Tag: marketing

May 5, 2011

4 Questions to Ask Anyone Trying to Sell You Ad Space

You can never know 100% for sure if something is going to work before you try it, but their reactions to these questions may help uncover if they’re offering you a real solution, or just trying to make a buck.

As the marketing manager for a B2B company, I get solicited. A LOT. Industry trade magazines, pay-per-click ad providers, online directories, and trade show organizers are but a few of the kinds of people calling me asking for a piece of my precious marketing budget. The thing is, I’m no pushover. Never have been. But in today’s business climate, there’s no way you can afford to throw dollars at every marketing option that calls you up. The vast majority of them simply don’t work, and even those that are worth your time and money only work if you use them in a way that makes sense for your business.

So how do you determine which options are worth a dollar, and which ones you should tell to kick stones? I wish there was an easy way, but the truth is that it can be very difficult to figure out. Effectively evaluating marketing options in today’s world requires you to look deeper than the traditional criteria of ‘page views’ and ‘circulation’, and examine the information that few of those solicitors are able or willing to provide to you.

I’ve put together 4 key questions that I use as the starting point whenever I get solicited by someone trying to sell me space in a magazine, online directory, or trade show. I’ve also noticed that there are certain ‘red flags’ that seem to consistently appear when dealing with some types of solicitors that can be early warning signs to tip you off that you’d best be cautious moving forward. I’ve included these after each question.

Let’s take a look at the questions now:

1 – First thing: What’s the range of costs?

This sounds really, really obvious. And it is. What you should be aware of is that very rarely is actual cost discussed up front. Most of the time, they’ll open with a ‘what is the #1 problem facing your business?’ kind of question that forces you to think of a negative aspect of your current situation, and give you the impression that they can help solve your problem. This is intentional, as it tends to disarm us a little bit, and leaves us more open to their suggestions. Solicitors who are confident in their product/service and can prove a real benefit/ROI will have no problem letting you know cost right up front. After all, if you don’t have flexibility in your budget to accommodate their product, then going in-depth just wastes your time and theirs.

Red Flag: If you answer a call from a solicitor, one of your first questions should of course be ‘What is the cost range for all your different options?’. If they answer with something like: ‘before we talk about that, let me ask what your goal is?’ or just flat out won’t tell you immediately where their prices start and where they end, be very wary.

2 – Who’s the REAL audience?

This goes for all types of marketing options. Magazines, directories, trade shows, you name it. Typically the solicitors will make available very basic stats that don’t really reveal much about who their actual audience is. For example, lets look at the infamous ‘circulation’ information for magazines, which outlines how many copies go out to their ‘readers’, and what kind of businesses they are sent to. The thing is, these commonly-used stats can be very deceiving. They may simply be pulling the information based on the name of the person on the address label, like the owner of the business that it is sent to. But who’s to say that this is the person who actually reads it, or even receives it in their hands? Especially in larger businesses that receive many MANY different pieces, only the most crucial pieces ever get opened by anyone. The rest? Either gets junked or ends up on the coffee table in the lobby. Make sure they can prove that their recipients are also actual readers.

Red Flag: If the solicitor can’t quickly back up their claim with readily-available hard data and testimonials from actual audience, and vaguely cites their own ‘internal’ surveying data, chances are they are making some pretty broad assumptions about who actually reads their rag.

3 – Can I do a short-term trial?

Contracts abound in the marketing world, and you’ll often find yourself staring down the barrel of a big fat commitment before you even know it. Smart solicitors who truly believe in what they are selling will be eager to have you try it out before you make any major commitment. If they don’t suggest it first, make sure that you do. Sometimes they’ll offer to do a short-term trial period at the same rates as a long-term program. Occasionally you may even find they’ll offer a free trial, depending on what kind of service they provide. Companies that openly offer a short-term trial are displaying not only confidence in their services, but also flexibility to your needs.

