Social Media: Number One Tool for Lead Generation

We can all agree that social media is here to stay (at least for now)…but do we know why? Research indicates that many professionals implement social media to increase lead generation. In a new social media study, eMarketer stated:

“According to virtual events provider Unisfair, social media is the top emerging channel for lead gen among technology marketers surveyed in May 2010.”

The definition of lead generation alone is argument enough for using social media. Social media can and does make finding new customers so much easier…and fun. Not only can you find potential business demographically but you can base it off interest. This information will save you time, energy and money. A strong social media plan can introduce to potential customers that up until now you didn’t even realized existed.

This ever evolving concept of social media can have powerful effects for you (or your company). Are you familiar with Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? Hopefully, the answer is yes. These are all social media channels that are at the forefront for the lead generation. These channels give you valuable information for finding your brands lead generation. Most places, events people are going online and social media in all it’s many forms grants you exclusive access to it all. What is imporant to potentially new customers? What interests do they have? Do you have offer something that they could benefit from? Socail media has the power to answer these questions and more without ever having to leave your desk.

This may seem like shameless marketing tactic but it’s not about attacking potential leads with information..it’s about spending your time and energy on someone who would be interested in what you have to offer.  Social media has literally created a bridge between the product and its consumers. Before it was a guessing game in determining future leads now we can eliminate most of that.  So, it makes sense that social media has become a new wave for the future. You can connect with customers in a whole new way, monitor brand awareness, form relationships and find new customers. What’s not love?

Are Traditional Coupons Dead?

Consumers are getting more and more technologically savvy. Threatening the practice of getting and using coupons in the traditional way.  According DMNEWS Newspaper subscriptions have declined by 9% in the past year, which means that consumers must be getting their coupons through other sources.  We are not only getting our news from other sources, but are we, as consumers taking advantage of online coupons and deals?

The obvious answer is yes, of course. All traditional channels for information are in question. Marketers understand that consumers are doing a majority of their shopping online. Therefore, marketing efforts are pointing toward online users.

This got me questioning the value of print media in today’s world. If we as culture no longer go to traditional sources for coupons, news, weather etc then what is the future for those traditional forms? Newspaper subscription has gone down, which is ultimately a sign of a shifting trend.

So, are the use traditional coupons near extinction? Let’s say that for now, no. Eventually, I’d say yes. As the the Baby Boomer generation moves along with the Millennial generation in going online the traditional sources are going by the wayside. Coupon cutting and clipping are relevant in an uncertain economy but it’s much better done online. Many companies are also delivering coupons straight to the consumers phones via e-mail, text, social media and other smart phone applications. Like every change big or small the shift from print to digital won’t be a quick process. Who knows, maybe we’ll all miss lazy Sunday afternoons with a pair of scissors and a newspaper and resist another modern change.

Is Avataritis Killing Your Brand?

Leigh Caraccioli considers herself a hybrid, a social-write-tographer spending most of her time doing brand, portrait and wedding photography for her company fleur de leigh photography as well as social media consulting. She is passionate that her lifestyle photojournalism tells an authentic story for her clients and their brand. Leigh also blogs regularly, helps companies geo-target social networks and speaks on social media. Website: http://atfleurdeleigh.com/ Main blog: http://blog.atfleurdeleigh.com/.

Let’s face it. The first brand message you offer up in social media comes from that little square icon that represents you in cyberspace, your avatar. Whether you know it or not, everyone who sees your image forms an impression of you and/or your personal brand instantly. What do your brand images say about you?  Are you one of the millions afflicted with…Avataritis?  Take this yes or no test to find out:

Do you have half of your ex-girlfriend’s arm around your neck in your cropped down image?

Was your image snapped on a smart phone by your overserved BFF at last week’s big kegger?

Does you photo scream 1995?

You use the boilerplate Twitter birdy or Facebook silhouette.

Is there a greyish, orangeish, yellowish swishy backdrop and a contrived smile on your face?

