Landing Page Makeover Clinic #28: IntelligentEditing.com 27 July, 2010, 6:20 am
This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work.
Daniel Heuman’s software helps writers, editors, translators, and proofreaders prepare error-free documents with greater ease and speed. He tried and abandoned PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, as he discovered the folks who clicked through weren’t his best prospects. (That’s a technique that almost certainly deserves some more thought and attention another time.)
Daniel is now marketing directly to prospects via email and showing some success, but he feels more can be done.
Let’s see what we can do.
The Goal: Generate enough free-trial downloads to sell 3 licenses a day.
The Problem: If folks are downloading a free-trial and not converting, it’s a product vs. value problem. If the problem is growing the numbers of prospects to take the free trial, that’s a traffic problem. If interested prospects are visiting the site or landing page and not engaging with the message, that’s a conversion problem.
The Current Landing Page (homepage): http://intelligentediting.com
Value: $90.00
Click image for larger view
The Maven’s 10-Point Critique
My personal take is that Daniel needs to generate enough traffic – via organic, SEM and social media channels – to grow his own mailing list to which he can continue marketing to his heart’s content. A stronger, more effective homepage would offer an overall boost to his ongoing marketing efforts.
#1– Make your case in the first screen with a strong, provocative headline.
Why would a professional writer or editor pay $90 for additional proofreading functionality?
The rational reason: Cleaner, error-free documents.
The emotional reason: To look better in the eyes of a boss/client/customers.
Sloppy work reflects badly on the writer and the company represented. Clean work makes everyone feel good and confident.
So while the current headline: “Proofread Faster, Proofread Better” is a clear statement, I’m wondering how we can juice it up a little? How about:
Just One Typo Can Rob You of Credibility and Cash
You’ve just gone from “reasonable” to “irresistible” with a provocative headline that resonates emotionally with the visitor.
#2 — Add more oomph to the tagline.
Again, your tag is very clear on the most basic of benefits: Cleaner, Smarter, Better Documents
That’s a good start, but then I’m thinking … why and for what?
A great exercise for headlines and taglines is to take your basic feature or surface benefit and “Why? Because!”or “So what?” your way through it until the core emotional truth is revealed.
Try working these words (or their variants) into your tagline:
polished
presentation
reflection
#3 — Invite your visitors to take your video tour from the get-go.
You already have a nice little video, yet you’ve basically hidden it from view. Slap it on your homepage and do a voice-over track. I found watching the material without a guiding voice unnerving.
Your voice-over would allow you to expand on the action in the video and highlight those areas of greater interest.
Don’t hide the good stuff. Warm it up and share it.
#4 — Be upfront about who this product is and isn’t for.
The only place I see “MS Word for Windows” is in teeny type under your box illustration. I’d give this more push so Mac users can grunt and grumble under their collective breath and move quickly elsewhere.
#5 — Keep sprinkling the goodies that keep visitors thinking “This is for me!”
Highlight the product’s ability to proof both British and American English. This capability strikes me as huge benefit for writers/editors working internationally.
You also have a strong guarantee. Get it on a homepage badge and show it off.
And you make customized versions — another wow, especially for those working in big organizations.
#6 — Rework your navigation for greater clarity.
You’ve hidden a lot of the product goodies in secondary position in terms of your primary navigation. I suggest the following revisions:
Primary navigation
HOME
Features
Success Stories (Testimonials & Case Studies)
Reviews
Resources
Download & Pricing
Contact Us
Secondary navigation:
About Us — FAQ & Tutorials — Forum — Blog — Support
#7 — Build your traffic organically with smarter SEO.
This is your current title tag for search:
Intelligent Editing — Cleaner, Smarter, Better Documents
A tagline, though, isn’t necessarily a good meta title — and it’s the title tag plus the content that Google sizes up and determines your topic and site relevancy.
So let’s adjust and get some primary keyword phrases in the front of the title like this:
Proofreading & Editing Software for MS Word Documents :: Intelligent Editing
I didn’t do the research to determine if these are indeed the best keyword phrases, but you get the idea. Frontload the terms that your prospects are using to find you … and add the product name, too.
#8 — Build your mailing list with a newsletter and a blog.
Since your email campaigns have been pretty effective for you, that means you need to add more names to your list so you can continue doing — and expanding on–– what works for you.
Add a newsletter sign-up and offer one or more of your current resources as a bonus for subscribing. Add a blog, too. It doesn’t have to be fancy or involved. See tumblr.com or preposterous.com for some easy-to- implement ideas.
#9 – Connect with your prospects with social media.
Build your authority in this niche space on this niche topic via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If there are writer/editor specific social media venues, make sure you have a presence there, too.
Social media is a long-term strategy to building credibility and a fan base that trusts you and ultimately your products for purchase
#10 — Tweak your homepage with one big Call to Action.
Click image for larger view
I’ve tweaked your current homepage to reflect and illustrate the suggestions I’ve made here. (I know you didn’t want me to, but honest, I just couldn’t help myself. ) You could easily flip the placement of the video and headline/bullet/call-to-action sections.
(Mea culpa for the incomplete sentences, dangling participles, and other little idiosyncrasies that make editors weep and gnash their teeth. All I can say in my own defense is this: “I’m a copywriter.”)
My thanks to Daniel Heuman for his patience and support of Heifer International. Look for my next makeover in approximately 4 weeks.
About the Author: Roberta Rosenberg is The Copywriting Maven at MGP Direct, Inc. Find her @CopywriterMaven on Twitter. If you’re interested in a private page makeover, site audit, or other services, please email Roberta directly.
Make Your Readers Love You: 5 Lessons from Pixar 26 July, 2010, 8:50 am
Everyone loves Pixar.
Okay, maybe not everyone. Let’s just say everyone except that 10% of the human race who enjoy hating on awesome like I enjoy sipping coffee.
Fifteen years ago, Pixar smashed the creative and technical limits of the animated feature film.
It would be easy saying they came from nowhere, if it wasn’t for the decade they spent scraping by, sharpening their craft, rewriting broken rules while keeping what was best about the classics in their genre.
People don’t just like Pixar films. They love Pixar films.
How does Pixar do it, again and again and again?
Yes, there is some magic, but it’s the kind that comes from plenty of commitment and hard work. Follow these five steps and eliminate the limits on what you or your business can achieve.
1. Be consistent and build trust
Toy Story 3 is now in theaters, continuing an impossibly solid 11-film winning streak — throughout its history, each of Pixar’s movies has debuted at the number one position in ticket sales.
From the first film to this newest, Pixar never stepped sideways. Their second film, A Bug’s Life, is probably their least appreciated, but still wonderful. Cars is my own least favorite, but it was my son’s #1 for two years straight, and I’m pretty sure anytime Mattel needs money, they can just churn out another fleet of Cars characters.
That kind of consistency creates trust: a trust that has vaulted Pixar to enviable success.
Each of Pixar’s films has been a box office smash, averaging more than $550 million per film in worldwide sales. Add DVDs, fast-food promotional tie-ins and the like, and you begin to understand that it’s Pixar that has made Steve Jobs really, really rich, more than his other company, one that’s also known for consistency, quality, and undeniable brand loyalty.
2. Take the time to do things right
Toy Story re-energized the world of mega-budget digital animation. But unlike the hurry-up-and-render aesthetic of most other studios, each of Pixar’s films is pixel perfect.
Unlike live action footage, every second of an animated feature requires specific articulation, many times over. There are no second takes. Yet Pixar has re-worked entire sections of their films they didn’t deem good enough, and even switched directors midway through the production of Ratatouille.
According to a June 2010 article in Wired, the average frame of animation of Toy Story 3 took seven hours of computing time. There are 24 frames in a second of movie footage.
Pixar would rather be late than shoddy. In a culture where we have timers at the drive-thru, guaranteeing the opportunity to deliver high blood pressure and heart disease in under 60 seconds, that type of care is rare.
And audiences know it.
3. Tell a story that connects
Sure, Pixar movies pop visually right off the screen (even before 3D versions). But it’s story and character that keep the audience coming back again and again.
Pixar has always understood something that most studios can’t seem to grasp — if you want to create highly profitable work, you’re in deep trouble without some amazing writers.
Memorable, lovable characters are a Pixar standard. From Buzz and Woody to Nemo and Wall-E, our affection for Pixar characters lingers. In comparison, characters in most other animated features seem pretty … two-dimensional.
Pixar fosters a connection with their audience through great storytelling. They speak to enduring archetypes, and deliver lessons we’ve all learned (or still need to).
Looking life’s regrets in the eye. Mourning the loss of a loved one. Making room for new relationships. Swallowing fear in the face of adventure.
I know I’m not the only grown-up to regularly quote Pixar characters. Tarantino is the only filmmaker I quote more, and I can only do that after my kids fall asleep.
Brilliant writing and the ability to connect leave a genuine, lasting impression on our memories.
4. Know yourself, your product, and your team
The hidden secret in Pixar’s sauce is its extraordinary team.
Usually, studios assemble a cast of freelance professionals for each project. Pixar houses a staff of writers, directors, animators, and technicians who move from project to project.
I know I’d have my face in the mud if it wasn’t for the remarkable people I work with each day. I admire Pixar for building a team of filmmakers who know, trust, and believe in one another. A team that’s fanatic about quality, and where everyone has a voice.
Steve Jobs, who brought director/screenwriter Brad Bird to Pixar after the studio’s first trio of home runs because he didn’t want the company’s innovation to stagnate, said:
For imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.
Brad went on to write and direct The Incredibles and Ratatouille, both movies with strong themes of family and friendship. He agrees teamwork has been paramount to Pixar’s success:
In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget — but never shows up in a budget — is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.
The relentless drive for superb quality comes from within the team itself. According to the same Wired article, the animation team gathers each morning on comfy couches with bowls of Cap’n Crunch cereal to review and rag the prior day’s work. (The team encourages criticism, even from the most junior team members.)
It’s this sort of healthy creative environment that allows Pixar to correct missteps before they appear on screen, and achieve something close to perfection.
5. Now, make it your own
There is no one else like Pixar, but there is someone exactly like you.
Do what Pixar did. Be consistent, take your time, put out a superb product, build an excellent team, and know exactly who you are.
Your own digital magic awaits.
About the Author: Sean Platt is a ghostwriter and Creative Director at REV Media Marketing. Follow him on Twitter.
The 7 Secrets of Running a Wildly Popular Blog 20 July, 2010, 6:47 am
Did you ever wonder why some blogs attract tons of readers and others don’t?
Of course you’ve wondered. We all have. Because if you’re reading this blog, you almost certainly have a blog of your own. You think it’s great, and you want lots of other people to think it’s great too.
So what’s the answer? Why do some blogs become more popular than others?
There are lots of reasons why people flock to certain blogs, but I think one of the most important is that popular blogs are written by popular people — the sort of people who attract others.
And becoming a popular person isn’t just a matter of fate or genes. It’s something you can work on.
I’m not saying content isn’t important when you’re creating a popular blog. Content for the best blogs is almost always top-notch, interesting, and informative — and that takes work.
But a blog isn’t just about work or great content.
Think about the most popular person you know in your personal life. What is it about them that attracts other people? Brains? Skill? Knowledge? These things could be part of it, but don’t you also know popular people who aren’t the smartest, the most skilled, or the best-educated?
When giving the commencement speech to the Vassar class of 1983, Meryl Streep said this:
Real Life is actually a lot more like high school. The common denominator prevails. Excellence is not always recognized or rewarded. What we watch on our screens, whom we elect, are determined to a large extent by public polls. Looks count. A lot. And unlike the best of the college experience, when ideas and solutions somehow seem attainable if you just get up early, stay up late, try hard enough, and find the right source or method, things on the outside sometimes seem vast and impossible …
In other words, success isn’t necessarily about competence. It’s often about likeability. People like to spend time with people they like.
The same applies to blogs. Success often depends on likeability. How you come across. Your vibe. Your attitude and personality.
And if I were to break this down into specific tips, I’d say there are 7 secrets for making your blog (and you) more popular.
1. Have a conversation
People don’t like to be lectured or talked down to. They just like to talk. And a blog is really a form of conversation between you and your readers. Even if people don’t always directly communicate with you or leave comments, the tone of your posts should be more or less conversational.
Don’t write like you’re delivering a sermon. Write like you’re chatting with a friend. Keep it easy and informal.
2. Lighten up
You don’t have to tell jokes, but it’s smart to keep things light-hearted. Consider the Men with Pens blog. James always has a lot of fun when writing a post, and her sense of humor makes the information more readable and entertaining.
Your readers are probably having a tough day. Their desk is groaning under the weight of all their projects. The economy is crappy and their life is full of responsibility.
If they read your blog and come away feeling just a little happier, they’ll keep coming back.
3. Be yourself
After all, people are not coming to your blog just to acquire knowledge. They’re dropping by to visit you.
Which means you have to be there.
That means revealing a little about yourself, sharing the occasional personal photo, posting videos where you talk to your readers, letting people know what’s going on with you.
For example, in a recent Pro Copy Tips post, I mentioned that I visited Las Vegas for my sister’s wedding. I show a photo of me standing in front of the famous welcome sign on a sweltering afternoon. I mention playing the slots and losing a little money. (Only a buck. I’m not much of a gambler.)
And all this served as an introduction to thoughts about how writers take risks, so it remained informative and focused on the reader.
4. Be nice
Yes, your mom was right. You have to be nice.
Don’t be a diva. Answer your emails. Respond to comments. Be polite even when a reader makes the occasional stupid remark or a troll flames you for no good reason.
The people who are rude to you are having a bad day, or a bad life, and they want to share their frustration and anger with you. But it’s their problem, not yours. They want to provoke you. Don’t let them.
If anyone gets out of control on your blog, don’t bicker about it. Just delete the comment and move on.
5. Get over yourself
When you think about it, blogs are really kind of egotistical. You have to think pretty highly of yourself to assume other people want to hear what you have to say day after day.
There’s nothing wrong with a healthy ego, but your blog really isn’t about you. It’s about your readers.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the more you cater to your readers needs, the more popular and profitable your blog can become. The more you give, the more you get. The world is full of self-centered and stingy bloggers. Don’t be one of them.
(I realize this might seem to contradict #3. There’s a delicate balance there. You want to share enough of yourself to make a connection, but still keep your focus on your audience.)
6. Help people
Isn’t this the whole point of a blog, especially one that’s wildly popular? Why do you visit Copyblogger or Lifehacker or Chris Brogan, or any of the other top blogs?
Because they offer you lots of stuff without necessarily expecting something in return. The people who run these blogs are constantly thinking about how they can help you.
Again, think about the people in your personal life. You probably know that one person who is always willing to help, no matter what you need.
Why do you keep going back to that person? Because you know they’ll say “yes” when most others will say no. Helpful people are popular people.
7. Stop trying so hard
Yes, you need to work at your blog. You should write good posts. You should offer solid information. You might even put in long hours.
But don’t push too hard. Relax. Enjoy it. Make it part of your life. If you’re desperate for success, that desperation will show.
It’s like dating: there’s a fine line between wooing someone and stalking them. I mean, have you ever had someone get a crush on you and start trailing you like a puppy? It’s annoying. And a little creepy.
No matter how much you want success, just remember that it comes fast for some and slower for others.
There’s a moderately popular blog I used to enjoy. Then the people who run it announced a product. From that day forward, every post was about their product. Every link pointed to a sales page. The blog was no longer a conversation. It was a relentless sales pitch. I don’t visit any more.
Meryl Streep was right. Life is like high school. And success has a lot to do with being popular. So … be popular.
About the Author: Dean Rieck is one of America’s top direct marketing copywriters. He shares his writing and freelancing know-how at the wildly popular Pro Copy Tips.
The Foolproof Cure for Weak Content: 4 Ways to Get Some Perspective 20 July, 2010, 6:10 am
When I was fifteen, I wrote a novel. I thought it was pretty good, and daydreamt about literary stardom.
Fast forward ten years. I recently found my old notebooks and read that novel over again. And … let’s just say it wasn’t as good as I remembered, and leave it at that.
It’s amazing what a difference perspective makes.
Usually, you’re not going to be revisiting work from a decade ago. You’re going to be busy trying to get that new website copy done, or that sales page written, or that ebook finished.
Problem is, when you’re writing, you’re working at a zoomed-in level. You’re so deeply into the words that you can’t get a grasp on the whole piece. You’re emotionally attached to your work, and even if it doesn’t seem perfect, you simply can’t see any way to change or improve it.
Here’s how to zoom back out and get the big picture.
1. Let it rest
Ever since I started writing as a teen, I’ve heard this piece of advice. Put your first draft aside for a few days (or at least 24 hours). Leave it alone.
Yes, it’s hard; you’re itching to get your piece finished. You’ll need to plan ahead: give yourself a few days in the middle of a project to take a break. Your unconscious mind will carry on mulling over that project while you’re away from it.
When you pick it up again, you’ll come to it afresh. You’ll have new insights. You’ll see different possibilities. Mistakes will jump off the page at you.
How long should you put your work aside for? I’d say, the longer the piece, the longer you let it rest. For a blog post, leaving it for a day is probably enough. For a novel, give it at least a couple of weeks — preferably a month.
2. Read as a reader
When you pick up your piece again after a break, try to get into the mindset of a reader. Imagine it’s the first time you’ve read this.
It helps to make a clear physical break between your writing mode and reading mode. Depending on your project and how you like to work, that might mean:
Printing out the whole thing and reading it in a coffee shop
Turning it from a word document into a PDF so that you can’t keep changing the text as you read
Creating a “real book” version of your manuscript on Lulu
Reading through the whole thing in one session
While you’re reading, watch out for:
Anything vague. Have you assumed knowledge which your real readers might not have?
Anything extraneous. It might be interesting to you, but if you can cut it out without losing any meaning from the piece, it should go. In fiction, I ask myself “Is this part of the story?”
Anything redundant. When you’re working on a project over a long period of time, you’ll often end up with two similar sections, or very similar phrase or word choices close together. Next to impossible to spot when you’re writing, glaringly obvious to readers.
3. Ask for feedback
However great your imagination, you can never truly put yourself in the position of a first-time reader. You know your writing and your topic too well.
There’s an easy solution, however:
Find some actual readers
Ideally, pick people in your target audience. You could try:
A writing circle — either a group that meets in real life, or an online one
Regular commenters on your blog
Participants in a forum or membership site which you belong to (I’m sending out my ebook draft to some fellow Third Tribers this coming weekend)
Unless she happens to be a writer too, or typical of your readership, your mom is not the best person to ask for feedback. Ditto for your spouse. They’re likely to be kind rather than constructively critical.
When you ask for feedback, be clear about what you want
If this is a first draft, you’re not primarily concerned with typos or the occasional clunky sentence. You want to know if whole sections should be cut, or whether your angle works, or if your call to action is clear.
I always give my guinea-pig readers a free copy of the finished piece, if appropriate. It’s also nice to offer to reciprocate if they ever want feedback on a writing project.
4. Proofread
Once you’re past the revisions stage and into the final version, you’ll need to proofread. Although you can get away with the occasional typo, spelling mistake or grammatical slip in most blog posts, you’ll want to avoid any embarrassing mistakes in your shiny new ebook or your slick sales page.
I find that I’m great at finding typos in other people’s work … and awful at spotting them in my own.
Usually, I find a long suffering friend to proof-read for me, but if I’m proofreading my own material, this is what helps:
Proofread on paper
For some reason, it’s easier to spot mistakes on paper than on the screen. Perhaps it’s because we’re more prone to skimming on the screen, or because our eyes glide over any mistakes which the spellchecker hasn’t picked up.
Regardless of why, it works. Print out your piece, and go through it slowly with a red pen in hand.
Proofread backwards
When we read, we rarely take in every word. Ur brain fills in what it expects to see — even if that’s not quite what’s there. (Ever mis-read a headline? Or a billboard?)
Reading your work backwards deals with this. You’re forced to look at every single word. It’s a slow and tortuous process, but if you have a piece of work which absolutely must be error-free, it’s the best way to do it.
How about you? Do you find it hard to get perspective on your writing? What methods work for you? And have you ever written something which you thought was perfect … until you looked at it again a few months later?
Let us know about it in the comments.
About the Author: Ali Hale writes about productivity with perspective alongside Thursday Bram on their newly-launched blog Constructively Productive: you can grab the RSS feed here.
The Insider Guide to Creating An Audience of Raving Fans 19 July, 2010, 6:52 am
There’s a scene in the animated series Futurama that cracks me up every time I think about it.
The show’s characters are at the horse track of the future, but there’s controversy when a race ends very, very closely — so closely that the race officials need a powerful electron microscope to judge the “photo finish.” The track loudspeaker eventually announces, “And the winner is … Number Three, in a quantum finish!”
And Professor Farnsworth, who had bet on the other horse, tears up his tickets in a rage and yells, “No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!”
Didn’t get the joke? Don’t worry, neither did most of the viewers.
