Adam Singer, Paul Isakson, Brad Smith @ IMS Minneapolis

Social Media  advice is cheap and for the most part, you get what you pay for.  Best practices social media marketing based on experience, well, that’s another thing entirely.

The Social Media Best Practices session at IMS Minneapolis earlier this week gave attendees access to first hand insights from the likes of: Brad Smith from Best Buy, Adam Singer from TopRank Online Marketing, Paul Isakson from Thinkers & Makers (formerly of Space150) and Bryan Person, founder of Social Media Breakfast.

Brad Smith, Director, Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media from Best Buy opened things up talking about a “new marketing reality”. Customers are out there, but they’re bombarded with messages. Customers are not listening to us (marketers & advertisers) anymore. Social media is all about communicating.  Customers are listening to each other instead and tuning out marketing messages.

Each company’s journey in social media is different. If your social media consultant starts the meeting with suggestions about starting a Twitter account, leave the room. Treat social media like any other major undertaking with planning, understanding the marketplace, goals and objectives.

Tenents that support Best Buy Social Media Marketing:

• Deliver
• Blow you away
• Never leave you hanging
• Make a difference
• Make sure you know all we know

Brad makes the distinction of social media tools and the behaviors we seek to engage and influence. “I don’t use facebook, I participate. It’s a two way thing.  You’re not half way into social media. When you’re in you’re in.”

Best Buy’s Social Media Marketing Mission:

To connect customers and employees with the Best Buy brand and each other through the right tools platforms and collaboration delivered when, where and how they want.

The focus is on the customer, not the company. “It’s not about what Best Buy wants customers to do, it’s about giving people the tools to connect with each other and employees whenever and however they want.”

Best Buy Social Media Guidelines:

• (Essentially don’t be stupid)
• Listen
• Be findable, think distributed
• It’s about people
• Enable creation
• Make it social
• Listen some more
• Be authentic
• Be transparent
• Keep it simple
• Make a commitment

Best buy and Twitter – @Twelpforce
The thing that makes it work is that they didn’t start with a “Twitter strategy”. It was born of a customer need. Best Buy simply leveraged an asset they knew they had with a customer need. Customers needed advice and there are 150,000 Best Buy employees world wide that are already being helpful. Twitter proved to be an effective platform for that. 2,500 employees are signed up to work as part of @Twelpforce.

Best Buy is also active with Community Forum, Best Buy IdeaX, a Facebook Fan page and other channels.

When Best Buy started their social journey with Facebook, Brad says they were overzealous and promoted commercial messages to the community. The community responded, “not to do that”. Customers want access to the brand, advice, tips exclusive access that others don’t get.

Best Buy Learnings From Their Social Media Experience:

• Listen first, talk second
• Its OK to fail
• The same social mores apply online as offline
• Customers don’t care about channels
• We have to be ready ro respond
• Customers will tell us and everyone else where our organization is broken. And expect a fix
• People are forgiving

Overall Best Buy is treating their social media experience as a journey and have learned the importance of listening instead of pushing.  It’s an impressive example, not only of a very large brand finding value in a humble and transparent, customer focused social media effort, but one of true Minnesota ingenuity when it comes to new technology and marketplace innovation.

I did miss some of the bulleted items above because the presentation went by very quickly. If access to the PowerPoint presentations is made available, I’ll link to it from this post.

I’ll be adding observations on the presentations from Adam Singer and Paul Isakson separately.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Social Media Marketing Best Practices from Best Buy |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

88 billion (OK, 87.8, we rounded up). That’s the number of search queries Google web properties are responsible for each month according to comScore.

Core to many search marketing strategies is to “Fish where the fish are” and make no mistake, the fish are decidedly hanging out on Google. YouTube, Gmail, Blogger.com and many other online services from Google make its presence ubiquotous in the online marketing world.

Now imagine if Google disappeared tomorrow. What would that do to your marketing? What would it do to your business?

Some of the people reading this post have experienced such a disappearance. Not of Google going away, but the experience of their own sites or pages disappearing from high visibility positions within Google search results.

Companies that hyper focus on Google or any singular online channel are not only putting themselves at risk, ala ‘all your eggs in one basket”, they’re also putting themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to search engine marketing.

This is the topic I presented on in the opening keynote at SearchExchange, a budding new search marketing conference held this week in Charlotte, NC.  Here is a liveblog post of it from Raven Tools.  The conference included familiar names including David Szetela, Chris Winfield, Brent Csutoras, Jon Henshaw, Rae Hoffman, Rhea Drysdale, Sarah Evans, Wayne Sutton and many others.

While Google and search engines present a tremendous opportunity to attract new business, support existing customers, attract new employees and media coverage plus a host of other search outcomes, it’s important to diversify online marketing in a way that also benefits overall search marketing.

There’s a segment of search marketers that use social media in a way that focuses on leveraging networks and influential “power” accounts to drive popularity and traffic to content. The boost in visibility exposes the content to blogs and online news sites, resulting in traffic as well as mentions and links from credible sources.

Social news and bookmarking services have been popular channels for this kind of SEO-centric social media marketing. With over 100 million accounts and growth of 300,000 new users per month, Twitter has been added to the mix as well. Well executed promotions or campaigns of this type can drive a substantial amount of traffic and attention.

Another way to include social media in a marketing strategy is to build connections, networks and community within areas of the social web that are meaningful for both short and long term business growth. For many companies, a relationship with customers is worth a lot more than a click, pageview or inbound link.

There’s a significant diversification and SEO productivity opportunity for companies that invest in the creation of an optimized content strategy that incorporates insights from buyer/searcher personas along with business goals. Following through with the development of channels of distribution for that content independent of, but complimentary to search engines like Google, provides exposure to relevant audiences, traffic and links.

“The advantage of adding social media search to your market research toolset is that you’ll get near real-time information that can help you get a head start on the competition on upcoming trends and get much richer detail than a list of generated keywords from search data can provide.”
Vanessa Fox, Author of Marketing in the Age of Google and creator of Google’s Webmaster Central.

The power of a social SEO program focused on content marketing enables companies to realize search engine marketing benefits as well as long term, meaningful connections with a community of customers. “Meaningful connections” means more word of mouth referrals, more purchases per customer, lower attrition and the opportunity to tap into an active fan base for research, consumer generated content and customer evangelists.

Inspired by Adam Singer’s graphic

Developing and promoting optimized content to relevant networks creates a Social and SEO cycle that expands reach, grows community and improves search engine visibility.

The 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey reports that 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations. In contrast, only 14% trust advertisements, (According to “Marketing to the Social Web” published by Wiley). Those statistics highlight the influence of consumer generated content and social network recommendations in contrast to traditional marketing and advertising.

The social web is growing at an incredible pace. According to their timeline, Facebook alone added over 200 million users in less than 12 months. Hitwise has reported that Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S. and comScore’s recent Search Engine Ranking report shows that Facebook search is more popular than AOL search. That means SEO for Facebook internal search along with SEO of other niche and internal search engines is something to pay attention to.

As the online experience of information discovery, consumption and sharing changes, so do consumer behaviors. Marketers need to be a few steps ahead of that and know what their customer behaviors are.

SEMPO recently released a new State of the Search Marketing Industry survey with insight specific to social media Marketing. In particular, it includes a number of data points on the intersection of search and social media: 35% of B2B companies integrate social media and search engine marketing programs. For B2C it’s 30%. There’s no reason for those numbers to go anywhere but up.

Marketing Sherpa’s recent Social Media Benchmark Report agrees and shows that SEO goals that social media achieves, very effectively,  expanded content in universal search results, increased rankings,traffic from targeted keywords, improved ROI and more qualified leads.

The decision is yours to make. You can focus all your efforts on Google SEO, or you can develop a bigger picture perspective that creates additional relevant traffic channels to your content and at the same time, boosts search engine visibility. In essence, get better results from Google by not focusing exclusively on Google.

Social media marketing, regardless of who “owns” it in an organization can work in concert with SEO efforts to achive branding and community building goals as well as increasing search visibility, web site traffic and online leads/sales. Ultimately, Social SEO and Content Marketing result in more revenue and better customer relationships both in the short and the long term.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Beyond Google: SEO and the Social Web |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

So you want to succeed with Twitter eh? Before you run off and chase shiny butterflies and little blue birds, take a seat and collect yourself. Then read the following tips on creating a potential Twitter marketing strategy that will help you become more productive and successful using Twitter for business.

First things first. Who are you trying to connect with?

1. Describe your target audience on Twitter.  If you’re not an active participant on Twitter, then research. Do the homework and write it down, including Twitter handles of actual target users. If you’ve been able to go so far as develop a persona that represents your customers that spend time on Twitter or social media sites in general, that’s even better.

The first step in scoring is knowing all about the goal.

2. What outcomes are expected from Twitter participation? Besides being able to say you have 50,000 followers, of course. Incidentally, we experiment with Twitter accounts and those that have a substantial number of followers do not always result in the the most retweets and web site visits. This is important in the fans/friends/followers game. It’s not how many connections you have, it’s who you’re connected with that determines the propagation of tweets, spread of links, traffic, etc.

It’s essential to know how success with Twitter will be measured. If it’s just follower counts, heck those could probably be purchased. (Which TopRankMarketing does NOT recommend)  However, that would be a fake network without effect.

Where does Twitter fit in?

3. Where does Twitter fit within your overall online marketing strategy? Is Twitter meant to be a customer service tool? Brand monitoring? Monitoring for sales opportunities? Promotion of other corporate social activities? (ie blogging, Facebook, YouTube, Etc) Does it support some other communications function?

As a communications and social networking tool, Twitter can connect with customers, prospects, journalists, employees, candidates, investors and marketing partners. Understanding where Twitter fits within the overall mix of online marketing and communications will help with: allocating monitoring and engagement resources, establishing a working social media policy, workflow management and reporting. You may very well find a number of synergies available through Twitter, such as connecting with journalists and bloggers for PR purposes but also encouraging link usage when citing the company to assist with SEO efforts.

Twitter is a tool and only as useful as the tactics you use.

4. A firm grasp of the first three steps really needs to be addressed before useful tactics should be implemented. If all you do is focus on Twitter popularity tactics without addressing a plan for reaching other goals (hopefully being popular isn’t the sole goal) then the investment in time and effort becomes more like guesswork.

