Archive for September, 2009

I think we all pretty much agree that social media as a marketing channel is in its infancy. Most businesses are like babies taking their first steps—excited, unsure and perhaps with a bit of fear. Having grown up in the direct marketing industry, I honor the brilliance of those who are developing the tools that are shaping social media today. Yet having participated in a marketing channel that has evolved into a science, I see some steps we need to take to advance social media to its next stage of development.

1. Approach social media as you would a small child with much potential. Invest in its care and feeding and don’t expect it to support itself until it has a chance to grow up.
2. Shift the focus from the concept of influence to the idea of propensity. Look towards building connections with people who have proven to take the action you want rather than rely on their friends to influence them.
3. Invest in developing methods to identify and reach out to your target customers. Don’t allow your social networks to evolve on their own. Manage your networks from the perspective of building the most valuable list you can. Don’t skimp on the time to do some digging as that is where you will discover your gold.

Courtesy Penn St. Facebook Page

If people and companies are looking for case studies, ROI proof, and written in stone results for Twitter’s impact on sales and marketing they can begin by researching Dell, Target, or Starbucks. If they want a large sample sized study on messaging, they should investigate the following information.

In a recent Penn State study “Tweeting is more than just self expression” Associate professor of information science and technology Jim Jansen and Abdur Chowdhury Twitter chief scientist examined 500,000 tweets to determine the messaging content. The results are very encouraging for businesses willing to view Twitter as a new marketing and sales channel in its infancy. The most important point in the study? Twitter strategies, Twitter planning, and Twitter etiquette must be formulated before a company launches their Twitter efforts.

5 Reasons Twitter Connects People to Brands, Companies, Products, Services

• Requests: 20% of the 500,000 tweets “contain requests for product information or responses to the requests” about companies and their products and service
• Self Expression: “People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services”
• Point of Purchase: “Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services.”
• Connections: “. . . people were using tweets to connect with the products”
• Positivity: Many of the brand comments were positive and not negative as many companies initially anticipated

Courtesy Vineyard Wiki

Wine marketing is the number one challenge for wineries in today’s economy. The importance of social media for wine marketing can be directly related to the acronym “DTC.” Direct to consumer sales provide opportunities for  higher profit margins, increased special event sales, and to sell  important wine club memberships. Yet with all that is riding on direct to consumer sales and marketing, the awareness of the power of social media marketing as a sales channel remains underappreciated and underutilized.

Case in point, the Winebusiness.com “Direct to Consumer: 2009 Tasting Room Report.” Most interesting in this report are the “barriers” to maximizing DTC potential for all wineries. The reported challenges as well as  the opportunities to overcome the challenges may surprise you.

Direct to Consumer Challenges

1. Compliance and Shipping: (39 percent) believe issues of compliance and shipping “still outweigh all other barriers“
2. Lack of Resources: (17 percent)  people, time and money
3. Effective Technology and Systems: (13 percent)
4. Acquiring Customers: (13 percent) aka lead generation
5. Marketing Tools: (13 percent) believe a lack of DTC marketing tools like customer relationship marketing (CRM) and Web analytics

Direct to Consumer Opportunities

1. Tasting Room Software: according to the report there are many online systems available to greatly reduce the challenges of shipping and compliance
2. Lack of Resources: the three resources  are people, time, and money. The answers should include social media marketing training that enables key employees to become more efficient in their social media tasks. Another solution is to hire a social media marketing agency to run your marketing program
3. Effective Technology and Systems: technologies that could improve DTC sales would be a blog and a strategic social media marketing plan to engage with consumers on Facebook and Twitter. Placing laptops in the tasting rooms so consumers can directly fan your Facebook winery page or follow your Twitter account(s) creates a bridge from real world to online world.
4. “Acquiring Customers”: this challenge (lead generation) could be addressed with a DTC Twitter strategy in concert with a Facebook company page for customer relationship management
5. Marketing Tools: customer relationship management would be the role of a strategically implemented Facebook company page that engaged consumers and created “Call to Action” messaging.  Web analytic measurement tools could be implemented to measure each message delivered in specific channels including the blogosphere, Facebook, and Twitter for the messages relevance or effectiveness

Courtesy Twitter Wiki

What every business needs to know about Twitter is a list of the most important strategies and facts. Although many businesses have yet to adopt Twitter, unmoved by the paradigm shift in communications or frozen in fear of making mistakes that would be seen by their audience, Twitter is not going away. In fact those naysayers who are still unsure if social media, and Twitter in particular, is a passing fad are losing market share to their competitors in the new media space–the one replacing the old world of print advertising.

