Why your social media needs a personality

As most people know by now, social media is a great platform for any sized business that is willing to put in the time and creativity required to keep your fans and customers engaged. Anyone that thinks all they have to do is create a Facebook or Twitter account and people will automatically pay attention either works for Red Bull or has no idea what they are talking about.  

A modified version of the old website adage that "Content is king" applies to social media. You have to constantly be finding RELEVANT content to share with your community. Not just mass quantities of information poured out minute-after-minute via Twitter. That will just overblitz your followers and make them pay less attention to you. One or two really good, relevant posts per day is all it takes. 

One reason why social media is so effective for small businesses is that it allows customers the chance to interact with the brand on a personal basis. The person updating the account is typically the owner and they know their business inside and out. Typically they don't use corporate-speak when talking to customers, they are free to use a sarcastic tone or a cringe worthy dark joke here and there, which the masses appreciate.

That is probably one of the toughest selling points for getting large corporations to use social media. If you put tough restrictions on those that will be updating the account, you will not get a return. But, if you allow your social media people to use their personalities within reason, like Samsung Canada did in this amazing bit of PR work, then you will find success and quite often will get noticed by the community.

So if your social media isn't firing on all cylinders maybe it's time to add a bit more personality into the mix.

Are you being a twit?

Are you making the most of your Twitter account?

You may be working hard to come up with clever or relevant tweets for your target market or unique offers to send to your followers, but if you haven't put the time into acquiring and cultivating the right followers then you are just wasting your time.

If you are a B2B company and think that following medium-to-large sized businesses twitter accounts is getting you any value, then you should rethink that idea. These accounts are maintained by the communications/marketing/pr department of a company, so unless you are selling advertising or other products related to these specialties then you aren't hitting the decision maker for your product. The people you need to try and get following you are the decision makers in those companies. But how do you find those people?

• Collect business cards from networking and business meetings then check to see if these contacts are on Twitter
• Go through the Followers of the company's corporate Twitter account, the people managing the account will often like to follow members of the company
• Use other social media profile information (ie. Facebook, LinkedIn) to see if contacts have listed a Twitter account

Just following these people won't guarantee they follow you back, but it is a good way to let them know you are on Twitter and introduce yourself to them. When one of these people gets an email notifying them "John Smith is now following you!" the reaction will often be to find out who this new follower is.

Now all you have to do is keep them interested in what you have to say.

Advertainment

Pretty sure i'm not the first to term the phrase "Advertainment" but if I am then let's hope I earn some serious royalties from it just like when Donald Trump tried to copyright the phrase "You're fired".

Anyways, the point of this post is to talk about how brands and companies can use Advertainment to engage users and get their message in front of copious amounts of eyes. As I was going through my blog reader today and reading Andy Sernovitz's latest post I couldn't help but laugh out loud. What a brilliant way to sell your impressively, terrible, beater of a car. The creator could have just put together a plain old Craigslist ad or posted it on Cartrader.com or any other car selling website but instead they created what can only be seen as one of the most brilliant marketing pieces i've seen in a long time. Although they clearly have an advertising background a similar ad could have been created using Microsoft office, not InDesign, Quark or other professional layout programs. He used humour and creative messaging to make his product go viral and that is a great lesson for small businesses everywhere.

You don't NEED to spend huge dollars to have an advertising agency create you an ad with Jerry Seinfeld or aliens. If you don't have marketing/advertising dollars to spend you have to use creativity and have a sense of humour to get the word out about your product/brand. In this digital age it is becoming easier for brands to make a big splash with a smaller amount of money. The masses are using advertisements as a source of entertainment and if you make one interesting enough they will do all the work for you.

Socially outsourcing your marketing

As more and more companies start to latch on to social media and look at ways to leverage it, there seems to be one tactic that is used again and again to engage customers - Getting the masses to do your marketing work for you. Offering some sort of incentive (monetary or prize typically) in return for them creating your next brand name, commercial, slogan, etc. Companies are straying from the often expensive creative agency in favour of asking their customers, fans, friends to provide them with ideas, concepts, mock ups, and anything else.

Is it really "engaging your customers" or are you more taking advantage of them by using their creative work for cheap (Some of the prizes can be as small as iPods and iPads)? Individuals won't typically know what this intellectual property can actually be worth and they will have no knowledge of copyrights or trademarks like marketing people that work in the business.

Some of the ideas generated through this social outsourcing could result in the next "google" brand name or the next mac vs. apple commercials that are wildly successful for a company, yet the individual who has poured their time and hours into the project usually is modestly compensated.

Then there is the flipside that sometimes it may not be worth a company's time. If you receive a large number of responses to your social outsourcing you want to go through them all in search of gold. I'm sure more often than not you will be looking at pyrite because these individuals don't have the experience and knowledge of a creative agency. Creativity isn't something that requires an MBA but advertising companies are successful for a reason.

So where do you stand on this idea of social outsourcing? I think the trend will probably fade out but maybe that is just the rantings of someone who's amazing ideas continue to be left in the "pyrite" pile when he submits them.

