Turn Your Employees Into Social Media Ambassadors

Brought to you by Steve McAbee

Brand management is a key concept that can significantly contribute to a company's success. One integral part of an effective plan is identifying and leveraging brand advocates, or ambassadors, who are passionate about a company's product or services. These consumers are familiar with the product, have used it, and actively recommend the company to friends and colleagues. Whereas a company markets to existing customers to sell more products, brand ambassadors attempt to relay their passion for the brand to new buyers.

Although branding is largely aimed at external audiences, it also has important internal implications. Employees have always been some of the most influential brand ambassadors, and now this group has truly stepped into the light thanks to the proliferation of social media. Social media enables a company to capitalize on an existing asset -- employees -- and make them active advocates who promote and demonstrate the key elements of the brand promise.

Employees now use social media outlets such as Twitter, blogs, and Facebook to continuously update their professional and personal networks on what is going on in their daily lives. Why not use their powerful voices to become agents of the brand? The thinking goes that if a company employs intelligent, happy, and satisfied people, then that adds to an overall competent workforce and positive reflection of the corporate brand.

To receive maximum benefit from these ambassadors, and ensure that employees showcase why they are your company's "biggest fans," it is important to maintain a balance between freedom of expression and an expectation of professionalism. Below are five tips on how companies can bring employee voices together to create a powerful, organic brand ambassador program.

1. Develop a social media policy
I would never suggest that employees be forced to blog, tweet, or chat about the company. The posts would appear both insincere and forced, and may lead to disgruntled employees.

Instead, employers should develop a social media policy that outlines corporate guidelines and principles of communicating in the online world. By providing structure instead of a steadfast direction on what to say, you'll give your employees the ability to speak with authenticity and a feeling of comfort when it comes to engaging online.

2. Offer training
The social media universe can be incredibly daunting to those who aren't familiar. For this reason, providing training for employees unsure of how to participate is an important part of developing effective ambassadors.

In order for employees to start a positive conversation that revolves around your brand, they first must know how to start the dialogue. One way to do this is to offer webinars or group trainings that can teach employees which social media tools are the most effective for their communication goals, and the appropriate way to communicate with their target audience. Examples can also be provided by employees who have appropriately participated in online discussions of the company or its products.

3. Provide employees with a centralized site
Giving employees an area where they can communicate both internally and externally easily opens doors of communication. Employees can engage by building off their colleague's participation and create a unified front. It also gives the company a single portal to communicate major initiatives and events, providing employees with the information to make accurate posts to social media sites.

Further, such a portal can provide a company with valuable insight into what employees think and feel about the brand and what keywords they use in discussions about the company, its products, and services. A centralized site can also be used to survey employees about their online habits and most-used channels to make dynamic changes and recommendations.

4. Lead by example
It's easier to reinforce a culture of openness and demonstrate appropriate engagement if management actively participates. Encourage high-level employees to set the example and provide them with information about cutting-edge tools and new trends so they can be passed down throughout the organization. With management involved, an organic internal conversation can begin, providing additional guidance and direction for employees who want to join the online discussion.

5. Reward influencers
While not all social media engagement needs to be insightful, industry-driven thought leadership, it is important to reward those who build influence. Reward them by providing them with what they want: valuable, exciting information about what is going on in the company.

Ask your employees for their insight into services, projects, or products. Show them you are listening, and that you are pleased and impressed by what they are saying. Some of your most influential ambassadors should have the opportunity to serve on a company task force or be recognized in internal communication materials, which can encourage others to join the discussion, adding more voices to the company's overall desired outcome.

Striking the perfect balance between strategic direction and organic thought from employees is crucial. Company ambassadors are there to help connect a brand with its audience and carry the conversation, not constantly push corporate-driven messaging. Additionally, brand ambassadors can listen and learn from ongoing conversations and then engage in them, forming bidirectional interactions. The result is a group of brand representatives who appear more like trusted friends, and less like corporate mouthpieces.

Steve McAbee is the president and founder of Wunderkind Public Relations.

3 Must-Have Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

Brought to you by Eric Groves

Small businesses naturally gravitate to tools and strategies that quickly generate revenue without incurring significant costs. So it's no surprise that web-based marketing technologies have become a boon to small businesses because of their low cost and ease of use. Tools that are purpose-built for small businesses project a more professional image and deliver a richer set of management and monitoring capabilities than online tools targeted to consumers, which are often ad-supported and limited in function.

The essential small business marketing tools described below encourage stronger customer relationships and are easy to use and affordable, which makes them must-have tools in the small business marketer's toolkit.

Email marketing
Despite critics who have called email marketing's effectiveness into question, email marketing continually delivers the highest ROI for any marketing method. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing delivered $43.62 for every dollar spent in 2009.

What makes email marketing so effective? It's simple: permission and relevant content. This means that the recipient is looking forward to receiving messages and considers the content of the emails to be beneficial. For marketers, this translates into a pre-qualified list of prospects and returning customers. All you need to do to keep them is stay in touch with content that is compelling and useful.

Businesses can achieve several important goals with email marketing, but the most important are strong, lasting customer relationships. With email marketing, you can consistently communicate your expertise, your offerings, and your brand, thereby building trust and recognition. When the time comes for customers to make purchases, they'll naturally turn to the businesses they're familiar with and loyal to, and they're more likely to recommend those businesses to others.

Online surveys
The most successful small business owners understand that listening to their customers is critically important. Yet, it's not always practical to engage in one-on-one conversations to find out what every customer is thinking. That's where online surveys come in. Online survey tools allow you to easily request anonymous feedback from your customers at their convenience.

Whether conducted frequently, such as after a purchase, event, or customer service issue, or just once a year, surveys are an excellent way to glean valuable information about your customers' satisfaction, experience with your business, or feedback on your product. For example, a retailer might survey his customers to find out what product lines they'd like to see expanded. A consultant could survey customers to learn what marketing challenges are most important to them for 2010. In both cases, the survey results will help guide important business decisions that neither business owner may have determined without the help of the customer base.

Another benefit of online surveys is the opportunity for your customers to feel like they're a part of your business. In fact, asking customers about the best way to communicate with them -- either via email, Facebook, Twitter, or some other mode or combination -- is a great first step in gathering useful feedback. By opening up a two-way dialogue and inviting them to offer suggestions and constructive criticism, your customers feel that they're contributing to your success. Knowing that you took their advice or considered their feedback creates a sense of loyalty that will naturally lead to longer and stronger relationships.

Your social network of choice
Everywhere you turn these days, someone is talking about Facebook, retweeting Ashton Kutcher's latest comment, or asking you to connect on LinkedIn. While all the hype can seem a bit frivolous, the business benefits of social networks are very real. Countless small business owners have made valuable connections, including new customers, through their participation in social networks.

Participation is the key to success when it comes to social media. Much like email marketing, you must first offer real value before you can expect to get anything in return. Simply being there isn't going to place your brand at the center of the conversation. You first have to establish your credibility as a member of the community and a legitimate expert in your field.

Establish yourself as a resource by sharing your knowledge. This may mean linking to your blog posts, media coverage of your product or business, or your email newsletter. You can easily add value and show you "get it" by offering your thoughts and commenting on another's blog post or tweet, or by answering a question on LinkedIn Answers.

Once you've committed to a particular mode of communication, be consistent in using it. Frequency of communications is always a challenge for busy small businesses owners, but a regular effort to communicate will help deliver your message most effectively. Eventually, your audience will begin to anticipate your outreach and even look forward to your next tweet, post, update, or newsletter.

Low cost, high return
Today's small businesses face an ongoing battle for mindshare among their target consumers. These low cost, high return marketing tools provide small businesses with the advantage they need to cut through the noise and get their messages heard without breaking their budget.

Eric Groves is senior vice president of global market development for Constant Contact Inc.

Where Twitter Drops the Marketing Ball

Brought to you by Bryce Marshall

Many marketers misunderstand the distinction between the micro-blogging social media service Twitter and opt-in SMS marketing. The most common misconception is that Twitter is a viable alternative for opt-in text message marketing. Or, at least, the benefits of "free" far outweigh the potential benefits of any SMS marketing initiative with hard costs.

This misconception has the unfortunate consequence of making it tough to sell the CMO on why a comprehensive SMS marketing program is justified. Here are some arguments to break through the Twitter-vs.-SMS misconception and help justify investment in an opt-in SMS marketing program.

Twitter is not mobile marketing
Many marketers operate under a fundamental misconception about Twitter, confusing the 140-character text limit for tweets as being the hallmark of mobile or SMS marketing. Sure, the 140-character limit on tweets is there in part to ensure they can be created and delivered as SMS messages. But this does not mean that tweets are SMS.

