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Is Google merging with Starbucks?

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:17:04 +0000

Google Caffeine

First there was the buzz and now the buzz is about caffeine-you would think there may be an angle… Forget all the buzz about Google Buzz. Google’s business is Internet search. Disregard their browser, operating system, and other frivolities; their main business is the Google Search Engine. So why, oh why did they reorganize their entire process of generating search results? In case you haven’t heard on Tuesday Google announced a new search index called Caffeine. Google claims that, with Caffeine, their search results will be “50 percent fresher” than with the legacy system. I know with my traditional caffeine searching typically feels fresher!
Of course by “fresher,” they mean more up to date or real-time. How will they do this? Let’s start by discussing how Google works. When you type a word or phrase into the Google search bar, Google doesn’t go out into the live internet to collect results, rather it references an index of the internet that it has already created. To create this giant index, Google sends out “spiders aka Googlebots” every so often to visit websites. The spiders will visit a website, read all the content, and follow all of the links. Then, depending on the keywords being searched and the content and links in a particular website, Google determines where to rank a website in the results. Google has a video that describes this concept better here.
In previous iterations, Google used to visit websites every couple weeks because the spiders would visit the entire web before starting over again. This led to problems like a new site not being indexed on Google at all for weeks just because Google hadn’t seen it yet. With Caffeine, Google sends out spiders more often to take on smaller chunks of the web to keep the index as up-to-date as possible.
Google’s update to more “real-time” search reflects the evolution of the Internet. Social media and blogs are now known as social marketing and there are even some self-declared social marketing experts out there. Updates on Twitter, posts to Facebook, and articles published on blogs have become the new ways to reach people on the Internet. Whether these posts are for business or social, Google wants to keep up with the social marketing trend and real-time search.
This leads me to the point which is the importance of social media as part of your overall integrated web strategy. If Google is redesigning their entire process of search to include social media and real-time updates, social media must really be important. I try to convince most of our clients to utilize Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, and their blogs to promote their business and direct potential customers to their website. Google’s opinion and directive carries a bit more weight than ours though!
The key take away: Use your Facebook, and Twitter presence to point people to your blog and website to show off your personality. Use You Tube and Flickr to highlight events, speaking engagements, and more importantly you and your company’s staff. Use LinkedIn to make connections with other professionals in your area and in your industry. The underlying goal of each of these social media sites is to point people to your website. Google is making it easier to connect the dots between the two worlds of traditional websites and new/social media. Hopefully I’ve been able to highlight why social media marketing is important. Now grab a cup of coffee and start Tweeting!

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Hey, Bud, you forgetting something? The Gekko phone call?

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:56:59 +0000

It’s the last day of the week and you’re already thinking about the beach, the barbeque, the baseball game, etc. –ad nauseum. You do it, I do it, heck we all do it. If you’re a marketer of any kind though you may be leaving more than 20% on the table if you don’t take the opportunity to reach out to clients and prospects during the much heralded TGIF. We’ve likely all read countless articles on which day is best to prospect. I’ve personally seen studies conducted by universities on the best day and hour to call. At the end of the day all of the data that’s analyzed is someone else’s, and bears very little relevance to you today.

In college I bet on a few football games and won, so I bet on a few more and lost-BIG. After winning the few that I did win a friend of mine suggested I read some book, the name of which escapes me, (likely selective amnesia) about football statistics. It had every variable you could imagine, on the road, during a short week, outdoors, on grass, under 40 degrees in December Team A has never failed to cover the spread 98.8% of the time. Guess what? They failed the Monday night I bet, and for some poor sap who read the next year’s version of that book in the hope that they would glean some secret insight to ensure their successful wager the number was probably 97.5% which while it sounds statistically significant, it still means nothing. What I learned is there are 22 guys on the field that are completely different than the 22 that played in any of the last 10 years worth of games they analyzed. All of whom make six to seven figures a year to play a game. All of whom have issues, injuries, etc. that we don’t know about. A center in a contract year might play with the flu, and get pushed around by another 300+lb guy for three hours that night like a shopping cart at Safeway, when the average office worker wouldn’t get out of bed to check his or her email.