First and foremost for tactics, the Twitter page needs to be designed and optimized. If a business has the expectation to be perceived in a significant way, then the Twitter page needs to avoid looking insignificant. Tweets need to be diverse, yet follow a theme that is consistent to the messaging and audience goal. Kudos to customers and offering tips are great but alone are not going to attract followers fast.

There are a few tactics with Twitter that are almost always a good idea regardless of the audience, goals and overall plan:

• Having a persona or target profile in mind, research Twitter users and follow them.
• Associate the Twitter account with something else that is social, such as a YouTube Channel, Facebook Fan Page and/or a blog.
• Make an effort to link to a small number of high quality and creatively written resources, daily. Mornings are best. Brand these with a hashtag like #yourbrandtips, where “yourbrand” is the brand within your company that this Twitter account is focused on. It could also be a behavior or action. Ex:  #niketips or #runningtips.
• Schedule a #yourbrandtips Twitter event every month, two weeks or weekly. This would be run like #blogchat where a real person from your company hosts a chat on Twitter about survey topics. Ideally there would be influential guests involved so that their tweets attract new followers to your brand’s Twitter account.
• The company should really post their twitter handle everywhere their web site address is posted.
• Find a way to ask followers questions, then use those answers in blog posts, which are promoted via the business twitter account.
• Create a Twitter list of a segment of the target audience. One list for each segment. Then solicit followers asking for recommendations of people that belong in the “segment one” list or “segment two” list. Ex:  ”librarians” or “network administrators”. Mention that anyone who retweets a link to the list can get added to that list – provided they belong. Lists must be relevant and managed to be of any use. Promote lists with Listorious.com.
• Use #FollowFridays or #FF to recognize people that retweet the brand’s Twitter content the most. Also mention influential Twitter accounts that you have had some connection with. They might retweet the #FF and expose the brand Twitter account to new audiences.

Measure twice, Tweet once.

5. Measurement with Twitter can be tricky such as identifying referrers via various URL shortening services, but it’s the most important. By “measurement”, I also mean monitoring on an ongoing basis, not just counting outcomes or KPIs. Followers is just one dimension. Based on what the brand is trying to achieve, a mix of data points and measurement tools should be implemented. Some example metrics:

• Tweets published
• Retweets & potential reach from those retweets
• New targeted Twitter users that are followed by the brand’s Twitter account
• New followers of the brand’s Twitter account acquired
• Direct traffic from Twitter to brand’s web pages. URL shortening services should be used like bit.ly
• Mentions of the brand in Tweets without links
• How many lists the brand Twitter account is included in
• What new Twitter users has the brand’s Twitter account added to it’s own organized lists?
• How many engagements or discussions the brand’s Twitter account has with other users
• Connections (follow, retweet, @message, DM) with targeted Twitter users

Example Tools:

• search.twitter.com
• social media monitoring like socialmention.com, trackur.com, scoutlabs, Techrigy SM2, Radian6
• Web analytics
• bit.ly
• cotweet.com, hootsuite.com, tweetdeck.com

Obviously, there are many other tools for Twitter out there, including overall social media marketing campaign management tools such as: Wildfire, Objective Marketer, Spredfast, SocialTalk, pop.to and others.

Sure, you can “experiment” with tools like Twitter and find your specific strategy as you go, but you could also find productivity and valuable connections a lot sooner (as well as effective time and resource management) if you create a plan that addresses who you’re trying to reach on Twitter, what goals you hope to achieve and a plan for getting there. Make no mistake, there will always be a component of on-demand and real time  or opportunistic marketing with Twitter. The platform is still so new that the community is finding new and innovative uses every day. You might find new uses too, so don’t get too committed to a single focus in your Twitter efforts. Be flexible, curious and willing to participate.

Some tactics are always a good idea and some will reveal themselves as you develop your Twitter network and participate with the community.  Measuring success on Twitter has everything to do with goals, so make sure you’ve spent at least a little time figuring out where Twitter fits in with your overall online marketing strategy and then what tools make the most sense to use when measuring success.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Social media is impacting how we do business online in new and exciting ways. Customers are sharing more and more data about what they’re doing online and the things they like. Getting people to share your products on social networks is a great way to bring in traffic and find new customers.

But ecommerce sites are stuck in a hard place because the number one goal of an ecommerce site isn’t sharing, it’s selling.

Take the “King” of ecommerce sites, Amazon.com, as an example. They have sharing tools on their product pages, but it’s not quite what you’d think:

While the sharing links are above the fold, they’re in the bottom-right corner of the screen. And you can bet that Amazon has tested that spot and found that it’s the best place for those links.

It’s hard to know how to promote your products and brand on social networks, without sacrificing potential sales. Along the lines of Michelle’s sage advice on 5 Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Marketing, here are 10 ways that you can improve social media efforts on ecommerce web sites without sending away buyers.

Basic Social Media Optimization for Ecommerce Sites

1. Get Data

First things first: You need to figure out where your site visitors are sharing your products. Without this information, you won’t know where to focus your social media energies.

AddThis provides data on social sharing trends which you can use to make some generalizations about social sharing right out of the gate. For example, right now social media networks make up almost half (44%) of all the sharing done with their service. It might help to add a “Share this” button for Facebook on your product pages.

But that data isn’t specific to your site. Who knows where your site visitors are sharing? They might be doing most of their sharing on Twitter or email.

The biggest benefit from tools like ShareThis and AddThis might be the sharing analytics they provide. You can figure out where your site visitors are sharing your products, and that information is invaluable.

You can also use Google Analytics with their click tracking and goals. Twitip has an excellent tutorial on how to track Twitter conversions and click data that you could use for any other social media site as well.

Once you figure out where your shared traffic is going, then you can modify your site’s design to highlight those services. After all, you don’t want 74 sharing buttons littering your product pages when you’re trying to sell a product.

2. Set up Facebook and Twitter profiles

Your site does have a Twitter account and a Facebook page, right? These two are the “big guns”, with hands-down the most traction for your social media efforts. (Be sure to follow @toprank)

You have to focus first on what social media networks make the most impact, and these two services are the best places to start.

3. Find unique places for sharing buttons

Instead of using a generic sharing widget in the same place across all your sites, try putting sharing features in prominent placements in different places in your site’s design.

For example, after a customer creates a review of a product, give them an easy way to share the review with Facebook friends or Twitter followers. They’ve already shown they’re in sharing mood by filling out a review, why not capitalize on the good vibes? You could create a simple link that sends the url of the page to their Twitter account to send, or use a Facebook share button.

Here are some other unique places on your site that you might put sharing links or widgets:

• The thank you page, after making the order.
• sale confirmation email
• mailing list email templates

There are plenty of other nooks and crannies on your site that you could add sharing links. Don’t feel limited by this list. Just click around your own site for more ideas.

4. Add product videos

Videos are great sales tools. People like seeing a product in action, so video is an excellent way to improve sales. Companies like Zappos have seen major increases in sales just by adding product videos.

But aside from the improved sales, adding product videos on YouTube or other video sharing sites adds another social factor. People like sharing videos, and they’re more likely to embed the videos other sites. Videos are a great way to add a viral factor to your product pages.

5. Engage customers

It’s one thing to just create a Facebook page or Twitter account, but it’s another thing to actually engage with followers. Social media takes work, you have to daily interact with followers to be successful. Easy to say, much harder to do.

Figure out who’s talking about your brand (or your competitors) and open a dialog.

Social media is a great tool to help promote products away from your ecommerce site. You can get people to your site with social media, and once they’re on your site you make the sale.

6. Add exclusivity

Make a strong call to action for your visitors as to why they should follow your brand on Twitter, Facebook, or any other network. Include special offers, coupons, tips, and other things that customers wouldn’t get unless they were following you on social media sites.

7. Don’t stay in “sell mode”

Companies often only post things related to selling on their social media profiles. But that doesn’t provide much benefit to your followers, does it? People want more from social media than just a constant stream of sales pitches.

Use your social media profiles to tell customer stories, stats, news, and other things related to your business.

Here’s a crazy idea: what if you shared one of your competitor’s deals? You’d show that your brand is interested in helping your followers, not just making money from them. It would be insanely useful to your fans, and it would add trust and loyalty to your brand.

8. Integrate your customer service strategy with your social media strategy

People are already talking about your brand on social networks, and odds are a few of them are venting frustration about something. Instead of waiting for them to call or email you, diffuse the situation by reaching out to them.

There are plenty of success stories of major brands reaching out to unhappy customers and diffusing situations quickly with social media.

9. Track what people click on social media sites

Url shorteners like bit.ly give excellent click analytics. When you share links on social networks, you can track and see how many people are actually clicking the link.

Knowing what gets people to actually click a link means that you can tailor your messages to get the most impact from your social media efforts. For example, you might find that your followers click a lot more on links to coupons versus links to product updates.

You could even drill down how effective types of links are across different social media sites. You might find that your Facebook followers like to click on coupons, and your Twitter followers like breaking news.

The more you know about your followers and what they like, the more useful you can be to them.

10. Give back

Giving back creates trust, which is crucial for your brand. Think of ways that you can be useful to your followers. Share news and tips that they’ll find helpful. Ask their opinions. Give them coupons. Interact with them.

The important thing is that you’re openly trying to be helpful to them. The more useful you are to your following, the more loyal they’ll be to your brand.

What creative social media marketing tactics have you implemented with your ecommerce site? Have you noticed rules of thumb recommended that do not apply to your situation?

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
10 Essential Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Sites |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Facebook pages can be a huge way to connect to audiences. Facebook statistics tell us that the average user (at the time of this writing) is connected to 60 pages, groups and events. This means that aside from all the other Facebook friend activity that goes on, your page is one of 60 trying to grab attention a fan’s attention.

So here are ten things that you can do to turn your Facebook page into a dynamic and engaging destination for your Facebook fans.

1. Be unique

There’s nothing worse than a bland Facebook page. Think long and hard about how your page can be different. Remember, your page is one of at least 60 things that an average Facebook user is giving attention to. It’s insanely important that your page is unique and stands out from the rest.

Design is a major part of being unique on Facebook. Check out these excellent examples of creative Facebook fan pages for inspiration. You can never go wrong investing time and resources into a great design for your Facebook page.