Some Twitter users have tweets delivered as SMS messages, but many do not. The 140-character limit for tweets simply ensures the content is always small bites of information, quickly digested, and very disposable. This does not necessarily mean the content is consumed through SMS. In most circumstances tweeting does not qualify as mobile marketing either in the technical sense of being accessed on a mobile device or in the spirit of mobile marketing, which is designed to leverage timeliness and location to define a unique and valuable interaction.

Free isn't "free"
Yes, SMS marketing will probably require a budget to cover transmission fees and perhaps other short code, technology, or services costs. Compared with the free Twitter service even a modest SMS budget can seem like a bitter pill to swallow. However, considering the resources, time, and materials necessary to promote a Twitter account, it is easy to realize there are costs in play no matter what. To obtain a critical mass of followers and achieve any semblance of mass-marketing, investments have to be made. To leverage Twitter to its strengths for maintaining more personal dialogs, well-educated personnel need not just monitor the Twitter presence, but actively engage. Getting value out of the free Twitter service is an investment in itself.

You can't take it with you
Two-way communications through Twitter are excellent, and the application -- when used well -- really does foster legitimate interactions. Those interactions supply profound insights into a consumer base. However, this intelligence is locked away in Twitter. Simply, Twitter followers do not represent a database in any valuable sense outside of Twitter. It is impossible to compile, package, and export knowledge gathered there in a concrete sense. It is impossible to make those insights portable and actionable in meaningful ways across other digital or offline channels, because those consumer attributes are not in a database.

Now, think about the organizational value of data that can be mined through smart, two-way SMS marketing programs; for instance, discovering where SMS program subscribers live or shop, based on a zip code volunteered in exchange for more relevant offers and information. Or, a subscriber may share demographic information when participating in a mobile poll and receive an instant coupon in exchange. Or, understanding which subscribers are converting in-store or online based on unique coupon codes and tying that insight back to a database profile. These are all valuable pieces of knowledge -- database optimization -- that simply cannot be managed with, or extracted from, Twitter.

Twitter is not database or direct digital marketing
Twitter is not database marketing, and please do not let anyone argue that it is. As noted above, Twitter followers do not represent a marketing database in any viable way, not like the proprietary opt-in database of profiles built with savvy SMS marketing. Additionally, Twitter does not support the scalable application of message relevance and personalization for direct digital marketing on a mass scale.

Twitter followers are fans, and perhaps even loyalists, but they are not individually addressable in a scalable way. Marketers are unable to gather additional data points such as a location, product preference, or purchase history and then layer these attributes to create more comprehensive follower profiles. Marketers cannot segment and target tweets based on these attributes, as is possible with SMS marketing. Marketers cannot personalize tweets in any scalable way.

Marketers cannot insert dynamic text in a tweet, or have the user click through to a personalized mobile web page with a targeted offer, or generate a unique barcode for in-store redemption, or track an individual user's preferences, activity, and behavior. These capabilities are the domain of intelligent database and direct digital marketing and can only be achieved with opt-in SMS programs.

Twitter is a 5/8" socket wrench
Twitter is a single, specialized tool. While it can accomplish some excellent tasks when used well, it falls short as a comprehensive online communications tool at critical mass. In comparison, well-designed opt-in SMS marketing programs provide not just offers or notifications of sales events, but also can automate valuable services, such as providing information on store locations and driving directions, execute delivery and shipping status alerts, provide reminders on bank balances, send alerts when out-of-stock items are now in-stock, or help online shoppers get in-store help with a purchase decision. All of these services -- and more -- are provided through a comprehensive SMS marketing approach that delivers extraordinary value and brand experiences for customers.

So what is that 5/8" socket wrench -- Twitter -- good for? Twitter delivers very real marketing value in these ways:

- Establishes brand key terms and positioning points with hash tags, tapping into the power of trending topics and searches
- Builds a network of advocates who help distribute a message across their social network through one-click retweets
- Develops and hones a brand personality through the highly social, dialog-based nature of the application
- Exceeds expectations with customers by managing fantastic customer support programs that could never be replicated through SMS alone.

Conclusion
Twitter is a microblogging service that delivers real marketing value to organizations, if they are willing to invest education and resources to the management of interactive relationships with their customers. Twitter is a marketing phenomenon unto itself and does not need -- or deserve -- to be muddled in with the definitions of mobile or direct digital marketing. Twitter will be a strong and valuable complement to work in the digital channels, not a replacement.

Bryce Marshall is the director of strategic services for Knotice. You can check out their blog at http://lunchpail.knotice.com/.

6 Elements Shared by Social Media Winners

Brought to you by Julia Hix

If your social media campaign is not driving users to your website, generating sales, or introducing new customers to your brand, then it is time to get your campaign back on task. With so many marketing options available in social media, from video contests to custom applications, it is easy for brand messages to get lost in the creative shuffle.

Some companies, however, are using social media in unique ways that promote their marketing objectives while keeping consumers engaged with their brand. One way that companies have been successful in activating consumers is by challenging them to complete tasks that help introduce or further define their brand.

Clearly define your marketing objective
To avoid brand disconnect, it is important to tie social media efforts back into specific marketing objectives. Defining the marketing objective is the most important element of creating a social media initiative. For instance, if your goal is to introduce new customers to your brand, consider tasks that require a user to share their brand experience with their network.

Acacia Africa, an African adventure tour company, is doing just that with a campaign that encourages Twitter users to retweet the hashtag #GoWildOnline with Acacia Africa (and a link to its YouTube video) to enter a sweepstakes to win a trip to Africa. While it can be argued that some Twitter users view "retweet to win" campaigns as spam, it can be an effective way to reach new consumers.

Another unique way to gain brand awareness using Twitter is to challenge users to use your brand name in a unique way. Website builder Moonfruit launched a hashtag-based Twitter campaign in the summer of 2009 in an effort to bring exposure to its products. The company tasked users with the challenge of using the Moonfruit name in a tweet to be entered to win Apple products. According to Moonfruit, the campaign was a huge success with over 500,000 tweets, 3,000 images, and 500 songs sent.

With a little creative thinking, Twitter can be used to drive ROI as well. When Party City launched its ecommerce website only weeks before Halloween, its biggest sales season, the goal was to increase website visits. The Zimmerman Agency created a unique contest that required users to search PartyCity.com for costumes in a version of 21 questions, called Trick-or-Tweet.

Each day over the course of two weeks, the company's @PartyCity Twitter account would answer "yes" or "no" questions, such as "is it a scary costume?" while followers used the clues to scour the site in search of the correct costume. By creating an engaging game, Party City was able to introduce users to its new online store, while interacting with consumers in an entertaining way.

Keep it simple
There are three key things that need to happen for a user to be able to complete a task successfully: understand the task, follow directions, and easily submit results. As a general rule, you should be able to explain the task in less than 30 seconds. The task should be clearly defined and include only one call to action.

By limiting the number of steps it takes to participate, you will increase the likelihood of a user completing the task. It may be necessary to visually outline directions with images or video, especially if the concept is new to your audience. Make it as simple as possible for users to submit results and that it is clearly defined in the instructions.

In SeaWorld's most recent Facebook initiative, users are introduced to an entirely new type of game, called "Photo Adventure," that challenges them to find mistakes in images. The application targets parents of young children by providing a task that they can complete with their child. Upon entering the application, users are introduced to the game's objectives with easy step-by-step instructions and images.

In contrast, SeaWorld's "iPod from myPod" Twitter contest has complex instructions that do not include images. Using the @Shamu Twitter profile, SeaWorld issue tasks related to brand imagery found on Google Street View. Participants then had to take a screenshot of the image and fill out a form on the contest landing page to enter. This contest requires users to visit three websites in order to complete a task, which may be confusing for some audiences and therefore limits participation.

Know your audience
The task that you create should align with the social media habits of your target audience. This will help eliminate confusion on how to participate and will make it easier for consumers to explain the task to their network. Most importantly, understanding your audience will allow you to create campaigns that are exciting and relevant to the user.

Forsman and Bodenfors had audience in mind when it promoted a new IKEA store by asking users to tag themselves in showroom images found on Facebook. Forsman and Bodenfors built a profile page for Gordon Gustavsson, the manager for the new IKA location in Malmo, Sweden, to host the photos, and when a consumer tagged an item with their name, they won that item.

IKEA knew that its young, tech-savvy audience would understand the tagging feature, and would find the concept creative and worth sharing with their network.

Align the task with the platform
When deciding on a social media platform, take into consideration your marketing objective and the task that you are challenging users to complete. If your goal is to drive definition and you have a lot of content to share, Facebook would be the best solution because of the sharing options it offers.

If your goal is to drive brand awareness with little content, and you have the ability to actively interact with consumers, Twitter would be the best platform to use.