My point is that while there are plenty of articles that will tell you that statistically Wednesday from 4pm to 5pm is the best time to make a call or send an email, unless you’re reading this on a Wednesday at 3:30pm the best time is now! And today is Friday. Before you leave to play golf, or have the celebratory lunch for a week well done-make five extra calls and send five extra emails. Don’t sell yourself, your career, or your company short. Who knows, maybe it will be your Bud Fox/Gordon Gekko moment? Happy Friday & happy selling!

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There’s no such thing as a dumb Social Media question…

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:58:30 +0000

If your company is using social media in 2010, it is vital that you have a strategy and plan in place that’s guiding your efforts. You will be much more successful, it will save you a ton of time and money since your efforts will be focused, and it will be much easier to measure the effectiveness and success of your campaigns.

So why don’t more people have a social media strategy in place? In most cases, they simply aren’t sure how to create said strategy. This post will hopefully help with this all too common problem. If your company is using social media and ‘winging it’ without a plan, please share this post internally. If you have friends that are trying to get social media efforts off the ground at their company, please pass this along to them. We will not see real growth from companies using social media until more of them get solid plans in place that are guiding their efforts.

Let’s get started on making that happen. Here is a framework for creating a social media strategy for your business. First, think about what you want to accomplish with social media. What are your goals? Here are some examples:

Build awareness for your company
Increase sales
Increase customer leads
Establish thought leadership
Use social media as a customer service platform
Provide product support for customers
Collect feedback on existing or potential products and services
Build a place where customer evangelists can connect

Second, think about who you want to reach. Is it current customers? Potential customers? Industry sources? Potential clients? Who is your ‘target market’? Creating a simple monitoring system will help you determine the answer to this question. By monitoring online mentions, you can get a good feel for where the online conversation about your company is happening, and how active it is. Want to jump on Twitter? What if no one on Twitter is talking about you? Monitoring will help you determine this. If you are a smaller business it’s probably fine to go with free tools such as Google Alerts and Twitter search, but if your business is larger or your strategy is more complex and you’re attempting to track multiple variables a more robust subscription based tool may be appropriate.

Third, what resources are you allocating for this endeavor? What’s your budget for social media? How many employees are available to work on your social media efforts? Will you have to outsource some of your efforts at the start? Will you have to outsource all of your efforts at the start? How much time can you devote to social media?

Answering these questions will determine in large part which tactics (blogs, Twitter, Facebook) are best for helping you achieve your social media strategy. Let me state this again-Getting on Twitter is NOT a social media strategy. Twitter is a tactic used to execute a social media strategy. You first need to answer the three questions above and then decide that Twitter is the right (or one of the right) tactics to help you achieve your goal(s) for social media.

So let’s say you’ve answered these three questions. Your goals are to use social media to build awareness and increase sales. That means you will primarily be targeting new and potential customers. Now let’s also factor in the answers from the third question about your resources.

On the surface, a goal of using social media as a way to build awareness for your business and increase sales sounds like a great opportunity for your business to launch a company blog. But a blog carries with it unique time and social media skill set requirements. That’s why you also need to factor in your resources. Do you have enough time and people available to ensure that the blog will regularly have fresh content available? Do you also have the people available to spend time connecting with readers and potential customers on and off your blog? If not, do you have the budget to outsource some or all of these efforts?

That’s why you must consider all three questions at once. And after you have answered these questions and now have your strategy in place, and have decided on the social media tactics you will use, now you have to figure out how to measure the effectiveness of your strategy. At this point, don’t blindly assume that more traffic or followers or friends is best. Make sure that the metrics you measure tie back to your social media goals. If your end goal for your blog is to sell more widgets, should you measure number of comments per post, or number of referrals from the blog to the widget product page on your website? Does it really matter that you have 10,000 followers on Twitter, if only 10 of them are potential customers?

