All Shapes and Sizes

Guest post by Social Media Consultant Colin Clark

I spend the majority of my day every day thinking up creative ways for businesses to use social media tools to improve their bottom line.  The one thing that I’ve found is that if I put together social media action plans for 10 different companies, all 10 would be very different, even if they were in similar industries.

The reason for this is that it’s extremely important to look at all aspects of your business before delving into social media, because once you do you’re baring your soul to anyone who you interact with online.  Since every business is composed of different types people, every strategy must be optimized to ensure those people will be successful in communicating with people online

So many consultants are saying ‘You must blog’ or ‘You must have a presence on Facebook‘.  It may or may not be the case.  The only ‘must’ is that you ‘must’ use good judgment and good marketing fundamentals to put together a strategy that’s going to be successful.

They Don’t Read Your Blog. Do Something About It.

Okay. This blew me away.

According to Minds Eye Web Design: 95% of web users DO NOT read 80%. (via ux booth)

Now.. there isn’t any reporting backing up the numbers of 95 and 80 (from what I could find) but I would like to think Minds Eye was either being dramatic to generate emotion or they actually surveyed for the info. I don’t know about you but I get emotional when I hear that 95% is only reading 20% of my content.

So how do we change? How do we create content that is going to take the 80% to 60% and eventually to 30% and then to 20%? Good question.

There are plenty of links we could list that have to do with content creation, headers, subject matters, blogging strategy, and links (to name a few). I wanted to concentrate on one thing that my readers and small business owners could implement tomorrow.

Relationship Building.

You will find that after meeting a person off-line you will tend to read their content a little more frequently. Now, this does not guarantee a massive amount of traffic to your site but in all reality… don’t we want qualified readers instead?

I would rather have 400 daily readers than 4,000 “kind-of” readers.

Take your blog out into the world with you. Share your content in more ways than just online. Tell people about your blog or website when you meet them at a networking event!

Be proud of what you do, what you write, and what you live.

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Twitter Has a Problem Going Mainstream

I have been wanting to write a post like this for awhile. Over the past couple of months I have been giving seminars in and out of Indianapolis over the topic of Social Media. Guess which question comes up when talking about the tools you can use online?

What is Twitter? Why and how do you use it?

It never fails. No matter where I am at or what I am talking about… there is always a question about Twitter. Do you know what I say? It is different every time. I always try to give the universal definition of Twitter:

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Or a personal definition from a blog like MovinMeat:

Twitter is a fun and occasionally useful social networking app.   You’re basically supposed to give frequent updates on what you are doing and pithy observations on life, in short 140-character clips, or “tweets.”   It’s sort of like text-messaging the entire world, as they are public feeds. 

Through reading multiple blogs, articles, and opinions on the definition of Twitter… I have come to the understanding that the lack of an identifying value statement is keeping Twitter from hitting the mainstream marketing. I’m talking from 2 million to 50 million users.

Small businesses and big corporations alike have huge problems if their value statement does not line up to the ideas of the people behind the brand. I believe that Twitter is going to have a problem hitting the mainstream market if they cannot push a message out to the users. A message that contains a universal value statement that helps the “viral marketing” aspect push the online tool.

Give me something sticky. Give me something I can yell at the top of my lungs. Help me become an evangelist.

The 10 Commandments to Understanding Social Media

I am obsessed with a book by Marc Gobe called Emotional Branding. It was written in early 2002 and is (in my opinion) a staple to understanding the concepts of emotional branding and marketing. He has a section in the introduction of the book (pg. xxviii) called The Ten Commandments of Emotional Branding. I was reading through the ten steps and realized they fit perfectly with understanding the model of social media and how to use it to better communicate with your clients and potential clients.

The Ten Commandments to Understanding Social Media

1. From Consumers to People.

2. From Product to Experience.

3. From Honesty to Trust

4. From Quality to Preference

5. From Notoriety to Aspiration

6. From Identity to Personality

7. From Function to Feel

8. From Ubiquity to Presence

9. From Communication to Dialogue

10. From Service to Relationship.

We are going to focus on each one of the ten commandments in the next couple of days. The concepts outlined in the book by Gobe were not dedicated to social media but they are essential to understanding how to use the tool. They are based completely behind the idea of understanding the emotional relevance of the communication tool called the Internet. Joel Desgrippes of BrandImage says it best:

“Branding is not only about ubiquity, visibility, and functions; it is about bonding emotionally with people in their daily life. Only when a product or a service kindles an emotional dialogue with the consumer, can this product of service qualify to be a brand.”

First on the docket: Consumers to People. I can’t wait. Stay tuned.

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Personalize Your Twitter Page with BubbleTweet!

I love this tool. I love it so much… I just had to share about it. First, check out the link to my new BUBBLETWEET PAGE. Pretty cool huh? I probably could have spent more time recording a nice message but Jay-Z, a pen, and a pad is good enough for me.
Can you think of a better way to personalize your Twitter page even more than a customized background? YOU should go check out BubbleTweet and get one for your Twitter page.

How should you use it?

Give a personalized greeting. You have about a minute to record whatever response you would want a user to hear when entering your Twitter page.