I’m quite sure that the writers laughed out loud when writing that scene. They were a bunch of nerds, and thought that applying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to horse racing was the height of hilarity.
But 99% of the viewers probably didn’t find it the height of hilarity. I’d guess that 75% didn’t even know that the line was a joke.
So why did the writers include the gag? Because the remaining 1% who did get it became fans for life.
How to lay eggs (like a platypus … they don’t do much, you know)
I call hidden gems like this “Easter eggs” — a video game term referring to hidden areas, rooms, or events that developers add to games to amuse themselves.
Animated humor shows like Futurama, The Simpsons, and many others are absolutely stuffed with Easter eggs, and they’re an important part of building the massive cult followings these shows enjoy.
When I recognized Farnsworth’s line for what it was, I felt like I was part of an exclusive club. In fact, I felt like that joke had been placed there for me and me alone.
I could immediately imagine hanging out with those writers. That Easter egg made me feel like we were buddies, that we had so much in common.
I became hooked on Futurama. I never missed an episode. I told all of my friends to watch it. I bought all of the DVDs.
Then, when I realized how effective those obscure little jokes had been on me, I started including them in my own writing.
If something amused me, I didn’t worry about the people who wouldn’t get it, unless not understanding it would ruin the reading experience.
So I let those oddball references fly … and I credit them with a lot of my recent growth.
Here are two examples of Easter eggs I’ve placed recently here on Copyblogger:
In a recent Copyblogger wrap-up, I made passing reference to “ruling the tri-state area,” “setting fire to the sun,” and “big laundry.” All three were lines said by Heinz Doofenschmirtz, the ridiculous villain of the children’s animated series Phineas and Ferb.
In an earlier wrap-up, while recapping a story about how overcoming purchase paralysis is like saving people from a burning building, I mentioned hanging from the arm of Kurt Russell while he says, “You go, we go!” in a heroic fashion. That’s a line and scene from the firefighter movie Backdraft.
Luckily, Brian is in that small group of people who finds most of my Easter eggs, and he lets me continue to hide them. And when I wanted to be replaced by Johnny Marr, his comment was, “It doesn’t matter if anyone else gets it. I think it’s hilarious.”
I thought it was hilarious too. A small group of people who read it thought it was hilarious, and proceeded to swap Smiths and Johnny Marr references in the comments.
If you’re thinking, “I don’t want only 1-5% of people who read my writing to appreciate it!” I have a clarification to add:
As long as your post works without the Easter egg, people will still read you and like you even if they don’t get your hidden gags.
This is an important point, so I’ll make it one more time. The post has to stand alone. It has to work even if they don’t get the Easter egg.
That Johnny Marr post on Copyblogger? While a small group got the gag and joined in on it, a much larger group read the wrap-up the way they would read any post, and clicked through my teasers to read the full posts.
The post did what it was supposed to do, whether or not you know (or care) who Johnny Marr is.
If you place your Easter eggs well, you’ll get a cloud of people who read your stuff the way they would read anything else they were interested in. But at the center of that cloud will be your core fans. Your insiders. Your “club of you.”
I love my club. The people who truly “get” me with all my oddities and foibles are like old friends. I bond with them. They bond with me. We interact in my comments and on Twitter.
But they also want to read more of what I write, wherever and whenever I write it. They spread the word, tell their friends, become ambassadors and raving fans … and often buy everything I sell (as well as taking advantage of my free offers, for that matter, like my current free blog setup promotion.)
The smaller the group who takes something from your writing, the more exclusive those people feel. You don’t have to settle for a small audience, but there’s a lot of value in having a nucleus of core fans surrounded by what I might call an “interested horde.”
You can build both the nucleus and the horde at the same time. Here’s how.
Six rules for hiding Easter eggs
1. Don’t confine yourself to humor
I’m an animation geek and have always liked humor in most forms, so the Easter eggs I hide tend to be jokes or references that are meant to make the reader chuckle.
But anything obscure will work. If you’re an alternative music fan, you might observe how Darren Rowse looks a little like Moby. If you’re a Starbucks barista, you might mention that tech skills need constant adjustment and sharpening — just like a burr grinder that processes a lot of low-quality beans.
2. The post has to work even if they don’t get the reference
I know we already said this. It’s important.
The Farnsworth line in Futurama wouldn’t have worked if the rest of the episode had revolved around the intricacies of why quantum uncertainty had foiled Farnsworth’s horse bet.
It worked because it was a throw-away line. You either caught it or you didn’t. Either way, the action marched on.
3. Don’t be a pretentious jerk
A few Easter eggs are fun. A diet of Easter eggs will give your readers heartburn. If you stuff your writing full of references and jokes that are so obscure that nobody will get them, you’ll just come off as pretentious.
(An example of someone who doesn’t listen to this rule: former comedian Dennis Miller. Yeah, he used to be funny.)
4. Don’t over-explain
If you have to explain it, it’s not an Easter egg, it’s just a joke that fell flat.
You’ll have to walk a fine line to balance clarity with inside jokiness. Sometimes you’ll need to add a few clues, but don’t overdo it.
5. Make it natural
I’ve failed here if all of a sudden, we see a rash of blog posts into which writers have used a crowbar to insert obscure references and inside jokes.
Don’t think of them as something you add; think of them as something you allow to remain. It should feel natural. Write what comes to you — and then stop yourself from editing all of the gems out.
6. Amuse yourself first
I use Easter eggs because I love finding them myself. It’s a game. If something doesn’t make you chuckle or smile or think when you write it, don’t include it.
Some things are meant to be edited out because they simply don’t work. Let those go; no one likes a bad Easter egg.
The name of the game is connection, and like so many other pieces of advice in the blogosphere, much of this boils down to finding your right people. Using Easter eggs is kind of like when a punk fan wears a shirt with a certain band’s logo on it. Other punk fans will see it and will say, “I know what that logo is!” And if those two people strike up a conversation, there’s likely to be instant rapport.
Think of your Easter eggs as a way of creating specialized rapport.
Great content builds a wider audience. But leave in a couple of Easter eggs, to build your “club of you,” too.
About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is setting up self-hosted Wordpress blogs for free until July 23rd. Learn more about Johnny at his blog, JohnnyBTruant.com.
How to Find Thousands More Prospects for Your Business 14 July, 2010, 7:46 am
Ever wonder why conversion rates are so low?
A “good” sales page will usually convert between 1 and 5 percent of its readers. Those numbers vary wildly depending on about a zillion factors, but that’s the middle of the bell curve.
So that means between 95 and 99 percent of people reject what you’ve got to offer. Seems a little depressing when you look at it that way, right?
So are those 95–99 percent just a write-off, a necessary cost of doing business? Do you have to do the work and/or spend the money to get nearly prospects to make 1 sale?
Not necessarily.
Note: No actual statistics were harmed, or even used, in the writing of this post. In other words, these numbers are theoretical. Use them to illustrate the principle, and for back-of-the-envelope planning. The real numbers always come from your own business and your own individual situation.
The desperate buyers strategy
According to sales strategist Chet Holmes, at any given time, about 3 percent of your market is in active buying mode. So if you sell furniture, about 3 percent of adults in your town are looking for some piece of furniture right now. If you sell fancy cages for naked mole rats, about 3 percent of naked mole rat owners are in the market for a new cage.
Traditional internet marketing is all about finding this 3 percent. The smartest Adwords, SEO, and affiliate marketers are all trying to selectively find that 3 percent and weed out the other 97. You can call this the Desperate Buyers Only strategy, which is the title of a very solid program by Alexis Dawes on writing and selling ebooks.
The trouble is that the desperate 3 percent are expensive, because everyone wants them. What are called the “converting keywords” (the keywords that are proven to attract the 3 percent who are ready to buy today) are expensive to buy with pay-per-click. Those same keywords are usually highly competitive for SEO, and getting more so every day.
You’re competing with thousands of hungry internet marketers for that 3%. It can be done, but you have to be at the top of your game.
But there are more buyers out there, if you know how to treat them.
The conquer-the-universe strategy
Holmes’s research goes on to say that about 7 percent of any given market is receptive to the idea of buying, even if they aren’t actively looking. Given the right offer, they could be talked into it. We could call these our Not-So-Desperate buyers.
If you can pull them in, you’ve more than tripled the size of your potential buying pool, going from 3 percent to 10 percent.
Another 30-ish percent will buy one of these days, but it’s not on their radar right now. Call them the Not Yets.
About 30 percent are mildly turned off on the idea of buying your product. Holmes calls them the Soft No.
And about 30 percent are highly turned off. They hate something about your company, or they never pay for information, or their spouse has threatened them with grievous bodily harm if they spend any more money on what you sell. They’re the Absolutely Nevers.
What happens if you start creating marketing communication that entices the Not-So-Desperate, the Not Yets, the Soft Nos, and even a few Absolutely Nevers?
You can scoop up all of those potential buyers and keep them close until they’re ready for you.
You can develop enough trust and rapport to warm up the Not-So-Desperates, and even light a bit of a fire to get them moving today.
You can make yourself the natural choice when the Not Yets are ready.
You can answer objections and reverse the risk for the Soft Nos, which often turns them into Yeses.
And you can even get a handful of Absolutely Nevers to act as your unpaid salespeople.
While Absolutely Nevers might never buy themselves, if you’ve set up your marketing correctly, a surprising number of them will pass the word along to someone else who will buy. The product may not be right for them, but they know someone who can use the content.
The key is the content net
What kind of marketing attracts all the potential buyers, rather than the ones who are hot to buy right now?
It has to be marketing that doesn’t look like marketing. Advertising that’s too valuable to throw away. Communication that delivers a real and compelling benefit, with the sales message presented only after you’ve earned the right to sell.
And what kind of marketing keeps them around and engaged until they’re ready to buy from you?
It has to be marketing that’s delivered over time. Advertising that arrives on a predictable, regular schedule. Communication that’s repeated enough times to develop trust and rapport.
And the two best tools for that at the moment are probably a blog combined with an email autoresponder.
A content net weaves a nice, friendly web of communication around all the categories of buyers, and keeps them interested.
It’s a terrific tool for your Desperate 3%, because it educates them about why you’re the unquestionably perfect choice. But it also takes the other 97% and nurtures them, training them to become your ideal customer.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.
Is Spiritual Business a Contradiction in Terms? 13 July, 2010, 5:37 am
With all the beads, prayers, affirmations, “laws of abundance,” and other woo-woo business accoutrements flying around these days, you’d think there’s some fire sale promotion going on spirituality.
Maybe it’s the rough economy, or the unsettling pace of change. Business seems to be getting more and more difficult, and support is hard to come by. When you’re struggling, the idea of having the unseen realms backing you is pretty appealing.
But can getting more spiritual really help your business?
For some of us, spirituality is everyday stuff. It’s how you relate to the world, in business just as in all other things. It’s what’s for lunch. As the Zen master Suzuki Roshi said, it’s “Nothing special.”
For others, spirituality in the realm of business can seem profane, inappropriate, or just plain bizarre.
So which is it? Is spirituality the missing leverage point in business — or is it just plain wrong to use spirituality to get what you want?
What the Heaven is spirituality?
Spirituality is one of those words that can be tricky to define.
The Oxford American Dictionary defines it as:
… of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to the material or physical things.
I would define spirituality as any connection we feel to a greater purpose, existence, or reality than ourselves. It means there is a core Oneness that everything comes from and everything returns to.
Ever been in love? You know what I’m talking about.
Things spirituality doesn’t really work for
On a power trip? Spirituality is not going to get you world domination.
If you want to manipulate people into doing something that’s not in their best interest, your connection to love and all-that-is ain’t gonna help you.
Because spirituality isn’t a tool or technique, you can’t “use” it like that. When people describe their spiritual experiences, they tend to use words like:
“awe-inspiring”
“humbling”
“connected to everything”
“full of love”
“deep trust and peacefulness”
If you’re trying to trick people into spending money on something worthless, it’s pretty doubtful those words describe your state of mind.
But hold on … something seems familiar here.
Copywriting, business, and spirituality
Here are a couple of key themes about copywriting and sales that you’re probably familiar with if you’re a regular Copyblogger reader:
You’ve got to believe in yourself and your product.
You need an attitude of service.
Rather than talking endlessly about yourself, you have to listen to your readers and engage them in conversation.
You have to care about your audience.
Great salespeople and marketers, the ones you feel good about and look up to instead of feeling slimed by, have this combination of confidence and humility, caring and willingness to deliver on their promises.
Are you starting to see what I’m seeing?
Maybe this spirituality thing could be helpful after all
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an amazing way to spend my time.
To be awe-inspired by the presence of the people you are wanting to help, to be humble and not distracted by trying to be something or someone you’re not, to feel connected to everything and full of love. And to have it all grounded in deep trust and peacefulness.
If your blog posts, tweets, products, content, conversations, and connections reflected that sort of approach, what would that do for your business? Or for that matter, for your life?
Spiritual teacher soup
Listen, I may have been designated as a master teacher in my spiritual lineage. I may have years of spiritual practice behind me.
But let me tell you, all I need is a bunch of cool people to launch cool things while I’m sitting on the sidelines and all my internal voices get going.
I’m an incompetent booby. I’ll never catch up with those guys. Maybe what I do doesn’t matter anyway.
I get worried and upset and angry.
The usual things that I’m tempted to do in moments like that (work harder, be brilliant, eat too much ice cream) tend to be completely ineffective.
In fact, they leave me feeling even worse.
Maybe you’re the same. You end up doing crazy things. Like buying yet another high-priced program when you already know what to do. Or launching a sales page that feels like it was written by a sleazy car salesman. Or retreating into a corner, too paralyzed and overwhelmed to do anything at all.
That’s one of the very useful things about spiritual practice. My practice allows me to drop all of those thoughts very quickly, saving me from acting on those impulses, from sabotaging myself or scaring off our clients.
It allows my heart to drink the love, peace and groundedness it thirsts for.
That’s the real payoff. The side effect? I’m more on-point with what I’m doing. Efficient, effective, connected.
Mother Teresa — you know, that once-unknown little nun who mobilized tens of thousands of people to care for the poorest of the poor, and trotted the globe bringing in millions of dollars and creating a legacy that has lasted far past her death?
She insisted that everyone associated with her Missionaries of Charity spend precious hours in spiritual practice every day, even when there was the pressing need of dying and starving people all around.
Why? Because getting stuff done simply wasn’t enough.
Ticking items off a to-do list is draining. But understanding that what you do and who you are into the world is an expression of profound love and caring — that’s when miracles happen.
It worked for her. It works for my business and our clients. It can work for you, too.
Have your spirit call my spirit, they’ll do lunch
As the great Sufi sheikh Ibn al Arabi said,
All streams lead to the Ocean.
There are a million ways to connect to spirit. Some are organized, some are eclectic. Some are communal, some personal. All, hopefully, are grounded in love and service.
I share my Sufism with two poets you may have heard of, Rumi and Hafiz. Sufis talk about Remembrance as a spiritual practice. That this connection with spirit is not something to cross off a to-do list or a technique to be mastered, but an essential part of who you are that is simply to be Remembered.
What if you were to stop in the middle of your busy day, right in the middle of your never-ending task list, right in the middle of the sales page copy or blog post you’ve been pushing uphill, and took time to speak to your heart and ask it to remember?
To remember that love and connection are essential to your business.
To remember that you aren’t alone, and that you don’t need to be anyone other than who you are.
To remember that it’s okay to be humble and in service, and that you are cared for deeply.
No one has to watch you do this. If you want help, I did a short audio to guide folks, Ack! Where’s My Heart?
Stop working so hard. Use all of that tremendous will power and individual force that you’ve been given to ease off the gas pedal and just stop. Stop. Breathe. Remember love.
When you step on the gas again, you just might find it easier to do whatever you were struggling with before, and making bigger ripples once it’s out there. Who, after all, can resist love?
About the Author: Mark Silver helps entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to make a difference, but also need to make a profit. Check out his website and blog at Heart of Business, follow him on Twitter, or take the free Remembrance Challenge.
How to Develop an Endless Source of Ideas that Sell 12 July, 2010, 6:51 am
Your bottom line is bottoming out. Your customers are looking elsewhere. Your well of new ideas has run dry. What can you do?
You could turn to your accountant for money-saving schemes, or hire a lawyer to re-structure your business. You could bring in a salesperson to drum up customers.
I’ll bet you wouldn’t think a technique used by designers could help you out of a bad spot.
The technique I’ll outline here is the secret to creating products and services your customers will buy. It’s a powerful way to keep your well of ideas overflowing.
It’s a three-step process anyone can do. And when it’s done right, you can expect impressive results.
The fountain of youth for your business
When your well of new ideas runs dry, design thinking will get it bubbling up again.
Design thinking is a technique that turns your business challenges on their heads, allowing you to see them from a different angle. It helps you discover new products and service that meet the needs of your market. And when your ideas meet a need, they sell.
The secret to creating stuff your customers will buy
Tim Brown of IDEO gave a lecture on design thinking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and explained design thinking with a great analogy.
Brown said that most new business ideas come in through one of three doors:
The technical door, which is led by research and development thinking.
The business door, which is led by standard value-oriented thinking like return on investment.
The people door, which is led by design thinking. Design thinking is a human-centered process.
If you focus on your customers when you’re developing new ideas, you’ll create products and services catered to them, and dramatically increase your chances of success.
Inspiration: Design thinking starts here
The first phase of the design thinking process is inspiration, and that comes from your customers.
Find out what their struggles are, and discover what their daily lives are like. You can gather inspiration through:
Observation: What can you see your customers struggling with? What do they complain about on Twitter and Facebook? What questions do you hear again and again?
Interviews: Whether face-to-face or on the phone, speaking directly to your customers and asking for candid information about their challenges is invaluable. Speak to users on either extreme: power users and beginners. Your most valuable observations will come from the far ends of the spectrum.
Role Play: Ask a friend to “mystery shop” your business, going through every interaction as a customer would. What’s their first contact like? How do they perceive the process? What would improve their experience?
Surveys: Online surveys are easy and fast.
Your goal in this phase is to understand the cognitive, emotional, and physical world your customers live in. Gather this information, and use it in the next step.
Ideation: Brainstorming gone wild
In this phase, Brainstorming Rule Number One applies: no idea is too outlandish to consider.
Use a white board, large paper, or a computer file to field ideas. If you’re a solo entrepreneur, gather colleagues for this process. Feed them the initial data you gathered in the inspiration phase, and set them loose.
Narrow down your ideas and pick the strongest one by prototyping.
I know what you’re thinking: prototyping doesn’t sound like something a small business can afford to do, right?
Prototyping your best ideas can be as simple as:
Videotaping someone going through the motions of using your idea for a new product or service.
Building quick models of physical products using cardboard boxes and tape. Create your product to size and see how it might feel in use.
Build a mini-product that gives a taste of the benefits of the full thing. If you’re thinking of creating a membership site, build out a tiny sliver into a teleseminar or a $7 ebook to test the waters.
Writing down stories about the journey your customer takes from the moment they realize they have a need, to the moment they discover your new product or service, to their interaction with it, and their post-purchase experience.
Prototyping allows you to visualize what your idea would be like in use. It makes it “real,” and will give you strong clues about whether or not an idea is viable.
Implementation: Make it so
You’ve been inspired by your customers, and you’ve developed a new idea they will love.
The last phase of the design thinking process is about implementation. This is where you will nail down your costs, determine your production needs, and figure out how to execute your best idea.
As you set up a system to deliver your idea, think back on those customer stories you gathered, and the prototyping exercises you did. Use these experiences to develop a marketing story around your product or service that will tap into your customer’s needs. And of course, always focus your marketing around the benefits your customer will experience after purchasing.
A three-part technique that helps businesses soar
Gaining inspiration from your customers, developing ideas based on their needs, and making those ideas a reality are the three phases of design thinking that every business can implement.
Harnessing this creative force will keep your well of ideas overflowing with products and services that connect with your customers needs, and help your business grow.
About the author: Pamela Wilson helps small businesses grow with great design and marketing tips. Learn the basics with her free Design 101 e-course at Big Brand System.
The Force that Powers Persuasive Content (And 3 Ways to Intensify It) 7 July, 2010, 8:17 am
You hear it from us all the time…
If you want to engage and influence, connect emotionally and then justify logically.
That’s still true.
But there’s a Force more powerful than logic or emotion…
And it’s you.
Same as it Ever Was
First, what do we know about effective persuasion?
We can now scan and record human brain activity in controlled tests, and the results continue to verify decades-old social psychology studies on persuasion.
Those same social psychology studies confirmed the effectiveness of centuries-old persuasion techniques practiced by sales people, savvy politicians, and smart parents.
And those very techniques originate with the observations of the ancient Greeks and Romans over 2,000 years ago, who developed the art of rhetoric to effectively persuade the masses of the day.
It’s a cliché, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. In other words, technology, media, and cultural context are dramatically different and ever evolving, but human beings respond fundamentally the same way we always have.