Think creatively about how you can add value to Facebook users. Can you give them something? Can you provide them with help, or resources? These are the things that will get people joining your Facebook page and keep them coming back.

2. Don’t use a generic landing page

Facebook allows you to customize what page different types of users land on. You can show people who have never been to your page before a completely different message than people who are already fans on your page. It’s a great idea to show potential users a page specifically tailored for them. It might give a little background about your company or site, and would give them a great reason for joining.

Never let new users land on your Wall. The Wall doesn’t really tell anything about your brand, and it won’t have much impact on new visitors.

3. Give something away quickly

Your die-hard followers won’t need any reason for joining your fan page. But if you’re trying to really grow your Facebook presence, consider giving resources back to your community and niche. This allows you to reach other potential fans within your niche that might not have known about your Facebook page.

4. Use a large profile picture

People on Facebook want to see photos. After all, Facebook is far and away the biggest photo sharing site on the web. So make sure your page has a large photo of your company or brand as the profile picture. This helps with branding and adds trust to your profile.

5. Tag fans in photos

This is a great tip if you’re a brick and mortar business. If you’re somehow able to take pictures of your customers, tag them within the picture. Many people have Facebook notifications that alert them when they’ve been tagged in photos, and this will bring them back to your page.

Your fans also have the ability to upload photos as well. (This might require some moderation on your part. As with anything user generated, you might get some spam, etc.) Allowing fans to upload and tag themselves and friends in your pages automatically adds a nice social “hook” to your page.

Not only are you giving back by adding photos, you’re also keeping your brand planted firmly in the fan’s mind.

6. Use contests

Contests are a great way to make your fan page more engaging, and they also give incentive for potential fans to join. Contests that include giveaways can be excellent marketing tools if they’re done properly.

7. Integrate multiple social networks

You can use multiple Facebook applications to pull in your other already existing accounts from other social networking sites. With the help of some nifty applications, you can pull in Twitter, Flickr, and many others fairly quickly.

8. Thank people for becoming your fans

When someone becomes a fan on Facebook, immediately thank them! Give them something in return, like an ebook or coupon, or at the very least send them a quick “thanks!” message.

This small gesture can be huge in spreading goodwill about your page and brand. It might even give users more incentive to share your contests and resources on your fan page.

9. Don’t treat your fans like kids

In case you haven’t noticed, Facebook has grown up a lot in the past few years. What used to be a place for college students and younger is now a place for everyone. According to this report from istrategy labs, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook in 2009 was adults aged 55 and over. The largest overall demographic on Facebook is ages 35-54, which makes up 29% of all Facebook users.

So don’t write for an audience of teenagers. Everyone is now on Facebook. Sure, your brand might dictate the writing style for your target audience. (Seventeen magazine sounds quite different than AARP.) But don’t make the mistake that the only people visiting and joining Facebook Fan pages are teenagers and college kids.

10. Keep at it

Oftentimes people will create their pages and leave them. Facebook pages are breeding grounds for excellent feedback and engagement. Many people are starting to find that Facebook pages have excellent discussions and high interaction rates, oftentimes higher than Twitter and other social networks. Photos and contests are great interaction tools, and posting stories and articles also add lots of value to the community.

There are plenty of ways to stay involved with Facebook fan pages. Growing a fan base on Facebook for your page requires work, but engaging with your community on Facebook pays huge dividends.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
10 Ways to Create a More Engaging Facebook Page |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

I decided to do a little liveblogging at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and picked this session: Why email CRM and social media have become the tools of modern B2B marketing where a case study was presented by Genworth Financial.

Joel Book from Exact Target introduced the case study:  Creating brand advocates is as important as creating brand awareness. [I would say more important. An advocate proactively shares the brand experience]. Funny, Google “brand tattoos” to see some serious brand advocate activity.

How are marketers using digital media to engage?

• email + crm
• email + social

Email and CRM help to automate interaction. Automation is the key because marketing staff and budgets are not increasing. In order to continue deliver personal and timely messages to customers, you need to automate.

Social participation brings customers together and provides an opportunity to include a call to action to join a newsletter.

Brands are aligning themselves with a specific cause, to add to their brand image.

Genworth Financial case study:

Genworth sells their insurance products through brokers, not directly to consumers.

Reduced marketing resources along with the expectation to have successful marketing campaigns let them to realize that more is not always better. It’s more important to send the right message to the right customer at the right time. Genworth understood the need to personalize communications and to offer in multiple mediums.

They started their email efforts with a business unit and have now expanded to 20 businesses. In 2006 100k emails were being sent and now 3.79 million emails are delivered as part of their program.

Personalized messages are critical to their email marketing. Email newsletters are personalized for the customer and according to the Genworth sales person. Open rates are 7-10% higher when the email comes from the sales person.

Email has realized cost savings as an alternative to print direct mail. Most new product introductions are launched only via email.  Emails were highly personalized and customized, which is very expensive to do in print. $3 million in print and direct mail cost savings were realized in 2009 for one of their marketing efforts.

Increased productivity is attributed to email and Genworth is able to use dynamic content and salesforce.com integration to create 700 highly customized emails every Friday.

Email – high ROI. Example: A co-branded campaign delivered highly personalized emails with Genworth customer logo, contact info and was distributed on behalf of Genworth customers (insurance brokers) resulting in a 12% increase in sales ($ millions) with only a $420 spend.

Efficiency of data integration and dynamic content. Customers used to receive 1-5 emails for each product. Now they only receive 1 with all info consolidated. Genworth used to have 4 FT employees and now only need one to manage email. This is as result of integration with salesforce.com and using exacttarget.com.

Timeframe to get completely setup including installation and testing: 1-2 months.

Creating self serve email templates for sales teams helps them become more efficient.

Enhanced reporting and metrics are available with data integration based on salesforce.com custom objects. Ex: what type of customers open and click the most. What’s working and what’s not.

Email Integration with Social Media has been tentative because of working in a regulated industry. However, the need to better engage with customers motivated them to move forward, albeit, tentatively.

One example is an email newsletter and blog. The blog is hosted on Active Rain (a real estate community). The newsletter gives a snippet of information and then links to a longer form of content on the writer’s blog. On the blog, readers can make comments and ask questions.  A loop is created by including a call to action on the blog to subscribe to the e-newsletter for people that get to the blog via other means.

A Facebook fan page was used as a destination for a national brand advertising campaign designed to recognize caregivers.  Genworth used online advertising, PPC, SEO, social advertising and Genworth producer and consumer web sites to promote. They now have over 7,000 fans. Most successful was Facebook advertising.

Email was used to drive traffic to Facbook and inspire participation and engagement. More awareness and education for products are expected to increase sales.

It’s essential to deliver content in the formats and mediums that your customers want. Integrating data with dynamic content in a combined Email, CRM and Social Media effort can help marketers become more efficient, effective and profitable.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
MarketingProfs B2B: Case Study on Email, CRM & Social Media |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

The book, “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” by Forrester’s Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff offered companies a much-needed framework for companies to understand social technologies and consumer behaviors. It also  introduced the now popular four-step process for developing a social media strategy.

A lot has changed since we first interviewed Charlene Li about the Groundswell, including her move to begin the Altimeter Group. Other changes include blogging having met its match as a popular social technology with the exploding popularity of tools like Facebook and Twitter.

Charlene’s new book, “Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead”, is essentially about how leaders can tap into the power of the social technology revolution and how to be “open” while still maintaining control.

That sounds a bit contradictory, “being open while still maintaining control”, but in truth it’s very practical. Li’s new book provides a much needed framework for organizations that are probably experimenting with the social web or might even have tried to implement a social strategy but without success.

The timeliness of this book cannot be overstated. Just about every company I speak with has dipped their to in the waters of the social web and for some, it’s a natural progression to be open. However, being open while maintaining control is new territory for executives managed by objectives vs by empowering staff and customers in an open environment. Social media isn’t a marketing tactic, it’s a platform for communication and can touch every aspect of an organization from the mail room to the board room.

“Open Leadership” is structured into 3 sections starting with an argument for why giving up control is inevitable and ten characteristics of being open. Section two dives into how you can create your open strategy starting with deciding how open to be, followed by understanding benefits and measuring the value of being open. A new term, “Sandbox Covenants” is introduced (at least its new to me) for structuring openness and tips on deveoping an open strategy.

Basically, Sandbox Covenants is a metaphor for a defined space to be open that allows companies to manage risk and provide some structure in an effort to be more open. There are boundaries and some guidelines, but there is also freedom to do what you need/want to do.

“Being open should be not a mantra or philosophy, but a considered, rigorous approach to strategy and leadership that yields real results.”

One of my favorites of the book is Chapter 6: Orchestrating Your Open Strategy.  Starting with objectives and creating a socialgraphics profile, to developing workflow, identifying stakeholder impact and understanding the difference in organizational models for openness will give readers specific actions they can take to implement an open strategy.

Part three focuses on the skills leaders need to develop openness within their organizations, how to nurture openness, guidelines for failing successfully and case studies on how openness has transformed organizations like Proctor & Gamble and Dell.

Open Leadership is full of examples and case studies from companies and organizations including: U.S. Navy, Walmart, United Airlines, Cisco, Kodak, Microsoft, Best Buy, Humana HP, Wells Fargo and many others, Most chapters include a checklist or action plan, so this book is rooted in strategy but is very actionable.  While there are many examples from the Fortune 500, the principles of being open, with structure are applicable to companies and organizations of any size.

If you’re a manager, leader or owner of an organization that really wants a framework for transforming your understanding of the social web and how being open can transform your company, then this book is a recommended read. Then read it again.

There is a compliment web site to the book with a number of useful resources at Open Leadership. The book is available May 24th but you can pre-order here. There’s also a good video interview with Charlene Li about Open Leadership at DachisGroup.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

This week, we posted thoughts from a variety of marketing and web professionals on social media strategy before tactics.

It’s an ongoing debate, but the consensus among the marketing and PR crowd is clear:  strategy before tactics is the logical approach for businesses to take when engaging in social media.

Sarah Evans provides a clever analogy:

Would you pick up a phone and randomly dial 10-digits? Unless you’re prank calling, probably not. The phone is a tool for communication, just like social media is a tool. Before making a phone call, sending a tweet or launching a blog, strategy is essential. It will guide the decisions you make, the platforms you use and how you interact.