Put your metrics on trial. Make sure that whatever you measure makes sense in the context of what you are trying to accomplish with social media. More traffic is great, but what actions are those visitors performing once they arrive at your blog or message board? If you are adding 100 fans a week to your Facebook page and still can attribute no additional sales from Facebook fans, so what? (BTW this opens another can of worms, but it could be that your Facebook fans are driving sales, but you don’t know that because you aren’t tracking them correctly or at all)

At the end of the day, you have to have a strategy guiding your social media efforts. And I know that some CEOs hear the term ’social media strategy’ and immediately get nervous because they think it means a lot of $$ and a big commitment. What it means that you are going to organize your social media efforts and make them more efficient. Just because an intern got you on Twitter and Facebook doesn’t mean you need to be on either site.

Once you get a strategy in place, you’ll save time and money. You have a strategy driving your other marketing efforts, why should what you are doing with social media be any different? As always, your thoughts questions and questions are always welcome.

Why Social Media? Word-0f-Mouth is now Word of Mouse! Social Networking has always...

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3 Steps to improve customer engagement-our operators are standing by

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 03:07:51 +0000

Collecting customer feedback is vital to learning how well your brand reaches, engages, and resonates with your customers. Unfortunately, most companies fail miserably to both collect and effectively respond to customer feedback.

Think about the last time you made a complaint or suggestion to a big company like AT&T or Comcast. Did you get a lame response like “Thank you, we’ll take your feedback under consideration?” I had an issue with AT&T personally a few months ago and had to research them and track them down to engage-lesson learned Comcast Cares, but AT&T not so much!

It’s not enough to simply say you’re listening, or give a scripted response. You actually have to mean it. Then, you have to prove it by taking concrete actions to address the feedback in a timely manner.

Here are 3 steps to help you to improve how you listen and respond to your customers:

1. Collect direct and indirect feedback

First, collect as much feedback as you can. Feedback comes in two forms: direct and indirect.

Direct feedback is what customers are saying about your company directly to you. To encourage direct feedback:

Make your email address and phone number easy-to-find
Answer your phone using a live person
Respond to every real email and voicemail you get
Provide a blog/forum on your website for customer feedback
Conduct a focus group or user study about your offerings
Participate on social networks such as Facebook and Yelp

Indirect feedback is what customers are saying about your company to other people. To learn what others are saying, you can:

Google yourself/your brand
Check reviews of your company on Yelp
Read blogs that likely to cover your business
Monitor your product reviews on Amazon
Search Twitter for tweets about your business

When collecting feedback, catalog each issue in some form of a database. It can be as simple as a journal, a set of index cards, or a spreadsheet. It could also be as complex as a bug-tracking application. Remember, be prepared for criticism and accept them readily. DO NOT ignore negative feedback.

2. Analyze the feedback

Once you collect enough feedback, you’ll start to notice patterns: the same complaints and feedback will appear over and over again. Organize these issues together and create a list of the top concerns. These are your “high priority” issues list and will keep you on focused on the biggest customer issues and problems. Categorize the remaining issues into “medium priority” and “low priority.”

3. Implement change

Once you have a prioritized list of customer complaints, it’s time to address each issue one by one by making real changes.

Begin with the high priority issues and think back to your company or product positioning statement. Make changes that meet your customers’ needs while staying true to your positioning. Remember, you can’t be all things to all people. Your goal is not to add every feature requested by every customer. Your goal is to improve the overall customer experience of your target audience.

Once you’ve made significant changes, it’s important to communicate them to your customers. They won’t always notice. You can tell them about changes in many forms:

an email
a tweet
a personal phone call
a blog post
a web page update

Communicating changes to your customers completes the feedback loop. It shows you’ve listened to their suggestion, considered the problem, and implemented a change to improve their overall experience.

These are just a few quick steps. For more specific examples please feel free to contact us at info@agency323.com. Also please do share how you’re managing your customer engagement. What’s working for you?

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8 Ways to get more out of LinkedIn

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:56:33 +0000

Most of us are on professional networking platforms such as LinkedIn. These networks have quickly become a directory for employers, customers, friends, foes etc to look you up. Make sure you optimize your visibility, allowing you to be next up for a promotion, pay increase or even a new job opportunity altogether. The following are 8 (3, 2, and 3) more ways to get more out LinkedIn.

