You are here: Home / 2009 / Archives for August 2009
Aug 27

Marketing Campaigns that Spread Themselves

August 27, 2009 • 10 Comments • Meet People in Austin

You know these people. They go to every social media conference. They write books on the subject and speak and get interviewed constantly about it. They network CONSTANTLY and rant about companies that don’t “get it”.

Guess what? They don’t get it because a bunch of people sitting around talking about social media is pretty lame. This is why I never have random tweetups unless there is an actual topic of conversation. It just makes life infinitely more interesting. I also like to promote things *gasp* outside of Twitter, and to people who wouldn’t even think to use such tools.

The cornerstone of every good social media campaign is a message. I am lucky to have learned this from Whurley, who was tweeting before you were knee-high to a grasshopper (well, not really, but he’s been on Twitter for a long time). If you are new to social media or just want a little inspiration, I suggest listening tothis podcast he’s in.

Marketing isn’t about meeting everyone and going to every conference and writing every book on a topic. It’s about sharing your voice and your message with others, and then hearing theirs. If done properly, even an old school TV advertisement can be something customers can embrace and actually champion. If you don’t have a brand or a message people want to share, you will be working a lot harder than you need to reach people.

Rather than go on and on about this for ages, I’m just going to show you three examples of brands that are easy to share:
1.) Hugh MacLeod’s “Microsoft Blue Monster”
Good branding turns into a tattoo
If you can’t tell, that is a tattoo of a cartoon Hugh did for Microsoft. Someone got a tattoo of a marketing campaign. I’ve heard of Apple tattoos as well. Now bear in mind that the first prerequisite to getting your brand tattooed on their ankle is to not suck as a company which is a bit out of marketing’s hands, but having a symbol that people can proudly share with others is key.

2.) Icanhazcheeseburger and the notorious lolcat
Tons of people can talk about building a community. Ben Huh and the gang at Pet Holdings Inc. just do it by uniting people around funny content. You know you have a happy community of users when someone gets this license plate:
This is when you know your brand rocks

3.) Amy’s Ice Cream
2009-01-10 13:44:12 -0600
I actually take pictures of their street signs and tweet them. I posted this pic to Flickr and it was viewed almost 300 times and favorited three times. It’s a tip jar. Rather than containing her employees, Amy lets them have fun with the place. They flip your ice cream like Tom Cruise in “Cocktail” and crack jokes. I know Amy’s Ice Cream is expensive for what it is but I don’t care. The experience, which in part includes the marketing, makes it a place you want to take your friends and family to.

A good brand is a thing of joy you give to someone so they can share with others. It says something people aren’t already hearing and fills a void.

10 Comments
Aug 26

Is Your Company’s Social Media Campaign Merely Gilded?

August 26, 2009 • 4 Comments • Social Media and Society

rottensocialmedia
When we think of the poster child for social media, we think of Zappos. The online department store (yes, it’s beyond shoes) puts all of their employees on Twitter and openly shows off its culture online. Apparently it paid off, because it caught the attention of Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who bought Zappos for $928 million.

I’m not a Zappos customer, but I do applaud them for putting their employees on Twitter. Why? Because if I buy something from them, I know I’m not supporting a dysfunctional company that has one person who actually bothers with Facebook and Twitter and 100 people who are miserable because their boss doesn’t respect them.

While I would actually handle their campaign a bit differently by actually accentuating the fun of buying new clothes and shoes and hiring people who understand this, there is no argument: it is easy to wrap your head around what kind of company Zappos is. When we enter a business and see a bunch of miserable teenagers who don’t care to answer our questions, we assume the owner has no pride in his or her business. When we walk in and see a bunch of people who are passionate about what they do, it tends to rub off on us. We focus on the quality of goods and services versus just the price.

The online space is no different. When we see a company Twitter page, we assume they went to some social media seminar or saw it on CNN and decided to give it a whirl. We don’t assume that a company is ethical or actually has good products. When we see that other employees happily use their Twitter feeds and associates their online identity with the company, we can get a clearer picture about how that company works.

