How Social Media Gives The Public The Power Over Your Brand

Now more than ever, the public have their own media channels through Blogs, websites, social media sites. Market Research firm, IDC, reports that North American online users spend about 32.7 hours a week on the Internet, almost twice as much time as spent watching television (16.4 hours) and more than eight times as much time as spent reading newspapers and magazines (3.9 hours).

People have the ability to produce their own content, share their opinions and experiences and can access a reach far larger than traditional media if their content gains a viral following. For this reason, the public can now have a distinct and powerful advantage in a crisis over many corporations.

Read more

How IT Services Companies can prepare for Social CRM opportunity

In one of my earlier post, I highlighted the Social CRM opportunity for IT Services Companies. In this post, I want to elaborate further on it by explaining HOW they can leverage this opportunity.

First step is to understand how customers of clients are using various Social Media channels (like Facebook or Twitter). And since this varies by the industry, IT services companies will need to come up with industry specific Social CRM approach and solution. Domain experts in each industry segment (called Verticals) need to evaluate ways their clients can:

Read more

Social media mastery is a mindset

I’ve been teaching classes on social media marketing to business professionals for about a year now and I’ve found there’s definitely a group that “gets it” and a group that doesn’t.

The successful ones keep in touch with me long after the class is over and tell me how the social web has dramatically changed their lives through exciting new connections and business opportunities. For others, I can usually tell by the end of the first class that it isn’t going to “take” no matter what I say or do!

Read more

Are you an elite?

In the developing world, there’s often a sharp dividing line between the elites and everyone else. The elites have money and/or an advanced education. It’s not unusual to go to the poorest places on earth and find a small cadre of people who aren’t poor at all. Sometimes, this is an unearned position, one that’s inherited or acquired in ways that take advantage of others. Regardless, you can’t just announce you’re an elite and become one.

In more and more societies, though (including my country and probably yours [and I’m including virtually the entire planet here, except perhaps North Korea] ), I’d argue that there’s a different dividing line. This is the line between people who are actively engaged in new ideas, actively seeking out change, actively engaging–and people who accept what’s given and slog along. It starts in school, of course, and then the difference accelerates as we get older. Some people make the effort to encounter new challenges or to grapple with things they disagree with. They seek out new people and new opportunities and relish the discomfort that comes from being challenged to grow (and challenging others to do the same).

Perhaps I’m flattering myself (and you) but I think almost everyone who reads blogs like this one is part of the elites. It’s not because of birth or financial standing, it’s because of a choice, the decision to be aware and engaged, to challenge a status quo of your choice.

The number of self-selected elites is skyrocketing. Part of this is a function of our ability to make a living without working 14 hours a day in a sweatshop, but part of it is the ease with which it’s possible to find and connect with other elites.

The challenge of our time may be to build organizations and platforms that engage and coordinate the elites, wherever they are. After all, this is where change and productivity come from.

Once you identify this as your mission, you save a lot of time and frustration in your outreach. If someone doesn’t choose to be part of the elites, it’s unclear to me that you can persuade them to change their mind. On the other hand, the cycle of discovery and engagement and shipping the elites have started is going to accelerate over time, and you have all the tools necessary to be part of it–to lead it, in fact.

Online Ad Targeting Is Pretty Much Like Dating

It turns out that it’s pretty simple to understand what women want. All you have to do is ask them. Of course, you have to be listening and willing to put it into practice. Having been married for nearly 9 years, I’m no genius at dating; but there are some parallels here that even my feeble brain can pull out.

In March of this year, behavioral targeting company Q Interactive did just that when they surveyed 1,800 female Internet users about the practice of targeted advertising. It turns out that women are actually okay with it – to the extent that they view it positively and actually want more of it.

When faced with an online ad that was closely aligned with their interests or activities, only 11% thought it was “weird,” while nearly 66% thought it was “cool.” Admittedly, this is when faced with ads from trusted brands. There’s no indication how the respondents felt when such targeted happened from untrusted or unknown brands, however.

Read more

Why I Don’t Want Traffic

Having worked in the digital world for more than 14 years now, I’ve seen lots of trends come and go–does anyone remember “push marketing”? But during that time, Web traffic has been the constant metric for measuring success…until now.

I’ve come to realize that I really don’t care about Web site traffic. Site visits are overrated.

In fact, for my next program, if I get zero visitors to McDonalds.com, I’m ok with that. I don’t want traffic, I want conversations…and conversations don’t happen on my Web site. They happen on millions of blogs, twitter pages and forums spread throughout the Web.

We are relaunching McDonalds.com right now. The new site is gorgeous and features tons of great information about our company and our menu items. We’ve also made sure that the content is easily shareable. But like a lot of brands, we aren’t trying to stoke conversation on our brand site. Those rich conversations are happening elsewhere and it wouldn’t be an efficient use of our resources to try to move them to a branded environment where we would be legally obligated monitoring and moderating, and thus stilting, those discussions.

