Viral Marketing is last year. Enter Echo and Reverberate Marketing.

Boris Veldhujzen van Zanten from the Next Web has a great post called Forget Viral Marketing. It Is All About Reverberating Marketing! . I completely agree with his choice of HATING the term viral marketing. I have never been able to fully stomach the term “viral.” I understand the concept of spreading but Boris hits it right on the head when he says:

I never liked the term Viral Marketing. It just sounds like bad karma. Viruses are associated with diseases and death. Do you want to associate your product or service with that?

It also sounds too easy. All these marketeers being asked for, or offering, a quick ‘Viral Campaign’ by clients. That is like asking for a quick number one music hit or a quick successful start-up. Wishing for it doesn’t make it so.

He proposes to use the phrase Reverberate Marketing instead of Viral Marketing. I like the concept of Reverberation as an echo… spreading from individual to individual. You could also use the term Echo Marketing.

Echo and Reverberate Marketing has a lot to do with social media marketing. Whether you are a small business or corporate entity, we all strive to create a story that will be repeated (over and over again). Social media marketing is the one platform that allows for echo and viral marketing to happen.

How do you utilize social media to spread a story? How do you use blogging, facebook, linkedin, and Twitter to communicate with potential and current clients?

Do you Echo?

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Balancing Strategy, Transparency, and Measurement in Blogging

Doug Karr has a great post over at his Compendium blog called When to Fire Your Blogging Expert. The post breaks down the concept of weighing the intangible and tangible benefits of blogging. Doug talks about what a blog consultant should be discussing when they are helping with an overall communications strategy:

1. Your Business
2. How You Drive Customers
3. Measuring Results

I wanted to map out a couple of things you should remember when planning your communication strategy. If you are the smart business owner, a social media strategy will be combined with your current offerings. I am gleening off of Doug’s comment:

Authority, engagement and transparency are all valid tactics when writing blogs for business, but the ultimate goal is to grow qualified leads through search acquisition for new prospects and upsell opportunities by building relationships with current clients.

Based on Doug’s post and a couple of ideas of my own there are three things you should remember when planning a social media marketing : Strategy, Transparency, and Measurement.

Strategy

There is not much mystery surrounding the concept of strategy. There is strategic thinking involved in every aspect of business from finances to communication. Sit down and create a detailed list of things you want to accomplish while using the blog… Examples:

1. We want the blog to increase page views and conversions by 35%.
2. We want to be number one in pagerank for (keyword) and (keyword).
3. We want to increase the  exposure of our brand in a specific geographic area.

Those are fairly simple and completely stupid but you get the point! What are your goals and how are you going to get there? Writing once a day? Three times a week? Specific keywords you need to write about.

All of the above. Check out Chris Brogan’s post: If I Started Today… to get more tips and suggestions.

Next up… Transparency… TO BE CONTINUED.

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15 Ways To Be HUMAN Online and Not A Screen Name

Jason Baer at Convince and Convert has an excellent post today on the 9 Ways to Humanize Your Brand (with real Humans). It got me to thinking about how we try and humanize ourselves as much as possible in the Internet landscape.

I know that I try on a daily basis to be as human as possible online. I don’t want to be seen as another social media marketer trying to sell his/her wares over the Internet. I’m just me and me is the best I’ve got.

Jason has 9 tips to Humanize your brand and I will add 11 more tips:

1. Build and optimize a blog
2. Reach out to other bloggers in the category for guest posts
3. Syndicate content to vertical aggregation sites
4. Publish white papers and ebooks, and/or conduct Webinars
5. Create a few killer presentations and get them on SlideShare
6. Do at least a little video blogging to make him/her three dimensional
7. Hustle for speaking engagements
8. Get on Twitter and make sure he/she sets aside time to really engage people
9. Make sure current company customers know all about the initiative and are invited to participate

These are great points and I wanted to add in some small business owner pointer to humanize your personal and professional brand online.

11. Join an offline networking organization: I am involved in a group called Rainmakers which allows me to network in the offline world and then connect it to the online environment or vice versa. This allows you to start connecting with more and more people over the course

12. Attend TweetUps and parties centered around social media. I would rather redirect you to an awesome post by Corvida of SheGeeks: Using Social Media To Get Our Of Your House.