Mark my words: the companies that see the greatest ROI by using social media will be the ones who focus on providing the best service instead of getting the most followers or being seen standing next to Jeremiah Owyang. We don’t care if you are social media famous– we care if we get value by using your goods and services. By listening and valuing our customers whether it’s via social media, the phone, or in person, we can foster sustainable brands that will always survive in the future.

4 Comments
Aug 20

Bowing Out of Twestival Local (Sorry, Folks)

August 20, 2009 • 8 Comments • Meet People in Austin

I had a big evil plan put in place for Twestival. I had Stephen from SureFire Promotions plotting music with with the awesome people from Do512.com. I had Drupal developers EmpoweredBy who built a sweet fundraising leaderboard for me and a logo by Dieter Erik von Schramm. After some issues coordinating with non-profits and volunteers, I’m going to have to bow out of this Twestival.

Why would you do that, Michelle? You crushed our dreams.
1.) I had a blast coordinating the last one, but I do think it took it out of me and I wasn’t able to deliver to my clients. Supporting non-profits is a good thing, but so is delivering to your customers. So is making a ton of money so you can pay lots of taxes and generate jobs. If there is anything I want more in the world right now, it’s a client or a full-time gig that lets me do what I do best, which is leveraging the online space to take care of and empower customers so they remain forever loyal to a company. I am tired of good companies not making it and tired of seeing people being laid off. I have a good amount of experience in both hardware and software marketing, and believe this is the best place for my energies to go.

I also found that volunteers were a bit stressed as they had full-time gigs too.

2.) I was unable to hand this to a non-profit who could see it through. Apparently that is against the nature of Twestival. I do not understand this, as the biggest shareholder in a Twestival Local taking off is the non-profit itself. I would think they could make it the most successful.

3.) I found that the non-profits I pursued had their own events coordinated, so I did not want to detract from their efforts by contributing to “cause fatigue”. People only have a finite amount of time and energy. The more events we have, the less time we can spend working, supporting non-profits’ ongoing efforts, or just chilling out.

If you are bummed about this, I’ll gladly pass the torch and give you my blessing if I feel that you are doing it for the right reasons. I genuinely don’t care how big or small you make it, so long as you are doing it because you are compelled to make a difference.

8 Comments
Aug 17

How the Real Time Web Will Naturally Sort the Weak from the Strong

August 17, 2009 • 2 Comments • Social Media and Society

Real time web. Mention it at a tech function and you will all of a sudden sound smarter. A lot of people are talking about the real time web happening, but few are mentioning what it will do when it’s in full force.

The real time web in Twitter search and whatever search Facebook decides to build with the FriendFeed guys, changes the game for everything. Even Google seems to reward fresher content with its new Caffeine update. It means essentially that a dissatisfied customer can drop a bomb on you and watch in splendor as it trends in Twitter, in Facebook search, and possibly lists high in Google. It means that one trend can swell to be very big and then die just as quickly. The fact that Google will be more dynamic and Facebook will probably have FriendFeed’s search capabilities means that it will be easier than ever to find what people are currently saying on the web.

Why am I just now blogging about the real time web when ReadWriteWeb covered it earlier this year? Because the only former “real time web” search platforms were Twitter and FriendFeed. Relative to the rest of the web, these are influential but still very obscure services. You can’t use FriendFeed to find reviews of local restaurants or find out the latest football scores. Google is the #1 most used website on the web and Facebook is now #4. That’s a lot of content to index. We will see more perspectives on a range of topics (welcomed or not) than we will have ever seen in the history of mankind.

It’s looking like any one of Facebook’s 250 million plus users will be able to log into his phone and blast a negative or positive review of your business. Then, that review can easily be found by people all over the world by a simple Facebook search. Are you ready for that?

2 Comments
Aug 11

Does Your Web Presence Get People to “Respect Your Authoritah”?

