Marketing-Gimbal

A Sesamee Street Simple Social Media Marketing Playbook

Finally, a pragmatic guide to a sesame street simple approach that any marketer can use in starting their dialogue with an individual. No matter how big or how small your company is this ebook written by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo, who run Capulet Communications, does a great job at distilling a topic with a lot of hype, into an easy to understand approach on how any marketer can, and should leverage social media tools to improve their overall marketing   http://www.socialmediaready.com/ .. Nuff Said

Five Key Traits to Conversational Success in 2010

2010 seems to be one of those magical dates much like the year 2000. It’s a date where it seems that most large companies are building internal and external initiatives to drive change. The challenge is that in order to define the change you need to make, you really must have an idea on where you want go.

In this context the topic of Social Networks is, I hope, pervasive in the halls of most marketing departments. However; I find the talk tends to be more around the technology that enables Social Networking, versus the requirements that a company must make in order to establish a true dialogue within its ecosystem (employees, customers’ prospects, partners, investors etc).

It’s the easiest thing in the world to buy the technology that puts social networking capabilities in place, but it’s an entirely different matter to have the company culture required to really establish a dialogue with your ecosystem. I came up with a few traits that I think a company must have in order to be successful, and actually get a return on the Social Networking Commitment:

·        Authentic: You really have to have an authentic nature about your brand that exudes honesty & openness. Really easy words to say, but how many of your companies ever ask the question, “Do you like our products?” on the corporate website. I wouldn’t start investing in social media software until you can ask this question, and your management is comfortable with the public answers. I would also look at your brand and see if new attributes like openness and honesty need to become part of your brand.

·        Conversational: Social Networking in my view is about establishing the two way dialogue with your ecosystem both internally & externally. How many of you publish a name, an email, a phone number and a picture of your key mangers on your web site that people can contact should they have a question or comment about your company or its products? Having an internal culture that desires a two way conversation is paramount to success.

·        Collaborative: We’ve all heard the term “user generated”, but in layman speak it’s a lot less expensive, and inherently more prosperous if you can tap into that ecosystem of yours for product & service innovation, product improvement, and even marketing messaging enhancements etc. Not only more prosperous but will be required if your going to be successful in this day and age.

·       Efficient: Why make the commitment to have this dialogue with your ecosystem? Well, it’s incredibly profitable, as the cost to establish the highways that enable this dialogue come relatively cheap, compared with the potential return of leveraging your ecosystem for insight & innovation. However; it’s not just about the ROI of social networking, it’s also about making the two way conversation highly efficient in and of itself. Think of the old ways we used to accomplish this: Events, market research, focus groups, more events, customer paid product development (Market driven right?), analyst meetings etc. Think of all the logistics and operations needed to pull of these avenues of conversation, and in the end were we really able to put all the pieces together to get true market insight? Today’s social media tools make it very efficient to capture this insight overnight.

·        Real time: Conversations in 2010 are in real time or near real time. Frankly you can’t take someone’s email and put into the reply bin, and send out a form reply in a few days. Now means now, and if you’re not real time your not authentic, conversational, or very efficient.

So you will need to be authentic, conversational, collaborative, real time and efficient if your going to have the moxy to establish a dialogue with, and within your ecosystem. I can guarantee you that you will face resistance, lack of understanding, and several barriers along the way.

So why not start internally first? Even within your own department , and deploy the social media tools to lead the change that will be required to make your company’s conversations successful in 2010. I would also put forth that the above mentioned traits are actual brand attributes that your brand must embody, if your conversations are to be successful.

Why is it so important to establish your conversation within your ecosystem by 2010? Well in my view those companies that aren’t conversing by 2010, may not be around to even have a conversation in 2020. Nuff Said......

Marketing-Gimbal's Theme Song

I think this song sums it up pretty well.

Nuff Said.....

Google Fight: How Are You Personally Fairing in the Land of Google?

Here's a great little item I came across today. It’s a website called Google Fight. Basically you enter in two competing search terms, and see which term had the most searches in Google.

Try Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader for example. While its fun to see if your company has more search volume than your competitor, it’s also a good tool to check out your personal online brand, and how it stacks up against other people. People you work with, and even people you compete with. In today’s internet (networked) age its important to think of your self as a brand. What does your personal brand stand for? What are its attributes? How aware are others of your personal online brand?