And when it comes to persuasion, people respond to a person’s perceived character way more than logic. Strong character can even defeat an eloquent emotional appeal in many persuasion duels.
So let’s take a closer look.
The Origin of the Force
The ancient art of rhetoric is based on three compelling components:
Logos is an appeal to pure logic and reason.
Pathos is an appeal to the desires, fears, passions, and other emotions of the audience.
Ethos is an appeal to the authority, honesty, and credibility of the person speaking or writing.
Of the three, Aristotle said ethos may well be the most effective means of persuasion a person possesses. And while general reputation certainly comes into play, Aristotle further said that ethos is best demonstrated through the tone and style of the messages you deliver.
That’s right – the content of your character is determined by the character of your content. Here are three powerful ways to strengthen the force of your ethos.
The Force is Strong in Those Who…
1. Show Some Decorum
Ethos is driven first and foremost by virtue, with a twist. Rather than an inherent trait, virtue is perceived by the audience when they believe you share and uphold the same values they do. You connect with them when you satisfy their expectations.
The ancient Romans called this meeting of audience expectations decorum. It’s not necessarily about being prim and proper – after all, the best person to persuade a gang of drunken bikers to sleep it off is likely one of their own, not the local schoolmarm.
In short, you can’t lead a tribe that thinks you don’t belong – and it’s totally up to them to decide if you fit in. So if the idea of changing to meet the expectations of an audience doesn’t sit well with you, you’ll have to attract an audience that naturally fits with who you already are.
Luckily, that’s what the Internet is famous for.
2. Have Han Solo Authority
There’s no doubt that Han Solo is a pragmatic bad ass. Whether you’re raiding the spice mines of Kessel, rescuing a rebel princess, or seeking just-in-time help at a murderous moon-sized space station, Solo is the likable, talented, practical pro for the job.
In terms of ethos, you want to display similar practical wisdom to increase your persuasive mojo. Be the likeable street-smart authority whose content helps get things done, not an aloof academic expert looking down from the lectern.
You don’t have to be perfect (Solo sure isn’t). In fact, letting your flaws flow increases your authenticity and strengthens the bond with those you’re trying to reach. When it comes down to it, all that matters is you know your stuff and deliver.
A Wookie sidekick is nice, but optional.
3. Exhibit Jedi Leadership
The final key element of an ethos that persuades is the goodwill and receptivity cultivated between you and the audience. This is usually best accomplished when people feel you are acting out of selfless leadership, without a vested interest or ulterior motive.
“Wait a minute Brian,” you’re saying about now. “I do have a vested interest. I want to sell stuff and build my business!” Okay, I hear you (and these voices in my head are freaking me out a bit).
That’s where we come back once again to valuable free content. Even while naturally promoting you and your business, great content with independent value is nonetheless a gift to your market. As long as you’re transparent (and unapologetic) about the reason you’re providing the content, you’re exhibiting effective leadership that entitles you to pull Jedi mind tricks at will.
Put the audience first and you’ll get what you want in return. Everyone wins.
Jedi Mind Tricks Without Going to the Dark Side
A strong perceived ethos is powerful stuff, which is why many have faked congruent character for fun and profit over the centuries. Church, state, and aristocracy have all seen healthy amounts of character manipulation thanks to the persuasive power of ethos.
Social media seems ripe for similar shenanigans. But great content can’t be faked, and a worldwide reach means you can be you and attract like-minded people who think you rock just the way you are. So there’s no need to go to the dark side of the Force to fit in.
Freed from the tyranny of geography, the Internet allows us to avoid being character chameleons and be authentic instead. Smart online marketers realize they don’t need a tiny niche topic to lead a tribe, because they themselves are the niche.
Never forget it’s all about the audience. But it’s you who has the appeal.
About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of Thesis and Scribe. Get more from Brian on Twitter.
Get More Great Content from @copyblogger on Twitter 7 July, 2010, 5:04 am
Since we’re taking it a bit easy this summer by dropping from six posts a week to three, you might find yourself going through withdrawal. Not to fear.
We share additional content related to copywriting, content, social media, SEO and online marketing from many sources across the web @copyblogger on Twitter.
So join us on Twitter!
3 Ways B2B Marketing Professionals Can Adapt to the Real-Time Web 26 July, 2010, 12:21 pm
It’s no secret that modern B2B marketing is all about the web. B2B marketing is actively being shaped by the power of the Internet as a resource and researching tool for prospects and buyers alike.
Add another layer of change when you consider the ability to share information in real time, and modern marketing can get complex quickly. In this ever-changing environment, sometimes it feels difficult to stay ahead of the game—but it’s vital. To accomplish this, it’s pertinent you stay adaptable.
Follow these three ways to acclimate to the real-time web and the way it’s changing B2B marketing.
1. Provide Relatable Information
Your customers are no longer waiting for information to fall into their lap. Instead, they’ve taken to the real-time web to search your company name, products and services. They’re gathering information and forming their own opinions based upon what’s at their disposal.
Many B2B marketing websites are relatively static. You may add new product updates from time to time or updated copy every so often, but for the most part, new content isn’t added on a regular basis.
B2B blogs and social networking sites allow marketers to add new content weekly or even several times a week. By consistently posting interesting, informative information, organizations will encourage prospects to regularly visit the blog in search of fresh content. Plus, frequently updated, optimized content can help improve a website’s visibility in the search engines.
2. Engage In Seed Nurturing
Lead nurturing campaigns used to take place after prospects landed on your site and entered your database. However, qualified prospects are now visiting your site or social media sites anonymously before you ever have their names or information. Seed nurturing allows you to build relationships with prospects before they you have any information. Thanks to the real-time web, you’re able to relay valuable resources to these prospects, helping shape their decision-making process.
Use social media to share educational and resourceful white papers, links and articles. Your ability to provide facts, research, updates quickly and rapidly will help facilitate your placement as a thought leader of your industry.
3. Practice Online Reputation Management
The Internet now provides a rich arena for brand monitoring; the marketing analytics possible to report on are robust. But there is equal potential for the real-time web to either praise or “flame” a brand digitally. Forums, comments, tweets and statuses can turn open-ended text boxes into a weapon or praise. To help ensure you’re receiving the latter, there are a lot of ways to correct and respond to any negative brand mentions. The real-time web gives us the opportunity to leverage brand ambassadors and B2B marketing tools to track our brand and increase awareness, while controlling any negative mentions.
Now that you know a few ways to adapt, it’s time to put these ideas into implementation. If you haven’t already, develop a social media plan and find out what’s being said about your company and products.
Want to learn more about social media marketing for the high-tech industry? Join us Oct. 26, 2010 in San Jose for SocialTech 2010—the only conference that’s all about social media for B2B high-tech professionals.
Serving Up Cheap (and Healthy) Fast Food 26 July, 2010, 9:14 am
These are interesting times in the fast food business. Fast food continues to be popular, but consumers are hungry for more options now. So, how about fast, cheap and healthier, or more ethnic, or a touch of “gourmet”? Hence the success of Panera, Chipotle, Baja Fresh, Quizno’s, etc.
A recent Brandchannel blog post, “McDonald’s President Cooking up Green Rival” gave brief but fascinating insights into the fast casual chain slated to open in 2011. Former McDonald’s alums Mike Roberts and Mike Donahue are behind the venture.
Tentative name: Stephanie’s. The idea: serve up a health-conscious menu in environmentally friendly locations with an eye to sustainability in every facet of the business. A great idea and a real departure for ex-McDonald’s alums, wouldn’t you say?
Being considered:
• Herb garden on the roof
• Grass parking lots
• Fresh flowers on tables
• Biodegradable cutlery
• Possible frozen food selections at outlets like Whole Foods
• Possible home delivery via electric cars
We all talk about a crowded marketplace, but there’s always room for fresh, new brands if they fill a niche. And if they deliver. One thing is certain: When it comes to restaurant brands, the two most important ingredients in the customer experience are taste and service. All of the green concepts in the world won’t create a success unless the principal criteria are met and the customer is happy.
In a recent Ad Age interview, Mike Donahue observed, when asked the inevitable question about founding a chain, that at present there are “no tangible goals other than to do one really good location, get the taste profile right and the affordability right.” After getting the formula down, they will determine “if and how quickly the concept can scale.” Smart. Why cookie cutter until they get the template right?
While the fast food biz has been generally anemic in a tough economy, with fast casual growing by only 4% in 2009, industry insiders feel if key trends can be capitalized on, as Stephanie’s is planning to do, the concept has plenty of upside. And if anybody can make a success in the fast casual category, it’s likely a pair of ex-McDonald’s execs. They’re probably right.
Questions:
• What do you think of the Stephanie’s concept? Will it fly?
• What do you think of the timing in launching a new fast casual concept in view of the sluggish economy?
• Would you personally be interested in eating healthier food in a fast casual setting like a Stephanie’s?
I’d love to get your feedback.
SocialTech 2010: 6 Ways to Generate and Nurture More Leads on Twitter 23 July, 2010, 12:16 pm
Now more than ever, lead generation for the complex sale is a long process of developing relationships with your prospects. Gone are the days of just getting names and making calls. Since Twitter is a fantastic way to build new relationships, it makes sense that B2B adoption continues to grow. However, because it’s still a relatively new channel, many B2B marketers struggle with how to use it and aren’t harnessing its full potential. With that in mind, here are 6 ways to generate and nurture more leads on Twitter.
1. Interact with People
This may sound obvious, but it’s easy for B2B marketers to fall into the trap of simply tweeting thought leadership content and promotions. Content is important, to be sure, but the real benefit of Twitter is the ability to develop relationships. So interact with people, reply to their tweets, ask questions, and start building new relationships.
2. Don’t Tweet in a Silo
Depending on the structure of your sales and marketing department(s), you’ll want to keep tabs on who is a real prospect and who isn’t (yet). After all, you may look silly suggesting to a seemingly new lead that they check out your product or white paper when they’re already in the last stages of the buying process. However you do it, try to set up some form of communication between your sales and marketing team(s) so you: i) hand off good Twitter leads to sales ii) follow and engage with current prospects and iii) are aware of who is in the buying process and who isn’t.
3. Provide Value and Advice in Your Tweets
So you’re interacting with people and probably promoting your own thought leadership content. Fantastic! You’re off to a great start. Now it’s time to provide real value in your tweets and become a trusted advisor. So provide solutions. Offer advice. Help your followers solve their pain points. Say “A great way to increase ABC is by doing XYZ”.
4. Monitor Relevant Keywords
Monitoring keywords is a great (and easy!) way to find targeted people to follow, offer timely advice, and stay on top of industry trends. Let’s say you market dedicated server hosting. Make a list of relevant keywords that your prospects may use to describe their pain points, like “server downtime” or “network reliability”. You can use an RSS feed to receive a notification when someone tweets with those keywords, or you can use the built-in functionality with a tool like Tweetdeck. However you do it, you’ll be able to stay on top of what’s happening on Twitter, and swoop in when someone complains about their current solution’s reliability or downtime.
5. Monitor Your Competitors’ Brands
The great thing about Twitter is that everything is out in the open. You can easily see who is tweeting to your competitors and what they’re tweeting about. By monitoring your competitors’ products and brand names, you can: i) offer advice to a competitor’s customer who is having technical issues ii) engage with anyone who is considering a competitors’ product iii) follow anyone who tweets about a competitor iv) follow people that your competitors follow v) stay on top of trends in the industry vi) engage with the people your competitors tweet to. Just don’t do it all at once. That would be creepy and weird. And you don’t want them to call you out on it.
6. Offer Lead Gen Opportunities
Finally, offer direct lead generation opportunities. Tweet webinars, reports, white papers, and content. Just make sure you’re associating those lead capture pages with your Twitter marketing, so you can track the stellar ROI of your efforts.
Want to learn more about social media marketing for the high-tech industry? Join us October 26, 2010 in San Jose for SocialTech 2010 — the only conference that’s all about social media for B2B high-tech professionals.
Drive Innovation: Suggest Ideas, Don’t Propose Them 23 July, 2010, 8:15 am
How something is presented has an effect on how it is received.
“No duh.” Right? We’re marketers here. Our job is presenting things to create an effect.
No wait, keep reading … Hear me out. We should be using these super persuasion powers of ours to help our companies be more innovative. So many innovative ideas get quashed early—never making it off the whiteboard. Not because the ideas are bad, but because of the way they were presented.
Psychologists have found that the more assertively you express an idea, the more likely it is the person hearing it will resist it.
Experiments were conducted in which an idea was presented to someone in one of two ways: either as a proposal or as a suggestion. As a proposal, the idea was given as a statement: “What you should do is … ” As a suggestion, the same idea was expressed as a question or reflection: “I wonder if … ?”
When an idea was proposed, almost half of the recipients received it skeptically and challenged the idea. (Sound familiar?)
When the same idea was suggested, only 1 out of five recipients stated difficulties. Telling people what to do can make them defensive, push back, and shut ideas down. Putting forward a suggestion makes it impersonal—allowing the idea to be adopted in the mind, instead of forced.
As the graphic shows, if you suggest ideas they are more likely to be adopted and developed than if you propose them.
When presenting new ideas—especially in situations where you expect others to be defensive avoid phrases that begin with:
What you should do is …
I think you ought to …
The best idea would be to …
If I were you I would …
Instead, put your ideas forward as suggestions. Take out references to “you.” Try these:
I wonder if it would be possible to …
Has anyone ever thought of …
I don’t suppose we could …
What if it were …
That same persuasion we use to woo customers should also be considered when we’re trying to develop innovative ideas within our organizations. Next time you have a “crazy idea that just might work,” don’t propose, suggest it.
(I learned this technique from the the book Out Of The Box: 101 Ideas For Thinking Creatively by Rob Eastaway. The study was mentioned in the book Improve Your People Skills by Peter Honey.)
False Numbers, Lost Revenue & ‘The Karate Kid II’ 23 July, 2010, 8:08 am
Now that Netflix can stream movies to computers and through the Wii, my kids are taking full advantage by watching some of the shows and movies I watched as a kid. At any given time in our home this summer, I have been serenaded by the eloquent dialogue of Hannibal from “The A-Team” and even the hysterics of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”
A few weeks ago at the request of my kids, we watched “Karate Kid II.” This not only brought me back to the days when Peter Cetera (singer of the group Chicago) was blazing the music scene with his singles career, but it also made me realize that as B2B marketers we sometimes put too much “weight” in the wrong numbers and can easily be blindsided. Let me explain.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the movie, Daniel and Mr. Miyagi go back to Okinawa due to the poor health of Miyagi’s father. While there, Miyagi encounters his former best friend turned long time foe, Sato, and his band of thugs led by Sato’s nephew.
In one scene, we see Sato’s nephew running a market where he purchases produce from local farmers. Within the market is a scale he uses to weigh the produce and “pay” the farmers what they are due. Through a series of events, Daniel accidentally breaks one of the weights, revealing that the weight is fake –the jig is up. The villagers were being cheated, and the scam is exposed. The numbers (or in this case, the weights) were false.
Unfortunately, many B2B organizations are similar to the villagers. Just as the villagers had come to rely on skewed weights, B2B marketers are relying on skewed metrics.
The Typical ROI Model
The typical measurement for a marketing campaign is to record the number of leads generated, as well as the amount of revenue that originated from that campaign. Take for example this scenario from a mid-sized organization:
Campaign Spend: $50,000
Number of Leads/Responses Generated: 1,000
Number of qualified or sales-ready leads routed to sales (30%): 300
Number of deals based on sales close rate of 25%: 75 closed deals
Average Sales Price (ASP): $50,000
Total Revenue Produced: $3,750,000
Campaign Return (revenue—campaign spend): $3,700,000
I doubt many organizations would complain about spending $50,000 to make $3,700,000. It certainly has a nice “and they lived happily ever after” ring to it. But, that’s not the whole story.
What about the other 700 leads generated from the campaign? Given that the campaign made more than $3 million, many companies are content to just let those leads go and do nothing more with them. However, further analysis reveals the true cost of ignoring them.
First, let’s determine the cost of the ignored leads
Campaign Spend: $50,000
Number of Leads Generated: 1,000Cost Per Lead Generated: $50
Number of qualified or sales-ready leads routed to sales (30%): 300
Number of “non-sales ready” leads
left to decay or drop out of the sales funnel due to lack of nurturing: 700
Lead Abandonment/Decay Cost
(700 x $50/lead): $35,000
Now, $35,000 seems like nothing compared to the $3.7 million you just made on the campaign. However, $35,000 only represents what it cost to generate those lost leads. We still need to determine how much revenue was lost because those 700 leads were not nurtured.
Number of leads left to decay in the system due to lack of nurturing: 700
Number of those leads that will buy the product or service your company sells in the next 12 months:
(*45% X 700): 315
Number of closed deals(sales close rate of 25% x 315 qualified leads): 79
Lost Revenue (79 potential closed deals x $50,000 ASP): $3,950,000
Total Loss
(Lost revenue + lead abandonment/decay cost): $3,985,000
So, although the campaign generated $3,700,000 in revenue, it also lost $3,985,000 in potential revenue for a net loss of $285,000. We refer to this number as the Lost Return on Investment (LROI). And it all happens because of the absence of process and lead nurturing.
Going through and computing the LROI of your campaigns can be a very integral exercise in building a business case for transforming your lead-management process and developing lead nurturing campaigns. Not only will it help you to get your peers on board, but it will also make it easier to convince sales and management that process implementation needs to occur. After all, the LROI is based on the one thing that is nearest and dearest to their hearts—revenue.
Developing a lead-management process, including lead nurturing and measurement, will enable you improve the revenue on your marketing campaigns and show a clear and accurate picture of your marketing spend. As Mr. Miyagi said, “Lies only become truth if other person chooses to believe them!”
*45% of the “non-sales ready” leads will buy the product or service.
Source: Gartner
Match Your Blog’s Metrics to Its Goals 22 July, 2010, 12:53 am
One of the biggest issues companies continue to have about blogging (and social media in general) is: “How do we tell if it’s working?’
One way to greatly improve your ability to measure the effectiveness of your company’s blogging efforts is by tracking the right metrics. When you are creating the strategy for your company blog, one of the things you need to focus on is making sure that the metrics you track match the goal you have for the blog. For example, if your company wants to use its blog as a tool to build awareness among current and potential customers, then one of the metrics you might track would be number of email subscribers. You might also want to look at number of comments per post and also the number of email inquiries or Contact Form submissions.
But you need to make sure that you are tracking metrics that feed back into the goal you have for your blog. Once you have settled in on the right metrics, then you can customize your blog and your blogging efforts so that these metrics are optimized.
For example, one of the metrics I measure at MackCollier.com is number of email subscribers. Up until May 15, 2010, I was averaging a new email subscriber every three days. In the 65 days since then, I have added an additional 87 email subs. What changed to cause this spike? I moved the email subscription form to the TOP of the blog, “above the fold.” That simple change has netted me an 311% increase in email subscribers. Not too shabby.
So when you look at your own blog, ask yourself two questions:
1. Are we tracking the right metrics? If you are looking to build engagement on your blog, then traffic might not be as important as number of comments. Likewise, if you are looking to increase sales, then you would probably place more importance on referral traffic from the blog to the website, rather than number of new blog feed subscribers.
Think about what it is you want to accomplish with your blogging efforts, then track the metrics that feed into that goal.
2. Are we making it easy for visitors to perform the desired actions? If you want visitors to subscribe via email to your blog, then is it best to place the subscription form at the TOP of the blog, or buried at the bottom of the second sidebar?
Think about what actions you want visitors to take on your blog, then find ways to encourage this action. It could be something as simple as putting your calls to action in the proper place, as with the above example about email subscriptions. Or maybe you need to figure out a strategy for increasing comments, if that’s a key metric you are tracking.
Track the right metrics for your blogging goals, then look for ways to increase the desired actions from your readers.
The Zero Latency Future is Now 22 July, 2010, 12:24 am
Today’s advanced technology brings us virtual broadband autobahns that move data across the globe with speed and precision. In an attempt to capitalize on fast-moving data, some companies are using sophisticated applications and compute power to make decisions faster than competitors. However, when machines move millions of times faster than humans, there are some implications for the decisions made by marketing professionals.
A previous column “Is the Speed of Decision Making Accelerating?” cited how a century ago, managers could take weeks or days to make important decisions. That’s because before the advent of the telephone, it would take a substantial amount of time for information to travel by courier. Fast forward to the 21st century, most executives now have a mobile device and can be reached at a moment’s notice.
Our global society is moving towards a zero latency world, where the reduction of time between decision and action is drastically reduced. And we need to look no further than Wall Street’s high frequency traders for evidence.
John Plender of the Financial Times recently defined high frequency trading (HFT) as a “type of computerized dealing (that) exploits the millisecond gap between news events and their impact on markets … such trading has expanded rapidly to the point where 60-70% of the trading volume is in U.S. equities. Much of this volume is conducted by a very small number of companies.”
