Posts Tagged ‘Socail Media’

Innovator, Early Adpoter, Majority, Laggard…

Monday, August 9th, 2010

One of the long understood principles about new technology from a marketing perspective is that customers can be classified as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. The innovators jump in with new technology almost immediately and there is a time delay before the other classifications join in.

Technical Acceptance Timeline

In a rapidly changing technology environment like the Internet, the marketplace can become perpetually jumbled. When things move fast there never seems to be a time when everyone is on the same page. With rapid change, laggards might be just adapting to technology that innovators abandoned a long time back.

For example, when websites and email were the new things, the innovators jumped in, but have since moved on to the latest and greatest technologies which for now are based on mobile devices like the iPad and hyper-smart phones. Some ‘experts’ are saying that websites are becoming irrelevant. But I don’t believe that. Websites are just not as effective for some types of people while becoming more effective at reaching other people.

Relative to websites, the laggards are just now coming onboard. For example, e-Commerce has long been accepted by most, but is just now becoming a comfortable environment for the slow adopters. And in between the mainstream still searches and surfs for web pages of interest and the majority have become comfortable with Web 2.0 which has morphed into a variety of Social Media technologies.

So what should businesses do to cope with this jumbled marketplace? Should businesses just play in the middle ground where the majority is comfortable? Should they establish themselves as leaders by catering to the innovator customers? Should they ignore the laggards as not worth the effort?

What to do is tricky business with no perfect answer.  If you sell a trend setting product like the latest generation smart phone, then you need to be in front of the innovative and early adopter customers by advertising where they are hanging out online and via mobile devices.

But if you sell a mature or commodity universally needed mainstream product (TVs, cars, appliances, travel, personal products, etc, etc) you want to reach people in all classifications as they are all potential customers. That suggests you need to have a presence at all stages of the technology’s maturity. This implies you need to be using email, websites, banner ads, search marketing, SEO, social engagement, mobile promotions, and basically all available established and new digital publication methods.

In the end, each marketing situation is different with a lot to consider including your product’s characteristics and the target demographic you are going after. Businesses will profit from consultation with a professional Digital Marketing organization to determine the best marketing approach – not too little or too much and where to be seen. We can help.

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Your Social Media ‘phone’ is ringing… are you answering it?

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Regardless of your political position, I am going to use the recent Massachusetts Senate election as a teachable moment opportunity regarding Social Media.

What would happen to your business if when your phone rang  you never answered it or recorded the messages? Disaster, right? Social Media channels are sending messages to or about your company each day, are you answering or recording the messages?  Are you respecting the value of listening and engaging with your customers? Hold that thought and keep reading…

Some political commentators on a Sunday Meet the Press type TV show, I think correctly, said that the politicians in power incorrectly interpreted the meaning of the 2008 US elections. And they disregarded public input about legislation that they received in considerable volume from many sources during 2009. These miscalculations are having an affect in recent special elections.

One commentator stated that there is a communication issue – the problem is that elected officials did not communicate their message effectively.  Another commentator disagreed and offered this opinion:  Communication is the issue, but communications involves talking and listening.  Politicians are used to telling an apathetic public what they are going to do but usually don’t have to seriously deal with the listening part of the communication equation.  

That is where communications broke down. It wasn’t that elected officials weren’t telling their story effectively or uttering enough ‘magic words’ to convince the public about legislation, it was at their peril that they weren’t listening to what the public was really saying. The majority of the public was saying we understand, but we don’t want your product in its current configuration.

You can’t make your products or policies more popular or better by just lecturing to your audiences while ignoring feedback or filtering feedback by listening only to positive comments from your inner circle of friends.  

So what does this have to do with Social Media? Just like politicians need to pay attention to their constituents, business managers need to pay attention to their customers. This is especially true now because the Internet makes unlimited information available and it has changed forever the way people mass communicate.

Control of information and communication has always been key to political and commercial power. Whoever controls the ‘microphone’ usually has the edge in a debate.  Traditionally commercial communication was mostly one way, not two way. Companies were in control of information and the conversation.

