In a social media world everyone is a content producer- even your business
April 30, 2008
Throughout history their have been gatekeepers to the media space. If you didn’t pay up you didn’t have any access. Business was completely at the whim of organized media to get their messages out to large audiences. That mindset has become ingrained into standard business practice so thoroughly that even today businesses focus almost exclusively on traditional advertising.
Why is that remarkable?
Because the gatekeepers haven’t blocked the internet yet. Anyone with an internet connection and something to say has access to large audiences of people without the constraints that traditional advertising has.
So why haven’t businesses jumped in and taken advantage of this opportunity?
Good question. When you figure it out please tell me. The ability to directly reach your prospects in numerous forms of media is ground breaking. It’s like free money for life. In the digital age everyone is their own media outlet.I think what holds businesses back from taking full advantage of web 2.0 are three things:
1) Fear of losing control of their message.
2) A lack of knowledge and understanding of the medium.
3) Fear of giving away too much information.
Fear of losing control is understandable, but online, rational minds prevail when you are honest and forthright. Sure there are bad apples, but its a small price to pay to engage so many people. Being online and under the watchful eye of your audience can make you a better company. A lack of knowledge is not surprising because of the rapid change in social media. There are resources and companies that specialize in this space to help you get your media plan working. Fear of giving away too much information is based on a scarcity mindset. There is no scarcity of information in an information economy. In fact their may be too much random information. By answering your customers questions you save them valuable time and energy sifting through the internet trying to get at what you already know. When you become a resource, you are building a relationship. You establish familiarity, repetition, rapport, and reciprocity. These are all powerful triggers in people that will make your sales process much easier.
If you aren’t a producer yet; where do you start?
Start simple with a blog. Get the feel for the conversation online and understand RSS. RSS is a method of subscribing to online content that allows you access to it in real time. It powers podcasting which will be your next step. You can get a free blog by going to www.wordpress.com. Podcasting is easy. Sites like www.blogtalkradio.com let you call in and record audio podcasts by phone. They already have an audience that you can tap into. Podcasting is very easy and very inexpensive to do. The next step is video. Video is the hottest thing in media. Video allows you to fully engage your audience. According to Comscore, there were 10 billions videos played by U.S. consumers in December of 2007. That represented 144 million people. Thats a majority of the U.S. population. Your customers are online in a big way. If you aren’t there for them to find, who is?
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Change your marketing message from “Buy From Me” to “Learn From Me” - Expertisement
April 28, 2008
Everyone wants to know “What’s in it for me”? That’s why you place ads that focus on you. They say “Buy from Us”, 
“We are having a sale”, “We won’t be undersold”. If you don’t know already, your customers don’t give a f*%#k about you. They don’t even care about your products and services. They only care about what IMMEDIATE benefit you can provide them through those products and services. Is this a surprise? Getting your copy writers to focus your ads on buyer benefits is a step forward, but its not revolutionary.
What is revolutionary…
Give people immediate benefit whether they buy from you or not. Change your marketing message from “Buy from me” to “Learn from me.” When you do that you are not only providing your customer with real value; you are providing yourself with tremendous leverage. The buyer feels comfortable with you, they trust you and they know that you can deliver benefits. You have now catapulted yourself above your competition. Does it cost any more to teach people with your marketing messages? No. It may cost less. Much less. Ads have to be distributed to thousands or millions of eye balls to have any effect. At great expense. Knowledge is an oasis that draws people in. They will find you. You just have to be where they are looking.
What is the common need among your clients and how can you answer this need?
In the information age, the people with the best information win. Provide your audience with valuable information and you both win. Expertisement is the new model for sales success and long lasting customer relationships. Benefits matter. So deliver them early and often.
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Pay Per Click Strategies That Work- Boost Your Click Through Rate
April 24, 2008
When someone searches on a set of keywords that you advertise on, your ad is just another ad. Hopefully it is written well and relevant to the search. Google loves that. But what would be more powerful than your name coming up once on the search page? How about if it came up twice or three times?
No, I don’t mean place two or three ads. I mean place high quality content in the natural search that reaffirms your credibility and popularity. Something that answers the question the person is searching for. When people see your domain name in the natural search first and then see it again in the advertiser column on the right, they are at least twice as inclined to click on your ad than normal. We did some informal tests of this and were shocked by the result.
What does that mean for your business?
It means you have cast a much wider net for a targeted prospect and Doubling your click-through rate makes “The Google” very happy. They reward advertisers with high click-throughs. You get lower click charges and you get higher placement. For a committed PPC advertiser, this can mean a savings of thousands of dollars.
Getting to the top of natural search requires the same keyword targeting that you are used to, but the missing ingredient is relevant content that provides real value to people. Videos and podcasts are even more loved than blogs and as such, they get rewarded with top placement.