1. Fill out all the profile information

This is really simple but can be time consuming, but think about it-would you hire someone who didn’t take the time to complete the “application”? Put as much details on your profile as you can, including work experience, education, relevant associations, hobbies etc. HR people and recruiters use LinkedIn for candidate searching and they do it by key words. Make sure you put relevant buzz words and lots of industry jargon on there. The location is very important as well, as recruiters look for potential candidates close to the client’s site first.

2. Add a photo

Place a face to a name. Everyone has at least one good photo of themselves, make sure it goes up. If you really don’t have one, put your company logo or something else up to make it personalized.

3. Connect early and often

Make a habit out of asking to connect with people you deal with on a daily basis, as you never know when these close contacts will come in handy. Furthermore, try to connect to as many customers as possible, in order to create more awareness and to sell yourself rather than your product or service.

4. Get Involved in groups and discussions

This is essential if you want to keep a high profile. This means you will ask questions, answer questions, link up news articles and other relevant information and you could even moderate a group. If you add value to others, you will be noticed by people in your industry. Just remember that you need to keep a healthy balance between online presence and actually doing your work, you don’t want to be seen wasting work time on LinkedIn.

5. Get Recommendations

Having other professionals vouch for you is very powerful. People to ask are your counterparts (i.e. your customer or supplier), colleagues, your manager and even friends if it is relevant. Some employers who will not consider applications from individuals with anything less than 10 recommendations on LinkedIn. Getting people to do this for you is not difficult, it is all about timing – the time to ask is just when you have done somebody a favor.
Research people. Use LinkedIn to your advantage and always check up on the recruiter you work with, hiring managers in the company and even potential future colleagues. You can bet your bottom dollar that they are doing the same.

6. Check out a perspective Company’s Stats and Trends

On the company pages you can find out what a company does, how many people they employ, how many connected employees etc. For instance, you can see if they have hired or fired recently as well as where these people came from/went to. If you see a wave of professionals jumping ship, you might want to reconsider that offer.

7. Personalize your LinkedIn page

There is an option of making your public profile have your name in the URL. For instance, instead of www.linkedin.com/67w84rj322wef09 you can change it to www.linkedin.com/in/johndoe. Be aware that this is also open to Google and other search engines, as it becomes your public profile which is accessible outside of LinkedIn.

8. Use Applications

Applications, this is slightly more advanced but basically means plugins to your LinkedIn experience just like a app on your iPhone. You can browse through these and find the ones relevant to you. If you travel on business, there is an application called Tripit that tells your connections where you are. If you are a keen reader, there is a reading list from Amazon and if you are a blogger, there is an application allowing you to post directly to LinkedIn.

Conclusion

Utilizing some of these tips may help you in your current job as well as open you up to new ideas and opportunities. Good luck and happy networking!

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You Need 20:20 Vision in Today’s Hospitality Market

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:33:16 +0000

guest post by Jon Davey

The single biggest reason given by all small businesses in relation to boosting their online profile is time… there is never enough! I would argue that you need to make the time. Failure to do so is missing a huge potential business opportunity and the bigger picture.   To make this palatable to the smaller hotel, where the owner is probably the person who will have to take on the role of online promoter, I have come up 20:20 Vision… this can also be applied to larger establishments…

20 Days
20 Minutes
20 Customers

How effective your online marketing campaign is will be directly related to the competition in your area offering a similar service and their level of engagement online. Whether you get 2, 20 or 222 customers from the activity is down to you taking some action in the first place.   If I suggest a 20 minute task for you to do Monday to Friday for around 1 month then if you find it is working for you, you’ll keep on going, working out your own way of doing things… if it’s not working then I would suggest it’s likely your only doing 2 minutes and giving up far too easily!

