Out of the Fog Marketing

A new MarketingSherpa Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report found that more than 55% of marketers surveyed in the hardware and software industries plan an increase in their 2010 social media marketing budget. This trend implies that B2B marketers recognize that IT buyers are using social media to make informed purchasing decisions.

Labels: B2B, marketing budgets, marketing sherpa, social media

We are getting many inquiries in the past month from prospects looking for social media and interactive marketing campaigns. Paul Dunay's blog Buzz Marketing for Technology had a great entry on how to choose a social media agency given this marketing area just hasn't been around that long. Here's Paul's advice... Now that we are beginning to feel the relief of the economic uncertainty that has been hanging around us for the past few months, I am beginning to hear a lot about the invention of some new roles inside organizations looking to get “social media”. Typically this means hire someone who knows our “space” really well and someone who is an expert in social media. Well it’s the latter part that is the hard part. Consider that in Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book Outliers: The Story of Success he goes into a discussion about Violinists and how long it takes them to become a master at their craft. So without spoiling the book for you – the bottom line was – it takes 10,000 hours to become a Master Violinist. This got me thinking about how it could apply to Social Media and how long it would take to become a Social Media Expert. So if you practice Social Media on the job for a few hours a day, let’s say 3 hours a day learning more about social media and 2 hours a day practicing social media times 5 days a week that means you could become a social media master in 7.6 years. Throw in the weekends and that drops to 5.5 years! But wait, social media hasn’t been around that long! So since you can’t hire an expert, what qualities would make for a good social media marketer? Here are 4 macro competences to look for: 1) Story telling – in social media you need to tell good stories, stories that people will be attracted to, identify with and want to share. Story telling is key! 2) Packaging – they need to be able to package the stories up and be able to make them shareable this means the content can be found in a variety of media forms not just one. 3) Reach – they need to know how to reach people with their content, the more forms the better. So that means they need to be fluent in many social media sites. 4) Measure – and finally the hardest part for most people is the measurement of the effectiveness of the media and the efficiency of the story being spread in those media.

Labels: interactive marketing, social media, social networking

Believe it or not, "Twitter" beat out h1n1, Obama and Michael Jackson as the most popular word in the English language in 2009. While it's not completely fleshed out, online social interaction is here is stay. Read the full story.

If your company doesn't already have a social media strategy, now is the time to get one. In the very least you should do a land grab for vanity name URLs on Facebook and claim your company profile on LinkedIn and corporate/product fan pages on Facebook. And start to play with Twitter. There are tools such as Ping.fm that link all these social sites and your blog together, so in 5 minutes per day, you can provide a status update on each site with just one login.

Labels: interactive marketing, Internet marketing, ping.fm, social media, social networking, twitter, web marketing

According to a report by Nielsen Online, social networking site use has surged 73% and exceeded web-based email usage for the first time ever! Last year alone the time spent on social media sites increased by 73%.

Labels: marketing, nielsen, social media, social networking

Flickr is fast-becoming a popular online marketing tool, especially for companies hoping to make a bigger impact using social media marketing. It allows companies to be creative and take advantage of marketing opportunities that are often overlooked in favor of costly online marketing tools. For those that are willing to take advantage of it, Flickr will create marketing opportunities where few exist.

Flickr is a web site community owned by Yahoo! But beyond just being another social networking site, Flickr offers its users free photo sharing and a host of related services. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Flickr is the fastest-growing photo sharing site on the web, and the 7th most trafficked social media site overall, giving it some marketing clout for companies looking to expand in this shaky economy.

Given that Flickr is a photo sharing site, the companies that have found it to be most effectively have a visual element to their business, or a product and/or service to sell. Nikon has served as the benchmark for a company marketing with Flickr by using it as an extension of their Nikon School and their Nikon Digital Learning Center website. Their Nikon’s Digital Learning Center on Flickr is an “online resource (that) provides Flickr members with tutorials, practical photography tips and advice from Nikon photo professionals to assist them in taking photos.” By using Flickr Nikon has been able to generate 8,527 members, 23,440 photos, and 669 discussions, all for free using Flickr.

There are other large and small companies alike using Flickr to creatively market their business ranging from companies as dissimilar as 7-11 using Flickr to market their Simpson’s Kwik-E-Mart campaign pictures to Purina dog food catering to dog lovers. There is even a Facebook Flickr application so that companies can link their social media sites together. A number of opportunities exist for brands to engage in Flickr but they seem to break into three basic categories:

1. Spreading content
Unique visual content like 7-11’s Kwik-E-Mart photos that have received over 800,000 views after being distributed around the web from using Flickr.

2. Hosting online competitions
Flickr allows companies to create image-based competitions without the cost of creating their own infrastructure for the project.