So what’s wrong with HFT? Plender cites potential problems, such as the “ability (for high-frequency traders) to see orders before they are public” and the propensity for high-frequency traders to co-locate servers on the floor of stock exchanges for faster trading (something not available to the average investor). In addition, the race is on where the winner in high-frequency trading can close trades as fast as 250 microseconds—faster than you can blink your eye!
The speed of decision-making is accelerating. In HFT, the trend is unmistakable. Machines are trading with and against each other. They’re moving ahead of individual investors, leaving day traders in the dust. And as a Financial Times article notes, speed isn’t just confined to Wall Street: “Technology has changed many other big markets around the world and tied them more closely together … Such changes has created winners and losers.”
For marketers, the implications of zero latency are clear. For example, did you know that “robots” are purported to perform text mining on press releases when they hit the wire? With analysis completed in microseconds, advanced algorithms then execute trades based on what they’ve learned. Your company’s equity price could go up or down in seconds, based on the words in your press release!
In a zero latency world, what marketers (and other employees) say, write, tweet, and announce can all be used as fodder by the machines to either raise equity prices or destroy shareholder value. Our ability to react and “fix” our mistakes before they are noticed is greatly diminished. All it takes is a bad press release, poorly written whitepaper or negative analyst report.
And it’s not just PR. To borrow a phrase from Thomas Davenport, companies are now “Competing on Analytics.” Marketers must understand that they are now engaged in an arms race with competitors mining their own (and third-party) data for insights—increasingly by the hour and minute, and then taking action to better connect with customers. Companies without these capabilities will increasingly face mammoth disadvantage.
Zero latency decision-making isn’t the future. It’s now. Are you ready?
Consider the following:
Regarding decision-making, how fast is too fast? What could go wrong at high speeds? What happens when the human element is removed?
Fame: Show Why You’re Different & Why Others Should Care 21 July, 2010, 9:03 am
Want to be known as a go-to person? Then you better learn how to “Fame,” says Richard Laermer, co-founder of The Bad Pitch Blog, president of NYC-based RLM PR and founder of “How to Fame,” a program designed to inform and instruct us on how we can achieve Pragmatic Notoriety.
No, not like Fame-the-TV-show (though those characters certainly struggle with some of the same issues).
“Faming,” according to Laermer, is the process of creating and maintaining a consistent image that reinforces your credibility and professionalism, and builds confidence in others in your ability to get the job done. It’s being known for all the right reasons, becoming a true go-to person. Faming makes apparent how you’re different—and why people should know you.
Over the past few months, Richard has been sending out specific “faming” tips to a select group of “smart self-aware types.” My favorite tip thus far: Tip #2: Stubbornness = Failure.
In this tip, Laermer notes, “Stubbornness comes in various forms. There are those of us who are too stubborn to recognize when change is needed; and those of us who know things need to change but are too stubborn to do anything about it. We might think we shouldn’t have to change because we ‘are who we are,’ and that’s that. Or we’re just too, ahem, busy to pay attention to the signs. Unfortunately, ‘who we are’ is a vague concept that can vary wildly between our own notion of our public persona and everyone else’s impression of it. Your personal and business relationships will be affected by stubbornness. And, in order to fame, we need to make certain the rest of the world is aware of our true public personality, instead of allowing them to create false impressions.”
An effective way to get past the stubbornness is to step out of our own head for a few minutes. Take five minutes and write down exactly what you think your public personality is. Be honest. Write every detail. Start with “I am …” (funny, smart, forward-thinking, compassionate, unique … ) Go ahead. What adjectives best describe YOU? Then, read what you wrote as if you were someone else. Ask yourself: If another person who knew you found that piece of paper and read it, would they know it was meant to describe you? What do you do that reinforces your internal perception?
The point is that, for most of us, our public personality probably doesn’t match up to our internal ideas. Until it does, we aren’t getting enough fame for our buck. We need to implicitly tell people what to think of us. Others aren’t going to figure it out on their own! To fame requires action on our part, and we must choose to change something about the way the world sees us. We must break down the wall of stubbornness and embrace new, better ways to shine … “to fame.”
For more information on How to Fame, download the How To Fame Manifesto. For the complete tip list, email giveme@howtofame.com.
Do You Know the Secret of World-Class Sales Organizations? 20 July, 2010, 12:00 am
Want to know the secret of world-class sales organizations? A new study finds the key is executive leaders are actively engaged in Sales.
The study by Miller Heiman, with key findings reported in MarketingProfs , reinforces the wisdom that leaders must be your best sales reps.
Therein lies a big opportunity for marketers to add value and visibility. Executives need our help to make their time spent with customers productive. They may hear from Sales what their individual clients want from the company executives. But it takes Marketing to create ammunition from the perspective of the customer and the market. Presentations, collateral, analysis, and proposals that make company leaders successful. Senior management and Sales will love Marketing.
My co-authors and I wrote in Marketing Champions (Wiley 2006) that Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of GE spent hours every day with customers. When executives see their role as “chief growth officer,” they stay active in Sales.
Are your execs selling? Does Marketing facilitate this activity? If so, how?
‘Part of Growing Up is Falling Down.’ 19 July, 2010, 11:42 pm
How true are these words? They’re found on the home page of a 2005 start-up company’s website. Me4kidz, the brainchild of husband and wife entrepreneurs, is very much a hands-on, family-run business.
Me4kidz stands for “medical emergencies for kids.” The premise of the business is: “To provide quality, user-friendly first aid products that are durable, comprehensive and encourage heightened awareness of the most common injuries.”
Their motto is: “Clean it, Fix it & Back to Play.” By offering basic first aid kit products—and packaging—that are both kid-friendly and user-friendly for moms and dads, Me4kidz has found a terrific niche.
There are three products. The Medibag for Kids contains a basic supply of the most-needed antiseptic gels and ointments, bandages and pads, swabs, tweezers and the like, plus a first aid guide all in a neat little red “doctor bag.” Medibuddy contains a smaller supply of the basics found in the Medibag for on-the-go families. And the Diaper Bag Buddy contains 15 travel kit items for baby, all of them natural and organic. All of it designed to hit the road with busy families.
What’s cool is that the products are manufactured and assembled in the United States. The chosen product suppliers also work with hospitals and the kits are assembled by disabled workers. There’s an eye on safety in the components of each product and packaging, meeting FDA safety requirements.
What’s also cool about Me4kidz is that these first aid kits are hardly scary-looking for kids while containing everything mom needs for life’s little emergencies. The recently repackaged line communicates this message beautifully.
The trick is to make kids feel secure and comfortable around first aid products. What makes them so approachable are colorful, kid-friendly packaging that helps convey there’s nothing to be afraid of. Bright colors and fun cartoon-like characters appeal to kids. “Pediatrician recommended” on the label assure parents the products inside each kit are efficacious.
Me4kidz products are sold in Target, Babies R Us and Toys R Us stores in the United States as well as internationally.
What’s not to love?
Questions:
• Can you think of other serious products that are thought-out and packaged, and that are still kid-friendly?
• What do you think of the approach Me4kidz has taken?
• What other kinds of products could this approach work for?
Marketers, designers and consumers, please weigh in with your comments!
Social Media is Measured by the Sum of Its Parts 28 July, 2010, 4:19 am
Social Media is greater than the sum of its parts, but it is these parts that define the socialization of business. Today consumers are interacting with peers, brands, and influencers in social networks at varying levels across more industries than you might possibly believe. The answers of who, what, when, where, how, and to what extent are out there, we just need to spend a moment searching for the insights necessary to galvanize meaningful social media content, branding, and engagement programs.
Instead of creating holistic programs that embrace social consumers through the distinct business channels that affect their decisions and experiences, we rush to networks to create a presence, one that may not fortify or represent the brand as well as we might think.
Hurry! Get a profile on Twitter, set up a brand page on Facebook. Let’s go go go!
While it may seem commonsensical or more importantly logical to create a strategy for social networks based on research, data, and perception, a recent study shed light on some interesting facts.
A May 2010 study by Digital Brand Expressions found that 52% of social marketers are running social media programs without a defined “game plan.” This finding is in line with an April report by R2Integrated that documented one-half of marketers were reacting to social rather than leading it.
Visibility is not the same as presence. In social media, presence is felt.
The Ingredients of Social Media Communications Plans
The Digital Brand Expressions report that found that those who are approaching social media with a plan find that needs, concerns, and outcomes outweigh the current scope of activities. The study found that logistics contributed to visibility, but insight was absent from investing in presence. Most notably, resource allocation guidelines, registration of branded usernames in social networks and competitive research were among the top ingredients of a social marketing plan. Other tactical elements include:
71% establish metrics to measure ROI, which is in direct contrast with a previous study by Mzinga that found that over 80% of companies were not measuring ROI.
52% plan for ongoing monitoring
45% develop social media protocols and policies
39% create and distribute guidelines for professional and personal social media use
At the bottom of the list, we see that only 29% of businesses are introducing protocols and policies for the usage of social media by specific departments. As this is the socialization of business, multiple divisions will embrace social media at any one moment, from sales to service to HR to sales and marketing and everything in between. Social media indeed reveals the true 360-degree opportunity. The social consumer is many things to brand snow and over time. And, to expect one representative or facet of business to track and engage with influential individuals in active and expansive networks is narrowing.
The question as to who owns social media is universal. Ownership begins within the team where social media championship is concentrated. As experience matures, social media extends and in many cases, “socializes” each sector. At the moment however, a land grab is in full effect with marketing taking the lead as the area responsible for the creation and management of social media plans. In fact 71% of respondents stated such with communications representing 29% , the executive team accounting for 16% and sales and IT tied with 10%.
The Last Mile Begins with the First Mile
In a recent post, I discussed the concept of The Last Mile and how social media would force businesses to adapt current practices to open-up traditional top-down methodologies by expanding engagement and interactive communications and feedback loops.
As previously stated, “Everything begins with a shift in perspective from viewing stakeholders as a separate entity, ‘us vs. them,’ to a singular view of ‘us ‘ as this enlivens a new era of community-focused marketing and engagement.”
The need for a new approach is inspired by the disconnect that exists not only between brands and social consumers, but also between the brand, management, and brand representatives in these emerging channels.
The socialization of business is forged in the last mile, but it is the first mile where strategy, planning, and the internal evolution of management and processes that inspires relevance and ultimately resonance.
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Facebook Connects 500 Million People: Defines a New Era of Digital Society 22 July, 2010, 10:31 am
On July 22nd 2010, Facebook officially announced that it had surpassed 500 million users around the world. This significant achievement represents a significant milestone for Zuckerberg and Co. as well as for social networking and more importantly for global societies overall.
To celebrate this achievement, Facebook released Facebook Stories, a new service to spotlight user stories from around the world and the impact Facebook has had on their lives.
In Mark Zuckerberg’s words, “We’re launching a new application called Facebook Stories where you can share your own story and read hundreds of others, categorized by themes and locations around the world.”
Highlights shared in Zuckerber’s blog post about the service include:
- Ben Saylor, a 17-year-old high school student, who turned to Facebook to organize a community effort to rebuild the Pioneer Playhouse, the oldest outdoor theater in Kentucky, after it was damaged by floods in May.
- Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who, during his time in office, would go jogging with 100 of his fans from Facebook.
- Holly Rose, a mother in Phoenix, who credits a friend’s status message telling women to check for breast cancer with her being diagnosed in time to treat the disease. She used Facebook for support during treatment and became a prevention advocate herself.
Facebook Around the World
Facebook is the leading social network in 111 out of 131 countries as recently analyzed by Vincenzo Cosenza.
If Facebook was a country, it would rank third, just behind the People’s Republic of China and India and roughly 190 million ahead of the United States, over 200 million greater than Indonesia, and 300 million greater than Brazil.
If we examine the breakdown of Facebook’s population, we’re presented with an interesting picture of worldwide adoption (source).
Top 15 Countries by Number of Users
1. United States – 125,881,220
2. United Kingdom – 26,543,600
3. Indonesia – 25,912,960
4. Turkey – 22,552,540
5. France – 18,942,220
6. Italy – 16,647,260
7. Canada – 15,497,900
8. Philippines – 15,284,460
9. Mexico – 12,978,440
10. Spain – 10,612,820
11. India – 10,547,240
12. Argentina – 10,452,040
13. Columbia – 10,226,920
14. Germany – 9,948,700
15. Australia – 9,151,280
To offer a bit of balance, at the end of the population list, Anguilla Facebook ambassadors rank at number 187 with 6,420 users.
When we examine worldwide Facebook activity however, we’re presented with a different picture. According to O’Reilly Research, Asia and Africa represent high growth regions.
O’Reilly also reports the age demographics of users in each country. The share of users age 18-25 is higher outside the U.S., but notice the representation of users 35 and older.
The Human Network
Facebook’s mission is to help make the world more open and connected and indeed it is changing how people interact online. The “Facebook” stories shared through this new service highlight very human ways that social networking is changing people’s lives and I believe that is the bigger story here. Over time, I have borrowed Cisco’s tagline, “The Human Network” to demonstrate how digital social networks were contributing to a new era of society that transcends online and offline relationships and how we foster and interact with each.
The discussion as to whether or not Facebook is the largest social network in the world is no longer relevant. Facebook, along with other prominent and emerging networks such as Twitter, Foursquare, and hundreds of other networks, has forever changed the way individuals connect and share with one another, adapting cultures and customs, dissolving borders, and uniting disparate cultures. The world is indeed becoming a much smaller place.
From Dunbar’s Number to Social Graph Theory
Many experts continue to cite British anthropologist Robin Dunbar’s famous number of 150 (estimated). Dunbar’s number represents the maximum number of social relationships we as individuals can manage to a stable extent. If we look at Facebook data, the average person maintains a social graph of 130. However, I believe that we will eventually see a shift from relationships to relations as a result of social networking.
The average number will grow from 130 to double over the next 1-2 years as individuals expand their social graph from those we know in first-degree relationships and those we care to know, second and third-degree relationships.
While we’ll still place greater emphasis on important offline and online relationships through active interaction, we will also consume, react to, and share thoughts, insights, and content with those individuals that move us intellectually and emotionally.
As a result, Facebook will eventually need to revisit its current friend limit of 5,000. For those individuals who hit that ceiling, their only option is to move from a profile to a “brand” page. Doing so however, shifts the dynamics of the relationship and resulting interaction from a peer-to-peer or horizontal axis to a top-down or vertical grade of communication.
We will focus shifting attention on the sub-networks within our social graphs that are separated by themes and context. These social “nicheworks” will result in higher engagement and participation as the core of these discussions, individuals are rewarded for their participation with intelligence, a platform to share their perspective as well as new requests for connection. Expect to see Facebook create grouping functionality to draw lines between interaction within these nicheworks to ensure that we do not cross the streams within our main social graph.
So, how has Facebook changed your world?
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Twitter Report: BP and Obama Oil Spill Sentiment by the Numbers 19 July, 2010, 3:55 am
This week BP successfully recapped its ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Test results are favorable and show that oil and gas are, for the time being, confined. This news inspires cautious optimism in the hearts of residents and spectators alike. Online, however, the social effect continues to flow across social networks and social graphs, echoing anger, hope, and the demand for resolution and prevention from BP and the Obama administration.
If we were to look back and examine the extent of these online conversations and the associated sentiment related to this catastrophic event, we realize just how pervasive social networking is becoming to society. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr served as primary media hubs for sharing pictures, videos, and information. And, studying this activity could yield an ocean of insight.
If one social community represented a repository of collective consciousness for study today, there is no need to look beyond Twitter.
Twitter as a Human Seismograph
Twitter recently reported 105 million registered users with 190 million monthly page views. Whatever the actual user count is and how many of those users actually Tweet vs. solely consume content, it’s clear that the public stream and the oceans of conversations it feeds is the Web’s most important database of collective consciousness.
Our voices and our thoughts form much more than trends and trending topics, when assembled, they reveal raw human sentiment, perception and also indicate the responses and actions that materialize as a result. What was once purely a human seismograph for measuring events and reactions has now evolved into a vibrant society where the united intelligence that’s available to us both historically and in real-time is greater than the sum of its conversational parts. If Twitter were the United Nations, its representatives would span the globe and rank 11th in terms of overall population, just behind Mexico and just ahead of the Philippines. Needless to say, the communication and connections that power the Twitterverse are indeed representative of a universal culture.
Study: Evolving Sentiment Towards Obama and BP
Working with PeopleBrowsr, we focused our research on the U.S. Gulf oil crisis, one of the most important stories dominating the news, our hearts and minds, and now history books. While emotions, opinions, and hope run deep, this report will focus on the state of human sentiment as defined by public conversations on Twitter.
The goal of this report was to surface and spotlight views and feelings as they evolved over time. Concurrently, we set out to demonstrate perception vs. actuality by separating the developing attitudes that defined the state of Obama and BP over the course of several months.
To align our calendars, the BP oil spill was first reported on April 20th, 2010 as a result of Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion that killed 11 platform workers and injured 17 others.
This study examines sentiment dating back to March 2010 and continues into June 2010.
It’s important to consider in this analysis that we viewed all conversations related to the White House and Obama as a whole and not isolated by the oil spill specifically. We did so to demonstrate the Gulf’s impact on White House sentiment as it became clear that the explosion was much more than an unfortunate incident. Also, the following sentiment data is the result of human sorted tweets that were randomly sampled over time.
Sentiment: Obama
Using Twitter as a micro approval indicator, the BP oil spill does not appear to be “Obama’s Katrina.” Based on the data reviewed thus far, Obama’s public approval doesn’t seem to indicate the intense backlash shortly following Katrina.
Between March and June 2010 (98 days), Obama and the White House was the subject of over 2.5 million tweets. Of that, an estimated 213,000 were specifically related to the BP oil spill. And over the course over those three-plus months, sentiment averaged 64.55% neutral, 28.5% negative and 7% positive.
Sentiment: BP
Applying the same lens to BP, total conversations tied to BP and the oil spill between March and June 2010 (98 days) skyrocketed to an approximated 1.1 million tweets. Of those conversations, 59.06% were deemed negative with an additional 8.98% categorized as very negative. 28.20% of those tweets remained neutral and believe it or not, 3.14% were viewed as positive.
Sentiment: Comparing BP and Obama Over Three Months
Positive: Starting with positive sentiment, the nosedive for both is grave. Doubts for resolution and swift response caused the lack of public support for both Obama and BP and ultimately shifted towards sharp criticism and deafening cries for action and resolution.
Prior to the oil spill, BP was perched at its apex of positive sentiment. As the attempts to cap the gushing well failed, sentiment plunged 61.5% over three months. Obama also fell 63.3% from its high in March to a three month low.
Neutral: When either negative or positive conversations increase, it’s usually at the expense of indifferent banter. As expected, BP conversations hurtled by 53.39% between March and May. On the other hand, Tweets related to Obama and the White House actually increased over the course of 90 days by 24.9%.
Negative: When reviewing negative sentiment related to BP, there’s a reason the term hockey stick is used when referring to graphs. In March, BP was already the subject of negative commentary; however, after the explosion, critical conversations skyrocketed 107.05%, representing a devastating vertical spike in antipathetic public opinion.
On the contrary however, unfavorable Tweets related to Obama practically remained constant, declining a bit by 1.29%.
The average sentiment comparing BP and Obama eerily aligned, indicating that from a public perception standpoint, proactive leadership and resolution is critical.
March
April
May/June
Hashtags
Hashtags were originally introduced into the Twitter stream by Chris Messina as a way of categorizing conversations by topic and theme. Over time however, the role of hashtags expanded beyond classification to now also convey emotion or observation. For example, conversations related to the oil spill include hashtags as sentiment or for conveying implicit messages such as “I can’t believe the BP oil well is still gushing #IhateBP!” and “The BP oil spill represents why offshore drilling should be banned #helpsavethegulf.”
Tweets populated with references and messages conveyed through hashtags were overflowing and for the purpose of this report, we focused on spotlighting only those densely tied to the event as well as President Obama.
To demonstrate the extent of these particular hashtag references, we visualized them through an overlay graph dating back to the beginning of the year and running through the end of June.
The number of Tweets including the following hashtags between April 20th and June 30th demonstrate only a sample of all oil spill related conversations, but offer a glimpse of the role hashtags play in this unique forum.
Total Hashtag References: April 20 – June 30, 2010
#oilspill = 438,926
#gulf = 35,225
#obama = 92,430
#bp = 225,365
Gallup: President Obama Job Approval
Reviewing President Obama’s Job Approval at Gallup, we can visualize a steady decline in approval and rise in disapproval with 47% and 46% respectively.
For Obama advisors as well as those on his communications team, a month-by-month comparison of the erosion of BP and White House sentiment screams for decisive action.
#ThankYou
Thank you to everyone contributing donations and volunteering time to the Gulf Coast clean up effort.
