Marketing Archives - Page 5 of 6 - Woolf Media & Marketing

December 3, 2009

Microblogging Meets Mobile Micromarketing

As a reminder that social networking is permeating all aspects of our lives, I saw an interesting article on SFGate.com this week about the mobilization of social media. Smarter telephones such as iPhones and upgraded Blackberries are placing more computing power in your pocket, and advertisers and marketers are anxious to adopt new strategies to get your attention while you are on the move.

The Gate article talks about using mobile social media applications to track your friends in real-time. You check your mobile tracker and find out that the gang is at your favorite watering hole, or one of you BFFs is getting coffee at Starbucks. With the new GPS and and smart phone capabilities being built into today’s mobile handsets, it’s easy to pinpoint anyone with a mobile phone. Combine the tracking capability with social media and the world can follow you anywhere:

“We’re seeing a renaissance in mobile services,” said Alok Deshpande, co-founder of Loopt, which was started in 2006. “People are trying it for the first time and seeing what they can do. A lot of that evolution was catalyzed by improvements in the iPhone and new BlackBerrys. That changed the game a lot.”

As the article notes, it’s going to take some time until one service or another reaches the critical mass of a Facebook or Twitter to be a viable mobile social media platform. The same is true in the world of instant messaging. To be valuable, your posse has to be using the same service, whether it’s Skype or Yahoo or MSN.

Now let’s throw mobile marketing into the mix. When you combine the ability to track mobile presence with data delivery, advertising can turn your cell phone into a personalized billboard. You are walking by Old Navy and “buzz,” there’s a clothing special just for you. You are near Amici’s pizza and “beep,” they have a linguini lunch special. If you haven’t seen it, the mall scene from film “The Minority Report” has some of that same creep factor. Imagine if advertisers were able to target you by taste and interest as well as location. This is as close to one-to-one marketing as I want to get.

I have to wonder about the tolerance of mobile users for cell phone advertising. I know I find the random text messages from my service provider annoying to say the least, but the novelty factor may overcome initial objections, particularly if the mobile ads can be targeted to your areas of interest.

So I am wondering if we are ready for a world where microblogging and micromarketing converge. You can check on your friends on the go, using your handheld computer with the build-in GPS to track them and check in in real time. At the same time, marketers can stalk you in the real world, serving up cybersuggestions based on your online history and location. It’s an interesting variation on the concept of free, perfect, now articulated by Rob Rodin, CEO of Marshall Industries over a decade ago. The basic idea is that the Internet has engendered the demand for instant gratification; I want what I want now, exactly as I want it, and I don’t want to pay much for it. Clearly, technology is changing the rules of marketing for all of us.

November 20, 2009

Understanding Twitter by the Numbers

All of my clients, including the agencies I work with, are watching the evolution of social media with keen interest, and one of the most curious phenomena to power social media is Twitter. Although they still don’t seem to have a revenue model, Twitter and the whole concept of microblogging has taken the Web by storm. I recall when Twitter first launched two years ago at the Web 2.0 Expo at San Francisco. I was there to help launch Vidoop, an innovative security solution for logging into Web sites, and the Vidoop marketing team were all abuzz about Twitter. They actually started using the service on their mobile phones to keep track of each other during the show.

Now Twitter seems to have grown up, a lot. In March, Mashable reported that Twitter was growing at a rate of 1,382 percent with 7 million unique visitors. And more services continue to leverage Twitter as part of their social media strategy; the latest being LinkedIn, which just launched a Twitter feed for users, and Yahoo which is harnessing Twitter to promote search.

But how effective is Twitter as a marketing mechanism? Can you use Twitter to reach your target audience? According to a new study by Pew Research, 19 percent of Internet users are using Twitter, up from 11 percent in April. Not surprisingly, web users who are already using social networking sites such as MySpace, LinkedIn, or Facebook seem more likely to use Twitter (35 perce

nt). And the more devices a user owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter to update their activities – 39 percent of Twitter users have four Web-linked devices, 28 percent with three devices, 19 percent with two devices, and 10 percent with one device.