3. Creating a community while providing customer support
Flickr can serve as a venue for fans to give insight to products and provide feedback while connecting with other company fans. This can be effective for technology marketing such as software vendors who want to show solutions or promote new products using screenshots.

When used effectively, Flickr has definitely shown that it has marketing potential for companies. Flickr can show any company, large or small, how to visually engage their customers using free social media, while creating an online community to disseminate their company message over the web.

Labels: ann arbor marketing, marketing technology, social media

I've had two clients call me this morning confused about Facebook recently allowing individuals and companies to claim custom domain names. Now instead of a long string such as www.facebook.com./234fsd0 you can actually get www.facebook.com/chris.slocumb. Unfortunately you do not have to be the owner of a personal name, trademarked name, or domain in order to claim the custom URL.

Even though the name land grab began this past Sunday, you can still claim a custom URL by logging into your Facebook account and directing your browser to http://www.facebook.com/username/.

Labels: facebook, SEO, social media

Think viral marketing can't work for high-tech, B2B companies? Think again. Assay Designs of Ann Arbor has recently released Life Outside the Lab -- a microsite containing hilarious images of employees in lab coats doing everything things here around Ann Arbor. Visitors can submit their own images or videos of "life outside their lab" for a free t-shirt.

Labels: ann arbor, ann arbor business, assay designs, social media, viral marketing

Bloggers and publication editors are now foregoing email pitches and asking for succinct pitches via Twitter and other social media tools. Check out Stowe Boyd's mandate that all pitches are over Twitter in format he calls the Twitpitch. It does make you really hone your message if you only have 140 characters.

Labels: media pitches, press pitches, public relations, social media, stowe boyd, twitpitch, twitter, web 2.0

Cisco and Facebook? Yes, folks they have a relationship. B2B Marketing recently reported on Cisco's use of social networking and Web 2.0 tactics to launch their Aggregation Services Router 1000 series. Usually stoic Cisco even has a Second Life property.

Research firm Universal McCann has a detailed report out with social media statistics. One of the more interesting stats is 36% of survey respondents thought more positively about companies with blogs. It's interesting blogging is becoming part of branding and corporate validation.

So does your company have a Facebook group, Squidoo site or Twitter page? In this new landscape the daring companies which try it will come out ahead I believe. We already see fabulous search engine ranking pages for Squidoo sites on niche topics and Twitter tweet pickup. So dive in...the water's fine.

Labels: b2bmarketing, better marketing presentations, cisco, facebook, Internet marketing, social media, social networking, squidoo, twitter, universal mccann, web 2.0

Read a great post and watch an associated video on social media strategies for business-to-business companies.
I agree that LinkedIn is a great place to start.

Labels: B2B, b2bmarketing, LinkedIn, social media, social networking

Type in a word, company or phrase in Serph and in about a minute see where you show up online - on pages, in blogs and news. It's super easy to use and all the search results I tried were very relevant.

Labels: serph, social media, web search

According to Forrester, 11.2% of online adults in the U.S. publish a blog at least once a month. Of the same group, 24.8% read a blog and 13.7% comment on a blog at least once a month. The numbers are higher for youths. Of online youths, 20.8% publish a blog, 36.6% read a blog, and 26.4% comment on a blog at least once a month.

However the complete Business Week article details why some businesses are shifting from blogs to social media sites. It's an interesting idea now that Twitter posts are being indexed by Google and only takes seconds to write compared to the longer time commitment for a well-written blog post.

Labels: ann arbor business, ann arbor google, blogs, businessweek, corporate blogs, forrester, number of blogs, social media, twitter, young bloggers, youth

Nielsen Online's October 2007 reports show that social networking sites and blogs are still expanding. Social networking giant MySpace drew 19% more unique users between October 2006 and October 2007, and Facebook grew 125% in the same period. Linked In - the business networking site - grew by 189%.

If someone in your company does not have time to blog, then at the very least make sure every employee has a LinkedIn profile that points back to your corporate website.

Labels: business social networking, facebook, LinkedIn, michigan, myspace, social media

I encourage all of our clients to get profiles on the big social networking sites: LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook. Invariably when I mention Facebook the CEO or owner of the client company will look at me with more than a little skepticism. "Isn't that the site my teenager is on?" is a typical next question.

While, yes your teenager might be on Facebook, more and more CEOs, thought leaders and technology gurus are posting profiles and joining groups on these networking sites. Facebook announced the details of its new advertising program in New York yesterday. Facebook now will give advertisers the ability to create their own profile pages on its system that will let users identify themselves as fans of a product. Each user's news feed will let others view the products she endorses such as "Shelley is a fan of Apple Computer".

So take notice small businesses. Can you afford not the have a profile on these sites? The word of mouth and validation marketing alone is worth the time and effort.

Labels: facebook, small business, social media, social networking, technology business