Red Flag: Sometimes the very suggestion of a trial period can offend some solicitors. If you find their tone or demeanour changes dramatically for the worse after suggesting a trial basis, you may be headed for a very inflexible and rigid relationship further down the road.

4 – Give some examples of your success.

Prove it. That’s ultimately what we all want to know. Ask them to provide stats showing what other advertisers have seen as a result. Have them show you data and testimonials from other advertisers/exhibitors that are similar to you. What works for one won’t necessarily work for another, but at least you’ll have a general idea of what kind of businesses are generating results. This is easy to do these days. Web tracking makes monitoring conversions and success nearly effortless. They should be able to tell you things like the number of referrals they’ve generated for specific types of businesses, as well as provide qualitative testimonials from companies similar to yours.

Red Flag: Any web directory or online ad provider should be able to give you buckets of reports that illustrate how their advertisers have benefitted from their services. If all they are able or willing to show you is ‘hits’ or ‘page views’, RUN AWAY.

Ultimately, B2B marketing people like us are trying to do the most we can with limited resources of both time and money. If they’re trying to sell a product or service to you, they need to realize this. Selling ad space to people like us really all boils down to a simple two-part strategy: Be to-the-point, and be able to back up any claims. If they don’t waste your time with a lot of preamble and vagueness, and they can prove to you that you’ll see a real, tangible benefit, I’m sure that you’ll be much more successful by doing business with them.

Bonus Red Flag: When they won’t let you get a word in.

This one really gets me riled up. The thing about providing effective service is that you need to listen to your customers. In my experience, you can’t really do that very well if you won’t let your customer finish a sentence. I’ve been solicited by countless salespeople who inexplicably decide that the perfect time to begin their next sentence is right in the middle of the one I’m currently speaking. It’s maddening, because I’m TRYING to let them help me. I’m TRYING to communicate my needs so that they can figure out how to help solve them. In a nutshell: If you’re the one trying to sell someone something: Know when to shut up and let them talk. if you encounter a salesperson who seems to follow this pattern, flee.

March 24, 2011

Outsourcing Intimacy – Making the Case for Internal Social Media

Are you farming out your social media activities? You may want to reconsider.

Do a search for ‘social media agency’ and you’ll get more than a few results. 23 million in fact. There are an awful lot of people out there clamouring to handle your social media presence for you, and they make a pretty strong case as to why you should let them.

Having an effective presence in social media is time consuming, and internal marketing departments are typically already stretched pretty thin covering traditional marketing efforts. Hiring an agency to handle your social media activities would seem like an ideal solution. It’s quick, easy, and gets the job done for a nominal fee. But be aware that there are a number of factors that make an equally strong case for handling social media from inside your company.

The first is quite simple: Someone connecting with your business will want to connect with YOU, not someone sitting at a desk at an agency, far removed from your business. For example I know that for myself personally, if I want to ask someone at Apple a question, I sure don’t want to talk with their ad agency. I want the same experience online that I would be able to obtain if I walked in to an Apple store and sat down at the Genius Bar.

Another reason to keep social media internal? The people working at agencies just don’t share your passion for your product or the industry that your business serves. But what’s most important is they don’t share the same passion for your customers. They can’t, otherwise they’d be in your business and that would make them your competitor. It’s not to say they’re not capable marketing people. It’s just that they’re coming at your customers from a very different angle than you are, so they can’t possibly understand them the same way you do. What ultimately makes your customers WANT to connect with your business is the experience they had with your business, not the experience they had with your ad.

Need an example of a worst case scenario?

Just look at the recent snafu that Chrysler ran in to. An employee at the agency they had hired to manage their social media not only made a grievous error in judgement by posting a rogue tweet with the ‘f-word’ in it, but the obscenity was directed at the driving ability of the entire city of Detroit. DETROIT. Motor City, the birthplace of the American automotive industry. Think that someone who actually works at Chrysler would have made that same mistake? Possibly, but I really doubt it.