Yet, in social media marketing and PR, it’s common for communications professionals to dive immediately into tactics without strategy “randomly dialing numbers” as Sarah notes above.

How often have you been in a meeting and heard things like “we need to be on Facebook, let’s get on Twitter, or why don’t we start blogging?”  In the social web, it’s analogous to inviting people to a theme party and not telling them what the theme is (or even knowing yourself).  If you approach social media in this way, expect your returns to be as predictable as the costumes your guests at the party will wear.

Shel Israel notes:

You really need to know why you want to use social media and which tools are best suited to meeting that objective. A good start is to know where, on social media, your customers hang out and what you can give them by joining their activities. This depends on which objectives you have in mind. It can be sales, lead generation, support, feedback, new ideas. So many things can be achieved in social media. If you know what your goals are they will shape the tactic.

Indeed.  While “getting more Twitter followers” may seem like a great idea, what if your market isn’t congregating on Twitter?  What if they are still using forums and boards (as many do)?  What if they are all bloggers who barely touch Twitter?  By jumping immediately into tactics without any thought, you may have success – but you may not.  It’s just not a methodical approach.

Peter Kim adds:

Strategy needs to drive tactics, as companies first need to know where they’re going before they figure out how to get there. A lot of roads can get a brand from point A to B, but a good strategy will help selection of the optimal route, as well as how to respond if setbacks are encountered along the way.

This makes sense, as with any type of marketing – digital or otherwise – it is the strategy all tactics should roll to.  Without a solid strategy in place aimed at positioning you as the stand out in the market, it’s difficult to brainstorm and map out cohesive tactics that provide the best route to success.  In other words:  you might get lucky once in awhile if creating tactics without strategy, but you will not build up the momentum required to accelerate ahead of competitors.

All the strategy talk aside, tactics matter too.  And Guy Kawasaki understands this intimately:

“Social-media strategy” is over-rated if not a downright oxymoron. The goal is to do more business. Social-media is a means to that end. Maybe you’ll use it to establish warm and fuzzy communal feelings. Maybe you’ll sell excess inventory. Don’t focus on some kind of high-level strategy because no one really knows how to use social media yet. Focus on tactics: Get more followers, make them happy, promote your stuff to them every once in a while. That’s all you need to know about strategy right now.

Guy has a point:  a solid strategy does not decrease the value of experimenting, tinkering and trying new tactics out.  Yet in a sense, Guy is offering his own strategic approach to social media – the no strategy strategy.

At TopRank Online Marketing, we believe that trial-and-error under the umbrella of a strategy is extremely valuable for businesses new to social media.  This is actually where they will learn the most, get real-time feedback and ultimately become fluent in social media marketing.  The strategy simply provides a framework for both planned and improvisational tactics, which can be dynamic.  In fact, a strategy itself could be designed in such a way to be fluid and shift with the times if a business is agile enough to change directions quickly.

Valeria Maltoni provides a succinct summation to the discussion:

In practical terms, you want to know where you’re going so you can get there. Every resource you expend in business needs to be justified. Everything worth doing needs to be measured. Social media is no different. It may be a great way to share useful content in places where your customers spend time to generate interest for further actions. And it can provide powerful business intelligence back, straight from the people who buy your products and services.

However, to capitalize on all of that, your process needs to tie all your activities together — the information sharing, the intelligence gathering, the communications, content creation, and anything else that happens in between. All activities aligned with and in support of the business. Without a strategy and goals, you won’t know how you’re going to measure results and won’t be able to answer the “so what” question.

Valeria’s statement is heavily grounded in reality.  To get buy-in from key decision makers and stakeholders, you need to be able to present a strategic plan outlining the tangible steps you’ll follow for success.  In the current economic climate (and really all of them) everything worth doing needs to be measured, and spends need to be justified.  The strategic plan allows you to confidently answer the all important “so what” question marketers inevitably receive from the C-suite.

Be sure and subscribe to TopRank blog as well as follow @TopRank on Twitter – we’ll be offering a PDF with even more from industry thought leaders on strategy vs. tactics in social media next week.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Thought Leadership on Social Media Strategy |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Several years ago (2007) I was asked to give a presentation at Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Seminar in Minneapolis. This was pretty cool because I had been reading Jill’s newsletter for years beforehand. The topic I spoke on was “UnGoogle Your Search Marketing,” where I discussed how to employ blogs, social media and optimized press releases as alternative, yet complimentary sources of web site traffic.

While search is the primary source of web traffic for our sites at TopRank Online Marketing and certainly for our client web sites, I think that now, more than ever, it’s important to “UnGoogle” your search marketing. Before anyone thinks I’m talking about ignoring Google completely, I suggest reading on.

Focusing content creation efforts solely to serve Search Engine Optimization purposes can be limiting. If the the only purpose for creating content is for search engine visibility, the publishing web site may improve search traffic but disappoint when it comes to converting that traffic. SEO alone might not be enough.

Every web designer and copywriter’s nightmare when it comes to SEO is an unattractive, keyword stuffed web page that might do well in search ranking but scares the hello out of anyone who visits. That’s an extreme of course, but my point is that great SEO leverages keyword use and search friendly design recommendations to the benefit of site visitors first or at least as much for people as for SEO. The best content optimization is a great expression of left/right brain thinking.

An alternative to such textbook SEO tactics would be to create connections and distribution channels that have nothing to do with search engines. Create sources of web traffic that are independent of search engines  but are executed in a search friendly way.

Fundamentally, that means: Listen to the social web. Learn about customer interests, preferences and needs. Create content to meet those needs. Grow networks in the channels where those customers spend time AND in channels that influence them.  Investigate popular and relevant search based keywords as well as social keywords and incorporate them into the content strategy and social networking effort.

Use a combination of real time search and social media monitoring to detect on-demand marketing opportunities and analyze the ebb and flow of keyword focused conversation. As advertising and media placements drive search queries, so do social conversations. While many of those opportunities are fleeting and not practical, some will take hold in the form of a conversation that turns to buzz and search.

In the end, creating content of value and connections with a network that focuses on delivering value to the customers and influencers you’re trying to reach will reap rewards beyond what SEO by itself can achieve. Invest in customer relationships, networks and an optimized content marketing program and you’ll achieve a distinct competitive advantage on the social web at large AND on Google.

[photo credit: Mark Knol]

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Should You UnGoogle Your Online Marketing? |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

It’s a debate that’s more common than you might think. Strategy or Tactics first when it comes to social media? Many companies approach their participation on the social web tentatively, picking a popular tool like Twitter, Facebook or for the more adventuresome, a blog. The exercise of setting up and populating a profile, friending others and seeing what happens is akin to the proverbial “throw spaghetti against wall to see if it sticks” school of marketing.

There’s a time and place for tactics, for strategy and for experimentation. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a company to test certain channels without a broad corporate wide commitment to being more social. However, that effort should be guided by smart analysis of audience, tools and with the aid of goals and measurement methodology. Without a plan, social media efforts often fail, waste time, money and detract from the brand experience.

There’s plenty of room for discussion on this topic so I reached out to over 40 friends, collegues and others in my social network to get their opinion. Responses include a great mix of insights, metaphors and analogies from the likes of:  Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Katie Payne, Peter Kim, Debbie Weil, David Meerman Scott and many more social media smarties.

Does social strategy need to come before tactics? (in order received):

Say you want to build a house. You survey the site. You assess your needs: do you want a one-room cabin, or a sprawling mansion? How many rooms? Should any serve specialized functions? How many bathrooms are necessary? Pool? Garden? Once you’ve answered these (and more) questions, it’s time to go out and buy bricks, lumber, hammers, nails, windows and all the other stuff you need to get your house built. Not before. After all, how do you know what you’ll need if you don’t even know if you’re building a ranch house or a stone cottage?

Same thing in social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, FourSquare, Digg, delico.us, blogs and all the rest are tools in your arsenal. A means to an end, not an end in themselves. Sure, most are “free,” but “free” comes at a cost: time, effort, ideas and commitment.

This isn’t chicken-or-egg. You need strategy before tactics. How else could you possibly know what tactics to implement?
Rebecca Lieb – Blog
Vice President, North America
Econsultancy
Author, The Truth About Search Engine Optimization

“What it comes down to is asking the question ‘How do you define success?’. Tactics don’t answer that question. Strategy does. Sure, you can measure tactics, but without a strategy, there’s no benchmark. You can’t confidently say your program has succeeded if you don’t have a clear snapshot of what success looks like.”
Jessica Smith – JessicaNow
VP Digital and Global Co-Chair WOM
Fleishman-Hillard

The majority of the market still suffers from “bright and shiny object syndrome.” Is it any wonder that they’re still struggling to figure out a Return On the their social media Investment? Ultimately a solution in search of a non-existent problem or a tactic in search of a strategy will only underwhelm, underdeliver and fail to deliver any real, long term and sustainable impact which is consistent with social media being activated correctly.
Joseph Jaffe – Jaffe Juice
Chief Interruptor
Powered
Author, Flip the Funnel

There are so many outlets for social media that it is imperative to have a solid strategy before acting unilaterally in the space. If you make a mistake on a simple project, you only affect your company and the client. However, If you make a mistake in some social media space, it is potentially in front of thousands. There are so many different strategies you can carry out in social media, that it is imperative to have your whole team on board and in alignment. We have project planning every quarter for a day and then act on that plan the rest of the quarter. However the social media project is an ongoing discussion where we spend more time on strategy that we do acting. We are constantly revisiting what is going on with the major outlets.
Brett Tabke
Founder, WebmasterWorld & Pubcon

With new ‘tools/tactics’ launching every 2.7 seconds, or so it seems, the social media world over flows with options. It can be overwhelming to both novice and experienced social media marketer. Strategy First helps you identify which are the best opportunities to put into play to achieve your goals. You do have goals? Oh, that’s another conversation.
Toby Bloomberg
Diva Marketing Blog

Strategy before tactics on Social Media is equivalent to diving into a pool before looking to see if there is water let alone the depth to handle such. If you don’t spend the time, you knock out your two front teeth and be reticent to ever get in the pool again. And as we all know, this is a pool worth swimming in.
Aaron Kahlow – Online Marketing Connect
CEO
Online Marketing Connect : Online Marketing Summit & Institute

