Archive for November, 2011
The World’s Best Digital Marketing Campaigns
Nov 30th
BEST DIGITAL CAMPAIGNS 2011 by gregory pouy
Gregory Pouy is rapidly becoming one of my favorite social media marketing brainiacs!
Earlier this year the Paris-based marketer rocked our world with his free eBook on eCommerce, and now he has been kind enough to let me share with the {grow} community his latest work — an exhilarating take on the best digital marketing campaigns of 2011.
In this presentation, which he prepared in English exclusively for you, Greg goes beyond reporting on 11 catchy digital campaigns. He tells you WHY they excelled, and WHAT the results were. And it is all presented in an entertaining and stylish manner.
If you love marketing as much as I do, you are going to bookmark this one and have a lot of fun with this presentation!
Would you care to share your reactions with Greg in the comment section?
If you can’t view this presentation within the blog, click here: The World’s Best Digital Marketing Campaigns
15 ways to use Twitter to toast your competition
Nov 29th
There are lots of success stories and case studies documenting business success through Twitter. Here are a few of my favorite ways to leverage this platform for new business benefits.
1) Using Twitter search and other simple listening tools, monitor real time conversations about your brand that can assist your marketing and management teams in seeing what is really being about your company today. There are a variety of free and effective “listening” tools available to allow you to save searches such as Tweetdeck and HootSuite. One heating and air conditioning company had their best year ever simply by monitoring tweets about broken home systems and offering their prompt help.
2) Customer service is a popular use of Twitter by many companies and other organizations. There are many well-documented best practices you can find by doing an Internet search on the topic. When people are “calling you” on Twitter, are you picking up the phone?
3) Offer helpful links and headlines that can drive traffic to your website, blog, landing pages, YouTube channels. Facebook, etc. Despite the social media hype, your website is usually the place where you ask for money… or registrations, downloads, or whatever you’re after. Websites are still important in the social information eco-system.
4) Discover consumer problems, product issues, or potentially damaging PR disasters by picking up conversations about your company and responding quickly. A friend of mine in Canada actually specializes in this — monitoring the social buzz for impending strikes or disturbed company employees.
5) Break through communication barriers with tweets. Having a hard time making that business connection with a new lead through cold calls and email? Try a tweet or direct message. You will not believe how well this works. They may not return your calls but they almost always return tweets! I don’t know the psychology behind this. I only know it works!
6) Run special deals and promotions on Twitter that you can use to drive traffic or move slow-moving stock. If you’ve done a good job surrounding yourself with targeted connections, they should be interested in your specials, right? A local bakery is using this idea to move their products quickly if they’ve baked too much of a certain item that day “come by before 4 p.m. for 2 for-1 coffee cakes.” Hey, coffee cakes would certainly be meaningful content in my estimation! Especially cinnamon.
7) Twitter is an exceptional way to build your personal brand beyond your normal business borders. Even if you hit the speaking tour for a few months, the opportunity for global reach through Twitter probably has more potential … with a lot less wear and tear.
8. Find new business contacts and sales leads through directories such as Twellow and the advanced Twitter search.
9) Pre-populate the business relationship. By following potential customers, you can learn a lot about them, which will help you connect when you meet the person. I once recognized a stranger at a meeting because they looked just like their Twitter picture. When I introduced myself he greeted me like a long-lost brother. He felt he knew me through my Twitter posts. Now, how many cold calls would you have to make to get a reaction like that?
10) Did you know Twitter can help your visibility on search engines such as Google? Just a few years ago, search results would only turn up websites. Now you’re just as likely to get LinkedIn profiles, video and yes, Twitter profiles.
11) Use your tweets as real-time testimonies. Tweets are published and permanent so feel free to use them as marketing tools. An example: One college featured real tweets about their school on an electronic highway billboard (not real-time of course!). A coffee shop featured happy customer tweets on a flat-screen display in their shop.
12) Public validation. As people send nice tweets about you, save them in your “favorite” Twitter function. When you need to pull out some “social validation,” simply direct them to your Twitter page. This is public information for all to see.
13) The PR opportunities are significant. Journalists are extremely active on Twitter, seeking information on leads and sources. You might get some unexpected PR placements if you establish yourself as a voice of authority on Twitter, especially if you combine this with blogging.
14) I love the way businesses are using Tweet-ups – networking meetings of Twitter enthusiasts — to effectively promote their organizations. Twitter loyalists love to get together to meet in real life — especially if there is free food involved! If you have an appropriate meeting space or venue, why not sponsor a Tweet-up to introduce folks to your facility while giving them a friendly place to meet? I think this would be effective for restaurants and clubs, banks, non-profits, schools, health clubs, real estate offices — almost any place with a large meeting space that serves local clients.
15) Twitter is a great way to keep up on the latest news and trends — what if you turned this into a competitive weapon for your entire organization? What would be the implications if your employees had access to real-time news and market information that your competitors don’t have?
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Marketing, Journalism, and Truth as Competitive Advantage
Nov 27th
I had a very interesting question come across my desk from {grow} community member John Bethune:
In the minds of most people, journalism and marketing were once diametrically opposed. Has that changed in the social media era?
A great question! And, in fact, I think the social web has brought these disciplines together in a number of surprising ways.
The ideal of journalism is a quest for truth. Marketing is the quest for a product’s “truth.” By that I mean the best marketers are on a journey to know how their company’s goods and services exist in the hearts and minds of their customers. Then, their job is to express that consumer truth to the best of their ability. So in this way, the disciplines are unexpectedly similar, although the end product is quite different!
But the social web has created an important shift for both disciplines. What does it even mean to be a journalist today? Through blogging and technology like smartphone video cameras, journalism has been democratized. Anybody can report, anybody can publish. Jeff Jarvis of City University of New York recently defined a reporter today as simply somebody who can say, “I was there and you weren’t.”
