblogger has established itself as one of the Web’s top resources on content, Brian Clark has branded himself the master of headlines. It’s a tiny microcosm of the whole content creation space that he owns. It’s where he’s untouchable.
Create your character
Like I said, my instructor is a fruit loop. The moment you think you’ve seen everything, she ups the ridiculousness.
She tears her sweats so you can watch her legs curl, and refers to body parts in ways you wish you could erase from your mind. She knows who she needs to be to attract the right audience, and she plays up her quirks to do so. She builds a tribe that falls in love not only with her class, but with her. It becomes so that the class and brand are so intertwined that you can’t tell them apart.
Lots of people will tell you to “be yourself” in social media. I’d advise creating a persona that mixes who you are and who you want to be. This heightened version of yourself allows you to lose the performance anxiety and magnify the personality traits needed to attract the right people.
We fall in love with those who are brave enough to do what we think we can’t. As long as you’re basing your character off who you really are, you’ll be able to keep it authentic and still look great naked.
Treat people like humans
My instructor has been dancing for longer than I’ve been an adult. She’s trained in moves and styles that my stiff body can’t even comprehend.
But you wouldn’t know that by talking to her. She’s unassuming and talks to you like you’re old friends meeting up for coffee. And she keeps that tone even when instruction has begun. There’s no jargon to confuse us, no making things complicated so we feel dumb and she wouldn’t dare call herself an “expert” or a “guru.” She’s just someone who loves belly dancing and is excited about the opportunity to share it with us.
Finding your voice and using it to be relatable is what will make or break your personal brand. It’s what separates the brands we love from the brands we wish would die.
It’s all about your ability to talk to people in a genuine way and show them that you’re one of them. This is where most people get tripped up. We elevate ourselves thinking that it makes us more impressive and authoritative and that our audience will trust us more. Truthfully, all this does is alienate you from the people you’re trying to connect with.
Figure out what the real you sounds like, and then use that voice to be real with others. You can’t fake this.
Make your brand accessible
My instructor shows up to class early. She stays late. She takes questions in the middle of instruction and will show and re-show certain movements until you’ve nailed them. Her email address is publicly available so that students can email her with questions. She has an email newsletter to help us stay in contact with not only her, but one another.
She’s not teaching a class, she’s creating a community.
When you make your brand accessible, you help it grow beyond your niche. Become part of your community. Answer questions. Lift up those who are doing well. Share trusted information. Look for ways to extend your brand through blogging, guest postings [cough], email newsletters, and direct mail.
Everything that you put out should incorporate and promote your personal brand. The more people see you and your tribe, the more they’ll gravitate toward it. It’s social proof.
Your personal brand is you. It’s who you are, what you believe, and what you want to put out there to others.
Use the social tools available to be you as loudly as you can, while always offering a benefit to those around you. Your personal brand may be all about you, but it’s also about how you make others feel.
It’s emotional DNA, and what separates the personal brands we love from those we love to tear apart.
About the Author: Lisa Barone has the totally pompous title of Chief Branding Officer at SEO consulting firm Outspoken Media. She tries to make up for the title by blogging Important Stuff on the Outspoken Media blog and being amusing on Twitter at @lisabarone.
Make A Referral Week: What’s Your Idea? 9 March, 2010, 8:57 am
My friend John Jantsch invited me (and a bunch of other people you probably know, including David Meerman Scott, Guy Kawasaki, Rohit Bhargava and Chris Brogan, Ivan Misner, Bob Burg, Ben McConnell, Dan Schawbel, Anita Campbell, Lisa Barone, Scott Allen, Scott Ginsberg, Janine Popick, and Pam Slim) to participate in his second annual Make a Referral Week, which is this week (March 8 through 12). What’s Make a Referral Week? The goal is dead-simple: To give 1,000 referrals to 1,000 deserving small businesses across the country.
I love this idea. Here’s how it works: Make at least one referral to whomever you think could use new business, and add your recommendation here. Each day this week, one referral story will be chosen as the “best referral of the day” and both the referred business (and its source) will win signed marketing books.
How else can you help this so-called small business stimulus package?
• Share it on Twitter (via hashtag #marm)
• Blog about it on your own blog
• Add this badge to your site
There’s more happening this week to help small businesses learn how to leverage the power of referrals, including daily guest-posts on John’s blog and an online seminar.
MarketingProfs is a sponsor of this event, along with GoTo Webinar, PR Web, Constant Contact, Perkett PR, Palo Alto Software, Duct Tape Marketing Coach, Sage, BNI, Vertical Response, Verizon, alphagraphics, InfusionSoft, The Referral Engine, Gold Star Referral and Intuit. If you are a small business, BTW, you may already know that MarketingProfs has tons of content geared toward small business. But did you know you can browse our archives by that category here and here? (The latter, by the way, is our Small Business-centric newsletter: Get to the Po!nt Small Business. Do you subscribe?)
So how do you encourage more referrals for your business, or inspire customer love?
My take is that there are two fundamental approaches to generating more business: The first is to focus on making your existing customers insanely happy, so that they want to tell others about how much they love you; the second is to simply be a resourceor be helpful — to those who aren’t customers yet. That’s a sneak peek of what I write in my post running on John’s blog this week, and I offer 17 tactics on how to accomplish that. Watch for it over there .
So how about you? What’s your referral secret? Add it below?
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Related posts:Guest Post: Recessional Loyalty — Strengthening Your Business Through Retention, Repurchase and Referral
Business Week: Upward & Mobile
Registration Open for Driving Sales: What Works + What Sticks
Home Sweet Home Brands 9 March, 2010, 8:53 am
In recent days, I’ve been struck by how powerful the sense of “home” can be. Home is familiar, comfortable, irreplaceable. There’s an undeniable “belongingness” that can’t be replicated.
Stepping off on a hike last fall in New Hampshire, I was overwhelmed by the sense that I was back home in New England. No matter that I’d spent seven years in Tennessee, and a quarter-century in New Jersey. I’m a Connecticut boy, and the New England woods are home. Driving in and around Mystic CT last week, the trees and stone walls and topography and houses all felt like … home.
How powerful can it be, then, for a brand to become a “home” brand. So much a part of your life, that you are not comfortable without it.
From day one, the iPhone became a home brand for me. I can’t imagine not using it daily. Google is a home brand, indispensable, every day. A particularly helpful blogger can be a home brand for you. As can a certain make of car. Or a brewer, such as Samuel Adams.
One of the signs that something is a home brand is that price becomes almost irrelevant. I barely even look at my AT&T mobility bill for the iPhone. I don’t even think about writing a check to Amica Insurance. Price is secondary because it’s … home. Part of the family. And, just as we talk about our family members naturally and eagerly, so we word-of-mouth our home brands without any effort.
We all have our home brands, and if we’re marketers, we all strive to BE one of those home brands. Undoubtedly, you have a home brand or two that come to mind — share them in the comments!
(Image credit)
Related posts:Five Key Characteristics of Web Brands
Store Brands Give National Brands a Run for the Money
What Brands Do for Business
Chocolate: the New ‘Health’ Food? 8 March, 2010, 9:22 am
We’ve known for some time that naturally occurring compounds called flavonols found in cocoa have potentially good health benefits.
Ongoing scientific research suggests consumption of chocolate rich in flavonols may act as antioxidants to help defend the body from free radical damage. Researchers at Harvard and elsewhere have been studying the effects of cocoa flavonols on healthy blood flow and circulation.
Even the American Heart Association in its Scientific Sessions of November 2004 demonstrated in its study that Cocoa Via™ Snack Bars (based on Mars technology) consumed by adults twice per day saw a significant reduction in total—and especially LDL cholesterol.
And let’s not forget chocolate consumption provides a serotonin uptick in the brain; there’s nothing like releasing endorphins to make people feel happy!
So what’s the point from a marketing perspective?
Mars, the behemoth manufacturer of some of the world’s most beloved chocolate brands: Snickers®, Milky Way® and M&M’S®, has been proactive by supporting ongoing research for years to uncover the health benefits of chocolate. Fifteen years of research led to a patented, proprietary process dubbed Cocoapro® which retains the compounds in the cocoa bean.
Wise idea, right? Why not capitalize on consumer interest in healthier snack options? But this is no mere marketing ploy without substance.
Earlier this year, Mars and Swiss B2B chocolate supplier Barry Callebaut released a statement announcing they will work jointly to create a standardized measure to “increase the availability and uniformity of cocoa flavonol-rich chocolate products worldwide.”
This was announced in a Just Food article among other sources, including press releases from both companies.
“This agreement with Barry Callebaut will now guarantee reliable flavonol levels in more chocolate products around the globe,” stated Mary Wagner, general manager at Mars Botanical, a scientific unit of Mars.
In a nutshell: Careful handling of cocoa and measuring throughout the manufacturing process are necessary to ensure the important compounds in chocolate are delivered to consumers consistently, on a global basis. Otherwise much of flavonol benefits are lost in the manufacturing process.
I think this is a terrific strategy. As more science emerges, Mars will be positioned to capitalize: its brands will no doubt be marketed as containing “standardized flavonols” or “the ultimate flavonols.” Even better: Mars will no doubt be embraced as the chocolate company that took the initiative to make cocoa products healthier the world over. From a marketing perspective, it’s a brilliant strategy.
Questions:
• Would you be more likely to purchase Mars chocolate or another brand of chocolate if it marketed a “standardized flavonol” pledge to you? Do you think messaging about this will be understood by consumers if handled properly by marketers?
• Do you prefer to eat your favorite chocolate and just enjoy it without health-related information?
• Do you think confectionery and snacks, in general, will have to be “healthier” than they were in the past? Or is this a category where marketing decadence will always be acceptable to consumers?
I’d love to hear from you.
Related posts:Jumping on the Healthy Food Bandwagon
Chocolate Phone: Sweet Spot or Sour Taste?
AOL’s Cofounder Launches ‘Revolution Health’ Website
18 Use Cases That Show Business How to Finally Put Customers First 5 March, 2010, 11:56 am
Or: “Social and CRM: How Companies Will Manage Their Customer Relationships.”
Over the last six months, I’ve been working closely with Ray Wang who is well known as an expert in the Customer Relationship Management space. Coupled with my focus on social technologies, we did a deep dive on how our worlds are colliding into the trend to Social CRM. In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear we’re looking at the holistic business, across multiple business departments — not silos or roles.
A real problem is this: Companies are unable to scale to keep up with the social phenomenon.
We know that customers are using these social technologies to share their voices, and companies are having a very difficult time to keep up.
For companies, real time is not fast enough. Companies need to be able to anticipate what customers are doing to say and do, in order to keep up. Although Motrin responded to angry mom’s within 24 hours –it was too slow.
Companies are unable to scale to meet the needs of social. No matter how many community managers Dell and ComcastCares hires to support, they’ll never be able to match the number of customers happening. They need tools, and they need them now.
Customers don’t care what department you’re in they just want their problem fixed. Dooce’s support problem with Maytag quickly became a PR nightmare –had the support group known she was an influencer (and what it means), they could have serviced her better.
As a result, companies will need to tie their existing customer management tools like CRM to the social web. Read this report to find out about the 18 different use cases. Then, prioritize a roadmap based on your needs, and always start with listening.
Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management
View more documents from Jeremiah Owyang.
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‘Entitled’ Gen Y: How They Add to the Integrated Hybrid 5 March, 2010, 1:33 am
What are the first words that pop into your head when someone says Gen Y? Go-getter, enthusiastic, tech-oriented? Entitled was more than likely among the more colorful adjectives. Those ‘My Kid is an an Honor Roll Superstar’ bumper stickers really went to our heads.
So, why should you want Gen Y on your marketing or public relations teams? Besides the obvious need for molding, educating, engaging and reverse mentoring, Gen Yers bring unique perspective to the table; those willing to research and learn know how to network and revitalize campaigns.
Target Demographic
Oh, the 18-35. This general consumer demographic is one that is very general, but with social media in the mix, brands are trying to reach everyone and constantly come back to this specific one. Instead of focus groups and crowd-sourcing, it’s easy to have a Gen Y give insight and ask questions of their friends (who they trust more than a brand) and help cultivate more strategic tactics and objectives.
It’s Sometimes Difficult to Blog with Authority
Successful Gen Y bloggers are willing to admit when they don’t know everything … and will craft open-ended blog posts to drive conversation and discussion in the comments. Utilize the comments section as an open brainstorm, where many ideas can delve from. We don’t have the 20+ years experience that seasoned professionals have. We have a thirst for knowledge, keen research skills and the ability to process a lot of information at once.
Integrated Marketing Communications
Those that stand out in the Gen Y crowd are amazing networkers. They know how to talk with people of all levels and bring together teams. With Marketing/PR/Creative/Ad/social coming together for a kind of Marprosocial hybrid, its imperative to have those on the team that aren’t entrenched in the silos mentality. They just haven’t been exposed to it as much.
Pride in Agency/Organization Work
The Gen Yers you want on your team? They want to learn from you. They want to engage. If they don’t ask you first, take them out for coffee. They want a dynamic where everyone can work together. It’s not so much individualism as it is pride in an agency or organization. PR professionals can sometimes be their own worst promoters when it comes to promoting their firm. It’s in our framework to always put the client first. Utilize them in a community manager type role in conjunction with traditional duties.
So, what do you think? What would you add?
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Whatever Happened to Standing Behind Your Products and Services? 5 March, 2010, 1:31 am
Remember the days when you purchased a product or service and the company actually stood behind its wares? Well, looks like those days are waning. Unless, of course, you buy the product insurance! Now, there’s a great money-making rip-off.
It seems like more and more retail outlets are getting wise to the concept of marketing their own product insurance. And is this because they are thinking about you, the customer? Doubt it. This additional revenue must add decent profit to the bottom line because many stores have incentive programs for their employees. The more insurance they sell, the more bonuses they make.
I can somewhat understand this concept when it comes to electronic, electric, and other goods with microchips or moving parts. It seems that appliances, computers, and other big ticket items just don’t last as long as they did in years past. But, my friends, get this. Have you ever heard of insurance on shoes?
When Sports Authority sold me a pair of New Balance tennis shoes in December of 2009, I declined to purchase the added insurance, which can run up to $16, depending on the cost of the shoes. That’s supposed to cover usual wear and tear for up to one year. Do they think I’m nuts?
Well, two months later, the shoelaces completely fell apart, so I went back to the store to ask for new laces. The manager took a look at my bill and reminded me that I hadn’t purchased the insurance and that the warranty was only good for 30 days without it. But … this time only, he’ll let me have a pair of new shoelaces (worth $2.49 in his store). Gee, what a pal. After exploring the Sports Authority website, I discovered that shoelaces are not even included in the warranty, so I’d be out of luck anyway. Besides, the floor sales rep handed me the wrong lace length after I showed him the shoes, so the replacement laces were useless.
