Getting Companies to Buy the “Social Idea”

What An Exciting Time! My company Brandswag had it’s 2009 Planning Meeting this weekend at our offices in Indianapolis. It was fun to have everyone together to talk about growing the business. One of the topics of conversation was the process of selling social media marketing to corporate America. Another way to look at it: How do you sell the idea of “viral/echo” marketing to companies between $10-$150 million?

Amazingly Seth Godin had a blog post recently called Selling Ideas to a Big Company. Seth always seems to save the day when I am debating something important like social media marketing to corporate America. In the post Seth talks about two things you HAVE to HAVE in order to sell an idea to BIG business.

1. They have to be in the business of buying ideas.

2. They have to trust you.

If there was one thing I took from the post it was the fact that…“if you have an idea for a company that doesn’t know how to buy it, move on. And if you want to be in the business of selling ideas, find an industry that has experience buying those ideas.”

The top two reasons are not debatable when it comes to selling social media to corporate America. They have to believe in the concept of social media marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy. They also have to trust you as a social media advocate or “trust agent.” (You can hit me later for using coined terms)

You cannot force the idea of adding in social strategy to an overall marketing plan. If you have to CONVINCE someone to use social media….

they will not.

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Being Disease Ridden in Marketing

Seth Godin has another great blog on gimmicks. I didn’t pull much from the actual blog pertaining to gimmicks but he had a great thought at the end:

As you sit down to consider ways to be more remarkable, the challenge is to be worth talking about… at the same time you are adding value for the person who’s talking about you.

I encourage all members in Smaller Indiana to invent your “gimmick” for Smaller Indiana. Does it add value when you are virally spreading? What will it take to create a Smaller Indiana that is worth spreading like an epidemic from city to city? Are we already there?

I will leave you with this:

I was playing Oregon Trail on Facebook and well, I died from a virus (my body was probably eaten by a pack of ravenous wolves but that is beside the point). It made me chuckle and ponder on how a virus spreads and infects.

And much like a small pox outbreak on Oregon Trail, Smaller Indiana is turning into a virus.

Eventually Social Media Will Dissapear. Remember What Matters Most.

Jason Falls has an awesome video over at Social Media Explorer. The post is entitled: When Social Media Doesn’t Matter. Check out the video and then check out my response.

My Video

Why Spend Money on PPC? QUIT WASTING MONEY!

There is an interesting post over at Ali Sale’s blog at Compendium Blogware.The title of the post is Pay Per Click vs SEO – Which Gets More?. It was an interesting title for me to click through because I have been debating the concept myself. Which one is worth more? Interesting fact for Ali’s blog.:

“Even though organic search is nearly 10x more effective on the click side, marketers are still pouring 10x the amount of cash into PPC (pay per click).”

This doesn’t make any sense to me other than one thing: time. I am not a huge student of PPC or Organic Search optimization but it makes complete sense to me (as a business owner) to use something that is 10x more effective than another tool.

Do I need to draw a picture?

It would be like paying someone for an 8-track to play on an iPod.

It would be like trying to run Office 2008 on Windows Me… When in reality you should not be running or using a PC.

Okay.. maybe those did not make any sense but you get the point.

Does it make business sense to pay for something that is about to dissapear? You are creating content, creating an experience, and getting better search results with organic search engine optimization. Why would you pay someone to for click throughs?

I am curious. Honestly curious. Why would you pick PPC over Organic SEO. Is it the time?

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Is Business Blogging Killing the Human Element?

I am a huge fan of Chris Baggott. Plain and Simple.
Chris is co-founder of a company called Compendium Blogware. Compendium is a brilliant blogging platform that is catered strictly in search, keywords, and acquisitions.From their website:

• Get found online. Blog to improve organic search (SEO).

• Generate demand. For your products or services.