Also, be sure to consider the task that you are asking users to perform. Each social networking platform has content elements that users are familiar using in comparison to other platforms. For instance, when Bing asked users to submit photos to its "Home Sweet Homepage Photo Contest," Facebook was a natural choice because users were already accustomed to sharing photos on the platform.

Keep in mind that the platform you choose should make sense for your target audience. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace are more effective for different audiences based on age, gender, education, and social status.

Make incentive relevant to the brand
The first question most users ask themselves before deciding to participate in a brand's campaign is "what's in it for me?" Not every social media initiative needs to be tied to a contest, however, there needs to be a clearly defined incentive for the user to complete the task. The incentive should be relevant to the brand and should support the marketing objective.

In the case of Bing's contest, users were asked to submit photos demonstrating something unique about their hometown. The winner's photo became the background for Bing's homepage for a day. This incentive gave users the chance to participate in creating Bing's homepage, and simultaneously drove them to the new Bing search engine to view the winners. The most effective campaigns include creative incentives that drive users to not only engage with the brand, but to share the campaign with their network.

Engagement is key
In all of your social media endeavors, keep user engagement top of mind. Unlike traditional media, social media only works if consumers are actively participating in campaign initiatives. Be sure that you are designing tasks around your audience's interests and strengths in order to increase interactions.

Social media campaigns that allow users to redefine themselves through brands are met with the most success. Social media is in its purest form is about communicating online, and most social network users utilize the media to communicate information about themselves.

Retail chain Target recently created the "Bullseye Gives" campaign that reinforced the brand's focus on building community by letting its Facebook fans decide which charity they should donate to. Target gave $3 million in donations to 10 charities, chosen by Facebook users, including St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, American Red Cross, and The Salvation Army. By participating, consumers were able to communicate which charities were important to them and were motivated to share the campaign with their network.

Julia Hix is social media manager for The Zimmerman Agency.

Social Media Websites Strengthened Holiday Season for Retailers

Brought to you by KPBJ.com

Holiday retail sales might have staved off a visit from the Grinch thanks in part to social media.

Nearly half of U.S. retailers polled in a pre-holiday national survey said they intended to increase their use of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter during the Christmas shopping season.

“Social media has allowed for a very efficient, low-cost way for retailers to communicate directly with their best customers on exclusive sales and offers,” said Clay McDaniel, co-founder of Seattle-based marketing firm Spring Creek Group.

Although the exact impact of social media on holiday retailing hasn’t been calculated, online outreach is thought to have been a factor in the 3.6 percent increase in November and December spending reported Monday by MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse.

In addition to boosting sales, social media has enabled retailers to reduce or divert spending on traditional advertising in print and broadcast media.

Total ad spending in the U.S. was down 14.7 percent in the first nine months of 2009 compared with last year, according to a recent report from TNS Media Intelligence.

Although much of the decrease is attributable to economic weakness, some retailers are using social media to supplement their traditional advertising at minimal additional costs, said Mike Gatti, executive director of the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, a division of the National Retail Federation.

“It has helped retailers to better target customers without increasing marketing budgets,” Gatti said.

Best Buy’s “Twelpforce” - a Twitter-connected set of customer-service workers - has been one of the highest-profile social media outreach campaigns.

Domino’s announced that Facebook, Twitter and other social media will be a cornerstone of its campaign to promote a revamped pizza pie.

Introduction of the new pizza “was driven so heavily by listening to our customers through social media (that) having that component be a part of our online marketing campaign seemed like a no-brainer,” said Domino’s spokesman Chris Brandon.

2010: The Year Social Media Comes of Age for Businesses

Brought to you by Sam Brace

Facebook, Twitter, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, LinkedIn. Where are these social media platforms taking us? Will there come a day when information is beamed directly into the cortex of our desired audience? While that seems unlikely, so did the concept of a social networking site like Facebook 10 years ago.

Today, businesses can instantaneously update customers through social media. Ten years ago many of us were still using dial-up Internet service or sending faxes to communicate.

Less Talking, More Doing

This is shaping up to be the year more organizations will pass the “thinking about” stage and start using social media to build awareness, relationships and sales. Campaigns implemented last year will provide solid foundations to build upon.

KRC Research, based in Washington, D.C., found that 88 percent of 200 executives of nonprofits it surveyed experimented with social media in 2009, and 85 percent plan to actively use it in their organizations this year. MarketingSherpa, a research firm specializing in tracking marketing efforts, reports that most industries are increasing their budgets for social media marketing in 2010.

Behind these increases is a booming population of new users of social media. Statistics show that 66 percent of global Internet users have visited social networks and that more have used these sites than traditional e-mail. Facebook grew to more than 300 million users in 2009. Twitter grew by 1,382 percent in February 2009. These sites are where people are gathering and there’s little to indicate they will leave for greener pastures in 2010.

Less Waste, More Targets

Existing social network pastures should prove to be very green through geotagging. This technology enables users to add location data to photographs, videos and websites, which could be valuable to marketers.

Restaurants could make a person’s phone buzz as they walk by, informing them of daily specials. Businesses can reach people by their exact GPS coordinate.

These are just some ways social media will target customers with greater efficiency. Platforms such as Facebook already let communications professionals send messages through advertisements that reach users interests.

Less Convention

Because of its potential, more social media advertising campaigns will be executed in 2010. PepsiCo recently took the plunge, deciding to back out of a long-standing relationship to run commercials for its beverage brands during the Feb. 7 telecast of the Super Bowl.

Instead, the company is shifting its resources to online advertising. PepsiCo official said they did this because research demonstrated customers are more responsive to online sponsorships with a professional football focus.

Although more than 100 million viewers will see Super Bowl TV spots, Pepsi’s move is one that marketers are making to reach a public with ever-changing behaviors.

More Precision

Consumers’ actions and behaviors can be analyzed in ways never thought possible through traditional methods. In the past, the gauge was limited to such things as a newspaper’s circulation.

Now, even small-town newspapers can reach millions, and inexpensive software can show where those readers live and work, how long they stayed on the website, and how many times they interacted with the content. The same applies to analytic software for social media.

So how are marketers measuring social media investments? Third-party Twitter applications, such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, are free and can show how many people clicked on content in tweets. Facebook has a free program on its business pages called Insight that can determine similar values. Other sources are available, too.

This will prove to be an exciting year for social media and the professionals who strategically use these sites to build brand awareness and relationships. The new developments in the medium are sure to come. Adapting to the times and looking forward is virtually certain to be the most effective trend for any perceptive professional.

To read more, check out http://www.azbiz.com.

SEO Tips for Smarter Social Media

Brought to you by Andreas Roell

Social media started as an underground college phenomenon. Of course, where there are people, marketers will go. And so, marketers entered into the environment. Social-media marketing was first viewed as a standalone strategy. As it gained mainstream momentum, marketers started incorporating it into a cohesive outreach plan. It started to serve the greater marketing good instead of cultivating relationships in isolation. Now, concrete statistics are being released that prove how social media can tangibly support marketing efforts and the bottom line. In October, MediaPost reported that users exposed to social media marketing are almost three times as likely to search using branded keyword terms. Furthermore, websites saw a 50 percent lift in click-through rates across the board when consumers had been exposed to social media and paid search.
There are unmistakable areas of marketing that social media support, such as customer service, brand awareness, and customer relationship management. But social media does more than keep you in contact with target audiences; it has additional, unexpected benefits across marketing channels. Forging relationships with users on social media has lasting impacts on how consumers find and relate to brands online.

Search engine optimization and marketing
At first glance, there isn't an obvious connection between social media and SEO. Social media stimulates off-site conversation and interaction, whereas search engine optimization aims to pull traffic to a website. That being said, social media does impact SEO efforts, especially in the area of link building.

Self promotion does not work well on social media, so marketers are faced with generating interesting content to share with their social audiences. This content is shared, distributed, and discussed on forums -- resulting in links. The more people referencing content, the more traction it will gain, and this buzz will drive consumers to search engines, where they be directed to branded web properties.

Social media also affords marketers the chance to create new, less competitive keywords to call their own. A great example of this is the wacky "Will it Blend?" video series for Blendtec blenders. These videos are widely circulated across social media, so product awareness is high. However, the odds of someone searching for a "blendtec blender" are slimmer than a user searching for "will it blend blender." In situations like this, marketers can and should plan out a search marketing strategy to capitalize on socially spurred keywords. Terms like "iPhone blender" will be less competitive, carry more brand value, and create a lasting impression with users. Three bonuses that marketers can use bring social users to their websites.

Beyond drawing social media traffic to a managed website, marketers need to afford users the chance to push website content out through their social spheres of influence. Doing so will have a direct impact on SEO and social media efforts.