What was really interesting about the Pew study were the Twitter demographics. As of September, 54 percent of Internet users have a wireless Internet connection, either from a cell phone, laptop, game console, or other mobile device. Twenty-five percent of those 54 percent use Twitter, which is up from 14 percent in December 2008. The median age for T

witter users is 31, with users between the ages of 18 and 44 up dramatically in the last six months, and

: Total Tweets for the 2009 – WebProNews

Internet users over 45 are coming on at a slower adoption rate.

I think the most interesting statistic, and the most important to consider from a marketing perspective, is that according to Harvard Business School researchers, 10 percent of Twitter users account for 90 percent of all tweets. In addition, of the 11.5 million Twitter accounts, most people post once a day and one in five have never posted on Twitter.

So what does this mean for your personal PR and marketing program? Understand your objectives before you embark on a social media program, and who you are trying to target. Twitter exposure can be valuable in promoting your online brand, but you want to make sure that you have the right followers. Twitter can be a valuable tool for market research and information dissemination, but only if you can tap a demographic that you care about.

November 8, 2009

Technology Is Promoting the New Intimacy

Does technology make us more indifferent to one another? Are cell phones, e-mail, and Facebook responsible for bringing us together or putting a wedge between us and our loved ones? According to a recent study by Tech Anthropologist Stefana Broadbent, technology is actually promoting intimacy. Check out what she had to say at the Oxford TEDglobal conference earlier this year.

What I found most fascinating from a marketing standpoint is that most people use their technology infrastructure – cellular phone, texting, instant messaging, e-mail, etc. – to communicate with a handful of loved ones. That’s it! Consider the stories Broadbent shares about the families who gather together via webcam for a meal, or the friends and coules who communicate regularly from work via e-mail and text. Of course we all do it, and technology can bring us closer to our loved ones. I am in ongoing contact with my spouse via text and cell phone. In fact, she now uses her iPhone to stay in constant contact with her daughter, who is a college freshman this year 3,000 miles away, using text, e-mail, Facebook, and, of course, phone calls. It’s almost as thought my stepdaughter was still home every night (and a far cry from the weekly call I made from the payphone to my parents in the days before cellular technology).

This demonstrates man’s infinite ability to adapt new ideas and new technologies for the things he cares about most. However, from a marketing standpoint, I have to wonder if this revelation undermines the value of social media to reach customers and prospects. If people only communicate with a handful of close friends on Facebook or Twitter, are the rest of us shouting in the wind, trying to get their attention? I don’t think so, but we do run the risk of devolving into so much white noise as people pursue the more intimate conversations that matter to them. Establishing online intimacy with strangers is difficult, but if we understand that the Web has become a tool to communicate both in an intimate way as well as with a larger universe, it helps us better understand how to reach the people who matter to us.

I also have to wonder about the impact it has on how we separate our personal and private lives. Broadbent talks about class distinction and our separation from the workplace. We seem to have come full circle. In medieval times, the merchants lived above their shop or place of business, the farmers lived on the land, and there was no thought of separating your work and your personal life. That came later with the modern concept of cities and suburbs. Our fathers, and our fathers’ fathers, used to travel from home to the workplace and back again, isolating themselves for eight to 16 hours in an office, or a factory, of a field, where they toiled to support their families. With the aid of technology, home and workplace have converged once again, or at least grown closer together. The more affluent use technology to carry their workplace with them. I work from home, and my office is my laptop and my cell phone, which means I carry my place of work with me. (I often joke that the great thing about working for yourself is you keep your own hours – any 24 hours in the day you choose.) Those who don’t use the technology are the commuters who transport themselves from home to workplace and back again, forging boundaries (both real and artificial) between their professional and personal lives.