Strategies and Facts Every Business Needs to Know About Twitter

1. Microblogging: Twitter is the most powerful  micro-blogging platform in the world. As such each tweet is a mini version of a blog post
2. New Channel: Twitter is the new sales channel much like what businesses are used to in old school channels like email, mailers, and print advertising
3. Lead Generation: Twitter is a powerful lead generation tool
4. Delivery System: Twitter allows companies to deliver their messages of value via shortened url’s to their strategically targeted audience(s)
5. Listening Tool: Twitter allows companies to ease drop and listen to conversations about their brand, company, products, or services
6. Mobile: Mobile phone communications will dominate the way we communicate and Twitter is the perfect application for this real time sharing of information
7. Customer Service: Twitter is being used successfully by companies to solve customer service issues and maintain customer loyalty. Frank at Comcastcares is a fantastic example of how to use Twitter in this capacity
8. Search: Twitter is on the cutting edge of “real time” search. This is the added value of people searching and finding live conversations in progress about a brand. This methodology is seen as the next progression of Google search
9. Networking: Twitter allows professionals to network within their niche from the comfort of their home, office, laptop, or mobile device
10. Broadcasting: In a brilliant use of Twitter, the Scottsdale Police Dept. uses Twitter to broadcast APB, amber alerts, traffic news, tips on safety, homeowner association tips, local events, and community building events
11. Cog: Twitter is the lead generation “cog” in a well rounded social media marketing platform that includes a blog (centerpiece of all messages), Facebook (Customer Relationship Management) and Twitter
12. Reputation Management: Twitter, when monitored properly, will reveal instances where companies can step in with correct information or suggests that challenge erroneous information or reviews.
13. Caring: A company’s Twitter participation and engagement with consumers shows their  audience that the company cares about them enough to engage with them on “their” system of choice for communications–not the company’s old channel
14. Growth: According to Techcrunch.com in June 2009 Twitter received 44.5 million unique visits to the site with 20 million of the visits coming from the United States. Estimates range from 18 million to 20 million registered users by the end of 2009
15. Research: Twitter is a vast and vibrant research go-to source for information. The information links to articles is amazing and not to be dismissed
16. Internal Communications: Companies can use Twitter as an internal communications tool by locking their account through the “Protected Tweets” option. This environment could be utilized as a more vibrant version of email that is much quicker and able to host real time conversations. The goal is to save time and employee productivity by eliminating unwanted meetings
17. Crowdsourcing: Twitter allows companies to ask their consumers what they want in service, product, or policy changes. It also allows companies to mine their audience for new ideas
18. Competition: Twitter allows companies to monitor their competition by utilizing Twitter search of keywords relevant to their niche. Once the correct conversations are found, companies can RSS subscribe to these conversations and be notified of new developments
19. Tone & Etiquette: The tone of social media was built upon the idea that the hard sell sales tactics are dead. The best strategy for companies to sell their products is to stop selling their products, listen to conversations, and become the reliable trustworthy go-to source of important information to their audience of consumers
20. Case Study: Case studies are indicating that Twitter is a robust and viable channel for marketing and sales of products and services. The most impressive case study to date is Dell Computer’s DellOutlet which claims $3 million in sales from it’s Twitter efforts and a following (9-21-09) of 1,228,233 consumers

Thinking about launching a blog for your company? The first question I would ask you is this: What do you want your blog to do for you?

There are many benefits of blogging that I covered in a previous article Serious About Getting Hired: Get Blogging. Along with these benefits, consider what we believe is the most powerful benefit of all—your blog’s ability to gain Google ranking on your desired keywords and drive traffic to your company’s website.

We have talked to several companies who have expressed satisfaction with their keyword placement as a result of paid search engine optimization (SEO) services. While it is not our intention to discount such services, the reality is that you can achieve similar results organically through blogging techniques that leverage Google’s keyword indexing methodologies. Not all blog platforms can deliver this valuable SEO benefit, however. In fact, there is only one solution that does—hosting your blog on your website domain. We recommend the free Open Source software from Wordpress.

Why Host Your Own Blog?

Bloggers who publish from sub-domain blogging platforms such as Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress.com and others are unable to capture the Google ranking benefits because their articles are published and indexed by Google with a URL attached to the sub-domain. This will drive traffic to the sub-domain blog and not your website. While it is nice that your article got read, getting the reader to your website then becomes an obstacle to overcome.

Integrating the blog with your existing website can be as easy as adding a new navigational link from your website to the page which will hold your blog. Many third party developers have created Wordpress templates, also called themes, which can be customized with your website’s color scheme to create an almost seamless experience for your website visitors.

The True Web 2.0 Website

My business partner, Dean and I talk about Web 2.0 as being a revolution in the way that businesses communicate. Thankfully, it is a shift from the hard sell to giving value to those we connect with. In this spirit, many businesses, ours included, have made their website landing page their blog. For those who chose this route, Wordpress provides a low-cost, user friendly foundation from which to build out an entire Web 2.0 powered website.

Questions? Feel free to pose them in this space. We’re here to help.