@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Branding & Marketing

BlogWorld and New Media Expo 2012 NY [Event]

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The BlogWorld Social Media Conference and Expo returns to New York again this year from June 5th through 7th as a must-attend social media networking and educational event. They are expecting thousands of attendees from over 50 countries with more than 200 speakers for the event. With a great trade-show planned this may be the only industry-encompassing event that will help bring together those in the content creation and publishing businesses together.

BlogWorld Speakers

There will be many notable speakers attending the BlogWorld Social Media Conference and Expo in 2012.

Greg Cargill –  VP of Client Services for Social & Media, Blitz

Greg’s professional career is focused on helping celebrities, brands, and products develop awareness through strategic and internet partnerships. Greg and his team at bigMethod have worked with some of the world’s largest brands such as City of Hope, Harley-Davidson, and Honda. They have successfully brought these organizations to the online social media marketing landscape. bigMethod was recently aquired by Blitz agency.

Greg will host a session called What Makes Big Brands Spend Money on Your Blog. He will share key points such as:

  • What makes brands decide to spend money on a blog
  • How much do they spend?

Linus Chou –  Product Manager, Google

Product manager for Google Analytics, Linus Chou focuses on social attribution as well as real time analytics products. Before arriving at Google, he was an engineer for display advertising at Amazon.com.

Linus will host a session called Measuring Social Media Using Google Analytics. His key points will be.

  • Always measure ROI
  • Understanding  how social channels are generating conversions for your business
  • Learn the difference between upper and lower funnel social channels and what that can mean for your social media marketing campaigns.

Katie Richman – Director of Social Media Strategy , ESPN / espnW

Director of Social Media Strategy for ESPN Digital Media, Katie Richman is part of the startup team that is building ESPN’s women’s sports business. Katie began her career in 2001 with MTV Networks Brand Creative and moved onto Oxygen Media in their startup days as well.

Katie will be hosting a session titled Creation, Curation and Collection: Getting to know Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr with key points focused on providing a good understanding of tastes, metrics and segmentation options as well as information on cutting edge platforms.

Who Should Attend?

Anyone who publishes online can benefit from the knowledge shared at this event. Content creators, publishers, bloggers, podcasters, radio and WebTV broadcasters will benefit from new understanding on topics such as trending strategies, best practices, and trusted techniques to improve content creation and monetization.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

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Optimizing Content Creation for Conversions

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Content can mean everything to a small business that is based online. While having a high search ranking may bring in more traffic, it doesn’t always equal more sales. However, marketers who make a focused effort on creating only the highest quality content can not only improve their positions on search engine rankings, but also obtain more conversions than those who go with more mass produced, lesser quality content.

Putting Your Content to Work for You

Creating content isn’t just a simple matter of tossing up blog post about your products or services and hoping it promotes or sells itself. In a time where businesses of any size are swiftly becoming media outlets in their own right by publishing their own original insights related to their industries, companies should not ignore the opportunity to be a part of the conversation on their own with high-quality and original content marketing.

However, it is important to remember that just publishing high-quality content is still not enough. It is important to focus on how you can put that content to work to help you attain your personal business goals online, covering everything from attracting relevant site traffic to helping direct your visitors to your most valuable conversion or ecommerce pages. The right content marketing campaign will involve strategic planning and a constant and consistent execution if a business intends to increase online conversions. Optimizing your content

How to Accelerate Lead Quality and Conversion

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZzF4qzP7vo]

What is Content?

By now you likely know that content can be any number of things. Everything from eBooks, blog posts, webinars, podcasts, case studies and more can be very educational, relevant, high-quality content that brings audiences back to your site and with each return, closer to your valuable conversion pages or links. Make sure that your content supports your own business goals and the educational needs or wants of your target audience.

Content Marketing Strategies

There are a few optimal thoughts to keep in mind and keep your websites content focused on.