While the adoption of "Share this" buttons is pervasive, there are other options that marketers can employ to boost search engine visibility. Providing users and bloggers with code to share and post content on your behalf will greatly enhance the reach of your content and increase in-bound links to your website. If you're running a promotion or contest, give users the tools to share their scores or customized content. If you host a popular blog, incorporate means for fellow bloggers to link to your post. Giving this option will build brand credibility because consumers are marketing on your behalf, and it builds a community of brand supporters.

SEO tips to keep in mind
Make sure the links you share via social media do not include tracking code that would prevent PageRank from being passed, otherwise no SEO value will be gained. If you're securing links, you should get credit for them. Also, when creating headlines for content -- blogs, articles, or otherwise -- make sure they are optimized with targeted keywords. If possible, try to optimize page titles independent of one another to get the most SEO value.

Paid search campaigns are also augmented by social media. As the Media Post statistics show, users engaged with brands via social media are likely to start their search queries using lower funnel terms. This can decrease a sales cycle because users can be directed to relevant landing pages that expedite their conversion. Similar to SEO keyword competition, lower funnel, branded PPC keywords are far less competitive and have higher conversion rates.

Social media on the move
Consumers are still reluctant about mobile marketing because they fear being bombarded by advertisers while they're out and about. But the overwhelming success of branded applications show that marketers have a mobile role to play, as long as they provide value.

If custom apps aren't a viable option, social media is another avenue for marketers to interact with their consumers on the go. EMarketer predicts that by 2010, 34 percent of mobile internet users will use social media on their phone. This is a sizeable opportunity for marketers. If they find their social niche and interact with consumers in a meaningful way, the Holy Grail of reaching mobile consumers can be discovered.

The top reason consumers engage with brands online is to gain access to exclusive promotions and specials. Taking this into consideration, marketers should incorporate mobile into their social strategy. If offers are timed correctly, they can impact social followers on their mobile devises. No matter what the strategy, the key has always been to provide value to customers on the go, without overtly interrupting them.

Using coupons of point of service/purchase applications, marketers can encourage customers to engage with them through social media and mobile marketing.

Thinking long term
Social media is a commitment. Time and resources are needed to keep a close watch on user sentiment, trending topics, and to be an active participant. This investment will most certainly pay off. Social media will keep your brand in front of influencers and provide search engines with new content to index. This will help your marketing cause in a number of ways because search engines will crawl your web properties more frequently. They will find press releases, product announcements, and blog posts more quickly, which means it will be in front of consumers in a timely manner. This also has a valuable long-term impact on SEO by increasing quality and quantity of website references.

The personal nature of social media will also do more than provide valuable consumer insights. It will enable marketers to identifying unique keywords through interactions that can be applied to search campaigns. Monitoring and tracking how consumers relate to you socially will provide further insight into their search intent and what phrases they use in search queries. By continually refining and evaluating search intent, marketers can ensure they're bidding on the right keywords that resonate with their user base and drive conversions.

Tying it all together
The ultimate thing to remember is that marketing is a holistic process. In traditional marketing, a commercial impacts brand awareness and in-store traffic. In digital marketing, social media marketing impacts brand awareness and SEO. Nothing operates in a silo, and the most successful marketers will continue to leverage the benefits of integrated plans including social media marketing and SEO.

Andreas Roell is president and CEO of Geary Interactive.

The Perils of Ad-Supported Social Media

Brought to you by David Teitler

People who live in the tropics like to say, "If you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes." This is not dissimilar to the media business, where the "paradigms" have been shifting at such a fevered pitch that even the rational professionals might be tempted to bolt for the exits.

Like it or not, we are now in the accountability business and seemingly damned to a life of forever being challenged to prove our worth or be ridiculed (or worse) as serving an unnecessary function.

To an extent, this aspect of our chosen profession rings true. No one needs advertising to survive. You can't buy a peck of page views or a gallon of gross impressions. Advertising is, and forever will be, a conduit through which products and services are communicated to the masses in bite-size chunks and surrounded by content consumers find entertaining or intellectually stimulating. At least, this has been the case up until now.

Today we find ourselves at a crossroads. Social media has inverted the pyramid and is brilliant in its simplicity. It's just "conversation," with a history dating back to cave men grunting at each other in either threatening or friendly tones. Social media is essentially a means by which affinity groups can find each other and babble for as long as other like-minded individuals will listen without being limited by proximity or time.

The growing ubiquity of social media weaving its way into the fabric of our society has traditional media and advertising executives both excited and horrified at where this all might lead. Content providers are nervous because affinity groups can now find each other without needing them to serve as a conduit. Marketers and advertisers are not sure how to react because of being trained to communicate in staccato tones with definitive starts and stops. Social media, on the other hand, is free to flow, meander, and evolve at its own pace.

Let's face it: What do "Coke is it," "The Ultimate Driving Machine," or "Just do it" mean in a vacuum anyway? But, given 30 seconds of sight, sound, and motion or a four-color page, magic can happen, worlds can be created, and products can be sold. But, setting these slogans free to be discussed as part of a conversation that evolves as long as those participating want without an omnipresent third party -- how cool is that?

Why not let the genie out of the bottle and let both media and the advertising that supports it be free to morph and flow anywhere they please? The promise of a personalized nirvana where each person can evolve their own world shaped to their needs and be changed at their slightest whim lies ahead. It almost sounds like a media Garden of Eden. But, as with the original biblical story, there is an apple (and possible serpent) that cannot be ignored.

As we all know, the true nature of the human condition will invariably come into play. Blogs cannot live by affinity groups alone. Eventually, someone will want coffee and doughnuts with their conversation and someone will be needed to provide them. Marketers are figuring out ways to almost imperceptibly insert themselves into the conversation. Many of the best examples of social media sponsorships to date are so subtle and nuanced that brand affinity supposedly takes place with the "sponsor" deep in the background or seemingly not there at all.

Contrast this to more traditional forms of display advertising that are downright refreshing in how they will punch a consumer in the nose and say, "BUY MY BRAND!" Not optimal perhaps, but at least you know it's there and what it is trying to communicate -- at least most of the time. Please don't take these comments as a treatise on whether social media is good or evil. I believe the ultimate answer is that everything in moderation has its benefits.

In the "old days," media consumption patterns were defined in "quintiles" -- the heaviest media consumers were the top 20 percent, down to the lowest 20 percent. Directionally, as an advertising-supported medium, I would contend that social media is best used in reaching light media consumers -- those on the fringe whose interests are too numerous and/or too intense to be heavy consumers of "mass media." This type of consumer used to be served by "niche" publications -- a market segment that will, to my mind, be most adversely affected by the rising tide of "social" as a mainstream media.

Leading marketers are diving into social media but need to tread lightly. "Going viral" can cut both ways. Once the genie is out of the bottle, the promise and the curse is that social media can take on a life of its own and, when it inflects to the negative, it can be exceedingly difficult to contain without significant collateral damage. Unless tight controls are in place from the beginning, the risks associated with ad-supported social media might end up outweighing the benefits.

Don't get me wrong, by all means experiment -- but be judicious and respectful. The most active companies in the social media space have standing committees with senior PR, marketing, and general counsel executives to monitor the "buzz" being created by their social media initiatives.

Social media shows promise to eventually play a huge role in the ad-supported ecosystem but, in its current forms, is like juggling nitroglycerin. There should be an ever-present "handle with care" label to remind us of the potentially considerable downside risk involved. For the time being at least, the inherent dangers will keep it from reaching its full potential.

On the bright side, if we continue to take a step-wise/iterative approach to learning how social media can be harnessed for the greater good, it shows promise to be seen by history as one of the primary ad-supported communication developments to come out of the first decade of the 21st century.

David Teitler is founder and CEO of BlackBox Media.

Where Digital Marketing Is Headed In 2010

Brought to you by Ken Mallon and Duncan Southgate

In our discussions about what will happen in the digital marketing industry during the next 12 months, one overarching trend emerged: The basic rules of brand building are just as important for innovations in the digital space as they are for traditional forms of communication.

Using new technology won't in itself bring success; your digital communications still need to be creative, engaging and relevant if they are to cut it during the second decade of this century. Here are the first five of our top 10 trends for 2010. (We'll post the next five here tomorrow.)

Online display: Don't be blinded by the shiny and new.
In 2010, advertisers will experiment with new, larger ad formats. These formats may be initially attractive because they are different, but the basics of brand building beyond awareness shouldn't be ignored. Most of the new formats perform very well in the short term. Dynamic Logic has previously reported the high performance (brand impact) of video ads when they were first introduced. They found that video ad performance, relative to average ad performance, declined over a two year period following introduction as the novelty wore off. We'd expect this to be true for most of the new, larger ad formats and their progeny.

Ultimately, over the next several years only the fittest for these larger formats will survive. If they prove too intrusive, they may make people less favorable toward the advertised brand or the website on which they are served. Other advertisers and agencies will use these formats more cautiously, taking note of creative best practices gleaned from prior work.