In the past companies talked at their customers, not with their customers other than via an occasional poll or focus group study. Ads and announcements were sent out to the marketplace through traditional media outlets, but little could come back from the marketplace inward because there were no easy pathways.  Company management, like politicians, did a lot of talking but not much listening even if they wanted to because before the Internet, there wasn’t a good source of feedback.   Via Social Media, customers now have a ‘microphone’ of their own.

Constituents of elected officials found their voice via email, town hall meetings, tea parties, online forums, etc.  And customers of companies now have a loudspeaker connected to the world via Social Media. Business managers need to listen or their companies could be voted out of existence by customers like politicians are being voted out of office.

Some random thoughts:

  1. There is an old saying that was never so true as in today’s realities… We have two ears and one mouth for a reason – we should listen twice as much as we talk.
  2. The customer is always right – you can’t fight that. It is crucial that you know what the customer wants; they are telling you in Social Media portals.
  3. You can ignore what people are saying to or about your business, but that doesn’t make the talk go away; ignoring the discussion frustrates your customers and lets the discussion go its own way without any influence from you.

Are you in the Social Media communication loop or are you letting Social Media ‘ring’ without pickup?  Like politicians, some companies ‘get it’, many do not.  You must be active in Social Media out of self defense at the minimum. Ignore it at your peril.  There are archived posts on this very subject.  Contact me if you need to begin listening to your customers and need help.

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Digital Marketing Tip – observations of a blogger addict

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

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I have been posting Digital Marketing Tips at the rate of about 5 per week since September 2009.  My motivation is to provide value in the form of actionable digital marketing tips for the readers via sharing my 8 years of WSI Internet Marketing training and my experiences from client projects.  Of course, I hope that sharing my knowledge earns the trust of the readers leading to recognition of expert status and perhaps some leads, but that is for the readers to decide.

I provided an earlier post about the why and how of blogging that is archived here.

So what have I experienced and learned about blogging over the last 5 months?

  • Deciding on subjects that will be of value 5 times a week is a challenge
  • High value blogging takes a lot of time – between one and two hours per day
  • Value blogging is personally enriching – I learn a lot while researching blog content
  • A high quality blog tool – the blog content management system (CMS) – makes the process easy. This blog is powered by WordPress CMS
  • A high volume of blog impressions (viewers) is gratifying
  • I have learned that careful attention to keyword research, proper keyword content integration, and frequent blog updates can get Google page one listings of a blog post literally within minutes – I’ve accomplished that many times
  • It is delightful to interact with blog reader message discussions from engaged readers, but…
  • Blogging message systems are subject to the same spam and scam problems that affect other Internet activities

On that last point – spam and scams:  All messages in this blog are moderated – that means messages must be approved by me before they show on the blog.  So far, about 20% of submitted messages have been spam or scam related.

dilbert_and_spam

If the content of the message doesn’t give away the self-serving motivations of the author, then there are other ways to find out. WordPress CMS captures some info about the message’s author like the IP address of their computer.  An IP address can be looked up online to find the general place of origin and that identifies many of the usual spam suspects. Or a simple Google search of the IP address will show if the IP address is on a spam or scam watch list kept by websites like http://www.stopforumspam.com among others. 

Really irritating to me is someone who enters a message with an advertisement for their business or a link to their business. Ya, right, I really want to spend 2 hours writing a blog post so that it can be used by a competitor to place a free ad.  My blog host, Yovia, does offer paid banner ad space if you want to become an advertiser.  I am not reimbursed for those ads by the way, I am a guest in the Yovia blog website.

Spam, scams and free loaders are all part of the game. You put up with the 20% of malicious viewers for the sake of the 80% legit viewers.  So I will continue with this blog and hope you find it valuable.  Non-spammers and non-scammers are welcome to reply!  I’m available if you have Internet Marketing questions.

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Digital Marketing Tip – Social Media why and how #6: Twitter

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Before reading this post, scan the preceding five Social Media Why & How posts that include a high level overview of Social Media business success factors. This Twitter post continues the series outlining top-level characteristics of the most important Social business channels. Note that SocNet Channels offer a complex array of services and capabilities with many administrative set-up & utilization details that are beyond the scope of this post, but some reference links are provided. 

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Twitter placed 4th in our Internet experts’ business utilization poll.  It is a general purpose ‘mini-blog’ communication tool consisting of short messages sent via the Internet known as ‘tweets’.  It started as a networking tool for personal use and has been successfully adapted for business use.