Think about it this way. When you build a Web site, you need to drive people to it. It would be silly to think that people will just “show up” (insert tired 1990’s quote from Field of Dreams here). Getting people’s attention in terms of awareness and clicks takes a lot of time and money. For certain types of campaigns traffic should be the number one metric, but for most of mine it won’t.

But my job is to make people aware of the high quality of our ingredients and the great balance in our menu. I want folks talking about our yummy salads and the 600 calorie Happy Meal and the most effective way to do that is by talking with people and having them talk with others in return. My key metrics will be the number of posts, and tweets that are generated. The number of comments/replies will be very important. The tone and sentiment of the conversations will also be critical.

It is a simple view of the Conversation Economy where traffic doesn’t count.

Greyson Chance: What A Sixth Grader Teaches Us About Social Media

In a matter of days, a sixth grader from Oklahoma, twelve-year-old Greyson Chance, has become a YouTube sensation, garnering over 15 million views, an appearance on the Ellen show, and a recording contract. In the process, this kid from Oklahoma has given a few lessons for students of social media:

1. Find and learn from a model of success. Greyson chose for his inspiration Lady Gaga. Not a bad choice considering the fact that she is the first entertainer to achieve one billion views on YouTube.

2. Find your voice and sing. Greyson Chance has never had a voice lesson, yet he has a voice that has propelled him to stardom. What made all the difference in the world was his decision to sing.

3. Share your passion. Ah…just watch the video that follows.

4. Be authentic. Be yourself. Chance chose to sing an extremely popular song from an extremely popular singer. Yet, he made the song his own. His version of “Paparazzi” is not an imitation of the original: it is an original, new version of the original.

5. Don’t give in to skeptics: convert them. As Greyson began his performance at his sixth-grade talent show, the expressions of his classmates seemed to convey disinterest at best: his performance visibly transformed skeptics into fans.

6. Content is still king. All the search engine optimization in the world still has a tough time trumping raw talent. Content, really good content, whether it’s a song or story, is still the best way to be found.

7. With compelling content, video is a viral rocket. YouTube is celebrating its fifth-year anniversary with two billion daily views. Twelve-year old Greyson Chance is one if its users who decided to upload a video from his sixth-grade talent show. 15-million views later, the video shows no signs of slowing down in its viral trajectory.

8. Give your friends more than one forum to connect. Greyson first uploaded the video of his performance to his Facebook page, then to YouTube. He has since added a Twitter account.

Greyson Chance’s 6th Grade Talent Show Performance

Ford CEO Shares Executive Leadership Lesson in 140 Characters

Photo courtesy of Flickr Ford APA

One of the most valuable shifts in business communication is taking place on Twitter: a global audience can now learn from industry leaders and apply high-level advice in real time. At Amazon.com, there are 28,242 books written specifically on business strategy. Since it’s impossible to read and filter all that advice, there are competitive advantages to connecting with executives and learning from a primary source. And even more valuable to have access to a Fortune 10 executive’s insight.

On March 31, Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally joined members of his management team at the New York International Auto Show for 30 minutes on Twitter. Pictured with Digital Communications Director Scott Montyand fresh from co-chairing the prestigious China Development Forum (CDF) in Beijing, Mulally was available for conversation and questions. Named one of Barron’s World’s Greatest CEOs in March, Alan Mulally’s accessibility defines Ford’s corporate culture.

Read more

Hey, Small Business, DON’T build a website… build a Marketing Platform!

The more I talk to small and medium-size businesses, the more I hear – we need to build a better website!

Don’t do it!

In the age of Social Media and ‘doing more with less’ you don’t have to build a website anymore, nor do you have to improve it. You have to, and you CAN, build a marketing platform. So, what does this mean?

Well, for starters, as a business you need to ask yourself – “What is it I want to do next? Grow my business? Generate Leads? Or establish or improve my brand?” Once you are able to answer this question, establish who your audience is and then select the appropriate marketing strategy – Social Media comes to the rescue!

Read more

Thoughts on propagation planning

Recently, the team at 1000 Heads have been discovering and discussing some great content out there on propogation planning.

Ivan Pollard from Naked Communications coined the term and Faris Yakob went on to, well, propagate it in a prize-winning essay for Campaign. Griffin Farley, of BBH New York, continues to develop the theory in his excellent blog, and produced the deck below which gives a neat overview of the approach and case studies behind PP.

Lessons in Propagation Planning Presentation

View more presentations from Griffin Farley.

As you can see, propagation planning is in essence word of mouth by any other name.

Read more