The Brains Behind Social Influence Marketing

If you are running a social media company or  thinking about implementing some type of social media strategy into your business… there is no better company to track than Razorfish. They recently released a report called Fluent which examines the possibilites of using social media influencers (like Chris Brogan and Douglas Karr) to market a product or service. The definition of social influence marketing is as follows:

Social influence marketing is about employing social media as part of the entire lifecycle of a marketing campaign, even beyond the campaign.

There is also a deeper understanding to the concept of social influence marketing (SIM). The idea that marketing has turned away from the company and now is in control of the customer (or at least soon will be) is the basis of SIM. How do you create a market when in reality… in the not-to-distant future… marketing campaigns may not exist. How do you empower certain evangelists to spread the word about your product or service and seem absolutely genuine at the same time?

Razorfish is leading the way in deciding the right form to tackle social media as part of a marketing process. I would encourage you to read the report and experience the world of social influence marketing.

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Expose Yourself. I Dare You.

“The lesson is, we all need to expose ourselves to the winds of change. We need to expose ourselves to our customers, both the ones who are staying with us as well as those that we may lose by sticking to the past.” -Andrew Grove, co-founder of Intel

I have a question for you… What is one of the largest public relations and customer communication problems facing companies?

I can help you out… it is ignorance and the decision to simply not listen. This concept can stem from every corner of a corporation or a small business. The CEO chooses not to listen because they simple do not know or a small business owner decides to ignore the ever changing world of customer communication.

We are experiencing a shift in how customers relate to brands. You can no longer hide behind a massive white paper, public relations firm, or marketing campaign.

The time is now. Expose yourself. Take the dive into the world of online communication. Start a corporate blog. Start a twitter campaign for a product. Get your customer service department trained in the ways of social media.

Can you feel the winds of change blowing through your window? Or did you decide to yank it close…?

Only to experience it being shattered.

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Sometimes You Should Just Walk Away and Simplify

It is important to understand when to walk away.

There has been times in my short career (3 years) where I have needed to walk away from my desk, from Twitter, from Facebook, from website design and graphic design… to just step away and re-evaluate where I was headed and where I wanted to go. We all work as hard as we can to get ahead in life and yet the best thing we can do sometimes… is to walk away.

The communication and technology worlds are creating an explosive.. fast paced world. Everyone is trying to stay on top of the trends and trying to pull ahead. I want to encourage everyone to slow down and look internally before deciding how to communicate with the external market. Sometimes you need to simplify before you maximize.

I recorded this video last year when Brandswag was still working out of  my apartment. Ahhh the days of a start-up. It talks about simplifying your life in order to reconnect with why you started your business or job in the first place.

Please ignore the spray can in the back.. behind my head.

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Redefining Your Customers with Social Media

There are many applications for social media when it comes to your business. We can talk about everything from content sharing, increase of qualified search traffic, or content creation. There is still one way that ranks in the top 5 reasons to use social media…

Turning Your Customers into Evangelists

We all hear the term… customer evangelists and to be honest, we have no idea what that truly means. Social media tools and the medium itself has finally created a way to truly reap the benefits of global communication with your best clients and friends.

You have the ability to use social media to empower your customers. You are creating a medium that turns your customers into the sounding board for your business story… and ultimately your business growth.

The next time you start to define your social media marketing plan… remember to include turning your customers into evangelists… one link at a time.

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Is Email Marketing Better than Social Media?

I was thrown into a conversation through the Understanding Marketing blog surrounding the concept of email marketing being better than social media… or vice versa.

I tend to agree with the editor over at Understanding Marketing when they say:

“So there’s a big conversation on which one is better. Here’s what I say – Who cares!? They both serve your audiences in their own way.”

I couldn’t agree more. There shouldn’t even be an argument over which medium is better. You should be using both mediums to develop your marketing strategy. Email has been successful over the years to drive valued buyers to a landing page, website, or phone. Social Media is used to build a brand, tell a story, and start a conversation.

They are two different mediums.. two different uses.. two different outcomes. If you are wanting an idea about how to combine the two mediums… Here is something to chew on:

1. Social Media is available to start building brand awareness around a specific product or service. It is also there to truly empower your employees and clients to talk about your company.

2. Email is the second tier of communication. Once a potential client buys into your conversation through social media.. Email can be there to deliver relevant and sales material to push the sales across.

These are just two uses for the HUGE mediums of email and social media. How do you combine both strategies?

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I Don’t Care If You Are On Facebook and Twitter

There are hundreds of thousands of ways you can use social media.

Facebook… Twitter… Vimeo… YouTube… LinkedIN… SmallerIndiana… Plaxo…
They go on and on and on and on and on.
The tools are becoming universal. They are becoming secondary. The learning curve is dissapearing. 

Frankly… it isn’t unique anymore to just be on Facebook and Twitter. The world is hitting social media with a force and with that force comes millions of people using the same tool. How do you set yourself apart? How do you make a difference using the same site (Facebook) that upwards of 250 million people are using?

