90% of Your Business Will Be Digital or WOM

A fellow employee at Brandswag, Colin Clark, wrote  a blog post about the 5 Ways to Prepare for the year 2011. Now this is an interesting post title in itself. What is the deal with the year 2011? I finally had the chance to read Colin’s post which is centered around a comment by Seth Godin. Seth has predicted that the majority (90%) of your sales will come from either digital marketing or word-of-mouth.

Talk about a crazy prediction… or is it?

Is it so hard to believe that the majority of small-to-mid size business leads will be driven by customer referrals and communication online? We are experiencing a complete 180 in terms of communication. Brands are being controlled not by the owner of the product or service but by the users.

Customer experience has always had a small hold on brands but with the Internet and social communities… the definition of YOUR product and service is no longer… under your control.

Where do you go from here?

Learn. Read. Jump in.

And when I say read… I mean go read Colin’s blog about the 5 Ways to Prepare for the Year 2011. The year of communication.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Taking a Gamble is the Way to Work! (kylelacy.com)
• Customer Service Is Defined By Customers (staygolinks.com)
• How to Be More Interesting (ducttapemarketing.com)
• All Shapes and Sizes (kylelacy.com)
• Just Call It Marketing (seohack.site88.net)

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• When to NOT Use Social Media (readwriteweb.com)
• This is a viral blog (bbc.co.uk)
• Timothy Karr: The Future Begins Thru You (huffingtonpost.com)
• Earning back trust | Corporate blogging news digest (socialmediatoday.com)

What’s Behind ILearningGlobal.tv? Coal or Gold?

There has been a slow but steady push (at least here in Indianapolis) to join a website with the likes of T. Harv Ecker, Brian Tracy, and Dr. Tony Allesandra. It is called iLearningGlobal. The whole concept behind the site:

“As an iLearningGlobal member you have direct 24/7 access to the most valuable training and learning content available today. iLearningGlobal provides training videos, audio programs, and ebooks from the top speakers, trainers, and authors worldwide. Fresh new content is added to the site weekly so the information is always fresh and you never run out of resources for continuous learning.

iLearningGlobal offers you the most advanced user viewing experience today within the iLG Signature Video Theater where you can experience full screen, High Definition video free of loading and buffering. This is web learning 2,0!” -From the Features section on iLearningGlobal.tv

I guess the question now is… what is this post about? I want to know what everyone thinks about the concept of iLearning Global. There has been the negative and positive viewpoints shared about the site. The negative borders on the Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) aspect of the site. Another negative has been the monthly cost of a online video based site (around $80/month). There are just as many positives as negatives.

The content on iLearningGlobal is excellent. I have watched multiple videos and they are short, concise, and give you a good boost of either confidence, ideas, or business knowledge (pick your poison). The instructors are fabulous and the video player is actually quite good.

On the other hand there are plenty of great content sites that are free. What is the draw?

Does the MLM pose a problem to people when using the site? Are you disgusted with the multi-level hundred grand a month scheme? I haven’t made my decision yet but I thought I would ask the more important critics: the readers of this blog.

What do you think?

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?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Have You Tried the DO Strategy of Social Business Success? (successful-blog.com)
• Book Review: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (basilandspice.com)
• Malcolm Gladwell is so money (writeblack.com)
• Malcolm Gladwell’s story of failure (news.cnet.com)

It is About Experiences Not About Sales

Tuesday I gave a keynote at the Hoosier Hospitality Conference in the beautiful city of Indianapolis. The presentation was over the future of online communication and what it means to business and the tourism industry. While giving the keynote… I stumbled across a recurring theme…

The value of experiences over the value of a sale.

When you are using social media as a tool in your marketing mix… It is important to remember how the world is changing (in terms of communication).

People are craving experiences. We have experienced decades of 50% off and last chance now sales ads. We have been pushed multiple advertisements in the span of a thiry minute television show.

1st mile. Billboard. 2nd mile. 5 radio advertisements. 3rd mile…

We all get the picture don’t we?

Everyone says they have excellent customer service. Everyone has a half-off sale.

Not everyone can create unbelieveable experiences for their clients. Show the experiences. Show the respect and trust.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Knowledge, Power & Social Media (techrigy.com)
• Twitter as a brand-builder: Three examples (news.cnet.com)
• Motrin: A Case Study In Social Media Marketing – Part 2 (marketing.blogtanker.com)
• Jason Baer: Are New Customers the Enemy of Success? (mpdailyfix.com)

Don’t Shoot Your Transparency All Over Me!

We talk alot about transparency in the blogging and social media world. In terms of being a business owner or a professional it is important to be transparent in everything you do in the online environment. Why? People want to know YOU not necessarily what you do.. that is secondary.

I haven’t really thought much about the concepts of transparency recently until reading a post by Louis Gray entitled Being Transparent is Fine but Please Use Smart Filtering. It talks about where you should/could draw the line when it comes to sharing personal information on the web. Louis talks about how he only shares personal information when it is relevant to the conversation or where it adds overall value to his online brand or persona.

“If you want to be transparent, and build a personal brand you are proud of, you must always be thinking about filtering what gets into your stream, and how it could benefit you and your audience.”

As I told some Purdue students a couple of weeks ago..

Everything is recorded online. Everything is searchable. Be careful what you post because it could come back to hurt your personal brand.

There is a fine line between being transparent and being ANNOYING. There is a reason why you have people following your blog or your profiles on multiple social networks. Don’t dissapoint and be proactive in what you share.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Jacob Morgan: Social Media Translated into the Real World (mpdailyfix.com)
• Despite Recession, More Than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media (readwriteweb.com)
• Liz Strauss: What Is Social Networking? (via Liz Strauss at Successful Blog) (successful-blog.com)
• Idea: LinkedIn Recommendations for You As a Blogger (davidrisley.com)

The Jeremiah Owyang Smack Down on Vaporware

If you are reading social media blogs and you are not reading Jeremiah Owyang’s blog… you are either an idiot or missing out completely! He has a new post called Vaporware in the Social Media Space which talks about the misleading of Social Media companies when they are launching their wares.

Flash. Bang. Boom. Look at me. Look at me. I have 3000 widgets. Well.. Right now I have 2 widgets.. the 2998 come in due time.

Add them to the list.

I am in the same boat as Jeremiah.. I am getting tired of hearing about all the new innovative products and offerings of certain social media companies.. only to be let down in the long run. It is fairly dissatisfying. Here are Jeremiah’s requirements to a successful launch

“On day of announcement they should be able to show a demo of their product. If it’s an enterprise product, or complicated, then show a video with it working. Consider using a customer reference or a test case to demonstrate how it’s been working in the past.”

If companies do not live up to the hype.. put them on the list. As a collective group we can stop the bleeding…

I am going to join the fight. Are you?

Related articles by Zemanta

• It’s time for a sponsored conversations summit (socialmediatoday.com)
• Michael Rubin: You Don’t Need to be an ‘Expert’ to Succeed at Corporate Social Media (mpdailyfix.com)
• The Twitter Attack on Jeremiah Owyang, Community Defense (socialmediatoday.com)
• Social Media pays (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)