• Humanize your marketing. Build relationships with prospective customers

This morning I read a post from Chris called Business Blogging Lies & Truths. In the post Chris talks about the assumed lies of Business Blogging which is:

The vast majority of your blog traffic will come from search engines.   Companies have lot’s of ways to engage in relationships with exisitng customers.  Blogging is an acquisition strategy.

But customer generated content in enough volume to drive your progam in to any meaningful ROI?  It’s a lie.

I am having a hard time relating the concept of Humanizing Your Marketing when focusing so much emphasis on acquisition and search. I don’t think you can downgrade the concept of internal customer support and conversation driving meaningful ROI.

When a social media marketing or traditional marketing company says, “We want a system that will allow our Chief Blogging Expert to create a post and then our customers will come and comment….all kinds of good things will happen.” This does not mean they are going to have their customers writing content…it means they are involved in the conversation.

Humanizing your marketing means getting involved in the conversation.  This means spending time answering comments and suggestions… sending email to the people who commented on your post.

You want to know how to humanize your content? Be Involved.

The last thing I want to see is blogging turned into a marketing machine churning out countless bits of data just to beat a traditional SEO strategy in the Google rankings. AND the last thing I want to see on a blog category are keywords like :

The Best Social Media Marketing Firm in Indianapolis

Why would I ever click that category?

Blogging for search, acquisition, and sales is great but when you focus so much energy and time on search you will slowly begin to lose the human side of your blogging strategy.

I don’t think business blogging or blogging for search is killing the human element of blogging but it isn’t helping people balance both sides of the equation.

Can you find balance? I know we are all trying, measuring, and searching.

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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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Email and Blogs: Ideas for Great Content

I was searching for some good concepts to write about tonight and I stumbled across Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware’s post about Blog Content ideas. He talks about using your sent and read email in your inbox as ideas for great content. Here is his example of a great content starter from a recent email he sent to a prospective client:

Trust that I’m going to hound you on this forever.  It’s for your own good    Data driven search marketing is the perfect compliment to email.   90% of all marketing dollars are spent on acquisition marketing…a place that email has limited value.   Search is the only acquisition strategy that is still growing in this environment and Compendium is the only software designed to legitimately target organic search on a  scale comparable to PPC.

You will be thanking me

I am always looking for ways to find great content to write about online. Let’s be honest with ourselves, we cannot thing up original content 24/7. Well.. unless you are Chris Brogan or Douglas Karr.

Other than using Google Alerts and Google Reader to start sifting through the massive amount of content on the web. I suggest using Chris’ idea and finding compelling content you have already written.

Imagine that. You have a wealth of information and content being created every day by your own fingertips!

Social Equity Is More Important than Financial Equity

I was surfing through some Gary Vaynerchuk videos and stumbled across this post from March 28, 2008: Legacy Is Greater Than Currency.

The video basically breaks down Gary’s thought on Financial decisions compared to legacy and social decisions. I have been debating internally about the concept of personal branding in the social media marketing realm and this video hits it right on the nose.

As an entrepreneur (and I think I speak for most) a legacy concept is much more important than the financial return a business may bring you. Let’s face it… the first five years of owning a company is pretty much scraping, unless you are a Mark Z, the creator of Facebook.

In the world of social media it is far more important to put emphasis on building your personal brand and personal equity than putting cash in your pocket. This has a lot to do with how you use social media. If you are a business owner and you are using social media as a marketing tool you CANNOT… let me repeat.

YOU CANNOT

Treat your friends and followers as financial equity. You will be eaten alive. I am saying this more towards the people who use Twitter Auto-Response or just write a blog for financial gain. Become a part of the community. Give back to the community. Join the race and enjoy the race.

In the end, you will find that will bring much more to your life than a new Infiniti or a Mercedes.

I am in business because I love what I do. I love everything about social media marketing and branding. If that means I need to make $20,000 a year for five years to truly build a company that helps people do what they love…

Sign me up.. over and over again.

Because in the end you will see far greater return in the long run both personally and professionally.

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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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