Is it just your eyeball?

Do you looked even a little bit wasted?

Is your image actually not you but instead an image of your fluffy dog, porche carrera or new born babe?

Are you masquerading as a celebrity or Homer Simpson?

If you answered yes to any of the above you’re not alone. Say it with me… “Oh Crap!! I have Avataritis!”  Prognosis: your social media picture is crap.  Worry not. There is a remedy.

Know your brand. 
Take a critical minute to define your personal brand. This exercise it very important and is the first step to curing Avataritis if you have it. Many people find that their personal and professional selves have morphed into one, myself included, so only one brand is represented. You may represent your professional self differently and therefore may need to make two lists. Describe yourself in three words.  You avatar should say those three words about you.  If it doesn’t, scrap it and start anew with your three personal brand words in mind. While the majority of these avatars work and are impactful, can you see a few examples of the afflicted?

Be clear
. When creating your new avatar, opt for simple. Crisp, close-ups, black and white or vibrant color work very well.  Don’t worry if the top of your head is cropped off. (Bonus: maybe this is a way to fix a poofy hair day or thinning top.)  There are no points awarded for being within the bulls-eye in the small square.  Don’t be afraid to crop in closely. I prepare client’s avatars to 250 px by 250.  Many avatars include company logos bolstering company reach and brand cohesion. Others are graced with causes the person promotes like 12 for 12K, a charity near and dear to my heart.  Be careful not to overdo your logos/causes/political stances on your logo. Create a blog if you have that much to say.

Quick change. Don’t be afraid to change it up every now and then.  New avatars can generate some much needed buzz if your social media experience feels a little stale.

Heck, @armano has a revolving door of cool avatars which represents his highly relevant brand well.  

Hire a photographer
Your message is worth it really.  Brand Photography is growing but it’s still not a common term. Unlike portraits, brand images carry an intentional message about the subject that helps you understand it more clearly. A thousand words are not needed, but an immediate good impression is critical. I help individuals and businesses properly represent their brand in images clearly and succinctly knowing that with the speed of social networking their avatar has to grab someone tightly less than 10 seconds.

Savvy people are investing in professional photography for social media brand impact. 

So now that you know how to recognize Avataritis, don’t let it kill your brand. Remember that when choosing to follow or friend you, your audience has a fleeting few seconds to size you up.

Make yourself clear, brand aligned and marketable and do the same for your avatar photo.

Building the Personal Brand and Evolving

I had a great time speaking at the 2010 You Too Social Media Conference on Friday at Kent State. I had the opportunity to speak on the changes in customer communication and the values of personal branding when searching for a job. It is always fun to teach college students the value of setting up personal brand in order to differentiate yourself in the job market! I promised I would post the slide deck for both presentations on the blog…. so here they are!

The New World of Job Search

Evolution of Customer Communication

E-Mail’s Role in Social Media

Rory Carlyle is an Email-Geek, frequent twitter hound, web-analytics nut and an all around dweeb. With experience in consulting, agency work and as an Email Marketing Manager; Rory has seen issues regarding email from many perspectives. Continuing on a 6+ year march through all things interactive marketing with a strong affinity for email, Rory hopes to make the web a better place one inbox at a time. Outside of his email passion he fills his time with beer/food/books and the occasional flight to somewhere random.

Quite a few years have gone by since 2004, the year an article was put out by John C. Dvorak regarding the death of e-mail. Since then numerous articles have followed suit in 2007, 2008 as well as 2009. Each post has valid points and comparisons; most of these posts reference SPAM and online social vehicles for the diminishing usefulness of e-mail. While I would whole-heartedly agree that there are numerous reasons why e-mail may not be the prime vehicle for communication online, I would argue that e-mail is far from dead, maybe even still in its infancy.