  • Content should speak to the content audience
  • Identify the goals you expect your content to achieve
  • Create your audience profile
  • Do your keyword research

As with any type of content, anytime, it is incredibly vital to have a content writer who can engage your readers effectively. We have covered some of the best ways to fit a content writer to your specific needs on DBMEi with several of our professional freelance authors and guest contributors content. Take the time to check them out.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

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Measuring Social Influence – Klout, PeerIndex, SocialIQ and Kred

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Nowadays, when a business wants to gauge how the general public feels about their brands, products or services, they are using tools for measuring their social influence on the web. In many cases, some even use them to take a measurement of their competitors. Staying on top of important industry trends, changes in algorithms, and social influence measurement tools can keep you and your business afloat on the web and learning how to make those trends, changes and tools work for you can assist your business in increasing growth, brand visibility, and even your business’s social media ‘voice.’

If you need a reminder of how important those things can be to your social media campaigns, take a look back to the blog, 4 important lessons on brand marketing via Twitter, where we shared the successes that JetBlue, Hilton and more were having from the social media voices they created for themselves. We covered the spread of social influence tools in another past blog titled Klout vs PeerIndex vs SocialIQ at the end of last summer, but how are those tools developing now?

Klout

Klout is still as powerful a force in social influence as ever. Recent updates include some fairly impressive leaps ahead in keeping up with business technology and its impact in the realm of social influence. Just this month Klout announced they would be offering dedicated pages for brands where Klout users will be able to see lists of top influencers for each brand as well as observe social media conversations,  monitor brand developments and even earn access to some special perks. This new update, codenamed “Brand Squad” is launched in a partner venture with Red Bull.

For some more information on where Klout may be headed, don’t forget to check out the video from #SMWSMAC where we had a full panel including Michelle Ross of Klout to explain where we can expect social influence measurement tools to take us in the coming year. Klout still has its naysayers as well. However, it has also begun to be an item of reference now asked for in some job interviews as well. For those working in the social media industry, it may soon become a vital tool on your own list of portfolio and reference links.

PeerIndex

PeerIndex has found itself in continual growth since we delved into it last August. Reebok has just offered the top 100 most influential PeerIndex users, as identified by their own PeerPerks service, a free pair of Reebox’s RealFlex trainers. In promoting their own, “The Sport of Fitness Has Arrived” marketing campaign. The PeerPerks system, hosted on its own microsite, allows users to sign in just as they do on PeerIndex, by using their Facebook or Twitter accounts. Although this particular marketing campaign will focus on those who have influence in fitness, athletics or sports, it seems that a few more brand offers from big names like Reebok may push PeerIndex and their competitive reward system into more growth for their social media influencer user base.

SocialIQ

SocialIQ was just breaking out of the start-up phase when we last covered them. Since then they too have grown into an impressively notable competitor on the social influence circuit. Early on, they had enacted their own series of perks for those who were influential in a variety of industries and the developers at SocialIQ are still continually looking to improve and perfect their relationship with users. Just this past Tuesday they met with a customer service special interest group at Intuit to ask for some feedback on the SocialIQ experience design.

SocialIQ has an aesthetically pleasing and easy to manage user interface in their one click social media network integration with Twitter and Facebook. Developed by Soovox, the algorithm SocialIQ uses seems to be working and measures influence based on the same idea as the others. However, I have noticed that SocialIQ has done some pretty impressive improvements on their site’s look as well as their feedback to users complete with an influence level analysis that tells you which brands you may have the closest affinity with.

Kred

A month ago we covered Kred and what it had to offer as a newer social influence measurement tool on the net in Monitoring Your Social Reputation with Kred.  Just this month Kred has added Facebook to their options for users wanting to measure their social influence scores. Everything seems to be working well so far and with Kred making a major showing at SXSW this year, the company is slowly starting to gain more ground. Kred scores do break down a bit differently as users actually receive points for interactions, tweets, mentions and more, so I would definitely encourage those who have not tried it to do so. It may offer the last piece to the puzzle of your business’s social influence analytics.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

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Monitoring Your Social Reputation with Kred

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Social influence is gaining notice as more advertisers, marketers, consumers, and affiliates use it as a method of gauging the knowledge, credibility, and reliability of prospective new clients or business contacts. There are other systems of influence measurement, such TwentyFeet, Klout, and Peer Index. Between them all there is a whopping level of social influence analysis to be found. So which should you be using? From someone who has experimented and experienced a little of what each has to offer, I’d have to say, use each of them for the best option they offer for social influence measurement.