But, the bigger picture here is … what happened to standing behind the products they sell? Has manufacturing gotten so bad that retailers need to add this insurance to protect themselves from the multitudes of returns? Shouldn’t retail buyers ensure that the products they buy match quality for price? The guy in front of me at the store spent $155 on Nike runners and declined the insurance. If his shoes fall apart after 30 days, does that mean the store will tell him he’s out of luck for $155 shoes?
Why aren’t these retailers standing behind the products they sell and then dealing with their distributors or manufacturers after they look after their customers? If consumers continue to accept this practice and it becomes more commonplace, wouldn’t it make sense that more and more retailers will jump on the bandwagon?
So, what do you say? If you’ve paid for product insurance, do you think you got ripped off or was it worth it? If you didn’t, is it because you think it’s a rip-off or did you prefer to take your chances? Share, please!
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How I Was Wrong About LinkedIn (with 2 Mini Case Studies) 4 March, 2010, 8:49 am
I’ve always considered LinkedIn more of a place to prospect for a job than anything else. And since I haven’t been in the market for one in a while, I’ve paid it little mind.
Plus, if I’m being honest: I’ve always thought LinkedIn was kind of … well, boring. If Facebook was a rave at a cool downtown hot spot, LinkedIn was a stuffy reception with piped-in music at one of those cookie-cutter function facilities conveniently located at the end of an exit ramp.
Does that sound harsh? Perhaps.
But now I’ve realized that I couldn’t have been more wrong. LinkedIn, it turns out, is a happening place: It has more than 60 million members in over 200 countries, in all 7 continents. Execs from all Fortune 500 companies are there. And 81% of business-to-business marketers use LinkedIn. All this is from our latest case study collection, LinkedIn Success Stories: How 11 companies are using the global networking site to achieve their business and marketing goals.
In the collection, our own Kim Smith details LinkedIn’s slew of new features and recent applications, and gives an insider’s view of how those tools are being used by 11 organizations in four distinct ways:
market research,
demonstrate thought leadership and expertise,
attract users to events, and
win new business.
Like how, specifically? Check out these two mini case studies excerpted from the report.
Market Research. Penman Public Relations, headquartered in Austin, TX, used LinkedIn to research a client’s planned launch of a high-end gaming system.
Approach: Penman found that connecting with potential product users individually through LinkedIn offered more straightforward feedback and less “groupthink” that focus groups often deliver. To research the launch by Hardcore Computer, Penman posted short discussion posts at certain groups they were already active in (as well as solicited individual contacts), requesting a shout from those willing to provide feedback on PC gaming computer features and their advantages.
Those who responded received a more detailed message thanking them and then asked about specific user expectations for a factory-built gaming system in the $3,000+ range, as well as for one that might cost $5,000 or more.
Result: CEO Patti D. Hill said she received several hundred responses, many from people who were neither in her contact base nor members of the groups Penman targeted. Instead, they’d been forwarded her query. “This speaks to the passion of this audience, but also to the willingness of people to provide information and contribute even when they’re not directly connected,” Hill said.
By the way, one of my favorite quotes in the case study collection is from Hill, who says she likes the enduring aspect LinkedIn. “Twitter is real time, and you’re a blip on the screen,” she says. “LinkedIn waits for us. Like email, it’s there when you want it.”
Bottom line: The approach worked to not only gather insight for the new product launch, it also attracted additional traffic to the Hardcore Computer website and generated great visibility among gamers and developers for both Penman and its client.
Biz Dev. Closer to my neck of the woods, Boston’s PJA, an advertising and marketing agency, told Kim how they successfully mined LinkedIn for new business. After using LinkedIn to fill key positions within the agency, PJA VP Greg Straface decided to test how effective the network might be for new business outreach.
Approach: Investing an hour a day, Straface focused on three main activities:
• Targeted searches for such keywords as “VP of marketing,” specific ZIP codes and company names, to identify key contacts to call, InMail, email, or forward the agency’s portfolio.
• Tracking who was looking at his profile and those of other PJA staff, as featured on each user’s homepage. He then researched those companies in more depth, identified their marketing directors and sent out the agency portfolio by FedEx to land on their desks the next day (and again following up with a phone call, email, or InMail).
• Participating in LinkedIn groups catering to CMOs to build conversations with relevant individuals. He monitored each group’s discussion posts until he thoughtfully with content, rather than a pitch. As always, the key is to engage, don’t sell.
Result: Actual business: Inquiries, agency pitches, and new accounts, including Guidewire and Chase.
Bottom line: “By using LinkedIn actively in this way, it has become a very productive channel with huge financial return,” Straface says.
* * * * *
So those are two stories that showed me how, while I wasn’t looking, LinkedIn has amped up to a full-blown party—one you don’t want to miss.
My bad.
Your turn: How are you using LinkedIn?
In case you missed it, LinkedIn’s Community Manager Mario Sundar last week gave MarketingProfs Pro members a tour of LinkedIn’s existing and new features. It’s a great primer on using LinkedIn, if you haven’t begun to take advantage of the goodness there.
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Employees’ as an Overlooked Resource: 5 Ways to Equip Employees to Help with Marketing 3 March, 2010, 9:05 am
Marketers have turned to all manner of social channels in their efforts to tap into the social media craze, from engaging in formal blogger outreach efforts to stuffing YouTube channels with videos in the hopes that others will embed link to them from their Facebook profiles. But marketers continue to ignore one group that, if approached correctly, could have a greater impact than all the rest combined.
Companies just don’t seem to recognize the value of turning to their own employees. I’m constantly bemused at the number of companies that don’t consider their own workforce a channel for promoting products and services.Of course, it is not unusual for an organization’s leaders to ask their employees to evangelize the company’s products or services. But the thinking is limited to face-to-face encounters with family and friends. When it comes to the social space, companies are generally more interested in restricting employees’ activities than in empowering them to support the company’s marketing efforts.
Employees, after all, have a vested interest in helping the company succeed. Marketing drives sales that leads to better job security. Plus, it’s just plain fun to work for a successful company. (Think the people working for Apple and Google don’t love to get up and go to work?)
But in focus groups, interviews and surveys I conduct for my clients, I’m constantly gobsmacked by the number of employees who are unfamiliar with all or part of the company’s product line and unaware of impending product launches.
The value of getting employees engaged as part of a strategic marketing effort goes far beyond the word-of-mouth your workers can create at PTA meetings, family dinners, and church picnics. Employees talking about the brand on Facebook, Twitter, and other social venues can reach hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of people with sincere, passionate messages.
At every company, there are employees sitting on the edges of their seats just waiting to be activated. I see evidence of them in social channels every day, employees conveying genuine pride and excitement about what they’re up to in their jobs or what their employers are doing.
In most organizations, employees are either restrained from talking to their online networks about work or they’re doing it in a purely organic manner. Consider a new-product introduction. How much knowledge do your front-line, rank-and-file employees have about the product and the campaign being launched to support it?
A short news article on the intranet doesn’t cut it, not if you’re going to employ models to integrate employees’ organic social networking as a resource for your strategic marketing plans.
Adopting these models requires a rethinking of a number of issues, from social media access policies to the role and mission of the employee communications department. Business- and product-literate employees will increase the reach of your marketing messages. Companies are loaded up with employees with limited business and product literacy and can’t access their networks anyway.
It’s difficult for a lot of organizations to see the benefits persistently networked employees bring to the company. First, you have to break through the paranoia that has been whipped up about the risks of letting employees talk about work online. They tend to fall into three categories:
Productivity: Employees spending time on their personal online networks won’t get their work done. Actual evidence supports exactly the opposite. Employees get more and better work done when they have access to their networks. One University study found employees with unfettered access to their online networks were 8% more productive than their network-restricted peers. (The many ways open access enriches the company is a subject for a whole different post.)
Network security: Employees will introduce all kinds of viruses, bots and malware to their computers and infect the network. The fallacy of this argument is evident in the companies that do allow employees access yet are not victimized by malicious code. These companies, from large corporations to hospitals, mitigate the risk through a variety of technical and behavioral practices. It’s not necessary to block access in order to protect your networks; it’s just the lazy way out.
Illegal and inappropriate behavior: Employees who don’t understand or follow the rules will compromise our intellectual property or make statements in violation of the regulations with which we must comply. Other employees will engage in behavior that will damage our reputation. This is not a technical issue. It is a management issue. Paul Levy, CEO of one of Boston’s biggest hospitals, said the prospect of HIPAA violations would not prompt him to block his employees’ access to Facebook or other social sites, noting that it was just as easy to violate HIPAA in an elevator. Rather than focus on the excuses for blocking access, though, organizations should be exploring the various means by which those networks become an organizational asset. Why spend the money on recruiting a new engineer when your engineers (who network with other engineers) already know exactly whom the company should pursue? Which brings us back to marketing. Employees need only two things to become a marketing force: the knowledge to engage intelligently in conversations and access to the networks where they participation in those conversations.
In order to equip your employees to support marketing efforts, consider the following adjustments:
Make business and product literacy a priority.
Employees mostly know the products and services with which they work. Those employees who don’t work directly with products generally don’t know much about them. They can’t build interest in what they don’t understand. Take steps to ensure a solid understanding of the company’s product line and the marketing plans for those products.
Create an online resource of marketing materials.
A site on your company’s intranet should provide insight into the company’s various marketing strategies and provide employees with assets they can use when talking about the company and its products. Whether it’s a widget they can add to their blogs, links to resources they can share with their Facebook friends or photos they can post, these should be just a few clicks away.
Include an internal plan for all your launches.
Employees should share in the excitement of a product launch. When they’re pumped, they’ll share the excitement with others. Create a microsite on the intranet for the launch where they can get a sneak peak at collateral, from TV commercials to print ads. I worked at one company where we set up a booth in the cafeteria for every launch, staffed by marketing reps working on the product. They could show off the product itself, the materials being used to market it and answer any employee questions. The launch of a product or service or new institutional campaign should be as big a deal in the company as it is to external audiences.
Set positive policies.
Most online policies are filled with negatives, elaborating on what employees can’t do, shouldn’t do, will get fired for doing. Try a different approach. Let them know what they CAN do and the right way to do it. Emphasize authenticity, candor and transparency. You don’t want your employees to be shills or astroturfers, but nobody will fault them for genuine enthusiasm about a new product.
Recognize your biggest champions.
Show employees exactly what evangelism looks like by spotlighting employees who do it right.
So, how does your company involve its employees in its marketing efforts?
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Seven Advanced Habits of Highly Effective Speakers 2 March, 2010, 8:52 am
Like it or not, marketing executives are expected to deliver great presentations. And while some marketing executives are competent public speakers, practicing the following advanced tips can take a communicator from “good to great”.
Public speaking, like any other craft takes discipline, commitment and plenty of practice. With customer presentations ranging from prepared to impromptu, it is often helpful for marketing executives to keep these skills current. And while many speakers concern themselves with “the basics”, some are interested and willing to take their skills to advanced levels.
In this vein, assembled are seven habits of advanced public speakers (undoubtedly there are more):
Know Your Audience
“Know your audience” initially seems like an obvious tip. However, too many public speakers give canned and non-customized presentations that show little to no knowledge of the audience. For example, if the presentation is for a customer, find out why the briefing was requested and specific customer needs. Think personalization. Surprisingly, a little homework goes a long way.
Storytell Whenever Possible
People love stories, and best of all, stories are memorable. Powerful presentations have stories sprinkled throughout, and case studies to help bring key topics to life. Undoubtedly you have seen presentation after presentation start with speaker introductions and an agenda slide. Why not consider starting and ending a presentation with a story instead?
A Smile and Laugh Go a Long Way
Must every customer or internal presentation be so serious? Do you have a funny anecdote that captures a key point? Presenters sometimes think, “I’m not a funny person, so I will leave humor out of the discussion.” Incorporating humor doesn’t mean one must tell jokes. The advanced presenter may incorporate a smile to start, humorous story, and/or self depreciating comment. Remember, a presentation is a performance, so have fun!
Engage the Audience Whenever Possible
Suppose your upcoming presentation is slotted for thirty minutes. Is there any heuristic that says a presentation must take twenty five minutes and leave five for Q&A? Mix it up! Why not incorporate feedback and questions throughout the presentation? Even better, allow for open ended questions (asked by the presenter) during the discussion. For larger audiences, some advanced presenters ask for a show of hands, or other polling device. Social media shows us we live in a world of “engagement.” Your presentation should take this concept into account.
Add Vocal Variety
The advanced practice of adding vocal variety is rare for most public speakers. While a speaker may have body language and content down pat, vocal variety (rate, pitch, tone, highs/lows) is often forgotten. A well-done presentation isn’t necessarily “over the top”, and to be sure vocal variety can be exaggerated. However, adding vocal variety where appropriate can alert your audience that key points are worth their attention.
Self Modulate Based on Audience Reaction
With the exception of a presentation to an audience in a dark room, most speakers can see their audience members. Don’t pass up a golden opportunity to gauge audience reaction—during the actual talk. During your delivery, notice audience reactions—are they bored, asleep, disinterested, fiddling with their smartphone, or staring into space?
Based on audience reaction, the advanced presenter changes his or her delivery and possibly content accordingly. Stop for clarification, ask your audience questions, or consider doing something to change the direction of your speech. Your presentation isn’t actually over until it’s over, so don’t be afraid to change things up before the half-way point.
Incorporate Dramatic Use of “The Pause”
Have you ever seen a speaker incorporate a long breath before delivering a key point? If so, you have witnessed “the pause”. A pause of 1-2 seconds can alert an audience that the next phrase or sentence is worth hearing. This advanced technique is extremely rare, but can effectively be incorporated to activate a key message. However, as dramatic technique, “the pause” should not be over utilized.
These are just seven habits of highly effective presenters. What other “advanced” techniques have you witnessed from your favorite speakers?
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How Toyota Missed Its “Tylenol Moment” 2 March, 2010, 8:30 am
When a company makes a mistake, it can be the brightest moment in their history.
Tylenol had that opportunity. But they missed their moment. Big time.
How a company reacts, removes the pain, and repairs the emotional connection shows the true colors of that organization more than almost any situation they might encounter.
The sadness most of us have in watching, experiencing and hearing about what has transpired in the events of the Toyota situation unfolding is that our expectations of this “great” automaker were not met in how they handled the situation. Not even close.