Do you have a domain name, a web address? What is the name of your establishment? How many rooms do you have? What does your average customer look like? Your first web address should be as logical as possible… the name of your property… additional domains can / should be purchased as ideally, you want to be taking up as many of the top 5 spots directly relating to the top search strings that people are actually using.
Are you a B&B, guest house, hotel or conference centre? Use Google search based Key word tool http://www.google.com/sktool/ or http://www.wordtracker.com to find the top key phrases for your establishment. Then buy a few domains, not too many, there is always danger that you’ll get bored and not use them. Just buy what you can realistically manage in house or afford to outsource.
Build a website using a current, up to date content management system. You can build the foundations of a website very quickly using a CMS. You may commission a designer to create a template and then a web chap to load up the template into the CMS. You can then add content easily and add in any key words that you feel are appropriate.
Write the content for the home page. You need 250 words or more for the home page that introduces you to your potential customer. The content should contain the main key phrase for this site around 3 times and should ideally start with the main key phrase. If you have a blog function with your CMS you may opt to have the blog as the home page as you move forward… this will depend on you adding fresh content regularly!
Highlight your establishment’s main feature. If you are dog friendly, or have a conference suite, have themed rooms, etc… What makes you stand out from the crowd? Write an article, 250 words to celebrate this.
What are the main tourist attractions in your area? Use the search tools mentioned in point 2 and bring in the Google Wheel for a spin. You can find this in the options menu, directly under the search box after you’ve done your search on Google. Here you can find it using the word hotel in the search box
Write an article about the main tourist attraction. How close you are, if you can offer a special deal, what you think of it…
Why would a business person use your establishment? For a stopover or use your rooms for seminars? Easy access to M4, local road networks, trains, etc. Write that piece…
What local websites allow you to add your details? Is this free or paid. If you pay, what extra do they give you… a CMS which allows you to update their site with your latest events, offers, etc…
National sites for hotel venues & other specialist sites. Establish which ones fit your market budget or you pay on results and get listed. Use the above copy, combine paragraphs and post on these sites.
Build your email database. Enable site visitors to sign up for more information. Send out regular emails… mixing business, pleasure and personal… people deal with people!
Are you tuned into Google alerts? Google picks up local news which they will deliver to your inbox daily. Sign up at http://www.google.com/alerts
Check your alerts, pick a story and write an article. Publish on your site and it may get picked up by a local journalist which could take your take to another level, boosting your profile. It also shows you are in tune with what is going on in your community.
Go set up a Facebook account. Millions use Facebook to connect with friends which means they know how to use the toolkit. Asking them to posts something on your “wall” will mean their pals will see it and so you’ll be on their radar should your location or venue type be needed
Create groups on Linkedin. Linkedin allows you to create multiple groups and attract liked minded business men and women into your world. Might be useful…
Connect with local networks and community groups. If you are in the business market then working with local networking groups makes a lot of sense. Similarly, if you’re a family venue, having links to local community groups and venues, has value.
Push out an RSS News Feed. Allow other websites to use your content via RSS Feeds.
Go and add your establishment to Google Maps. Create a virtual tour on Google Earth.
Raise an invoice! Say hello to guests you may never have met had you not done the above!!
Evaluate which bits are working. Do more of what: you enjoy; appears to be working; takes you in the direction you’d like to go in; makes good business sense…

When you’re doing some of this and want to step things up to a whole new level then give us a call…

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Networking has never been so important

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:25:30 +0000

guest post by Laura Bell

Networking no longer means scheduling power breakfast or dinner meetings. In fact, you probably don’t have to move out of your seat in front of your computer. You would have to have been hiding in a monastery to have missed the new rage of Social Networking.

There are so many social networks that I can’t imagine the numbers. With my own networking, I get constant invitations to join others. The membership numbers on the majors: Linkedin., Ecademy and Facebook are mind blowing. That doesn’t include You Tube or Twitter. The latter two deal more with social issues rather than finding your next position.

There are topics of interest when you login to Linkedin. It amounts to who is discussing what. You scratch your head. I need a job. My mortgage is about to be foreclosed. I don’t have time for this. Questions and answers on Linkedin, allows you to put your expertise out for millions to spot. You may get a job or consulting offer simply based on an answer you write. You may also create a signature line to end your answers with. A signature line (sig line) can list your website, a list of your professional skills and how to get in touch. A very nifty calling card.