E-mail today still plays a pivotal role within online communication, even within the social arena. The ‘social inbox’ is just another indication of how valuable e-mail is to users on social networks. David Daniels of Forrester released the US E-mail Marketing Forecast, 2009 To 2014 mid last year with a projection that e-mail will continue to grow for the next 4 years – at least. Spending in e-mail will increase to $2 billion. Peripheral research also suggests that “Social Networkers Still Love E-mail”, noting that 42% of social network users check their inboxes more that 4+ times a day. I would agree with that considering I leave my Gmail web client open all day to monitor my inbox and I’m an avid Twitter and Facebook user.

I predict, going forward e-mail will continue to play a large role in online marketing and social media. E-mail marketers are becoming smarter and better equipped to facilitate direct personalized communication to consumers; the usage of advanced list segmentation, behavioral targeting, and retention based automated deployments will all play a huge role of reducing e-mail clutter and becoming a huge tool for social networks to continue providing services to users.

My call-to-action for my fellow interactive marketers would be to embrace e-mail and leverage it into each and every marketing effort; social marketing will not eradicate e-mail marketing, it will only envelop it. E-mail marketing and e-mail in general is here to stay due to the start-to-finish measurability and fantastic ROI of the channel. Don’t believe for a second that e-mail is dead.

Thanks for listening to my blabbering; much thanks goes to Kyle Lacy for allowing me a guest spot on the blog. Viva la E-mail!

Connect with me @rorycarlyle

Bye, Bye Barbie – Hello BlackBerry

– Caity Kauffman is a 20-year-old, social media-obsessed journalism student dabbling in sports writing, news writing and broadcast. Follow her on twitter at @caitykauffman.

As technology is filtering down to younger and younger generations (I have a friend who gave his three-year-old niece his iPhone when he upgraded to the 3G. No joke.) there is a rise in the concern of its effects on the developing brain.

Being born in the late-1980s, I’m the first generation to literally grow up in a digital world. Somewhere in the depths of a scrapbook, there’s baby picture of me poking away at an IBM computer the size of mini-fridge. When I was 10-years-old, my parents gave me my first desktop Gateway. I filmed and digitally edited my 13th birthday party, and the same year I got my first cell phone – a silver Motorola flip phone the size of a brick. I don’t have veins, I have wires.

Question is: is the digital world helping the Internet generation utilize our brains, or are we just distracting it with multitasking overload?

There are times, I’ll admit, my digital savvy has been more distracting than productive. I’ve fiddled away hours clicking through Facebook statuses or played mindless hours of Guitar Hero until my thumb nearly cracks off.

Last week, my honors reading class at Florida Gulf Coast University discussed of Don Tapscott’s “Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World.” Our class of seven (plus one journalism professor to keep us on track) seemed to all agree that the baby boomers’ implications that NetGen-ers lack concentration, productivity and retain less information aren’t all true.

Tapscott wrote about interactive technology, and how regularly playing an action video game can change how the brain processes information.

John, an outspoken, bearded philosophy major can vouch for video games, using Halo as an example. “You notice your radar, how much ammo you have, where your teammates are, how much life you have left all while you’re having a conversation with your team on a headset,” he says.  “We are able to instantly compartmentalize every aspect of the game.”

I guess it’s no surprise teenage boys lock themselves into their bedrooms for hours at a time, committing virtual massacres inside their TV screen: there’s a hell of a lot to process simultaneously.

Audrey, a soft spoken 21-year-old from Malaysia, takes multitasking to an entirely new realm. She says in order to concentrate, she listens to Chinese music (one of four languages she speaks) as she reads her textbooks that are written in English, writes her blog in English all while switching back and forth from Facebook.

She does admit the the United States’ reliance on technology has made her a little lazy since moving to the states to attend college. “I grew up in Malaysia, and we had to memorize a lot,” she says. “Here, we copy and paste. I think it has to do with culture.”

But why memorize when we carry around Google on our iPhones?

As much as my generation is reliant on our BlackBerrys to help us find the nearest coffee shop, I think it has to be more with efficiency than laziness. The world moves faster than ever, and there’s an increasing urgency for productivity. If Merriam-Webster says “google” is a legitimate verb, then Google I will.