All the opportunities were in place for Toyota to display the type of heroics that move a brand to cult status. Toyota had all the components that Tylenol had to call on when they made the decisions and took the actions that continue to hold that brand up as the gold standard in customer apologies and catastrophe recovery. As Tylenol had, Toyota had the following conditions in place upon which they could decide and act for their customers and employees:
1. Toyota has a large community presence, enabling personal, community-based outreach.
For example; in a 72 hour period, starting September 29,1982 when seven people died in the Chicagoland area after taking cyanide-laced capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol, it took Johnson & Johnson twenty minutes to decide “How do we protect the people?” With the golden rule strapped to their back, they set to work. With bullhorns blaring, Chicago health and law-enforcement officials swarmed Chicago-area streets, warning everyone not to take Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules and to bring in suspicious bottles for testing. Tylenol worked with local authorities, schools, even Boy Scout troops. Children were sent home from school with notes, and transit system workers formed a continuous human megaphone, spreading the word. Anticyanide kits were distributed to all paramedic units. Telephone drives run by the Boy Scouts and church and civic groups sent folks door-to-door to reach those who might have missed the warning.
What has been Toyota’s response in communities? Some dealerships have been given stipends [of about $25,000 for the entire dealership] to underwrite giving out coffee and giving away some free gas credit cards. But what about the missed opportunity to go beyond handing out coffee to customers who can drive in? What has been done proactively in communities to allay the fear that Toyota consumers feel? Here www.toyotarecall.org, consumers are helping each other to allay those fears.
2. Toyota knows the records of their customers and those who have been impacted, enabling them to reach out and personalize support.
Toyota’s communication has been within the “letter of the law” regarding recall communication, but does not go much farther than the standard letter and process to go in to get your car taken care of. Think of how rich an opportunity Toyota missed here, where they could have worked with dealerships after the initial notification letters went out, to customize content based on customers’ lives and loyalty to the brand?
In addition to the consumers who are identifiable, what about owners of resale vehicles? It does not appear that there has been thought or decisions made to consider and support the fear and worry that these owners are experiencing.
3. Toyota enjoys (enjoyed?) a “halo effect” of customers who were pleased with their vehicles, enabling them to build on that respect and emotional connection.
These Toyota vehicles meant reliability for their drivers. Peace-of-mind. For their owners, this meant that Toyota needed to extend that peace-of-mind in how they empathized and supported the drivers of their vehicles. The halo is tarnished.
4. Toyota has the communication infrastructure to have made their recovery a “wow” experience in terms of proactive, transparent information, process and support.
If Toyota’s decision making and actions had been driven by “How do we protect the people?” rather than “How do we protect our brand, and how do we mitigate our losses?” clearly what we have experienced and heard about would be different. The intent and motivation guiding Toyota’s [early days of the recall] decisions were clearly not connected to our perception of the brand. They certainly didn’t engender a human connection with the people behind the decisions. Now, with pressure, Toyota is becoming more transparent; they are offering more assistance – but under pressure, under duress.
An apology when it is executed well is an important peace process between a customer and a company. It repairs the emotional connection. It is swift, it is deliberate, and it makes the recipient feel that they have been listened to, honored and made whole again. Five actions make up that peace process:
1. Delivering a swift response.
2. Showing humility and empathy for what the customer is experiencing
3. Accepting accountability.
4. Providing and honest explanation of what happened.
5. Immediately extending an olive branch – to right the situation and mend the relationship.
How would you grade Toyota’s performance in delivering this peace process in how they’ve handled the news of their vehicle performance, the recall, and the customer and dealership experiences?
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News: Twitter Changes Updates to Tweets 9 March, 2010, 11:32 am
In the grand scheme of things, this news seems a bit insignificant in light of other current events However, it is significant in the world of Social Media. As mainstream audiences embrace new media, every subtle nuance introduced from here on out reverberates across the social landscapes that define, shape, and dictate its evolution and its pace of adoption.
Today, Twitter changed it’s “update’ button to a verb that will only gain in prominence, “Tweet.”
Thanks to good friend @Orli for her observation and also for capturing the screenshot.
It should be noted, that Twitter has applied to trademark “Tweet” and that process is still ongoing.
This is the second recent change in the culture and language of Twitter, with the first, rewording the prompt that triggered or shaped your updates, well, now Tweets. Originally Twitter asked, “What are you doing?” Now, you’re prompted by “What’s happening?” Again, subtle…but profound. As I’ve always believed, Twitter has always asked the wrong question and suggested that it change over time to continually inspire creativity, deep thought, profound statements and observations in addition to everyday status and conversations.
What do you think about this change?
Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook
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Please consider reading my brand new book, Engage!
Optimizing Brands for Social Search 8 March, 2010, 4:38 am
Faceboook recently overtook Yahoo as the second most visited site in the United States. And in doing so, Facebook along with other social networks set the stage for a confluence of social and search that fundamentally changes who we, as a society, discover and share information, and in turn, where our attention is directed and driven.
Source: Mashable
Make no mistake, attention is shifting away from traditional destination sites and instead, it is fixated on personalized attention dashboards that funnel social feeds, the activity and focus of social graphs into one clickable view. It is, for all intents and purposes, changing how we discover and share information. In fact, Nielsen observed that 20% of social consumers today, use social networks as their primary navigation hubs, relying on contacts and trending themes to point them in the right direction.
For media properties and brands, optimization combined with targeted and enterprising social networking now plays an instrumental role in capturing the attention and essentially defining the action of our customers, peers, and the trust agents and authorities who influence them.
Referral traffic is quickly migrating away from traditional search to social networks, and in some cases, at alarming rates.
In November 2009, Compete observed that some of the top media properties were already realizing a dominant effect in traffic from social networks. For example, USAToday receives upwards of 35% of its referral traffic from social networks and just over 6% from Google. People Magazine receives 23% of its referrals from social networks and 11% from Google. And, CNN earns 11% of its referral traffic from social versus 9% from Google.
Referrals from social networks will only continue to soar over time as we’re introduced to new information where our attention is focused and when our attention aperture is open to clicking through to new, socially-influenced content.
If the socialization of search and commerce is driven by any one behavior, it is that of sharing. If it wasn’t worthy of conventional appreciation and recognition before, the share economy is now certainly worthy of contemplation and analysis. In the share economy, currency is defined by likes, retweets, updates, comments and shares on Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, MySpace, et al. And, its impact only grows as Social Media becomes pervasive. This is why providing the necessary means for individuals to not only discover your content, but also readily share it across the social web is paramount to the survival of brands in the era of social search and also social media.
In a recent article, TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld reviewed the state of social sharing based on data provided by Gigya, which powers sharing widgets on more than 5,000 content sites, including ABC.com, NBA.com, PGA.com, Answers.com and Reuters. In the study, it was revealed that almost one million items were shared over the Gigya network within 30 days. Facebook ranked at the top of social sharing, but Twitter wasn’t far behind.
Distribution of shared items
Facebook: 44%
Twitter: 29%
Yahoo: 18%
MySpace: 9%
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook alone counts over 5 billion pieces of content shared within its network each and every week.
According to AddThis, a sharing network installed on more than 600,000 Websites, Facebook also ranked on top, but email ranked second, with print, yes print, and Twitter placing in third and fourth respectively.
Top 10 Services, Overall
Facebook: 33%
Email: 13%
Print: 9%
Twitter: 9%
Favorites: 8%
Google: 6%
MySpace: 6%
Digg: 3%
Live: 3%
Delicious: 3%
At 400 million global users strong, and rapidly growing, Facebook is a mandatory content and engagement play for any brand and media property.
In February 2010, Nielsen reported that Facebook users are averaging seven hours per month, up 10%, sharing and connecting within their social graph. If we used Compete’s numbers, Facebook would rank #2, just behind Google.
Social Architecture is How We Connect and Define Experiences
Gigya recently published a white paper that documents the shift to and the resulting importance of social search and its dependence on crowd participation.
As a result of its research Gigya recognized that online businesses must optimize in order to earn referral traffic from social networks.
With the advent of social feeds—a live stream of friends’ activity shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter— consumers can more easily rely on trusted personal relationships to determine what’s worthwhile to read, watch, play and buy online.
Information is already socializing.
The difference between our present and our future is defined by the roads and bridges we build between relevance and prevalence.
Publishing content is no longer enough. Wiring search systems to deliver consumers who hunt for information in social networking to our existing static Web sites is outmoded. And, earning friends and followers is only as effective as our ability to return value to their feeds and online and ultimately, real world experiences. We are confusing our elementary steps towards digital and social significance with the illusion of progress.
It is now our responsibility to create and connect meaningful content directly within the places where our audiences communicate with each other and also interact with the social objects that compel them to share and react. In parallel, we must optimize that content to improve findability and also integrate the tools and services that simplify the process for sharing within the networks where people engage today and tomorrow. By creating a connected social experience, we activate our content and community and empower a new genre of branded information catalysts.
Everything begins with enhancing and optimizing connections and experiences for the social web. The key is to incite participation and sharing…on our site as well as across the most active social networks that are material to our business strategy.
10 Steps for Optimizing the Brand for Social Search
1. Modernize and socialize your site to complement the experience visitors expect in 2010
2. Optimize the site and all social objects for traditional, social, and real-time search
3. Create meaningful and personable social profiles where consumers are active today (pay attention to where they will be tomorrow as well)
4. Establish an editorial calendar to produce and distribute relevant content for each and every network with cadence
5. Add social connectivity to the home site to facilitate maximum engagement (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Google, Yahoo) – eradicate proprietary login systems
6. Integrate social sharing functionality at the source of engagement – keep them on the page
7. Enable the social syndication of that content within one step
8. Manually introduce content and social objects to stakeholders and social beacons
9. Create paths that define and engender the experience you desire with destinations and calls to action integrated to close the loop
10. Monitor the activity and find ways to improve the experience and also sharing
Bonus: Give them a voice to make sharing more personal and contextual
The Future of Search and Business is Social
Indeed, the future of search is social. Better said, the future of information discovery and dissemination is social, now powered by the very people who were once fed information as dictated by mainstream media and brands.
The rapid evolution of search fuses traditional search algorithms and destinations with new formulas and services defining social graphs, social networks, semantic and real-time. As social becomes the axis for which all search is predicated, advanced SEO/SMO and a maturing human algorithm reinforced by the stature of one’s social capital will ultimately contribute to the hierarchy, placement, and findability of the content and social objects we share online.
Google and Bing are already implementing sweeping changes in their algorithms and reported results to include activity from the social and real-time Web. It’s also the reason why Google rushed Google Buzz into the spotlight. Information and activity are now influenced by the greater collective of social contacts with whom we forge relationships and relations in each and every network where we engage.
How does this information change your Web strategy for the year?
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Customers Ignite a New Era of CRM 5 March, 2010, 11:17 am
What follows is the unedited version of my latest post at AllThingsDigital…
The Altimeter Group is no stranger to disruption. The incredibly savvy and influential team lead by Charlene Li are redefining the role and purpose of industry analysts by placing research into action – essentially bringing trends from the edge to the center to help businesses employ the technologies and strategies that will help them compete for the future, today.
Industry analysts, at least in the case of the Altimeter Group, are ultimately becoming market catalysts.
With today’s news, this is of course, only fortified.
The Altimeter Group released a new report on Social CRM and while analysts release reports all the time, this is different. The report is free to read and share under Creative Commons and this is a big disruptor, one that reflects the socialization of information and the spirit of social media. By giving away insight, Altimeter ignites change and thus brings its report to life.
As such, the Altimeter Group is demonstrating how new models are needed to thrive in the social economy and concurrently putting into practice the ingredients of an effective social CRM framework.
The New Rules of Relationship Management
The essence of the new report by Altimeter’s R “Ray” Wang and Jeremiah Owyang is putting the customer first. While that seems like a simple principle, it’s easier said then done. The case the duo make is rooted of course in social media and the self-actualization of personal influence.
As the report notes in the beginning:
Rapid adoption of social networking enables users to connect with individuals and communities who share mutual interests, increasingly leaving organizations out of the conversation.
Simply hiring more people to keep up with social marketing, sales, and support will not be sufficient, as consumers and their new channels will always outnumber employees. As a result, companies need an organized approach using enterprise software that connects business units to the social web – giving them the opportunity to respond in near-real time, and in a coordinated fashion.
And indeed, they’re right.
Social media didn’t invent conversations, it simply amplified and connected them to audiences and the actions that are triggered as a result. With the right tools, and more importantly mindset and resolve, we can now uncover these incredibly valuable, insightful and prominent conversations where and when they happen. Listening is only the beginning however. As in anything, we need a little less conversation and a little more action.
As the report notes, Social CRM does not replace existing CRM efforts, it complements it with an outbound extension to connect with the very social beacons that shape and steer perception – those previously untouched with inbound only infrastructures. Essentially the “s” in sCRM should be viewed as a verb…as in socialize. Actions speak louder than words and thus, sCRM transforms words and intent into action.
As the “Godfather of CRM,” Paul Greenberg notes, “We’ve moved from the transaction to the interaction with customers, though we haven’t eliminated the transaction – or the data associated with it… Social CRM focuses on engaging the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. Social CRM is the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.”
The Socialization of an Entire Organization
The social customer is only one part of the equation. As any listening program will reveal, conversations map specifically to departments within an organization and as such, all units affected by outside activity will socialize over time. This is why I believe that over time, we should focus less on the “C” of sCRM and focus our attention, energy and ingenuity on the aspects of SRM – social relationship management.
The Social Web is distributing influence beyond the customer landscape, allocating authority amongst stakeholders, prospects, advocates, decision makers, and peers. SRM recognizes that whether someone recommended a product, purchased a product, or simply recognized it publicly, in the end, each makes an impact on behavior at varying levels. Therefore customers are now merely part of a larger equation that also balances vendors, experts, partners, and other authorities. In the realm of SRM, influence is distributed and it is recognizes wherever and however it takes shape.
SRM is a doctrine aligned with a humanized business strategy and supporting technology infrastructure and platform. SRM recognizes that all people, no matter what system they use, are equal. It represents a wider scope of active listening and participation across the full spectrum of influence mapped to specific department representatives within the organization using various lenses for which to identify individuals where and how they interact.
But we must begin somewhere and for many businesses, the evolution from CRM to sCRM is in fact, revolutionary.
After months of study and interviews with over 100 organizations, Altimeter Group identified 18 use cases for Social CRM to help businesses assess, adapt, and create new programs and processes to socialize their brands.
As the report notes, Social CRM programs start at the departmental level, but require corporate support to transform fiefdoms into united efforts. The challenge lies in mobilizing and organizing resources around distributed conversations and building the connectors that link CRM systems to social networks. And, organizations must prioritize based on market demand and technology maturity.
Customers have already migrated towards new channels and in the process, companies that are not in pursuit are quickly falling behind. Relationships between organizations and customers might be better defined simply as “relations” as the existing framework was traditionally optimized around the organization and not the customer.
Traditional CRM projects have failed to grasp the complexities of the customer-company relationship. Though these CRM programs started out with the goal of providing a single customer view and 1:1 relationship management, early efforts quickly refocused on automation of front office tasks and improving management visibility across marketing, sales, service and support. Because these programs have often failed to support the front office worker’s needs to manage relationships, internal adoption halted as users grew to resent, and in some cases revolt, against CRM.
