@BasilPuglisi

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

Social Media Topics

Social Brand Visibility: Multiply, Social Media for Grown Ups

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Another way to look at, and benefit from, social media aside from the ubiquitous Facebook, is a site called Multiply – a social media site that has been in existence since 2004 and is just now gathering speed, after many improvements and modifications.

While Facebook is hip, young and aimed at teenagers and young adults, Multiply’s average users range from the late 20s to the upper 30s. Facebook wants to help you increase the number of your virtual friends, while Multiply aims to help you stay in touch with your existing, real friends, colleagues and family.

This social network grew nicely throughout the years. As of September 2010 it has 20 million unique visitors. A small fraction of what Facebook has, but not to be discounted with.

Multiply allows its users an easy upload of pictures, videos and music. Each user who has a contact list on the site, gets his own page which he can customize and on which he can post text or media. It means having the capability to have your own blog among the users of the community. Another helpful feature allows users categorize their contact lists to groups like family, friends, co-workers etc. and decide, very easily, who gets to see the new post.

Since 2009, Multiply is offering a premium service. For about $10 a year, the site can be used as a digital locker. You can upload all your family photos and videos (up to 20 minutes long), in high resolution, to safeguard your family memories and other important pictures. That service allows for easy access and sharing. You can import all your photos from Google’s Picasa and Microsoft’s Photo gallery.

Of course the social side should not be forgotten. Easy access to friends, family or schoolmates. Easy sharing of videos and links.

Multiply has a Social Newsreader. This is a collection of not only the user’s posts but those of his contacts and groups. It is customizable, so users can set filters to show specific posts only.

There’s a section for reviews, recipes etc. and a marketplace to showcase items people want to trade or sell.  You can have your own business page on the site, easily upload photos of your products and connect to your website.

A social media site for adults who don’t feel their co-workers need to see all the baby’s new pictures. But grandma will surely be delighted.

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Can you buy Reviews? The new marketing tools to beat the system?

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There are many sources for reviews on the web to help your product or service get the attention it deserves. It is also a great way to find out what the public thinks about you.  Some are well known like Amazon.com but there are many others that can be a valuable resource too. Some of the sources for reviews are targeted towards specific products but most are varied.

If you are an author of a self published book you might want to check out Kirkus Discoveries reviews. This can help your book get noticed by readers and includes a review of your book on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. If chosen your book review may be featured in a monthly newsletter that is read by journalists, school librarians, publishers, and booksellers. To have your book read and reviewed can be quite pricey, starting at $425, but the rewards can be great.

Another site that is recommended by many people is ReviewMe.com. They do not allow advertisers to require positive reviews but note that at the worst case most reviewers will only give constructive criticism even if they are not particularly pleased with the product.

SponsoredReviews.com is another well rated source for reviews. They have a great selection of blog writers and start their pricing at just five dollars per post. Smorty.com is another source that has strict requirements for their participating bloggers which should ensure that reviews draw in the right traffic to your product or service.

Many of the sources for reviews pay bloggers to write about your product and post it on their blog. There is also the opportunity for link backs through the information posted on the blogs. The more popular the blogs the more traffic you should receive from link backs.

There are many other sources for reviews that might be of interest; BuyBlogReviews.com, Linkworth.com, and ReviewParty .com are just a few of them. Reviews can add to your brand image so you want to connect with reviewers that will review you in a positive light.

There are many marketing tools on the web today and product and service reviews are one of the best. There is also a market for blog writers who don’t mind writing a review of products and services that they have tried and use. These sources for reviews will help you connect with people who want to tell people what they think about your company.

Beware:

Customers are not without intelligence, if you get caught with false reviews they will leave honest ones, especially with companies like yelp that have strict protocals to et your name be dragged through the mud.

Take A One Up! Lets look at how someone is using reviews in a positive light and pushing away the chance that you think its a fake review.

Petri Plumbing & Healting uses scanned copies of their review cards that have been hand written by their customers! It doesn’t stop there as they also have text copies of some of the reviews, likley for SEO purposes.

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How to be Proactive about Social Networking and protect your Brand

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Social networking is here to stay and if you want to stay in business you had better learn to proactively manage it.  It involves more than setting up a Facebook page or Twitter account, it involves searching, responding, and making sure there are positive things said about you on the web. It also involves employee training so rules are defined before a problem occurs.