Viral video will move from art to science.
As online video consumption continues to rise, advertisers increasingly value viral viewings as a clear and visible sign that their campaigns are engaging audiences. In response, viral video analytics are becoming sophisticated. YouTube has enhanced its video analytics offer, and companies such as Visible Measures and Unruly Media are providing comprehensive viral monitoring services across multiple online video platforms.

This information will fuel a more scientific approach to viral campaign planning. Rather than just place videos online and hope an audience will come, advertisers will invest in viral seeding strategies. They'll promote their videos via online influencers, Facebook video-sharing applications and targeted, paid placements. Advertisers will also become smarter about developing and selecting ads with the most viral video potential before they employ the seeding. A recent calibration exercise for Millward Brown's Link pre-test, for example, identified the creative factors which explain most of the variation seen in levels of viral viewing.

While there are likely to still be more misses than hits in the viral space, the opportunity of being next year's T-Mobile "Dance" or Evian's roller babies is something many marketers will plan for.

Gaming gets more social and mobile.
The ability to access Twitter and Facebook from the Xbox game system is one sign console gaming is becoming a lot more social. Games such as "Uncharted 2" already allow you to tweet your progress from within the game and we anticipate seeing these features implemented in more games. Microsoft's Project Natal promises to bring even more interactivity to gaming by supplanting controllers with your actual body movements, improving immensely on a model created by Nintendo. Perhaps the most promising and category-busting idea appears to be OnLive, a games-on-demand service that allows you to play any console or PC game on your TV or computer, without the need for a console at all.

Gaming's reach is already significant -- "Modern Warfare 2" is the biggest entertainment launch ever -- but the social elements are going to make the growth exponential. The proliferation of mobile games such as Doodle Jump for the iPhone, which allows the user to interact with other players, brings gaming to the masses.

Dynamic Logic's research has already shown that gaming can be very effective in increasing brand metrics. As interactivity increases and gaming becomes ubiquitous, we expect more advertisers to enter this space. For example, in the fall of 2010, Disney will launch "Epic Mickey" for the Nintendo Wii, the first major communication vehicle for a significant repositioning of this much-loved global brand.

Mobile takes a bite out of online.
According to the Mobile Marketing Association, total U.S. spend on mobile marketing will grow from $1.7 billion this year to $2.16 billion in 2010. Google's $750 million purchase of mobile ad network Admob reinforces that 2010 will be a significant year for mobile. We expect to see more consolidation in the mobile space.

With Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry platforms making the smartphone choices more attractive to consumers and cost of access slowly coming down, mobile web usage numbers will increase. The iPhone alone has now reached 57 million units worldwide, the fastest uptake in the history of technology. The real innovation will be increased adoption of the next-generation mobile browsers that will make the mobile web look and feel more like the applications we know today.

While web-based mobile, despite its growth, still only reaches a relatively small number of people, this niche audience can be particularly attractive to some brands and we've seen many targeting successes. Mobile provides the ability to target by site, phone model, demographics and location, all of which can be useful to advertisers. In addition, Dynamic Logic's normative advertising effectiveness data already suggests that mobile is two to five times better at driving brand metrics than online, and we expect this differential to remain consistent in 2010.

All of this means that mobile may well start to take ad dollars which would previously have been spent online. Since it's a new medium, there remains some consumer resistance to mobile advertising, so we advertisers will initially favor the soft-sell approach of providing useful content in this space, rather than pushing hard-sell messaging.

Here I am. Over here!
The promise that technology would enable automated direct-marketing messages to be pushed to consumers with GPS-enabled mobile devices has yet to come to fruition. Consumers are understandably reluctant to broadcast their location randomly or to be interrupted by unexpected messages without their consent. Instead we're seeing a variety of innovative solutions created to facilitate geo-targeting of marketing messages (when in-aisle, in-store or in-proximity) as the number of GPS-enabled devices continues to rise.

Services such as the mobile game FourSquare contain a social-media element that allows users to broadcast their location to a network of friends and other users in their respective cities. The social element of this voluntary disclosure has allowed marketers to tap into an engaged network of users and offer special promotions based on reported location. We expect FourSquare and other apps with a hybrid location/social-networking component to grow significantly in 2010.

We also expect to see utility-focused location applications gain popularity on GPS-enabled mobile devices during 2010. ComScore has reported that 11% of their mobile panel is currently using map or direction-based applications on their devices, representing 41% year-on-year growth and potentially stealing market share from standalone GPS devices. How these applications are eventually monetized remains to be seen, but the "Minority Report" scenario of "push" location-based advertising is starting to become a reality through voluntary user disclosure of location.

Even if consumers won't share their location with brands, brands can share their locations with consumers. In this vein, marketers will increasingly make location a feature of their campaigns, as the recent Levi's Twitter promotion in Australia demonstrates.

Search evolves, but not everyone notices.
As marketing budgets remain under intense pressure, search will do well thanks to its clear and measurable short-term ROI. In 2010 search will become more relevant and efficient for users. The arrival of Bing has intensified competition between the major search engines, who will develop and experiment with new features such as vertical searches and more visual integration. For example, Google may adopt Bing's handy "more on this page" hover-over feature. But most consumers will continue to prefer a simple experience, and so more complex new features will be used by just a small minority of users.

Social media will affect search in two ways. Firstly, search will become increasingly real-time as users take advantage of Google and Bing search results, including Twitter and Facebook updates, or use Twitter search as a standalone application. Secondly, the meshing of search and social will be embodied by the arrival of Google's Social Search option, where you can see the information posted by people within your online social circle.

Major search providers, including Google, MSN and Yahoo are all focusing heavily on the new .mobi search domain. Travel and hospitality brands in particular will be interested in this new development as it fits well with the behavior of their target customers. Rapidly improving mobile applications such as map-based search and Google Goggles' picture-based search will encourage more consumers to search on the move.

We also expect research to continue into the interaction between search and display advertising. The influences between them are well established, but we expect experimentation to increase as more advertisers appreciate the branding role of search and the search influence of display, and then try to optimize this relationship for their brands.

Brands will realize online video is not a panacea.
Online video advertising continues to grow at a high rate, and we expect this trend to continue into 2010. Beyond the PC, online video is increasingly being watched via gaming consoles (eg. Xbox360) and mobile devices such as the iPhone. Developments in the sector will be driven largely by competition among major industry players such as Hulu and YouTube. Hulu, the ad-supported premium content site, has been growing fast, and some analysts estimate it accounts for 20% of all online video spend. YouTube still has a far higher number of viewers, and is incorporating increasing volumes of premium, long-form content from providers such as MGM, BBC, CBS and Lionsgate.

YouTube is also increasingly embracing short (15 second) pre-rolls and skippable video ads. Learning from the latter suggests that creative content plays a greater role in online video success than we see on TV. Content in the online space faces competition for user attention, thereby increasing the importance of creative ad quality -- this should lead more smart advertisers to pre-test their online creative before investing in relatively high online CPMs. Dynamic Logic has found that effectiveness may be tapering off as the "novelty" of online video fades and advertisers realize that the platform in itself is not the answer.

Video advertising can be highly effective when used well, with strong brand integration and entertaining content. In an effort to maintain impact and drive further engagement, advertisers will continue to experiment with extra layers of interactivity beyond standard pre-rolls -- such as one-third clickable overlays, expanding, interactive companion banners and interactive in-video elements. As they do this, advertisers need to be sure they aren't using technology just because they can: It will only be effective when it is relevant to the brand or the message.

Brands start taking advantage of social graphs.
If the late '00s were the era of the social network, the early '10s will see the rise of the "social graph" -- the network of you, your friends, and the friends of your friends.

Everyone has a social graph. In fact, the point of social networking has been to build one. We will now see services like Facebook and Google start to use social graph data more aggressively as we move away from the "destination web" towards a "social web" whereby people get information through their networks rather than a specific site. Facebook's new "reconnect with" feature is one implementation of social graph data.

The social graph needs two kinds of tool to work. At the service end, it needs algorithms -- the formulae that use your graph to determine what information and connections you value most, which allows services to predict what information you're going to like (including, of course, which products and marketing communications you'll appreciate). At the user end, it needs filters -- the ability to group people and information more effectively to get the most out of a network. The effectiveness of both algorithms and filters are improving rapidly, and these will be a big factor in the continued evolution of social media.

In 2010 there will be a heightened need for brands to understand how to be more social in order to access these more segmented networks. There's increasing evidence that the ROI of social media is definitely worth the effort.

Integration trend stimulated by privacy concerns.
We are in the midst of a shift (powered by digital) where information flows side to side as much as from top down or bottom up. This means that the act of consumers talking to one other now has a rightful place within the circle of influential communications that shape brands.