Twitter Description –
Twitter is an online portal where continual updates of your personal or business activities are posted known as tweets.  Personal tweets are aimed at ‘followers’ like friends, family, co-workers, or the general public who wish to stay connected with you through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? It’s all about you. Users are either followers or following. You reach your followers with posts you send or you receive posts from those you are following.
 
Twitter has evolved to become a popular channel for businesses to communicate with their most important audience (i.e.: their customer base).  Twitter’s inherent nature as a real-time news feed; its ever growing population (currently about 24 million/month USA users); and its low cost of use (it’s free – only cost is time) makes it an interesting business tool. 

Twitter began in 2006 from an idea by board members at the podcasting company Odeo to use SMS service to communicate to small groups. The scope expanded from that humble start. Funding so far has come from venture capitalists. Observers are concerned Twitter’s long term viability is limited by lack of revenue streams. Twitter is researching various ways to monetize, but to date no definitive plans have been revealed.

Publication Method –

Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS), or external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or by default allow open access. Twitter has been described as like a Web-based Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client with functionality that has been provided via a variety of proprietary software platforms as Twitter matured.

References: If you want details from the source on how-to Twitter, visit here. For an audio/visual explanation of Twitter, visit here.  And Twitter Search allows finding all open access tweets on a topic of interest or what are called high tweet level ‘trends’ within Twitter - very useful – learn more here.

Authorship and Target Audience –
The median age of Twitter users is 31 with growth in all age groups. 

Message Types –

  • Messages are limited to 140 characters which has its routes in SMS messaging limitations. This results in the use of the kind of shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages like ‘lol’ for laugh out loud.
  • Personal messages and those from celebrities, political figures and the like are about you, the author: where am I / what’s happening / what’s next / etc
  • Business messages can be similar to personal notes and often include offers, links to web pages, coupon codes, etc
  • Rumor trafficking is common
  • Pictures are out
  • Announcements are common
  • Basically anything you can imagine from the trivial to the monumental is broadcast

Message Preferences –

  • Best to have a 1 to 1 ratio of following to being followed
  • Spammers are distained and called out to Twitter for removal
  • Hard selling is ignored, but soft selling with valuable offers does work
  • The more posts the better to satisfy your follower’s curiosity
  • Repeat posting are a must to be reliably seen
  • Followers are finicky about who they are loyal to and will drop off if not feed frequent info

Time Commitment –

  • Each tweet doesn’t take much time – literally seconds – but a high volume of tweets is needed to be effective. Twitter can cumulatively consume hours per day. For business utilization you must commit to it, not play at it.
  • Rapid fire postings are common – like being at a party where everyone talks, but few listen
  • If a business tweet relies on links to content and offers, time needs to be budgeted to prepare that material

Business Benefits –

  • Customer service / Answer questions
  • Offers, discounts, coupons, specials
  • Promote events
  • Announcements of any type
  • Public relations and news
  • Advertising of new products
  • Thought leadership and knowledge sharing
  • Market research / Polling
  • Brand building / Loyalty
  • Keep track of what people are saying about your biz via Twitter Search
  • Build trust, networks, & relationships
  • Real time quick communications ability
  • Can drive traffic to your website or special purpose landing page

Miscellaneous considerations –
The Twitter Channel is one where single postings can go unnoticed or be ignored and where infrequent postings will discourage followers. You must often repeat posting to make sure your followers ‘pick up’. And you must provide a regular flow of tweets to be a player. The Twitter channel doesn’t take much time to use each time, but frequent postings can be considered disruptive to your schedule unless Twitter has become a part of your marketing mix – a habit.  Like other SocNet channels, resources must be allocated for effective business utilization, either as new resources or more usually as a reallocation from ineffective traditional marketing methods.

The next post will be about LinkedIn

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Digital Marketing Tip – Social Media is mainstream – yes or no?

Friday, December 4th, 2009

It is clear that established and emerging social media channels have not only entered the cultural mainstream but have become a permanent and rapidly maturing part of the commercial landscape. Social Media is not a fad. Not sure? Consider the following:

According to studies of social media usage by Inc. 500 companies by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, adoption and awareness continue to trend upward.  Inc. 500 firms are the fastest growing companies in America currently ranging in revenue from a few $Million/year to a few hundred $million/year. 91% of firms used at least one social media tool in 2009 and three-quarters described themselves as “very familiar” with social networking.

