5 Marketing Posts to Read This Weekend.

I have been reading different blogs for most of the day today and thought I would list the 5 of the more interesting..  Of course… for your reading pleasure.

1. Time To Call It Quits? by Duncan Alney

Duncan always has a way with breaking down the internal strife of Internet companies and shedding light on the potential ramifications of biz activity. This is a great read for the group of us who cares what is internally happening at Facebook.

2. How Much Personality Should My Blog Have? by Lorraine Ball

Lorraine breaks down the intricacies with running two blogs: one for a company and one for the personal side. What do you think?

3. Integrated Campaigns. Multiple Partners? by Jacob Leffler

“Recent market research has exposed the fact that there are no less than 150 – 200 advertising agencies/marketing communication and/or marketing consultancies in the city of Chicago alone. Many of these firms claim to offer “web site” design/development and/or interactive services. If you go the portfolio section of many of these firms
web sites…” I’ve said enough.

4. How Would You Feel About Google Buying Twitter? by ReadWriteWeb

I’ve been wondering the same thing. ReadWriteWeb takes a couple of innovators in the area of Social Media and gets THEIR reaction. Good stuff.

5. Silver Square Reaches the Inbox of Your Brain by Clay

Hilarious April Fool’s Day post about Push-Telepathy technology. Freaking hilarious.

Targeting Location and Conversation on Twitter

Imagine if you could target conversations around a specific target location? Do you think that would be valuable to any small business or marketing firm using Twitter as a communications tool? Probably and Yes.

I stumbled across TwitterHawk this morning while finishing up some last minute preparations for a pitch and I would have to say… at first glance.. I am pretty impressed.

Developed by Duellsy , Twitterhawk allows you to search for keywords across the conversations happening on Twitter. Now… this is not revolutionary.. I know but the cool part is that you can target specific geographic locations around a keyword. If you want to know all the conversations about coffee happening between people in Indiana it is possible to track. Here is an example:

Let’s say you just opened a new coffee store in Queens and wanted to let people know about it. As part of your advertising efforts, you could setup TwitterHawk to search for things like “coffee near:Queens within:8mi” (of course you could simply search world wide if you are global).

We would then periodically (at a frequency determined by you) find twitter posts that mentioned coffee by users that are actually located within 8 miles of Queens such as
‘@cracksh0t Oh I could really go for a coffee right now’ or
‘@loxly Coffee… my one true love’

Talk about a great marketing tool to start a conversation! I am still debating on whether or not this is just another form of Auto-Dm… which I despise.. I haven’t really made my decision. It is a great way to start conversations and use Twitter as an actual marketing platform. It is only disingenuous if you don’t respond after the initial connection is made.

What do you think?

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The Job-Seeking Student’s Social Media Toolbox

Today’s guest post is by David Spinks. David is a student at SUNY Geneseo, an freelance interactive analyst for Ruder Finn, a social media enthusiast, a big Giants fan, an athlete, a gamer, an artist and many other things depending on who you ask. You can read this thoughts and opinions at DavidSpinks.com.

______________________________

We grew up on livejournal, then upgraded to myspace, and finally matured to facebook. College students know their way around a social media platform, that’s for sure. The problem is many students limit themselves to the one or two big sites, or tools, and fail to recognize the great amount of potential these sites and other sites can offer you in your job search.

I have been using multiple social media tools while at school to connect with a lot of professionals that I would never been able to meet otherwise. From these connections I have been able to create a few job opportunities in a very tough job market. Make use of your social media toolbox, connect and collaborate like you were raised, and create opportunities for yourself!

Google Reader

The first step to establishing your presence in a field is to know what is going on in that field. Search for blogs by professionals and subscribe to their feed. Most news sites will also offer an RSS feed that you can subscribe to.

A good way to build a list of blogs to follow is to look up blogs on google, find a couple good ones, then look at their blogrolls. Usually good bloggers can recommend other good blogs. Try to subscribe to blogs with slightly different ideas so that you’re not only hearing one side of discussions.

You can also create a feed based on keywords. All articles that google finds with that keyword will then be fed into your reader. This is another good way to find more blogs to subscribe to.

When you start looking for jobs, you can subscribe to job boards and have all openings fed into your reader.

Twitter

If you’re not on twitter already, you probably should be. If you’re skeptical of its value, there are plenty of great articles written explaining the value of twitter as a networking tool, and articles to help you get started.

Through twitter, you’ll be able to connect with seasoned and new professionals; allowing you to learn from their expertise, offer your own insights, and if you play your cards right, create job opportunities.

Once you’re comfortable and established on twitter, you’ll be able to keep with the most recent trends, innovations, and news in your industry. If you have a question, ask your loyal followers and receive instant responses. The greatest thing about twitter is that almost everyone is willing to help, myself included (@davidspinks if you have any questions).

Linkedin

This is a great tool that will not only allow you to create a professional presence online, found easily on search engines, but will also allow you to connect with professionals in your desired field from all over the world. You can use twitter to create connections with like-minded professionals, and stay connected through linkedin.

The Answers section is a great tool that I like to use every so often. You can discuss different ideas and prove your knowledge / enthusiasm to other professionals. If your answer is good enough (the “best answer”), the person who asked the question can grant you “expertise” under that topic.

Blog

These networks are great, but if you really want to create a name for yourself start your own blog. You need three things: Thoughts and opinions on your field of interest (if you don’t, you should probably reconsider your career) some writing skills, and time that you can commit to updating your blog.

Setting one up is really easy with services like wordpress (I use it) and blogger. Read up on some articles that provide advice on how to start a blog and get started! You can use your other social media tools like twitter, linkedin and even facebook to drive traffic to your blog.