[slideshare id=9465635&doc=kredslidedeckv15-110928212859-phpapp02]

What Does Kred Offer?

Kred offers many of the same options as the others. A collaborative algorithm will allow you to enter your social network accounts to gather an overall score listing the highlights of your personal topics, and circles of influence. However, Kred does offer a few things that the others do not, or lack a particular focus on.

Analytics

Kred seems to have an analytics platform that is a bit more detailed than the others. Using a system known as PeopleBrowser, Kred has based their analytics system around the notion that they believe social analytics can depict accurately, how human behavior and influence can provide data to help businesses increase productivity, community, and growth.

Community

An important element to any brand is the ability to find the right community that cares about your services or product offerings. When you include the chance to pinpoint top influencers in your industry or topics, a brand marketer’s job gets a lot easier.

Transparency

Kred is unusually upfront about how scores are handed down, down to every mention, retweet, follow, like, and so on.

See what Scott Milener of PeopleBrowser has to say about their platform.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKTEXlGuxgM]

Influencer Reality

True influencer reality is not going to come from Lady Gaga, or a Kardashian. Although any company would be delighted to have one of those famous influencers tweet or share their brand, the true consumer is unlikely to run out and purchase relentlessly just because Gaga or Kim said they should. However, the true consumers, those that may buy your product or services, and then relate their wonderful experience with you to all of their friends, is the epitome of influencer reality. Klout and Kred both seem to have a good realization of what it means to base an algorithm and platform on the real consumers companies are clamoring for attention from.

Kred vs Klout – Fun Fact

If you think that the competition between Kred and Klout when it comes to providing the best tool for social influence, it may also be important to note that these two companies also share the same city and office space, not just the same views on social influence. However, as much as each company seeks to shed light on the same platform of social influence, they also appear to have different viewpoints on the true sources of online influence.

If you want to learn more about the basics of Kred, check out this helpful PDF.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

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How Fab.com Achieved Two Million Users in Seven Months with #SocialCommerce Marketing Strategies

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Although Fab.com was founded in early 2010 as a social network for gay and lesbian users, it has quickly turned into an e-commerce site with an incredible following. As their social network base grew it made the leap from networking site to high-end flash sales. This young endeavor is already making a huge impact in its industry.

Lessons from Social Commerce Summit 2012 #SCS

Sheezan Bakali, director of marketing for Fab, spoke at the recent Business Insiders’s Social Commerce Summit. She revealed the basic points behind the strategy that brought Fab.com over 2 million users in just seven months. Sheezan shared that Fab’s keys to success was based on three elements in their marketing strategy.

Product

Sheezan shared that they provided “virtual products and physical products that must delight every day.” She highlights that the product itself should never be skimped on. The consumers who purchase need to be provided with a quality, end product that will serve as its own selling point. Customers need to feel the satisfaction of purchasing a quality product along with the comfort of having a user-friendly front end.

Make sure the product that arrives on your customers doorstep speaks for itself.

Social Media

Fab was created to be social. To keep everyone on Fab in-the-know, they now have a calendar listed on site that displays products that are soon to go on sale or have just went up for a sale price. This means their consumers usually begins to post on Facebook or Twitter without needing additional prompting. No one likes hearing about a great sale after it ends, but Fab’s analytics show them that this particular strategy really gets their followers talking, or tweeting. Currently, every 30 seconds, someone is tweeting about a Fab.com deal.

In one great test of their marketing power and reach, Fab promoted a product known as Beardo. This unique product is a combination of a a stocking cap and a knit ‘beard’ to keep the face warm. This quirky product sold quickly and became a huge success on Fab.

Users are encouraged to invite their friends, earn credits, and engage with other Fab users.