And I have to wonder about the impact all this has on organizations. From my recent work with FaceTime Communications, I have a deeper understanding of the challenges that IT managers face in trying to contain personal conversations on public networks. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Skype are pervasive, and defy many of the conventions of IT managerial control. If you can access the Internet from your office computer, then you can chat online with you boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mother, and completely bypass most enterprise security measures. Companies can choose to block access, or try to control it. I have a client that uses Barracuda to control employee network access, which means when I work on site I can’t be productive because I can’t access any of the social networking sites or online tools I use for the client. Locking the door isn’t the solution. Instead, you need to find a way to help your workers feel more connected to home in order to increase productivity. If you control the online conversation rather than blocking it, you can prevent abuses and data leaks while letting workers connect with their loved ones, which helps everyone.

There are some important insights here as to how technology is transforming human interaction. What are your views? Can you build intimacy online? Share your thoughts.

October 30, 2009

Social Media Is About “Do Unto Others,” It’s Not About “What Have You Done for Me Lately?”

Social media is like a cocktail party - you never know who you will meet

I wanted to share part of an e-mail exchange with a client earlier today. I have been evangelizing to this client for some time about how social media can help his business. His company serves the financial services market with some rather specialized research, and the logic of social media is often more elusive for B2B companies with a highly focused product. However, we had a major success this week with a news announcement profiling a new market research report that tied dropping deposit rates to rising unemployment rates. The release generated a lot of interest, including social media interest, and an e-mail from one follower to an influential executive at a credit union sealed a deal one quarter earlier than expected.

Wow! You mean this social media stuff actually can help you make money? Of course it can!

So we expanded our strategic discussion. Yes, press releases and news should be discussed in social media outlets. Of course you should be talking to your peers on specialty forums. And then the question came in, “So I see you are connected to Jane Doe on BankInnovation.net. What is that contact going to do for me?”

My response was, “Who knows?”

The thing about social networking that marketeers consistently fail to grasp is that social media is not about outbound messages, it’s about engaging in conversation. I explained to my client, “Think of social networking like a good cocktail party. You meet a number of interesting people along the way, and there are lots of interesting topics to discuss, but that doesn’t mean that every person you speak to is a prospect for your business or can help you close a sale.”

You have to apply the concept of six degrees of separation where the human web and the world wide web converge. You are talking to people who know other people you don’t know. If you can convince your contacts to say something interesting about you to one of their contacts, then you may acquire a new contact that has real value to you. It’s like having someone you know casually forward an influential press release to a senior executive who decides to buy your service. You never know where your next evangelist may come from.

So when you are building your network of contacts, do you need to dissect ever connection for his or her potential value? Of course not. Consider my approach to Twitter followers. I get an e-mail notification that Marty Marketer is following me on Twitter. Cool! I bask in the love for a moment, then link to the profile to check him out. If he has posted a bio that is even marginally relevant to what I am interested in, I will follow him back out of Twitter courtesy. If there is no bio, the bio is completely offbase, or absolutely no one is following them, then I usually don’t bother to connect – we all have to have some standards. The point is that you are trying to build a sphere of influence relevant to your market, so you should weed out the MLM schemes and the porn vendors (unless that’s your bag). So I have some oddballs among my Twitter followers, like the custom T-shirt shop and the motor head who’s into muscle cars, but you never know who they know, or who they influence.

So when you get that Twitter follow request or that LinkedIn request, should you connect? Use your own judgment but unless there are obvious reasons not to, remember you never know who your contacts might know. Naturally, you can’t develop a personal relationship with hundreds of people, but if they are interested in what you have to say, you never know whom they might tell.

So what value do those contacts have to you? Who knows? Connect and find out.

October 19, 2009

Understanding the New Consumer

Consumers are turning into Ants, not Grasshoppers

If you haven’t discovered TED Talks, you are missing a great source of inspirational thinking. TED, which stands for Technology, Education, Design, plays host to some awesome pundits and thinkers who have some really insightful stuff to share.

This week, I have been working on a press release for a client, Market Rates Insight, a company that provides competitive rate research to banks and credit unions. Their latest research report reveals that consumers are looking to banks for security; trusting their money to an FDIC-insured institution over other options that may offer higher yields. Even though banks are paying less than mutual funds or stocks, consumers are seeking security for their money. This is part of a shift in consumerism where people are planning for the future rather than spending in the present.