The Beauty of Humanizing Content

There are random times throughout my life where I have the pleasure of sitting down with Chris Baggott. Chris is co-founder of ExactTarget and now co-founder and CEO of Compendium Blogware. Our meetings always consist with some type of beverage and spirited discussion around the world of direct/internet marketing. Yesterday, we were talking about the future of online marketing and where social media, email, blogging, podcasting, search and mobile fit into the discussion. After arguing about a few things here and there we came to the conclusion that everything is about content. Now, it does matter what type of tools you use and how you use them… but that more important thing in marketing is about creating content that moves.

Chris made the comment:

Above all, it is about taking your story… your company stories… your client stories… your employee stories… and humanizing content. It is about telling your story to improve search and the sharing of the content. Simply put… get other people to tell the story for you.

This is a conversation that happens (quite a bit) on this blog. I say it all the time… I don’t care about your clients. I care about their friends. Your clients are already your friends! Leave customer service and client retention programs to keep them in the loop.

Create content and marketing strategies that encourage your clients to talk to their friends.

Because the truth of the matter is…

The only people who can truly humanize your content are the people you have already served. They are also the only people (and marketing voice) that will cause potential clients to act… and buy.

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I Was Just Exposed on Facebook

Peter Preksto is a co-founder of image-recognition company Alta Data Solutions, Inc.

My business is pretty esoteric–we scrape petrified information off of paper or microfiche at super high speed and make it machine readable, useful for lawsuits and electronic benefits claims, among other things. Our customers are a relatively small number of service bureaus that process billions of such documents per year. I hadn’t thought of my use of social media as a marketing tool because we’re not really expecting to grow through word of mouth but by providing more functionality and speed at a lower cost to those who care about such things. My peers are in their 50′s and 60′s. Most of us started on mainframes, helped invent document-processing technology on intervening platforms, and have ended up in the cloud. In 1983, we first started inter-office chatting to each other using a utility in Novell Netware, and we mostly haven’t shut up online since. Twitter ultimately didn’t pass muster except as a novelty, but Facebook was a natural adoption. We tend to clamp our privacy down perhaps more than our younger colleagues, but we’re using and like the service a lot.

I’ve long believed that you cannot conceal who you really are if you use Facebook regularly–people can really get your number by looking through your books, music, quotations, links, videos, smart-ass remarks, notes of sympathy, whatever. In this big country, you stay closer to friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, and folks who you might otherwise have let drift (and a few who have come drifting back against the tide). If you work it, you stand exposed.

A couple days ago, I was friended by a really important business colleague, president of one of the big service bureaus whom we serve. While we don’t need to network to grow, if you screw up in our small community, it has a big impact. He joked on the phone about my Facebook content, saying it was really “out there,” lots of “personality,” very “young at heart.” I froze. At that moment, I realized the double-edge sword of Facebook. Even if you practice a policy of avoiding writing about politics, religion, creationism, diet, immunization and handguns (and boy don’t we all have opinions we’d love to share on those!), you still stand exposed–in a way even Rotary didn’t do to you in the old style of networking.

I seriously considered un-friending all of my business colleagues and leaving it strictly social and family. Fortunately, I probed the guy a few days later, joked about his comments, and found out that I had it backwards–what he saw, he liked, and it brought us closer together–Facebook shortened the learning curve he would have climbed to learn who he’s dealing with.

A life on Facebook is no place to hide. So maybe letting whoever the heck it is that you’ve turned out to be shine through that medium might be good for business–even if you’re not using it exactly as the pros would suggest for viral growth.

Speaking of pros, many thanks and much respect to Kyle Lacy and Brandon Coon for the company they’re building, and thanks for sharing so generously their insights and experience in their blogs.

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ExactTarget Acquires CoTweet. What Does It Mean?

For most of my readers, you heard it here first.