Strategic Advertising

Fab didn’t come out of the gate with endless funds for costly worldwide advertising possibilities, but they also have full understanding that social media cannot do all of the work either. In order to find the perfect balance, they target their marketing as specifically as possible.

Just at launch time, out of the 175,000 members, over 50,000 of them arrived via ads. Those early influencers helped to fuel the pinwheel that helped to create such a significant jump in their user-base. During their advertising process, Fab goes out of their way to target brand new communities that they believe can appreciate what Fab has to offer. This strategy can also go a long way in feeding back into social media.

From Artfire to Etsy, Fab now joins a growing list of boutique and economy retail sites that are gaining ground by providing consumers with a level of customization that may not have been possible before, at least not when on a budget. The option for budget clothing is available in every Walmart across the country, the option for customized clothing that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg are only available on sites like Fab.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

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Snaptag Versus QR Codes

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QR codes have been a new and unique source of executing mobile marketing campaigns in recent times. Many seem to not only enjoy participating by using them, but have actually begun to look for offers from those with QR codes and may even have begun to ignore those that do not have them at all.

What is a QR Code?

QR is short for quick response and that is exactly the purpose of the QR code. These codes take an element of data from transitory media and sends it to your mobile device. The code will give you details about that business, item, or even discount information on products and services.

QR Codes are more useful than a standard barcode in that they can store a more data and a wider variety of it. QR codes commonly include URL links, text, coordinates and more.

How Does This Benefit Businesses?

Most marketers are well aware that mobile marketing is becoming increasingly more important, almost by the day. No method of advertising could be easier than one that consumers reach out for, instead of being asked to look. QR codes allows those consumers who prefer not to be barraged with overt marketing tactics to choose where they will show interest in a product or service.

There is really no limit to the options that can be embedded in a QR code.

  • Running a restaurant? – Embed a great recipe, a buy a meal get one free discount, a special on this evenings dessert.
  • Authors – Add a QR code to the back of your book that enables a consumer to get extra features or hidden endings to your script.
  • Good health practices – Doctors, or other medically related practices can add good tips and tricks for healthy living to their QR codes, update them every month for innovative creativity in the medical field.

Vital Aesthetics Arrive to QR Coding

Traditionally, QR codes have retained a Rorschach look to them, leaving the responsibility on the advertiser to make sure consumers know whose QR code they are scanning. However, with Snaptags, QR codes and increasing brand awareness have meshed nicely. Snaptags have traded out that whole inkblot look for a code ring that serves the same functional purpose.

Who is Using Snaptags?

Because of the applied branding ability on Snaptags not previously available on QR’s, we can now see who is actively using them.

Picture c/o http://www.socialsnaptags.com/

Snaptags Cons?

Although Snaptags no doubt win out in the aesthetic element, there are other issues that can make Snaptags less beneficial than they appear. Many venture because of the supporting copy, Snaptags are not as easily accessible as QR codes. Snaptag stands by the fact that all advertisers would need to do is determine the required supporting copy, but this does lend itself to the inaccessible accusation.

Many current QR code advertisers agree that if a mobile marketing campaign is managed correctly, the aesthetic element of the Snaptags versus traditional QR’s is hardly advantageous.

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Customer Engagement for Small Business

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Telling business owners that they need to have some plans for customer engagement is easy. However, once they have absorbed that tidbit of helpful information, many may be lost as to what customer engagement can actually entail. Most likely, there is nothing that you in particular are selling, that can’t be found somewhere else. So what can the small business owner do to show that their product is the right choice for the consumer?

Be a Customer for a Day

Spend a day emulating the actions that your prospective consumers do.

  1. Call your customer service number.
  2. Go through the motions of purchasing your own product.
  3. Fill out your contact forms.

Make sure that your customer experience matches your outlook and ideas.

Build Communication Options

Not everyone uses Facebook and Twitter believe it or not. Make sure you have traditional methods of communication as well as digital ones. List phone numbers and a physical address for your business, even if it is online based.