That’s why I found the recent TED Talks recent presentation by John Gerzema so interesting. Gerzema is co-author of The Brand Bubble, a new book that advocates change as the best strategy for brand management in today’s market, and is Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam. If you watch the video, you see that his perception is that consumers have returned to an old reality. They are no longer leveraging their future, and the future of their children. The economic downturn has transformed the grasshoppers into ants that are saving for the future.

Consumers are saving more now. Spending in Q4 dropped 3.7 percent, the lowest in 62 years. Gerzema shares some interesting change indicators. More molars need filling because stress is causing people to grind their teeth. Gun sales are up 25 percent since January according to the FBI. The Cornell Institute reports that vasectomies are up 48 percent. And shark attacks are at the lowest level since 2003 because no one is at the beach.

So what Gerzema is seeing (or hoping for) is that by restricting demand, consumers can control their consumption and be more discriminating. As Gerzema says,

“By restricting their demand, consumers can actually align their values with their spending and align capitalism to not just be about more, but to be about better…”

Gerzema expands this theme, talking about people downscaling their consumption patterns and adjusting purchases to take advantage of reduced costs. Consumers also are demanding more empathy and social responsibility from companies. And they are looking for “durable living,” investing for the long haul. And finally, he points to the “return to the fold” phenomena, where consumers look to their peers to endorse brands and validate brand decisions.

And much of this ties back to social media. People are looking to share their values and empathy through social media outlets, and they are looking for validation of their decisions and values. They are using the Internet more than ever to connect with like-minded people and research their purchases and support this new socially responsible lifestyle. If marketers are going to engage with these consumers, they need to be sensitive to this shift in perception and be prepared to engage with authenticity, empathy, and longevity. The new consumer is all about cooperative consumerism, and the smart marketing professionals will become part of the cooperative.

October 13, 2009

Look, Up in the Sky – The Air Force Is Piloting Its Own Social Media Strategy

I am always scanning the Web for informational tidbits, and one blogger I have been following is Jeff Cole of JJC Communications LLC, who posts his PR101 observations every Monday. Last week’s blog particularly caught by eye, “PR 101 – Lesson 31 – Social Media Is Everywhere – Even Places I Didn’t Expect To Find It.” In this installment, Jeff recounts what he uncovered about how the Air Force is harnessing social media to facilitate coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

How progressive! The military embracing an open forum like blogging! Of course, “open” is a relative term when you talk to the government.

“There has been a major debate in the Air Force over social media. There was an “old-school mentality” over its use, [U.S. Air Force Captain David Faggard, Chief, Public Affairs for the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing] said. From talking to Faggard and reading about the Air Force’s social media efforts, I think the senior commanders are having had the same debate many C-suite executives are having. The Air Force commanders are in their late 40s and 50s. They grew up reading newspapers and watching television news. In their worldview, those mediums still dominate. They are not sure about social media, what it is, and what it can do.”

As Cole notes, bloggers have become field reporters like Ernie Pile in World War II. And why not, Twitter is playing a major role all over the world any time a disaster or political upheaval strikes. When traditional communications channels close, the Web is still there with fresh information. And I noted a story on CNN today that military recruiters have met their goals this year for the first time since the draft was discontinued in 1973. The report said it may be largely due to the economic downturn, but it also has to be due to the fact that the military is now hipper than ever with pages on Facebook and channels on YouTube.

Of course, the U.S. military is still erring on the side of caution, and there isn’t a consistent policy. There is still a huge concern about data leakage. The U.S. Marines banned use of Twitter, MySpace and Facebook from its networks as a security risk – see the article in Wired. Letting the social media genie out of the bottle clearly can have some disastrous side effects as well, but the same concerns are true in any corporation.