The one major opportunity all three have in common is groups. Mind you many networks call them something different. Ecademy refers to them as clubs. They all serve the same purpose as forums did in the past for other online platforms. You can post messages/discussions you wish others to read and add comments to. You can, on Linkedin, post that you are looking for more work/consulting or a full time job. After joining a forum, every time there has been a new message posted, you will receive an email update.

Mass mailings are allowed on Linkedin to your contacts. The system constantly advises you to increase your network. Do you have old classmates or colleagues that may be a part of the system that you haven’t heard from in years? This is the time to connect. When signing up, send out invites to all those who may have a desire to join. The more you are active on any of the networks, the more invitations you will receive from others who are impressed by your comments. It doesn’t matter if you really know them or not. (Although Linkedin, constantly reminds you not to join with those you don’t know.) Once a need for a mass mailing comes up, you can send the same note to all of your connections, as well, of course, to the general population. You can’t think of a reason for this? How about: I need an expert to help me with my mortgage, I need some more consulting work in my expertise, I just lost my job, know any recruiters who work in my area? As you get started, you will think of others.

If you are thinking of: opening a new business, need to expand the business you have, need additional employees, need a consultant, want to just brainstorm, you will find help in one or all of the social networks. Some recruiters use this media as their preferred method of recruiting. There could be job postings out there right now that you are missing out on because you haven’t jumped aboard the social networking bandwagon.

It’s quite painless. There are free accounts on all of these networks. If you want to be very aggressive with your messaging and postings, then you will find the need to pay for more access. I haven’t had the problem of feeling limited yet. If you have thought about it or heard about it and wondered what it was all about, it’s time to jump in. I can’t imagine anyone who can’t benefit from this great networking tool.

I most add a cautionary note. When it comes to platforms on the Internet, they can be very addictive. Don’t find yourself spending hours here without reaping the rewards you were seeking when starting out Be patient and wait for those email updates.

Happy networking.

8 Ways to get more out of LinkedIn Most of us are on professional networking platforms such...

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We work hard-so you don’t have to!

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:04:49 +0000

Remember the product? It worked hard so you didn’t have to. Simply squirt some in “the bowl” and voila-sparkling clean in minutes without the elbow grease and quite frankly gross task that makes anyone but Adrian Monk long for a live in house cleaner.

What do scrubbing bubbles have to do with marketing? Everything. If you can illicit the same demand for your product by illustrating how effective it is at eliminating an undesirable task that your perspective customer doesn’t have the time, desire, or stomach for then half the battle is won. The other half, and where many marketers fall short, is in A. Reaching their target audience with their message, and B. providing a clear and compelling call to action.

If your marketing message is poorly packaged, and/or poorly delivered, then chances are it will be poorly received. Or, to put it bluntly-you’ll miss your projections, targets, and goals for market share and revenue. As far as a “marketing in bottle” elixir that you can simply apply …it doesn’t exist. If it did agencies like ours wouldn’t. If you would however like someone to do the messy, dirty, and undesirable marketing work you’ve been avoiding for far too long, and you’re worried the smell and stain on your old campaign may be permanent-give us a call and we’ll work hard-so you don’t have to! Incidentally, I do know a great company that does bathrooms….

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Consistent Activity Leads to Consistent Results

admin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:17:14 +0000

So I’m running the other day and it starts pouring on me 1/10 of a mile into the run. Anyone who’s ever lived in the South in September will tell you-it can be 105 degrees one day and 70 and raining the next. Not just regular West Coast California rain, which is very similar to those theme park misters they have in long lines at Disneyland to keep you cool while you wait 2 hours for a 2 minute roller coaster. I’m talking about table spoon size drops that come fast, hard, and sometimes sideways.

Back story

I’m at an appointment with @Chrisandersonis about a year ago at the St David’s North Austin Medical Center. The receptionist tells us to take the stairs, because they’re “quicker” and points to a door about 10 feet away. Not for nothing, but how often do you really take an elevator that’s slower than walking up eight flights of stairs?