August 11, 2009 • Leave a Comment • Online Marketing

authoritae

It’s very frustrating to know a company’s website or web presence doesn’t convey benefits to customers. Anyone can write, but saying you are a competent copywriter without practice or training is like thinking you can be in the NBA because you can dribble a basketball and you are standing on a court. If your competitor has the equivalent of Kobe Bryant driving up the lane with copy that actually sells, are you going to be able to hack it?

Copyblogger was one of the first blogs I read. I found the author Brian Clark’s writing to be both entertaining and informative. If you have or want any sort of web presence at all, I’d recommend reading his free e-book Authority Rules. It’s a quick read but very worthwhile.

Leave a Comment
Aug

Why Facebook’s Acquisition of FriendFeed is Culturally Significant

August 11, 2009 • 19 Comments • Social Media and Society

Today, Facebook acquired the social network aggregator FriendFeed. Some people on Twitter didn’t understand why I cared. Here’s why:

I have done everything I can to make social networks “user friendly” and mainstream. I don’t WANT tweetups to be cliquish and I have never tried to exclude my circle to just people who have a lot of followers. Whether it was the Blood Drive Tweetup, Twestival, a NameCheap contest, a GeekAustin meetup or another one of my social networking exploits, I’ve always tried to provide incentive for people who normally considered social networking incestuous and lame to try it out. People meet and then actually have something to talk about besides social networking.

Most people groan when you mention another social network. They’ve built their contacts and they don’t intend to spend all of their time rebuilding a network. When someone mentioned FriendFeed, I did the same thing. But then I saw how easy it makes organizing your contacts and how it facilitates conversation across social networking lines. FriendFeed is an aggregator of social networks. People who post on Flickr or YouTube can easily communicate with people who like Twitter without sacrificing the functionality they like. That’s the beauty of an aggregator like FriendFeed–it allows you to see the sum of the parts without having to tear them apart or jumble them into an unusable mess.

Bloggers like Robert Scoble and Louis Gray like FriendFeed for the chatting and real-time search capabilities. You can search a topic on FriendFeed and it will comb through any content from any network, so long as that person uses FriendFeed. Again, very awesome.

Here’s the issue though–very few people actually used it, and those who did were social media early adopters. So it was easy to fall in love with the platform, but the community itself was very limited. This limits the amount of useful data someone like Scoble would get for search, and it means I can’t really follow all the people I would want to follow because they are too busy being interesting and not setting up social networks like FriendFeed.

Steve Rubel pointed out that lifestreaming is finally going “mainstream” by this acquisition. This is my favorite part. Instead of having networks of Twitter users or network of Flickr groups, we can have groups that are united not by their platform of choice, but by their ideas. After all, most people who use social networks do indeed use Facebook. If FriendFeed’s capabilities are integrated into Facebook (which they can be already but most people don’t do), someone who takes pictures of Iran and posts them to Flickr can easily find and track a blogger from the region via Facebook. One artist can post a YouTube video of him playing a Beatles song, and another can put up a blog post of himself singing the same song. A simple FriendFeed search of the title connects them both. Facebook has essentially taken out the 400 pound gorilla that is actually marketing a social network for FriendFeed.

Will this be an issue for the security of our data? If enough people complain, they will change, because there is always the threat that someone like Google will come along and do it better.

19 Comments
Aug 05

Why “The Oprah Effect” Can Trump “Free!”

August 5, 2009 • 1 Comment • Online Marketing

I don’t watch the Oprah. Maybe this makes me callous because I’m a woman and therefore am supposed to, but I can live with that.

As a marketer, I LOVE the Oprah. Oprah is a landmark. She is the only person who can legitimately be afraid of beef and then gets sued for it. Oprah’s endorsement has sparked careers (see Jill Scott and Barack Obama), sparked new martini crazes, and books like The Secret. Oprah’s blessing on your brand is basically money in the bank, and well, I think she knows that.

WHY is Oprah’s endorsement so powerful? Because it’s genuine. When Oprah recommends her favorite things, they actually are her favorite things at that time. People don’t have to figure out if she has ulterior motives or not and they know she doesn’t need the money. She’s also not doing it as a favor to someone else.