The only thing true about online marketing – and by extension, social media – is that the tools always change. Three years ago, MySpace was king. 10 years ago, Yahoo! had 67% of the search market. A “strategy” that is based on tactical execution isn’t a strategy at all, it’s a recipe for playing a constant game of catch up. The trick is to focus on how you’re going to be social, not where you’re going to do social media.
Jay Baer
Founder, Convince & Convert

If there was an upside to last year’s down economy, it was the fact that it encouraged many big brands to dip their toes in the likes of Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. While experimentation in these social outposts was initially a good thing, doing so without an overarching strategy ultimately risked works against the brand in the long run. Imagine the chaos that might ensue if a company’s traditional distribution channels — phone, web and physical stores — didn’t align. Similar risks lurk below the surface of the social web if brands’ messaging and CRM capabilities don’t coordinate… except on the social Web, customers have an ability to tell their 200+ friends with the click of a button.
Aaron Strout –  Citizen Marketer 2.1
CMO
Powered

Social media without strategy is like cooking without a recipe. Sometimes it works but sometimes its disaster. With a recipe, at least you know what ingredients to have before you get started. Along the way it’s great to improvise to make it your own but without at least a plan, you end up wandering aimlessly.
Julie Roehm
Marketing Strategy Consultant

How about research before strategy before tactics??? In social media you have to understand what is going on in your marketplaces and what people are saying BEFORE you jump in. It’s the old “don’t ask a social media expert if you should blog or Tweet, ask your customers first” — Once you know where the market is going, THEN you need to fit your organizational goal into the reality of the marketplace and see what kind of strategy might be effective. The last thing you need is tactics and tools.
Katie Delahaye Paine – Blog
CEO
KDPaine & Partners, LLC

The C-Suite talks strategy, not tactics. And you are going to need their support if you even want ’social’ to take root in the soul of the enterprise.

You don’t need to re-invent the wheel when it comes to social strategy – borrow one if you need to. How could you go wrong with a strategy like: make listening to the voice of our community/customers central to how we make decisions as an organization.
David Alston – Community Instinct
VP Marketing & Community
Radian6

Tactics don’t take into account the customer need. They typically center around “doing something viral” or “doing social” or “creating a community.” Good social strategy forces you to understand and realize that if you don’t solve a real customer need with your actions, you’re already forgotten.
Steve Bendt – Blog
Senior Marketing Manager, Social Media
Microsoft

Why strategy before tactics? A better question might be why do marketers shoot first and ask questions later? First, unlike other marketing tactics, the barrier for entry into social media is very low, so a lot of marketers think they can just jump in and base their strategy “later” upon a hollow number first achieved. They think this is data.

There is this false perception that social media is black and white and its effectiveness is based on hard numbers. i.e. followers, subscribers and friends. That might be somewhat true but it reminds me of the early days of web analytics, when web traffic was measured on a “hit” and not much else. Sure we can measure followers, friends and subscribers but that’s merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Marketers in social media think they can measure their activity and effectiveness by looking at social media’s hard numbers, meaning they are measuring a gross aggregate number and associating it with “marketing” and effectiveness all in the same breath.

A tactic first approach in social media avoids answering the questions “Why?” and “What For?” Movement for the sake of motion in social media doesn’t mean effectiveness.
Marc Meyer - Direct Marketing Observations
Dir.of Social Media and Search, Principal
DRMG

The tactics are just tools and most are easy to learn. What’s tough is the 1st step in a social strategy: adopting the social media mindset
Debbie Weil – Blog
Author, The Corporate Blogging Book

Using social media without a strategy is like writing your message on a paper airplane and aiming it out a window. Before you start engaging with customers you need to be prepared with what your goals are. Determine who your audience is, plus where and how to reach them. Most importantly you need a plan for how you will monitor the converation, respond to feedback and funnel it back into the company so you can be continuously improving.
Jennifer Cisney – 1000 Words
Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager
Kodak

Why should social strategy come before tactics? Because you don’t ask a girl to marry you before you ask her on a date. Because Chevy doesn’t manufacture hoods before they design a car. Because you fill sandbags before a flood.

While it’s tempting to sign up for Facebook, Twitter, [choose your social networking flavor of the month], just to “be there,” it’s critical to define your measurable objectives, test the waters, develop a strategy, and define evaluative criteria before jumping into the deep end of the social pool. Without solid strategy driving tactics, companies can find themselves questioning ROI, making significant missteps, or worse, annoying or offending stakeholders in both the long and short term.
Greg Swan – Perfect Porridge
Digital Strategy Director
Weber Shandwick

“Why strategy before tactics when it comes to social media?”…
…because the payoff of a strategic approach to social marketing is effectiveness. As this chart shows, marketers in the strategic phase of social marketing maturity are much more likely to report that their social media programs are “very effective” at achieving objectives than are their counterparts in the tactically-oriented trial phase.

Sergio Balegno
Research Director
MarketingSherpa

I call Social Media w/ out tactics Zombie Media: Social Media w/ No Brains.

Any marketing needs strategy before tactics not just social media. You use marketing tactics to drive a business outcome. If you’re expected to measure contribution to the business you need a strategy. If you haven’t defined that outcome (Goals) or how you’ll achieve that outcome (Strategy) then how do you expect to measure the result of your marketing?

Developing strategy doesn’t have to be a complicated exercise. It can be simple and fluid.
Tac Anderson – New Comm Biz
Social Media Director
Waggener Edstrom

You simply can’t tell if you’re doing well or not if you don’t know what you’re trying to do. You don’t need social media for social media’s sake, you need it for business’ sake.
Laura Fitton
CEO/Founder oneforty.com & Pistachio Consulting
Author, Twitter for Dummies

If you’ve ever had an ounce of question as to where and how to start social networking (on or offline), I’d ask you what does your data say? Jumping into a social environment and starting to engage is like crashing a wedding reception and trying to network with everyone there. You might make some friends (and enemies) along the way, but are you really engaging with an audience that 1) is useful for you to engage with and 2) wants to engage with you?

Most companies will put up a giant megaphone to the internet and “listen” to the conversations, spending time finding out where people are talking about the things they care about first – for 6 months and longer. This allows you to determine where people are talking about the things you care about (your brand assets and relevant topics), what they are saying, who’s saying it, and how they feel about it. With that type of insight, you can more effectively determine a social networking strategy, engaging targeted networks and people with a specific message or goal.
Laura Lippay - Lip Service
Founder, Online Visibility
Ex-Yahoo Marketing Director & Ringling performer

“Social-media strategy” is over-rated if not a downright oxymoron. The goal is to do more business. Social-media is a means to that end. Maybe you’ll use it to establish warm and fuzzy communal feelings. Maybe you’ll sell excess inventory. Don’t focus on some kind of high-level strategy because no one really knows how to use social media yet. Focus on tactics: Get more followers, make them happy, promote your stuff to them every once in a while. That’s all you need to know about strategy right now.
Guy Kawasaki – Blog – Alltop Social Media
Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures
Author, Reality Check & 8 Other Books

The most important aspect of strategy is to focus on your buyers and not your own ego. Only then can you create the tactics that reach people in an authentic way and that they are eager to consume.
David Meerman Scott – Web Ink Now
Author, World Wide Rave and The New Rules of Marketing & PR

Why social strategy should come before tactics:
“You might feel comfortable leaving for vacation and just driving until you get tired of driving, but would you do that with your business? Without a strategy, goals, objectives and measures for success, you’re just going for a ride.”
Jason Falls
Founder, Social Media Explorer

Would you pick up a phone and randomly dial 10-digits? Unless you’re prank calling, probably not. (Darn you, caller ID). The phone is a tool for communication, just like social media is a tool. Before making a phone call, sending a tweet or launching a blog, strategy is essential. It will guide the decisions you make, the platforms you use and how you interact.
Sarah Evans
Founder, Sevans Strategy

Strategy before tactics means, essentially, think before you talk. In other words, in any social-media effort for marketing or other business purposes, it’s important to do a gut check. What is your corporate culture? Who are you? This leads to other key questions: What do you want to say? What do you seek to accomplish using social media? what are the ground rules, the map to follow? This doesn’t have to be a 500-page manual or anything, but do look before you leap.
Julio Ojeda-Zapata – Your Tech Weblog
Technology writer and columnist at St. Paul Pioneer Press
Author, Twitter Means Business

Having a social strategy before jumping into tactics is imperative for long-term success. Short term tactics are okay for brands who are just testing the waters, but having a strategy will a help a brand think more holistically about becoming a social business rather than a business who can sometimes be social. Having a strategy will force brands (or small business) to think about culture change from within the organization which is required to transform into a social business. It will also help brands determine how to effectively integrate social into everything a brand does in their communications arsenal (web, PR, outdoor, retail, customer support, channel, B2B).
Michael Brito – Britopian
VP Social Media
Edelman Digital

The most succinct argument would be to quote Louis Carol’s Cheshire cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

You really need to know why you want to use social media and which tools are best suited to meeting that objective. A good start is to know where, on social media, your customers hang out and what you can give them by joining their activities. This depends on which objectives you have in mind. It can be sales, lead generation, support, feedback, new ideas. So many things can be achieved in social media. If you know what your goals are they will shape the tactic.

Conversely, if all you want to do is get your feet wet, then I would advise you to get yourself a wading pool.
Shel Israel – Global Neighborhoods
Author of Twitterville and Co-Author of Naked Conversations

Putting strategy ahead of tactics is a must for just about anything, but especially social media marketing. The problem seems to be so much confusion around what the word strategy actually means — a strategy is not a timeline or a goal, even though these elements are often included in what people refer to as a strategy document. The actual strategy piece is the spirit with which you approach others and engage with them. Engagement is not a strategy, but a high level tactic. HOW you plan to engage is strategic. Strategy also doesn’t ask about ROI, but about how you plan to win.

Proponents of social media often “get” the strategy piece in an intuitive way, but that means they don’t always empathize well with those who don’t. The result is poorly articulated strategies centered around a single trendy tactic. Initiatives like this may be easy to launch, but they’re typically not very successful.
Shannon Paul – Very Official Blog
Community and Social Media Manager
PEAK6 Online

Strategy needs to drive tactics, as companies first need to know where they’re going before they figure out how to get there. A lot of roads can get a brand from point A to B, but a good strategy will help selection of the optimal route, as well as how to respond if setbacks are encountered along the way.