I have been working on a project for a client, FaceTime Communications, which just shipped a new unified security appliance that monitors and records Web 2.0 traffic to prevent data leaks and promote compliance. Theoretically, with the right policies in place, it prevents Facebook data leaks such as status posts like “Our patrol attacked this well-protected village today,” or a LinkedIn query such as “We are working on a multi-million dollar deal with Acme and I need information…” As Faggard notes:

“In my personal opinion, the military is still trying to figure it out… Of course, anyone talking to a blogger, or writing a blog, cannot violate standard Air Force rules. You cannot talk about war plans for instance or about operational plans.”

But like the Internet, the blogosphere cannot be controlled, which is what scares both the military and corporate leadership. However, they can control the message by being proactive, and embracing the social medium that will help them deliver the message (with apologies to Marshall McLuhan). This means attacking the problem on three fronts:

Taking a proactive approach and embracing social media, as the Air Force is clearly doing with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube;
Using a reactive approach where you are using social media tools to track the conversation (both good and bad) on the Web – check out the Air Force’s “Counter Blogging” strategy and their Web, Posting Response Assessment; and
Applying strict policies and procedures, bulletproof security technology, and common sense to prevent leaks of sensitive information.

The U.S. military has been fighting its battles in the public press and in the trenches for as long as we can remember. Social media is too powerful a tool for them to ignore, and could be the most effective weapon in their PR arsenal once they figure out how to use it effectively.

October 11, 2009

Why Are Marketers Ignoring Social Feedback?

Marketers are stumbling blindly when social media can give them direction.

We all know the potential social networking offers to connect with customers and prospects. Social networks offer an unprecedented ability to connect with people you care about in a way that is meaningful and insightful. Yet a recent study by PRWeek and communications agency MS&L shows that most marketers are ignoring their followers:

Almost 70 percent of marketers say they never made a change to a product or a marketing campaign based on consumer feedback from social media sites.
Another 43 percent say that a lack of knowledge and expertise prevents them from using social media as part of their marketing programs.
And 39 percent say they are not convinced of the value or ROI from social networking.

By way of counterpoint, let me share the following from the first chapter of Paul Gillin’s book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing:

“Social media challenges nearly every assumption about how businesses should communicate with their constituencies. The most important change to understand and to accept is that one of those constituencies now have the capacity to talk – to each other and to the businesses they have to patronize. In the past, those conversations were limited to groups of at most a few hundred people. Today, they are global and may include millions of voices.”

The social media revolution will change marketing, whether marketers choose to embrace it or not. The real challenge is that most marketers aren’t used to embracing dialogue. They would rather show how good they are as marketers by telling you what people want. Think of the cast of Mad Men sitting around brainstorming the latest advertising campaign. Or I can recall any one of countless PR strategy meetings where the PR team and the client sit around and imagine what will appeal to their target audience.

Why not just ask them? Social media lets you do that.

Some marketers seem to feel there is too much risk in embracing social media. The risk is they will be rejected, that their customers will tell them they are wrong. Isn’t that the point?

As Einstein once said, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” Social media is a new concept that requires all of us to abandon old thinking. Embrace the new. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

October 3, 2009

Is Social Media Training Right for You?

Have you noticed how many social media experts have emerged in the last two years? It seems as though anyone with a background in PR or communications has become a social media whizz kid. If you have been working in marketing communications long enough, integrating new channels like Facebook and Twitter into your current marketing strategy is mostly common sense. As with any communications program, the objective is to deliver the right message to the right audience in the right way.

This is why I find it increasingly fascinating that more and more social media universities have been springing up. I have sat through a number of webinars, offering great insight and revelations as to how to harness social media for wealth and fame, only to come away scratching my head, waiting for the big revelation. Many of those offering social media nirvana were selling Ponzi schemes in another life. Social media snake oil seems to run rampant on the Web. However, there are a number of respected professionals like Paul Gillen and David Meerman Scott who do understand how to leverage social media for effective marketing and offer sound thinking with minimal hype.