Your blog will allow employers to see that you’re involved in the industry, you’re enthusiastic, and allow them to get an idea of your writing skills which may matter depending on your field. It will also give you a good google ranking when people search your name, unless you share a name with someone famous (I get a lot of hits from people searching “the great spinks” looking for the boxer).

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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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Social Media is Valuable but Broken. We Need to Work Together.

There is always debate.
There is always debate on the topics of social media… the black magic of the business world. Should we do it? What is the best way to do it?

Traditional marketing, advertising and PR firms do not know what to do. “Social Media” companies do not have enough traditional strategy to make something stick. We are all scraping to find something to make this powerful tool work. It is going to be a long process of customization, personalization, and strategy.

My company, Brandswag, started out as a small business design and marketing firm in Indianapolis. We have thus grown to a 5 person shop dealing with graphic design, web design, and social media/internet marketing. The transition happened pretty naturally because all of us were so involved in social media already… Why not try to leverage this amazing tool for business benefit? And it has worked… to an extent. The tool is broken. Social media should be used strictly with a traditional strategy. Hire a traditional marketing firm. Hire a Public Relations firm.

This is not the “save-me-from-the-economy” tool. It is a new thing. It is a new product that is being slowly pushed and pulled apart to make it work. I am far from an “expert” and there are only a few that can take that title (Chris Brogan and Douglas Karr). We all have little pieces of the pie to maximize a marketing strategy.

What are we to do? Work together.

Traditional marketing, PR, and advertising companies need to open up their minds to the tool and also the opposite way. Social media and internet marketing companies need the traditional strategy and marketing of the agency. Let’s work together to measure and get results.

We are all in this together. We have (at our fingertips) a tool that could transform the way we communicate.

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Get 30,000 Followers on Twitter. What is it Worth?

I search constantly on the web for writers and thinkers who display a chip on their shoulder. They are brilliant thinkers but they have a sarcasm about them that keeps my days interesting. One of my favorite writer is Alexander van Elsas. There are times when I completely agree with Alexander and also times when I completely disagree… there really is not a middle ground.

He has a post talking about the real value of Twitter ‘s suggest user feature which was made a little more valuable after Jason Calacanis offered $500K. Congratulation Jason and Alexander, you have pushed me to a crossroad on the purpose of quality over quantity.

We talked about the purpose of quality over quantity all the time on the web.

“I would rather have 200 devout followers than 20,000 kind-of listeners.”

There is a reason we do this. We are the social-renegades of the marketing world. What? You think we should send out mass mailings? Buy an email list? AHH. I am dying from heart failure.

The truth of the matter is this… I haven’t come to any conclusions yet on the value of quality over quantity. Jason Calacanis shows the absolute value of driving traffic from Twitter to his start-up, Mahalo. He was willing to pony up $250,000 to drive two-million visits a month to his site. I would do it too.

And yet, Alexander talks about the quality of the followers being below zero. I also agree with him when he says:

“It makes the reach you have on Twitter as good as any spammer that hijacked millions of e-mail addresses. There is always a sucker that falls for it. The real-time effect is pretty much worthless when put into comparison to the nr of followers and the spam being produced. To me the only benefit, if you can call it a benefit, would be that the audience that follows you remains persistent.”

So what is the answer? You can always give the quality over quantity speech but does that drive revenue? In the world of business there is absolute value to use social media but what is the strategy? Quality over Quantity?

What are 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 Twitter followers worth to you?

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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.

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Is Conversation or Content King on the Social Web?

I am currently doing some research for my presentation at the Hoosier Hospitality Conference and I ran across this quote by Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing:

“Content isn’t king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you would choose your friends…. If you chose your movies, we would call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.”

It made me think hard about my opinions on content and the use of such tools to drive leads to businesses using the Internet. Sometimes the point of conversation is missed by many Internet marketers. It is excellent if you are at the top of Google search for your keywords but what happens when the potential customer clicks through to your site?

Do you have the necessary tools and systems in place to create conversations with the users influenced by your search ranking? Is it even necessary?

Absolutely it is necessary. We are seeing an overwhelming demand for the marketers and businesses of the world to call consumers… PEOPLE… and not the other way around.

It is important to creat excellent content in order to push the conversation but…

Conversation leads to Relationships. Relationship leads to Aquisition.

What do you think? Is Content king or did Conversation just take the throne?

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Facebook Isn’t For Your Kids Anymore

I was reading a new social networking report from Nielsen called Global Faces and Networked Places and they had some stats about the growth of Facebook over the past year.

At Brandswag we deal with the Facebook paradigm from the older generations. Many of the small business owners we talk to would rather not think about using Facebook for marketing or networking because it is something their kids use. Now, we know that is not entirely true and yes… Facebook is used by your children but there is more behind .

The past few years have seen an increase in the use of Facebook by the Gen X and Baby Boomer crowd. According to the Nielsen report the greatest growth on Facebook has been from the people aged 35-49.

Guess what age group doubled that of their 18 year old children? The 50-64 year olds.

We are talking about one-third of the global audience on Facebook being between the ages of 35-49! What does this mean for small business owners? It means that you now have a viable source for business networking. It means that social media is no longer all about your children.

This small piece of your marketing strategy is now catering to all age groups… young and old. Is it time to start using social media to grow your business? Is it time to at least learn how to communicate online?

Absolutely. Start now.

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Grow Your Biz Using Social Media Class

For those of you in the Indianapolis area.

I have completed some Rain University Classes the past couple of months and I have another class coming up on the 19th of March.

This class is not for beginners. We will not be covering basics. It will help if you have been through at least one of the introductory classes or are already blogging and engaged in several social media sites.

Social networking is a great way to promote your business and build your brand. With that said, how do you use it productively? How do you spend 30-60 mins a day and get the most out of social media?

What you will learn:

We will also be offering this class with a live online video stream. To find out more information follow the link to the Information Page.