I can see where some people might recommend tactics first when it comes to social technologies – the space moves quickly and new opportunities emerge weekly. This actually reinforces the need to have a good strategy in place to evaluate and experiment with possibilities within frameworks that drive towards business goals.
Peter Kim – Being Peter Kim
Managing Director, North America
Dachis Group

It’s a bit like baking a cake. Tactics are the ingredients that deliver the strategy. Decide on what kind of cake you want to bake first and why. If you dive straight into the ingredients and get the balance wrong, you could end up with a very bad taste in your mouth.
Mel Carson – UK Internet Marketing Blog
Community Manager
Microsoft Advertising

Why do you put social media strategy before tactics? There is the standard cliche about making sure that you have blueprints before you build your house, but here’s a bit of a different take. As you achieve some initial success, you’ll soon have other business units asking “How did you do that?” and “How can we be part of that?” If you don’t have an agreed upon strategy things can get messy rather quickly.

Having a strategy developed before tactics helps you manage the growth of your program. Also, working with different business units to develop a strategy in advance of tactics also helps with buy-in and keeps internal political battles and communication breakdowns from derailing your efforts.
Josh Hallett – Hyku Blog
Director, Voce Connect
Voce Communications

In practical terms, you want to know where you’re going so you can get there. Every resource you expend in business needs to be justified. Everything worth doing needs to be measured. Social media is no different. It may be a great way to share useful content in places where your customers spend time to generate interest for further actions. And it can provide powerful business intelligence back, straight from the people who buy your products and services.

However, to capitalize on all of that, your process needs to tie all your activities together — the information sharing, the intelligence gathering, the communications, content creation, and anything else that happens in between. All activities aligned with and in support of the business. Without a strategy and goals, you won’t know how you’re going to measure results and won’t be able to answer the “so what” question.

For example, we have 2,000 followers on Twitter. So what? Are they in our base or just robots? Why are we on Twitter? What are we going to tweet? And so on. Today many companies are working on optimizing social media, moving away from tactical approaches and working on the business alignment part. Tomorrow, we will hopefully see the ultimate strategy, which is that to optimize the business for social.
Valeria Maltoni, ABC Brand Strategist
Conversation Agent

I have a very short answer when someone asks me why strategy should come before tactics. Having your strategy in place, with your objectives set, usually means not having to go back and fix everything that you rushed to develop in your communications program. You must know the “why” part first, before you build anything, and use a listening strategy to determine early on what tactics will actually be successful with the people you want to reach. The strategy first approach saves time and doesn’t waste valuable resources.
Deirdre Breakenridge – Juicy Bits Blog
President, Executive Director of Communications
Mango! Creative Juice
Co-Author, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations & PR 2.0

Strategy is the path one intends to take to reach a certain goal. Using only tactics in social media is like picking up the phone and dialing random people before you’ve even decided if the call is for a sale or customer service. The tools are there to serve the goal, and certain tools improve certain strategies. Starting the other way around is just asking for pain.
Chris Brogan – Blog
President, New Marketing Labs
Co-Author, Trust Agents

The primary reasons businesses flounder with their social media integration is a) not clearly identifying their target market and which social sites these prospects visit most, b) lack of clear, measurable objectives and c) lack of a solid strategy to achieve such objectives. Thing is, there’s so much peer and media pressure to “get on Facebook (and, now, get Facebook on your site!), get on Twitter, work on your blog, make videos.” But, for what purpose? What are you trying to achieve? By starting with the technology tactics piece first, you could be completely missing the mark and, in fact, might not even be building a presence where your target audience lives! Carving out time to architect a solid social strategy is vital for success in today’s uber noisy online world.
Mari Smith
Social Media Speaker & Trainer
Author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day

Strategy starts with understanding what unique values we bring. It requires an overarching mission and understanding of the climate, systems, current conditions, and the character and culture of the people involved. Strategy is a practical plan to analyze and advance a position over time through understanding human nature and making good decision. Tactics or campaigns are the methods for executing a strategy.

Social media strategy has to come first. Without a strategic mission — to build a community to strengthen a brand — social tactics at best gather momentum then end without building something larger that people (the social) can believe in and belong to. Tactics may gather followers and fans, but strategy keeps them coming back and bringing their friends.
Liz Strauss – Successful Blog
Social Web Strategiest & Founder of SOBCon

Tactics are fun, strategy is boring.

Focusing on tactics, in social media as in business generally, in sport and other areas of human activity, appeals to people who like to get things done, action-oriented people. They say things like “ready, fire, aim!”. We need to have a bit of that in our approach, or we’ll never get anything done.

But if we ignore strategy we have no way of managing the process intelligently, no way of measuring how we are going, no way of adjusting when circumstances change.

Implementing a social media focused regime in business, going on Twitter, setting up a Facebook page, starting a blog, all without doing the hard yards on strategy, would be like trying to build a home without a blueprint: could be interesting, could get you on prime time television, but might not be livable.

Two quotes from Sun Tzu, The Art of War:
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.”
Des Walsh – Blog
Social Business Mentor
Director
The Webarts Company

Strategy before tactics isn’t only relevant to social media it’s relevant for all aspects of business. Strategy should always be the backbone of anything you do. There’s no point in creating a presence on various social channels unless you have a very clear understanding of the business challenges you are looking to solve and an understanding of how you are going to solve them. Only then you can start to think about the tactics. What happened to Nestle recently is a great example of what happens when you put tactics ahead of strategy; it’s irresponsible, not accountable, and quite frankly stupid. Any company that puts tactics ahead of strategy will fail, and rightfully so.
Jacob Morgan – Blog
Principal of Chess Media Group
Author of Twittfaced

One of the biggest mistakes many people jumping into social media make is to focus on the tactical application of various social media platforms before creating their strategy. It is easy to get off track in social media, after all SM conversations vary dramatically day to day. By setting your goals and strategies before you start your outreaches, you ensure everything you do online includes your company branding, ensures your messages are delivered and can be easily tracked and measured. My rule of thumb? Determine your goals, write your strategies, create your program, measure and revise your strategies based on customer/consumer feedback.
Serena Ehrlich – StartupArmy Blog
EVP of Social Media, StartupArmy
Corp Sec – Social Media Club

I think strategy should come first because your goals for social media usage are more important than the tools. You pick the strategy/goals, then that tells you which tools will help you best execute that strategy.

The alternative is to pick the tactics first, then you have to pick your strategy based on the chosen tools. That’s obviously a recipe for disaster.
Mack Collier – The Viral Garden
Social Media Consultant

It drives me a little nuts when organizations jump on the “shiny new toy of the day” bandwagon without much forethought. Often this happens because someone influential within the organization has seen a competitor doing it, or because it’s getting “buzz” and they think that buzz will automatically rub off on them. On the other hand, I’ve also seen organizations resisting social technologies because of fear, ignorance or internal turf wars (who will “own” social?), regardless of how much these might help them achieve their strategic goals.

You nailed it when you said companies need to “develop a strategic approach based on customer research and goals.” I don’t think you can keep your finger on the pulse of your customer and adjust your tactics successfully unless you’re working in the context of an overall strategy, one that is research-based and has goals and measurable objectives.
Shonali Burke – Waxing UnLyrical
Founder, Shonali Burke Consulting

There are so many different tactics you can use, and some of them even conflict with each other. If you ignore the big picture goals and strategy, then in the best case you wasted time and money, in the worst case you moved your company backwards.
Mike Volpe – Blog
Vice President Inbound Marketing
HubSpot

I have to smile about this request since I meet brand marketers on a daily basis who want to start their efforts in social media by creating a facebook fan page, or worse, already have taken this into their own hands prior to thinking through best practices, resources and ongoing engagement…let alone strategy, KPIs, etc…! I’ve put this to a stop via corporate governance/guidelines, but am still playing the role of an educator. I’m also seeing venues vary by brand depending upon the existing discussion.

Developing a social strategy is a complex process that stems from business goals and objectives; it involves embedding listening (both mining and monitoring) into the organizational culture. Tactics are the easy part that follow.
Amy M. Lamparske
Global Social Media Leader
3M Consumer & Office Brands

In today’s world of digital marketing, things are moving at an intense speed – so quickly, in fact, that today’s platform du jour may be tomorrow’s digital refuse. Remember Friendster, Jaiku and Splashcast? Perhaps you do. Or not. They are sites that faded from relevance, got acquired or shut down completely. Or maybe you’re more conversant with the white label social platform Ning, which recently announced that it’s ending its free service. Think of the implications if you’ve built a number of online communities that depend on the site.

If you’re putting tactics in front of strategy, then you’re probably out there building profiles and pages on social networks that could just as easily succumb to the same fate. In other words, you’re busy chasing trends instead of focusing on what’s core to your brand and building a sound strategy that will outlast every technology upheaval.

For the leaders out there, instead of building your plan on the back of everyone else’s success, maybe you should focus a little more on building your own.
Scott Monty – Blog
Global Digital Communications
Ford Motor Company

Thank you to everyone that participated in this post. It’s a testament to the power of social connections and social technology. My request went out on Friday and it simply amazes me that so many, arguably very busy, people responded the same day and some over the weekend.

What are your practical observations and opinions about social media strategy and tactics? Why do so many companies approach social web participation based on tools and metrics like friends/fans/followers versus establishing listening programs to analyze their market, influencers and develop a plan to reach and engage them? It might be a lack of trustworthy information, it might be that social technologies are so new to senior executives. We’d love to hear your perspective.

As a postscript, a good number of the responses I received were shortened for this post. We are putting together a downloadable compilation of everyone’s Social Strategy Before Tactics response in full. It will be posted in the next week or so. Details will be tweeted from @toprank and @leeodden.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Social Media Strategy Before Tactics |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Here on Online Marketing Blog, we post a tremendous amount of insight on organic  search optimization and content marketing related topics each month. But how about the site search tool on our own blog? Who’s searching for what, and why? And what are they finding?