To begin at the beginning, businesses must deploy Social CRM for business value and not get caught up in the hype of Twitter and Facebook. We have to go where our customers seek, discover, and share information. Alitimeter suggests focusing on bite-sized entry points as today’s tight budgets, limited resources, and little time will ensure that companies get the most bang for the buck initially.
In the report, each one of the 18 use cases brings definable metrics that should be incorporated in each Social CRM program.
- Begin with the end in mind
- Metrics should be aligned with an organization’s entry points
- Quantify the baseline and determine the effort
- Adjust ROI targets to align resources with efforts to move the needle
- The goal – drive business value
The 18 recommended use cases are organized in seven categories and in order of operations. As observed, most organizations start their initiatives by building out the “5 M’s” and deploying a customer insight program that matures with experience and earned intelligence. I previously discussed the maturation of social media infrastructure in business usually evolves in at least 1o stages.
Social Customer Insights form the Foundation for All Social CRM Use Cases – Everything begins with listening
1. Social Customers Insights
Social Marketing Seeks to Achieve Customer Advocacy
2. Social Marketing Insights
3. Rapid Social Marketing Response
4. Social Campaign Tracking
5. Social Event Management
Social Sales Enables Seamless Lead Opportunities
6. Social Sales Insights
7. Rapid Social Sales Response
8. Proactive Social Lead Generation
Social Support and Service Drives Sustainable Customer Satisfaction
9. Social Support Insights
10. Rapid Social Responsse
11. Peer-2-Peer (P2P) Unpaid Armies
Social Innovation Streamlines Complex Ideation
12. Innovation Insights
13. Crowdsourced R&D
Collaboration Reduced Organizational Friction and Stimulates Ecosystem
14. Collaboration Insights
15. Enterprise Collaboration
16. Extended Collaboration
Seamless Customer Experience Sustains Advocacy Programs
17. Seamless Customer Experience
18. VIP Experience
The Customer (R)evolution
The methodologies, systems, and people that entwine CRM are unquestionably forcing a historical (r)evolution from the outside in. As customers earn prominence online and ultimately in the marketplaces they define, CRM is far more consequential to the prosperity and relevance of businesses, than perhaps ever before.
This is about earning a prestigious position in the hearts, minds, and ultimately decisions of customers, prospects and those who effect their actions, today and tomorrow. Essentially, with the socialization of media and the redistribution of authority and influence, we are competing for the future simply by listening, responding, learning and adapting.
The social customer is disrupting the balance of power and they’re actively exerting their new found eminence within every social network and community that thrives off of shared experiences. The socialization of CRM is effectively measured by the dedication of resources and resolution the organization commits not just to social media, but to all existing channels where customers, influencers and prospects seek help.
Divided we share…United we change.
Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management
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Social Capital: The Currency of the Social Economy 3 March, 2010, 4:34 am
The convention for creating financial opportunities is evolving and changing the way we seed prospects, promote our expertise and prowess, and connect with those who can help us learn and advance through the facilitation of strategic and mutually beneficial alliances.
Digital capitalization is laying a foundation for expanding the need to cultivate and participate, not only in the real world, but also in the online networks and communities that can benefit us personally and professionally.
In an era of democratized publishing and equalized influence, it can be said that engagement and participation are a new, powerful and effective form of “un” marketing. At the very least, this is an epoch of empathy.
Social capital is a strong ally, an elite catalyst for lucrative relationships, and now a metric for qualification, consideration and ultimately success (however you define it). This is a state of human economics that is thoroughly discussed in Tara Hunt’s book, The Whuffie Factor. Our “Whuffie” or social capital and intellectual assets are defined by both online and real world conduct and its “balance sheet” is available for anyone with a web browser to review, assess, and analyze.
Reputation, trust, and relationships, are each earned at varying levels, through our action and words. Our interaction reinforces impressions and engenders experiences. As such, our personal and professional brands are essentially reflections of our contributions. In the end, we get out of it, what we invest in it.
By participating in relevant online communities and publishing content that promotes our expertise as it empathizes with those seeking information and direction in a way that literally speaks to them, we begin the process of building and shaping our online reputation, brand, and persona that traverses virtual, augmented, and actual realities. The ideas and wisdom we share and the relationships we forge only fuel its proliferation and stature.
Like any form of capital, Social capital rises and falls with the market and the individual to which it’s governed by the state of the industry and affected by the state of corresponding affairs. As it escalates, however, it unlocks opportunities that are commensurate with the community’s assessment of its value. In the same regard, the community will not support or reward lackluster, opportunistic, also-ran, or hollow engagement in the long term.
Again, social capital is measured by individual value and collective perception.
The Human Algorithm
But trust and reputation are only as valuable as their ability to represent you in your absence. And as in anything online, perception and presence are the focus of proactive programs that enhance the discovery process and steer recognition and stature in your favor.
As search plays an increasingly important role in the investigation process of surfacing qualified candidates and social objects around relevant topics, we quickly become brand managers for our intellectual and personal assets. Our livelihood now pivots on our ability to connect dots between who were are, what we stand for, and the value we offer.
You will be Googled.
You will also be Twittered, Flickrd, YouTubed, Facebooked, and LinkedIn’ed.
While Google is the standard by which all search is measured, those active in defining their presence in traditional search will do so through organic as well as through optimized techniques such as SEO. However, as search becomes social, the role of queries disseminates beyond Google with content sought and channeled directly within Social Networks as well as new breeds of real-time search platforms. As such, prominence is then ascertained by the digital shadows we cast across the traditional and social Web (yes, there is a difference) and also through our investment in driving strategic visibility. Essentially, our brand as defined by our views, opinions, thoughts, observations, and actions, becomes a social object that requires dynamic cultivation and placement.
The Human Algorithm becomes our lifeline to regulated exposure while also providing a foundation for constructing and enhancing our presence directly within the channels where prospects are seeking information.
Social Customer Hierarchy
As social media becomes ubiquitous, businesses will no longer possess the means to effectively scale and sustain participation across all conversations on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other online communities. Whether you agree with this or not, brands will face the need to prioritize who they engage based on what I refer to as the Social Customer Hierarchy. The level of influence and authority a customer or prospect holds determines their placement in the chain of preeminence.
Yes, we earn prominence and amass social capital through productive contributions to online societies. In the process, we increase our stature and amplify our voices and it will escalate consumer matters when other traditional means are exhausted. Brandishing this distinction however, erodes value, and over time, ranking and credibility are diminished.
Our online reputation and the activity that contribute to its definition are investments in our social capital. The return on these investments is evident in the opportunities and relationships that ensue and proliferate. Our social graph, the connections we forge and actively nurture, represents a very public testimony. If you’re not actively investing in its significance, you may actually take away from its net worth.
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The State of the Twittersphere 2010 1 March, 2010, 4:30 am
Original Artwork by @Natasha
The state and future of Twitter is passionately debated as users and industry pundits explore whether or not the platform and the relationships that connect one another are in danger of slowing or worse, regressing. Over the last year, Twitter experienced its most phenomenal growth to date, fueled by the adoption of the communication network by highly visible and influential personalities that attracted legions of new users to establish one-to-many and ultimately many-to-many connections. But, then the meteoric ascent practically leveled-off…
HubSpot released a new report that captures the state of the Twitterverse, opening a window that instantly transforms speculation into analysis and setting the stage for informed discourse and exploration.
According to the report, Twitter’s user growth peaked at 13% in March 2009 falling to just 3.5% in October 2009. And while this is the most recent date for which HubSpot has access, it is revealing nonetheless.
The steep decline, as I’ve said many times, has less to do with exposure and more to do with the initial Twitter experience for prospective users. Millions upon millions of new prospects are introduced to Twitter everyday by brands and media properties who place Twitter center stage in broadcast, print, and in person.
Follow us on Twitter.
Send us a Tweet.
Tweet us to win.
Receive special discounts, promos, and coupons just by following us.
Once they arrive at Twitter, there’s very little instruction or incentive to take the steps to not only create an account, but also adopt it as a form of daily or even weekly communication.
Although user adoption is slowing, existing users appear more engaged. According to the report, the average user is following a greater number of people and earning a greater reach through an increased number of followers. Existing users are also posting more content.
Once engaged in Twitter, the seduction of response, by a stranger or someone we know, combined with the allure of popularity is enticing and intoxicating. Many people fall victim to its addictive qualities as you are rewarded with feedback, connections, and presence through engagement. As such, Twitter is a rich network of opportunity to increase stature as measured through online social capital. Experienced users realize that the value of participatory media is powered by so much more than just simple tweets or conversations.
Paying it forward, reciprocity, and recognition are the investments we make in earning attention and awareness for the value we bring to the table.
When we realize that Twitter is far more than a tool to enliven self-actualization, “I Tweet therefore I am,” we uncork the essence of who we are today and who we wish to become tomorrow. As such, we embrace nuances of self-branding by presenting ourselves through bios, locations, and outbound profile links. Users are making the connection that they can define and shape the experience of those who clickthrough to their profile in order to better present the persona they wish rather than the personality left open to interpretation and perception.
Social Media is making this world a much smaller place, linking us through the words we place into action and the topics, interests and passions we share. We’re forging highly focused and expansive networks that engender opportunities for collaboration, education, and entertainment and as a result, we’re finding comfort outside of our comfort zones. We are now citizens of international provinces where we establish the governance and culture and set the course for our new found freedom.
Relationships are seemingly evolving into relations, where we invest in connections of those we know and also wish to know. However, while many users maintain following and follower networks numbering in the thousands, 82% of Twitter users maintain a network of less than 100 followers and 91% follow less than 100 people.
The Twitterverse is a living and breathing ecosystem that moves and adapts to current events and the moments of opportunity when someone is prone to sharing, responding, or viewing the activity of their friends and contacts. Dan Zarrella and I previously discussed the art and science of retweets, and in this report, HubSpot examined user characteristics and patterns of use.
What, when, and how we share, read, and bookmark tweets is governed by what I call the attention aperture. Our attention aperture opens and closes to match our daily regiment. We are only susceptible to learning at different times than we are to sharing. And through the analysis of the greater collective, we can observe patterns in this activity.
HubSpot observed that Thursday and Friday are among the most active days on Twitter, with each accounting for 16% of total tweets. Furthermore, 10 – 11 p.m. is the busiest hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an average day.
HubSpot also documented the distribution of Tweets per day to get an idea of when people are updating their status, but also most likely, ready to be introduced to new, relevant content.
In the report published in collaboration with Dan Zarrella, we observed that Monday and Friday were among the greatest opportunities for retweeting as those windows represented ideal time frames for when the attention aperture was wide open.
Believe it or not, I’m often asked, “what’s the secret to retweets.” People are often introduced to formulas and methodologies that are questionable at best, but presented otherwise. My response is direct and honest, “say something worthy of retweeting.” And for good measure, I always throw in, “120 is the new 140. If you leave room at the end of your tweet for @username and potential commentary, you make it effortless for someone to RT you.”
Billions of Tweets Now Served
According to the data, it appears that the growth of Twitter is indeed leveling. However, existing usage is only skyrocketing among the core group of users who didn’t necessarily need Twitter to tell them how to get value out of ongoing engagement. According to recent research conducted by Pingdom, Twitter is serving more than 40 million tweets per day.
Most notably, on January 12th, 2010, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams published a Tweet that marked the company’s busiest day…
Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter’s highest-usage day ever. (And today will be bigger.)
In reviewing the astronomical rise of Tweets published by existing users, we see that Twitter is now serving more than one billion tweets per month – crossing over for the first time in December 2009.
From January 2009 to January 2010, the growth is practically blinding. Tweets, in just one year, ballooned 16x.
In the last three months, Twitter experienced month-to-month growth close to 17%.
November 16.8%
December 16.6%
January 16.9%
Pingdom estimates that Twitter will process around 1.4 billion tweets as soon as February 2010.
50,000,000 Tweets Per Day
We can’t help but feel like we’re running on a perpetual treadmill of rapid evolution courtesy of the blurring pace at which the real-time is Web is accelerating. When reviewing the recent Pingdom data, the first thing that comes to mind is, that was then, this is now.
Why?
In February, Twitter added its data to the mix revealing the magnitude and velocity of tweets. As of today, more than 50 million tweets are published in the statusphere, not to mention the distribution and syndication of those tweets across multiple social networks. According to the Twitter team, that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.
For perspective, in 2007, Twitter hosted 5,000 tweets per day. In 2008, the number climbed to 300,000 per day. In 2009, Twitter was publishing an astounding 2.5 million per day and over the course of the year, it soared to 35 million, up 1,400%
Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.
The state of the Twitterverse or the Twittersphere if you will, has less to do with what “is” and more to do with what’s possible. I’m focusing my time on the latter. However, it takes Twitter, as a technology and as a business, to realize that what it is and what it wants to be, is distanced only by the actions it takes today. Meaning, the user experience starts upon the initial visit to Twitter.com and it continues long after registration. There’s much to be done – especially as Twitter has yet to truly demonstrate its value as an independent network for the masses.
I Tweet, therefore I am…part of a larger movement to expand awareness, literacy and connections that escalate causes and conversations that are greater than, but still complement, my purpose for engaging online.
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It’s Time to Engage: Please Help Share the News 26 February, 2010, 4:05 am
I can’t believe the day is finally here. In fact, it’s here earlier than planned.
Please join me in celebrating the official release of Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web
Social media has democratized influence, forever changing the way businesses communicate with customers and the way customers affect the decisions of their peers. With platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, anyone can now find and connect with others who share similar interests, challenges, and beliefs—creating communities that shape and steer the perception of brands. Without engagement in these communities, we miss major opportunities to shape our stories.
However, use of the tools does not guarantee that people will listen. Engagement is shaped by the interpretation of its intentions. In order for social media to mutually benefit you and your influencers and ultimately customers, you must engage them in meaningful and advantageous conversations, empowering them as true participants in your marketing, branding, and service efforts…this is true whether it’s B2B, B2C, government, non profit, education, etc.
With Engage as your guide, you can effectively compete in this new era of digital Darwinism while engendering the support of online champions. Social and participatory media significantly contribute to the success of every modern business, and with this book, you will find out how to:
Create a space in the online ecosystem that truly represents your business and cultivates your customers’ loyalty and trust
Participate in the unique culture of each available social media platform to engage your customers
Establish an organizational structure that constantly targets the next new media trend
Attract online champions and change agents who will uncover the social networks you need to reach and the influencers who will help build your reputation in the networked world
Consistently adapt your company to market needs and trends based on the invaluable connections you forge and the empathy and insight you garner in the process
There are thousands of customers waiting to hear from you about your business and vision. It’s the minimum ante to create a vibrant and loyal online community. When you engage, you will build an authoritative social network that increases your visibility, relevance, influence, and profitability. It’s time to Engage!
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If it’s one thing that I ask, it’s that you please help me share this news with those around you.