I have had the privilege to meet, chat, and work with the brilliant team at ExactTarget over the past month. It is always fascinating to meet people that want to change the way corporate culture uses social media. It has been said that the future of social media is in enterprise expansion and we are officially witnessing the push into one virtual platform (thanks to ExactTarget).

As of 11 am (EST) ExactTarget officially announced that they will be acquiring CoTweet, a Web-based collaboration platform that allows companies to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single dashboard, support multiple editors, track conversations, assign roles, and create follow-up tasks. Social tools have been random and sometimes carelessly developed because the developers did not have the financial means to build a top quality product.

I don’t know about you… but I am overly excited with this step into an enterprise system social media platform. I am overly excited because ExactTarget is an Indianapolis, Indiana based company… and… I am overly excited because Jesse Engle (co-founder of CoTweet) is an awesome guy.

This deal will result in (finally) the expansion of social platforms into a unique collaboration system for one-to-one marketing. I love it. See press release below.

———————————

ExactTarget Acquires Twitter Pioneer CoTweet, Creates Social Media Lab in San Francisco

Businesses Now Have Complete Solution to Manage Social Media, Email and Mobile Communications

SAN FRANCISCO (March 2, 2010) – Global on-demand email marketing and one-to-one marketing provider ExactTarget announced today it has acquired San Francisco-based CoTweet, creating the industry’s first complete solution for managing communications across all interactive marketing channels including social media, email and mobile.

CoTweet will operate in San Francisco as a business unit of ExactTarget and will lead the company’s social media product development.  CoTweet co-founder and chief executive Jesse Engle will lead the San Francisco operation and spearhead the creation and expansion of the company’s social media lab.

“What we’re seeing in the market is organizations are moving quickly to try to capture the potential of social, but are discovering that it’s siloed and not integrated effectively with other forms of digital communications,” said Scott Dorsey, ExactTarget co-founder and chief executive officer.  “By combining the power of ExactTarget and CoTweet, we can provide businesses a complete solution to tie together all forms of interactive communications and drive deeper customer engagement online.”

Founded in 2008 and based in San Francisco, CoTweet is a Web-based collaboration platform that allows companies to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single dashboard, support multiple editors, track conversations, assign roles and create follow-up tasks.  The company has a growing client list, including Whole Foods, Oracle, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Ford, Dell, Pepsi, Sprint, Target, Intuit, Salesforce.com, USA Today and Coca-Cola.

“We see a huge opportunity to build on ExactTarget’s incredible business and customer relationships to help companies drive more measurable value from social media,” said Engle.  “As part of ExactTarget, we’ll have the global resources to cement our early lead, rapidly expand our platform and develop the next generation of social media communication tools.”

Forrester Research predicts social media marketing will grow faster than any other form of interactive marketing.  In its 2009 U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast Report, the independent research firm estimated social media marketing will grow at compound annual rate of 34 percent, reaching $3.1 billion by 2014.

“This acquisition is strong validation that valuable, sustainable businesses are emerging from the Twitter ecosystem,” said Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief operating officer. “An ExactTarget and CoTweet combination should lead to even further digital marketing innovation through use of the Twitter platform.”

The acquisition of CoTweet follows ExactTarget’s record-breaking 2009 that welcomed the company’s 36^th consecutive quarter of growth in the fourth quarter 2009 and saw annual contracted revenue soar to $114 million and total GAAP revenue exceed $95 million.  In 2009, ExactTarget also secured $145 million in venture capital investment, opened its first international office in London, earned the title of a “leader” in email marketing in the “The Forrester Wave: Email Marketing Service Providers Q4 2009” (December 2009) report and added NIKE Inc., Best Buy and Universal Music Group to its client list.  Headquartered in Indianapolis, ExactTarget now employs more than 600 associates worldwide.

About CoTweet, Inc.