Previous Reports:
- Top 20 Brands on Twitter
- SuperBowl Ads Sentiment 2010
- The 2009 State of the Airline Industry on Twitter
- The Twitter Hollywood Report 2009
- SXSW Sentiment 2009 vs. 2010
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The Hybrid Theory Manifesto: The Future of Marketing, Advertising, and Communications Part Three 16 July, 2010, 4:07 am
Part Three of Three
Nicheworks are highly coveted or soon will be as no brand is an island. Attention and interests are focused within social streams and as individuals are empowered to define their online experiences, connecting the dots proves pivotal. If conversations are markets, nicheworks represent the glue that binds disparate conversational ecosystems. And through effective engagement, we make inroads towards community and being the construction of bridges between our brand and each desirable market.
While many creative initiatives find their way into social networks extemporaneously, it is the intentional and manual act of linking content to new and traditional influencers. This, for the moment, is the most genuine and authentic way to demonstrate intent and drive awareness and activity among the very people we’re hoping to reach and galvanize directly within the communities where their attention is focused.
Hybrid Theory Explained
Hybrid Theory is the fusion of creative and communications, combining earned and paid media to enliven ideas, unite communities, amplify stories and spark desired outcomes. It unites marketing, advertising, service, and public relations (note: not PR) with engagement and digital influence. This is about applying influence to rouse response where attention is focused. As such, Hybrid Theory requires a cross-breed of communications professional, one not tainted by the acts of storytelling through press releases or communicating through mass messaging and broadcasting. This new breed of communications professional essentially becomes the influencer they wish to engage through the embodiment of what I call the “5I’s,”an evolution of the 3I’s introduced by Forrester Research in its Future of Agencies Report.
1. Intelligence
2. Insight
3. Ideation
4. Interaction
5. Influence.
The 5I’s are rooted in peer-to-peer networking where the individuals with whom they connect are viewed as equals and conversely, those making contact are qualified as worthy of attention.
In a conversation several years ago with Doc Searls, Chris Heuer, Robert Scoble, among others, Searls described social media as the “live web.” It’s a name that resonated and is now a fully-realized prophesy. Indeed, this live web has evolved into a hyperactive conversation ecosystem that encourages and rewards real-time content creation, collection, and distribution. As social consumers, we willfully drink from the firehose and as such, Hybrid Theory introduces the strategies and means necessary to not only compete for the moment, but also inspire a more vested form of participation that fosters presence and affinity.
If we were to visualize the 5I’s into a workflow for Hybrid Theory, everything would begin with intelligence and the data necessary to inspire insight, innovation, and a corresponding action plan that officially brings creative to life. It is during this process that influential voices who reach and influence other individuals within our desired markets surface.
Ideas are then tested against an influence filter to gauge the viability of meaningful vs. promotional engagement. As such, channel diversity is then explored to chart effective courses for direct connections and the social objects commensurate with conversations within each. Concepts are then transformed into campaigns, stories are packaged as social objects and highly personalized social hubs are constructed to host, define and steer the user experience.
As the campaign goes live in its respective mediums, the hybrid team is then tasked with optimizing content for search in traditional search engines and also social networks. This form of inbound marketing, speaks for the program when consumers seek out related content outside of proactive outreach. Once optimized, social objects are then syndicated through all channels previously identified to reach our audiences and prospective participants as they search for relevant content.
But, it is the last mile where our connections with influential people brings our campaigns to life. This is where we connect the brand, its persona, its mission and purpose, and extend value to our consumers and the markets they represent. It is how we engage and with whom that defines the reach, velocity, and ultimately the resonance of our campaign. And, it is our participation that either credits or debits our social capital.
The state of brands in social networks is measured by the multiple axes of resonance and fortified by the relationships we earn and the actions we merit. Hybrid Theory introduces a human framework that marries best-in-class attributes of data analysis, sociology, advertising, marketing, communications, and service to connect people and brands through relevance, empathy, and empowerment.
Without relevance, we cannot trigger resonance, and without resonance, we cannot establish significance in social media.
Continue Reading…
Part One
Part Two
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The Hybrid Theory Manifesto: The Future of Marketing, Advertising, and Communications Part Two 14 July, 2010, 4:07 am
Part Two of Three
In the book Engage!, I use music as a metaphor for the business approach necessary to execute socialized programs flawlessly. I suggest that today, many organizations approach new media with the style of jazz improvisationalists. They possess an incredible ability to jam independently and also together, but they often drift into wild, wonderful solos that may or may not lead the audience back to the heart and soul of the brand purpose and mission. Instead, I suggest that we assemble a team of virtuosos who can perform the dedicated requirements of their roles to contribute to an organized and powerful performance designed to engage and stimulate its audience.
A conductor who possess social prowess and business savvy is necessary to creating and managing a holistic social media program that extends from the top down, from the center outward, from the bottom up, and also from the outside in.The quest to find the conductor and the members of the orchestra rekindle the debate to who owns social media. But, I argue, that the only the person who masters the majesty of music theory, instrumentation, leadership, artistry, and stagemanship can effectively lead and inspire a band of leaders. Simply said, The person and team qualified to lead social are those qualified to do so.
Again, a hybrid approach is essential. In the very least however, they will possess the ability to understand customer touchpoints, channels of influence, market dynamics, challenges and opportunities that face consumers, and how engagement and the production of social objects trigger measurable reactions that impact the bottom line.
Advertising Must Look Beyond Madison Ave.
Advertising, along with every form of marketing, communications, and service, is not immune to the radical changes that amount to nothing less than the complete transformation of business and culture. In my dealings with some of the most creative and forward-thinking advertising agencies, it’s clear that social media is indeed sparking imagination and inspiring experimentation. Yet in a highly critical article that ran in the Washington Post, the advertising industry was labeled as smug and unable to realize the need for innovation. The opening of the article reads more like a bitter generalization than a call to action, but nonetheless, it’s an impression that I’m sure plagues almost every industry in the new content democracy, “Is advertising the next casualty of the ongoing digital tsunami? For now, advertising looks like the patient who developed an asymptomatic form of cancer without realizing how sick he is.”
This view is as extreme as it is dire. However, social at the moment is only one channel that reaches a growing subset of an overall market. Print, broadcast, billboards, and digital are still relevant and in many ways, effective. In the era of 360-degree, holistic marketing, people are now a vocal majority in our markets and as such, social becomes the “last mile” of connecting the dots.
Part of the challenge as well as the opportunity is the embodiment of an age-old cliche, “thinking outside of the box” or “thinking differently.” As Chris Heuer rightly believes, we should think as though “there is no box.” Social Media inspires new thinking that very well assembles the best practices from advertising, marketing, and communications. But to be clear, the future of effective marketing and engagement lies in the reinvention of strategies, media, methodologies, processes, and their respective industries by and large. This starts with rethinking campaign development and deployment to now also integrate the ties that bind them through ongoing relevance and resonance.
Social networks represent new media channels that offer paid and earned platforms that invite ingenuity and contribution. The difference with social networks and other media however, is that consumers are vested in each medium. Social networking is a very personal venture and here, people define their experiences through the relationships they forge, the content they share and consumer, and the devices they use to interact. Here, intention is everything. Programs are not rewarded simply for innovation, gimmicks or artistry. Consumers embrace programs rooted in empathy, aspiration and emotion. While they’re designed with mass appeal, effective initiatives are disguised as personalized communication to hook viewers into an immersive experience. It is the emotional and aspirational connection that entices engagement and response, but it is relevance and some semblance of empowerment that inspires sharing and loyalty.
From Campaign to Continuum
In new media, advertising and creative businesses are criticized for approaching social through the constructs of campaigns. While they spark increased brand awareness, activity, engagement, campaigns inherently place constraints on community and relationship development – unless designed otherwise. They start, incite activity, stop, and then disappear only to re-emerge as a completely different production when time, budgets, and events align.
Indeed campaigns are catalysts for conversation and action. However, in social, creative campaigns must now introduce continuous sequences where adjacent objectives, messages, and storylines are reinforced through ongoing participation. Essentially, campaigns must be strung together through brand-driven conversations and connections.
Consumer attention is increasingly thinning and as a result, we are forced to compete for the moment in order to stay top of mind. At the same time, we must also compete for the future and the only , advertising must now contribute to marketing for the long term through a connected series of creative initiatives that promote rightly versus right now.
Advertising is now presented with a new lease on marketing, one where the right to connect with individuals and audiences is continually renewed through value. If paid media offers mutual benefits, the pace for introducing micro creative programs multiples as they now serve as bridges between larger campaigns.
If we don’t actively compete for mind share, then we lose our placement within the hearts, minds, and decisions of consumers and those who influence their actions.
While creative is designed to perform an intended function or evoke a desired reaction, social networks and the influential beacons that connect potential audiences and ultimately participants create a signal repeater that extends the reach and effect of any campaign across media platforms. And, with research and analysis, we can now identify the specific people within these social graphs that form highly desirable nicheworks, where the long tail is visualized and also revealing. Nicheworks, or what Twitter refers to as “interest graphs” is the next big thing for marketing and business in general. In social networks, meaningful content is only surpassed by context. As such, the formation of contextual networks is both the promise and reward for social networking at large. People invest in knowledge sharing and beneficial relationships and as a result, people establish linkages based on common interests and themes with individuals they may know or wish to know.
The Death of CPM and CPC and the Birth of Resonance
At Twitter’s first annual developer conference, details of its initial foray into advertising were unveiled. Two words that were repeated throughout the conference, resonance and relevance, underscored Twitter’s commitment to creating an advertising platform that would earn the support of the community. As Twitter’s COO Dick Costolo noted, “Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate with users will disappear.” The same is true for any social object and supporting campaign that’s introduced to social networks.
Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare and the like truly believe that the user experience is the source of social media’s future. As such, Twitter is introducing a new metric to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns that will only fortify the approach of Hybrid Theory. Initially ads will be based on a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions or 1,000 qualified individuals exposed to the Tweet). But as Twitter learns about the performance, accuracy, and how the community responds to each program, it will migrate from a model of CPM to one of ROI…yes, Return on Investment.
Using resonance as a metric and also as a form of inspiration, we’re now introduced to multiple axes of engagement to design resonance into our campaigns. Doing so will ensure prolonged existence, visibility, and engagement. Advertisers will need to not only get creative, but also ensure that campaigns and social objects are engaging, actionable, shareable, and valuable. If not, as Costolo said, those campaigns that don’t resonate with uses will “disappear.” As such, Twitter introduced the idea of a resonance score to determine the lifespan of paid social objects. The multiple axes of engagement defining Promoted Tweets for example included:
- Retweets
- @Replies
- #Tag clicks
- Avatar clicks
- Link clicks
- Views after RT
Twitter’s use of the word “resonance” forces relevance into their campaigns in order to trigger positive responses and ultimately word of mouth and measurable activity. And, herein lies the opportunity for Hybrid theory. The key to marketing within social network is to uncover the possibilities, people, and connections that prolong the lifespan of social objects in the stream now and over time. Everything begins with intelligence in order to inspire relevance.
Resonance is the reinforcement or prolongation of social objects. In this example, a Tweet, whether it’s paid or earned, represents a social object as its introduction and exposure possesses the ability to spark conversations. The extent and volume however, are determined by relevance and the shareability of the social object however. The same is true for a campaign introduced in any social network.
Twitter’s metric of resonance could be applied to all forms of social media. Twitter is not only changing communications between people, it also changing how brands and people interact. Resonance represents the impetus for contextualizing and humanizing advertising, in real-time. Without the ability to connect to and inspire people, campaigns will fail miserably. Those that appeal to the emotions and interests of consumers will spark a social effect that reverberates across the social graph online and eventually into the real world.
R.R.S. – Without relevance, we cannot trigger resonance, and without resonance, we cannot establish significance in social media.
Activating the Fifth P of Marketing
Many progressive agencies and internal teams are employing communications professionals to escort campaigns on the long and winding road between media and attention. In the overall socialization of business, marketing is one of the tentacles necessary to reach and grasp consumers. In advertising and marketing, the last mile is best served by connecting messages and people instead of assuming that information goes viral through its own propulsion. Information is just too readily available to ignore and placing people on the front line to personally deliver insight and relevance to decision makers is the difference between temporary visibility and increased presence. In social media, presence is felt and prized. And, this is how we begin to redefine viral marketing…
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to work with Mekanism, a leading San Francisco creative company that builds digital audiences. The team is incredibly gifted and in the projects where we collaborated, they were tasked with developing immersive and “viral” online experiences that pushed the boundaries for even the most radical advertising and branding. However, concepting and building these campaigns would prove straightforward. Luring consumers, clutching their attention, and compelling them to act and share is the true challenge and opportunity in the social economy.
Attention here is thin. Engagement is a form of currency. Recognition and rewards are the deliberate acts of establishing goodwill and earning social capital. In order to bring campaigns to life in social networks, a comprehensive and demanding socialized approach where new influencers and influential consumers are identified and engaged is nothing short of mandatory.
This relationship served as the inspiration and providing ground for Hybrid Theory. And over time, digital influence evolved into a natural extension of creative campaigns, from concept to the Last Mile (see Spore example.) Today Mekanism employs a five-person team that fuses digital PR and influence. And this is only going to grow as advertising seeks to connect campaigns to the very people they wish to inspire and engage. According to Adweek, digital shops are increasingly investing in the creation of communications departments to spread awareness through earned media.
For a creative example of this today, look no further than the Old Spice Guy who is reinvigorating the advertising campaign by creating custom videos for online influencers. It reverses the process of syndication by recruiting people to connect the dots and storylines across social graphs. Videos were initially targeted at Kevin Rose, Alyssa Milano, Justine Bateman, Perez Hilton, Starbucks, among others. Old Spice is also experimenting with Twitter’s Promoted Trends platform, combining earned media (Tweets and posts about these videos), owned media (Old Spice Guy), and paid media (Promoted Tweets) to engage and activate the social web. It creates a confluence of sorts, a concentrated collective that raises awareness and causes action, that if planned accordingly, also rouses desired outcomes.
Here is a sample video to @Alyssa_Milano…you can view more custom videos here.
To successfully tie creative, intention, outcomes, and affinity through paid and earned media, Social Media requires a talented orchestra…and a master conductor.
Continue Reading…
Part One
Part Three (TBA)
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Twitter’s @EarlyBird Soars: Launches with Disney 14 July, 2010, 3:12 am
Prior to the July 4th Holiday, reports that Twitter would soon launch a dedicated stream for special and promotions hit the web. Today, Twitter announced that the @earlybird account takes flight and Disney goes along for the maiden voyage.
@earlybirdoffers Twitter-exclusive deals in entertainment, fashion, technology, beauty, travel and more. For a limited time, @earlybird and Disney Pictures will offer Twitter users a special “buy one, get one free” deal on tickets to “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” a new feature film from Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films that opens in theaters today.
This is the second time Twitter has worked with Disney to launch new advertising initiatives. Last month, the interactive duo introduced the Promoted Trends concept with a Promoted Trend for the Walt Disney Pictures / Pixar Animation film “Toy Story 3.”
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The Hybrid Theory Manifesto: The Future of Marketing, Advertising, and Communications Part One 12 July, 2010, 4:45 am
Hybrid Theory |ˈhīˌbrid thee-uh-ree |: The fusion of creative and communications, combining earned and paid media to enliven ideas, unite communities, amplify stories and spark desired outcomes.
Part One of Three…
Marketing, advertising, service, communications, and business dynamics in general is undergoing incredible transformation. The innovation transpiring across the board however, wasn’t ushered out of vision as much as it was pressured through the democratization of content and the equalization of influence. After years of the socialized media changing how individuals find, create, consume, and share information, we are approaching the cusp of following markets to leading them.
Business and its supporting branches of information dissemination, connection, and contact, are no longer practical in the era of interactive media. A new philosophy and methodology is required to effectively shed the perpetual cycle of catching up to consumer behavior. Doing so will position us for prominence and influence to guide experiences, direction, and earn presence through not only traditional media, but also through the opinions, thoughts, and ultimately public validations of our influencers and influential consumers. But it will take more than ideas, creative approaches, or simply “showing up” to the conversation. A new skill set is required to effectively compete for attention, mindshare and ultimately affinity. Hybrid Theory introduces a workforce of cross-breeds , experts who master an array of marketing artistry, social sciences such as psychology and sociology, creative vision, business dynamics, service, and communications. These individuals do not displace the authorities in their respective disciplines, they simply extend their capabilities into new media and corresponding domains and markets.
Social Media Upsets the Balance
In social networks, attention is earned and engagement is a privilege. But instead of innovating or identifying opportunities for meaningful internal and external collaboration and engagement, many organizations and the teams that support them, debate over who owns social media on behalf of the brand. The answer to the question of “who owns social media” is not representative of the opportunity that seemingly eludes most organizations.
In its sixth Communication and Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices (GAP) study produced by the Strategic and Public Relations Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, it appeared as though a clear winner was crowned in the tug of war for social media governorship. According to the report, more than 25% of companies placed between 81 to 100 percent of budgetary control over social medias compared to only 12.6 percent going to marketing. In addition, one quarter of respondents claimed that PR held strategic control over social media as a whole within their organizations and only 9 percent was bestowed upon marketing. An interesting point of note is that just over 25 percent stated that marketing held zero budgetary control and 22 percent said marketing maintained no strategic control whatsoever.
Jerry Swerling, Director of the Strategic and Public Relations Center explained the results, “[Social media] require a relatively non-commercial approach; they entail dialogue rather than monologue; they often convey objective information rather than product features; and they tend to be free-form in nature, which is just the opposite of the highly controlled world of marketing.”
If you believe the information contained within this study, PR is a clear beneficiary of the strategies and purse strings that drive corporate social media. But to say that it is the industry standard or even the right or only answer, is far from reality. While Public Relations may not operate with commercial motives, it doesn’t operate without its own bias and agenda. It is only one part of the overall marketing mix and it too, is in need of reinvention.
The truth is that while we control the top down aspects of branding, it is the people who define our stature in social media today. Their views are emanated through the impressions, perceptions, and opinions they not only harbor, but also share via word of mouth in the real world and in the networks that connect us socially. The web has a long memory and the words of customers enjoy the same visibility, if not sometimes greater, through the SEO and SMO that we employ in our marketing efforts.
So in the great debate as to social media ownership, for the time being, it appears as though it’s not created, but co-created. As such, our best interests are served in the investment of time and energy in identifying the missing elements that currently prevent our business from embodying a true 360 approach in all we do. Doing so opens the doors to identify and apply specific value and resources to where it’s most critical and to specifically match capabilities with needs.
The socialization of media begets an approach that’s reverse engineered in order to affect the culture of our organization to inspire relevance in our markets and in turn, socialize the outbound efforts that connect products, services, and communications across every impacted branch of our business. In the process, we’ll find that the only thing that changes in terms of ownership of social today is the introduction of shared equality and equity in the engagement of our stakeholders through the evolved mechanics of:
- PR
- Marketing
- Advertising
- HR
- Finance
- Sales
- Service
- Product
- R&D
- Strategic Alliances
- Et al
A hybrid approach is required to ensure that engagement is focused and genuine in order to meet the needs and expectations of today’s social consumer.
The Five P’s of the Marketing Mix
Social networks and the prevailing cultures within each foster interaction and reward active contributors with visibility and connectedness. As individuals in online networks earn prominence, it’s clear that their authority and influence is only expanding. As we’re learning, people and their actions and words, are now critical ingredients in business. Therefore, a 360 approach is only complete through the integration of a fifth “P” to the marketing mix, people.
We’re familiar with the Four P’s of the marketing mix. For those who need or perhaps would enjoy a refresher, the term “marketing mix” stepped into the spotlight when Neil H. Borden published, The Concept of the Marketing Mix in 1964. In the late 1940’s, Borden adopted the term in his teachings inspired by James Culliton who had described the marketing manager as a “mixer of ingredients.” Borden grouped the ingredients of the marketing mix in 13 parts, product planning, pricing, branding, distribution channels, personal selling, advertising, promotions, packaging, display, servicing, physical handling, fact finding and analysis. Years later, E. Jerome McCarthy grouped these ingredients into what we now refer to as e 4 P’s of marketing:
1. Product
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotion
Source: NetMBA.com
The Four P’s represent the variables controlled by a marketing manager as dictated by the internal and external dynamics of the market ecosystem. Originally, the 4 Ps were designed to create the perception of value in order to drive activity and in a positive and profitable direction.
In the era of social media, the 4 Ps require a new tenant in order to make its rent. Now in 2010, social media upset the balance of top down communication. Whereas organizations thrived on the governed dissemination of information as of a form of control nowadays, many of the intermediaries and individuals they hope to reach are now far more influential than we may realize.
As content production and dissemination is democratized and influence is equalized accordingly, a new “P” is necessary to ensure the integrity of the existing 4 P’s.
People = The Fifth Element
Continue Reading…
Part Two
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Foursquare Means Businesses: Have you checked-in yet? 9 July, 2010, 8:01 am
Are you playing Foursquare? Are you “going out” with Gowalla? Are you looped in with Loopt?