This book and all that’s in it, was written with passion and dedication over the last year to address the issues that have now become paramount to the success of social media within businesses and industries of all shapes and sizes. I wrote this book for you…and it would mean everything to me, if you could join me in leading a new, more meaningful era of socialized media and engagement.
Order now from:
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Time Spent on Social Networks up 82% Around the World 24 February, 2010, 4:28 am
Nielsen recently released a new report that officially documents what many of us already know, just never substantiated through data. According to a study published at the end of January 2010, Nielsen observed the online social activity of consumers around the world and discovered an 82% increase in time spent on social networking sites in December 2009. On average, users spent more than five and a half hours on popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter. In December 2008, users clocked just over three hours on social networking sites.
The audience for Social Networks also increased year-over-year for the last three years, reaching an estimated audience of over 300 million.
Specifically, online visitors concentrated their time on social networks and blogs, placing them ahead of other forms of engagement and interaction including online games and instant messaging. Facebook led the way for all social networks however, with over 200 million visitors, representing 67% of all social media users in December 2009. As such, Facebook earned the number one position as the top global social networking destination with users spending nearly six hours per month on the site.
In the U.S., time spent participating in social networks and reading blogs increased 210% year-over-year and the average time per person grew by 143% year-over-year in December 2009. Media darlings Facebook and Twitter captured the greatest volume of attention and engagement, outpacing the overall growth for the category at 200% and 368% respectively. And despite the grim reports that portray a leveling-off or possibly a dwindling of visitors, depending on which data you source, Nielsen reports that Twitter continued its reign as the fastest-growing social network in December 2009 as measured by unique visitors. With 18.1 million uniques, Twitter’s audience increased 579% year-over-year, from 2.7 million in December 2008. However, Nielsen also observed a decrease of 5% in unique visitors when viewed month-over-month.
Facebook and Twitter were alone in the competition for attracting visitors. MySpace, Classmates, and even LinkedIn realized year-over-year declines in unique visitors.
Social Networking is a global phenomenon and while the largest audience resides in the U.S., Australia boasts the highest amount of time spent in social networks per person (6:52:28), followed by the U.S. (6:09:13), the United Kingdom (6:07:54), and Italy (6:00:07).
When reviewing the size of the audiences for social media around the world, we see a substantial, but expected divergence between each country.
Country
Unique Audience (000)
Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)
United States
142,052
6:09:13
Japan
46,558
2:50:21
Brazil
31,345
4:33:10
United Kingdom
29,129
6:07:54
Germany
28,057
4:11:45
France
26,786
4:04:39
Spain
19,456
5:30:55
Italy
18,256
6:00:07
Australia
9,895
6:52:28
Switzerland
2,451
3:54:34
Source: The Nielsen Company
As brands and marketers seek guidance and inspiration to engage customers, influencers, and stakeholders, their efforts only increase in importance. User attention is going to continue to focus on activity within social networks, and their potential reach is far greater than any one country.
Users celebrate the democratization of information sharing and discovery and they’re taking to social networks to cast their voice. The art and science of true engagement is measured by our ability to connect with people for greater durations and at deeper levels over time. And, it’s not as easy as it sounds. The competition for attention is substantial and therefore requires an increased sense of awareness, empathy and intelligence in order to conceptualize creative yet meaningful content and programs that captivate the people we hope to reach. It’s the difference between activating the social web and inciting consequential action and response that’s directed, measured, and memorable. In social media, we are defining and shaping experiences that either increase affinity or simply earn attention.
As I believe, in the race for relevance, we earn the relationships we deserve. And as such, we must choose between visibility and presence. In the attention economy, presence is felt.
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ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media 22 February, 2010, 4:05 am
What follows is the entire version of my recent post on Mashable, “The Maturation of Social Media ROI“
Over the years, Social Media experts attempted to redefine ROI for a new era of influence. While some introduced alternative philosophies for measuring the nuances tied to social media, others wondered aloud whether ROI simply wasn’t necessary as the tools and methodologies for analyzing yields didn’t yet exist. And furthermore, by focusing on justification and metrics, we were distracted from the primary objective of building relationships and cultivating dialogue.
The debate over ROI inspired certain brands to cannonball into popular social networks to join the proverbial conversation without a plan or strategic objectives defined. At the same time, the lack of ROI standards and established authorities, unnerved many executives, preventing any form of experimentation until their questions and concerns were addressed.
But that was then and this is now.
In 2010, we enter in to a new era of social media marketing, one based on information, rationalization, and resolve.
Business leaders simply need clarity in a time of abundant options and scarcity of experience and answers. As many of us can attest, we report to executives who have no desire to measure intangible credos rooted in transparency and authenticity. In the end, they simply want to calculate the return on investment and associate Social Media programs with real world business performance metrics.
Over the years, we explored ideas, driven by a passionate desire to find new meaning and vindication in uncharted domains. These discussions and the innovation they sparked, redefined the framework for traditional metrics, creating hybrids that would and will prove critical to modernize business practices, improve products and services, and effectively compete for the future.
ROI: The Return on Ignorance
Where the “I” in ROI represents return on investment, marketers have also explored ancillary elements to address the socialization of media, marketing, and the resulting dynamics of engagement.
Adaptations included:
Return on engagement – the duration of time spent either in conversation or interacting with social objects, and in turn, what transpired that’s worthy of measurement.
Return on participation – the metric tied to measuring and valuing the time spent participating in social media through conversations or the creation of, social objects.
Return on involvement – similar to participation, marketers explored touchpoints for documenting states of interaction and tying metrics and potential return of each.
Return on attention – In the attention economy, we assess the means to seize attention, hold it and as such measure the responses activities that we engender.
Return on trust – A variant on measuring customer loyalty and the likelihood for referrals, a trust barometer establishes the state of trust earned in social media engagement and the prospect of generating advocacy and how it impacts future business.
But as we learn through experience, our views and techniques mature into more sophisticated strategies as we progress through the Ten Stages of Social Media Evolution.
For many businesses, the case for new metrics cannot arise until we have an intrinsic understanding of how social media engagement affects us at every level. To be quite honest, it is not as simple as counting an increase of subscribers, followers, fans, conversation volume, reach, and traffic. While the size of the corporate social graph is a reflection of our participation behavior, it is not symbolic of brand stature, resonance, loyalty, advocacy, nor is it an indicator for business performance.
ROI: Return on Investment
Sometimes we simply need ROI to signify a meaningful return on investment.
In 2010, Social Media endeavors are still funded as pilot programs to steer the brand towards perceived relevance in the hopes that they demonstrate momentum and as such, rewards materialize. Budgets are for the most part, borrowed from other divisions to fund the teams and programs lead by the internal champions who effectively make the case for experimentation. Where that money goes and from where it’s borrowed varies by department and by company usually tied to where champions reside internally today.
In many cases however, new programs are introduced without an integrated strategy. Money is allocated from existing programs, and if we’re going to take away from something, we should therefore determine whether or not we’re justified in doing so.
According to a 2009 study performed by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, 84 percent of professionals representing a variety of industries reported that they do not measure ROI.
Source: eMarketer
In 2010, executives are demanding scrutiny, evaluation, and interpretation. Even though new media is transforming organizations from the inside out, what is constant nevertheless, is the need to apply performance indicators to our work.
The Business of Social Media
The CFO, CEO, and CMO of any organization would be remiss if they did not account for spending and resource allocation, regardless of the allure and seduction of social media.
MarketingProfs recently published a study performed by Bazaarvoice and the CMO Club that revealed the true expectation of chief marketing officers. Bottom line, they want measurable results from social media.
Elusiveness continues to prevail however. The study found that the exact impact of social media tactics evade the grasp of CMOs.
- 53% are unsure about their return on Twitter
-50% are unable to assess the value of LinkedIn or industry blogs
More specifically however, roughly 15% believe there is no ROI associated with Twitter and just over 10% cannot glean ROI from LinkedIn or Facebook.
I believe this is the direct result of not tying activity to an end game, the ability to know what it is we want to measure before we engage. Doing so, allows us to define a strategy and a tactical plan to support activity that helps us reach our goals and objectives.
We first answer,
What is it we want to change, improve, accomplish, incite, etc.?
Doing so will allow us to establish goals and objectives that specifically tie activity to:
- Sales
- Registrations
- Referrals
- Links (the currency of the social web)
- Votes
- Reduction in costs and processes
- Decrease in customer issues
- Lead generation
- Conversion
- Reduced sale cycles
- Inbound activity
Customer Insight
Among the responses received from CMOs, customer ratings and reviews rose to the top of marketing activities that deliver tangible ROI insight. In 2009, 80% of respondents reported that customer stories and product suggestions shape products and services. As a result, brands earn the trust and loyalty of their customers for listening and responding – as long as they are made aware of their role and rewarded for it.
In 2010, CMOs will review opportunities for user-generated content sources to involve customers and advocates with many reporting…
- a 400% increase in use of Twitter comments to inform decisions about products and services
- a 59% increase in the use of customer ratings and reviews
- A 24% increase in use of social media for pre-sales Q&A
The Socialization of Monetization
Social media metrics will increasingly tie to revenue in 2010. To what extent seems to vary according to CMOs.
- 80% predict upwards of 5%
- 15% optimistically hope for 5-10%
In 2009, those companies that aligned social media investments with revenue estimate:
- 5% or less revenue tied to social in 2009 foresee an increase of an additional 5% in 2010
- 6-10% of revenue stemming from social is expected to increase more than 10%
- Those with greater revenues resulting from social engagement expect an escalation of revenue derived from social at 20%
Companies such as Dell are not only tracking the impact of Social Media on revenue, but expanding lessons learned across the entire organization. According to Dell’s Lionel Menchaca:
Our @DellOutlet is now close to 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and back in June we indicated that @DellOutlet earned $3 million in revenue from Twitter. Today it’s not just Dell Outlet having success connecting with customers on Twitter. In total, Dell’s global reach on Twitter has resulted in more than $6.5 million in revenue. In fact our Brazilian and Canadian accounts are growing rapidly too – and it was Canadian tweeters who asked to make sure Dell Canada came online to Twitter. Dell Canada responded because the team heard our customers. In less than a year, @DellnoBrasil has already generated nearly $800,000 in product revenues. Similarly, @DellHomeSalesCA has surpassed $150,000 and is increasing at notable pace.
The Forecast for Metrics in 2010
Earlier we mentioned generic forms of Social Media metrics. The survey revealed that indeed, many CMOs, 89%, tracked the impact of social media by traffic, pageviews, and the size of their social graph or communities. However, 2010 is the year that social media graduates from experimentation to strategic implementation with direct ties to specific measurable performance indicators.
In 2010, CMOs will seek to establish a connection between social media and P&L business goals. The study documents the adoption of three metrics:
- 333% surge in tracking revenue
- 174% escalation in monitoring conversion
- 150% increase in measuring average order value
A Call To Action
Among the most effective forms of any marketing initiative is the integration of a call to action. It is how I define influence as it gives us the ability to inspire activity and measure it – as designed. As stated earlier, revenue is only one form of metrics we can introduce, but defining the “R” in ROI is where we need to focus as it relates to our business goals and performance indicators specifically. Even though much of social media is free, we do know the cost of engagement as it relates to employees, time, equipment, and opportunity cost (what they’re not focusing on or accomplishing while engaging in social media). Tying those costs to the results will reveal a formula for assessing the “I” as investment.
When we truly grasp the ability to define action and measure it, we can expand the impact of new media beyond the P&L. We can adapt business processes, inspire ingenuity, and more effectively compete for the future.
Connect with Brian Solis: Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook
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Pre-order the next book, Engage!
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Click the image below to get the current book, poster, or iPhone app:
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Image Credit: Shutterstock
This is Your Time to Engage 20 February, 2010, 9:57 am
I’m truly excited to share some big news with you…
You are invited to the official debut of my next book Engage at SXSW Interactive.
On Saturday, March 13th at 11 a.m., I will take the day stage along with a special guest to discuss the book and its inspiration, intentions, and aspirations. A signing will immediately follow. To RSVP , click here.
To commemorate the release of Engage, I created a special introduction for all to enjoy and hopefully share.
Looking forward to celebrating with you…
Note: For the full effect, click “More” and view in “Full Screen” mode
.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; }
Engage on Prezi
(The official Website will go live soon)
Connect with Brian Solis: Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook
Facebook Mobile Now Bigger Than Twitter 19 February, 2010, 4:01 am
Interesting headline I know…However, it’s not intended to be sensationalist, simply a matter of fact and also a topic worthy of discussion.
Facebook announced that active users of its mobile platform surpassed 100 million, each and every month. And, this usage happens on almost every carrier in the world. If interaction and participation serve as the foundation for social media, then Facebook is setting the standard. Facebook is reporting that mobile users are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
According to estimates, the number of mobile Facebook users far exceeds the total active user base for Twitter, including mobile, Web, and through third-party applications.
This news also represents a concentric ring around another major milestone the company reached earlier this month. On February 4th, the burgeoning social network celebrated its sixth anniversary as well as hosting more than 400 million users.
In a recent statement, Facebook voiced its dedication to mobile platforms…
Facebook’s goal is to enable our users to be able to stay connected and communicate with their friends whenever, wherever they are. To accomplish this we are working with every major operator and mobile device maker to ensure that users are able to access Facebook – through SMS, mobile web sites or an application – from the device of their choice.
To further improve the mobile experience, Facebook redesigned m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com enabling people to access Facebook from any mobile browser in more than 70 languages.
Text messaging remains significant, with more then 80 operators in 32 countries enabling millions around the world to stay connected via SMS. The Facebook team also introduced FB.ME that makes it even easier for people to share content from their mobile devices.
Of course dedicated applications for Facebook remain paramount as smart phones gain traction within the marketplace. The network recently released updates for the dedicated Facebook applications on Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia and Samsung and it also supports a broadening array of new devices from HTC, INQ, LG Electronics, Palm, Sony Ericsson and Microsoft’s Windows Phone.
Let’s quickly recap…
100 million active mobile users. 400 million total Facebook users. Facebook is truly gaining prominence all over the world.
While Twitter is seemingly stealing the real-time spotlight, Facebook is where brands, whether local, national, or global, should concentrate significant attention, creativity, and engagement. And with 100 million active users interacting with other Facebook contacts from their mobile devices, creating portable brand experiences is now predominant.
Why?
The social graph that each individual user builds within Facebook is unequaled in its design and effect.
The average user on Facebook has over 130 friends, sending eight friend requests per month. Individuals spend more than 55 minutes per day interacting with contacts while also exploring the activities of those defining their social graphs (which is exactly where brand opportunities reside).
More than 35 million users update their status each day with more than 60 million status updates posted daily.
More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day.
Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans.
At a time when businesses are rushing to create Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter profiles without necessarily calculating or defining goals, intentions, or targets, the question becomes, how are you optimizing your brand or story for the Facebook and also the Facebook mobile experience…?