There are some unique rules of engagement in accessing that communication. If marketers and researchers want to be able to tap into the huge amounts of rich, accurate, and timely information that consumers themselves generate, they have to think beyond traditional paradigms.

The next 12 months will continue the "privacy by design" movement whereby consumer privacy and user control will become more important for those seeking to understand consumer behavior. Privacy elements will therefore need to be integrated into consumer generated platforms. This will naturally lead to a land grab where parties join forces e.g. a market research company and a social network provider, so that the transition between the platform and the third party collecting data become seamless.

We will also see a continuation of media convergence. The aggressive nature of regulatory regimes means a global privacy standards framework will become vital. A global framework will allow for a more uniform application of notice and consumer consent regardless of platform. This should allow for greater transparency, but will place a premium on the key partnerships that are given permission to be part of reduced set of data collectors and processors.

Data integration enables insightful 'tradigital' learning.
During 2009, digital marketing became increasingly complex and marketers have been looking for more guidance about where to advertise, what size of creative to deploy and which tools to use, from display to CRM to search to social networks and mobile.

Moving forward, the definition will change from managing "digital" to managing "tradigital" as the lines of demarcation between traditional and digital media blur. Media consumption patterns are driving this blurring of the boundaries, as TV viewing is either delayed or online; magazines offer integration of content in print and digital form; and online activities are leveraged for both online and offline sales goals.

This means that data integration will remain at the heart of our measurement challenge and will require a research platform linking many data initiatives that mirror the integration of the technology that delivers the marketing messages.

Survey research will remain the primary tool for understanding branding effects and motivations across these platforms, but the deeper value-add to the marketer will be how the branding effects in surveys help explain the behavioral and sales information coming from a variety of sources including buzz monitoring, online behavior tracking, shopper loyalty databases, consumer sales panels and custom databases. While online listening techniques will continue to grow in importance, marketers will find this of limited value unless they also understand who is saying what.

How Social Media Can Resurrect Your Brand's Reputation

Brought to you by Doug Schumacher

Recently on NPR's Morning Edition, host Renee Montagne interviewed 20-plus year auto-exec-turned-industry-analyst Jim Harbour (to Jim's credit, "industry analysis" must be the only growth sector in the U.S. auto industry for the past couple years). Montagne was quizzing Harbour on the problems the auto industry is facing.

Here's an excerpt from their exchange:

NPR: What about the perception that U.S. automakers aren't making cars as well built as foreign cars? How can U.S. automakers change the perception?

Jim Harbour: I am not a marketing expert at all. I don't know how you change the perception of the American people who think we're still building junk. And I know, I'm from the time that I was doing that. I was building the junk. We used to build cars with eight defects, and we'd ship them out and ship them to the dealer.

Now, I realize the U.S. auto industry's situation is complex, but I think it's fair to say that they're making better cars than they used to. The industry's products have improved, and yet the companies are still dogged by the perception that they're making junk.

Imagine that, coming from the third-largest advertiser in the U.S. This is a company that spent $3 billion in 2008, and saturated our media with messages about how great its cars are and how much everyone loves GM. And consumers still don't have a positive perception of its brand.

What's going on here is an epic battle for the consumer's mind. In one corner sits massive, far-reaching paid media ad campaigns. In the other corner, consumer word of mouth.

In the end, billions of dollars in paid media are no match for a group of consumers chatting about your product.

Of course, around 30 years ago, when GM's negative buzz started spreading, it took longer for word of mouth to spread. That was a pre-internet, pre-mobile phone, pre-fax, even pre-cable era for much of the country. If a company was producing junk or mistreating customers, unless there was a "60 Minutes" type expose produced or published, it took a long time for word to get around. Thus paid media messaging was able to continue working because there simply wasn't any contradictory information available on a mass scale. In short, companies had a lot of control over the messages people heard about them.

Contrast that with today, where product-defect stories tear across the web like a virus. And what's enabling that spreading of information? Social media.

A recent article in Brandweek summarized a survey of 110 CMOs and concluded that "social media was a relatively low priority -- ranked in the bottom third. Mostly it's because of analytics. The things that are measurable are a top priority. Most marketers see [social media] as an experiment."

This, in an environment in which some of our country's most venerable media giants are collapsing because consumers have found new media formats to be more in line with how they gather and share information. It's a time when a $3 billion annual advertising budget can't move the needle on brand favorability. There are currently more than 200 million Facebook users, with 1 million domestic users joining every week. Even Twitter, what I consider an emerging tool with an early adopter user base, is approaching 10 million users and ascending like a rocket.

That doesn't sound like an experiment to me.

And yet, those CMOs are still asking if social media works? Guys, the monster's out of the cage. Shouldn't the question be, how quickly and thoroughly can we figure this thing out?


As I mentioned in a previous article, hiding from social media isn't really an option.

Too many companies stand on the sidelines, apparently waiting to enter the game until they're sufficiently behind and playing catch-up.

Maybe those CMOs should take an example from celebrities.

Like marketers, celebrities are in an almost constant state of building and promoting their brand. Celebs also have a lot of concern for their brand equity, and are highly sensitive about how they're presented in the media. After all, if a celeb's image is getting shelled, pretty much the entire brand franchise is under attack.

So combine that vulnerability with the fact that celebrities have gotten slammed by social media. They were first in the line of fire from sites like Gawker and PerezHilton, and looking at the latest numbers, the audience's appetite doesn't seem to be waning.

Yet in spite of all that, a number of celebrities are getting involved in social media. Why? They're being proactive. They're beating their adversaries to the punch. Because while social media gives virtually anyone a voice, they realize it also gives them a voice. Just as importantly, it's a voice most people have never heard from a celebrity before.

Does it take effort? Of course it does. Does it at times bring up issues they'd rather not deal with? Sure. But they've realized there's really no stopping it. There's only dealing with it head on.

Fortunately, brands will probably never get the same level of scrutiny that celebrities do. That's because most people just don't care enough about them, unfortunately. But when consumers want to research a brand, that negative information will be easy to find. And it's at that point that the brand's presence or absence in social media will likely either help them counter the negativity, or leave them exposed and vulnerable.

Brands may never be able to enthrall their "fans" with details about what they had for lunch (or the effects of that meal). But they can cultivate conversations and generate positive experiences with a range of social media tactics -- from basic tools for utility, to relevant information, to engaging people with entertaining online experiences.

Brands that do that effectively will then be populating the web with positive content to combat any negative information. That positive information will be working to improve people's perception of the brand.

And thus, in an ironic twist of fate, social media becomes CMOs' best hope of once again having some semblance of control over the messaging around their brands.

Doug Schumacher is the president and creative director at Basement Inc.

7 Tips for the Perfect Twitter Profile

Brought to you by Jason Baer

People are drinking the Twitter Kool-Aid like it's the last day before Prohibition. It's fantastic that so many are finding value in something so simple that can be so powerful.

But many experienced marketers who've joined the latest wave of Twitterers seem to be overlooking a fundamental premise of the Twitter follower/following paradigm -- people only know as much about you as you tell them.

Stay informed. To hear more about the latest in social media marketing, attend the iMedia Breakthrough Summit, March 21-24. Request your invite today.
Having a succinct, compelling profile is more critical on Twitter than anywhere else.

Your Twitter landing page
Just as the landing page is the most important component of a PPC, email, or banner ad campaign, your Twitter profile is the most important landing page for your personal brand or the brand of your company/agency on Twitter.

Every time you follow someone, they will be asked to make a decision on whether to follow you back. At scale, these decisions are made in increasingly large batches, and are made quickly.

I'm not Twitter royalty, but routinely get 50+ follow emails per day. For each of these, I visit the person's profile page and decide whether to follow back. And just like on a landing page, I scan and make this follow/no follow decision in about eight seconds or fewer.

Here are important considerations for your Twitter profile.

1. Use your real name (and don't use underscore)
I realize your real name (or even business name) may not be available, but try to get as close as possible. This isn't an AOL chat room circa 1997; this is business -- especially if you're a professional marketer.

Using made-up names makes it very difficult to tie your Twitter profile to your Facebook, LinkedIn, blog comment and other profiles (unless Twitter adopts Facebook Connect). Further, five weeks from now when I see "@batgirl63? in the tweet stream, it's difficult to remember who you are.

I'm also not a big fan of using @"youragencyname" as a Twitter handle, if you're really serious about interaction. Increasingly, the "official" agency or brand account is more of an announcement megaphone, and less of a conversation platform. If you want to truly interact in Twitter, use your real name (or your name combined with agency name like @jason"agencyname".

The underscore issue is more of a personal peeve. It's not inherently terrible, but it's much easier to remember for direct messages, etc., if you do not have an underscore in your name.