Now, I certainly don’t want to give the impression that Agency = Bad, because that’s really not the case. They excel at certain tasks, and one of those tasks can be training you and your people on how social media works. They can train you on the right language to use, the importance of replying and acknowledging your community’s activity, and they can show you the methods and tools to use in order to be successful. They can show you how, but they can’t do it for you.

Ideally the agency you choose should support you in your efforts, as a guiding hand through the complexities of social media. Providing advice, education, and suggestions on what to try next. But the conversations? Those should be yours to have.

Social media is the most intimate way a business can maintain a relationship with its customers. We’ve never had the ability to connect so easily, on an ongoing basis, with customers and businesses as we have today. Does it really make sense for your business to outsource that intimacy? Every company should be asking that question and choosing the path that’s right for them, and for their customers.

March 21, 2011

Apprehensive about using Foursquare? Don’t be, and here’s why.

Location-based social media is huge, but what if you’re one of those people who just doesn’t want to share where you are all the time? Well, fear not! You can still have fun AND stay private.

I first heard about Foursquare early last year, but I didn’t really give it much thought as something that was ‘for me’. At the time, I couldn’t wrap my head around the whole issue of privacy, and why people would be so willing and eager to broadcast their exact whereabouts all the time. I guess I thought of all the same apprehensions that most of the naysayers have about it: “Open invitation to stalking/robbers/perverts, etc”. But like most things that generate a fear-based response, this was just due to my not really not understanding how it actually works.

When I went to the UnGeeked Toronto conference last fall, Katie Felten gave a fascinating presentation/discussion on Foursquare, and answered a lot of questions about what it’s capable of, how it works, and why Foursquare users love it so much. Katie’s discussion removed some of my negative assumptions, and I recognized that Foursquare did have it’s benefits, but ultimately I still wasn’t ready to give it a shot myself.

Then the other day, I had a simple, obvious realization: What if you just don’t add any friends? Foursquare will only broadcast your location if you specifically tell it to, and even then only to those people that you have added as friends. That’s the beauty of these new tools. They can be as social as you want them to be. There’s no requirement saying that you HAVE to add every one of your Facebook friends, your Twitter followers, or everyone in your address book as soon as you create your account. You don’t need to add anyone unless you choose to. Your Foursquare experience can be completely private, if you want it to be.

So, if you want the benefits of Foursquare, including deals and discounts at all kinds of local businesses, you can do so without anyone knowing where you are or where you’ve been. Create your account, skip the step where you add friends, and when you check-in just stay ‘off the grid’ (Foursquare slang for toggling the ‘share with friends’ switch off when you check-in). Just reap the benefits, and have fun while doing so.

So, I created an account, and began exploring it personally. I was immediately impressed by the quality of the ‘specials’ that were available in my local area. 10% off at a local clothing store, free song download at Old Navy, 15% off purchases at American Eagle, free appetizer at local restaurant, 40% off bicycle service at Mountain Equipment Co-op, etc. And all you need to do to earn these discounts is check-in at those locations. You don’t need to share any other information other than show your server/cashier your phone proving that you’ve checked in.

Not only that, but even without any friends added, you can also begin collecting Foursquare badges. These are simply fun little virtual badges you collect for doing certain things such as visiting lots of coffee shops, checking in at 10 different places, going to a gym, etc. They just add a tiny little incentive to get out and explore a bit more of your town.

Now, I’m sure that the Foursquare advocates out there will likely comment that it’s more ‘fun’ when you add your friends, and that a little friendly competition can help you get out there and experience all kinds of new things, and they’re probably right. But for those people out there who like the idea of scoring rewards for loyalty, or for being in the right place at the right time, but don’t want to lose their sense of privacy, there’s no reason that they can’t use Foursquare in their own way.

Your experience with location-based social media can be what you want it to be, and doesn’t have to be what other people tell you it should be. If you eventually get to the point where you feel like adding a few friends and maybe sharing a bit more, then great! If not, that’s great too. As long as you’re having fun with these new tools, that’s really all that matters.