When you see how effective online media can be at getting you targeted leads that don’t have any recurring cost, you might reconsider PPC advertising altogether. But until then, you will boost your sales tremendously by creating synergy between your paid and unpaid search marketing with relevant content.
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Target Marketing
April 19, 2008
Target marketing, in the social media space, is the most powerful way to get your message heard by an engaged audience. The power of online communication is that people parse themselves into precise groupings and pull through the messages that pertain to them. Gone are the days of looking at wide ranging demographics and blasting out a message that will only resonate with a few and interrupt the rest.
The key to target marketing online is to think like your customer. What questions do they have? How do they frame those questions in their minds? Most of the communication online passes through information choke points like search engines and site search. This makes keyword targeting so important. Its the words we use that will dictate whether they find us or not.
A little time spent talking with and informally surveying your target audience will reveal some insightful information on 
which words they use to describe their needs.
They have questions. In order to connect to them, you need answers. And those answers need to be targeted precisely in order to make their way to the top of these information choke points where people can find them. That is where Expertisement comes in. Turn your knowledge into a marketing message that solves peoples needs with high quality content.
Expertisement places your relevant content in exactly the right online places where people are looking for it and allows them access to it when its convenient to them. It doesn’t get any more targeted than that.
By adjusting your keywords and your content, you can reach different audiences with very different messages and not worry about cross contamination.
Start your keyword research at Wordtracker and see what your customers are searching for.
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Marketing Personality in a Social Media Space
April 14, 2008
Its a social media world… so be social. That includes your marketing too.
How many times has a well meaning PR firm or a corporate lawyer turned an engaging dialog into swiss cheese in the name of ass covering? That might be an industry standard approach in the analog world, but in the social media world it amounts to a tree falling in the woods… No one cares.
Or worse, your industry standard response pisses of a swarm of bloggers and leads to a PR nightmare. It’s happened before.
People identify with people, not faceless corporations. Boring doesn’t get style points. So inject some personality into your communication. Nothing crazy, just some enthusiasm and normal human authenticity. Web 2.0 is about conversation and interaction. The new currency online is attention. Be very thoughtful of the attention investment you are asking for. The question you need to ask yourself is:
Am I worth watching?
Think about college for a moment. Do you remember the classes or the things that happened after them more? You remeber the ”other stuff” because it was filled with personalities that engaged you and made an impression.
For business professionals the right approach for social media communication is to start with high value content delivered with enthusiasm and over time reveal more personality to get your audience vested in you. The more they know you, the more emotional engagement you can create.
You are your own brand. A brand must be memorable, or it isn’t a brand.
Social media is a powerful way to market, but only if you market from the market’s perspective. Have some fun and don’t take yourself so seriously.
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Marketing with Social Networks
April 10, 2008
Marketing with social networks is the new frontier in digital marketing, but New Media is a “new beast” that requires a new approach.
Social networks work. Advertising on them doesn’t.
What does that mean? Despite the huge audiences and fantastic growth rates of social networks, the advertising returns have been less than stellar.
How can that be? You can target by group and very precise user demographics. I agree that there is huge “Google like” targeting potential, but all of the assumptions are based on an old media model. They ignore the elephant in the room.
People go onto social networks for community, content and conversation. Ads only interrupt that. In fact many people have migrated online to avoid interruptive ads. They just don’t want to hear it. Your brand is an intrusion.
So, what does work?… Building online communities around your brand or industry. Build a social network with your brand as a center piece and become apart of the conversation, part of the community and a content provider that people look to.
The true power of niche social networks are many:
* Organize your best prospects in one place.
* Your prospects bring in people within their circle of influence.
* You have the ability as the admin to contact all of them.
* You are developing relationships.
* You can monitor the discourse to determine the communities needs.
* & much more.
When you have a sound business and an audience, you are in a much more powerful position than your competitors that have to pay to access someone elses audience. Advertisements get old and go away, but communities can grow over time. Is your marketing a force of its own, or is it an interruption to someones online escape?
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Push Pull Marketing Strategies with Web 2.0
April 5, 2008
In a traditional Push / Pull marketing campaign you push your advertising content out and use the marketing message to create a buzz that causes consumer demand to pull sales through the pipeline. With an innovative campaign it can be very effective, but it can also be very expensive to create that type of mass awareness.
Using Web 2.0 strategies is a little different. You push out high quality informational, educational, or entertaining content at very little cost. Then you use the already present market demand to pull through the content to a highly engaged audience that already exist. After all if they didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a business worth marketing.
The web 2.0 approach, using social media is about targeting and reaching buyers at information choke points like search engines and social media sites where they are most likely to pass. These choke points create cohesive motion and allow marketers to get their messages in front of people that are already listening and receptive.
Push / Pull marketing with web 2.0 is changing the way companies communicate their messages and how consumers consume them. Everybody is a little happier.
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