13. Join Geographically Base Social Networks. Ning has a huge database of niche social networking that will allow you to meet and start conversations with professionals and other people in your area. I am a member of Smaller Indiana and it has given me a massive amount of exposure as a HUMAN and not a screen name.

14. Join a Network like Flickr or Facebook for Picture Galleries. This is not meant to say you should post every party or outing you have been involved in. This is just a way to post pictures or your family and friends. People buy into people and not products. In this emotionally charged world, a brand is the people behind it and not the billboard on the side of the highway.

15. Authenticity. Authenticity. Be Authentic. I preach about this non-stop. Authentic communication and content is key to humanizing yourself in social media. Talk about what you do and add personality into your posts and usage of social media. I can pick up the Wall Street journal every morning. I want to read REAL content.

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“I Don’t Play on Facebook, Sir. I USE It.”

I am still surprised when many of my friends bring up the fact that they cannot use social media (Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIN, etc) in their offices. Most of them work for corporate America and their bosses still view Facebook as playtime.

Jason Falls has a great post today on How To Be The Social Media Champion At Your Office. What do you say when you are being made fun of for using Social Media? What do you say when you are constantly being beat down with this “new-fangled-fad”?

And what do you say when superiors and peers tell you social media marketing is a waste of time? Jason has six steps to help you along your journey. I am also going to add in a couple of my own.

1. Illustrate the Benefits

2. Make Yourself Available

3. Target the Right Co-Workers

4. Get To The Professional Through the Personal

5. Operate Within The Rules

6. Solve Business Problems With Social Media Tools

I would encourage you to go read Jason’s blog and learn from his expertise. I wanted to add a couple that will help my peers along the way of social media domination in the corporate environment.

1. Show Historical Data of Productivity Enhancement. I know that title sounds like something from the inner vaults of Forrester but I have found this method to work numerous times. I have used the success of Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation to champion the use of social media in the corporate environment. This adds to Jason’s first point and if you can show the success of peers…. it will be easier.

2. Work Behind the Scenes and Work Often. I am not saying go behind your supervisors back and start using social media for productivity and marketing enhancement. Ask to use social media for the companies benefit on your OWN TIME. Map and track everything you are doing to show management the value of all things social media. This will also show the leaders that you are serious about social media and SERIOUS about the companies success.

If you ask… you better hustle. Hustle hard and work your butt off.

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20 Reasons Why You Cannot Ignore Social Media

I will forever been an advocate for Social Media. If you want me to jump up on a soapbox and talk about social media marketing until I am blue in the face… so be it. What used to be a “fad” two to three years ago is fast becoming the premiere way to communicate.

I have been reading the Wave.3 Presentation from Universal McCann and they had the follow facts relating to the power of social media.

1. 394 million people watch video clips online
2. 346 million reaqd blogs/weblogs
3. 321 million Read personal blogs/weblogs
4. 307 million visit a friends social network page
5. 303 million SHARE a video clip (viral marketing anyone?)
6. 272 million manage a profile on a social network
7. 248 million upload photos
8. 216 million Download a video podcast
9. 215 million download a podcast
10. 184 million started a blog or weblog
11. 183 million uploaded a video clip
12. 160 million subscribed to an RSS Feed

Not enough reason to start the journey into connecting with your clients and consumers? Here are eight more reasons to continue on the social media marketing path.

13. Blog Reading has risen 66% on a global scale in a year
14.  60.3 million american have read a blog
15. 36% of consumers will think more positively about companies that have blogs
16. 32% of consumers trust bloggers opinions on products and services
17. Social Networking has an estimated 272 million users (Myspace, Facebook, etc)
18. 43% of online consumers belong to a social network
19. 74% of social networking users message friends as part of their daily routine
20. Video Uploading growth is 31% to 82% global reach seen in all markets

I am not sitting here writing this foaming at the mouth and demanding companies (both small and large) use social media marketing exclusively. It is important to combine both traditional marketing and new media marketing in your overall strategy.

If the numbers from Universal McCann do not convince you of the overall important of social media in the years to come….

I am at a loss for words.

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LinkedIN and Social Media: A Powerful Business Tool

Anne over at Brandeo has some interesting information about LinkedIN users taken directly from Anderson Analytics and the SPSS:

60% of 30 million LinkedIN users have high personal incomes, hold executive level or consultant positions, are decisionmakers and likely to be active networkers.