Location-based services are once again changing the face of social networking. Where relationships were once at the center of user experience, in the Golden Triangle of mobile, social, and real-time interaction, “places” take center stage and corresponding activities and rewards become the cast and crew of the production.
What started as a way to literally see and be seen, has now transformed into a universe where physical and online activity merge to improve experiences and relationships between people and also between people and businesses, services, and locales. We were lured into “checking in” through gaming and game theory. We earn points and badges for adding locations, checking into them, and also adding tips for other related activities worth consideration. But since then, the resulting culture and behavior emerging within these networks have rapidly matured into a microcosm powered by the 4C’s of commerce, connections, community, and content.
In a recent post by Marshall Kirkpatrick for ReadWriteWeb, he reviewed the top reasons why people check in to location networks. To summarize:
- Finding people
- Chance meetups
- Badges/Points/Gifts
- Special offers and coupons
- Local tips/discovery
- People tracking
- Personal history/Diary
I would add one more. Whether it’s said or simply a subconscious act, it is the essence of social networking universally. People check in as a form of social currency and the resulting capital and the value we place on it is different network by network. As such, it governs how we interact with objects and one another and also defines our net worth based on how we earn, spend, lose, and build capital.
As in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs, individuals are earning prominence through the tireless acts of earning visibility and community through interaction, content creation, and the establishment of goodwill by investing in the experiences of others.
The State of Local Social Networking
Facebook touts registered user numbers in the neighborhood of 500 million and Twitter claims over 100 million. However, with the amount of media attention given to Foursquare especially, one might expect a higher network of users, especially when local service providers are concerned. As of today, Foursquare boasts roughly 2 million users and Gowalla checks-in with somewhere around 350,000.
If you want to get an idea about the future of technology and society, pay attention to the left side of the adoption bell curve. It’s less about how many people are networking via LBS today and more about what it means for people and businesses at the local level and how the 4C’s become the hub for bridging digital and offline social economics.
Robert J. Moore, CEO of RJMetrics recently studied data related to Foursquare and Gowalla and published his research in TechCrunch.
Foursquare is acquiring new users at an impressive clip, averaging almost 13,000 new users per day over the last 30 days while Gowalla’s user acquisition rate hovered at one-tenth the growth with 1,370 users per day. Perhaps most compelling is Foursquare’s average daily growth rate, the number of new users in a given day divided by the total user population from the previous day. When compared to Gowalla, Foursquare is averaging a daily growth rate of 75%.
Location-based networks are measured by users and also by the number of venues contained within the system and the velocity of its expansion. At the moment Foursquare boasts 5.6 millions venues with Gowalla housing 1.4 million.
In most social networks as well as mobile networking, women rule. However, in Foursquare, 64% of users are male, 33% are female and 3% did not specify gender.
The Business of Checking-In
Local services are realizing, albeit slowly, that increasing visibility in the real world, on the traditional Web and now the social web, is an effective way of competing for attention where it is focused. Foot traffic, Yellow Pages, Google and Yahoo Search are losing favor to new forms of research and referrals. Yelp paved the way for social reviews and referrals, but Foursquare and the like are introducing trusted opinions and real-life networking into the mix that reward exploration and experimentation. Businesses can only benefit by playing along.
However, on Foursquare, 18% of the venues have at least one “tip” associated with them. Only 3% offer “specials.” 32% of listed venues have been checked into only once or never. Across Foursquare and Gowalla, the most popular venue names include:
- Home
- Subway
- Starbucks
- McDonalds
- Burger King
- Walgreens
Not only are businesses competing for the moment, they are also competing for the future. And with limited resources, identifying where to focus time and energy is paramount. What took Twitter some time to formally embrace, Foursquare is realizing that businesses, in addition to everyday users, are the beneficiaries of check-ins. As such, Foursquare is concentrating marketing and development resources to helping businesses compete for check-ins through specials, loyalty programs, campaigns, promotions, and events.
Businesses, if you read one thing in this post, CLAIM your business on Foursquare right now and read a bit about how to make the most of the service to increase your customer-base as well as increase loyalty among existing customers by introducing new and fun engagement programs.
Foursquare recommends offering:
- Mayor specials
- Check-in specials
- Frequency-based specials
- Wildcard specials
- Loyalty programs
- Variable ranges for nearby offers
- Tips
These offers and lures carry across the mobile and social experience, extending your brand across social graphs on Facebook and Twitter through iPhone, Android, and Blackberry phones.
Foursquare also offers real-time venue stats for business owners to gather insight into their new “digital” consumers and spark creativity in campaigns and service programs. For now, available information includes:
- Most recent visitors
- Most frequent visitors
- Times of day for check-ins
- Number of unique visitors
- Histogram of daily check-ins
- Gender
- Check-ins also broadcast to Twitter and Facebook
As The Brand Builder Olivier Blanchard asks, do you know who the mayor of your business is?
Making the Business Case
Foursquare provides window clings, as does Yelp and other services, to attract passerby’s. For example, Hampton Inn and Suites (below) and Whole Foods are among the many businesses proudly displaying the ability to check-in “here.”
While effective, this is only one of the ways a business can leverage location-based social networks for customer acquisition and retention.
Here are a few examples as collected from around the web.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) partnered with Foursquare to encourage transit ridership
Starbucks offered $1 off any size Frappuccino for mayors and as a result, observed a 50% increase in check-ins at its locations.
Monique’s Chocolates in Palo Alto acquired over 50 new customers and earned over 100 redemption for its special of “buy one get one free” for truffles. Each redemption also equal a 25% return ration. In comparison, the chocolate shop ran an ad in a local paper and acquired only one new customer at a cost of $300.
AJ Bombers, a popular burger joint in Milwaukee, increased menu item purchases by 30% through its special promotions of free burgers for mayors and free cookies for adding tips. Also demonstrating creativity, AJ Bombers hosted the equivalent of a Tweetup for customers to help them earn Swarm and I’m on a Boat badges while increasing loyalty and sales.
Using Gowalla, the New York Nets hid free pairs of virtual game tickets throughout sports-related check in spots. These tickets could be exchanged for real game tickets as well as other prizes.
Through Gowalla, the Courier Journal, Kentucky’s largest newspaper, hosted a city tour and bar crawl during the Kentucky Derby where visitors earned special badges for following the guided tour.
While these examples represent only a few of the many ingenious and viral ways to attract and reward customers, the true promise of these portable social networks is the ability to bring to life online and offline relationships and experiences to unlock a city’s true treasures. Business owners, the question is, have you checked in?
Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook
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Please consider reading, Engage!: It might just change the way you approach Social Media
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Get Putting the Public Back in Public Relations and The Conversation Prism:
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Image credit: ShutterStock
The Problem With Influence 8 July, 2010, 7:59 am
Guest Post by Damien Basile, Read his blog | Follow him on Twitter
Just recently Fast Company launched a contest to find the most influential people online. I say contest because that’s what it is. People vote if they’re encouraged or reminded to do so. The prize for “these” influencers is that the winners get their photo in Fast Company in varying sizes according to who is more influential (aka has more votes). I suppose the The more influence, the larger your photo. The only problem is that this has nothing to do with influence. It does however, have everything to do with duping friends, followers, and peers into a link bait scheme that boosts the “popularity” of the person sitting at the top of the pyramid.
Brian Solis believes that “influence is not popularity,” but it is often confused through the creative stunts and social measurement apps and services that are getting a fair amount of attention these days. As such, he defines social influence as the ability to cause deliberate and measurable action and outcomes. Yes, you can pull numbers on website views, article views, article comments, retweets, twitter engagement, friends/followers, Facebook shares and likes as well as from a variety of other social networks. What you can’t truly define however is how deeply someone is influenced by someone else. What you also can’t define is the influence that takes place in the back channels – IM, DM, email, text message, telephone and offline. I spoke about this issue in a previous guest article here, Social Media Influencers Are Not Traditional Influencers.
The type of influence Fast Company is attempting to measure is simply the ability to influence someone to click a link. The exact wording of their advertisement is “Fast Company is searching for 2010′s Most Influential Person Online. You are more influential than you think.” Essentially this is a bait and switch ponzi scheme of sorts. If you first say you’re looking for the MOST influential then proceed to say that the reader is MORE influential than they think you are leading them to believe that they can be the most influential person online. What you’re not telling them is that they are voting for that particular person as well signing up to pimp out themselves as well.
You have a better chance of winning if:
You understand how to play pyramid schemes
You get in early
You broadcast, share, cajole your social networks more often
You have a larger social network
You don’t mind dipping into the well of support from your community every time you feel like validating your popularity
Let’s put aside the fact that Fast Company’s click campaign shrouded their intentions in a well worded enticing phrase. The problem with this type of influence is that it’s not influence at all. It’s a shallow and very specific ploy rooted in misdirection and vilified through the opaque pandering of votes. Asking your social networks to click on a link is measuring their ability to click on a link. Nothing more. It doesn’t measure the type of influence brands need to know about for their brand, product or industry vertical. A better way to do that would be to quantify who someone is connected to, how many people they are connected to and what happens to their message once it is shared exponentially. You could also figure this out by doing a test campaign to find out who YOUR influencers are. Who gets retweeted the most or has the most views and comments on their article about your brand becomes your influencer by default. You can look at who your competitors as well as other industry leaders are interacting with online.
You need to ask what type of influence you’re trying to measure. Are you trying to reach mass influencers or influence influencers? Broadcast influencers or purchase influencers? Fast Company chose to measure a very specific type of influence – a broadcast campaign that banks on people’s egos. Only some campaigns pander to people’s vanity. Some bank on their charity. Most bet on their actual interest in the product.
The one thing this campaign and influence measurement doesn’t take into account is that “true” influencers are busy influencing decisions and decision makers in the back channels. “It’s fair to say that some of the most influential people on the web aren’t going to take the time register in a project, to begin with. I mean, they’re influential! As part of being influential, they’re probably busy doing the things that made them influential in the first place, not worrying about proving their influence.” – Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land via SF Weekly.
In my Facebook social graph, 34 people have signed up for this in an attempt to quantify their popularity. I won’t call them out here because they’ve already called themselves out enough. If you’re cool, you don’t need to tell anyone you’re cool or have anyone tell you that you’re cool. The same goes for influence. Asking people to validate that you’re influential only tells others that you’re really concerned about being viewed as influential. True influencers know that they influence others by what they say and do. They don’t need someone to tell them they’re influential. They already know.
Think Like An Editor 27 July, 2010, 12:53 pm
Think Like An EditorThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I’m writing a series of posts over at Colourlovers for HP and what follows below is an excerpt from today’s post. I’m also doing some fun video interviews with real small business called Local Color.
So often content producers have no real plan. If they write a blog they simply decide that day what they plan to write. First off, this makes the writing process more difficult and makes repurposing much harder.
Effective reuse comes from planned reuse. The best tip I can give you is to sit down once a month or so and create an editorial calendar. This allows you to create some goals, but it also allows you to think big picture about what needs to be written to create a body of work that will have multiple uses.
You can always slip hot topics into your calendar on the fly, but you’ll find that if you do keyword research for your industry and use that list for topic focus, you’ll get far more bang for what you write and you won’t feel nearly as much pressure always trying to come up with topics.
Read the rest here
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Inspiration Is the Root of Commitment 27 July, 2010, 9:34 am
Inspiration Is the Root of CommitmentThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I’m going to continue another day or two on this idea of commitment. Forgive me if you find it tedious, but it’s a really big, really important topic and I think it will lead somewhere helpful – I started with the Evolution of Commitment and A Convenient Truth.
Getting people to commit to spending money with your firm, and perhaps equally as important commit to returning to spend money, commit to passing your message and telling your story, and commit to referring your products and services, has become more complex in this everything is free, information overload world we find ourselves in.
Today I want to explore another prime driver of commitment – Inspiration. While we will go out of our way for an experience that’s convenient, we will mortgage our assets for an experience that inspires. Inspiration is so thoroughly lacking in most of our daily lives that when we find it, be it in a person, innovation, or organization, we get committed to keeping it.
It would be very easy to cite a company like Apple as a great example of an organization that inspires loyalty and commitment, but that’s just too easy. I’d like to share a couple examples that to me feel more personal in nature.
Seth Godin in quite possibly the most popular marketing blogger and author of the day. His readers are committed to helping him succeed. When Seth mentioned my new book in a blog post about referrals, several hundred people ran out and bought the book. Mind you this was not a review, it was a one sentence mention. I read Seth’s books and I enjoy them. But, and I hope this doesn’t come off wrong, I don’t always implement new strategies and tactics I find in those books. What Seth’s books do, in fact what all of Seth’s 300 word or less blog posts do, is inspire me. I always come away feeling better for having taken the time to visit and that, I believe, is one of the secrets to the success of brand Seth.
Inside the Threadless Office – Image borrowed from Guy Kawasaki
Threadless makes t-shirts, but there’s nothing too inspiring about that. The thing is Threadless makes the coolest t-shirts in the coolest way. The designs, promotion and most likely a great deal of the marketing is done by the customers. The image above taken from inside their Chicago headquarters gives some feel for why the employees are inspired by working in a playground setting. Threadless inspires by taking advantage of the Internet’s two-way nature to involve customers in the process of creating their product. This innovation inspires profits, customers and competitors alike.
37Signals boasts over 5 million users to online services with a ton of competitors. The company’s customers are fanatical in their support because the software does just what it’s suppose to do and little more – that’s an inspiring idea. The company inspires through simple ideas and incredible design. People are drawn to the almost counter intuitive innovation that holds on dearly to simplicity. The organization lives these beliefs and has been profitable from day one.
Useful is forever. Bells and whistles wear off, but usefulness never does. We build useful software.
Our customers are our investors. They fund our daily operations by paying for our products. We answer to them, not outside investors or the stock market.
Clarity is king. Buzzwords, lingo, and sensationalized marketing-speak have no place at 37signals.
If you or organization does nothing that inspires, no simple concept, no incredible design, no earth shattering experience, no commitment to an idea, no story that attracts – how will people commit?
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A Convenient Truth 26 July, 2010, 4:39 am
A Convenient TruthThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Last week I wrote a post on a subject I’ve been fascinated with of late called the Evolution of Commitment. The general idea of the post was to suggest that with all of this free information and free versions of products available it’s become more challenging to get someone to commit to your offering. I asked readers to tell me what gets them to pull out their wallet and commit and several themes arose.
One word that came up time and time again was convenience. It does seem that people will spend their last dime to get something that makes life easier, more convenient, and that’s something marketers must factor into every aspect of their business. It’s not always the best product that wins. Often it’s a good product that is easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to acquire that wins.
We often get stuck running our business in a ways that are most convenient for us and not so much for the very people we need to attract – customers. Some of the greatest innovations available today reside in making something – a product, service or entire industry – more convenient.
Convenient business
Take a look at all of the ways a prospect could find you and contact you. Are your contact details on every page of your web site? Do you have outposts in places like Facebook? Are your local search engine profiles enhanced with useful information? Do you offer multiple forms of contact – email, web form, click to call, IM? Can prospects get additional information without having to pick up the phone?
Convenient products and services
Do you have versions of your products and services tailored to every size and budget? Do you have trial offerings? Do you offer automated training to help customers get the most from your offerings? Do you give access to your products and services in ways that prospects want them – smart phone, online, offline, iPad, iPod?
Convenient delivery
No matter what your product or service you can always find new ways to give customers the ability to acquire it on their own terms. This is an area where growing use of the mobile device is just begging for innovation. I’ve been offering my podcast free of charge for years. Recently, I created a iPhone app for the podcast that’s available for $2.99. While the same information is available for free, hundreds choose to download and pay for the app for the convenience of getting the content delivered the way they want it.
Convenient message
This is a tricky one. If it’s hard to understand what you do that’s unique, what you stand for, why I must have what you offer, there’s going to be convenience friction. One of the best innovations in this area lies in paring your message down to the simplest terms possible.
Consider this About Us message from software service provider 37 Signals as a fine example of a convenient message – “We believe most software is too complex. Too many features, too many promises. Instead, we build simpler web-based software with elegant interfaces and thoughtful features you’ll actually use.”
While I think most would consider this an obvious topic, it’s not always an easy one to put into practice. What a customer thinks is convenience may not be what we think it is. In fact, it’s often hard for customers to tell us what it is. You’ve got to experiment and constantly push everyone in your organization to consider innovation through convenience.
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Weekend Favs July Twenty Four 24 July, 2010, 7:42 am
Weekend Favs July Twenty FourThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr.
Image credit: tm-tm
Good stuff I found this week:
300+ Resources to Help You Become a WordPress Expert – Pretty much more than you need to put yourself into the WordPress business
Etacts – tool that plugs into your Gmail account and helps you keep track of who you contact the most and who you’re neglecting
Popscreen – Service that makes it very easy to discover videos that are trending before they become popular
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The Social Profile Interactive Tool 23 July, 2010, 11:43 am
The Social Profile Interactive ToolThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Email service provider Exact Target has been doing some very valuable research of late called SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, & FOLLOWERS. More importantly, I guess, is that they have been sharing this research and I think you should go grab this fascinating read.
Below is a pretty cool interactive tool that introduces us to the 12 distinct consumer personas they turned up online. Studying this kind of behavior allows you to get to know your audience based on their personalities, not just their demographics.
Go play around with the tool above for a bit, go download The Social Profile report
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The Evolution of Commitment 23 July, 2010, 5:21 am
The Evolution of CommitmentThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Most of us want to sell something – want to get people to commit to plopping down the hard won cash in an exchange of value. That’s certainly one of the reasons millions of business folks have jumped into online networks and social platforms – to gain access to the hundreds of millions that hang out there and prospect for customers.
But while social technology has made it much easier to gain access to people, I think in some ways it’s actually made it harder to get those same people to commit to buy (or at least it hasn’t really made it easier.) While selling in the old days (2 years ago) was still very much about getting someone’s attention and making them an offer, it has now become much more of an intentional act of gaining trust and helping prospects evolve towards a customer commitment.
The Evolution of Commitment looks a bit like this:
It’s pretty darn easy to get a fan or a follower, but what’s that really worth by itself?
Using social media platforms to drive fans and followers to read your educational content furthers their engagement
Encouraging that reader to subscribe to your email newsletter or how to series is the link to gaining permission to make offers
Creating opportunities for subscribers to participate by evaluating, sampling and trialing your products and services is the key to demonstrating value worth paying for.
And finally now you’ve got them hooked and it’s time to pay up – but wait, why would I pay for something I can get for free in so many other places?
The response in the last point above is the dilemma of the free online world that people have grown accustomed to. Scads of smart marketers have mastered the pre commitment dance of know, like and trust, only to fall flat when asking for the ultimate commitment – money.
So what does it take to get fans and followers to commit, take the act of paying for your offerings?
I asked some of my followers on Twitter that very question and receive responses like:
“there needs to have been serious “can’t live without” value on the free version that would make me test out the paid version.”
“the idea that what i’m paying for has real life value, isn’t free somewhere else, or won’t lose half it’s value in < 1yr."
"add'l features get me from free to paid, as does a great free experience."
"It has to inspire me, be enjoyable and/or fulfill a true need."
As I look around at some of the successful freemium models, Basecamp, Evernote, and those that have experience challenges going to a paid model, Ning, I’m struck with the impression that commitment comes from an experience that so exceeds expectation, so motivates people to talk, and is so valuable that people actually feel bad not paying for the experience or come to understand their life will be better by making the commitment.
That’s a pretty high standard, but the clear message is this – people will buy anything that’s free, even crap, but they won’t commit unless it’s remarkably free and freeing.
But think about that for a moment – isn’t there a similar bar for any commitment? What gets someone to say yes to a marriage proposal? What gets someone to commit to giving up smoking? What gets someone to go after a job at a company with no current opening?
Commitment, and it’s semi-evil twin non-commitment, is all around us every day. What can we learn from it to bring to our business, culture and marketing? I think there is much to explore on this topic.
So, what tips you to a commit to something?
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A Book You Can Do 21 July, 2010, 4:54 am
A Book You Can DoThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Thankfully my newest book, The Referral Engine, has met with enthusiastic support. The book offers a road map for how any size business today can go about building a marketing machine based on deserving and attracting referrals. As many reviewers have pointed out, it’s a pretty darn powerful and enjoyable way to build a business.
Unfortunately, many people read books and get lots of great ideas, but have trouble implementing the ideas. The book ends with a workshop chapter that outlines the action steps you can take to build your own referral engine, but I’ve also taken the additional step of building a course that guides you even further than the book and provides the forms, examples and resources you need to bring the book’s content to life in you business. Now, with the help of the Referral Engine Pro course this is a book you can do.
Referral Engine Pro is a four or five session program conducted exclusively by Duct Tape Marketing Coaches and includes in depth course materials including over 30 videos, audios, and posts from me and other experts in the field of marketing. You can read more about Referral Engine Pro here and find a Duct Tape Marketing Coach conducting a program either online or in your community here.