March 14, 2011

4 Simple Tips for Integrating Print & Social Media – Making it Easy

by Jonathan Barrick

When it comes to listing your social media contact info on your brochure, do you simply say ‘Find us on Facebook’? You’d better hope your customers are very patient while they comb through 500 million users.

We see Facebook and Twitter icons and logos all over the place now. They are very nearly as common place in advertising as phone numbers and email addresses, but what I’ve noticed is that a large number of companies stop short with JUST the logo of the Social Media site that they participate in. Unfortunately, this doesn’t do anything to help the user actually find you on those sites. Since the search functions on Social Media sites can pull up dozens of suggestions for any business name or search term, simply putting the logo of the site somewhere on your brochure can be counter-productive.

Businesses must realize that by doing this, they’re essentially saying “If you go on this site of 500 million users, I’m in there somewhere.” Not to mention the added level of complexity that exists if your business is a single location in a chain. What if there are 5 or 6 different stores from the same chain on Facebook? How easy is it for your users to identify which one is yours? What if corporate head office is listed there, too?

You can see the problem that this presents when you take the time and effort to connect with your customers, but you don’t go those last few steps to ensure that it’s really you that they find when they go looking. Luckily, there are a few simple things you can do to make yourself easier to connect with.

1 – Use a custom URL, and minimize it.

Most social networking sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn, will allow you to customize your URL so that you can shorten it and make it easier to fit on to brochures and business cards. For example, you can easily go from something like this page I found:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ford-Dealership/109108405778479

to a much cleaner example from another page:

http://www.facebook.com/ford.sales

Another tip to minimize the text is to simply remove the ‘http://’ from the URL, since we are all so used to seeing web addresses, it’s hardly a stretch to realize that ‘facebook.com/ford.sales’ should be typed in to the URL bar of a web browser.

To create a customized URL on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/username/

With Twitter, you can follow two ways of approaching this. You can either list your Twitter username: in my case @j_barrick, or your direct URL to your tweets: http://twitter.com/j_barrick. Again, you can use the simplistic: twitter.com/j_barrick and make the URL even cleaner and still make no mistake of which Twitter user is the real deal.

2 – Stick with only your top sites.

You may be tempted to list every single location online where your users can find you, but once you get past Facebook and Twitter, the widespread user base drops off dramatically. You might have a Flickr page, or Tumblr blog, or Myspace page, or several others from the myriad collection of social media sites, but that doesn’t mean you should stuff your materials full of every possible site. As a general rule of thumb, just list the few key sites that you’re most active on, or that you have the largest community. Again, this is all about making it easy on the reader.

3 – Don’t forget your main web address.

Unless you’ve got a VERY specific reason for doing this, don’t leave your regular www. web address off of any of your materials. I’ve seen several instances of companies running ads that are designed solely to drive traffic to their Facebook pages, but unless you’re running a completely dedicated campaign with Facebook traffic as your ultimate objective, this may not be the best course of action.

After all, your website should be the main hub of all your activity. Users should be able to go anywhere you are online from your website, so that would be where you’d list all the ‘other’ locations we talked about back in Tip #2, so don’t miss out on an opportunity to get people to visit your main online home. It can encourage them to check out more of you in other locations.

4 – Avoid ‘stylized’ logos. Stick with the instantly recognizable ones.

If you have picked up a magazine or newspaper in the last 12 months, then you know what the Twitter logo looks like. Same for Facebook. The simple, clean but easily identifiable ‘T’ and ‘F’ icon logos in the official colours are unquestionable about what they represent. But if you start to incorporate ‘fancier’ ones, (maybe they look like stamps, or buttons, or shiny metal), then you run a much greater risk of the general populace not recognizing them.

Example:

Use logos like this: not like this: in print materials.

The goal here is to ultimately drive people to see what you’re doing on these sites. If they can’t make that immediate association to the social media site brands that they are familiar with, they will be less likely to make that effort.