  • Reserve Your Spot

The first step in getting involved in social networking should involve setting up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and other pertinent groups. This will prevent someone else from setting up a page using the moniker that you would like to be known by. It also prevents fake pages that are set up as if they are your business or entity without proper permissions.

  • Monitor Your Social Networking Page

Once you have set up your page or account, you should post information that may be of interest to others and information that contributes to your brand image. Most importantly though, you should monitor your pages for links to porn sites and other unwanted attention. It reflects poorly on a brand if undesirable posting are posted on your Facebook account and it is left for everyone to see.

  • Search for Yourself or Brand

On a regular basis, you should perform a search for your name, business, etc. This will allow you to find out what is being said about you and yours on the web. If you discover untruths you should contact the source and ask for them to be removed. If the things that are written are undesirable but true, it is time to start damage control by responding or burying the unfavorable comments.

  • Plan a Response

If unfavorable information is recent and growing in number, you should carefully plan to respond to customer concerns. Customer trust is more important than privacy in today’s changing world. This can be a learning experience for all involved since you may see where you can improve your brand image by listening to what people are saying about it.

  • Read the Fine Print

Facebook is a great tool for social networking but all involved in posting to the social media page should be aware of a clause in Facebook’s TOS. “We take an…irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute….” This clause is in effect even after a Facebook membership has been terminated.

***This is important to the business user as well as the individual since many employers study social networking sites before making a hiring decision. A 2008 article on PC World stated that twenty percent of employers admitted checking an applicant’s social networking profile before making a decision to hire. In 2009, Careerbuilder.com reported that number had risen to forty-five percent. A March 2010 survey by Microsoft discovered that seventy percent of hiring managers had rejected an applicant due to information they found online***

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Social Brand Visibility: Gowalla, Mobile Web

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A relatively unknown as of yet, Gowalla is a mobile and web service that allows people to connect, communicate and win prizes for their effort. It helps people keep up with their friends, share and comment about favorite places and discover new ones.

Users can share their physical place with friends and family using GPS locator that lets people know where you are physically, so you can get together. Gowalla is geographically available in over 7,500 cities around the world and has categorized listings of businesses and location-based listing to search from. It has a social “to do” lists called Trips, and rewards users when accomplishing stuff, like checking in to an establishment or posting a good review of a place. The items can be picked up and dropped, and they are giving out a lot of prizes.

You can receive pings when your friends check in or ‘shout’, and you can meet other Gowalla users who happen to be in the same location as you.

Founded in 2007, and launched in 2009, this Austin Texas Company is the brain child of Josh Williams and Scott Raymond. It is a competitor to Foursquare and had a similar launch. Foursquare took off immediately and now Gowalla is catching up with them.

According to Williams, Gowalla has over 600,000 active users and sees about 20,000 check-ins a day. It is ranked 3,216 in US traffic.

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Top Ten Twitter Tools for 2011: Used by Banks and Businesses

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Twitter accounts are showing up in unexpected places, Citi Bank is training one hundred customer service agents to use Twitter to handle customer questions as well as complaints. This training is being done in expectation of a flood of Tweets as Citi representatives are being prepped to develop customer followings through Twitter.

On a smaller scale the Tofino Brewing Co of British Columbia, Canada is using Twitter to reap words of encouragement and to publicize important events such as the recent launch of their website on the internet. Besides being a way to communicate events easily to followers they feel it is an indispensable tool to reach the twenty-five to thirty-five year old age group.

The top ten Twitter tools that these companies and many other businesses use today to manage their followers, etc. are:

  1. CoTweet – a workflow management tool used by Citi, Coca-Cola, and Delta Air Lines is specifically designed for use with social networking. CoTweet assists banks with the creation of an audit trail, keeping track of conversations, as well as managing marketing campaigns and providing better customer service.
  2. TweetDeck – is useful for serious business users and people that want to save time by organizing their tweets. TweetDeck also allows you to connect through multiple Twitter accounts as well as FaceBook simultaneously.
  3. Sign in with Twitter – allows users to connect their Twitter account with third-party services in as little   as one click. This tool lets people interact with Twitter from your website.
  4. Nearby Tweets – lets you find twitterers near your area; your search can also be limited by radius and keywords
  5. Twello – is a search directory of people by their area of expertise, profession or other attributes that are listed in the users’ personal profiles on Twitter.
  6. Tweetmeme – A resource to see the most recent news and trends within your industry.
  7. Tweepler – allows you to sort through new followers and accept them or ignore them. This application also shows the followers’ stats and their last three tweets in one screen view.
  8. Twimailer – a free email client that allows you to receive email notifications when your Twitter account gets new followers. The emails contain the follower’s location, stats along with their recent tweets. Twimailer also gives you the ability to follow someone back without having to log into Twitter.
  9. Monitter – is a web-based tool that allows monitoring of Twitter in real-time for    mentions of specified keywords.
  10. Twitterfeed – allows you to easily feed your blog posts to Twitter.

One of the greatest things about using Twitter to promote your business is that it is free. Some of the tools used to manage Tweets are not free but many people find them invaluable and don’t mind paying for the benefits.

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Picking the Right Social Network for your Brand

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As for internet visibility, or digital brand as it is being called now, 2010 proved, without a doubt, the power of the social network. Facebook just passed Google in the number of hits per day. People are using the internet to connect and be connected more than they use it to perform searches.

Aside from it being a sociological phenomenon that no doubt will be talked about and researched, it opened a world of advertising not used before. Facebook makes it extremely easy to connect with almost anything that is a digital brand, with one click of a button. Just type into your Facebook page that you liked a certain television show and immediately you will be connected to their site, to see more.

As a way to advertising your brand, it is a goose that can lay golden eggs. And why not? It is free, it is simple and everyone with a little understanding of how the system works can join in and be effective. Right?

Not so fast. The problem with social media is that it is multiplying. New sites, with new possibilities for connectivity between people are popping up like mushrooms after the rain. You can join all of them and spend most of your time updating and chatting while neglecting your core business. You can hire people to do it for you, believing that bigger is better and the more sites you join will yield better results, only to find out that the ROI (return on investment) is not worth the effort.

Before you embark on the social media voyage, you should know that not all sites were born equal and knowing which one to join is the most important aspect.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself:

–          What is the strength of the site?  You have to do a little research. What can Twitter do for you? What can Dailybooth? Evaluate the site to see if it fits you and the character of your business. Think of a strategy; what do you want to achieve, how can this or that site get you there?

–          How much time you are willing to invest? How much time you can afford to spend on social networking? An hour a day? A week? Social media is, after all, just that – social. Scott Stratten (1), a man with over 74,000 followers on Twitter says the amount of followers started to grow when he dedicated time and interacted with others. You have to maintain presence for social media to work.

–          Do your customers use social network at all? Most businesses have communities. Check them out. Are they talking about your kind of business? Maybe they do on a forum of another kind. It is a bit of a detective work, but you have to find out where your potential customers are.

–          If you had to pay for the service, would you still do it? How much are you willing to spend on this form of advertisement? Granted, joining is free, but maintaining it will cost you a lot of time.

–          Social media is a long term commitment. Having a page up then not updating it for months has a worse impact than not having one at all. It shows you don’t care, don’t follow through and maybe you are out of business. If it’s up there it should be maintained.

Thinking ahead about a strategy before embarking on this trip is important. Treating social media seriously, as part of an advertising campaign, is important as well. Those are the things that will yield results. Use the questions above to get organized and start thinking in the right direction.

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What is Advertising in comparison to Branding?

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Advertising tells the world how great, useful, or exciting that your product or service is. Branding is when people know how great, useful, and exciting your product is without the advertisement. Advertising is a very important part of branding since the human mind forgets things very quickly and advertising reminds them of the brand.

The Brand is an experience in “an emotional economy, success is judged by a profound and indelible connection with people through sensory experiences” (Gobé, 2007), if you build a brand around the product alone then you will have missed the opportunity to build a genuine brand. The intangibles are as important, and in some services more important than the tangibles in branding.

  • Consistency is Important

To fully benefit the creation of a brand name, advertising should be done in a consistent manner that exemplifies what the brand stands for. This is very important when a brand is being created or developed so that people will remember your product or service when they make a purchase or require services that you perform. It is essential that there is a consistent look and feel to everything that is associated with the brand.

