Numbers Don’t Lie: Why You Need to Use Social Media Marketing' @Growsmartbiz

The opportunities available using the Internet and Social Media to grow your Brand and become more visible to your target market, enabling you to reach more people interested in your products and services faster, more effectively without the huge marketing budget that traditional media requires.

Social Media + Lead Generation Opportunities = New Clients

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Numbers Don’t Lie: Why You Need to Use Social Media Marketing

The good folks over at HubSpot put together a great presentation on social media stats and sound bites that should convince you, once and for all, that you can’t afford to ignore social media marketing anymore.

Global Internet Users

The number of global internet users worldwide is, in a word, huge, making your potential audience very big no matter what industry you operate in, who your target market is, or whether you sell a product, service, or combination of both.

North America: 252,908,000

Latin American/Caribbean: 179,031,479

Europe: 418,029,796

Africa: 67,371,700

Asia: 738,257,230

Australian/Oceania: 20,970,490

Social Media Users

The volume of information being shared online is staggering.  In 2009, 90 trillion emails were sent.  The biggest, most popular social media platforms are not only generating a tremendous amount of information as well, but they’re also being used by tons of people.  Again, this translates into a lot of potential customers.

There are 550 million Facebook users and counting.

Blogs on the Internet number 126 million.

Since 2006, over 10 billion tweets have been distributed on Twitter.

Every day, 2 billion videos are streamed on YouTube.  Every. Day.

Even though I have the tendency to sound off on the fact that so much is written about social media at the expense of marketing in general, I happily acknowledge that social media is the future of marketing and advertising.  Not only is it where the people are, it’s an easy way to share information about your company to a targeted audience and track the return on your marketing investment in the form of new clients.

Social Media + Lead Generation Opportunities = New Clients Read more at growsmartbusiness.com

 

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smarter conversations: “how do i want to change the way i talk to people?” RT @gapingvoid

"Start today. It’s never too late to begin a Smarter Conversation."

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smarter conversations: “how do i want to change the way i talk to people?”

[The "Life Is Too Short" print...]

I first started playing with the idea of “Smarter-Conversations” way back in 2004, the same year gapingvoid really started getting traction in the blogopsphere.

Though not something I talk about day-in-day-out, it’s always been there somewhere in the background, informing everything I work on. Here are some notes:

1. In the seminal book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto”, the great Doc Searls famously declared, “Markets are conversations”. If you buy that premise (and I do, wholeheartedly), then quod erat demonstratum, if you want your marketing to be smarter (i.e. more effective), you need to be having a “Smarter Conversation”.

2. “Conversation” is a metaphor. Making your product sleek, elegant and graceful while all your other competitors make their product look cheap, plastic and clunky is a smarter conversation. Not all conversations need words.

3. It’s not just what you say, its how you say it. Calling it the “iPod” is a smarter conversation than say, the “MZT-2300-B Electronic Portable MP3 Digital Hand Device”.

4. Smarter Conversations scale. That’s what I really like about it. Anyone can have a smarter conversation- from a mom n’ pop pizza joint to a Fortune 500 company. It can happen in a Superbowl ad or on printed on the back of a paper napkin. You can start one on a blog today, for free. Or on Twitter or Facebook. The tools don’t necessarily have to change, the way you talk to people has to change.

5. Deciding to have a smarter conversation isn’t a business decision, it’s a moral decision. Like I said in the last point, the barriers to entry are zero. While your competition treats their customers like idiots, you treat your customers like intelligent human beings. You don’t do that because your accountant told you to, you do that because that’s who you are.

6. The Smarter Conversation’s value comes from, I believe, not by yet more increased business efficiencies, but by its humanity. For example, take two well-known airlines. They both perform a useful service. They both deliver value. They both cost about the same to fly to New York or Hong Kong. Both have nice Boeings and Airbuses. Both serve peanuts and drinks. Both serve “airline food”. Both use the same airports. But one airline has friendly people working for them, the other airline has surly people working for them. One airline has a sense of fun and adventure about it, one has a tired, jaded business-commuter vibe about it. Guess which one takes the human dimension of their business more seriously than the other? Guess which one still will be around in twenty years? Guess which one will lose billions of dollars worth of shareholder value over the next twenty years? What parallels do you see in your own industry? In your own company?

6. If Smarter Conversations work, it’s because they help humanize the company. I wrote about this years ago in an article I called “The Porous Membrane”. To paraphrase: Ideally, you want the conversation between customers [the external market] to be as identical as the conversation between yourselves [the internal market]. The things that your customer is passionate about, you should also be passionate about. This we call “alignment”. A good example would be Apple. The people at Apple think the iPod is cool, and so do their customers. They are aligned. When you are no longer aligned with your customers is when the company starts getting into trouble. When you start saying your gizmo is great and your customers are telling everybody it sucks, then you have serious misalignment. So how do you keep misalignment from happening? The answer lies the cultural membrane that separates you from them. The more porous the membrane, the easier it is for conversations between you and them, the internal and external, to happen. The easier for the conversations on both sides to adjust to the other, to become like the other. And nothing pokes holes in the membrane better than blogging.