Marketing that makes you go hmmm

How often do you receive, hear, or see an advertisement that just completely confounds and confuses you? Probably more often than the companies who employ these marketers would like. It makes me go hmmm, but not in a good, thoughtful way, more like a who the hell would approve this kind of way.

For example this afternoon I received this email from a comedy club that I had once submitted my name to in hopes of winning free tickets to a future show.

This was the whole email and the title of it was "Yuk Yuk's special Announcement"

Sooooooo, I can surmise from the local service provider that this is a new television station but other than that it really tells me absolutely nothing. The email was also just one big image which I have now copied to make fun of them for not knowing how to market, and it did not click me anywhere. Not to a page dedicated to the television channel or anything. I watch a decent amount of television and i've never heard anything about this channel, I haven't read anything online about it or seen anything in a newspaper.

As far as I know, this is the first effort they have put into marketing this channel. Fail.

Twitter Teetering??

I've written a few posts about Twitter and can personally say that I'm not a huge fan of Twitter. I have used it for my company in the past and to be honest, it did a good job at what we were using it for. But we were using it to help spread political insight leading up to a provincial election as opposed to our day-to-day marketing of health plans. Twitter certainly has its share of success stories including this one that Marketing Magazine shares with us.

That being said, I think Twitter has peaked and is heading for a steady decline. Much like Second Life and a couple of other social networking sites that were big for a while. I read a FastCompany article a few weeks ago saying that 60% of new Twitter users were not logging on again after a month on the site. That's not a good sign. Then just yesterday I read Mitch Joel's post about Twitter and one of the telling quotes from it was this:

At the bare minimum 70% of the people on Twitter won't tell you who they are, where they are located or how to connect to them. That doesn't sound very "social" at all.

On top of that, over half of those people don't follow anyone, have never tweeted and how no followers. So, what's the point? Are most of these "people" not really "people" and simply bots? Or, do the majority of people who sign up for Twitter have no idea what they're getting themselves into, what the point is or how to really use it?

This makes it extremely hard for you to use Twitter as a targeted marketing effort. With 70% of the people not sharing their information your entire list of followers could, in effect, be completely wrong for your business. Take my company for example, we focus largely on British Columbia and sometimes all of Canada. Well anyone that would follow an account of ours in the States or elsewhere on the globe would not be any value to us, nor would we really be providing value to them.

I still don't really see the sustainability of Twitter and don't expect it to have the same buzz about it in the future. However, there clearly is some value for specific companies and individuals but I wouldn't bank my entire marketing efforts on it.

As you can tell, I can relate much more to the brownhaired guy in this video

Pour a little beer on that wildfire

Last year I wrote a post on an event/product/brand catching on like a wildfire (you can read that post here) and recently I have noticed such an event in the Canadian marketplace. Now maybe i've only taken notice because I enjoy beer, but hey it's not a crime were not in the prohibition era so stop giving me the stink eye. Anyways, it's for the Bud Light Lime product that was introduced to the canadian marketplace a month or so ago. It has literally been a wildfire for Labatt since then (Labatt markets and sells the product in Canada). I'm not sure how well they have handled/fanned the wildfire though.

First off, the product got plenty of press before its entry because a Facebook group had been created to encourage the beer be brought to Canada, so they already had a passionate following. According to Labbatt's, they usually only release one new product per season and had already introduced Alexander Keith's White Ale to the masses. Then they did the right thing and took notice of what these hardcore customers wanted and brought Bud-Light Lime in at the same time which went against company SOP. Smart decision. Listen to your customers.

The launch has been a success i'd say (to say the least), but it may turn bad for them soon if they can't bump up production on the hugely poplar drink. Here is an image for the BC Liquor Stores website which shows real time inventory of the product.

If you can't see the inventory numbers it shows exactly 3 cases of the product in all of British Columbia. So there are goods and bads of this obviously. Good, the product is basically sold out which means it has been received very well by the masses. Bad, the product is sold out which means your customers who would be loyal to the product can't get it anywhere.

Now maybe this will be effective in helping build up another buzz around the product and generating more excitement for when they actually get some shipments in, but I think their customers would rather whet their whistle than twiddle their thumbs. To me it shows a lack of wildfire protection planning.

When people have had enough of your antics

Yes, this is yet another post on General Motors. I can't help it, I read Jaffe Juice or watch Jaffe TV and he makes nothing but logical points about the mess that they are in and I can't help but blog about it myself.

However, this blog post is about how with the internet people now have the power to knock companies down a couple of pegs. It's an obvious statement and anyone that knows the power of social media and the internet realizes how disastrous one person with a vendetta can be to your brand. Unfortunately GM has many haters, which leads to things such as this:



This is not what GM was hoping for following their Chapter 1 television ad and the launching of the "Reinvention" website. They have also taken strides to be very prevalent throughout social media (including their head commenting on my blog), but no matter how hard you work the internet balancing the playing field. GM has spent millions and millions of dollars on their latest campaign and whoever started this website probably spent a couple of hundred. In terms of which has more impact, it may even be the GM Retardation site.

Unfortunate for GM but a humbling lesson that many marketers know.