Connect with Brian Solis: Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Facebook
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Pre-order the next book, Engage!
—
Click the image below to get the current book, poster, or iPhone app:
—
Image Credit: Shutterstock
Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t Happen 9 March, 2010, 9:56 am
Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t HappenThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010
Sometimes, what you do is done as well as it can be done. It’s a service that people truly love, or a product they can’t live without. You’re doing everything right, but it’s not remarkable, at least not in the sense of “worth making a remark about.”
What’s up with that?
Here’s a smörgåsbord of reasons:
It’s embarrassing to talk about. That’s why VD screening, no matter how well done, rarely turns into a viral [ahem] success.
There’s no easy way to bring it up. This is similar to number 1, but involves opportunity. It’s easy to bring up, “hey, where’d you get that ring tone?” because the ring tone just interrupted everyone. It’s a lot harder to bring up the fact that you just got a massage.
It might not feel cutting edge enough for your crowd. So, it’s not the thing that’s embarrassing, it’s the fact they you just found out about it. Don’t bring up your brand new Tivo with your friends from MIT. They’ll sneer at you.
On a related front, it might feel too popular to profitably sneeze about. Sometimes bloggers hesitate to post on a popular source or topic because they worry they’ll seem lazy.
You might like the exclusivity. If you have no trouble getting into a great restaurant or a wonderful club, perhaps you won’t tell the masses because you’re selfish…
You might want to keep worlds from colliding. Some kids, for example, like the idea of being the only kid from their school at the summer camp they go to. They get to have two personalities, be two people, keep things separate.
You might feel manipulated. Plenty of hip kids were happy to talk about Converse, but once big, bad Nike got involved, it felt different. Almost like they were being used.
You might worry about your taste. Recommending a wine really strongly takes guts, because maybe, just maybe, your friends will hate the wine and think you tasteless.
There are probably ten other big reasons, but they all lead to the same conclusions:
First, understand that people talk about you (or not talk about you) because of how it makes them feel, not how it makes you feel.
Second, if you’re going to build a business around word of mouth, better not have these things working against you.
Third, if you do, it may be a smart strategy to work directly to overcome them. That probably means changing the fundamental DNA of your experience and the story you tell to your users. “If you like us, tell your friends,” might feel like a fine start, but it’s certainly not going to get you there.
What will change the game is actually changing the game. Changing the experience of talking about you so fundamentally that people will choose to do it.
Seth Godin is author of ten books that have been bestsellers around the world. His most recent titles include The Dip and Linchpin. His books have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work.
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17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business) 9 March, 2010, 9:52 am
17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business)This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010
There are two fundamental approaches to generate more business: The first is to focus on making your existing customers insanely happy, so that they want to tell others about how much they love you; the second is to simply be a resource, or be helpful, to those who aren’t customers yet.
Specifically, here are 17 tactics:
1. Have a goal. Set a clear goal with a specific timeline – for example, you want an x increase in referrals over the next six months. You know that old adage about how you can’t get there if you don’t know where you’re going? It’s true.
2. Monitor the web and primary social channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) for people talking about you or your company. Say thank you (if they are saying nice things). Reach out and ask how you can help (if they aren’t).
3. And if they aren’t, BTW: Apologize for mistakes and solve problems fast. Speed is your ally.
4. Monitor the web and social channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) for specific keywords relevant to your business. Be approachable, conversational, and helpful there. Engage, don’t sell.
5. Join LinkedIn groups relevant to your expertise or industry, and build conversations with relevant individuals. Chime in when you have something to contribute, and be helpful with your advice, suggestions, opinions. Again: It’s about engaging, not selling. (This bears repeating.)
6. Create a blog with content that helps your customers with a problem, or gives advice on a difficult situation, or walks them through a hard decision, or just takes the customer’s point of view, generally. Be a resource, and don’t simply toot your own horn.
7. When someone comments on your blog, respond. Talk back. Thank them for participating with a follow-up email. This is a dead-simple thing, and something a lot of people don’t do.
8. Read other relevant blogs in your industry, or by your customers, or would-be clients. Comment there, too. How? I almost want to repeat that bit about engaging-not-selling again, but I know you get it.
9. Put something on your front door (if you have one) that reminds people to tell their friends about you. (This is an idea from my friend Andy Sernovitz.
10. Put a “tell-a-friend” form on every page of your website. (Another idea from Andy.)
11. Put a special offer in easily forward-able mail.
12. Add a small gift and a word of mouth tool to every package you sell. Do something unexpected. (Andy once sent me a few packets of Bacon Salt with a copy of his new book, for example, which inspired me to blog and tweet about it.
13. Create a mechanism to keep in touch with existing customers or clients, even if they aren’t in buying mode. Perhaps you publish and “insider’s” newsletter, guest-blog on their blogs, or pick up the telephone and call every once in a while, just to say hello.
14. Be generous in your business practices. Go the extra mile. Offer extra service or follow-up support as a routine way of doing business.
15. Be generous with your own referrals.
16. Say thank you. Someone refers new business to you? Send them a note. An especially nice touch in this digital age is a handwritten card. The kind that arrives in the mail.
17. Be nice. Does this sound lame? It’s not. People refer people who treat them well, are approachable, and likeable. Be that person.
Your turn. How else do you generate referrals, or inspire positive word-of-mouth?
Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, the world’s largest community of marketers. Follow her on Twitter at @marketingprofs
Related Posts:Making Referrals As a Job Creation EngineAuthor of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week5 Ways to Share Content to Create ReferralsHave You Made Your Referral?Get Closer to Your Customers NowPowered by Contextual Related Posts
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Is Google Local Search For Sale? 9 March, 2010, 9:42 am
ShareIs Google Local Search For Sale?This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I’ve always assumed that Google Maps (and other local search directories) would build up the free local directory, drive other for pay players out, get us hooked on their service, and then start charging to be listed in the prime spot. In this case the prime spot for local search is the Google Seven box shown below for a search for “Attorney Houston, Tx”
Click to enlarge
Something else you might notice is that while optimizing your web site to appear in the lucky seven box is a great idea, the majority of these results are sponsored. That’s right, Google is playing with selling enhanced listings in several cities and looks to be headed towards paid listings in local search.
At first this may not seem like such a bad thing to those on the outside looking in, but it may price some folks out of yet another organic search option.
Related Posts:Google Adds Local Search to Mobile PhonesGoogle Local Finally Adds Ability To List Your Local BusinessGoogle Maps expands local viewYahoo Adds Local Featured ListingsWhere In The World Is Local Search?Powered by Contextual Related Posts
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Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model 9 March, 2010, 6:10 am
Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business ModelThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010
Have you ever squirmed when a seasoned businessperson asked you “what sets you apart from your competition?” or “what are you truly great at, that no one else in your market can do better than you?”
You are not alone.
Many new entrepreneurs get uncomfortable with the notion that they have to be an expert in their field to have a successful business. This is because they think that they have to know every last thing about the market in order to be considered an expert.
Here is the good news: one of your unique differentiators can be your ability to refer your clients to fantastic people who compliment your work. You don’t have to know everything. You just have to know people who do.
I have designed my business this way. I feel exceptionally competent helping corporate employees figure out which business to start. I can wrestle their snarling fears with confidence. I can help them with branding and marketing plans, and teach them how to grow their network using social media.
But if they ask what kind of business structure will protect their assets, I draw a blank. That is why I have tax attorney and business process guru Kyle Durand on speed dial. If they are creating a new software product and want to know how to wade through IP laws and trademarks, I send them to Jill Hubbard Bowman.
If they have no idea which shopping cart to use on their website, I send them to research maven Crystal Williams, otherwise known as Big Bright Bulb.
If they want killer branding design with great copy, I send them to Reese and Kelly Parkinson.
If they know what to do but get paralyzed by procrastination, overwhelm and creative blocks, I send them to Charlie Gilkey.
If they decide they don’t want to start a business after all and want to get a job, I send them to the best career coach I know, Michele Woodward.
And if they are incredibly difficult to work with, I send them to John Jantsch. (Just kidding John! J)
Knowing I have world-class business partners who will not only deliver excellent service to my clients but will also be fun and easy to work with allows me sell my strengths and refer the rest. My clients are happy, I am happy, and my circle of partners is happy. Our combined networks generate lots of new business, and many opportunities to collaborate on programs, products and services.
How can you bake a great referral network into your business model?
Define the problem your clients are trying to solve. Are they trying to start a business? Make more money? Simplify their life? Build a product?
Break down all the knowledge and support they will need to solve the problem. Think about which tools they may need, which decisions they have to make and what skills and competencies they require.
Identify your strengths. As you examine all that’s needed to solve their problem, think about what you love to do, what interests you, and where people say you excel.
Structure your services around your strengths. If you love doing big picture strategy and get bored with implementation, don’t offer that service. By focusing only on what you do best, you will set yourself apart from so many others who struggle to provide everything to everyone.
Identify ethical, competent people who are great at solving the rest of the problem. Use your personal networks, social networks and research to find excellent referral partners. Watch closely the first few times you send a client their way. Make sure they deliver great results and make your clients happy. After awhile, you will send them business with your eyes closed. And they will do the same for you.
Baking referrals into your business model will not only grow your business, it will make your brand shine. As Miguel de Cervantes said in Don Quixote:
“Tell me what company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are.”
Pamela Slim is a business coach and author of the award-winning book Escape from Cubicle Nation. Find her at www.escapefromcubiclenation.com and follow her on Twitter @pamslim
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A Simple Way to Increase Referrals 300% 9 March, 2010, 5:23 am
A Simple Way to Increase Referrals 300%This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010
I’m always amazed at how much is written about sales and marketing and how little is written on the nuts and bolts of driving business through referrals. Which is why I’m so excited for The Referral Engine to finally hit the street!
Over the last 12 years, I’ve built a number of small businesses and online brands. The small businesses were brick and mortar, serving very local markets. And, despite the fact that I knew each was considered a “word of mouth” business, I spent a lot of money and time throwing nearly every marketing idea I could conjure out there.
What I discovered was, driving people into the businesses was easy. There are a million ways to do that. But, that’s not the challenge. The real challenge is driving new customers who will spend many times what it cost you to acquire them.
Getting 100 new customers who spend $100 each is a recipe for ruin when it costs you $110 to bring those customers through your doors or to your website.
So, what we’re really looking for as small business owners and marketers are the business strategies that yield the greatest return on our efforts. We want to know that for every dollar we spend, it comes back to us in the form of new business many times over.
Which is where the referrals comes in. Hands down, they’re the most cost-effective way to generate new leads and clients. Even if you need to incentivize them in some creative way.
But, what I discovered over the years, both on and offline, is there are two small steps you can take that dramatically increase the likelihood of referrals.
1. Find Your Organic Referral Window –
Those who love you may well always love you, but there’s an energy connected with the “new-ness” of experiencing your product or service that creates a near-palpable drive to evangelize in the beginning. The honeymoon phase. So, you almost always have a short window where the likelihood of referrals and verve of those referrals is substantially higher.
In the fitness and lifestyle world, where I operated, that window is about 4 to 6 weeks. Because the commitment is still there, the product has been used long enough to generate results and the “shiny new” energy is still there.
Question is, what is the optimal organic referral window for your business?
Take a look at your business’ history and see if you can determine where the intersection is between:
Tapping the “new-ness” energy and
Allowing enough time for substantial results to fuel delight.
Then test a number of different windows and let the results tell you what works best.
2. Facilitate Referrals With Tangible Prompts –
Scenario 1: A group of women are having lunch. One arrives late and as she approaches the table, all jaws drop. The group hasn’t seen her in a few months and she’s lost 30 pounds and become ultra-fit. Of course, the first question, once she’s settled, is “what did you do?”
She reveals how she’s been working with a new fitness and nutrition center and she loves them. A few minutes pass and the conversation moves on to the next topic. An hour later the lunch ends and everyone goes their separate ways.
Scenario 2:
A group of women are having lunch. One arrives late and as she approaches the table, all jaws drop. The group hasn’t seen her in a few months and she’s lost 30 pounds and become ultra-fit. Of course, the first question, once she’s settled, is “what did you do?” She reveals how she’s been working with a new fitness and nutrition center and she loves them.
Then, she remembers the center has given her a beautiful card-case with 10 VIP Referral Invites that expire in the next 6 weeks. She hands one to each person and says, “these guys will change your life.”
A few minutes pass and the conversation moves on to the next topic. An hour later the lunch ends and everyone goes their separate ways.
If you’re the fitness and nutrition center, which scenario do you think generates more leads for your business? Scenario number 2. And, the difference can be huge if you do a really good job of matching the incentives and timing with your ultimate client persona. Now multiply that by hundreds or thousands of “card-carrying” evangelists…and smile.
So, yes, referrals are great, but creating a tangible prompt, a physical tool that can be used to share referral information serves a strong reminder for the recipient of the referral that (a) a referral was made, (b) action needs to be taken, and (c) the contact information is “right there.”
This same strategy can be used for both online and offline businesses, with or without incentives.
Indeed, combining the effects of asking for/encouraging referrals within the optimal window and offering tangible referral prompts generated a nearly 300% increase in referral-generated leads for my businesses.
I wonder how it might impact your business?
Jonathan Fields writes on entrepreneurship, marketing and lifestyles at JonathanFields.com and is the author of Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love. He’s also a twitter heavy-user at @jonathanfields.
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Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week 8 March, 2010, 6:07 am
Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral WeekThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010
Marketing podcast with Andy Sernovitz (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes
Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) and author of Word of Mouth Marketing chatted with me for this special episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.
We covered a wide range of topics related to Word of Mouth Marketing such as:
The difference between referrals and word of mouth
How word of mouth happens
How to create word of mouth campaigns
Simple examples of small businesses word of mouth success
Related Posts:Talking Word of Mouth with Andy SernovitzAnd Now a Word from the Word of Mouth PodcastLearn Word of Mouth Marketing from the Guy Who Wrote the BookMichael Port on Make a Referral WeekThe Anatomy of Buzz RevisitedPowered by Contextual Related Posts
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The Referral Multiplier Effect 8 March, 2010, 6:06 am
The Referral Multiplier EffectThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010
After I read an early copy of John’s terrific new book The Referral Engine, it got me thinking about how really great online information makes the job of referring a friend, colleague or family member to somebody a simple process.
Think about your own referrals. How many of them happen via an electronic mechanism (email, Skype, Instant Message, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on). If you’re like me, nearly all of your referrals happen this way. Somebody will email or tweet me something like: “Hey, I’m looking for a great Web designer, do you know anyone?” How easy it is to just send a link to a Web designer’s work and some contact information!
Most businesses aren’t like Web designers, though. We don’t have our stuff available for easy access. But this problem is easily solved. All you need to do is create something amazing on the Web—a YouTube video, a blog, an ebook, some photos, graphs or charts—something that people are eager to share with others (something that makes referrals easy).