Bonus Tip: Business Cards

Your business card had better already have your company web address on it, but why not add your Facebook or Twitter URL as well? It’s simply one more way for your users to connect with you, which is the entire purpose of the business card to begin with! This info belongs on your cards, so the next time you print a batch, make that addition.

So overall, I think you can see that simply throwing an icon on your print materials doesn’t really accomplish anything other than ‘Yeah, we’re on Twitter’. If you really want to encourage people to check you out, then you need to make it as easy as possible. You would never put ‘Find us on the Web!‘ without listing your web address, so why do that with your Social Media?

End Note: There is another technology being introduced that intends to do a better job of integrating print and web, and that is the QR code. I haven’t touched on that in this article for two reasons: 1 – It’s a bit more advanced in terms of it’s usage and how to integrate it in to your business goals, and this article was intended as the ‘basics’ of putting SM contact info in to print, and 2 – it is still in the early adoption stage, and until every person has a smartphone, and everyone has taken the time to download a QR code reader app for their smartphone, QR codes will continue to be a very specialized way to reach a unique target market. In summary, not enough people know what they are or have the understanding and technology to utilize them effectively.

Jonathan on Google+

March 4, 2011

4 Guaranteed Ways to Tragically Fail at Social Media Marketing

How several small bad decisions can lead to tremendous failure.

After reading it once already, I recently started skimming back through “How to Lose a Battle”, a collection of epic military failures gathered and edited by Bill Fawcett. I came to the chapter relating to the Battle of Agincourt, in which Henry V succeeded in producing one of the most lopsided victories in military history. After many weeks of exhaustive fighting had whittled his already relatively small force down to approx 17,000 soldiers and archers, Henry’s army still managed to decimate a well-rested, well-equipped force of 60,000+ French Knights. How did this happen? Well, the simple summary is that the French general did everything possible to lose the battle. There are many parallels that can be drawn from the details of the disaster and applied to marketing in social media, and I’ve pulled the 4 most prominent of those to explain how you can easily produce a tremendous failure in the world of social media marketing:

#1 – Wait until the time is wrong.
Henry’s forces landed on the shores of France 30,000 strong. They first laid siege to the port city of Harfleur, at which time the French Army could have simply marched up and sandwiched Henry’s forces between the French ground forces and the city, forcing the English to be attacked from two sides. But the French waited, and waited, and waited until every noble knight could be gathered in Paris. In short, they failed to recognize the urgency and left Harfleur to defend itself, without the support of the main French forces, and as a result the city soon fell to the English. After the city fell, Henry V left a small contingent in the city as a garrison, sent the sick and wounded back to England, and marched on with a force approx 20,000 strong, continuing his attacks against other French cities.

What to take away from that: When marketing in Social Media, don’t ignore small problems that can grow in to major problems. Any hint of customer dissatisfaction that goes unaddressed, any positive comment that goes unthanked, any question that goes unanswered simply gives your competition more opportunities to serve your customers in a better way. If something (ANYTHING) happens, be the first to have a presence in the discussion. Those seemingly ‘small’ issues can be the precursor to ‘large’ issues that are decidedly more difficult to manage later in their life cycle.

#2 – Say ‘no, thank you’ to valuable tools and resources.
While gathering their forces in Paris, a group of 6,000 militia crossbowmen offered their services to the French general. They were promptly told ‘No, thank you, we’ve got this under control.’, and were sent on their way. The French army viewed them as ‘low-rent’ soldiers, hardly worth using in a real war.

What to take away from that: Free help? One more tool in your toolbox that you can call on when necessary? Always take it. If you want to learn about your customers or competition, you don’t just use one channel, you use all of them. See what’s being said on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and any other place you can find info and participate in each of them. Don’t ignore any of your available options for learning.