Mining the site search report from Google Analytics can be very useful since it’s an indication of what our visitors want to read more of. Here are the six most popular site search terms for Online Marketing Blog including our favorite, “pirates”.

1. Facebook

With Facebook taking off as a top channel for social media marketing, it’s no wonder that them comes up as our leading search query. Just consider the recent numbers:

• Facebook boasts more than 400 million active users
• 50% of Facebook users log on during any given day
• More than 20 million Facebook users become fans of pages every day

A quick Online Marketing Blog site search for “Facebook” yields recent posts on tools for sharing microcontent, insight on social media advertising and how to leverage channels like Facebook to take advantage of real-time search.

2. Twitter

Speaking of popular social media marketing channels, Twitter takes to No. 2 spot for most common site searched on Online Marketing blog. Twitter may only have less than 106 million users compared with Facebook’s 400 million. But consider how quickly Twitter is growing and how active its users are:

• New users sign up at the rate of 300,000 per day
• 180 million unique visitors visit the site every month
• Users post an average of 55 million tweets a day

So what can you get with a search for Twitter on Online Marketing Blog? Learn more about the role of news in blended search or find ways to electrify your social network.

3. Books

Who says print is dead? “Books” turns up as our fourth most popular search term.

Here on the Online Marketing Blog, we’ve posted reviews of some of latest most intriguing marketing online marketing books like “The Art of SEO.”

Plus, we’ve conducted exclusive interview with some of the hottest marketing authors out there, such as David Meerman Scott, author of “The New Rules of Marketing.” We’ve even polled our readers on the best available books on SEO.

4. Social Media

These days, social media isn’t just a hot topic for B2C marketers looking to connect with consumers on sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Social media is equally as relevant in the B2B world. In fact, 91% of business buyers read blogs, watch user generated video and participate in other social media, according to Forrester Research.

A “social media” search on Online Marketing blog pulls up posts on setting and measuring goals for business blogging, which social media sites are the biggest time wasters and the risks of sponsored blog posts.

5. Email Marketing

Contrary to predictions, RSS never did replace Email. Social media and network use and status updates or microblogging haven’t “killed” the popularity of email either. In fact, there have been reports that Email use is actually up. So it certainly makes sense that our readers are looking for more information on email marketing.

A search for “email marketing” reveals some insight posts including, “5 Top Email Marketing Tactics for 2010“, 5 Tips for Effective Email Copywriting” and “How Social Media & Email Marketing Boost Customer Reach“.

And Finally: Pirates!

Few things seem less relevant to Online Marketing Blog than pirates. Yet somehow it’s one of the most searched terms on the blog.

So what do pirates have to do with Internet marketing and Web 2.0? There is an answer in this social media marketing post, we promise. Hint: It has to do with Dave McClure.

Are you analyzing the top search phrases on your web site? Are you using that insight to guide your site content?

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Top 5 Search Terms at Online Marketing Blog – Including Pirates |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

What is Comment Management?  Virtually all blog software offers commenting functionality, so why would you need a 3rd party comment management service?  Many of the comments and “reactions” to content posted on a blog never make it to the blog itself – the source of the conversation.

Comment Management tools provide all the expected features and also pull in mentions & citations of the post as well. That way when someone reads a post on your blog, they can see comments made directly on the post as well as mentions made of of the post on other sites like Twitter.

Should you add a comment manager tool to your blog? It depends how much of your social engagement is happening off your blog and also whether you feel it will add to the user experience to see a collected list of on and off site interactions. For many blogs, citing comment and reaction counts is simply a matter of social proofing and popularity. For others, it’s an attempt to harvest all the conversation about a post at the source.

To help you decide, here are the three main comment management tools to consider:

ECHO from JS-Kit offers a wide array of features. It can be embedded on a blog or static web site and pull in comments from Twitter, Digg, comments from other blogs, FriendFeed and several others. Commenters can choose to promote their comments simultaneously to Twitter, Facebook or Google Friends. Sites like Technorati and Guy Kawasaki use ECHO.  We tried JS-Kit but didn’t like not being able to show comments on top of the off site citations under each post.  JS-Kit ECHO Live is $12/year and ECHO Live white label is $48/year. There is also a PRO version with many other controls and features with costs according to page views ranging from $195 to $1995 per year.

Disqus, as you may have noticed, is the commenting system we are currently using on Online Marketing Blog. Disqus lets readers choose their identity, via: Facebook Connect, OpenID, or Twitter Sign-in, when they leave a comment. Comments can be threaded and the moderation dashboard is easy to use. Off site references to your content on Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, and YouTube are pulled in as “Reactions”. You can sort comments as we do, on top, then show the reactions below. Readers can choose to cross post their comment to other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.   You can edit comment content but not the names of commenters, which is frustrating because some spammers write really useful comment content but spam them hell out of their names and links. The base version of Disqus is free. Disqus VIP offers much hand holding support and analytics. Cost is not disclosed on the site so it must be very expensive.

IntenseDebate was acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress and therefore, can be easily added to WordPress blogs as well as TypePad, Tumblr or Blogger blogs. There’s comment threading, notification by email, commenter profiles and points, moderation, cross posting to Twitter and several other features.  IntenseDebate is free.

Which comment management tool is right for you? It depends on your use. If you have a static web site and you’d like to add comment features, then ECHO might be a fit. If you want something that offers all the basics and works natively with WordPress then maybe IntenseDebate is your pick. If you want more features and also don’t want to pay anything, then it’s possible Disqus is the choice for you.

The great thing about these tools is that they are easy to install and test out.

Here are other reviews you might find useful on these comment management systems.

• Blog Comment System Shootout: Disqus vs. Intense Debate vs. JS-Kit Echo – 40 Tech
• 3rd Party Comment System Roundup – Dave Mosher’s Blog

Although I pinged Facebook and Twitter connections for examples of other 3rd party comment management tools that pull in off-site citations, I didn’t hear about any. I didn’t find much on Google either. There are other comment management services, tools and plug-ins, just not any (that I’ve found) that automatically pull in 3rd party mentions of your content.

If you know of other comment management systems that pull in comments from other social media sites, please share in the comments. Do you use any of the the tools mentioned above? What has your experience been? What features would you like to see added?

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Comment Management Tools You Should Know |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

What is Comment Management?  Virtually all blog software offers commenting functionality, so why would you need a 3rd party comment management service?  Many of the comments and “reactions” to content posted on a blog never make it to the blog itself – the source of the conversation.

Comment Management tools provide all the expected features and also pull in mentions & citations of the post as well. That way when someone reads a post on your blog, they can see comments made directly on the post as well as mentions made of of the post on other sites like Twitter.

Should you add a comment manager tool to your blog? It depends how much of your social engagement is happening off your blog and also whether you feel it will add to the user experience to see a collected list of on and off site interactions. For many blogs, citing comment and reaction counts is simply a matter of social proofing and popularity. For others, it’s an attempt to harvest all the conversation about a post at the source.

To help you decide, here are the three main comment management tools to consider:

ECHO from JS-Kit offers a wide array of features. It can be embedded on a blog or static web site and pull in comments from Twitter, Digg, comments from other blogs, FriendFeed and several others. Commenters can choose to promote their comments simultaneously to Twitter, Facebook or Google Friends. Sites like Technorati and Guy Kawasaki use ECHO.  We tried JS-Kit but didn’t like not being able to show comments on top of the off site citations under each post.  JS-Kit ECHO Live is $12/year and ECHO Live white label is $48/year. There is also a PRO version with many other controls and features with costs according to page views ranging from $195 to $1995 per year.

Disqus, as you may have noticed, is the commenting system we are currently using on Online Marketing Blog. Disqus lets readers choose their identity, via: Facebook Connect, OpenID, or Twitter Sign-in, when they leave a comment. Comments can be threaded and the moderation dashboard is easy to use. Off site references to your content on Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, and YouTube are pulled in as “Reactions”. You can sort comments as we do, on top, then show the reactions below. Readers can choose to cross post their comment to other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.   You can edit comment content but not the names of commenters, which is frustrating because some spammers write really useful comment content but spam them hell out of their names and links. The base version of Disqus is free. Disqus VIP offers much hand holding support and analytics. Cost is not disclosed on the site so it must be very expensive.

IntenseDebate was acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress and therefore, can be easily added to WordPress blogs as well as TypePad, Tumblr or Blogger blogs. There’s comment threading, notification by email, commenter profiles and points, moderation, cross posting to Twitter and several other features.  IntenseDebate is free.

Which comment management tool is right for you? It depends on your use. If you have a static web site and you’d like to add comment features, then ECHO might be a fit. If you want something that offers all the basics and works natively with WordPress then maybe IntenseDebate is your pick. If you want more features and also don’t want to pay anything, then it’s possible Disqus is the choice for you.

The great thing about these tools is that they are easy to install and test out.

Here are other reviews you might find useful on these comment management systems.

• Blog Comment System Shootout: Disqus vs. Intense Debate vs. JS-Kit Echo – 40 Tech
• 3rd Party Comment System Roundup – Dave Mosher’s Blog

Although I pinged Facebook and Twitter connections for examples of other 3rd party comment management tools that pull in off-site citations, I didn’t hear about any. I didn’t find much on Google either. There are other comment management services, tools and plug-ins, just not any (that I’ve found) that automatically pull in 3rd party mentions of your content.

If you know of other comment management systems that pull in comments from other social media sites, please share in the comments. Do you use any of the the tools mentioned above? What has your experience been? What features would you like to see added?

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Comment Management Tools You Should Know |
18 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The buzz on geolocation marketing is hot. Recently Lawrence Coburn from RateItAll released the beta version of a new project: DoubleDutch, a platform for creating your own geolocation check-in app, ala Foursquare. I connected with Lawrence to ask more questions about DoubleDutch and to get tips for marketers that want to incorporate geolocation and review services into their online marketing.

First, can you share a bit about yourself and your company RateItAll? We spoke on a panel several years ago at Pubcon and I remember that you have a great story about how your company started and really exploded with media attention.