Make it free with no registration gates of any kind
There is no doubt that free information made available on the Web creates a referral multiplier effect. When you make it easy for people to point to something interesting that tells your story for you, many more people will talk you up with their friends, colleagues and family members.
Sadly, most people put brakes on their referral engine by requiring an email address (and other personal information) prior to permitting people to download content (such as a white paper). The thinking is that with a gate, each person downloading becomes a valuable sales lead.
When you remove the gate and allow the completely free flow of information with no registration required, immense value comes from many more people consuming and spreading your content and referring you to others.
For example, my most popular ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free has been downloaded over one million times.
Every week someone contacts me to say that they learned about my ideas first when someone referred them to one of my free ebooks. There is no doubt that if I required registration, I would not have a referral engine.
I’m always interested in metrics from other organizations. For example, John Mancini, President of AIIM—a non-profit organization representing the users and suppliers of document, content and records management technologies—released an ebook called 8 Reasons You Need a Strategy for Managing Information — Before It’s Too Late. AIIM also made their ebook totally free, with no registration required.
In just the first month of release, the ebook was downloaded 5,138 times. In addition, AIIM also created a presentation version of the book and posted that, also with no registration, on SlideShare. This version has had 3,353 downloads for a total of 8,491 downloads in the month. Pretty darned good result, for the first month of an ebook, I’d say, and each one a potential for a simple and easy referral.
“Making the e-book available for free and totally without registration was a new approach for us,” Mancini says. “These results for unfettered access are particularly impressive when considered against a couple of more traditional examples (i.e., content requiring a registration on our web site).”
So create some great content, make it totally free with no registration required, and encourage people to share. Your referrals will multiply immediately.
David loves it when people refer to his keynote speech video
David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, and seminar leader and author of the best selling book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. The book is a BusinessWeek bestseller published in 24 languages.
Related Posts:Making Referrals As a Job Creation EngineGetting Referrals is only 1/2 of the gameThe 100% Refund Referral StrategyWhat Referrals Can Tell UsIt Is Make a Referral Week!Powered by Contextual Related Posts
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It Is Make a Referral Week! 8 March, 2010, 5:58 am
It Is Make a Referral Week!This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I’ve declared this week, March 8-12, Make a Referral Week with the intent of drawing attention to the act of making referrals rather than simply receiving them. In fact, I have set a goal to challenge 1000 businesses, large and small, to make 1000 referrals this week and publicly tell the world about it on the Make a Referral Week Counter and on Twitter using the #marm hashtag.
I have been joined in support of this effort by GoToWebinar, PRWeb, Contsant Contact, Marketing Profs, The Referral Engine Book, Perkett PR, Palo Alto Software, Verizon, Alphagraphics, Vertical Response, BNI, Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network, Intuit, Infusionsoft, Gold Star Referral Clubs and countless personal ambassadors.
This blog will feature guest posts and interviews each day this week from thought leaders on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and a live online panel discussion – How to Create a Referral Engine – featuring Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and author of the 29% Solution, Bob Burg, author of Go-Givers Sell More, and Ben McConnell, co-author of Creating Customer Evangelists. The live session is Wednesday, March 10th at Noon CST – Register Here
Want to know how you can get involved?
Make a referral and post it on the Referral Counter
Tweet your referral made using #marm
Tell others about the challenge to 1000
Make more referrals
If you like this idea of making referrals you can also join the Make a Referral Monday effort on Twitter. Starting today, and every Monday hereafter, make referrals and tell people about in on Twitter using the Make a Referral Monday hashtag (#marm) My hope is that we can turn this idea into a movement of sorts and keep the notion of giving referrals front and center all year long.
Related Posts:Building Your Referral Engine - Free Webinar with the Referral A-TeamMaking Referrals As a Job Creation EngineHave You Made Your Referral?The Referral A Team Heads Up Make a Referral WeekTired of Hearing About E.D. - then do somethingPowered by Contextual Related Posts
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Weekend Favs March Six 6 March, 2010, 6:15 am
Weekend Favs March SixThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I have a weekend routine where I share a handful of favorite things I tripped upon online this week. I usually about three and don’t go into much detail but suggest you check them out. The image featured in the post is a favorite creative commons image on Flickr.
Image credit:Nordgren
Good stuff I found this week:
Backup Buddy – a WordPress Plugin that automates the back-up, restoration, and migration of a WordPress blog. This is a paid plug-in but I’ve not found much out there that offers the migration ease that this plugin seems to offer if you need to move to a new host.
Harness the Power of Referrals – Inc magazine article showcasing Make A Referral Week 2010 – a week long effort to raise 1000 referrals for 1000 businesses from March 8th to the 12th.
Master List – a wiki format list of social media monitoring solutions
Related Posts:Weekend Favs February TwentyWeekend Favs February Twenty SevenWeekend Favs January NineWeekend Favs November Twenty-nineWeekend Favs September SixPowered by Contextual Related Posts
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Building Your Referral Engine – Free Webinar with the Referral A-Team 4 March, 2010, 5:32 am
Building Your Referral Engine – Free Webinar with the Referral A-TeamThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
As part of the Make a Referral Week 2010 Education Series I am highlighting the power of referrals and word of mouth marketing with a live event featuring the some of the brightest authors, speakers and thought leaders on the subject of referral marketing.
Join us for a live web discussionWednesday, March 10th at Noon CST. Click here to register for the online seminar.
Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and author of The 29% Solution, Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and the Go-Givers Sell More, and Ben McConnell, co-author Creating Customer Evangelists make up a panel of what may be the worlds greatest single collection of thought leaders on the subject of referrals and word of mouth.
Join us for a live web discussionWednesday, March 10th at Noon CSTClick here to register for the online seminar.
The conference is the headline event of the educational component of Make a Referral Week. More info on the entire week can be found here. Have you made your referral yet? Do it here
Related Posts:The Referral A Team Heads Up Make a Referral WeekMaking Referrals As a Job Creation EngineHave You Made Your Referral?Tired of Hearing About E.D. - then do somethingIvan Misner, Bob Burg and Bill Cates on Making ReferralsPowered by Contextual Related Posts
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The factory in the center 9 March, 2010, 3:24 am
Old time factories had a linear layout, because there was just one steam engine driving one drive shaft. Every machine in the shop had to line up under the shaft (connected by a pulley) in order to get power.
That metaphor extended to the people working in the factory. Each person was hired and trained and arranged to maximize output. The goal was to engage the factory, to feed it, maintain it and have it produce efficiently.
Distribution was designed in sync with the factory. You wanted to have the right number of trucks and drivers to handle whatever the factory produced and to get it where it needed to go.
Marketing was driven by the factory as well. The goal of marketing was to sell whatever the factory could produce in a given month, for as little as possible.
And things like customer service and community relations were expenses, things you did in order to keep the factory out of trouble.
So...
What happens when the factory goes away?
What if the organization has no engine in the center that makes something. What if that's outsourced? What if you produce a service or traffic in ideas? What happens when the revolution comes along (the post-industrial revolution) and now all the value lies in the stuff you used to do because you had to, not because you wanted to?
Now it doesn't matter where you sit. Now it doesn't matter whether or not you're adding to the efficiency or productivity of the machine. Now you don't market to sell what you made, you make to satisfy the market. Now, the market and the consumer and idea trump the system.
Suddenly, the power is in a different place, and the organization must change or else the donut collapses.
The factory in the center 9 March, 2010, 3:24 am
Old time factories had a linear layout, because there was just one steam engine driving one drive shaft. Every machine in the shop had to line up under the shaft (connected by a pulley) in order to get power.
That metaphor extended to the people working in the factory. Each person was hired and trained and arranged to maximize output. The goal was to engage the factory, to feed it, maintain it and have it produce efficiently.
Distribution was designed in sync with the factory. You wanted to have the right number of trucks and drivers to handle whatever the factory produced and to get it where it needed to go.
Marketing was driven by the factory as well. The goal of marketing was to sell whatever the factory could produce in a given month, for as little as possible.
And things like customer service and community relations were expenses, things you did in order to keep the factory out of trouble.
So...
What happens when the factory goes away?
What if the organization has no engine in the center that makes something. What if that's outsourced? What if you produce a service or traffic in ideas? What happens when the revolution comes along (the post-industrial revolution) and now all the value lies in the stuff you used to do because you had to, not because you wanted to?
Now it doesn't matter where you sit. Now it doesn't matter whether or not you're adding to the efficiency or productivity of the machine. Now you don't market to sell what you made, you make to satisfy the market. Now, the market and the consumer and idea trump the system.
Suddenly, the power is in a different place, and the organization must change or else the donut collapses.
You rock 8 March, 2010, 3:07 am
This is deceptive.You don't rock all the time. No one does. No one is a rock star, superstar, world-changing artist all the time. In fact, it's a self-defeating goal. You can't do it.No, but you might rock five minutes a day.Five minutes to write a blog post that changes everything, or five minutes to deliver an act of generosity that changes someone. Five minutes to invent a great new feature, or five minutes to teach a groundbreaking skill in a way that no one ever thought of before. Five minutes to tell the truth (or hear the truth).Five minutes a day you might do exceptional work, remarkable work, work that matters. Five minutes a day you might defeat the lizard brain long enough to stand up and make a difference.And five minutes of rocking would be enough, because it would be five minutes more than just about anyone else.
You rock 8 March, 2010, 3:07 am
This is deceptive.You don't rock all the time. No one does. No one is a rock star, superstar, world-changing artist all the time. In fact, it's a self-defeating goal. You can't do it.No, but you might rock five minutes a day.Five minutes to write a blog post that changes everything, or five minutes to deliver an act of generosity that changes someone. Five minutes to invent a great new feature, or five minutes to teach a groundbreaking skill in a way that no one ever thought of before. Five minutes to tell the truth (or hear the truth).Five minutes a day you might do exceptional work, remarkable work, work that matters. Five minutes a day you might defeat the lizard brain long enough to stand up and make a difference.And five minutes of rocking would be enough, because it would be five minutes more than just about anyone else.
Losing Andrew Carnegie 7 March, 2010, 3:43 am
Carnegie apparently said, "Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors......Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory."Is there a typical large corporation working today that still believes this?Most organizations now have it backwards. The factory, the infrastructure, the systems, the patents, the process, the manual... that's king. In fact, shareholders demand it.It turns out that success is coming from the atypical organizations, the ones that can get back to embracing irreplaceable people, the linchpins, the ones that make a difference. Anything else can be replicated cheaper by someone else.
Losing Andrew Carnegie 7 March, 2010, 3:43 am
Carnegie apparently said, "Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors......Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory."Is there a typical large corporation working today that still believes this?Most organizations now have it backwards. The factory, the infrastructure, the systems, the patents, the process, the manual... that's king. In fact, shareholders demand it.It turns out that success is coming from the atypical organizations, the ones that can get back to embracing irreplaceable people, the linchpins, the ones that make a difference. Anything else can be replicated cheaper by someone else.
Spring reading list--big ideas for idea people 6 March, 2010, 10:44 am
Readers have told me that they enjoy my off-the-wall book lists. Here's another. Science fiction, Tom Peters, Krista Tippett and even a book for touring musicians.Enjoy them. And don't forget it's okay to share books. They don't wear out.
Spring reading list--big ideas for idea people 6 March, 2010, 10:44 am
Readers have told me that they enjoy my off-the-wall book lists. Here's another. Science fiction, Tom Peters, Krista Tippett and even a book for touring musicians.Enjoy them. And don't forget it's okay to share books. They don't wear out.
Pulitzer Prizefighting 6 March, 2010, 3:36 am
People are drawn to existing competitions like moths to a flame.It's precisely the wrong way to succeed.Lots of journalists take significant detours in their careers and their writing in order to win a Pulitzer. Maybe not to actually win one, but to be in that class, to have peers that have won one. Mystery novelists stick to the center of the road, because that's where the road is. Movies are written and released in order to win an Oscar. Once there's a category, a ranking, a place to battle for supremacy, we run for it. Do you go to trade shows or enter markets or submit RFPs or push for a GPA or even gross ratings points because there's a list of winners or because it's what you actually want to do? Most bestseller lists and prizes measure popularity, not effectiveness.I wonder if real art comes when you build the thing that they don't have a prize for yet.
Pulitzer Prizefighting 6 March, 2010, 3:36 am
People are drawn to existing competitions like moths to a flame.It's precisely the wrong way to succeed.Lots of journalists take significant detours in their careers and their writing in order to win a Pulitzer. Maybe not to actually win one, but to be in that class, to have peers that have won one. Mystery novelists stick to the center of the road, because that's where the road is. Movies are written and released in order to win an Oscar. Once there's a category, a ranking, a place to battle for supremacy, we run for it. Do you go to trade shows or enter markets or submit RFPs or push for a GPA or even gross ratings points because there's a list of winners or because it's what you actually want to do? Most bestseller lists and prizes measure popularity, not effectiveness.I wonder if real art comes when you build the thing that they don't have a prize for yet.
March Break 9 March, 2010, 11:58 am
Even the most ultimate road warrior and digital nomad needs a break every now and then.
Sure, the latest tech can help you get down to work wherever you are. But time on the road (and in the air) is also the perfect opportunity to let loose and play. Sudoku was never my thing, and lugging around a hardcover of Dan Brown's latest just isn't in the cards. So, in the spirit of March Break, here are two of my favourite ways to kill time when not strapped to e-mail or grappling with a smartphone:
Foursquare. Have you ever dreamt of becoming the mayor of Yorkville or Yaletown? Now is your chance. One of the hottest games, applications and online social networks - yes, it's all three and more - is Foursquare. This app for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android phones (though it can also be accessed by any mobile device with a browser) allows you to "check in" and tell your friends where you are, so they can recommend where to shop and eat and what to do nearby. As more and more people connect, you learn more about the best spots to frequent, and the more you go to a specific place (and tell your social network), the more status you earn for that locale. And yes, you can be named "mayor" of your favourite bar, restaurant or hotel. You can also receive hyper-local offers (like free appetizers at certain restaurants) and, as with the best of video games, you can unlock badges that give you real-life street cred (and some additional goodies).
Cinemin Swivel. For those of you who'd rather stay in your hotel room, the Cinemin Swivel lets you project a crisp 60-inch image from over eight feet away. This amazing multimedia pico projector is about the size of two packs of cards but still lets you get that movie theatre experience for around $300. It pulls your video files right from your iPod or iPhone (or you can use a VGA-to-AV adapter to connect a laptop). The coolest part about this mini-projector is the 90-degree swivel hinge that makes it simple to project on any surface - even the hotel-room ceiling (full disclosure: WowWee, the manufacturer of Cinemin Swivel, was a client of Twist Image).
What would you recommend to the road warriors and digital nomads for this March Break?
