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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All That Matters Is Your Story

We are experiencing a change in the world of customer communication. It is no longer the company that is controlling the brand management but the consumer. Forget the concept of social media… we have been witnessing this transition for the past decade… and since the inception of the Internet as a worthwhile tool for communication.

Customers are now talking about you at a staggering pace using sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIN… and the list goes on. I was watching TV today and taking note of the increasinly terrible advertising that is taking place on the cable networks. I began to realize that I (along with millions of others) are no longer making buying decisions based on traditional advertising. You can take the definition of traditional advertising any way you want but in my terms it means old ways of doing business.

A great book to read from the Heath brothers is Made to Stick which talks about the concept of creating a story to push your company into the next decade of communication. I have read, reread, and read again the excellent points made throughout the book and began to realize one thing… if you do not create a story that your customers can retell you will lose market share steadily over the next couple of years.

We might not be seeing a steady decline because social media and the Internet is still bleeding edge when it comes to market penetration in a global sense. My question is simply this: What happens when we do reach the peak of market penetration for social media? What happens when your customers ARE using the tool and using it effectively? What do you do when you reach the point? Are you ready for the onslaught? Is your communications department familiarizing themselves with the tools?

All that matters is your story. You are going to be creating a story based on a marketing process but we might come to the point where it doesn’t matter what you want your story to be… your customers are going to create a story anyway. Experience is the key to the future of marketing and customer communication. They (your customer) are going to be talking NOT about your sales or PR release but how they personally experienced your product or service.

Are you preparing yourself for the new age of communication?

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6 Ways to Use TwitterCounter for Twitter Growth

I have been doing a ton of research for the new book from Wiley Publishing, Twitter Marketing for Dummies. The research has to do with productivity tools, marketing tools, and overall marketing knowledge for use on Twitter. I came across TwitterCounter in my search for a tool that fully utilizes trends of your followers, as well as, a personalized platform to track Twitter growth. TwitterCounter doesn’t look like much at first glance but if you dig into the roots of the tool you will find that the guts of the website is fairly useful in terms of analyzing Twitter.

When you first go to the site it gives you the ability to sign in with your Twitter account and gain access to a variety of  data that I found extremely useful.

1. Tracking Your Growth. The site allows you to view a graph that can expand over a couple of days or a couple of months that shows the growth of your followers. This is interesting because it shows you where you being effective and where you were not being effective pertaining to growing your following. If you can see the graph to the right it shows that I had a couple of days last week where my follower count shot up and then it started leveling off at the end of the week. This shows that halfway through the week I was sharing content that people found more valuable than at the end. You can then review your tweets and figure out what content your followers enjoy most.

2. Comparing Your Growth with Other Users. Under the graph you will find a section that allows you to compare different Twitter accounts with your own growth. This allows you to either track your growth compared to competitors in your industry or anything else you could possibly think of when trending growth patterns. It is similar to Compete.com and the use of comparing website traffic with multiple sites. You can then cross reference the data with the accounts you are comparing and find what type of content they are sharing to drive more growth.

3. Twitter Badge for Your Blog. I have always wanted a little badge on my blog that tracks how many followers I have. TwitterCounter gives you the ability to pull an embedded code off their website and place it on your own site. You can see mine to the right of this post under the email subscribe button. This badge gives you another route to gain more followers (especially the people who read your blog and are not following you on Twitter).

4. Twitter and TwitterCounter API. For the geeks reading this post the TwitterCounter API is a pretty cool application to develop. The TwitterCounter API allows you to retrieve everything TwitterCounter knows about a certain Twitter username. It uses a simple REST API, which can be called on at the following UR. Personally, I would not be using the Twitter API but it gives TwitterCounter another route to fully utilizing and searching Twitter for different types of data.

5. Tracking Updates and ReTweets. You have the abiliy to view a graph on the amount of updates you have made in a given day or month and the amount of retweets tracking throughout a given period. This is valuable in order to keep yourself accountable to pushing a certain amount of updates in a given day on Twitter. If you found you have been slacking during a certain time in the week it might be wise to adjust your schedule to help with making more updates to your Twitter account. However, don’t share stupid content.

6. Remote Twitter Stats. This function is apparently still in building phase but the potential of the tool is pretty cool. The remote allows you to view WHO visited your site from Twitter. This is an awesome application in concept because it will allow you to target the Twitter users that visit your blog on a daily or weekly basis. I don’t know about you but I would love to know which users truly visited my blog. You can start adapting a help me, help you process to your Twitter usage and really push content that specific Twitter users have found appealing.

Did I miss anything on the use of TwitterCounter? Any other avenues that YOU personally use to track your growth using this awesome tool?

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5 Things I Have Learned as a Generation Y Business Owner

Two Years.