So all this talk of “Free!” being the new economy. I admit, free can and does work. I’m not telling you to ignore Chris Anderson’s book because I haven’t read it although I’m a bit afraid of the hype (that goes out to Seth Godin). The hardest part of getting customers is acquisition and if you reduce the barrier it takes for customers to get to you, they are more likely to use you. But “Free!” is not and will not be a savior. If you give me something for free and it sucks, I will not only not use it again, I will tell my friends not to use it either. Or I’ll tell them, “Hey, it’s not bad for being free, but I wouldn’t pay for it”. You can fix it to be better, but you’ve already given me the first impression that you aren’t the best out there. Why would I get burned again by even spending the time to listen to your “Hey, we fixed it” pitch? My time is my money and you’ve already burned me once.

So back to what I deem “the Oprah Effect”. Oprah is genuine and she is powerful. Her viewers know that she is picky and intelligent, so she has basically sorted through the crap (free or not) to show them ONLY things that are good. So sight unseen, free or not, they will buy what she recommends to them in droves. If you are a competitor to this product, people won’t care if your product is free if it isn’t good.

A truly genuine endorsement from an intelligent and powerful person will trump something that is merely free every time. The only way to get an endorsement is to create something people like and then ask them to spread the word. If you are launching something for free that sucks, admit in your marketing that you are looking for feedback. Let people shape your brand to make it not suck. Grandfather those people in at free for helping you out, and start charging for the product.

THEN get on Oprah. Or if you can’t get on Oprah, get on the equivalent of your Oprah in your specialty field. Or make customers feel like Oprah for recommending you. That’s for you to decide.

1 Comment
Aug 03

Are You Empowering Your Organization to Use Social Media Effectively?

August 3, 2009 • 2 Comments • Twitter

social media cheerleader

Your PR team reads books and articles with titles like “Social Media for PR”. Your marketing team reads “Social Media for Marketing”. HR reads “Social Media for HR”. The developers or tech support teams may not be involved on purpose. Everyone gets stuck in their little worlds about what social media is for and what their role is.

Guess what? Your customers don’t see these roles as clear as you do. They see “This person works for Company X and therefore should be able/willing to solve my problem in some way”. That’s it.

Think of blogs, Twitter, etc. as hyperconnected cell phones. Anyone can find your number or where to find you. So if are in marketing mode and someone pings you on Twitter saying your technical support team dismissed their problem too soon, it doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Why? Because you could wake up, check your Google Alerts, and then find a nasty blog post pop up that not only mentions that your rep was bad, but that YOU are bad for ignoring their plea for help. All you had to do was tweet, “Please DM me your ticket number and I’ll have someone look into it.”

Having people in your organization on Twitter or blogging without connecting them to every part of your organization is like putting someone on a company phone system but not allowing them to transfer or even see the phone numbers of other people they work with. The more you advertise their phone numbers, the more issues you will face and the more you will look like a big jerk for not giving your social media team the information they need to help customers.

You aren’t in control of how you use social media–your audience is. They will use it for sales questions, bizdev questions, HR questions, tech support, or whatever random use pops in their head. They will use it to complain about you publicly. It’s great to think of social media engagement as a means for consumers to shape your brand, but it’s key to get your head out of the clouds and to be realistic. I as a consumer could care less about shaping your brand. I want your product or service to do what it is supposed to do for me in the most efficient way possible. Is your organization set up so that employees using social media can do this?

Here’s an example of how meetup.com angered my friend Dave Delaney by not having a specific crucial feature. Dave warned people of meetup.com, and then a Meetup VP actually reached out to Dave via email and phone. Could your social media team respond to this, or are they just pushing out smiley faces?

The lack of constraints involved with social media can give you a lot of freedom. There is also a lot of responsibility involved with that as well. In order to maintain a good reputation, it is crucial to give the kind of service that helps you earn that reputation. You aren’t going to be able to make this happen if your team members don’t even realize your social media people exist.

2 Comments