The survey sponsors are quoted saying that social networks (social media) have become powerful business tools as well.

I am still running into business owners and professionals who dismiss social media and online social networking as a fad. It puzzles me that people can be so nieve to think that the interconnectedness of the web could ever dissapear.

Turn into a different medium in 5 years? Perhaps.

Disappear completely? Never.

Take this survey as an example. The communication world is changing. Jump on the wagon or be left in the dust.

Just jump on a little bit.

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Lost In Translation: Why Don’t Marketers Speak Human?

I was browsing through the world of Social Media tonight and I ran across a blog called Socialized by Alisa Leonard-Hasen. She had a simple post dated back in October called Like Humans Do. The post was a simple graphic:

It hit me. HIT ME HARD. A simple design and yet such a profound message. Why don’t marketers know how to speak Human?

As marketers shouldn’t that be what we strive for on a daily basis? How do we create a message that will resonate with our user base? How do we take an idea and turn it into a message that tugs the heart strings? How do we take a product/service/offering and make it “speak Human?”  Why is it so hard?

One last question:

Is the answer Social Media?

I would venture to say… ABSOLUTELY. Never in the history of marketing has a platform been developed where you can tap into a community. We are no longer products and services but people.

Why don’t businesses know how to speak human? They should. There is no better place than here. There is no better time than now.

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Social Media? Networking? Good For Small Business?

Ricardo Bueno has an excellent post at Ribeezie called Social Networking: Is It Good For Small Business?  He piggbacks off of a Seth Godin quote from the Amex’s Open Forum:

“Networking is always important when it’s real and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake. What the internet has allowed is an enormous amount of fake networking to take place.”

This quote hit me simply because I have been debating on how to make social media more effective in a marketing environment.  The small business marketing world in Indianapolis is a buzz with the concept of using social media marketing to drive revenue. So how do we go about using social media to drive revenue? Brand development? Pure enjoyment?

Ricardo and Seth hit it right on the head: Genuine Relationships.

When using social media it is extremely important to take time in developing your network on a personal level. The concept is the same with Offline Networking in a group like Rainmakers Marketing Group. Offline and Online networking are extremely similar in many aspects when it comes to mutual respect between individuals.

Respect me. I will respect you.

Add in a personal thing or two. Do you have kids? What do you enjoy most out of life?

I would rather not have posts constantly talking about your new blog post or new product offering. Tell me something that makes it personal.

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Networking with Authenticity or Blandly Giving a Presentation?

Gary Vaynerchuk has another brilliant video on his website called Giving a Presentation vs. Working the Room.

In this video Gary talks about brands using social media in terms of giving a presentation versus working the room. When you are giving a presentation you are speaking to a group of people. When you are working the room (as many networking junkies know) you are getting involved in the group, in the community.

There is another facet of working the room and giving a presentation in social media: authenticity.

Authenticity
When you are working a room at a networking event you have to put on an air of personality and authenticity in order to gain any foothold in an individuals mind. If you are not yourself and try to wear a facade…you will not be successful at networking with professionals.

In giving a presentation there is a small amount of personality involved but is not truly involved in the process of giving a presentation. You are relating information to a group. Push. Push. Push and no Pull.

It is truly important to work the room when you are using social media for your business. Work the room at 30 mins a day. Heck! Work at the room at an hour a day online. You get what you put in!

And Gary ends his post by saying something brilliant:

“Their cost is just their time. They just have to care enough to work the room.”

The cost of your social media endeavors is your time. Plain and simple. If you want to gain a foothold in the Web 2.0 community landscape… make the time.

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Taking Social Media Beyond the Comfort Zone

I was reading through The Next Web and came across a post called the Perfect Viral Marketing in 2010. I thought to myself, “I love viral marketing so why not check out the video that Boris listed underneath the post. The video is an absolutely brilliant video produced by Slate V on Youtube.

I doubt that marketing companies will ever take the concept of viral marketing to the point where they are paying actors to actually relate to a consumer group. The concept is absolutely hilarious.

There is something to learn from the video from a marketing perspective. When you are building and implementing a marketing strategy try to get into the heads of your target market. Don’t take it to the point where you are PERSONALLY entering into their lives.

The concept is worthy enough to note. Watch the video!

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