One thing that really separates the 40 somethings from the 20 somethings are personal online brands. Go onto Google and type in the name of the young online marketing manager you just hired and you will see what I mean. In this day age we need to start managing ourselves as a brand in the online environment….Nuff Said

God Bless Evel Knievel: Old School Rules

To a real American Hero: RIP

Even The Facebook Kids Gotta Eat

I really loved reading the recent hoopla on Facebook’s latest attempt to monetize their social network so they can pay the light bills, and buy the Ferraris.

Facebook recently launched a new program called Beacon. What’s so great about Beacon? Well if you’re a Facebook partner like Overstock.com, and a Facebooker purchased something from your site, then that Facebooker’s purchase would be placed in their news stream on Facebook. This means that everyone in that Facebooker’s social network would know that he, or she just bought a product, and what type of product that was from Overstock. Now the reasoning goes that if you see your friend buying from Overstock, that you too will buy from Overstock.

Actually the real value here is in the consumer data. If I can get data from that Facebooker on what they bought, when they bought, how they bought , and then cross reference that information against their peer group I can begin to drive behavioral segmentation (ie targeting potential buyers on how they behave. A post for later).

Now what is causing all the uproar is that our kids at Facebook didn’t exactly, and clearly give its members an option to opt out or in to this “service”. Once people caught on (I believe there is story about a guy who bought his wife’s Christmas present, and it was broadcast to his network including his wife. Hopefully his girlfriend wasn’t on his network.) To Get more info on how Facebook managed its "opt in" approach read the NY Times Blog.

David Wilson, who has the Blog “Social Media Optimization” brings up a great question. Are Facebook users even in the purchasing mindset when they are on Facebook? I honestly don’t think they are after spending loads of time on Facebook myself. David points out that MySpace is different, in that it started out as a Music Platform where users, and bands sell music & apparel, so that network is in much more of a purchasing mindset than Facebook. For those of you on Facebook, ask yourself if you’re really going onto Facebook to buy stuff.

While the ideals of broad based social networks are pure and good, the reality is that unless you can monetize them in some way, you better have a huge bankroll of idealistic rich people footing the bill. I haven’t found such people yet. However the ideals of social networking could pay off in spades as they are brought into play between a company, its customers, and prospects. We will explore these areas in later posts. Nuff Said.....

Are We Moving Too Fast?

In Jeremiah Owyang's recent post to his blog he asks the question: Are We Moving Too Fast. Why is this an important question? Well Jeremiah is one of the young wunderkinds of the digital age. In short, he helps the old guys like us figure out what to do with all latest twitters, utterz, diggs and the rest of the exploding bag of tricks.

Now maybe it’s a sign that Jeremiah is getting old, when he asks the question “Are we moving to fast”. Granted Jeremiah is as cool as ever as he uses the latest social media tool “Utterz” to post his question. I think what has even Jeremiah a little flustered is the reality that there is little barrier to entry in developing the latest tool to allow the individual to communicate.

Of course my question would be what the value of all these tools is. Have you ever really read through the twitters, the Utterz, blogs etc..the majority is garbage. Maybe we don’t want the masses to have the tools to post meaningless diatribe. At least let’s keep these tools away from the tweens. As usual the tried and true 80/20 rule will apply to social media as well. Maybe it’s the 95/5 rule?

So I thought I would post the comment I made on Jeremiah’s Blog:

Dear Jeremiah:

What’s moving too fast is the hype, the jargon and the hustle and unfocused energy of change for the sake of change. People are running through the hallways saying we need “social networks”. When asked what they mean they all respond with “Facebook”.

The core principles of marketing have not changed. We still network, we still position, we still promote, and we still leverage PR etc. The tools and the terms and the way in which we go about things have changed and are changing at light speed.

The real core change is that the consumer is now in the driver’s seat. It used to be that you had to go to the company and have them tell you about their product in nonsensical messaging BS. You had to do this because before you had any real information you had to be at the RFP stage. Companies controlled the dialogue and the engagement.

But the multitude of media channels, people communicating, blogging and connecting with each other has shifted the power to the individual. This means that to be a successful marketer you have to focus on building a 2-way road between your company and its prospects & customers, and between those prospects & customers. On this highway there must be an exchange of value added content between the two parties.

Stay calm and keep doing what you’re doing.

ED