Read about the Dartmouth study here.

Both Business to Consumer companies (B2C) and Business to Business companies (B2B) are increasing their usage of Social Media Marketing, but in different ways.  Learn more here.

Recall from my earlier posts that Social Media Marketing is about starting a conversation, telling a story, and sharing information.  It is not about pushing a controlling, intrusive advertising message directly to your prospects. It is not about Company A telling prospect B how great Company A is.

It is about prospect B reading, seeing or hearing Company A’s interesting story or information and sharing that with Prospect C who tells their friend, Prospect D, and so on and so on.  It is about networking and word-of-mouth started with a non-pushy, non-intrusive value added or entertaining message that gets ‘endorsed’ by viewers who share it with their contacts.  Sometimes things go viral, but that is not necessary for a successful Social Media message.

Consider the T-Mobile video below. They could have done a video saying T-Mobile is great so subscribe to T-Mobile blah, blah, blah.  But instead they got across a powerful message that ‘Life is for sharing’ by in their video showing by-standers using cell phones to phone friends, taking pictures, and recording the event.  Enjoy the London Event: T-Mobile YouTube Life is for Sharing Dance  The soft message was: A cell phone helps you share life.

And the same message and crowd reaction happened with a  similar event in Antwerp Belgium

Learn how SocNets funtion in this short video

And view compelling data about the Social Media Revolution in this video

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Digital Marketing Tip – it’s about quick PAIN relief

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

An important aspect of any marketing approach is your message. This is especially true with Internet Marketing because in a website, ‘content is king’. And in Social Media channels, ‘conversation is king’.  It’s all about communicating.

People online are in a hurry and impatient; what you say, the order you say it in, and how you say it is critical.  Usually people are reading your text or listening to a recorded message online rather than being in real time communication with you.  You can’t read their body language or hear their reaction to your message. They either quickly ‘get hooked’ on your message or they click the back button on their browser and they are gone.

It is best practice to start your message with benefits first and then move to features.  Consider tools like a drill bit.  People are just interested in making as many holes as needed and the drill is just a way to do that. The benefit is making holes whenever you need them, not owning a drill. So if you are promoting drill bits talk first about the benefits like: long lasting, stays sharp longer, faster drilling, works in many materials etc. Get into features secondarily like the drill bit type & material, coatings, point & flute design, etc.

Everyone is interested in and understands benefits. Some people do not care so much about features or may not understand some of the features even if they do care. They will care that the drill makes lots of holes easily, quickly, and inexpensively. 

People tend to buy emotionally and justify their purchase intellectually later in their head.  So your benefits discussion should focus on your audience’s emotions – their PAIN:   Problems / Anxieties / Interests / Needs.  Later in your message you can provide product features information for viewers who are interested. But if they don’t see ‘PAIN relief’ benefits, they won’t care about features.

Present the ‘PAIN relief’ benefits of your product or service clearly and early in your marketing message.  Clarity trumps persuasion. So use short bullet points rather than paragraphs. You can provide links to detail discussion if anyone needs more info.  Viewers must quickly understand what is in it for them rather than how you designed your product or service.  Product features should also be presented in bullet or table format with links to detailed information should anyone need more data.

This approach is not about being manipulative, it is just about understanding human nature.

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Digital Marketing Tip – I finished my checklist, now what?

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

First, I wish everyone a joyful Thanksgiving.

After finishing  your marketing plan check list (see the prior post) you are ready for Internet Marketing Mix selection. Here’s some hints for selecting your channels. References to the ‘funnel’ means the buying funnel (see an earlier post).

Search Marketing includes SEO & PPC. These  are bottom of funnel tactics to provide purchase or action ready prospects the pull information they need to make their decisions.

PPC ads are effective immediately, can be local or national targeted, but are especially effective for local businesses as a Yellow Pages ad substitute. PPC has a cost per click so you need to watch ad cost affect on margins.  Cost effectiveness depends upon intelligent ad set-up, landing page design, monitoring results, and A/B ad testing so make sure you have the know-how and time to do PPC right.

