marketing

Brand Survival for 2011: The socially-focused organization

It’s a whole new year – literally and figuratively.

Social media is quickly changing the way we need to think about our brands and marketing.  We can no longer expect to be successful if we just focus our marketing efforts on telling our target market how great our own brand is.  What we – the brand – say about ourselves is no longer what matters.  It’s what OTHER people say about our brand and their experience of our brand.

Brands have a challenge having effective external conversations with consumers and then truly activating them as Advocates unless they evolve internally into a socially-focused organization.

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How to add Twitter to your PR mix in 9 easy steps

On December 6, 2010, I was privileged to be a guest on #MMChat (Marketer Monday Chat), hosted and created by @JeffAshcroft of @TheSocialCMO fame. My esteemed PR colleague, Amy Howell, owner of @HowellMarketing Strategies, was featured with me and our topic was The Impact and Value of Social Media in PR. You can find the transcript here and glean some amazing insight from practitioners around the world. Not only was it a fun and exhilarating online experience, it also prompted this post on Twitter and its PR potential.

The digital channels can be consuming, and it’s important for those of us in business—whose first goal is to run a profitable company to sustain our employees and our clients—to stay abreast of communication trends. To make sure that we achieve optimum PR health for ourselves and our clients, here’s a quick Twitter primer. No more excuses for PR colleagues who say “I don’t get Twitter.” If the government is using social media for PR, and the business community is not, there’s a disconnect.

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Unlocking the secrets of UnGeeked, bringing the online world to the real world

Last Friday I had the distinct opportunity to attend, present and mingle with some of the “who’s who” of social media at UnGeeked Toronto, a three day social media retreat. The speaker list was extensive and reflective of the professionally social atmosphere. Guest speakers included:

Mark Bowden @truthplane

Marsha Collier @MarshaCollier

Amanda Hite @sexythinker

Jason Falls @jasonfalls

Jason Weaver @mixdown04

Jeffrey Willinger @jwillie

Erin Bury @erin_bury

Bruce Powell @IQPartners

Tom Tentoglou @tentoglou

Katie Felten @KatieFelten

Karima-Catherine @karimacatherine

Heather Taylor @heatherAtaylor

Stéphane Poirier @exopoirier

Alan Lepofsky @alanlepo

Michele Price @prosperitygal

And me! @DebWeinstein

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How Duct Tape Marketing legend John Jantsch uses social media

You probably already know John Jantsch from his wildly (and still) popular book Duct Tape Marketing. The book, and the movement it spawned, is based upon simple, back-to-the-basics, marketing systems any business owner to apply TODAY to grow business. John’s taking things a step further in his new book, Referral Engine. He’s a kindred spirit: he starts with a working definition of marketing and then builds a process based upon it.

I especially appreciate where he places social media in the process. Too many of us present social media like it’s a cure-all or the ultimate marketing toolkit. Many have even gone so far as to proclaim the death of direct mail, death of print, death of newspapers, all listing the killer agent as social media.

John has a gorgeously balanced approach. He says, “While the notion of community-building online has become a very commonplace practice, the opportunity for community-building offline is richer than ever.…The converged business [the business blending John’s balance] uses every advance in technology as an opportunity to forge a deeper, more personal relationship with its customers.”

Marketing is a series of decisions and actions. John says, “For the converged, high-tech, high-touch business, the primary decision filter for every marketing process, customer touch point, and tactic is how technology can make the customer experience more fun, more convenient, more engaging, and more frequent.”

Bravo. It’s not about tools or tactics or even policies and profits. It’s about using everything possible to create something for someone ELSE.

John is as delightful in person as you’d imagine he would be. It was fun to grab a few minutes to talk with him on camera while we were together at Conquer & Grow, hosted by InfusionSoft.

Trey Pennington

Marketing Benefits of Employee Engagement #MMchat with @BillBoorman

HR met marketing during our eleventh MarketerMonday Chat #MMchat and our SPECIAL guest, @BillBoorman made the introduction last night. A recruiting industry rockstar, Bill spent 27 years in and around the headhunting industry and is what you might call a veteran!. @BillBoorman then decided to become a social media amateur and founded #tru events and has run 6 unconferences with 4 more planned before Feb, all marketed/built through social media. Our topic for #MMchat this evening was the Marketing Benefits of Employee Engagement and anyone who thinks the two can be managed seperately in the future may wish to think again!