2. Use a real picture (especially if it's a real name)
Twitter is about human connections. Don't use a cartoon, a dog, a tree or any other animate or inanimate object for your profile picture. A simple headshot is great -- preferably with some interest.

Ideally, use the same photo on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, et al. It's easier to remember that way. And don't change your photo routinely, as many Twitterers have commented that they look at and remember profile photos more than usernames. There are definitely marketing rock stars that violate the rule of keeping your photo consistent, including @chrisbrogan and @armano, both of whom change their Twitter photos plenty, but that's the exception that proves the rule.

3. Think SEO when writing your bio
Each Twitterer has multiple spheres in which they operate, sometimes intersecting and overlapping. You want to belong to as many spheres as are practical and relevant to your interests and expertise. It's helpful if you define your spheres before jumping in, as it will make your following decisions and bio creation much easier. If you're using your Twitter account for both business and personal reasons, you'll have multiple spheres that intersect and overlap. This can be confusing, but two rules should be observed:

Don't post anything on Twitter (or elsewhere on the social web) that you are not comfortable with the entire web reading.
Trying to keep your social profile "all business" or "all personal" is not going to work long-term. Social media insists that you are part work, part play.
Just as you would when optimizing a webpage for search engines, when you write your Twitter bio think about your desired spheres and include words and phrases about them. A touch of personality is helpful, too.

4. Include a URL
Make sure to include a prominent link to your website or blog. @briansolis links to his Wikipedia page, which is useful.

5. Consider a custom background
Custom Twitter backgrounds are inexpensive (or free), and can convey important details and contact information. Include information about you and your company, URLs for your other social outposts, and some sort of semi-interesting graphic.

6. Don't protect your updates
Seriously, what's the point of being on Twitter if people have to jump through hoops to follow you? It completely runs counter to the spirit of community. If you don't want people to see your tweets, maybe you should stick to LinkedIn and Facebook where your connections are typically your friends/associates in the real world.

7. Take it slow
Certain Twitterers' following/followers ratio makes it seem like they are using Twitter inappropriately. When you are following 1,997 people, and have 57 following you back, it looks like you are randomly following as many as you can, hoping for follow backs. That's essentially "follower spam" and it calls your motives into question. You'll get fewer followers, not more, with that approach.

If you want to expand your personal network via Twitter, you'll never find a more fertile opportunity. But, try to follow these guidelines to make it easier for potential followers to decide they want to read your 140-character advice.

Jason Baer is a social media consultant with Convince and Convert.

10 Tactics That Will Dominate Digital in 2010

Brought to you by Drew Neisser

When Chicago failed in its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, President Barack Obama elected to use a sports metaphor to soften the blow. "You can play a great game and still not win," noted the First Chicagoan upon his return from Copenhagen.

As we move into 2010 -- and toward the Vancouver Winter Olympics in February -- marketers will be facing Olympic hurdles themselves that will require steadfast agility just to stay in the game, much less to hit the finish line ahead of the competition. Here are 10 ideas that should deliver the gold.

1. Social media: A marathon, not a sprint
Hoping to become fast friends with their targets, a lot of brands rushed into Facebook and Twitter in the last 24 months without investing sufficient time or resources. In 2010, savvy marketers will increase their commitment to social media by first listening and then offering up a steady stream of engaging content that their fans actually want. This will be particularly true for B2B brands, only 38 percent of which included social media in their 2008 marketing plans (compared to 71 percent of B2C brands).

One comScore study indicated that branded social media activities can have a multiplier effect on search results, providing a quantifiable rationale for brands to up the social media ante in 2010.

2. Mashups: Taking inspiration from biathlons
A few innovative marketers took a shot at mashups in 2009. E.P. Carrillo, a new cigar manufacturer, created a mesmerizing Twitter and Google Maps mashup for its "coming soon" site that tracks cigar tweets from around the world. In 2010, these kinds of mashups will become smoking hot as marketers look to extend the value of their social media activities. Recognizing that tech-savvy consumers glide seamlessly between personal and business, online and offline, mobile and desktop, farsighted marketers will bring together formerly disparate elements into a cohesive and self-perpetuating social media experience.

3. App happy: On your mark, get set, go crazy
Given the success a handful of marketers enjoyed with their "apps" in 2009, expect a blaze of new entries in 2010. iPhone apps that provide demonstrable utility like Kraft's iFood Assistant recipe finder, Benjamin Moore's color matcher, and Zipcar's GPS-based car finder will continue to gain traction. Expect more apps that integrate with other social media like the Gap StyleMixer that allows you to mix and match clothes and share them with friends on Facebook.

And don't forget the non-iPhone universe. The steakhouse Maloney & Porcelli cooked up a humorous and somewhat deviant web-based app Expense-A-Steak that extrudes faux expense reports that look stunningly authentic.

4. Measure up: Track every second
With more dollars earmarked for social media, marketers will undoubtedly use new tools to monitor the conversations that are happening with or without them. Radian6 and Scout Labs emerged in 2009 as two of the leading social media monitoring tools. Molson Coors uses Radian6 to stay on top of all the banter about its major brands, allowing it to respond with remarkable speed to one of my blog posts about a Coors Light Twitter account that turned out to be unofficial.

And while these tools are great, each requires a sizeable commitment by the marketer in time of staff, a commitment that can and does pay off. Just ask JetBlue, which manages to enhance customer loyalty daily by responding to any and every customer tweet within minutes. JetBlue follows 117,000 people on Twitter, generating more than 1.3 million followers for itself.

5. POV power: Don't just talk the talk
While lots of brands raced into social media in 2009, few established true connections with their targets. The reality is that consumers engage with brands they like on a visceral level and that provide a distinct perspective on the world. Aflac's Duck quacks up a gaggle of quirky content, including charitable requests that appeal to more than 161,000 fans on Facebook and more than 3,000 followers on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Geico's Gecko has been left in the social media dust due to its surprisingly dry and unresponsive online voice. Ironically, a brand by definition is a point-of-view that, once clearly defined, should guide all communications, social or otherwise.

6. Expose yourself: Win the crowd with honesty
The emergence of several "tell all" consumer-created sites signals the arrival of a new era of honesty and transparency, especially for brands targeting those under 35. Sites like fmylife.com, textsfromlastnight.com, and MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com reflect a generation willing to bare and share all without the least trepidation.

Even the emergence of "Untag Mondays" speaks to the socially acceptable norm of posting embarrassing content that one might not want a parent or employer to see. Marketers that share this sense of honesty, that admit mistakes and address shortcomings in real-time, will find a youthful army of comrades willing to do their bidding. As Comcast discovered, this kind of honesty can even transform a PR nightmare like ComcastMustDie.com into an industry-leading customer service, like its Comcast Cares Twitter pages.

7. Hold the presses: Major comebacks are possible
Though a 50-percent decline in ad pages certifies 2009 as the worst year in print's history, don't write it off as a viable media channel just yet. More than 80 percent of U.S. consumers still subscribe to at least one magazine and 83 percent believe newspapers are still relevant, according to MediaPost.

Experimenting with video in print publications like Entertainment Weekly is but one of the ways certain magazine segments will hold onto their targets and satisfy advertisers. Fashion magazines and enthusiast publications continue to offer a visual showcase that is far superior to what most online magazines can serve up. Models, both human and auto, simply look prettier in print.

And while Procter & Gamble shut down its 72-year-old TV soap opera Guiding Light in 2009, it is cranking up the presses with a custom-published glossy, Rouge, that it expects to reach a whopping 11 million North American households in 2010.

8. Go to the video: Separate from the pack
The emergence of viral video rankings in 2009 reflected the mainstreaming of this approach to audience engagement.

While everyone and their branded brother aspired to cut through with a viral hit, surprisingly few found an audience. In 2010, marketers will undoubtedly crank out more of the same, while a savvy few will worry less about mass reach and focus more on grassroots appeal, providing content that their core targets really want. B2B marketers in particular will find that using informative videos that transform the complicated into the comprehensible, like Commoncraft's Plain English videos, will generate quality leads from grateful prospects.

9. Mobile media: Catching up at last
Despite all the hype by this author and others, less than a third of marketers had a budget for mobile in 2009. In 2010, smartphone penetration should rise to at least 25 percent (from 17 percent in Q2 '09), making it a lot easier to deliver a rich mobile experience worthy of consumer attention. The blending of mobile and social apps like Facebook, Loop'd, and Twitter has also created a new openness toward this medium.

Given the desirable demographics (18- to 34-year-olds with household incomes of more than $75,000) of smartphone owners, marketers should, at the very least, give strong consideration to creating a mobile friendly website, thus allowing prospects to engage whenever and wherever they happen to be.