The video below is an archive of an online seminar conducted July 6th that covers many of the core ideas presented in both The Referral Engine book and Referral Engine Pro course.
Referral Engine Workshop
Hire a Journalist 19 July, 2010, 4:20 am
Hire a JournalistThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I owe the idea in this post to a conversation I had with David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR.
Most every business these days is really a publishing business of some sort, whether they think that way or not. The need to produce lots and lots of educational content has become standard operating fare in today’s Internet search driven marketing world. But, publishing content in blog posts, ebooks and articles, while considered compulsory, is not the easiest thing to do for some.
A smart move that businesses should consider these days is to hire a journalist, rather than a marketing person, to act as their primary content producer. If you think of your business as a publishing business, the need for journalists becomes obvious.
An experienced journalist will usually look at content in the objective, source driven, and factual way they’ve been trained – precisely the way that marketing content must be viewed and communicated these days.
An experienced journalist knows how to start with the kernel of an idea and develop an entire story quickly – another key success factor in more is more publishing business.
An experienced journalist, particularly one that’s worked in your industry, may possess key contacts throughout your industry and with publications that cover your industry – making them much more than a content production machine.
The good news, for you at least, is that there is a growing pool of very experienced journalists finding themselves without a publication to write for as traditional publishing operations downsize and go out of business, so now is a great time to snap one up, even if just for a few hours of work a week.
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Weekend Favs July Seventeen 17 July, 2010, 5:14 am
Weekend Favs July SeventeenThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr.
Image credit: a4gpa
Good stuff I found this week:
Adict-o-matic – Instantly create a custom page with the latest buzz on any topic.
WePay – helps groups collect, spend, and manage money – great tool for small networks
Guide to WordPress – 101 Techniques for a Powerful CMS using WordPress – a great 3 part series of tips.
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The Abusive Math of Cold Calling 16 July, 2010, 5:32 am
The Abusive Math of Cold CallingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing
If you are emotionally attached to cold calling, you might want to stop reading this post now.
At a recent conference I heard Mahan Khalsa, co-author of Let’s Get Real of Let’s Not Play share the following statistics. (I don’t have the source of the data, but my experience tells me it’s pretty accurate.)
Cold calling results in about a 1-3% success rate for getting an initial appointment and it’s generally abusive to both parties. When that same call is made with a referral, the rate jumps up to 40% and even much higher when that referral comes from within the company.
The conclusion anyone should make from the gap in these two points is that you should never leave the office or get on the phone to call on a prospect without some form of a referral. In fact, if you’ve got a hot prospect, you should probably wait to find someone who can refer you or you might just waste any chance of getting in the door.
So, let’s do some simple math – if you have a list of 1000 names to cold call, you’re looking at getting 30 appointments as doing quite well (who knows if they are the right 30, but we can use this for conversation sake.) Now, let’s say you drill down and do enough research to find 250 prospects on that list that are very well suited to your business. Then you do further research using social media to locate information and contacts that would allow you to get referral introductions and recommendations to most on that pared down list. Experience tells me this approach is likely to turn up 75-100, well qualified prospects willing to discuss your ideas further.
Make fewer calls, get better results – that’s marketing math you can live with.
A referral into a prospect can come from one of three places, your current customers, your network, or a strategic partner. It’s important to mine all three of these groups as you build your prospect list.
A key aspect of this concept, of course, is that you are constantly developing a hot prospect list. In other words, a list of customers you would like to do business with. When you have this as your starting point you can target your referral sources for specific requests. When you go to a customer or strategic partner and ask if they know anyone on your list, it’s much easier for them to help.
Now, here’s where social technology can really be your friend. Once you have a prospect list, connect with them in social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. When you do this, not only will they tell you a lot about what’s important to them and what their challenges and opportunities are, they’ll probably show you who their peers, friends and network members are. They may actually identify for you the best way to get to referred into them.
Do this with your existing customers as well because it will make it easier to identify the ones that are influencers, who participates at a high level in social media, and who might be great candidate to refer you to your hot prospect list.
The last piece of this tactic is that you also have a plan to educate your referral sources. If you find that you are just one LinkedIn connection away from a hot prospect and you would like someone in your network to make an introduction, make sure that you take the time to teach them how and why to introduce you. This assures you don’t waste anyone’s time and your referral source including that of your referral source.
This approach obviously takes more time and planning. You must develop a prospect list, research using social media, and plan for referred introductions. The end result, however, is a success rate that any sales and marketing person would be envious of.
Image credit: stuartpilbrow
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It's (always) too soon to know for sure 28 July, 2010, 2:55 am
The cost of being first is higher than it's ever been...It's entirely possible that you're racing.Racing to the market with a new product or a news story or a decision or an innovation. The race keeps getting faster, doesn't it?If you're racing, you better figure out what to do about the times that you don't know for sure...because more and more of your inputs are going to be tenuous, speculative and possibly wrong. Day traders have always understood this--all they do is trade on uncertainty. But you, too, if you're racing, are going to have to make decisions on less than perfect information.Given that fact, what are you going to do about it? I think it's worth a few cycles of your time.Is it smart to blog on a rumor?Worth dropping everything and panicking because of a news alert?Should you hire someone based on information you're not sure of?What about changing your website (your pricing, your layout...) based on analytics that might not be absolutely correct? How long are you willing to wait?Given that you will never know everything for sure (unless you're opting out of the race), some of the issues are:
What's the cost of waiting one more day?
Are you waiting (or not waiting) because of the cost of being wrong, or because loud people are yelling at you?
Is the risk of being wrong unreasonably amplified by part of the market or your team? What if you ignore them and focus on customers that matter?
And have you thought about the costs of waiting too long? If you don't, you'll probably end up last.
Have you noticed how often stock analysts quoted in the news are wrong? Wrong about new products, wrong about management decisions, wrong about the future of a company? In fact, they're almost always first and almost always wrong.Rule of thumb: being first helps in the short run. Being a little more right than the masses ultimately pays off in the long run. Being last is the worst of all three.A few people care a lot about scoops. Most of us, though, care about alert people making insightful decisions. Decide who you're trying to please, then ship.
The problem with unlimited 27 July, 2010, 2:12 am
If you work out on a weight machine that has a limit--where you have to push the bar until it stops--you're far more likely to to hit that limit than if you had left it to your own initiative to figure out how far is far enough.People enjoy going to the max (or in the case of Spinal Tap, a little farther than max, to 11). But if there is no max, no limit, it's much easier to satisfy yourself and declare that you've done enough.If you want your best users to do more, one way to do it is to announce the most they can do. While this may dissuade a few people from pushing ever farther, it will in fact motivate a large number of people to up their game."The maximum number of times a week you can dine here is three." "The maximum bonus paid is $100k.""The maximum number of tweets per day is 30."
Getting unstuck: solving the perfect problem 26 July, 2010, 2:51 am
The only problems you have left are the perfect ones. The imperfect ones, the ones with a clearly evident solution, well, if they were important, you've solved them already.It's the perfect problems that keep us stuck.Perfect because they have constraints, unbendable constraints, constraints that keep us trapped. I hate my job, I need this job, there's no way to quit, to get a promotion or to get a new boss, no way to move, my family is in town, etc. We're human, that's what we do--we erect boundaries, constraints we can't ease, and we get trapped.Or perhaps it's your product or service or brand. Our factory is only organized to make X, but the market doesn't want X as much, or there is regulation, or a new competitor is now offering X at half the price and the board won't do anything, etc. There's no way to solve the perfect problem because every solution involves breaking an unbreakable constraint.And there's your solution.The way to solve the perfect problem is to make it imperfect. Don't just bend one of the constraints, eliminate it. Shut down the factory. Walk away from the job. Change your product completely. Ignore the board.If the only alternative is slow and painful failure, the way to get unstuck is to blow up a constraint, deal with the pain and then run forward. Fast.
15% changes everything 25 July, 2010, 2:56 am
When a newspaper loses 15% of its readers or 15% of its advertisers, it goes out of business. There are still people who want to read it, still people who want to advertise, but it's gone.When a technology company increases its sales by 15%, profits will double. The sales line doesn't have to increase that much for profits to soar.It's so tempting to head for green fields with a new thing, a new market, a new business. But in fact, 15% right here and right now might be exactly what you need.
Running away vs. running toward 24 July, 2010, 2:35 am
Every brand, every organization and every individual is either running away from something or running toward something (or working hard to stand still).Are you chasing or being chased? Are you leading or following? Are you fleeing or climbing?
But who will speak for the trees? 23 July, 2010, 2:37 am
Defenders of the status quo at newspapers, book publishers and the magazine industry are in a panic. Some are even misguidedly asking for government regulation or a bailout.All three industries are doomed (if doomed means that they will be unrecognizable in ten--probably three--years). And yet...And yet there's no shortage of writing, or things to read. No shortage of news, either. And there doesn't appear to be one on the horizon. In fact, there's more news, more images and more writing available to more people more often than ever before in history.No, just about all of the whining is about protecting paper, the stuff the ideas are printed on, not the ideas themselves.It's paper that makes the economics of the newspaper industry work (or not work). It's paper that creates cost and slows things down and generates scarcity. And scarcity is what they sell.It's paper that makes the book industry what it is. As soon as you remove paper from the equation, the costs change, the timing changes, the barriers to entry change, the risk changes. And defenders of the status quo don't like change.Is there not enough paper in your life? Why are we wringing our hands about the demise of paper as the economic gating factor for ideas? In fact, some of the trees I know are delighted that we've found a better, faster, cheaper way to spread ideas.If the demise of paper means that good people doing good work in important industries will have to find faster and better ways to do their jobs, I don't think that's a bad thing.
The art of seduction 22 July, 2010, 2:36 am
Carole Mallory was Norman Mailer's mistress. Seducing him probably wasn't that difficult, though, as he was already on his sixth wife at the time.Marketers seek to seduce. So do painters, authors and job seekers. The most important thing to understand about seduction is this: it only works when the other person cooperates, contributes and is at some level interested in being seduced.In short: it's a lot easier to seduce someone who's worldview and attitude makes them open to it. If you want to be successful at whatever form of seduction you have in mind, seek out the right people.Some people were seduced by the iPad. Many ignored it. It wasn't that the iPad changed from person to person, what changed was the audience's worldview and openness.And yet...And yet as marketers we seem to want to treat everyone the same, want to please everyone, want to come up with the magic words that open every heart.
Getting to scale: direct marketing vs. mass market thinking 21 July, 2010, 2:24 am
A mass marketer needs to reach the masses, and to do it in many ways, simultaneously. The mass marketer needs retail outlets and fliers and a website and public relations and tv ads and more more more and then... bam... critical mass is reached and success occurs.Best Buy is a mass marketer, but so are Microsoft and the Red Cross. Ubiquity, once achieved, brings them revenue, which advances the cycle and they reach scale.The direct marketer, on the other hand, must get it right in the small. That pitch letter can be tested on 100 houses and if it gets a 2% response rate, then it can be mailed to 100,000 houses with confidence. That business-to-business sales pitch can be honed on one or two or three prospects, and then when it works, can be taught to dozens or hundreds of other salespeople.The key distinction is when you know it's going to work. The mass marketer doesn't know until the end. The direct marketer knows in the beginning.The mass marketer is betting on thousands of tiny cues, little clues, and unrecorded (but vital) conversations. The direct marketer is measuring conversion rates from the first day.That's the reason we often default to acting like mass marketers. We're putting off the day of reckoning, betting on the miracle around the corner, spending our time and energy on the early steps without the downside of admitting failure to the boss.Of course, just because it's our default doesn't mean it's right. Business to business marketing is almost always better if you treat it like direct marketing. Most websites that do conversion as well. Same with non-profit fundraising. As well as marketing goods and services to the bottom of the pyramid, people who live in villages where mass media and mass distribution are difficult and have little impact.Get it right for ten people before you rush around scaling up to a thousand. It's far less romantic than spending money at the start, but it's the reliable, proven way to get to scale if you care enough to do the work.
The paradox of promises in the age of word of mouth 20 July, 2010, 2:29 am
Word of mouth is generated by surprise and delight (or anger). This is a function of the difference between what you promise and what you deliver (see clever MBA chart to the right--->).The thing is, if you promise very little, you don't get a chance to deliver because I'll ignore you. And if you promise too much, you don't get a chance to deliver, because I won't believe you...Hence the paradox. The more you promise, the less likely you are to achieve delight and the less likely you are to earn the trust to get the gig in the first place. Salespeople often want you to allow them to overpromise, because it gets them through the RFP. Marketers, if they're smart, will push you (the CEO) to underpromise, since that's where the word of mouth is going to come from.I have worked with someone who is very good at the promising part. She enjoys it. And when the promises don't work out, she's always ready with the perfect excuse. This is a great strategy if you have a regular job and the excuses are really terrific, but if you need internal or external clients, it gets old pretty fast. It certainly doesn't lead to the sort of word of mouth one is eager to encounter.Surgeons have this problem all the time. They promise a complete, pain-free recovery and work hard to build up a positive expectation, particularly for elective surgery. And the entire time you're in bed, in pain, unable to pee, all you can do is hate on the doctor.This is one reason why recovering from failure is such a great opportunity. If you or your organization fail and then you pull out all the stops to recover or make good, the expectation/delivery gap is huge. You don't win because you did a good job, you win because you so dramatically exceeded expectations.
The new dynamics of book publishing 19 July, 2010, 2:23 pm
Click to listenor
Download mp3In May, I did a talk for the Independent Book Publishers (site).
The link above gives you a free and slightly abridged recording of the talk, probably of interest if you are focused on how industries are making (or not) the shift to the new rules of a digital age.
The Goods On Virtual Goods 27 July, 2010, 5:09 pm
While scaling and monetizing e-commerce is still an issue for many of the top retailers in the world, those merchants should also keep an eye out on virtual goods.
News came down this week that the Executive Director of Shop.org, Scott Silverman (a close friend of the Six Pixels of Separation and Twist Image community), was leaving the organization to join a start-up focused on virtual goods (more news on that here: DM News - Shop.org executive Silverman resigns to found startup). While this news sent shockwaves through both the online merchants and retailers associated with Shop.org and the NRF (National Retail Federation), this is a very forward-thinking move for Silverman, who is joining an industry so new that we can hardly even say that it is even in its infancy.
Why aren't all retailers seriously focused on virtual goods?
Think about the current opportunity (and where this is all going). Why wouldn't a department store start selling digital versions of products like music, movies and books? On top of that, think of the opportunity for doing multi-channel marketing campaigns by offering up specials or exclusives on things like a tractor in FarmVille or better armor in World of Warcraft with either an online or in-store purchase. While Facebook no longer offers the buying, selling or sending of gifts (more on that here: All Facebook - Why Facebook Killed A $100 Million Baby), this was a multi-million dollar business for the company. At a more primal level, just think of the baseline affiliate marketing opportunities for retailers as an entry point.
And this is only the beginning.
Some of the major retailers (like JC Penny and Target) are already embracing celebrity-endorsed brands, so why not extend this to the online/virtual goods channel? Imagine exclusive wallpapers for your iPad and/or iPhone designed by Demi Lovato and sold through her new relationship with Target? Yesterday, it was announced that Madonna will be designing and selling a new line of accessories through Macy's (more on that here: Wall Street Journal - Macy's Hopes Madonna's Line Puts Retailer On Map With Teens), this is another great opportunity to tie-in exclusive virtual goods to up the overall basket.
We tend to think with extreme shortsightedness.
The truth is that nobody can forecast the future of retail (or if virtual goods have a legitimate business leg to stand on), but as distribution gets more complex and the cost of building, maintaining and staffing individual stores continues to rise, the retailers of the future are going to have to embrace the very real reality that consumers no longer draw a hard line between their virtual goods and their physical goods. Don't believe me? Look at the quick transition the mass public made from a physical CD of music to an iTunes library. On top of that, we also got news today that consumer's habits are changing at the retail level. Customer service needs are dropping (they're probably being met by empowered consumers using the digital channels for information and more) and they are becoming much more price sensitive and driven.
Digitization is as digitization does.
While some industries are being forced into digitization (music, movies, books, software, etc...), retailers may offer the world a Digital Marketing leadership stance by embracing and encouraging the sale and distribution of more and more virtual goods. Initially, this will look much more like strategic partnerships (where a company like Warner Bros. would team up with a major retailer like Urban Outfitters to distribute their virtual goods), but it could (and should) lead to that retailer developing their own merchandising team against virtual goods, and building that new category within their business. Look no further than Apple to see a glimpse as to how this can play out (you buy your computer, iPod or whatever at the retail level, but then fill it up with content and software through their digital channel - iTunes).
What's your take on virtual goods? Will people actually buy it?
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world of warcraft
The Next Big Thing Online Could Well Be Anonymity 26 July, 2010, 1:37 pm
With more and more people adding more and more personal stuff about themselves online, it's fascinating to think that the next big thing in the online world could well be anonymity.
While it's easy to take a contrarian view of Social Media, Digital Marketing and the trends that are currently underway (and this includes everything from Facebook passing 500 million users to the growing popularity of location-aware platforms like Foursquare), it's important to remember that a lot of what made the online world popular during its commercial inception was the ability to be anonymous. That anonymity was quickly followed by the ability to be someone/something completely different from who you were in your offline world. The intersection of this personality conflict came shining through when Second Life (the virtual world) began to gain in popularity a few years back. You would have individuals switching genders (some were even switching species) and in all of the flamboyance of island owning and virtual partying, what we really had was a place where individuals could lead a "second life" or, as some described it, "the life I was meant to lead."
With all of this personal information that we're publishing online, people still have a need/want to speak anonymously.
While online social networks and Social Media swells in popularity, and those who disclose and act "more human" benefit from these real interactions with real human beings, there is (what seems to be) a growing groundswell towards places that embrace those who do not wish to disclose who they are and what they're up to. Whether it's individuals looking to block their IP from Hulu (a trick anyone who doesn't live in the United States has mastered) to the news today that Wikileaks put out a swath of leaked U.S. government documents about their actions in Afghanistan. Let's not even get started with the avatars you will encounter by playing the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft.
There's something happening here and it's not just about deep throats or predators.
The knee-jerk reaction to anonymity is that the person creating the content has "something to hide." It's logical, but it's not the entire story. Some people simply feel more liberated to speak their mind knowing that who they are will not become a focal point within that discussion. Look at what is happening on Chatroulette and Formspring. While both offer the ability to fully disclose who you are (in reality), the main push of traffic comes from people wanting to connect in a more anonymous way. Yes, with this comes the two-percent-plus of people doing very bad things, but along with that also comes a different kind of culture and content production that you won't see on platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Everything is "with" not "instead of."
Does this mean that having The King from Burger King show-up on Chatroulette is the future of Digital Marketing? Probably not, but it is a smart play and may well be the right strategy to let those futzing around on Chatroulette know that if they get tired of watching very ugly people doing very strange things to themselves, that they could take a break and grab a Whopper. The point is that Marketing is becoming less and less of a zero sum game (or one campaign to rule them all). Based on the wild and explosive growth of these platforms that allow and engender anonymity (and the huge uptake in a brand's desire to play with transmedia storytelling), it could also be an indication that your current/future Digital Marketing strategy may be well served by also embracing the anonymous side of the Internet. As an entry point, imagine what consumer reviews may look like if you didn't force people to declare who they are?
What are your thoughts about the growth of the anonymous Web? Should we be scared or ready to embrace this growing trend?
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The Art Of Power Friending With Amber Mac 25 July, 2010, 10:55 am
Episode #212 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
She is well known in the Digital Media circles from her work on G4 Tech TV to her constant (and consistent) appearances with Leo Laporte. There are few people more connected (both online and to the New Media channels) than Amber Mac. We have been friends for many years (and constantly joke about how often we wind up connecting in airport lounges across North America). She's not just a mass media personality either, her highly popular Podcasts,Web Nation and Command N are must-have pieces of content. More recently, she published her first book, Power Friending - Demystifying Social Media To Grow Your Business. I don't know what took us so long to get together to chat, but the moment finally happened and here it is. 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 #212.
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amber macarthur
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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention 24 July, 2010, 11:07 am
Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Rednod, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, Bite-Sized Edits, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for each other (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".
Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:
Star Wars: Episode 1 - Red Letter Media. "Techcrunch recently covered a three-hour, candid discussion with Conan O'Brien in which he said of Big Media producers, 'Those men behind the curtain -- the great and powerful Oz -- are scared shitless right now,' adding that the chaos is so high that anyone in the audience could just as likely be running a major network in a few years. This is pretty simple economics: one-to-millions media was based on economies of scale, but an audience of one is based on economies of skill. While the Techcrunch piece is must-read for anyone interested in new media, that's not what I want you to watch. Rather, you need to see this 7-part, 70-minute review of The Phantom Menace, by a serial killer. It's brilliant, and it proves O'Brien's point more than any celebutante or startup could ever do. So grab a beer or three and some friends, and watch this." (Alistair for Hugh).