Social Strategy for Boring Brands

Was flipping through my monthly Marketing News magazine from the American Marketing Association and found and interesting article called "Social Strategy for exciting (and not so exciting) brands", written by Josh Bernoff, VP at Forrester Research.

The article discusses how "talkable" or popular brands have an easier go with social networking because people already want to discuss them and talk about them. In a recent survey of theirs they asked online consumers whether they'd like to interact with various forms of social applications with their favourite brands. 42% of respondents said they would like to. Thats a pretty nice number. When it came to how they preferred to interact it was a little different
- 1 in 4 would prefer a discussion forum
- 1 in 6 would be interested in connecting through a social network profile (ie. Facebook)
- 1 in 5 would prefer watching online videos
- Only 12% would want to read a blog about the brand

Interesting stuff.

Now onto the "boring", non-talkable brands that no one really cares about or wants to interact with (much like insurance, which is the sector I primarily work within).

"Boring brands have a different problem, but social applications can help them, too. The key with boring brands is to get people talking about their problems, since they won't talk about your brand. In advertising, you can force messages on people watchiing other things. In a social context, this fails miserably."

An interesting point, and one that I agree with wholeheartedly. Ie. the post that I did earlier on the pharmacy centre advertisement. If they wanted to get into social networking they could provide a place where people could talk about what ails them, etc. and help provide health advice and that sort of stuff.

An interesting article, its not up yet on the http://www.marketingpower.com/ website but check back here soon and it should be http://www.marketingpower.com/AboutAMA/Pages/AMA%20Publications/Marketing%20News/MarketingNews.aspx

Tweet Tweet Too Much

When does Twitter become too much?

I am a fairly new user of the much vaunted Twitter and it has made me think about a few things.

Firstly, what happens when every single company you know starts Tweeting? Remember that thing about why advertising is working as well, because everybody gets harassed by 8,000 messages a day or whatever the number was? Well with Twitter you could seemingly receive 8,000 messages in a matter of an hour depending on who you are following. Granted, Twitter offers consumers the power to select who they follow and don't follow but the majority of them probably won't pare down their list once they have added someone.

So what happens when everyone is on Twitter???? I think it will probably lose the a major chunk of its appeal because how do you cut through the clutter of the hundreds of messages you receive to find the good stuff? How do you follow hundreds if not thousands of people?

Twitter is definately still in the beginning stages of its adoption, but it is starting to go like fire. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next year or so and how long of a life it has as a result of its success.

Positive Reinforcement

This just in......The economy is in the shitter. Maybe you have heard.

Now take a deep breath and lets start to think about this a new way.

The world is not ending, there are still a number of positive stories out there that are very good for the economy.....they just aren't getting as much press because the negative stories are grabbing peoples attention more, which means the media is much more interested in telling us about them (see my previous post about wildfire).

Here are a few positives that I have heard over the last little while:

• The Canadian dollar is getting hammered (Negative). However out of this comes some positive also. The movie industry in Canada just got a lot more interesting to american companies, could this be the re-emergence of Hollywood North? What about tourism? With our dollar dropping every day a trip to Canada starts to become a bargain once people start travelling again.
• Housing prices have plummeted. Well guess what, they weren't affordable for the younger generation before and everyone has been waiting for them to come down. Now this generation that is invigorating the work force and business in general will soon be investing in property as the prices fall to a level that works for them. That sounds like a good thing for the economy.

Let's start spreading some of the good stories, because that is another way we can help ourselves get out of this situation. With more positive reinforcement people will be more willing to contribute and help build the world economy back up. But until then the more and more negative we get the darker the world appears. So share your positive perspective on the economy here.

Wildfire

The economic crisis moving throughout the entire world has easily become the single item at the forefront of everybody's mind. Everyone is concerned and eagerly waiting to see how it folds out. It affects everyone and therefore is being talked about non-stop between friends, in newspapers, on radio and tv and in the blogosphere. It literally is the biggest wildfire I have seen in my entire lifetime.

As an example I was in Seattle on the weekend and went out to a nightclub one night. The bouncer looked at our IDs and literally thanked us for coming down and stated that they needed our help to boost their economy.....Pardon. A bouncer? We are talking about the stereotypical slow, beefy, pure muscle no brains type of person right. Well with this economic wildfire spreading everyone knows about it and it can pretty much make it into any conversation between 2 people.

On a lighter note, wouldn't it be great if you could make your product/business/service into a wildfire that everyone talked about. Granted you aren't going to have politicians making points about your widget during nationally televised debates broadcast on every possible television station. But how can you start a wildfire marketing campaign? As is often discussed these days, social media has made it a lot easier for you, but there are many other factors you need to line up that will ignite the forest of consumers/businesses. Here are some things to think about:

1. Why should anyone care about your brand?
You say its the greatest or the lowest priced on the market, well that's fine. Prove it to them, every consumer has heard this before. Once people experience it for themselves and have a positive experience then they are more likely to fan the flames

2. Do something new
With the internet people are exposing themselves to so many more ridiculous and crazy things each day that a mundane advertisement will not even register on them. Therefore you need to think more creatively, let your imagination run wild and truly there are no bad ideas at this stage.

What else would you do to fan the flames and start a wildfire?