CoTweet is the real-time business collaboration platform for Twitter. Working with companies such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, JetBlue, Ford, Pepsi, Sprint, Coca-Cola, the City of San Francisco/311 and Twitter, CoTweet has established itself as the tool of choice to brands to connect and engage with customers and stakeholders. Founded in 2008, CoTweet is based in San Francisco, Calif.  For more information, visit www.CoTweet.com

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and one-to-one marketing solutions. The company’s software as a service technology provides organizations a single platform to connect with customers via triggered and transactional email, integrated text messaging, voice messaging, landing pages and social media.  Supported by collaborative global services teams, ExactTarget’s technology integrates with more sales and marketing information systems than any other in the industry, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Omniture and Webtrends among many others. ExactTarget’s software powers permission-based multi-channel communications for thousands of organizations around the world including Expedia.com, Aurora Fashions, Papa John’s, CareerBuilder.com, Gannett Co., Inc., The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, The Home Depot and Wellpoint, Inc. For more information, visit www.exacttarget.com or call 1-866-EMAILET.

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Media Contacts:

Cybele Diamandopoulos (FOLIO Communications for CoTweet) – 512.431.5759 or cybele@foliocommunications.com

Lindsay Tishgart (FOLIO Communications for CoTweet) – 512.327.1818 or lindsey@foliocommunications.com

Mitch Frazier (ExactTarget) – 317.670.9611 or mfrazier@ExactTarget.com

Carol Sacks (Tenor Communications for ExactTarget) – 650.520.8261 or carol@tenorcom.com

Lauren Sanders (Dittoe PR for ExactTarget) – 317.202.2280 X 10 or lauren@dittoepr.com

5 Tips to Being Productive in Social Media

We had a packed house yesterday for the Staying Productive in Social Media seminar! It is always fun to communicate the importance of managing your time effectively. I wanted to send out the slide deck I used for the presentation… and… give you a few basic tips for staying productive.

Tip 1: Use the 4-Points Model

When using social media you should keep in mind the 4-points model. There are 4 points social media applications should touch in regards to your daily life: Business, Local Business Networking, Social, and Information. Choose four main networks where you spend the most of your time.

I use LinkedIn for business applications, Smaller Indiana for local business networking, Facebook for social application, and Twitter for information. LinkedIn can be described as my connection Rolodex. Facebook is to keep me updated on my friends and acquaintances from college and high school. Twitter is a wonderful information aggregation tool where you can follow influential people and the information they share. Smaller Indiana is a great place to connect to local professionals and share ideas on how to make Indiana a better place.

Tip 2: Commit Yourself

You get what you put in. How many times have we heard that? When using social media commit to a set amount of time a week to using your applications. You will find yourself spending to much time on your applications if you fail to designate a certain amount during the week.
I try to designate an thirty minutes to an hour of each day to information sharing (writing blogs, commenting on blogs, perusing my Google Reader) and an hour a day to using my other networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Smaller Indiana).

Tip 3: Setup Time Blocks for Social Media Management (Facebook Meeting)

If you use Outlook or Google Calendar (well.. any calendar) it is important to setup time blocks for use of social media. Some people may disagree with me but I find it extremely valuable in helping in building a habit and setting aside time.  Setup up social media meetings!

Tip 4: Try Rescue Time

RescueTime is an AWESOME time management tool for Internet use.  RescueTime is a web-based time management and analytics tool for knowledge workers who want to be more efficient and productive. If you own a company and you are looking for a great tool to help manage your employees time online… this is for you. Check out the video below:

RescueTime Reports from Tony Wright on Vimeo.

Tip 5 : Do Not Get Sucked into the Social Media Black Hole

Everyone knows the problem of the social media black hole…. let me run the scenario. You get on Facebook at 10:00 am. What are you doing? You are probably checking your messages… updating your status… and looking at pictures.

All of a sudden your chat box ignites with a flurry of activity. Friends from long ago are tweeting you, texting you, Facebook chatting you, and frankly… destroying your ability to get anything done. This is the social media black hole. Easy fix > turn off chat functionality on everything.

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