This is only the eleventh #MMchat we’ve held and see #MMchat for more details on MarketerMonday Chat our previous SPECIAL guests, transcripts and our upcoming schedule.

Thanks again to @BillBoorman as well as all of you AWESOME #MMchat tweeps who joined us and participated for a truly ENGAGING and very interactive chat!

Check out the full transcript of the chat at http://bit.ly/BillBoorman and please join us next week as Judi Samuels, @ChiefLemonhead arrives on October 18th at 8:00 pm EST for True Love, True Loyalty! See you all then!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

Who Do You Trust?

It’s been well documented that people don’t trust corporations as much as they used to. But who do they trust? It’s largely people from two categories: third party experts
(academics, some media sources, analysts, etc.) and “people like me.”

But when it comes to social media, we’ve also heard that people don’t trust bloggers (from Forrester, no less). I’ve often doubted that assertion, particularly because it seems rather misleading. While the category of bloggers as a whole may be untrusted, people develop relationships with the blogs they follow and read most closely, and therefore develop a sense of trust with them.

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Old Spice: Now That’s Viral, Man!

If you haven’t followed the Old Spice phenomenon from this week, you’ve missed out. It’s a great example of a really strong performing viral campaign that harkens back to some of the classics like Subservient Chicken, Shave Everywhere, and Tea Partay.

It started on on television earlier this year with the following Old Spice commercial, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” (link for those of you in RSS readers):

(If you’d like to see how this was accomplished, Leo Laporte has a great interview with the agency.)

That commercial, first aired during the Super Bowl in early February, as of this week has garnered over 14 million views. And then the next commercial, “Old Spice: Questions“, went up on YouTube:

Those ads are pretty funny to begin with and were passed around a good deal. But this week, Wieden + Kennedy, creators of the campaign for Procter & Gamble, took it to the next level.

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Meet #MarketerMonday Greats on #MMchat !

MarketerMonday Chat or #MMchat for short was founded by @JeffAshcroft on July 26th, 2010 and every week since has featured a SPECIAL guest and generated an interesting and useful transcript.

Beginning on July 26th, 2010 we were pleased to announce that every #MarketerMonday at 8:00pm eastern we will feature a SPECIAL #MarketerMonday Chat guest on a LIVE tweetchat hosted by @TheSocialCMO !

These tweet chats will be conducted utilizing the hashtag #MMchat and can be followed through the #MMchat on Twitter search or through your favorite twitter tool! And our ongoing schedule for future chats as well as the links to transcripts from our chats already completed are always available at http://bit.ly/MMchat

Join us every #MarketerMonday evening to personally get to know, discuss cool topics and ask questions of our SPECIAL guests on #MarketerMonday Chat!

I’m VERY pleased to announce that our first #MarketerMonday chat SPECIAL guest on Monday July 26th will be none other than Rick Wion @rdublife Director, Social Media for McDonald’s and our topic for the chat will be Social Media Alignment! (Completed see blog post & transcript)

On August 2nd, 2010 our second #MarketerMonday chat SPECIAL guest will be Ted Rubin @TedRubin , CMO of #OpenSky and our topic will be Relationship Commerce.(Completed see blog post & transcript)

And on August 9th the fun continues with Karima-Catherine Goundiam @KarimaCatherine joining us to discuss Multilingual Social Media Platforms (Complete see transcript!)

On August 16th our very own world traveling storyteller @treypennington will join us to discuss Cut through the marketing clutter with storytelling(Complete see transcript!)

And on August 23rd one of the first and still most fervent #MarketerMonday fanatics Cheryl Burgess @ckburgess and Mark Burgess @mnburgess will join us to discuss the Agency Blueprint for Energizing Social Media Business! (Complete see transcript!)

On August the 30th we’re very pleased to have the orginator of #MarketerMonday on #MMchat @KentHuffman will be joining us for a discussion of Social Media Resources. (Complete see transcript!)

After a break for the Labor Day (Sept 6th) long weekend, #MMchat will continue on September 13th with SPECIAL guest @ScottMonty and our topic will be Encouraging Executive Participation in Social Media! (Complete see transcript!)

#MMchat SPECIAL guest on September 20th will be Jeff Wilson @jeffthesensei and our topic will be Online Demand Generation!
(Complete see transcript!)

REALLY pleased our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on September 27th will be Viveka von Rosen @LinkedInExpert and our topic will be Making the Most of LinkedIn Groups! (Complete see transcript!)