The above posting is my monthly tech and gadget column for enRoute Magazine called, Ultraportable. I cross-post it here with all of the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:
- enRoute Magazine - March 2010 - Portable Play Stations.
Tags:
android
blackberry
cinemin swivel
dan brown
digital nomad
email
enroute magazine
foursquare
gadget
gadget column
hyper local
iphone
iphone app
ipod
laptop
location-aware
magazine column
march break
mini projector
mobile browser
mobile device
multimedia pico projector
online social network
road warrior
smartphone
spafax
status
sudoku
tech column
tech gadget
technology
twist image
ultraportable
video
video game
wowwee
March Break 9 March, 2010, 10:58 am
Even the most ultimate road warrior and digital nomad needs a break every now and then.
Sure, the latest tech can help you get down to work wherever you are. But time on the road (and in the air) is also the perfect opportunity to let loose and play. Sudoku was never my thing, and lugging around a hardcover of Dan Brown's latest just isn't in the cards. So, in the spirit of March Break, here are two of my favourite ways to kill time when not strapped to e-mail or grappling with a smartphone:
Foursquare. Have you ever dreamt of becoming the mayor of Yorkville or Yaletown? Now is your chance. One of the hottest games, applications and online social networks - yes, it's all three and more - is Foursquare. This app for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android phones (though it can also be accessed by any mobile device with a browser) allows you to "check in" and tell your friends where you are, so they can recommend where to shop and eat and what to do nearby. As more and more people connect, you learn more about the best spots to frequent, and the more you go to a specific place (and tell your social network), the more status you earn for that locale. And yes, you can be named "mayor" of your favourite bar, restaurant or hotel. You can also receive hyper-local offers (like free appetizers at certain restaurants) and, as with the best of video games, you can unlock badges that give you real-life street cred (and some additional goodies).
Cinemin Swivel. For those of you who'd rather stay in your hotel room, the Cinemin Swivel lets you project a crisp 60-inch image from over eight feet away. This amazing multimedia pico projector is about the size of two packs of cards but still lets you get that movie theatre experience for around $300. It pulls your video files right from your iPod or iPhone (or you can use a VGA-to-AV adapter to connect a laptop). The coolest part about this mini-projector is the 90-degree swivel hinge that makes it simple to project on any surface - even the hotel-room ceiling (full disclosure: WowWee, the manufacturer of Cinemin Swivel, was a client of Twist Image).
What would you recommend to the road warriors and digital nomads for this March Break?
The above posting is my monthly tech and gadget column for enRoute Magazine called, Ultraportable. I cross-post it here with all of the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:
- enRoute Magazine - March 2010 - Portable Play Stations.
Tags:
android
blackberry
cinemin swivel
dan brown
digital nomad
email
enroute magazine
foursquare
gadget
gadget column
hyper local
iphone
iphone app
ipod
laptop
location-aware
magazine column
march break
mini projector
mobile browser
mobile device
multimedia pico projector
online social network
road warrior
smartphone
spafax
status
sudoku
tech column
tech gadget
technology
twist image
ultraportable
video
video game
wowwee
The Lines Continue To Blur (At Breakneck Speed) 8 March, 2010, 7:27 pm
Some still look sideways when thinking about mobile. Some are just kidding themselves. Our world is changing faster and faster.
The writing is on the wall. Marketing Charts had a fascinating news item today entitled, Mobile Facebook, Twitter Growth Explodes, which stated:
"In January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, up 112% from 11.8 million mobile users in January 2009. While only 4.7 million mobile users accessed Twitter from their mobile browser in January 2010, this represented 347% growth from 1.05 million mobile users in January 2009."
It's easy to say the shift is subtle (especially when you look at the amount of people who own a BlackBerry, iPhone or Nexus One compared to those who are simply "online"), but it's happening fast, and it's not just about having a mobile version of your website (more on that here: The End Of Big Website Builds). What's happening is that consumers aren't thinking about your online website and your mobile website, they're simply looking to access content and platforms wherever they are and however they want to.
It's not about the kids (at all).
"Despite the stereotype of teens spending every waking moment on a mobile device, Nielsen data suggests their parents actually spend more time performing mobile web surfing. Only 7% of mobile social networking activity was represented by 13-to-17-year-olds and only 16% by 18-to-24-year-olds in December 2009. The leaders in mobile social networking activity are 35-to-54-year-olds, who accounted for 36% of mobile social network usage in December 2009. Close behind them were 25-to-34-year-olds, who performed 34% of the month's mobile social networking activity. Users ages 55 and up combined for the remaining 7%."
What do you think these numbers are going to look like in 12 months time? What about 24 months?
Are you (and your business) ready for this?
Tags:
blackberry
content
facebook
google phone
iphone
marketing charts
mobile browser
mobile social networking
mobile website
nexus one
nielsen
obile
online
online social network
platform
twitter
website
The Lines Continue To Blur (At Breakneck Speed) 8 March, 2010, 6:27 pm
Some still look sideways when thinking about mobile. Some are just kidding themselves. Our world is changing faster and faster.
The writing is on the wall. Marketing Charts had a fascinating news item today entitled, Mobile Facebook, Twitter Growth Explodes, which stated:
"In January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, up 112% from 11.8 million mobile users in January 2009. While only 4.7 million mobile users accessed Twitter from their mobile browser in January 2010, this represented 347% growth from 1.05 million mobile users in January 2009."
It's easy to say the shift is subtle (especially when you look at the amount of people who own a BlackBerry, iPhone or Nexus One compared to those who are simply "online"), but it's happening fast, and it's not just about having a mobile version of your website (more on that here: The End Of Big Website Builds). What's happening is that consumers aren't thinking about your online website and your mobile website, they're simply looking to access content and platforms wherever they are and however they want to.
It's not about the kids (at all).
"Despite the stereotype of teens spending every waking moment on a mobile device, Nielsen data suggests their parents actually spend more time performing mobile web surfing. Only 7% of mobile social networking activity was represented by 13-to-17-year-olds and only 16% by 18-to-24-year-olds in December 2009. The leaders in mobile social networking activity are 35-to-54-year-olds, who accounted for 36% of mobile social network usage in December 2009. Close behind them were 25-to-34-year-olds, who performed 34% of the month's mobile social networking activity. Users ages 55 and up combined for the remaining 7%."
What do you think these numbers are going to look like in 12 months time? What about 24 months?
Are you (and your business) ready for this?
Tags:
blackberry
content
facebook
google phone
iphone
marketing charts
mobile browser
mobile social networking
mobile website
nexus one
nielsen
obile
online
online social network
platform
twitter
website
Media Hacks #26 Audio Podcast Is Now Live 7 March, 2010, 6:05 pm
Episode #193 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to. It's also episode #26 of Media Hacks.
The Ninja (aka Christopher S. Penn) talks about his new gig at Blue Sky Factory, but the main thrust of the conversation is about what happens to a company when someone with a major personal brand (like Ninja had for the financial aid industry) leaves and starts in another industry? What happens to the brand? How trusted is the personal brand of the individual? Along with that we graze through a bunch of topics from mobile and iPhone apps to the pending launch of the iPad. We even take a sneak peek at where C.C. Chapman won't be during SXSW (hint: it's in line waiting to get into parties) and have a chat about the power of email for Marketers (and where it's going), plus lots more. Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #193.
Tags:
advertising
apple
bank run
bite size edits
blog
blogging
blue sky factory
book oven
campfire
cc chapman
chat roulette
chris brogan
christopher s penn
digital dads
digital marketing
email
email marketing
facebook
facebook group
foursquare
gowalla
htc
hugh mcguire
in over your head
iphone
iphone app
itunes
julien smith
librivox
location aware
macbook pro
macrumors buyers guide
managing the gray
marketing
marketing over coffee
media hacks
mobile platform
new marketing labs
online social network
personal brand
please rob me
podcast
podcasting
podfade
six pixels of separation
social media marketing
sxsw
trust agents
twist image
twitter
web 20
widgets
Media Hacks #26 Audio Podcast Is Now Live 7 March, 2010, 5:05 pm
Episode #193 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to. It's also episode #26 of Media Hacks.
The Ninja (aka Christopher S. Penn) talks about his new gig at Blue Sky Factory, but the main thrust of the conversation is about what happens to a company when someone with a major personal brand (like Ninja had for the financial aid industry) leaves and starts in another industry? What happens to the brand? How trusted is the personal brand of the individual? Along with that we graze through a bunch of topics from mobile and iPhone apps to the pending launch of the iPad. We even take a sneak peek at where C.C. Chapman won't be during SXSW (hint: it's in line waiting to get into parties) and have a chat about the power of email for Marketers (and where it's going), plus lots more. Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #193.
Tags:
advertising
apple
bank run
bite size edits
blog
blogging
blue sky factory
book oven
campfire
cc chapman
chat roulette
chris brogan
christopher s penn
digital dads
digital marketing
email
email marketing
facebook
facebook group
foursquare
gowalla
htc
hugh mcguire
in over your head
iphone
iphone app
itunes
julien smith
librivox
location aware
macbook pro
macrumors buyers guide
managing the gray
marketing
marketing over coffee
media hacks
mobile platform
new marketing labs
online social network
personal brand
please rob me
podcast
podcasting
podfade
six pixels of separation
social media marketing
sxsw
trust agents
twist image
twitter
web 20
widgets
The End Of Big Website Builds 6 March, 2010, 6:49 pm
If you thought fragmentation was changing the way a brand buys media, just wait until you see what it's going to do to the Digital Marketing space.
Are the days of big websites and long website builds numbered? It could well be. If you think about how people find and connect to most brands, it's not just through a search engine anymore. In fact, more and more people are having their first brand interaction on their mobile device. There are many people who are also connecting to brands for the first time in spaces like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Does this mean that the website is going the way of the dodo bird?
Not exactly, but it does mean that the overall Digital Marketing strategy is going to change dramatically in the next little while. Instead of one, big and centralized website with many digital marketing outposts in the appropriate platforms, it is more than likely that we're going to see more and more brands create multiple spaces and platforms to ensure that they're connecting with the right people in the right communities.
Imagine a world...
Where a Digital Marketing strategy focuses less on one big website and more on creating engaging "things" like iPhone apps, a mobile website, a Facebook page along with a Blog (or whatever), and it's all supported with a simple website that acts more like a hub for all of the other spokes. Yes, there are some (only a few) brands already playing with creating Facebook pages in lieu of micro-sites for promotions and experiential marketing initiatives, but it has not become a commonplace activity where you find a brand doing multiple things in multiple channels and focusing less on driving consumers to their marketing-riddled jargony websites.
It becomes a more complex Digital Marketing play.
The "game" used to be about always driving people back to your own, controlled, website, and the truth is that the more vibrant community for a brand may be happening more through a mobile app or online social network platform... or something else or something in addition to it. Does this mean we need to trim websites back to WordPress Blog-shaped platforms or micro-site sizes? Not really, but it does mean that if a brand's vibrant community is happening in a place like Facebook, they won't have much control or ownership over the content, but they might be able to do things (in terms of connecting and growing that community) that they could not scale to with a big, towering website of their own.
This is just further proof that the conversations are everywhere (and maybe not where we always want them to be).
Tags:
blog
brand
branding
conversation
digital marketing
digital marketing strategy
dodo bird
experiential marketing
facebook
facebook page
iphone app
media
micro-site
microsite
mobile device
mobile website
online community
online social network
promotion
search engine
twitter
website
website build. media fragmentation
wordpress
youtube
The End Of Big Website Builds 6 March, 2010, 5:49 pm
If you thought fragmentation was changing the way a brand buys media, just wait until you see what it's going to do to the Digital Marketing space.
Are the days of big websites and long website builds numbered? It could well be. If you think about how people find and connect to most brands, it's not just through a search engine anymore. In fact, more and more people are having their first brand interaction on their mobile device. There are many people who are also connecting to brands for the first time in spaces like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Does this mean that the website is going the way of the dodo bird?
Not exactly, but it does mean that the overall Digital Marketing strategy is going to change dramatically in the next little while. Instead of one, big and centralized website with many digital marketing outposts in the appropriate platforms, it is more than likely that we're going to see more and more brands create multiple spaces and platforms to ensure that they're connecting with the right people in the right communities.
Imagine a world...
Where a Digital Marketing strategy focuses less on one big website and more on creating engaging "things" like iPhone apps, a mobile website, a Facebook page along with a Blog (or whatever), and it's all supported with a simple website that acts more like a hub for all of the other spokes. Yes, there are some (only a few) brands already playing with creating Facebook pages in lieu of micro-sites for promotions and experiential marketing initiatives, but it has not become a commonplace activity where you find a brand doing multiple things in multiple channels and focusing less on driving consumers to their marketing-riddled jargony websites.
It becomes a more complex Digital Marketing play.
The "game" used to be about always driving people back to your own, controlled, website, and the truth is that the more vibrant community for a brand may be happening more through a mobile app or online social network platform... or something else or something in addition to it. Does this mean we need to trim websites back to WordPress Blog-shaped platforms or micro-site sizes? Not really, but it does mean that if a brand's vibrant community is happening in a place like Facebook, they won't have much control or ownership over the content, but they might be able to do things (in terms of connecting and growing that community) that they could not scale to with a big, towering website of their own.
This is just further proof that the conversations are everywhere (and maybe not where we always want them to be).
Tags:
blog
brand
branding
conversation
digital marketing
digital marketing strategy
dodo bird
experiential marketing
facebook
facebook page
iphone app
media
micro-site
microsite
mobile device
mobile website
online community
online social network
promotion
search engine
twitter
website
website build. media fragmentation
wordpress
youtube
The Last Notebook And Journal 5 March, 2010, 6:43 pm
There are moments in time that should make you stand back in awe and marvel at technology. This is one of those moments.
Engadget posted this today: Microsoft's Courier 'digital journal': exclusive pictures and details (update: video!). No, it's not an iPad, but it is one amazing looking device. So, what is this new device from Microsoft? "Courier will function as a 'digital journal,' and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5x7 photo when closed. That's a lot smaller than we expected," reads the Engadget Blog post.
But, you have to watch these two videos demos:
Bye bye Moleskin.
Tags:
blog
digital journal
engadget
ipad
journal
microsoft
microsoft courier
moleskin
notebook
online video
tablet
technology
The Last Notebook And Journal 5 March, 2010, 5:43 pm
There are moments in time that should make you stand back in awe and marvel at technology. This is one of those moments.
Engadget posted this today: Microsoft's Courier 'digital journal': exclusive pictures and details (update: video!). No, it's not an iPad, but it is one amazing looking device. So, what is this new device from Microsoft? "Courier will function as a 'digital journal,' and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5x7 photo when closed. That's a lot smaller than we expected," reads the Engadget Blog post.
But, you have to watch these two videos demos:
Bye bye Moleskin.
Tags:
blog
digital journal
engadget
ipad
journal
microsoft
microsoft courier
moleskin
notebook
online video
tablet
technology