Branding is the perception that people have of a brand name. It includes their perception of the logo, packaging, and the products or services represented by the brand. Branding makes people think of your brand when they need a product or service that you offer. Advertising keeps the brand fresh in their mind.

  • Branding is a Mind Game

Branding is not always a tangible thing; branding is a sum of what people feel, think, or know about a product or service. It is a very real thing but it occurs in the mind; it is how a brand is perceived to be. Brand awareness must be promoted and sustained through marketing communications such as advertising.

The importance of a product, the delivery of the brand as well as the uniqueness of a particular brand should be stressed within the advertisement of the product. Why you need it; what it does; and what it does better than similar products are important benefits to emphasize when marketing a product or service provider. This is especially important in a tough economy when people are trying to save money and sometimes straying from their favorite brands.

  • Advertising Keeps a Brand on Your Mind

Advertising is very important to the creation and sustenance of a brand name. It keeps your product fresh in their mind which may make your brand the brand they chose to buy. Advertising helps make a brand memorable which is very important to a marketing plan.

  • Advertising to the Young

Advertising can also bring awareness of the products to different groups of people who may need or want the products or services that you sell. Young people are very brand conscious and although they don’t usually have their own money, their desires influence purchases made by adults in their family. This is the reason why many advertisements are geared towards the young. If you plan to capture the attention of this group, I suggest you think mobile first, internet video second, then down the line.

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Apps and Sites to help Businesses Manage Social Media Branding

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If you are a small business owner active in the social media circuit, there are some free or inexpensive apps you should know about.

Apps are very popular. As of 2009, iPhone users downloaded more than 2 billion apps through iTunes which has more than 85,000 apps for sale. From apps that let you find your car in a crowded parking lot, or alert you when you are getting low on gas, to apps that help you maintain your digital brand from your smartphone.

Here are some Apps to help you should know about:

Twist – A free app which lets you search topics on Twitter that are related to your business. You can get that information in real time and see what people are talking about.

Tweetmic – Allows you to record your tweets and publish an audio file on Twitter stream. Can be used for personal invitations and announcement to tweets you can record quickly while you wait for the traffic light to change.

Qwitter – Lets you know via e mail when someone leaves your Twitter account. It is a paid service that costs $4.99 a month.

YouTube for pages – To stay connected and integrated, this app lets you connect your business channel on YouTube to your Facebook account. You can post your video only once and using this app, connect it to all your other social media sites you are involved with.

Networked Blogs – A promotional tool that lets you link you blog to Facebook. A free app.

Sites:

Mybrainshark.com – A free site that allows the creation, narration and sharing of multimedia presentations.

Icebucket.com – a search engine specializing in blogs. It helps narrow the results when you want to check what blogs are relevant to your business.

KnowEm.com – Allows you to check the availability of your brand name, and see who is using similar names. It can check this information in about 120 social network sites in a matter of a few seconds.

Blinxx.com – another free search engine that allows you to search videos from YouTube, Vimeo etc. Again, this search helps you narrow down the search results to videos only.

Those are but a few examples of how apps and sites can help the business owner save time and get organized. With the proliferation of social media sites it is important to be able to aggregate information relevant to the business. It is equally important to be able to create connections between the official website and social media sites, so they can feed and connect to each other.

  [Read more…] about Apps and Sites to help Businesses Manage Social Media Branding

What is a Brand? How Does a Small Business use Branding?

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What is a brand? A brand is the sum of people’s perception of a name, a company logo, the products carrying the brand, and the packaging of the product. If you are in the business of selling, you are either selling your own brand, selling the brand of another or in most cases, doing both. Unfortunately, most businesses do understand the importance of brand. However, they fail to organize, or better yet capitalize behind it.

 How do we know that Small Business Owners are failing?

“In a recent report, it was discovered that 47 percent of Small Business Owners either aren’t sure or don’t think their customers spend time on social media sites. Further, 24 percent of Small Business Owners don’t think their customers do research online before finding them” (Barone, 2011)

Branding Makes You Stand Out in the Crowd

Branding is also important in the marketing of services such as the Painless Dentist or the Computer Geeks. Branding attracts certain types of people and makes a small business stand out in the crowd. Branding may not make you seem to be all things to all people but it will make you important to some people.