On Monday October 4th our #MMchat SPECIAL guest will be Cd Vann @ThatWoman_Is the famous Founder of unGEEKED and our topic will be Issues Surrounding Brand Authenticity vs Personal Integrity! (Complete see transcript!)

@BillBoorman a very prolific and vociferous tweetchatter will join us October 11th for #MMchat and our topic will be Marketing Benefits of Employee Engagement!(Complete see transcript!)

On Monday October 18th our #MMchat SPECIAL guest will be Judi Samuels @ChiefLemonHead and our topic will be True Love, True Loyalty (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday October 25th will be @GlenGilmore the ever famous and original @Trendtracker to discuss what else but Tracking Trends via Social Media! (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 1st will be @DannyBrown on the Increasing Role of Content as Engagement & Marketing Tool! (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 8th will be Eric Qualman @equalman the Socialnomics dude to chat about The future: Social Search, Social Commerce & eReaders oh my! (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 15th will be Chuck Martin @ChuckMartin1 to discuss It’s a Mobile World: Trends & Research (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 22nd will be @ChrisBrogan to discuss The Role of Major Influencers in Cause Marketing! (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 29th will be John Bernier @BernierJohn Empowerment Ninja of Bet Buy’s original Twelpforce and we’ll be talking Proactive Customer Service in a social media world!)(Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday December 6th was Amy @HowellMarketing and @AnneDGallaher to discuss the Impact and Value of Social Media in PR!(Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday December 13th will be Laura Fitton @Pistachio Author of Twitter for Dummies and pleased she has chosen #MMchat for the 1st stop on her virtual book Tour!(Complete see transcript!)

The #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday December 20th was @ShaneGibson Author of Guerrilla Social Media Marketing!(Complete see transcript!)

Our final #MMchat of 2010 is #MMchat The Year 2010 in Review with @JeffAshcroft on Monday December 27th. Reviewing all #MMchats held in 2010, suggestions for improvements and SPECIAL guests in 2011!(Complete see transcript!)

We continue to round out our future #MarketerMonday Chat schedule and are always looking for great suggestions for topics and SPECIAL guests so feel free to @ MSG or DM @TheSocialCMO with your suggestions.

So make the most of #MarketerMonday and get to know some of the people behind the GREAT suggestions of #MarketerMonday follows right here on #MarketerMonday Chat or #MMchat for short!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

Mastering social media is all about who LEADS!

Having been continuously inundated for the last few years with social media how to books, articles, the five steps to the ten steps of social media greatness and so on, I am now at the point of saying enough already, STOP!

Under such duress my brain has been crying out for a way to crystallize a simplified explanation of the core requirements and sequence required to assist people and businesses to master social media in a straight forward, meaningful and practical manner.

And so recently the LEADS social media concept was born and simply stated, it is an acronym for Listen, Engage, Activate, Dominate and Social mandate or just LEADS for short.

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Are You Measuring What’s Important?

We often talk about social media ROI being measured differently. These are different behaviors and we should be applying new and different measurement standards, right? One of my favorite demonstrations of this is K.D. Paine’s legendary acronymn HITS = How Idiots Track Success.

A recent eMarketer article asked Is the Click Still King? To the average user, there are so many ways to engage with a site. So you would think that there would be more relevant and prevalent ways of measuring success. But take a look at the top methods that both the CMO Council and Chief Marketer respondents indicated were important:

Click-throughs and website views. How very 1999.

Although, I will give the CMO Council the edge on this one, with looking at registrations, which tells you a little bit about actions taken and level of commitment to engage. That’s a positive thing. But it seems like we’re still treating the Web like a version of television, where “eyeballs” are what’s important.

Take a look farther down those charts and see some of the interesting ways of measuring success: content download, transactions, engagement (which is a little vague), and increased knowledge. Those are all methods of demonstrating effectiveness that can determine your content strategy and marketing channels moving forward. But ultimately, each time a campaign is launched, the methodology for measurement needs to be customized to the goal at hand. Click-throughs and hits are not a universal metric for every campaign.

Some metrics that might appeal to me as a marketer include:

  • Likelihood of a customer to become an advocate for my brand
  • The spread of information across the Web – especially via social tools
  • Sentiment of comments generated by a post or campaign
  • Effective integration of offline calls to action and online actions

These are just a handful of suggestions for different types of measurement. As I said, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. What are some unique and different measurement standards that you’ve seen evolving?

Scott Monty

Photo credit: raneko (Flickr)