So how do you decide of social media training is going to be beneficial? Social marketer Larry Brauner has a seven-question litmus test to determine if you will get what you need from a social media training program. I want to share them here for your consideration:

What are your needs and expectations? What are you really looking for from social media? Is it about building your business, changing careers, making money? If you are clear about what you are looking to accomplish you will be better able to find the right program.
Does the course match your needs? Once you understand your objectives, you can assess whether the curriculum is on target for you.
Does the course justify the cost in time and money? Assess what kind of return you are looking for from social media and invest accordingly. And don’t expect a fast return. Any course that promises overnight success is snake oil.
Do you qualify for the program? Make an honest assessment of your social media skill set, including your web skills and your strategy. Are you prepared to follow through on your social media plan?
Are you sufficiently motivated? Effective social media programs are long-term, and require an ongoing commitment. If you are ready to run the marathon and make the commitment required to yield a return, then you may be ready. Consider the commitment carefully before moving ahead with a social marketing program.
How qualified are the instructors? This is where you need to apply the sniff test – if the training program smells a little off, it probably is. Make sure the instructors can walk the walk as well as talk the talk, and get references.
Can you afford to lose your investment? If the course costs more than you can afford to lose, then don’t do it. Social media is not a magic bullet and will not yield instant returns that will cover your costs.

September 13, 2009

Dont’ Be the Bore at the Blog Party

In the last post, I mentioned that 95 percent of blogs have been abandoned, or at least untouched for three months or more. But what about those blogs that remain active? Are the authors getting the most from their online exposure?

I have been reading Paul Gillin’s book, The Secrets of Social Media Marketing, and visited his blog to see what he had to say. Paul offers some insights into the basics of successful blogging in three separate blog posts. I want to share his list of “blogging blunders” here:

1. Handing blogging off to PR. This is a tricky problem for me. I have written before about the challenge of online authenticity and the fact that PR and marketing professionals are better at messaging than conversation. Paul’s point that PR professionals tend to use the blog as another channel for news release is not inaccurate. However, I find that getting the real experts to contribute to the conversation can be equally challenging. Executives understand the value of social media, but don’t want to take the time to engage. Hence, PR moves from advisor to ghostwriter, which is where things can go wrong if you let them.

2. It’s all about me. If you are writing a humor blog or online diary that’s one thing. But for corporate bloggers, the key is to converse, not pontificate. It’s just like talking to a bore at a cocktail party; it it’s all about me, you tend not to talk with that individual.

3. A look that is boring. Well, we all can’t be design mavens, but I think the point really is that by investing in the look of your blog, you are showing you are invested in the blog itself.

4. Failure to link. Paul calls links “online currency,” which is an accurate statement. The power of the web is in the threads you can create to promote discussion. Linking not only acknowledges your sources and helps promote traffic for their blogs and web sites, it promotes threaded conversation, which is what the web is all about.

5. Treating your blog as a wire service. No brainer. That’s what web sites and wire services are for.

6. Being irrelevant. By their nature, blogs are dynamic, which means they should reflect events of the day and new ideas.

7. Turning off comments. Is it true that 20 percent of business blogs turn off comments? Why would you? That just shuts down the conversation. Beside, you are always in control of comments, and the feedback should be valuable.

8. Nothing more to say. If you are going to blog, you have to make sure your online commentary has depth. I thought long and hard about the structure of the PRagmatist before I launched it. You want to make sure there is enough in the discussion to be engaging, interesting, and to promote your personal brand without running out of steam. I maintain an electronic clip file of potential topics I encounter on the web so I am never short of topics.

9. Too busy to blog. I have had a couple of colleagues say, “when do you find the time?” Short entries don’t take long to create. Blogging is not like writing War and Peace.

10. Nobody came. As I have noted in a previous post, patience is required, as well as self-promotion. Put blog entries out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other outlets, otherwise you are just talking to yourself.

If you are going to blog for profit and to build brand awareness, you have to understand how to make the most of the medium. It’s always about conversation and engaging with others, not just self-promotion. Too many marketeers lose sight of that when they turn to the web to carry their message.