#3 – Be ‘too good’ to use certain tools.
The traditional hierarchy of fighting forces was extremely ingrained in the social castes of the time. For example, it was generally accepted that a well-trained knight was a much more valuable and effective fighter than a peasant archer, even though that peasant archer could easily take out dozens of knights at a distance without breaking a sweat. That didn’t matter. What did matter was that archers were poor, lower class citizens, and knights were the elite. They decided the knights would be first in line, and the archers fell in behind them, essentially making it impossible for them to do their jobs. Oddly, archers were the most-feared part of the English army by the French, and yet were not viewed as a crucial part of the French assault force.

What to take away from that: Recognize the inherent advantages in each available tool, and use each of them to maximum effect. Twitter is different from Facebook is different from LinkedIn, etc. Trying to put all your emphasis on one channel and saying the others are just ‘not for you’ is a big mistake. Making assumptions about the options available to you without all the facts can be crippling. You can use each of them for different effects, each of which has an inherent value. Sometimes you don’t know just how far-reaching the effects can be until you try.

#4 – Disregard the basic environmental conditions.
The ground was wet on the battlefield that day. Previous engagements with English archers had led the French to learn how devastating they can be to mounted knights, due to the lack of protection on the horses. The French general made the decision to have his army dismount and attack on foot, slowing their approach considerably, and quickly turning the wet ground to a greasy slop under the weight of thousands of heavily armoured French soldiers.

What to take away from that: Be aware of the current environment. Paying attention to how people talk, what makes them move towards you and what makes them run away. What kinds of things are impacting their opinions? The influencing factors aren’t always directly linked to your company or your competitor, but can be something as intangible as market attitudes or external economic factors. Being aware of the basic market conditions is essential to communicating effectively on what matters to your audience in the here-and-now.

So, as you can see, by simply ignoring problems, ignoring available tools, and ignoring basic environmental conditions, you too can have a social media failure as symbolically tremendous as the French loss at Agincourt. Although, by doing the exact opposite of that, you might find yourself on the other side of the spectrum. Of course, hindsight allows us to easily criticize but the reality is that each of those individual effects may have not been so tragic on their own, but when you combine them one after the other, they create the perfect storm of failure. The trick is to prevent those individual effects from occurring, so that the major disasters simply can’t form. Easier said than done, but by staying vigilant and learning from others mistakes, I believe it’s achievable.

What are your thoughts? Have you heard of any social media or marketing experiences where one bad decision after another led to a failure of epic proportions?

February 28, 2011

The Tao of Twitter – Book Review

The book I wish I had before I wrote my first Tweet.

Twitter can be a really hard sell sometimes. “Who wants to hear what celebrities had for lunch?”, “You can’t use something like Twitter for business.”, or “How can you say anything worthwhile in 140 characters?” are all questions that we’ve heard before, and some of us are even guilty of asking them. But the reality is far from this perception. Twitter is indeed a viable platform for business communication, professional networking, customer service, marketing, news, and more. Every day more and more people are realizing the positives from participating on Twitter. They are preaching its awesomeness from all corners of the globe, and yet there are still droves of people who still think it’s stupid, pointless, just for kids, or full of celebrity gossip.

So how do you break that stereotype and show them the reality? Well, Mark W. Schaefer, author of the {grow} blog, took action and wrote The Tao of Twitter. A book whose sole purpose is to smash the negative stereotypes that talk of Twitter as a ‘waste of time’, and show readers that the personal and business benefits you can achieve on Twitter are real and are far-reaching.

Rather than start off with the typical lists of terminology and mechanics, Mark begins the book with a funny little anecdote about when he had his ‘a-ha!’ moment on Twitter. A moment that we all have when we start using it. The precise moment when you realize what the potential is. He then moves to an example of a tangible business success that could only have come to him as a result of Twitter. This approach allows the reader to understand the whole point of Twitter in the first 10 pages, and see what it’s capable of, instead of getting immediately bogged down with dry definitions and acronyms.

From there, Schaefer proceeds to explain the three ‘Tao’s that ensure you’re developing a strong community. In summary, the keys are to ensure you follow a group of people that are providing good content, that you return the favour and share good content to your followers, and that you commit to being genuinely helpful to the community. Through these three activities you will begin to realize the full benefits of Twitter.