The Peekaboo Paradox - The Washington Post. "The Great Zucchini works 2 days a week, makes $100K a year. He's scruffy and his trademark is putting a diaper on his head. This entertaining piece from The Washington Post looks inside the wacky economics of children's entertainers. Beyond being a terrifying reminder to save all of my pennies, and the perils of living day to day, it's actually an object lesson in marketing, supply, demand, branding, and the value of transparent innocence and customer empathy." (Alistair for Mitch).
No Minister: 90% of web snoop document censored to stop 'premature unnecessary debate' - The Sydney Morning Herald. "In the start-up world we tend to think of Web technology living somehow on the edge of regulation - outside of the interference from the pesky officials who don't get the Web. But we have some big debates ahead of us: about net neutrality, privacy, censorship and much more. Australia seems to have jumped off the deep end in efforts to bring censorship and government snooping to the Web. And, ironists that they are, the Australian government censored 90% of the policy document - drafted with industry consultation, but no citizen input - that will form the basis of their policy-making. Their rationale for expunging most of the document, according to Attorney-General's Department legal officer, Claudia Hernandez, was to prevent 'premature unnecessary debate and could potentially prejudice and impede government decision making.' Which, if I understand the way democracy is supposed to function, is precisely the reason you allow debate." (Hugh for Alistair).
Real Editors Ship - FTrain.com. "Editors and 'old'-media people get a bad rap in these Interetish times. Paul Ford comes to the defense of the editor, arguing that in fact they have all the skills needed to rule our messy Web universe: seeing patterns, meeting deadlines, shipping product, separating wheat from chaff, evaluating what people like and don't like. I'd never thought of it before, but editors as described by Ford are much like start-up product managers. Now, if only we can deal with that pervasive distrust of technology." (Hugh for Mitch).
Cooking For Geeks by Jeff Potter - O'Reilly Publishing. "First off, a huge congrats to Alistair on the birth of his first child. I know you're an O'Reilly published author, but when I saw the title of this book, I just knew it had your name written all over it. You're a Geek, you love to cook and now you'll be home a whole lot more. I could not think of a more appropriate piece of content that you should be devouring right at this exact moment (pun intended). So, welcome to being a Dad (and with that, you should also be checking out Digital Dads and the Dad-O-Matic Blogs). Now, get cooking and help your wife out a little, will ya?" (Mitch for Alistair).
Five Reasons Amazon E-Books are Outselling Hardcovers - SF Gate. "It was a big/historical week for the Publishing Industry. Amazon announced that digital books are now outselling hardcover books. This moment in time reminds me of when MP3 sales started to eclipse those of physical CDs. The digitization of any industry is never easy, and this transition for the publishing industry is going to be equally confusing and scary. Issues like rights management and what 'distribution' means is going to challenge the status quo. Just this week, I was told by my publisher that the rights to distribute my book, Six Pixels of Separation, on the Kindle format in Canada have not been secured (along with all books published by Hachette Book Group). Imagine that, you can't get Malcolm Gladwell, the Twilight series or even Tony Hsieh's new book, Delivering Happiness, and thousands of other books in Canada via Kindle. What does that do for sales?" (Mitch for Hugh).
Now, it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.
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amazon
bitcurrent
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publishing
red letter media
rednod
rights management
sf gate
star wars episode 1
start-up
stephenie meyer
techcrunch
the book oven
the great zucchini
the phantom menace
the sydney morning herald
tony hsieh
twilight
washington post
web technology
I'm A Creep 23 July, 2010, 10:56 am
What is it about the human condition that makes us interested in the personal and public business of one another?
People would like to have you believe that they have, indeed, evolved beyond the point of needing the public's attention. If those same people have a Facebook profile, Twitter feed or have uploaded (or even watched) a video to YouTube, they're lying to you. Like all people (except for those who are really cut-off from society or off the grid), Social Media proves one thing magnificently well: no matter what we do, it's important to have the attention of other people, and that no matter what we do, we like to see what others are up to.
I wish I was special.
What is really happening when you post a photo to Facebook? What about a tweet on Twitter? What about when you broadcast your location via Foursquare? You're looking for attention and you're looking for some kind of recognition/acknowledgement from your social graph. Many people will read this and think that's a negative thing. It isn't. Take a quick re-look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and you'll quickly be reminded how important love, belonging, esteem and self-actualization is to our personal development. Social Media has an amazing way to solve the "look at me!" internal dialogue that we all have.
I want you to notice.
We don't just post and share things for ourselves (don't kid yourself). We post things to get people to notice us. If we didn't, we would simply call those we really wanted to connect to and would keep all of our Social Media private and by invite-only (and, even then, it could be argued that you're still posting for attention and acknowledgment). On top of that (or if you think you are above that), let's say you're not creating or publishing content to garner any attention, you're still creeping on other people. You're looking to see people's profiles and pictures on Facebook. When you see a small avatar of someone on Twitter, you click on it to see what it looks like bigger (especially if you think that they might be good looking). There's a reason so many pieces of content (mostly images and videos) are being uploaded and shared at such a mass amount online. We like to creep. We like people to creep on us.
Whatever makes you happy.
From gossip and soap operas to professional wrestling and reality television, we love following and burrowing ourselves in the lives of others. So, why is it any shock that Facebook has over 500 million accounts? If given the choice of following a soap opera or having a peek inside the lives of people we know (on whatever level of quality), it shouldn't surprise anyone (not in the least) that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc... continue to grow flourish. It's fascinating to hear people say that they would prefer it if brands and marketers were not a part of this. The truth is that we live in one of the most branded generations ever, and that brands play an integral part of who we are, and how we communicate and connect to the world... and there's nothing wrong with that.
It turns out that I like to watch. And so do you. I'm a creep. And so are you. Have you ever stopped to wonder why?
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Thank Social Media For The Next Phase In Human Evolution 22 July, 2010, 3:08 am
What do you do with your down time?
The average Canadian watches more than 25 hours of television every week (depending on which survey or research report you believe). On top of that, the average Canadian is also watching close to 12 hours of online video every month. Comparatively, the average American is watching close to 40 hours of television every week and about four to 12 hours of online video (the difference is probably related to both connectivity and culture). As busy as your life may seem, imagine what you could do with all of that free time? Let's agree that no one is ever going to ditch television (or watching YouTube videos) completely. What would happen if you suddenly had half of that time - which would be close to 60 hours every month? Would you watch more episodes of America's Got Talent or The Bachelorette?
We have to be able to recognize that television culture has done a lot more to us - as a civilization - than simply to entertain and (sometimes) educate the mass populous.
Television has changed who we are. We sit in front of this box as a way to kill time and as a way to relax (although we should be hard pressed to see how anyone could relax watching the news on Fox or Lock-Up). In its primal form, TV is probably a lot closer to what Paleolithic man did after eating and in between hunts -which is waiting to die (sorry for being so morbid, but it's true).
The act of actually creating something vs. sitting around and consuming content is one of the pivotal components that make the Internet and Web culture such a huge shift in the media landscape and who we are as a people.
That is the crux and main thrust behind the newly published business book, Cognitive Surplus - Creativity and generosity in a connected age, by Clay Shirky (Penguin Press, June 2010). In Cognitive Surplus, Shirky argues that now, instead of just sitting idly by and watching TV, this (fairly) new technology mixed in with Social Media can put our "untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last." Basically, television was (and still is) the main driver that is sucking this cognitive surplus out of humanity. The book isn't about turning off the boob tube to become an activist, but it is about the potential for human beings to see, do and create a whole lot more. Much like Shirky's first book, Here Comes Everybody - The power of organizing without organizations (Penguin Press, 2008), Cognitive Surplus is not only a pleasure to read because of Shirky's writing style, but it is a much needed, deeper look into what is happening now online.
Social Media and the advancement of things like the iPad, smartphones and more places us - as a civilization - in the middle of a new renaissance period.
And, it's hard to know that we're in the middle of a new renaissance period until after it is over and we have had the time to sit back, review the results and reflect on these many changes. No one will argue that business, technology and media have changed dramatically in the past two decades because of the Internet, but the question now becomes: what are we going to do with our free time now that we don't have to simply be a passive audience (or as NYU professor and media pundit Jay Rosen defines us, "the people formerly known as the audience")?
A glaringly obvious example of how to harness this cognitive surplus is Wikipedia (love it or hate it).
Suddenly, it is not incumbent on a group of PhDs and peer review to decide what constitutes the collection of knowledge and information that human beings have discovered. And suddenly, we can all contribute, edit, add, revise and yes, debate not only the content, but its accuracy. Shirky explains that Wikipedia took about 100 million hours of cumulative thought to build when compared to the reality that on average Americans watch about 200 billion hours of television every year. "That represents about 2,000 Wikipedia projects worth of free time annually," the book argues. "Even tiny subsets of this time are enormous: we spend roughly 100 million hours every weekend just watching commercials."
It turns out that even a massive project like Wikipedia takes up only a small amount of our cognitive surplus when broken down.
Now, we can do even more amazing things, projects and initiatives because of our connectivity and the publishing platforms that the Internet affords us. The question becomes this: are human beings naturally lazy or are we naturally hungry to replace our primal hunting instincts with a new hunt for information, content curation, creativity and publishing? As Shirky points out so eloquently in Cognitive Surplus, "Access to cheap, flexible tools removes many of the barriers to trying new things. You don't need fancy computers to harness cognitive surplus; simple phones are enough. But one of the most important lessons is this: once you've figured out how to tap the surplus in a way that people care about, others can replicate your technique, over and over, around the world."
This could well be the next phase of human evolution...
How we use our time to connect, share and build things (ideas, movements, social change, businesses, political change, helping those in need, etc.) in an era where everyone is connected and we push toward the last mile of connecting even those who are not in the developed world.
What are you going to do with all of this free time? What do you make of Clay Shirky and his concept of Cognitive Surplus?
The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation. This blog post is also a part of a Blogger outreach program by TLCBooktours. They sent me a review copy of Cognitive Surplus and invited to join this group of distinguished Bloggers participating in Shirky's blog tour. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:
Montreal Gazette - Tapping into people's free time can help create a powerful resource.
Vancouver Sun - Connectivity could lead to next phase of evolution.
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wikipedia
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500 Million 21 July, 2010, 6:23 pm
Today was a big day. Not just for Facebook, but for Digital Marketing and Social Media.
When 500 million people do anything, it becomes mass media newsworthy. Today, Facebook made it official: they have 500 million accounts. This makes Facebook the third largest country by population after China and India - and a couple of hundred million ahead of the United States (according to Wikipedia). That being said, we're looking at the wrong metrics. Those are mass media advertising numbers, and they're not a true reflection of what is really happening with Facebook.
Facebook is small.
In fact, Facebook is just a very large bunch of very small connections and communities. According to Facebook's latest statistics, the average user has 130 friends. Marketers are focusing on the 500 million number and wondering how they can get their brands, products and services in front of them. They're not focusing on how complex and tangled the social graph actually is. They're also not focusing on why people connect on Facebook (hint: it is - for the most part - a place to share information with those who aren't overly close with you). These are not people who are idly sitting by and waiting to consume content. They are on Facebook to create, edit, share and tag information (mostly personal information).
Facebook is the new portal... but with a big variance.
In the early days of the Internet, big media companies figured that if they create a destination with great original and aggregated content, people would flock to it... and we did. We always assumed that the Internet was just another media channel, but not a new media channel. Social Media is really about creating things (not just consuming things), so as more and more people join Facebook and connect with friends, family and business associates, it's obvious that this is becoming their homepage. The average user's newsfeed is now way more fascinating than anything they can get on Yahoo! or at CNN. It's their own little newspaper filled with gossip, news, links, pictures and videos of people they know (or are curious about).
Facebook makes us more human.
Like any destination with 500 million members there are going to be issues (from privacy to business strategy and from evil-doers to manipulators). This is a new world and the rules are fuzzy (at best). Along with this, there come a lot of haters and those who will be critical (we like to eat our own). In the end, Facebook makes us better. It has helped to turn technology from something cold that people did instead of meeting with real people to a much more warmer type of technology. Love it or hate it, Facebook makes us all connected (just a little bit more) and that's something to celebrate.
How do you feel about Facebook?
Tags:
advertising
brand
business strategy
cnn
connected
content publishing
digital marketing
facebook
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mass media
media channel
new media
news
newsfeed
newspaper
online community
online social network
portal
privacy
social graph
social media
technology
wikipedia
yahoo
The Myth Of Location 20 July, 2010, 7:56 pm
Why hasn't Foursquare and other location-aware platforms taken off?
Let's not dismiss the amazing growth that online platforms like Foursquare have had, but they certainly do not have the mass adoption trajectory or passionate users like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. So, what gives? Didn't us Marketers (and yes, I am lumping myself into this group) all think that location-aware goodness (and the ability to send a targeted message to someone who is physically close to whatever it is that you're selling) was the last mile of Marketing?
Location may be the last mile that consumers are afraid of.
Foursquare doesn't work for a lot of people because allowing anybody to know where you are at any given time still seems creepy to most. Granted, the thought of posting all of your personal content (in text, images, audio and video) to the world like we do on Facebook and YouTube probably seemed a little crazy too just a few years back. All of this just furthers the notion that technology and connectivity continues to change and evolve at such a rapid rate that many people don't "jump in" simply because they can't/don't see the application in their daily lives.
Are we going to open up a lot more in the coming years or become more reclusive?
Most people see mobile and location-aware technology as something that the vast majority will open to and embrace, but we must also be prepared for a minor backlash of, "enough is enough" as people begin to realize that everything they do (and every place they go) is, essentially, being tracked, recorded and turned into some kind of data/trending tool. While brands may not use this information in a specific one-to-one way, this type of trending and data mining can still give off that same eerie feeling we get when we hear The Police classic, 'Every Breath You Take.'
We're watching you.
While the specific information (who you are, where you live, etc...) may still be hidden (ok, with location-aware platforms, where you live is there for the world to see), let's not forget how violated the masses felt when they started to understand what a cookie meant during an online session. People are, naturally, concerned about privacy and how their information is being used. The trouble is that the more these Social Media tools and channels evolve, the more we're creating a very fragmented culture of those who benefit by divulging all from those who may become the freaks and weirdo because they're not letting everything they do be tagged, uploaded and shared with the rest of the online populous. Think about how we frown upon those who refuse to join Facebook.
Just because they can, it doesn't mean that they will.
As exciting as location-aware is, Marketers need to get cautious and put the right levers in place today so that we don't blow this (and so that the government doesn't step in to regulate and police it as well). The opportunity is there to create real interactions with real human beings in a real and meaningful way. Historically, we haven't been great at getting this done right (think about spam, click fraud, telemarketing, etc...). Our culture of making people read the fine print and promoting offers that are subject to change hasn't helped either. For location-aware to truly take off, we need to put the consumer first... and they need to know (not feel) that they are in control of divulging their location, information and the types of messaging and people they would like to connect to. Otherwise, Marketing (advertising, communications and public relations) will lose out in the end.
It would be sad to see the world of Social Media, mobility and location never come to fruition because Marketers and the platform developers could not restrain ourselves from being intrusive, annoying and predatory.
Tags:
advertising
click fraud
connectivity
content
cookie
data mining
facebook
foursquare
location
location-aware
marketer
marketing
mobile
mobile marketing
mobility
online culture
online platform
online privacy
online trend
privacy
publishing
social media
spam
technology
telemarketing
the police
twitter
web culture
youtube
4 Ways To Not Reek Of Desperation 19 July, 2010, 12:33 pm
When you're desperate it's hard to win business, get that job, market a product or do anything (like find a mate).
The trouble is that most people who are desperate, can't even muster up the levity to see, feel and hear it in themselves. When you're desperate, your confidence drops, so whether you're looking to meet someone, get a job or close a piece of business, nobody wants to connect with someone who reeks of desperation - and therefore lacks confidence in whatever it is that they're doing.
If you can't find a job, there are plenty of things that you can do.
What most people fail to realize is that while they are looking for work, their full-time job is actually making themselves as knowable as possible (Hugh McGuire over at the The Book Oven and one of the co-hosts of Media Hacks once brilliantly stated, "don't Blog to be know. Blog to be knowable"). Our work/world has changed. If you are looking for work, pay attention to this...
4 Ways to not Reek of Desperation:
Publish. Whether it's in text, images, audio or video and whether it's a Blog, flickr, YouTube, Twitter or a Podcast, there is absolutely zero reason why you should not be highlighting how you think, and express yourself through one of these many online channels (btw, it's free too). If someone is truly interested in you, they are going to do a quick online search to learn more. If the number one organic search result is not your own personal space of what truly makes you unique, you are failing yourself... miserably. This is especially true if you're out of work, because time is not an issue. Start publishing about something (anything!) that you are passionate about. It doesn't even have to be related to what you're pursuing. You're simply demonstrating (publicly) how you think. Pushing this further: who would not want somebody who has an audience/community as a part of their team?
Read. What was the last book that you read related to the industry you're interested in? If you are not up-to-date on the latest book, or if suffer from the fact that Google is actually making you stupid (a la Nicholas Carr), what about Blog postings, industry magazines, general business magazines, etc... If you're looking to be hired and you're not up to snuff on the latest trends, thoughts and innovations, why should anybody bring you in? This is on you, and if you don't like to read, get over it. It's an integral part of learning and growing. Plus, you can cheat: hope over to iTunes and subscribe to both audio and video Podcasts that serve your industry and get informed.
Community. What have you done in your community? If you're not working, why are you not an active participant in bettering the community? This can be both social causes or industry related ones. Better yet, why not volunteer your time to the organization by specifically applying your professional skill-sets? Imagine both the amazing work you can do to make the world a better place while also meeting some amazing individuals who are also contributing their time. In my experience, the volunteers on the many boards and organizing committees are usually the most fascinating people in the world (and can probably help you network and connect if you're truly great at what you do).
Lead. No one is going to do this for you, and you may not be able to get into the groove of someone else's community or charity, so why not start your own? Look at how the whole unconference movement started with BarCamp. This handful of people had passion, commitment and the drive to start something new by being/becoming a leader (which they probably didn't even realize they were doing at the time). Why not head over to Meetup and start a group or join/help to lead an existing one? Leadership doesn't have to happen in the physical world either, you can also head over to Ning and start your own online community or even something as simple as group on Facebook or an open dialogue using Twitter (look at what #BlogChat is doing for inspiration). Bottom-line: there are way too many opportunities that exist for you right now to become an industry leader. All you have to do is figure out the area of expertise that's right for you and put the long, hard hours of work into building it.
Do you see how this works?
Nobody owes you anything. Social Media offers you tools, access and opportunity that were not available to a single person within a specific niche until very recently. It's up to you... and it's incumbent on you to be successful. As Jeffrey Gitomer says, you don't have to ask your Daddy for an allowance anymore. Translate that: you don't need permission... it's on you to do this, and no HR person can do this for you. So, while everyone else is letting their Blogs lapse or are spending their time tweeting for the sole purpose of gaming their numbers, why not use the channels to empower yourself to be become more knowable and interesting?
What do you think? What would you add to this list?
Tags:
barcamp
blog blogger blogging
blogchat
business
business book
business magazine
community
desperation
facebook group
flickr
hr
hugh mcguire
human resources
industry publication
itunes
jeffrey gitomer
leadership
media hacks
meetup
networking
nicholas carr
ning
online channel
online community
personal brand
podcast
publishing
read
social media
the book oven
twitter
unconference
youtube
Media Hacks Audio Podcast #33 Is Now Live 18 July, 2010, 11:40 am
Episode #211 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to. This is also episode #33 of Media Hacks.
Instead of the usual phone conversation, Hugh McGuire, Julien Smith and I met up for an early morning breakfast at the infamous Bagels Etc... in beautiful Montreal. The conversation floated between mass media versus Social Media to looks at everything from how Old Spice is leveraging the convergence of the two, to why both Clay Shirky and Nicholas Carr have new business books that are well-worth reading (even though they both don't agree with one another). We also attempt to tackle the conversation over content and its value (re: pricing model) in our current society, and many other hacking media topics. As with most episodes of Media Hacks, some of the language is not safe for work (you have been warned). 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 #211.
Tags:
advertising
bagel etc
bite size edits
blog
blogging
blue sky factory
book oven
cast of dads
cc chapman
chris brogan
christopher s penn
clay shirky
cognitive surplus
comedy festival
david usher
digital dads
digital marketing
facebook
facebook group
finland broadband
hugh mcguire
ibook
in over your head
instapaper
iphone
is google making us stupid
itunes
jaron lanier
julien smith
just for laughs
kindle
kobo
librivox
managing the gray
marie mai
marketing
marketing over coffee
media hacks
new marketing labs
nicholas carr
old spice
online social network
papi coudrey
podcast
podcasting
readability
six pixels of separation
social media 101
social media marketing
strategy
the atlantic
the grateful dead
the shallows
transmedia
trust agents
twist image
you are not a gadget