What do I suggest?

My first suggestion is to NOT do what I did. I would doubt that the majority of your users (both potential and current) would enjoy watching you dance to Rhianna and Jay-Z. You never know though.

Thank them for coming by your page. Tell them a quick snippet about yourself. This is a great way to be transparent and show some social media authenticity!

UMBREL. ELLA.. ELLA… ELLA

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The Beauty of Online to Offline Networking

Last night we had the Smaller Indiana 4,000 Member Party! What was once a twinkle in Pat Coyle and Doug Karr’s minds is now a reality. Over a year old, Smaller Indiana is boasting 2,000 – 3,000 hits a day and moving from a membership of 35 people in August of 2007 to 4,400 in January 2009.

The concept of Smaller Indiana is to make ideas findable in the State of Indiana. The idea was to build a community of business owners, employees, employers, artists, writers, musicians and every type of creative individual to stop Indiana’s brain drain and put Indiana on the MAP!

The party was excellent and it reminded me of the power of taking your online relationships to an offline environment. The whole concept of networking is to build relationships with individuals who could potentially be a client or a referral partner (better the referral partner).

I will always encourage clients and individuals attending our seminars to try and take your online relationships to an offline environment. We are all human. We all crave that face to face interaction. Online networking can only go so far but if you combine the two….

Magic.

And not the Disney World kind of magic but the “successful” kind of magic.

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It’s Not About Professional Networking In Social Media

I was surprised when I was reading some stats from the PEW Internet & American Life Project via ReadWriteWeb. Apparently the majority of adult social network users are not using the networks for business or professional networking. According to the PEW report the majority of adults (89%) are using social networks to stay in touch with friends. A surprising 6% of all adult users on the Internet are using LinkedIN which makes more sense if you think about it.

LinkedIN has boasted around 30 million users and when you think about the odd 250 million Internet users worldwide… it makes complete sense.

My question for LinkedIN and other professional social networks?

How do you get more people onto your site? How do you utilize your far from perfect application development and draw in more business owners, corporate professionals, and white-collar individuals?

Or does it matter?I don’t think LinkedIN has to expand to the point when they are catering to the people who will not use social media.

It isn’t about numbers anymore. You do not need 60 million people on a network to start making money. LinkedIN should be focusing on it’s 30 million members… switching them over to the premium service.

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The COMPLETE History of the Internet

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

I discovered this History of the Internet video from Alisa Leonard-Hansen at Socialized. This is a great video over the complete history of the Internet. Check it out and love it!

The Importance of Content in Internet Success

We had some great discussion surrounding the effectiveness of the Internet Marketing Success equation yesterday. There was one comment in which I wanted to discuss further because I feel it is extremely important.

Mike Seidle of IndyAssociates left a comment about content being involved in the Internet Marketing success equation.

Kyle, last I looked, content is pretty important. Of all the items you listed:

(data + software + skills + network)/time

Nothing has more effect on your denominator than does the creation of content. It’s time consuming, expensive and usually ignored at the price of things that are more fun – like software and network building.

I replied to him with:

@Mike In my opinion Content is involved in DATA. You need the content first and then the software and the skills.

I wanted to expound  upon the notion of content being involved in the 5 Steps to Marketing Success.

Content is involved as a subset of Data and Skills. Data could mean a variety of things depending on the strategy and tools you are using to reach internet marketing success. We will speak in terms of blogging. In blogging the Data you are gathering is two fold.

1. You are gathering data and information to write posts and gain more insight into certain topics.

2.  You are using tools like Google Analytics to measure traffic and visits.

The skills subset of the equation is also two fold:

1. The skills you gain over life through reading, learning, and experiencing are what give you the ability to write content. I am obsessed with social media. I immerse myself in it on a daily basis (data) and because of this, I have the ability to write content.

2. Skills also have to do with your ability to use the SOFTWARE and tools necessary to take the data and skills and apply them to an Internet marketing strategy.

The learning curve for skills, data, and software can be wide but there are always professionals out there that can help you with the process.

Read some blogs. Develop your skills. Use the free software. Strategize and Destroy the competition.

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5 Steps to Internet Marketing Success Not Four

I was reading Lorraine Ball’s blog over at Roundpeg.biz and she has a post called Four Steps to Internet Marketing Success which piggy backs off of a Hubspot post called 4 Components of a Successful Internet Marketing Strategy.

In the post they both talk about the concept of:
Data + Software + Skills + Network = Internet Marketing Success

The formula makes sense. You need all four components to realize marketing success. I couldn’t figure out how the time involvement fit into the equation. Time is THE most valuable asset to a marketer, small business owner, or entrepreneur when it comes to social media marketing.

In the Hubspot post it talk about time in the skills category but that didn’t make much sense to me. Skills and time are not related in my opinion. You can have all the skills in the world but if you do not make the time to use the data, tools, skills, and software… the 4 components are kind of a mute point.

A new equation could look something like this:

The new equation takes in the time aspect of social media and internet marketing success. You need to divide time evenly over the four tools of success. Time is the crucial element in this equation without time you have nothing.

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