Long story even longer, we get to the top floor with our laptop bags and suits like we’re doing a tag team interview, and we both take that exaggerated sigh after the last step-“whew”. I turn to Mr. Anderson (ten years my junior) and say I’m old, with three kids, and spend the whole day sitting behind a desk , I’m supposed to be in bad shape-what’s your story? He proceeds to tell me that he “runs all the time, but stairs are different”-yada, yada, yada. I reply, how often do you run? And I’ll never forget his response: “I once ran 477 days in a row”. He wasn’t putting me on. It turns out there is a site www.runeveryday.com and you become a member of this running group by running everyday for a minimum of one mile, without stopping, without missing a day-for a minimum of 365 days.

The Point

Many years ago a great friend, boss, and mentor of mine Ric Torres told me consistent activity leads to consistent results. I’ve never forgotten that. Whatever you do whether it’s getting in shape, making sales calls, or marketing your brand, product or service online-consistent efforts will yield better and more consistent results. Certainly there is the caveat that you have to have the other three P’s of the marketing mix, but even a mediocre product (or service), poorly priced, with less than perfect placement will yield better results with consistent promotion.

Social Media Marketing, not unlike traditional marketing requires commitment. You must execute a plan which may consist of a number of different campaigns, tactics, and strategies over the course of the year. In Social Media you have to dedicate resources (time and/or money) year in and year out moving forward period. There is no “single effort activity” like a Superbowl commercial in social media, because it’s about building relationships and brand equity over time.

Coca Cola is the most recognized brand on the planet and depending on your information source they spend between 5%-12% of their annual earnings on marketing, and Microsoft spends upwards to 20%. Why? To gain and retain market share and dominate their competitors and they do perennially.

Since few companies have Fortune 50 resources to throw at marketing – Social Media can help level the playing field. I’m sure you’ve read about how Dell drove over a million dollars in revenue through Twitter in 2008 as it was well documented and Tweeted. What we should all take from that is the solace that we have at our disposal the same Social Media tools to market our own respective brands.

If you take the time and effort to consistently execute some of the same best practice tactics the big brands are using-you will get results. If you consistently save (spend less than you earn) you’ll accumulate wealth. If you consistently exercise, you’ll be in better shape. This works both ways mind you- If you consistently spend more than you earn (see also US Economy), consistently eat McDonald (see also Supersize Me), or consistently avoid marketing your business you will get consistently bad results.

BTW-Tomorrow is Day 224 in a row running for me-rain or shine.

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and price is not always the issue!

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:57:38 +0000

So my daughter launched her first start-up venture during the past few weeks-Makenzie’s babysitting. While this may seem like a “right of passage” for every young lady, like the paper route was for young men 100 years ago when I was a boy-and people read newspapers, it is a perfect case study on Word Of Mouth Marketing.

We all talk about it, blog about it, and tweet about it, but I witnessed the most effective grass roots marketing campaign ever during the month of September-and the months not over yet. Within hours after announcing her free-agent status, she not only got her first gig – but she had neighbors coming by to discuss her availability. Side note-price was never an issue! Makenzie doesn’t have a marketing plan, published rates, heck she doesn’t even have her own phone line in her room (which she doesn’t need as she can make it from anywhere within a 30 yard radius of our house to the kitchen phone in ¼ of a ring), but what she does have is the most effective weapon in a marketers arsenal-a MOM.

Women in general, but moms specifically are pound for pound the best word of mouth marketers on the planet. They generate ridiculous amounts of targeted traffic which converts at (in our example) 100%. When a mom tells another mom about a product or service, that endorsement is GOLD.

We’ve all witnessed it at some point in our lives when two women get together and woman number one says to woman number two “what a cute ________( <–insert any clothing item here)”. To which woman number two provides the following unsolicited information: “This? I got it at ABC company for only $1.67).

It is a mystery to me why woman number two feels compelled to share the post sales tax price with woman number one every time whether they’re related or just met, but that’s not the point, and what I don’t know about women could fill a warehouse.

The point is if you have a brand, product, or service that markets to women between the ages of 8 to 80 and you’re not engaging in a strategy that can leverage their WOM prowess-you’re missing the boat!

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