Exercise and Act on Your Listening Skills

It isn’t enough to reply to customers questions or request with generic terms. When prospective consumers ask for discounts or other beneficial options, show them you are listening by enacting them. You will get no better word of mouth advertising then having a consumer who can say “I asked for a discount, and they gave me one!” This doesn’t mean you have to offer that discount to everyone who asks, but you should never outright ignore those request.

Show Your Integrity

Since bad news can travel with light speed on the internet, you may need to go out of your way to show your customers that not only are you expert at what you do, but that you back that professionalism with personal integrity. Show your customers that the people behind the brand care.

Let Your Customers Advertise for You

Anything that you can do to get your consumers to share their product or service experiences with the public will provide you with two benefits. Obviously it will give you the valuable advertising you are seeking, but it will also provide you with media that you can post to help build top-notch links for your site. Don’t expect your customers to do this for no reward though. Their time is valuable too. Try to run contest for the best written or video reviews of your project. Reward the winners appropriately for their time spent talking about your products and services.

Above all it is important that any consumers approaching you for your products or services walk away with the sense that you are a brand they can trust and rely on.

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“Privacy” is a great way to stay unemployed, unconnected and extinct [Opinion]

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Social Media does not create a brand, it takes the brand (or character impression) and carries it. Just like in the “old” days when you worked in a community and everyone knew everything about you anyway, social media has played into the global business revolution.

“Privacy is for old People” but perhaps we misunderstood “old”? It was my interpretation, it was for people who try to “network” the “old” way. Keep sending out those paper resumes, no really keep doing it, in the mean time those that are out in the digital space that have embraced transparency are taking all the job leads and finding and creating careers.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pexGCUPlUeA]

“Think Digital, Act Social”, this is the best way to find a career and not a job. Your resume starts with one word, Google! This is what almost 90% of hires will go through before they get a job or enter into their career. The power of LinkedIn is not just in its ability to connect, it’s in the uniformity that the professional social tool provided.

A resume was traditionally put on a piece of paper that had a million different formats, was presented in infinitely different ways and contained a variety of info that could range from too little to too much. The paper resume then needed to be mailed, emailed, uploaded into a system that could scrape keywords, if you knew how and where to put them.

LinkedIn created a space that provided basic continuity in your digital resume, then provided you the flexibility to be different without losing the Education, Experience, and transparent influence.

If your concern is privacy, then good luck, your “old” way of thinking is what has you unemployed or in a dying industry.

Here lets show you a example of why this is so important and relevant.

  • Position: Writer
  • Duties: On a regular basis produce a variety of articles on subject “A” that people want to read to help increase site/paper/blog readership.

How will you apply? How will you be evaluated?

  • Traditional Applicant: Resume with impressive samples, clean resume, quality education, phone numbers for references.

vs.

  • Digital Applicant:  LinkedIn Account, this includes a good work history, quality education, samples of articles from the connected blog. The impression that you understand digital, with 500+ LinkedIn connections, a Twitter account with 3,000 followers a Klout score that shows that you influence people in a call to action style with your tweets/articles. A Facebook page that shows who you are as a person, Spouse? Parent? Sports Fan? Alumni? Hobbies? the things that provide comfort about the applicant being hired is of good and cohesive character to the organization. How about the power of say 12 “Recommendations” on LinkedIn from people who you can see are reputable, professional and also of good character.

If you’re going to spend money on mailing paper resumes or email spam, you might want to consider target marketing ads on Facebook or LinkedIn, as you’ll only pay for who you target when you know they have looked at you.

Why this matters?

Social Media transparency is better than the traditional background check, this gives you a look into what has been legally off limits and even though you may say it doesn’t belong as part of the hiring process, the data shows that it clearly is! Now consider the business model, the writer with the traditional resume path only tells they can do the work, the digital resume can show you that they can do the work and generate revenue!

How?

Writers generate content to create readers, the first shows they can create content that people might be interested in, the second using the digital resume shows that they CAN and DO produce followers and views for their content. If you’re an online media source, like a news paper gone digital, you NEED the second writer more. Advertising revenue is about “eyes” the more eyes you get on your content the more valuable the ad space is, the second writer shows that they can generate more “eyes” or views from the start.