10. Be positive: Attitude is everything
While honesty is a worthy friend to marketers, don't forget that almost no one wants to date a Debbie Downer. A recent Adweek/Harris poll found "relatively little enthusiasm and lots of indifference for ads that refer to the downturn." Even if the economy is slow to recover in 2010, find the silver lining for your customers and prospects with both words and actions. Like the athletes whose positive outlooks and superior skills propel them to victory, so too can marketers find success with an upbeat message and an unimpeachable value proposition.

Go for the gold in 2010
While 2009 hasn't been much fun for most marketers, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the approaching year. There are more ways than ever to engage with consumers and a new willingness from consumers to engage with brands. Marketers are showing a renewed desire to listen to their customers and offer "marketing as service" that favors the dissemination of meaningful value over disruptive messaging.

To borrow the words of the President after Chicago's disappointing Olympic bid this year, "Although I wish that we had come back with better news, I could not be prouder."

Drew Neisser is CEO and founder of Renegade.

7 Rules For Aggregating Brand Content

Brought to you by Carnet Williams

As the CEO of a start-up company creating social media campaigns for some of the world's largest brands, I know that the future of my company is at stake every time a new campaign is launched. While I do my best to educate brands about the power of social media and the benefits of providing consumers an open platform to speak their mind, I know that there are legal and ethical considerations that must be weighed before any campaign is launched.

Following are some best practices that we follow at Sprout to ensure success.

Enter at your own risk
It is no surprise that there are several large companies that do nothing but manage the rules, regulations, and management of contests and sweepstakes. They are big, hairy messes. Rules change all the time and vary from state to state, not to mention country to country.

Even Facebook has realized the risks involved with sweepstakes and contests running on its platform. On Nov. 4, Facebook published a new set of rules that cover what brands can and can't do. You can find it here: http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

Facebook is clearly trying to dissuade brands from using the site as a platform for sweepstakes. In addition to stating that brands must comply with all laws and regulations, contests must be approved in advance by Facebook and must contain language that makes it clear that Facebook isn't involved in any way. Further, contests can no longer be based on actions taken on Facebook, such as updating status, becoming a fan, or uploading a photo.

Unless you're willing to pay a lot of money to a third party or have a large legal team, my recommendation is to find another emotional hook. You would be surprised what people are willing to do for brands they like, or to score higher than friends, or just to take a minute away from work for a bit of fun.

Moderation... in moderation
There is a divide among marketing folks about the need for moderation. Some brands, such as Skittles, have gone whole hog into social media and allowed people to see all tweets about Skittles on the Skittles homepage, regardless of the content. Other brands, such as Juicy Juice, have taken a more conservative approach and have reviewed tweets before they are approved to publish in an ad. My recommendation to our clients is that they moderate content to ensure compliance with the terms of service of the sites where the content will be found, but that they allow differences of opinions. On social networks, authenticity is very important, and brands that embrace the idea of natural conversations with consumers will be rewarded.

Must share well with others
Everyone is looking for the next viral hit. The truth is that all campaigns will not be viral hits, but all campaigns should be viral-ready. When consumers are allowed to share user-generated content, they usually will. Therefore, it's important that campaigns have built-in hooks to the leading social networks to make sharing as easy as possible. At a minimum, your campaign should be Facebook- and MySpace-ready. To really get people talking about what they've experienced or shared, a "Tweet this" button helps drive awareness and virality. Depending on the type of campaign or content you're promoting, Digg, Delicious, and LinkedIn are other possibilities to consider.

If you want to catch a fish, go fishing
While Facebook has 300 million subscribers, brands need to consider their target audience and decide whether a Facebook-only campaign makes sense. For example, entertainment companies find great success on MySpace, since it's a common destination for movie and music news. To get authentic user-generated content for your campaign, make sure your reach is broad. Some of the best fans are found in the most unlikely places. At Sprout, we try to ensure that our campaigns can run anywhere -- on Facebook, MySpace, and our clients' websites as well.

... but fish in the right pond
Having said that, it is important to think carefully about which types of user-generated content to integrate into a campaign, and this goes for choosing your media and social networking channels too. Depending on your particular goals around quality and volume, it's important to get the right mix of quirkiness and unique marketable content with some sort of mass appeal.

The holy grail: The activity stream
It's true that if you want to catch a fish, you need to go fishing. But Facebook's activity stream is still the holy grail for brands attempting to get their campaign to go viral. It's important to make sure that if you're allowing users to create their own content via your campaign, they should be able to share that content with their friends on Facebook by publishing to their activity stream. Once published in their own activity stream, all of those users' friends will see it published in their activity streams too. Those friends should then be able to access your campaign right from the message in their activity streams. For an example of how this works, try Sprout's Holiday Matchmaker game.

The FTC and transparency
When dealing with user-generated content, it's important to ensure that your content contributors follow the rules. The FTC's new rules for bloggers state that any user or blogger who makes an endorsement for a product must disclose the connection he or she has with the seller of that product. The FTC can slap said users or bloggers with big fines if they don't. Note that the definitions are broad here -- the FTC rules basically state that any situation where anything of value is exchanged between company and advocate (blogger or user who's not part of the company) requires total transparency.

There's a lot to think about when you launch a social media campaign. But if you plan well and ensure a healthy balance between authenticity and moderation, UGC and branded content, and creation and sharing, you are off to a great start. I hope these seven best practices help to plan your next great campaign.

Carnet Williams is CEO at Sprout.

5 Tips To Maximize Online ROI

Brought to you by Scott Severson

There are times we all feel like field generals, deciding where to deploy our limited resources along the many fronts of the marketing wars. But the best leaders are one step ahead with strategy -- looking for results by reading the signs that others don't see.

Yet, the signs are right there in front of us: Clicks aren't translating into purchases; consumers aren't returning; online advertising spending is wasted on tactics with little or no ROI. We're seeing story after story in the marketing trades about the reshuffling of ad dollars, with more and more budget being plowed into online ad spending and social media. Despite the economy, online marketers aren't shy about investing in clicks, paid search, back-links, and tweets. But are their online efforts resulting in action? Marketers need to put the brakes on less-than-strategic online spending and instead determine which tactics deliver the most actionable outcomes.

The good news: We are also seeing signs that point us in the direction of engaging with customers through action-causing tactics, while discounting the siren's song of sheer click numbers.

But how do we pinpoint these high-ROI tactics? There are countless analytics available, but I decided to go beyond click data and ask consumers how they're making decisions about their online advertising choices. My company recently commissioned a study by public opinion measurement leader Opinion Research Corporation to help us understand what's happening inside the minds of consumers as they're making choices about what online advertising they're engaging with -- and what actions they take over time after seeing the advertising.

The results represent a big, full-color, blinking sign for marketing leaders.

ORC asked 1,000 consumers the type of online advertising they're most likely to read and act upon, among banner ads, pop-up ads, email offers, articles that include brand information, or sponsored links. Article-based advertising was the most preferred -- 51 percent of respondents said they are "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to read and act upon the material.

Coveted demographic groups are even more likely to express a preference for articles. According to the survey, 67 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 24 and 56 percent of those making at least $75,000 per year say they are "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to read and act upon article-based advertising. Pop-up ads were least likely to be read or acted upon.

And here's another critical sign from the study about how consumers take action based on what they see online: When asked how frequently they conduct internet searches for products or services they read about in online articles, half the respondents said "very frequently" or "somewhat frequently."

Those are some pretty strong signs directly from consumers. It tells me that they are willing to interact with a product or brand in an in-depth manner if the information is presented to them in ways where they can read the information, evaluate it, and then decide to click through for more details.

As marketers, we owe it to ourselves and our clients to use consumer feedback to earmark online marketing dollars for tactics that deliver the highest ROI, deliver the most action, and bring value to the brand.

Here are five tips for maximizing ROI and measuring the impact of online advertising:

Mix brand storytelling into your tactical approach. If you can build a program that breeds consumer feedback and fosters measurement, consumers will be willing to engage with content-rich information, and take the next step in contacting the advertiser.
Set benchmarks for every step in the conversion funnel and measure against them. Not everything is measurable, but it's important to capture data on every step possible.
Take on the tougher measurement tasks. Determine how online advertising and social media activities are impacting consumer attitudes toward your brand. You can try unconventional methods such as using social media to get qualitative feedback from your other marketing methods.
Integrate by measuring the flow of consumer interaction among social media, websites, blogs, and product landing sites. As marketing disciplines have converged (PR, advertising, and digital are using sometimes indistinguishable tactical approaches), it challenges us to update our measurement tactics as well. Count the clicks, but measure brand impact, too.
Remarket to consumers who show an interest in an article or ad about your product or company. Study the downstream value of the first interaction. If a consumer has expressed interest in your category, it's an indicator for further dialogue (and ads).
The signs are clear. Consumers are telling us to give them information in context, and if it's good enough, they'll take action on it. Then, it's up to us to measure it.

Scott Severson is the president of ARAnet Inc.