When developing a business, you should find a need then tailor to that need. If you create a product and then hope people need it, your success will likely be short. Your brand should be treated the same way. Target a need or concern and meet an expectation.

Kohl’s has done fairly well with this, while much credit has been given to the brand in being a great “price for value”, the Kohl’s brand has started to shift from general value to specific. When Kohl’s started excepting any item for return at any time, they shifted from value when you shop, to value for life. In response would be casual shoppers started spending at Kohl’s like it was an investment.

Over time a company normally develops a brand identity, through customer experiences and the perceptions of others who are outside the business. Creating a brand identity is different but it takes a lot of the chance out of the situation since creating a brand identity is carefully thought out and carried out consistently across the product lines and services that are offered. This ensures that the effects of branding have a positive impact on customers and also attracts potential customers to your brand.

How Does a Small Business Use Branding?

Major brands have strong corporate identities; these companies spend a lot of money making you remember their name, their look, and their products. This is branding, and it is a carefully thought out process that is important for large and small businesses alike. Branding makes people remember you and hopefully put you on the top of their list which can make or break the success of a small business.

To be successful a small business should:

  • Discover what they do best and then do it.
  • Do what you do best over and over again.
  • Quality customer service is also important when trying to establish a brand.
  • Consistency in packaging, advertising, and quality will make your brand and your small business stand out in people’s minds.

Developing a specific identity and then communicating your identity consistently is key to creating a brand identity. Social Media has created a great new tool for Small Business Owners to capitalize on strategies used by the big boys for centuries.

More than just being on social media, consumers want a Small Business Owner to establish a real presence there. (Barone, 2010)

For example:

  • 81 percent say it’s important for businesses to respond to a post.
  • 78 percent want to see promotions.
  • 74 percent want regular posts.
  • 66 percent want to see pictures.

Summary:

Brand or Branding, is a crucial part of any business in any field, while you may be successful with what you do, without a brand strategy you will never reach your full potential. This may feel fine to you, just realize that your capitalization will be limited by the “brand” investment you have put into your concept, product or business.

Sources:

Fan Page List, retrieved October 28, 2010

Kohls.com retrieved on December 28, 2010.

Las Vegas Business Press retrieved on December 30, 2010

Small Business Trends retrieved on Jan, 2 2011.

Wenatchee Business Journal retrieved on December 30, 2010

New Year – Brand Marketing Educator

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What does this mean?

  • Brand – The name, image, idea or concept that is associated with something.
  • Marketing – Marketing is the processes for strategizing for the creation of campaigns that communicate, deliver, and/or exchanging offerings that have value for the general public, be it customers, clients, partners, or the society at large.
  • Educator – Someone who chooses to continually learn themselves, while teaching others what they have learned. An individual who seeks knowledge for the purpose of sharing or disseminating it to others.

As a Consulting Coach for the last decade I have taken what I have learned in Banking, Student Affairs, Public Policy, Politics, Small Business Development, Advertising and Marketing, Web Development, Social Media and more to help develop businesses, political campaigns and support non-profits. This decade long process that started as Puglisi Consulting has helped me define what role I have in society. I also believe it defines what I offer to those that I work with, work for, or have the pleasure of their company.

As a Brand Marketing Educator it will be my responsibility to continue to develop my understanding of how to reach people. In the end, a business, a political campaign, a charitable cause only finds success in its ability to get seen and be found. After all the best message, even the one that may save your business, organization, campaign or life has little value if it does not reach those who need or want it.

This blog is the collective work of so many, even in the last year as I started these articles, part or majority have come from volunteers and paid sources who helped research the topics. One person cannot claim to be a source of value alone, but can claim to be a facilitator of sources and knowledge.

I pledge to use this blog as an extension of what I know and more importantly learn during the next year. I ask for no pay, no donations and no for profit advertising on this blog. I do this in the hopes that those that visit it, will always find an unbiased opinion and suggestion for what I believe can help increase visibility, so that you can be successful.  

Why?

Because I am a SPARTAN! If those who can, choose not to, then they have lost the best of themselves or in some cases ourselves.

 Basil C. Puglisi – Brand Marketing Educator

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