Now the same can translate to PR positions, Sales, Business Development and any position where reaching people is important. Then imagine you’re a prospective employee that can show a following or influence over 50,000 people across the social networks that drives 10,000 clicks or views a month, you’re on your way to being your own business. Big brands got to their ivory towers on the shoulders of their employees being representatives in their communities, social media is an extension of that practice.

This is why it’s important to “Think Digital, Act Social”. Having transparency allows you to show value by using digital means to display who you are, the professional and the personal. Things like video, websites, social sites create a foundation that then allows you to act social by reaching out in both traditional networking and digital networking methods.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5e-6psDk8U]

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Jeff Pulver’s Second #BRANDSconf Kicks off This Month!

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The second Jeff Pulver’s #BrandsConf will be kicking off on November 9th, 2011. BrandsConf helps businesses to explore the options for ‘humanizing your brands’ as well as the possible effects this can have on your business.

In recent times, many businesses on and off the web have begun to find that utilizing Facebook and Twitter as a part of their business marketing plan has helped to firmly establish their presence on the web. This provides a new challenge in a business’s marketing campaign. Do you need to need a person, or a team of them to help establish and maintain your brand in the social world?

Views From BrandsConf on Humanizing Brands

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBqSRXYMaog]

What to Expect at #Brandsconf

Instead of just standing by and watching those who have achieved success and trying to learn from them at a distance, Jeff Pulver has invited them to attend #Brandsconf  and participate in the vital discussions held there.

You will hear from some of the most creative and innovative thinkers who will share their personal knowledge from the inside of several types of business segments. Since brands can transcend business elements, Jeff Pulver’s hope for #Brandsconf is to have a wide variety of industries represented.

With the same tradition practiced in the #140 Conferences and events, panels will run for ten to twenty minutes and presentations will remain ten minutes long.

Exploring a wide range of topics with the best practices for corporate branding, everyone should be able to come away with a new insider perspective in their particular industry.

About Jeff Pulver

Jeff Pulver is a top-notch entrepreneur who grew up in Kings Point, New York.  Graduating from Great Neck North High School, some of his early accomplishments include the founding of Spreadsheet Solutions Corp. that marketed macros and add-ins for Excel and Lotus.

In 1995, Pulver cultivated an interest in Internet Telephony. During this time, he was a systems administrator for the Cantor Fitzgerald firm. In 2003, Business Week listed him as a tech guru. Co-founder and shareholder in Vonage, a voice-over-ip provider, Pulver also invented a device known as CellSocket. Cellsocket could make and receive cell voice calls through standard telephones.

Pulver also helps to organize the #140conf, or 140 Character Conference, and is an investor in many startup companies.

Guest Speaker Ryan Osborn (@rozzy) – Director of Social Media at @NBCNews

In the summer of 2010, Ryan Osborn was named the first social media director at NBC News. With earlier beginnings as an aspiring journalist, he went from a page on The Today Show in 2002, to reaching the rank of Director of Social Media. However, Osborn does not have the typical view of how to utilize social media.

Osborn concentrates his efforts on Facebook and Twitter in the form of extended storytelling editorials from NBC News, instead of using it solely as a marketing tool. Osborn knows his organization well and knows the specific personalities that make it function smoothly. He believes that if you tell the right story, it will market itself. Having discovered Twitter in 2007 at a SxSW conference, he carried this knowledge back to The Today Show and began a feed. Ryan brings loads of vital social media marketing knowledge to  #BrandsConf .

Please help share awareness for the event by sharing the Twitter hashtag #BrandsConf

Want to attend? Enter Discount / Coupon Code “dbmei.com” to save 10% OFF, special discount for dbmei.com readers.

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Social Media is NOT a Marketing Plan, think Brand!

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It’s important to realize that Social Media is a tool, a very powerful one but far from a keystone for any business. Social Media tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are only as valuable as the brand and the marketing campaign.

  • A Brand is an identity that a company, organization or individual facilitates.
  • Marketing is the practice of delivering content to society in a manner that leaves a memorable impact or sparks action.   