Put your heart into the content. Create an extreme value that PEOPLE and the masses cannot ignore. Only then will you cut through the noise. 

Gary Vaynerchuk has an excellent video blog that talks at length about the vale of content and the “2.0 hustle.” Do two things: 

1. Watch the video below

2. Follow the link above and subscribe to every little ounce of Gary Vaynerchuk content your little mouse pointer can handle..

Forget Social Media Measurement. Get Back to the Basics.

There has been a lot of talk about measurement and return-on-investment in the world of social media. Where and what do we measure? Is there any type of return on investment we can micro manage down to the point of dollars and cents?

Richard Stacy asked a brilliant question on his Social Computing Journal post called Social Media Measurement – Are We STaring At Stones? Are we measuring/looking at the wrong thing? Are we missing the point when we use Web 1.0 measurement tools and try to squeeze them into a Web 2.0 – 3.0 world? I think so. I would guess that Richard would agree.

Are we staring at the finish line without starting the race?

We are focused so intently on understanding the measurement model of social media that we fail to recognize the tool itself.  We fail to realize that a complete understanding of social media (as a tool) has yet to be accomplished. We need to back up and refocus. As a company, we are just as guilty.

It is hard for me to swallow the concepts of using traditional and web 1.0 measurements tools (traffic, click-throughs) to social media tools like Twitter.  What is the answer? Ad agencies are falling over themselves to gain as many viewers as possible to online videos. We can have 2 million views on a YouTube video but does that measure to actual growth in sales? It is hard to tell and becoming increasingly harder (Google aquisition of YouTube).

I don’t have the answer. Every interactive marketing firm on the planet is trying to measure this phenomenal new medium of communication… We all have case studies but there hasn’t been a proven formula for measurement.

Maybe we need to go back to the basics… refocus on completely understanding a new medium  that is changing our entire communication formula.

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What Roseta, PA Can Teach You About Social Media

I have been reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and just to be clear… the book is awesome.

At the beginning of the book Malcolm talks about a researcher named Stewart Wolf who was fascinated with the long lives of a group of Italians living in Roseto, Pennsylvania. Wolf did extensive research to try and figure out when the citizens of Roseta had virtually no heart disease or any sickness related deaths of any kind. It was not the diet, exercise or location… what Wolf found was that it was the city itself (pg 9). The conversations and relationships that “Rosetians” experienced on a daily basis helped keep them healthy and jovial.

This post is not about the City of Roseta.. it is about the data that was presented to medical communities across the world. Wolf was being met with resistance because of lack of “long rows of data arrayed in complex charts (pg 10).” They had to convince the medial establishment to look PAST the data and look at the findings in an entirely new light.

The same is true for using social media. There is still resistance from the “establishment”  because of the lack of data and charts to show growth rates and return-on-investment. Have we started to discuss the negative ramifications of not being involved in the new medium of social media?

Roseta citizens remained healthy and content because of conversations and relationship driven communication.. can’t that be applied to your marketing? Can’t that be applied to your communication strategy

What is stopping you?

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5 Steps to Deleting Your 3,000 Connections on Twitter

We talk a ton about quality over quantity. I need to take my own medicine.

I’m starting to see a shift in my own use of Twitter. I have been talking a lot about quality over quantity and the value of one-on-one relationships. I have realized I need to take advantage of my own advice.

It is time to purge the Twitter account. I need to start focusing more on the quality of the conversations I am experiencing on Twitter. What do you think about the quality over quantity approach?

5 Steps to Deleting Your STUPID Twitter Connections

1. I am going to unfollow all automatic feeds into Twitter. It doesn’t make sense… they do not talk back.

2. Keep following the people RT and respond to your posts. They are who matter! They are experiencing the value of communication and collaboration.

3. Pick 10 to 20 thought-leaders to follow. It doesn’t matter if they follow you back. They are there for education and sometimes “communication.” We cannot evolve unless we learn.

4. You can start to purge your connections by unfollowing people who do not follow you. Now, this does not mean you should be “upset” with people who do not follow you back. If they share great information… you should keep following them (See #3).

5. Do they have a logo as a picture. Eh? I would un-follow.

So remember the quality over quantity concept and start the process!

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Don’t Shoot at Fish in a Barrel. Blow the thing up!

Jeremiah Oywang has been ON FIRE the past couple of weeks with his posts regarding social media. I went through the slideshare (above) a couple of times and wanted to share.

When it comes to social media marketing you either understand the tools and then reach the customers…
or understand your customers and then find the tools!

Which choice do you think will grant you more success? The second.

Small business owners and business professionals are scraping to learn the tools presented to them. Whether it is for their personal use or for external marketing, they learn the tool and then broadcast it to catch the fish. They are choosing a gun… learning how to use the gun… and then firing into a barrel. Blow the thing up!

If you created a strategy and you understand your customer you don’t have to shoot anything… you will destroy the competition and the market. You will be picking dead fish up off the ground and cashing in. Dead fish apparently equal revenue/sales in my mind.

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