10e20 Blog

Frequently I speak with Chief Marketing Officers (CMO’s), Business Development Specialists, Product and Brand Managers regarding Social Media engagements and they always ask: “How many customers am I going to get directly from my Social Campaigns? What’s going to be my CPA, my ROI and my ROAS? What Immediate sales will I get?” To this I respectfully respond: “Stop! Don’t look at Social as a direct response marketing channel.” These marketers often react in shock with a quizzical twist because they are used to hearing what they want which is: “Hey, all of our programs are going to get you crazy, mad sales dude, right away - mate.”

With great design and implementation you can break all the rules and still be successful. This, by any other means, shouldn’t have worked. It shouldn’t have reached the ridiculous number of 3,338 diggs after being posted just 4 days ago. It was Flash animation. It was an advertisement for a product. It was selling you something. But as the submitter ‘ad-hater’ #1 stated :

If all advertisements were done like this, I might actually start reading them.

What happened? It was a healthy combination of good design and smart implementation of a beautifully created product that spawned a much deserved buzz. Pink Floyd was selling their limited edition 40th anniversary 14 album box set called ‘Oh, By The Way’. The Flash animation was designed by a London digital creative agency called Bloc.

If we look at the presentation and design of the interface that the user controls to view the various albums in the set we see that it is very minimal.

In the olden days a sociologist had to find people and recruit them to fill out long arduous forms. Today there is Facebook, and these sociologists are finding out that people generally love to talk about themselves. It is fun to talk about my interests, social networks and life!

Check out the New York Times article ‘On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data’. I would imagine this is being used in many other ways and will be being used more frequently in the future.

I remember when I first experienced the power of the Internet. I was in middle school hanging out with a friend. We decided to use the computer in my father’s office and got online to chat. Of course that led to starting trouble within the chat room and getting kicked out, but the feeling of connecting (even if it was very juvenile and idiotic) was lasting.

Well both myself and the internet have evolved since then (thankfully). We are in the midst of Web 2.0. I mean, look at who Time’s person of the year in 2006 was- it was me, or was it you?

Now you can sell your handmade t-shirts to someone in California, post a video so millions can see it, raise money for a certain candidate or cause or even connect with a classmate that now lives in Boston.

I am becoming a big fan of the organic approach to StumbleUpon (SU) and the ways you can connect with members finding like minded users in demographic and interest areas.

The StumbleUpon social tool was built for discovering webpages that are recommended by your network of friends. The site allows for networking and the toolbar allows for finding and discovering new great content on the web. This is a powerful combination of Internet function and social web.

After using SU for a long while it seems that the tool will be able to grow in its use as a localized marketing tool. And though outwardly commercial sites tend not to get a great amount of traffic (rather fail miserably) – it’s all in the approach.

The three C’s of a strong social news profile are content, consistency and contacts. If you follow these tips, your success on social news sites will become that much easier.

Reliable Sources. Make sure the blogs and news sources you’re submitting from are reliable and have quality information. Make sure they aren’t sending false information to the readers. And if you see that they might be trying to game social news websites don’t submit their content.

General viewpoint. Find a viewpoint in which the majority of the users will have interest in, or even care about. Take a look at the top submissions for the day. Those are basically the stories which most people have interest in. If you don’t find stories for all audiences, the users will either bury your story, or it will just be left unnoticed. Try thinking from a global standpoint. Does your town hockey championship really effect people half way across the world?

Two weeks ago I posted about the ins and outs for forum marketing. When joining a community, especially if you plan to market to them, it is important to understand the dynamics behind a lot of the interactions.

Below are what I’ve noticed as the different types of prominent forum members.

The Worker Bees. These are the people that keep the forum moving. When someone posts a question they are quick to research the answer. When someone posts for advice, they give it. When someone need hugs, or encouragement they are there to offer it. These forum members will rarely cause controversy but they are the heart and soul of the community. They are the ones that keep coming back to make it lively.

Epinions.com is great site for Internet and Brand Marketers to work in. The site is a user and member driven product/service review website. It is owned by Shopping.com which is in turn owned by…..Ebay.

How and why is the site useful for marketers? Aside from helping consumers looking for information about products, it can also help SEO’s, webmasters (who dabble in marketing) and brand managers by allowing them to monitor their products and develop traffic/awareness.

Epinions is all about writing reviews and interacting with knowledgeable people to get information about products. The basic uses from the consumer side are:

• Reading product reviews for information about the quality of a product or service.
• Finding information about products and services in advance of your purchase to help you with your decision on brand, price, and features; shopping comparison.
• Connecting with retailers who have good prices on these products.

Over the holidays I spoke to lots of different people who told me that they want to get more involved in social media in 2008. My first question to them was always: Why? Do you want to get involved because it seems like it’s THE hot thing right now? Or do you want to help your company or clients grow? You need to have goals in mind and focus on the end result in order to be successful.

Social media can be very complex and involved but it can also be broken down into very simple and actionable steps. These steps can have an immediate impact on your businesses bottom line. And that’s what it’s all about.

The Ins and Outs of Forum Marketing

Yesterday Jake took us through Social Media Marketing and why it is so important to incorporate into your overall marketing strategy. Most of the time when Social Media Marketing is mentioned, we talk about large sites like Digg, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. Today I want to discuss the benefits and strategies in using forums to your advantage.

Participating in forums can provide valuable insight to business owners. Not only for sales, but for some good perspectives from others in your industry as well as potential clients. Forum marketing is not always going to provide you with instant gratification though. It takes time to build a credible profile, and when participating in a forum you can wind up giving more information than you gain. I’m going to outline a few of the benefits of participating in forums as well as give you some basic tips for building a strong profile and using them to help your business.