This cannot be done by simply setting up a Facebook Page or Twitter Account, in fact the most successful consultants an agencies still struggle developing their own Social Media because they spend so much time on the brand and their campaigns. Social Media is part of the campaign, and anyone with a successful business or organization will tell you there was a lot that came before social media or a lot that was done in addition to social media.

Think Foundation:

Ask an architect, builder, or perhaps a homeowner about the importance of foundation, they’ll all agree that while how it looks is important, the value is in the foundation. The same is true for companies, organizations and individuals. Think of the job search environment, HR professionals will tell you how sometimes the most talented people get missed because of things like poor resumes and grooming.

Brand is the key to building anything that you want to be memorable or spark action. This means thinking about the basics and it all starts with a mission.

  • What is the purpose of what you do?
  • What need are you meeting?
  • How will you meet that need?
  • What will that experience be like?
  • Why  do you meet this need better than others?

Now think about the marketing campaign, and remember it’s not just about introductions, it’s also about follow up and retention.

  • Who is your target audience?
  • When do they have this need?
  • Where are they when they have this need?
  • What value are you offering?
  • What will make them talk about or share what your offering?
  • Why will they buy from you? Now and in the future!
  • How will you use these efforts to become more efficient and responsive?

Think Campaign:

Once you have answered the basic questions, now it’s time to think about the campaign and decide how and where to execute it. Marketing takes time and the brand will develop its ultimate identity from the consumers, so when you think about the campaign think in six month intervals.

Do not confuse marketing campaigns with advertising. The marketing campaign is the process by which you answer the questions above and meet the purpose of those answers. Advertising is the components of the marketing campaign.

Advertising is in the same structural campaign issue as Social Media, both have costs associated with them. Advertising may require you to buy ad space, generate flyers, purchase pay per click ads on search engines or social media sites. The same is true of Social Media, it cost time, either yours which is likely better spent on your business, or the marketing agency, consultant or local self proclaimed guru.

Each type of Advertising or Social Media investment should work together for the brand in a manner that accomplishes the campaign mission.

If you make commitments in advertising and social media do so with specific intent and purpose, do not stick with the product (advertising or social media) if it is not where you are getting traction. However, do be prepared to come back to it at a later point. If your purchasing advertising space it had better be brand specific, but have a fresh new look every month.

Social Media as a Tool:

Social Media is great for a lot of things, once you have a brand and a plan that is. Social Media accounts like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn require a lot of resources, well if you’re using them correctly that is.

Facebook garnishes a lot of everyday activity, but did you know that it’s highest value comes on Saturdays? Facebook is a networking event that never ends, the highest value for Facebook is the ability to interact, or engage and once you stop the value in it is diminished almost completely.

Twitter is one of the best sources for specific information or content, the limit to #140 characters does a great job at reducing the amount of useless or irrelevant words. Likely when you search for something in twitter you’ll find it, if it’s there… are you? Twitter’s highest value comes from our societies need for instant gratification, the answers are short, to the point and in the most successful brands, come almost instantly.

LinkedIn is for professionals, so leave you beach photos, family photos and weekend adventures on Facebook. LinkedIn is for professional networking and problem solving. This social media tool is a great place for the actual business owner or professional to get hands on with who they are and what they do. LinkedIn allows for a transparent look at who the people are you connect with. The profile page can include work experience, education, social media sites, websites, ongoing blog entries, twitter feeds and more. It is the most efficient way for someone to get an entire look at the professional  they are communicating with. Why is this important, well LinkedIn helps identify needs, if you have a product or service that can meet that professionals need, you likely have a client. The groups feature is also a great place to learn and showcase your expertise.

Summary:

Connecting a product, service or talent with consumers and clients takes a lot more than just a social media account. Given the limited resources that most businesses and organizations face, it is far more important to think about the brand and the campaign first, then find out if and which social media tool fits into that plan. Social Media is a powerful marketing tool, enter into it with a long term plan, a purpose and brand expectations above sales expectation. As Arthur Germain, a fellow professional asks his clients and professionals “what is your brand story?” because social media does not change your story, it helps carry it.

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