The democratization of marketing
To a great extent, marketing has been democratized, too. Remember last year when Gap changed their logo and there was such an outcry? I felt empathy for the company because they are probably good marketers who followed a traditional protocol — work with graphic designers, test it, get feedback, and roll. That system has worked for decades and changing a logo is not an easy or flippant decision for a consumer product company to make. I’m sure they had done their homework … or at least they thought so.
But a few vocal people thought the new logo was stupid (perhaps people who were not even customers!). Through Twitter and Facebook, they created an anti-logo movement. and suddenly it became an embarrassing meme. I can imagine the Gap marketers waking up to this one morning and thinking “Wait … what?”
So something as important as an adjustment to your brand image may not even be in the hands of marketers any more. The Gap’s marketing strategy had essentially been crowd-sourced! Like journalism it seems, marketing has also been democratized.
Content as power
The production of content has also been an output of the marketing process, usually in the form of advertisements. But now content is at the very centerpiece of many strategies as companies fight to attract attention on the crowded social web. The journalism schools are full of new applicants. Why? Because content is big business now and the new media channels have an insatiable need for it. Companies need story-tellers as much as marketing graduates.
I have recently been working with the president of one of my B2B customers on a blog and a series of how-to videos to demonstrate their new robotic technologies. I’ll bet five years ago he never would have dreamed he would be in the publishing business!
So this idea of content and storytelling is another way that journalism and marketing have been brought together. For both fields, content that moves virally through the social web represents success and power.
Truth as a strategy
I think expectations of “truth” and transparency is another way the social web have brought journalism and marketing together. For a brand to have integrity and to be successful, it can’t be spinning the truth around any more. There are a million watch dogs out there now and any one of them can sniff out a fake.
A few weeks ago, I was working with some marketers for a hotel chain and we were discussing negative hotel reviews. “We don’t mind them,” they told me. “It makes us more real.”
Interesting. Truth as a marketing strategy.
My hunch is that a few years ago, that is not necessarily what their reaction would have been. In marketing, truth is the new black.
Maybe journalism and marketing are getting closer than we thought? What do you think?
Note: John Bethune’s full interview with me can be found here: “Content is Power: A Q&A with Mark W. Schaefer.”
5 ways corporate culture determines social media success
Nov 25th
A while back I was working with a new client in New York. In the lobby of their impressive building, there was a huge plaque with the corporate philosophies of the company’s founder — a man who had died 25 years ago. In every meeting I attended, his name, and his values, were mentioned at least once. As I learned about this company, it was apparent that this beloved man’s influence extended far beyond the grave into the daily activities of the company life today!
Corporate cultures are a complex amalgamation of executive personalities, external events, and history. Culture affects almost everything … from how employees are treated to how they compete in the marketplace. When I talk about social media strategies, inevitably the conversation turns to cultural fit.
Social media success and failure is not usually determined by resources, vision, or ability. It is inevitably a function of the personality of the organization. Here are five signs that your company culture may be getting in the way of your progress:
Corporate culture mis-match — You need to build your strategy around the realistic capabilities of your company culture. As grandma used to say, you have to deal with what is, not what you wish for. Is your company ready to become a publisher? Are they able to react? Are they truly open to the idea of customer dialogue? If the honest assessment is “no,” move on. That doesn’t mean you can’t be successful, you just have to adjust. Your culture is your culture. Your desire to have a blog isn’t going to change it. But your strategy can probably conform to your situation and still have an impact. You need to think about education, not execution.
Lack of executive sponsorship– On a related topic, if you’re counting on a “grassroots” effort to establish a company social media program that will “change the culture,” you’re setting yourself up for problems. To be successful in the long-term, you must have support from the top. Why? That’s who controls the purse strings and resources! That’s the person setting the strategy. You can’t make this happen alone. Here’s an article on selling your boss on social media that might be helpful.
Lack of executive engagement — To really build a social organization, you need your executives to be involved, as well as sponsoring the initiative. I’m not saying executives actually have to blog or tweet … but they have to be connected to the point that they intimately understand the vast implications and opportunities. Some executives will relish this change. Others will resist it. If your boss is in the second group, you need to lower your expectations and slow down.
Unwieldy politics. Every organization has politics. But when everybody is trying to own a piece of your blog or customer service strategy, watch out. If you find that Legal, HR and the janitorial staff demands to approve every tweet, it might be a sign that your company is just not built for social media. Remember, the beauty of the social web is an ability to be flexible and reactive. Most companies have been conditioned to broadcast. This is a very difficult change to make and it make take re-organization. One large brand I work with has re-invented its approach by creating a new department called Customer Connections. That’s the idea.
Unrealistic expectations — … and her brother “impatience.” It takes time to build a strategy and connect to customers, especially if cultural change has to occur first. It may take YEARS. If your boss is making your employment contingent on Facebook Likes or the number of blog comments you get next month, it might be time to consider another position!
One of my B2B customers is just getting into social media marketing after I have worked with them as their “rented Chief Marketing Officer” for more than two years! Why did it take so long? First, they had other low-hanging fruit to take care of (I’m a marketing consultant, not just a social media consultant!). And culturally, they just were not ready.
But a few months ago, the president approached me and said, “You know, I think we need to begin working on this social media stuff you talk about.” He was beginning to feel expectations from customers and suppliers and, along with a constant drip of education from me, there was a catalyst for change. The transformation is beginning, and we will be doing it the right way — with understanding, executive sponsorship, and cultural readiness … but it took me a long time to get them to that point.
Any of this sound familiar? What are your experiences with corporate culture and social media success and failure?
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Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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