Only then, once he’s shown that YES it does work for business, does Schaefer begin to explain some of the essential common terminology, the basic mechanics of how to Tweet properly, and some of the best do’s/don’ts for both beginners and veterans alike. Mark also outlines a simple regimen for ensuring that your entire day is not devoured by Twitter, but you are still an active participant within your community.

Finally, the book discusses how to put all the concepts together, as well as some important competitive advantages that will come from using Twitter, and how some of the current influence benchmarks work and are being used. While far from perfect, these influence metrics are still important to be aware of, and you certainly won’t be able to ignore them for long.

Overall, I was quite impressed by this first book by Mark W. Schaefer. It tackles a key problem that businesses face when adopting Social Media, and uses real examples of successes, both personal and professional. The Tao of Twitter should be viewed as the handbook to become one of those Twitter users that people will actually WANT to follow. It’s the kind of book that you’ll read more than once, lend to your friends and colleagues, and will probably fill with post-it notes, highlighter marks, and dog-eared pages.

*NOTE: This review was not solicited in any way. My copy of the Tao of Twitter was purchased.

February 4, 2011

Being the student & the teacher – Participation in Social Media.

Being involved in Social Media is to be a perpetual student who is also teaching the class.

I stumbled across an old proverb today: “By learning you will teach, by teaching you will learn.” I’ve come to realize that never has this been more evident than in the world of Social Media. We now find ourselves participating in one big, continuous learning environment, with access to the most brilliant minds in whatever field you happen to be in. It’s like living inside the best convention/event/conference that you’ve ever seen, 24/7/365. It’s never been easier to learn from others, and to have others learn from you.

Social Media is an incredible tool for exchanging information. It allows you to connect with others who operate from a similar mindset to your own, but a big part of the power is that it allows you to connect with those whose brains use a completely different operating manual. This is often where the most inspirational ideas come from. I may not like the same music or foods as you, but that has nothing to do with your ability to generate an idea that blows my mind. Connecting with people of all different mindsets allows you to grab the best of all perspectives, and use it to form a completely new approach that you would never have been able to obtain before.

But lets also think about your ability to teach others using Social Media. Just because you don’t have 10,000 followers doesn’t mean that you’re not capable of providing valuable information to others. Think about it in a simple example like this: the internet is a huge place, with millions and millions of new pieces of content added daily. There’s no way that one person, or even a group of people, can find all the gold that exists. Everyone has to do their part to find the hidden nuggets of awesome that can be shared with the community. If you find even one piece of gold that may have been missed otherwise, then you’ve done your part. Share the wealth of knowledge that you find, and you’ve become both the teacher and the student.

Even the ‘learned masters’ in the Social Media world are constantly searching out new material and information from the community. The reason they are so successful in these new channels is not because they are the single brilliant mind that everyone yearns to become, but because they are constantly learning from others. What works, what doesn’t work. They take the info, digest it, process it, tweak it, apply it, and test it. Repeat. This is how the smart get smarter. No one person has all the answers, but when we all come together, the collective does.

This is where the learning power of Social Media lies. The ability to create, the ability to discover, and the ability to share. Only by doing all three are you able to maximize your learning through these communities. As a result, we all become better. We all become more knowledgeable, more effective, and more successful.

January 27, 2011

I’m listed in Tumblweeds under marketing, socialmedia, business

I’m listed in Tumblweeds, a user-generated community directory that rates Tumblr bloggers by their number of followers. Find me listed in #marketing, #socialmedia, #business

January 23, 2011

Changing Your Tone – Talking in Social Media

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

For many, many years, the marketing and advertising teams out in the world had a very distinctive way of ‘talking’ in the materials they produced. This way of talking even has a name: “Ad-speak”. I’m sure that you don’t even need me to describe it to you, but it was always loaded with punchy, trendy words, phrases like ‘never before seen!’ and ‘for a limited time!’, and gave you the impression that the people who wrote it thought they were doing you a favour by telling you how lucky you were to now know about this amazing product.