It has been two years since Brandswag drove a stake into the ground in Indianapolis and Oklahoma City. It is funny to look back on the process and change the business has gone through. From working out of an apartment to moving into offices, hiring employees, speaking through the mid-west, and venturing into new markets… it has been a whirlwind ride.

What have I learned?

Good question. I have been asking myself this question for the past week. What have I learned over the course of two years? Here are 5 things I have learned as a generation y business owner.

1. A Great Business Partner is Invaluable.

Brandon Coon (my business partner) has been the foundation holding this company together for the past 2 years. To be completely honest, I am surprised he hasn’t quit on me. I can tend to be a little ADD and completely crazy. If you can find a person that has opposite strength qualities… it will help when planning marketing strategy, financial forecasting, and absolutely everything else you will deal with as a company.

2. Don’t Let Your Age Keep You Down.

When we first started the company and I needed to go out on the “networking circuit” to sell product and services.. I let the issue of my age (being 23 at the time) destroy my confidence. I would tend to think that my alternative look and overloaded energy would push business owners away. After losing a couple of projects to “seasoned veterans” I realized that my age could actually be a supporting model to business owners looking for a “refreshed” look to their image.

By owning to your age… you will find that people feed off of your energy. Don’t ever let someone tell you that you are to young to complete a project. Don’t ever let someone tell you that it will be impossible for you to succeed as a business owner right out of college.

We have 5 people… We are all under 26. We look and preach what we sell.. and it works.

3. Find a Mentor. Even a Couple.

I am blessed to count a couple of people as mentors in my network. Tony Scelzo, Lorraine Ball,  Ray Hilbert, Mike Lantz and my father (Dan Lacy) are people that have coached me and helped me through the past two years of running Brandswag. Without a support system of business owners and mentors who have accomplishments far outweighing your own… you will not make it in the business world.

Make it a point to create mentor type relationship with your clients.

4. Work Your Butt Off.

There is a saying out there: Work smarter not harder. Forget that crap. Work your butt off in the first couple of years as a business owner. You are going to make mistakes and that is a given. I have forgotten clients, missed deadlines, and screwed up print jobs BUT I have learned from those mistakes and changed.

You are not expected to run a business free and clean. You are a young business owner! Work harder than the person next to you. Out hustle the competition. Get out there and rule the world. It is yours for the taking!

5. Your Team is the Most Important Thing You Will Ever Have.

If you want to grow your company… If you want to expand into new markets and destroy new competition… You need a powerful team standing with you on the front lines. Notice I said, “Standing with you.” Your team members need to be powerful and better than YOU at what they do. We have a great team at Brandswag.

Amy Rowe, Austin Wechter, and Stephen Coley are the three team members that stand next to Brandon and myself at Brandswag. We could not do it without them.

Take care of your team members. Take care of the people helping to grow your company. They are the most valuable things you have behind that wonderful brand.

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It has been awesome running a company with one of my best friends. Hopefully, I will be writing another post by our 5th year milestone. Until then… rock out.

The Future of Online Communication : The Stats

I had the pleasure of speaking to the Indianapolis Public Relations Society recently and I promised them I would post some of the information I used in the presentation to the blog. Here it is my friends:

Should You Use Social Media? Ask Your Customers.

There is one common thread that holds  the worlds of customer management and marketing together. There is one common practice that drives every live event, direct mail campaign, email marketing push, and billboard ad. It is pretty simple in the world of business communication… you go where your customer goes… you (try) to speak how you customer speaks… you live where you customer lives… you are on their turf.. you want to be in their living rooms… you want to be in their thoughts.. you want to be first thing they think of when the pain point arises.

How do you decide which avenue to use when you are developing a strategy campaign to reach your customers? Chances are… you are going to decide based on market reach and campaign costs… Your organization is going to ask itself: How do I reach the largest amount of people for the least amount of dollars? Period.

Is social media right for every business? No. However, you need to ask yourself… Are my customers on social media? Do not take advice from your own personal experiences. You may be a baby boomer business owner who has never used social media tools but you are in the minority. Baby boomers are the fastest growing demographic using social media.

The best way to find out? Ask you customer. Engage in a conversation. Do they think it would be helpful to communicate one-on-one with your employees or maybe even you?

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The 4th E of Social Media is Engage

Kat Jaib beat me to the punch! I had been writing this 4th step in implementing a social media strategy as engage and Kat beat me to it in a comment earlier on my morning blog post. Kat is right when pertaining to the 4th E in the social media strategy: Engaging the Community

After you have stepped through the 3 E’s of Embrace, Educate and Empower it is important to engage the community in conversation. If you think of it as an action point you are listening and learning. By engaging the community you are creating action steps to supporting relationships to the people using social media.

Engagement means you care about what other people are saying online. What happens when you actually listen and engage? You create a new lead generation and communication tool.

When people know you care… they return the favor.

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