SEO has the lowest cost per acquisition, but top 30 search engine ranking will take  a lot of work and patience – months.  SEO can be acomplished for a local and/or national target market. Considerable skill is required for DIY web page optimization or you need a budget to outsource SEO to specialists. There is also a modest amount of ongoing maintenance needed for ranking stability or improvement. But the rewards are substantial and lasting.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is an umbrella term covering many sub-channels (Networks, Content Sharing, Bookmarking, Blogs) .  It is a powerful driver for fast results, SEO ranking improvement, and is effective for long term relationship building. Relevant SMM elements are useful at various stages of the funnel. SMM can be very targeted based on many criteria. SMM is the most labor intensive Internet Marketing channel. On a DIY basis the cost is just your time. Or you can effectively outsource SMM activities to experts which isn’t a bad idea because it is a time consuming, complex, and fluid landscape.

Display Ads (Banner Ads) is mostly a top of funnel tool for brand building or presenting offers – much like newspaper or magazine ads, etc. Targeting is possible because in the digital world ad placement can be aimed at a specific audience.  Cost is modest compared to traditional ad publication options. This is not a DIY method as access to an expansive ad network is the best route – find a service provider. Display Ads have a lower response rate than more direct marketing methods as people tend to tune-out intrusion advertising, but Display Ads are effective if targeted intelligently.

Email Marketing is used for either new customer lead generation or relationship building or up-selling with existing clients.  This is a top of funnel to mid-funnel activity (awareness and consideration stages). With a targeted, opt-in list, email marketing has proven effectivness and is the most efficient form of Internet Marketing from a time and out-of-pocket cost standpoint.  To avoid SPAM issues, delivery problems, and monitoring complexities, email marketing is best done in partnership with a mass-email service company.  Also, lead generation emails are best done with a ‘drip email system’ that auto-sends emails to prospects on a schedule (like with traditional ads, it takes several impressions before prospects take notice).

So now you have the info you need to get started.  Just be careful because a little information can be dangerous. It is your company’s well being that you are playing with so give serious consideration to getting the advice and services of an expert; at least until you have more experience.

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Digital Marketing Tip – do you want fast results?

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

How does Social Media utilization help search engine optimization (SEO) also known as organic ranking? Keep in mind that the goal is getting traffic to your website via page one search engine listings for keyword searches important to your business. The search listings provide the linkage to your web pages. 

Classic SEO relies on getting your web pages optimized better than competing web pages which over time will hopefully result in page one listings in search engines. This process takes considerable optimization skills and usually months of effort.

But Search Engine Result Pages no longer just list web pages and their URL. Google etc now shows Social Media and local search elements in their search result pages such as: Images / Videos / Social Network Postings / Bookmarks / News Articles / Blog Pages / Local Maps

Content in the above elements often changes frequently and is often viewed by large audiences which are things that search engines use to measure topic and web page popularity.  Consequently search spiders monitor social media elements constantly and index new content fast, sometimes in minutes. 

There can be references or links in the above elements that direct traffic to your web pages. So using social media elements and local maps function can get your web pages traffic from page one in search engines much faster and easier than by classic SEO methods. And utilization of multiple social media elements can allow you to dominate page one listings.

But the social media page one listings can disappear fast unless they are constantly supported with traffic to the videos, news article, etc or if bookmarking slows down. Today’s hot thing and news can become yesterday’s old news fast. So social media page one listings can be unstable. Sustained page one listings are still best accomplished with classic SEO tactics.

So use social media for fast results in search engines, to obtain a domination affect, and to supplement classic SEO efforts over time.

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SEO Tip of the Day – hunting and farming

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

SEO is not the only option to promote a website. There is also Pay-Per-Click ads (PPC), Social Media Optimization (SMO), Display Ads (banner ads), and email marketing.

  • PPC is like a hunting/gathering – to eat, constant pursuit of game & foraging is a must; experience is critical
  • SEO is like farming – a lot of work & time, but upon harvesting you eat steady if the farm is well managed
  • SMO is like farming with magic seeds – the crops grow faster with a bigger harvest if you understand the magic
  • Display Ads & Email Campaigns is like using fertilizer – you get a bigger crop if you use the right methods
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