7. Social Media is not about reaching a mass audience. Social Media is not about creating yet another sales channel. Social Media is about allowing the Smarter Conversation to happen. That’s all. Why do some companies lose, while other companies win? Because the latter has a smarter “conversation” with its customers. Zappos had a smarter conversation about the power of customer service and the power of company culture. Peet’s Coffee came along 20 years ago and began a smarter conversation about coffee with millions of people within a very short space of time. Target’s recent massive success started from a smarter conversation about good design. Savile Row tailor, Thomas Mahon came along and, with his blog, had a smarter conversation about $4000 English bespoke suits. Lucky’s Juice Joint had a smarter conversation about fresh-squeezed. Big companies, medium companies and tiny companies, whatever- it was never about size, it was never about the choice of media (social or otherwise), it was all about language.

8. Social Media allows you to cheaply and quickly begin a smarter conversation. And once you get it going, that conversation starts bleeding out into all other areas of your business- including advertising, PR and corporate communications.

9. Ask not what tools you want to use, ask how you want to change how you talk to people. All evolutions in marketing are evolutions in language. Those who can raise the level of conversation in any market, win.

10. Start today. It’s never too late to begin a Smarter Conversation. Like I said, money or time is not the issue. Making the decision is the issue, and only you can do that. Read more at gapingvoid.com

 

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The Use of Social Marketing Tactics @MarketingSherpa http://amplify.com/u/8sk6

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The Use of Social Marketing Tactics @MarketingSherpa

"build and participate in a network populated by our targeted audience," not "build and participate in a Facebook fan page"

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The Use of Social Marketing Tactics

SUMMARY: What social marketing tactics are most often used by organizations for marketing purposes? From participating on social networks, blogs, microblogs and more, find out which tactics top the list as the most commonly used for marketing purposes in this week’s chart.

by Sergio Balegno, Research Director

Use of Social Media for Marketing Purposes

Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart

Creating a tactical plan of action for social marketing purposes is the critical third step in MarketingSherpa’s Social Marketing ROAD Map methodology for mapping a successful social marketing strategy.

This chart shows the average percentage of organizations using each of the social platforms listed above for tactical purposes. Keeping in mind that your strategy must outlast the revolving door of leading social media technologies, tactics should be social brand agnostic when creating your organization’s plan.

In other words, an enduring tactic would be to "build and participate in a network populated by our targeted audience," not "build and participate in a Facebook fan page." Read more at www.marketingsherpa.com

 

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Feel Inspired @gapingvoid

Feel Inspired

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Feel Inspired

There's many ways to measure success. But how often one feels inspired, I think, is about as good a metric as any. Inspiration is totally addictive. I can't get enough of it. You?Read more at www.gapingvoidgallery.com

 

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25 "P"s of Social and New Media Marketing RT @KyEkinci & @socialmedia2day http://bit.ly/dkqa5W

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25 "P"s of Social and New Media Marketing RT @KyEkinci & @socialmedia2day

GREAT!!!

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25 "P"s of Social and New Media Marketing

August 1, 2010 by Ky Ekinci 7

You probably heard about the 5 "P"s of Marketing:

Product: The products or services offered to your customers/clients. Price: The pricing strategy for the desired profit margin. Place: Distribution --getting your product/service to your target market. Promotion: Communicating with your customers. People: The value of your people and people at large (i.e. influencers)

Now with the New Media the same list has been re-purposed for the social media channels such as twitter, facebook, linkedin, foursquare etc. etc.  Some folks talk about the 3 P's some talk about the 4 P's...  But if you think about it, Social Media is different; with Web 2.0 it is no longer a monologue, it's now a dialogue, so there really are more than just a handful P's in Social Media and Social Media Marketing. So let's take it up a notch, shall we?..  Here is the 25 P's of Social Media we can think of:

Provide: Something of value...

Petition: Demand innovation, make folks, platforms, messages better!

Productize:  Yes, new word!  Make your offer easy to understand!

Promote: Your product, service, business, events, news (don't overdo).

Personalize: Let them see the "real" you.

Participate: Interact and engage (your audience)

Play: Take it easy, it's not all strategy... :)

Pace: Take it easy, don't over do it.  Just don't!

Protect: Protect your brand, industry, service, peers

Plan: Yes, plan --don't just do it!

Propel: Initiate discussions, bring the best out in people.

Pamper: Recognize players, collaborate, give credit where credit is due.

Partake: Answer questions, participate in discussions/chats.

Peer: Do not underestimate players based on their followers, community

Penetrate: Cover all aspects

Patrol: Entire landspace --correct & clarify statements and behaviors

Perform: Do it!  Just do it!

Persist: Don't give up!

Predict: Think what's next...

Pioneer: Don't hold back, try different things (white hat rule though!)

Practice: Don't be afraid, practice makes perfect; learnings await you!

Propose: Propose ideas, solicit business (humbly), ask for collaboration.

Punctuate: Don't be afraid of repeating your point, though not bot-like.

Pursue: Follow up; be persistent to engage: to get answers, be heard.

Pay Attention: To influencers, trends, competition, customers.

Also pay attention to the fact there are are more letters in the alphabet! Why is the letter "P" significant?  The answer is, it is not!  We just wanted to expand on the existing discussion on Social Media and on Marketing based on our own thoughts and learnings, that's all... :) ..and you know what the biggest P is?

Be Positive!

Hey, speaking of 'P's, can you think of more Ps?.. Read more at socialmediatoday.com

 

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