I really like Guy Kawasaki. I saw him at Ad Tech in San Fransisco and he was hilarious. If you haven’t seen the Art of Enchantment speech you should watch it. My favorite part of the video is at minute 20.28 – 23.01 where he makes fun of how companies come up with mission statements. [...]
Read MoreYou know who we trust? Our friends. Our families. Our respected peers.
You know who we don’t really trust? Faceless companies.
Yet the vast majority of marketing campaigns are less than personal and follow the traditional model of companies pushing the discussion in one direction.
I can’t be the only one having an issue with this.
So how might the opposite of this look?
Let us use as our example the evil entity known as Rogers Communications. The parent company of everyone’s least favorite wireless brands Rogers and Fido. Now I could write a whole post on all the horrible things that Rogers/Fido do to their customers, but for the sake of brevity do a search on twitter for #rogers and #fail…case made.
Is it just me that sees a massive opportunity for Bell and Telus to not only steal some customers away from a rival, but also to tap into the voices that those around us trust?
If I were Telus and Bell, I’d be searching on Twitter and making a list of say 10-20 people who are extremely unhappy with Rogers/Fido. I’d then go to these people and explain that you would like to take care of them, get them on better packages, with better customer service, better phones and get them away from the evil Rogers/Fido.
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As our society moves away from traditional media and we begin to go to web-based resources for our news and entertainment needs, the public relations game is shifting as well. Connecting to online sources such as blogs is now an important aspect of many public relations campaigns.
If you’re thinking of using blogger outreach for your business, here’s my quick primer on how to approach this tactic.
Qualify blogs based on their audience
There are over 200,000,000 blogs on the WWW and the vast majority have little to no following. Not to say that more is always better (if what you are marketing is a very niche product then that niche blogger with a small but loyal following could be an incredibly effective media outlet) but in general, a decent size audience is important. The other thing that I think should be obvious is that the blog’s audience should directly correspond to the target market of whatever it is you are marketing.
Read the blog
This is also part of the qualifying step because there is nothing worse for a blogger than to have to waste time going through pitches that aren’t relevant to their blog or their audience. Engaging through comments or on twitter is also a good way to start to build a relationship with the bloggers you are hoping to gain coverage from.
Stiletto Marketing interviews Charles Zuckermann, Glowbal Group’s social media guy.
Stiletto Marketing – Interview with Glowbal Group’s Charles Zuckermann from Stiletto Marketing on Vimeo.
Read MorePart three of my series on the different solutions organizations have found for their social media marketing. Read Scenario #1: The Overeager Intern and Scenario #2: X-Company is Going Social and Everyone’s Invited!
Scenario #3 The Big Guns
The ideal situation is one where the organization’s founder, president, or CEO is in charge, or heavily involved in the company’s social media. In this case, this person can become the true “face” for their company. Where we are actually seeing the most of this is in small business or start-ups which makes sense. In these cases, it’s often the owner who is driving sales to start off with and actively trying to promote their company and develop a name for them-selves. What better place to start than social media?
Read MorePart two of my series on the different solutions organizations have found for their social media marketing. Read Scenario #1: The Over-enthusiastic Intern.
Scenario #2: X-Company is Going Social and Everyone’s Invited!
X-Company: “Wooohooo! We are embracing social media and we want our whole company to embrace it to and become a part of it!”
Awesome. But hang on a sec. You aren’t planning on giving all of your employees (or even several) access to your social media sites to post away at will are you? Ok good. That could turn into a real disaster.
Don’t get me wrong, the more people in in a company who are into participating in social media efforts, the richer your content can be. It’s also great to get different perspectives on a business through the eyes of different employees and departments. However, one of the problems is, even if everyone is properly trained in how to use the tools and how to interact with the community, there really is still something to be said about creating consistent messaging and having one person become the “face” that delivers that message.
Read MoreNow that the large majority of marketing and business professionals have drank the social media kool aid so-to-speak, I think one of the major questions on everyone’s mind is actually “now that we know we need to be taking part in social media, how do we go about it, and who do we put in charge?”
It’s a big question for sure and businesses have come up with several solutions all with varying levels of success. Over the next few posts, I’m going to look into several of the most common scenarios and how/why they can work.
Scenario #1: The Over-eager Intern
You see this a lot and I don’t think it’s always terrible. On the plus, interns are generally full of youthful enthusiasm for their new companies and eager to impress and hopefully land a job. They should be more than comfortable in the online space and, let’s face it, they’ve just come out of University where Facebook is probably one of the more dominant activities one’s daily life! (Students, please don’t take offence…. I am only speaking from experience)
Location-based advertising (LBA) as defined by Wikipedia is “a new form of marketing communication that uses location-tracking technology in mobile networks to target consumers with location-specific advertising on their mobile devices”. Recently, a slew of location-based social networks have been creating a buzz including Gowalla, Loopt, Yelp, MyTown and, most notably, Foursquare which has rapidly grown to almost one million members.
As marketers, any time there is a large gathering of people, be it online or offline, our ears perk up and we take notice. Like the little capitalists we are, we rub our hands together and ask ourselves: “how can we use this to promote business growth”?
As it happens, location-based media makes it easy for us by offering several options for businesses and, with a range of levels of involvement to commit to, most businesses can benefit from getting involved. Here is our list of how you can get your hot little hands into the action.
1. Get Listed
Whether or not you plan to fully embrace lo-so (that’s location-based social networking), you really should take a few minutes to make sure your business is listed correctly in the most popular sites. This delivers two benefits. The first and most obvious is that it allows you to be found by people participating in these networks. The other is that it helps you to be found by anybody browsing the web by boosting your SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
2. Do Your Homework
As with any foray into a new medium, if you plan to go beyond the basic step of listing your business, it’s important to take time to understand the community. Spend some time learning how individual members and businesses interact within the platform to avoid looking like an amateur.