Sure, RateItAll is a story of endurance. I ran it out of a coffee shop for years (along with a number of other niche sites). By 2007 it had started to grow to a point that I couldn’t handle it by myself. It was making decent money, but I was struggling to keep the servers up. Mathew Spolin, our CTO joined us in 2008 and we were able to go out get a little funding for it. We now have a team of seven based in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Congratulations on launching your new project, the iPhone App: DoubleDutch. I appreciate getting a pre pre alpha view of it and now you’ve really added some great features – especially the ability to white label it. What prompted you to create DoubleDutch and how is it different than Foursquare and Gowalla?

Lee, you were actually one of the first people to see DoubleDutch in the wild. We’re really excited about it – it has been called “Foursquare for the Enterprise” and “Ning for Mobile Social Networks.” We’re OK with both of those descriptions.

We had been eying location based services for a long time. I was an obsessive user of Dodgeball (the SMS precursor to Foursquare). By the time 2009 SXSW rolled around, Mathew and I were determined to do something with location. We approached Foursquare to team up on a reviews + check-ins combo, but weren’t able to get their attention.

So we set out to build the thing ourselves, leveraging RateItAll’s massive database of geo tagged data. Over the years we had signed a number of geo data partnerships, giving us a big advantage in entering the location fray.

Our goal was to put together a collection of mobile, social components that could be remixed and customized by white label partners. In addition to the check-in functionality, some of our features include game dynamics (leaderboards, achievement stickers, and “Rockstardom,”), ratings and reviews, photo uploads, Facebook / Twitter integration, and many more. This app was in development for more than 6 months and we’re quite happy with how it turned out.

Our big difference from Foursquare and Gowalla is in our emphasis on reviews. We think there is an endemic relationship between a social check-in and a review of a local business. Just as Amazon has been able to leverage sales data to convert more reviews than anyone else, we think that check-ins are the first step towards posting a review.

We also believe strongly in the concept of “The community IS the social graph.” What I mean by this is that on public networks like Foursquare or Gowalla, you need to recreate your social graph for the apps to get any value from the service. Not so on a private network like DoubleDutch. You can imagine an app white labeled for a conference like Pubcon, in which every attendee could see the check in activity of other attendees. Think about what a boon this would be for networking – no more just heading to the lobby bar and hoping for the best. And because everyone was there for Pubcon, no friending would be required.

Are widgets still sexy?

Of course! Just not as sexy as geo at the moment. In fact, I’m not posting much on Sexy Widget any more. I started a blog called Location Meme a few months ago with a friend. The folks at The Next Web took notice, and invited me to be an editor at that network’s Location blog, and that’s where I’m doing most of my writing now.

Back to DoubleDutch. Not only is this a (another) geolocation iPhone app, but you’re offering companies or organizations the opportunity white label the DoubleDutch platform to create their own location-based iPhone app. Who is your target and how do you see them using it? What are your plans to make it competitive with the other apps out there that are already well entrenched?

Our three target verticals right now are Conferences, Hotels, and Universities. We think that almost any community that is tied to a location could benefit from a location and knowledge sharing service, but we needed to narrow the universe down a bit. Conferences and Hotels are interesting because they typically are communities of people who are converging on a new city looking for recommendations and interaction. DoubleDutch helps on both counts. Universities are interesting because of their tie to a specific geography, and the demographic. You can check out some sample use cases on DoubleDutch.me.

How does the Double Dutch app tie in to your main business, RateItAll?

Great question. We are seeing signs that DoubleDutch has the potential to become our main business, with RateItAll taking a supporting role. RateItAll provides a tremendous foundation for the service, with its massive amount of geo tagged data, and its 4M+ reviews. Our server infrastructure is key as well as it allows us offer SLAs to our clients. Also, all check in, ratings, reviews, and photo activity is aggregated on RateItAll.com, making DoubleDutch another content collection channel.

You were at SXSW, who won the geolocation prize there? Gowalla or Foursquare? I guess that’s a loaded question. What did they do right? Did you see any big mistakes?

I think geolocation won the geolocation prize. Both those services got a big boost, but I think the whole space benefited from all the attention. At DoubleDutch, we are huge fanboys / fangirls of both services and wish them only the best. If you believe that Enterprise trails Consumer by two years (which we do), the faster that those services blaze the trail, the faster that DoubleDutch will grow.

Please share 3-4 best practices and tips for companies that want to use geolocation based mobile apps to market their businesses?

I think it really depends what kind of business you are. If you are a local business, you don’t really have to do much other than ensure that your address info is up to date on the mobile services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, and of course, RateItAll. If you are a bit more savvy / experimental, you can try offering discounts / giveaways to Foursquare Mayors, and try and incentivize your customers to check-in and push to Twitter / FB.

If you are a big brand, perhaps it makes sense to try and cut a deal with Foursquare or Gowalla to sponsor some Badges. Lots of companies are cutting these sorts of deals, and it’s a good way to drop your brand into the experience of those apps in the context of the location game.

But if you are a big community, it might make sense to use a service like DoubleDutch to create a more pervasive connection with your customers / members / employees and extend your community out into the real world. Social check in apps are not only fun, but they can be productive. We’re talking to companies with some pretty innovative ideas for putting geo to work – for example, a real estate company wants to put this app in the hands of their agents to encourage more property visits, and help those agents capture photos and thoughts about each property. We have been amazed at how creative some of these companies are.

What about tips for marketing within the consumer reviews marketplace overall? How important is it for companies to be active, whether it’s editorially, through advertising or offline promotion with services like Yelp, Epinions or even RateItAll?

I strongly recommend that businesses be active on the big review properties. Being active does not mean being confrontational and bullying – it means engaging thoughtfully with customers, even the insane and / or angry ones. If you suspect cheating, don’t call out the customer – go to the host site. Most of these services allow commenting and messaging – on RateItAll, which is the 9th biggest review site, we see a number of big brands on the site every day making use of the free tools like commenting and messaging to engage their customers. Some of those folks pay us for access to a few more tools, but you don’t need to have a budget engage your customers.

One question I like to ask smart and busy entrepreneurs like yourself is: How do you stay current with technology and marketing? Do you have favorite events, books, blogs, networks or some kind of crystal RateItAll ball to keep you on top of what’s important for the future of your business?

I read and write as much as I possibly can. Writing makes me smarter about a topic, because I don’t want to come off as a moron. It takes a lot of research to write a post. Sexy Widget was born out of my desire to get smart about widgets, and my role as Editor at the Next Web was born out my desire to get smart about geo. In terms of reading, I hit Techmeme and Hacker News all the time, and also get a lot of good links from Twitter. My two favorite blogs are AVC and CDixon.org.

Living in San Francisco, I have access to a number of technology meetup type events – I try and hit a couple per month. There’s nothing better than talking to entrepreneurs, because for them, predicting the next big wave is life or death. I tend to listen to folks running companies more than I listen to journalists.

Thanks Lawrence.

You can download the Double Dutch app here. RWW did a great overview with screenshots here.

Lawrence Coburn is the founder and CEO of RateItAll and co-founder of the white label geolocation app,DoubleDutch. In his spare time, he is an editor of The Next Web’s Location blog. Lawrence is also a mentor at Ventures.io, a San Francisco based technology incubator.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
DoubleDutch: Foursquare for the Enterprise |
2 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Since late 2009 when Google introduced real time search, the concept has gained a lot of attention.

Today, real time search is at the top of the priority lists for all the major search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo!.

As part of the new technology, Google is combining live updates from sites like Twitter with the latest news headlines and blog posts in search results.

For web searchers, real time search means the ability to discover breaking news the minute it’s happening.

For marketers, it presents a whole host of opportunities to increase online visibility. Here, we’ve provided five ways to leverage real time search in your online marketing efforts.

1. Develop the type of content that supports real time SEO

With real time search, frequently publishing online content becomes a must. Try incorporating these three types of content to support both traditional and real time SEO programs:

• Tweets and Facebook fan page updates: Micro content from social sites now has the ability to appear in search results. It’s quick and easy to frequently post Tweets and Facebook fan pages updates, so both should play a big role in your real time SEO content strategy.
• Blog posts: Blogging presents the opportunity to help your content rank and show thought leadership at the same time – since blog posts can offer more valuable information than micro content.
• Optimized press releases: By optimizing press releases and submitting them through authoritative newswires, you can help your content achieve high rankings.

2. Mobilize your fan base

Creating a core group of brand advocates is important for a number of reasons. They recommend your products and services to their friends and family, defend your reputation in times of trouble and are more likely to adopt future products and services you introduce.

Now add one more benefit to the list: Brand advocates – particularly authoritative ones – can link to your content to help keep in the real time stream.

In addition, brand advocates who are active on social sites like Twitter can create their own content about your company that can appear in real time search results.

3. Know what’s hot in the news

With real time search, it’s important to recognize both what users are searching for online and what they’re discussing via social channels – at this very minute. Create frequently updated content that speaks to the latest topics and trends, and is optimized for the latest search terms.

A variety of tools exist to help monitor search and conversation trends:

• Google Trends: Use this free tool to find the hottest topics and hottest searches in Google
• Social Mention: Determine the strength, sentiment and reach for terms used throughout the social web, including blogs, microblogs, social networks, video sites and news sites
• BlogPulse: Find the top blog posts, key phrases, new stories and more from across the search universe or related a specific topic
• Delicious: See the types of content that goes wild across the social web
• Trendistic: Learn trending topics in Twitter over the last 24 hours, week, month or more (see image below)

Trendistic shows “online marketing” trends over the past 30 days.

4. Time your content promotion efforts wisely

Give your content an extra boost by monitoring when blog posts, articles and other online content are indexes in Google News or Google Blog Search. Then ensure tweets, Facebook fan page updates and other social content promotions are timed right after the content is indexed. Doing so will help you take advantage of every opportunity to appear in real time search results.

5. Optimize your web site and online content for mobile technologies

Real time search is relevant on many mobile devices, including Android and iPhone devices. So Web site optimization for mobile technologies becomes even more important.

Consider these few mobile SEO tips:

• Limit the use of images
• Keep the design simple and clean
• Test to ensure your site appears as it should across various mobile devices

The bottom line is, it’s crucial to take advantage of every real time search opportunity that comes around. Remember that these opportunities won’t stick around for long – presenting themselves quickly and then disappearing. It is real time, after all.

Have you implemented real time SEO into your online marketing mix? Tell us what best practices you’ve found so far.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
5 Ways to Leverage Real Time Search in Your Online Marketing Mix |
12 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com