The thing is, every product had that kind of pitch. Sure, some were more eloquently written than others, but ultimately their goal was to convince you that whatever it was that you were looking at was a better choice than all the others. Here’s an example: Do you know how many different ads for pickup trucks claim that they have the ‘most horsepower’, ‘most torque’, ‘biggest towing capacity’? All of them. And for some reason, they all seem to have won a ‘Truck of the Year’ award. Not sure how that works, but maybe ‘Truck of the Year’ awards are like the ‘participant’ ribbons you used to get at your public school science fairs. Everybody gets one just for showing up.

But does this really make a difference anymore? We see study after study being done that reveals the lessening effects of print and television advertising in swaying opinions. People just don’t give those types of messages any kind of credibility anymore, because they all sound exactly the same. So how do you turn off decades of habitual ‘ad-speak’ and switch it to something that doesn’t make people tune out? Start working in Social Media, that’s how.

Take a look at some of the companies that are successful in Social Media, and look at the way they write their content. When they tweet, when they update on Facebook, or post on their blog. How does it sound? Does it read like an ad? Or does it read like someone talking to you in a casual setting? I’d be willing to wager something marginally valuable that they aren’t shouting slogans at you, are they?

Social Media is all about starting conversations that go both ways. An ad on TV is one-way communication. An ad in a magazine is one-way communication. But a piece of content put out in Social Media is ∞-way communication. Anyone can post on your Facebook wall, anyone can reply, and anyone can reply to anyone’s reply. A single tweet can spread to hundreds of thousands of people, if it’s something that your followers care about. A blog post can generate insightful comments and valuable feedback, if people care about what you wrote.

The key is to keep your readers/followers comfortable. Keep them at ease when they’re connecting with you. Make them feel like you’re not just shouting at them, but actually talking as if they were sitting next to you in a coffee shop, or over a beer at the end of a long day.

Here’s two ways of talking to your audience about an upcoming trade show. You tell me which one you think would get people replying to you:

1) “Come on down to the Trade Show! Product X is now on sale!”

2) “Hey, will anyone be heading down to the Trade Show? What kinds of things will you be looking for?”

Post #1 is entirely one-way. It doesn’t elicit any kind of response from your community. Someone reads that, and they think “Ok, that’s nice.”. Now, post #2 on the other hand is flat-out asking your community for input. In one short post, you’ve asked two different questions that they can answer, and get them talking. If they’re going to the show, they can see that others might be, too. If they’re not going, maybe you can ask why and get some info from them on why not. Maybe they’ll tell you what they’re looking for. Seeing what other people are looking for might encourage them to check out stuff they might not otherwise know about. If your special price on Product X isn’t something they’re even interested in, maybe you adjust your promotion to be more in tune with what people are going to see. Both posts let people know where you are going to be, but only one lets them know that you care what they think about it, and want to hear it.

That’s really the key point here: Let them know that you really care what they think. Asking someone for their opinion makes them feel important. It lets them know that they have knowledge that you need. It changes their relationship with you from ‘customer’ to ‘partner’. They are important to your success, and you need to let them know that. How do you do this? By involving them in the conversation.

I feel I must quote Scott Stratten, @unmarketing, as he makes an excellent observation in his book:

“Why do we market to people the way we hate to be marketed to?”

Makes you say ‘Yeah, no kidding.”, and it’s a message that is ignored all too often. How do we like to be spoken to? Like a real person. Like the other party cares about what we have to say, and isn’t just preaching at us from the pulpit. If we can all keep this in mind, not only will our customers become our partners, but they will provide the ∞-way communication that we all need to be better at everything we do. You just need to start by changing your tone.

Do you have examples of companies that have changed their tone for Social Media? Let’s hear about your own success in getting people talking!