Feb 19 2009

Buzz Meter: Busuu

February 19, 2009 – 10:30 am

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Have you ever wanted to learn a new language? Or tried Rosetta Stone and decided you need interaction with a native speaker of the language? Enter Busuu, an innovative online community for learning languages.

Busuu, the name derived from a language spoken in Cameroon that supposedly only eight people in the world speak fluently, combines social network features with language learning. With over 150 learning units, Busuu connects you with native speakers of different countries, and offers all of this for either a basic (free) or premium plan (monthly memberships).

The language learning tool provides users a “Language Garden” filled with trees that grow as you learn your language(s) of choice. The top four languages offered are English, Spanish, German and French. The 150 learning units feature:

  • Key vocabulary – simple words for visual learning and audio playback for pronunciation
  • Reading comprehension – practice reading various paragraphs
  • Writing – after learning phrases, write a short text and let your native speaker friends correct you
  • Chat – directly talk with native speakers
  • Exam – take a test to see what you learned
  • Transcript-PDFs – download the learning unit transcript
  • Podcast – download all the audio for the learning unit

Buzz Meter Ranking: 3 out of 4 Buzz Bees

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Positive: Busuu has over 80,000 users and is unique in the sense that it offers an online community dedicated to learning. Most of the online communities are built for providing a basic service (i.e. Facebook provides you a profile then you do what you want with it). Busuu presents users with two great offerings: social networking and/while language learning.

Negative: Busuu offers a video tour of their “Language Garden” and how to use their social network features. I found this video confusing since it only provides music and images (I guess they didn’t want to add any languages to make the video tour user-friendly). Busuu only encompasses learning units for the top four languages: English, Spanish, German and French. The only way to learn other languages is to directly chat with other native speakers.

Conclusion: Busuu is an interesting product as it provides a gateway for people to learn new languages and culture from meeting new people. Once Busuu starts offering more learning units for other languages, I’m sure more and more people will want to learn a different language. Join now and let’s learn German together! My username is Marmones.

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Marinel Mones | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The New Competitive Reality

February 19, 2009 – 8:10 am

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Marketing communications services are usually one of the first things to get cut in a down economy, and also one of the last things to come back (image: clearing the gate by cmaccubbin). The current freeze (more like slow flow, as contracts are starting to come in again) is something many executives and I talk about on the back channel. Most want to know when it’s going to end. I wonder if it is, or if this is just the new competitive reality.

We’ve had a big party over the past decade on credit, and now it’s time to pay the debt. In my opinion, and based on many reports I read, this downturn seems to be more of a severe correction than a true recession. Meaning this contraction of markets is forcing expenditures to be made on hard cash as opposed to speculation and credit. Even when credit flows again, organizations will be less quick to use credit to fund their business operations. In the end, that’s a good thing as businesses will be stronger for it.

In the short term — meaning the next couple of years — this type of hard competitive business environment will continue for marketing services companies, consultants and job seekers. Contracts are now starting to be doled out and some markets are starting to do better, but they are much more competitive. As the bottom becomes more secure over the next few months, the more risk adverse and those that know they have to market will also start spending. A slower ebb of business is resuming.

Some companies will take a long time to return to marketing. Why this is, I don’t know. It’s really hard to make money if your customers don’t know you’re out there. But in every down economy, some companies do this, and they pay the price in market share. What’s important is for agencies and consultants to identify these companies quickly and move forward to work with smarter organizations that understand the value of marketing services.

To effectively compete, marketing services companies and consultants alike will have to be much more customer focused. Their offerings — as many have discussed — will need to be less experimental, and more ROI oriented.

The sharp and nimble will not only make it, but they will thrive. They will capitalize on the opportunity presented now. They will offer the right kind of marketing services that distinguish their organization and create meaningful growth for their clients and partners.

It’s an interesting time. Welcome to the new competitive reality.

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing, PR Industry Trends | Tagged , , , , | Comments (5)
Feb 17 2009

The Art of Seduction

February 17, 2009 – 6:33 pm

“Don’t play semantic games with the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It’s a seduction.”

- Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning

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Advertising stopped working a long time ago, prompting Positioning theories and strategies from Ries and Trout. We’re discussing it next week in our weekly Georgetown class on Social Media for Social Good.  And what would a classic advertising strategy book be doing in a class that leads off with the Cluetrain Manifesto?  Well, you can get social media, but if you don’t understand what makes people fall in love with causes, products,  services and ideas then you may as well mail it in (image: Marcel Desaulniers’ "Chocolate Demise" by fooey).

Is seduction too strong a word?  I think not.

The whole premise of Positioning 30 years ago was that consumers intentionally avoid advertising and corporate propaganda.  Communicators are in a perpetual losing battle for the attention of inundated minds. That was when there was only 50 channels and No Internet, much less social media!  The situation for communicators has gotten much more dire, and their empty platitudes and PR messages fall flat, failing left and right at astonishingly high percentages.

Getting in the mind of donors, advocates, citizens and buyers, and tempting them, enticing them to become interested in your efforts is a great accomplishment.  It’s hard cutting through the clutter, achieving impact, and retaining commitment.

It means you’ve listened, you understand them, you have value for them, and can build meaningful experiences that resonate in their minds and hearts. You haven’t lied to them, peppered them with corporate messages or BSed them, but you have thought about them, cultivated trust, and positioned yourself to cut through the extremely fractured traditional and social media environments… Not only to be heard, but also welcomed. Indeed, in this kind of media environment that’s seduction. And it’s just good old-fashioned marketing strategy.

Strategy, Again.

Social media and technical savviness does not equate to marketing strategy. Nor do blogs, a bookmarking widget, or crowdsourcing.  That’s a meaningless Twitter debate that stakeholders don’t care about. What does count is creating a meaningful way, a method, an overarching course to get and keep the attention of your stakeholders. The rest is tactical. 

Like advertising in Positioning, if you can succeed in creating meaningful communications in this particular media form (social), then its likely your strategy will work across diverse traditional media, too, just with different tactics. Positioning is all about finding that way to cut through the clutter with a strategy that separates your market and convinces stakeholders that they should give you that listen.  If your cause, service, or product is worthy and you successfully position, communicating becomes easy.

Great strategies are clear, they are simple, and they ring true and unique.  They stand out in a crowd and attract the right kind of people, those whose attention we are working so hard to attain.

That’s why we’re reading Positioning.  To jog the mind. To think of ways to entice, stand out and use our few, precious opportunities with our stakeholders online to attract them, and strike a meaningful conversation that becomes an even greater relationship.

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (7)

Goodness Gracious, Great Blogs of Fire!

February 17, 2009 – 9:45 am

Mark Evans considers how social media is impacting the way businesses promote their products and services; specifically he highlights five common myths companies have on the use of social media. For example, Mark says, “Social media is not an add-on or an accessory,” rather it is part of a company’s marketing mix. What is your experience with the corporate world’s perception of social media? Visit the Mark Evans’s blog and share your thoughts.

Professor Samuel Bradley is running a series on the future of paid advertising on his Communication & Cognition blog. In this post, Sam interviews Deborah Morrison, Ph.D. Dr. Morrison offers fascinating insights into the shift that is currently underway. She says, “we are all content producers and carve out a name with our work on so constant a basis is pretty amazing. Anything is possible.” Visit Professor Bradley’s post, and return each Tuesday for more insights into the progression of advertising.

Kurt Greenbaum cleverly demonstrated the usefulness of the Venn’d Twitter app and the Google Chart API to quantify the multiplying power of Twitter. After a concise explanation of his methodology, Kurt concludes that, “One tweet to 181 people equaled exposure to another 1,400 people.” This is a great example of Twitter’s viral nature. Visit Kurt’s STL Social Media Guy blog for the full multiplying power of Twitter case study.

Doug Firebaugh of SocialMediaBloggerster.com says he’s seeing “the SWOI Flu” (Same Warmed Over Information), with regards to social media content creations. To be successful in social media, Doug says to create, “New, fresh, catalyzing content that takes [people] places, not takes them for granted.” Doug offers four focused suggestions for creating “sought after information.”

On Amber Naslund’s Altitude Branding blog, she is creating a social media starter kit. In this post, Amber explains the value of LinkedIn: “The virtualized and interactive version of that pile of business cards on your desk.” Amber offers several helpful hints that will help you make more connections and make LinkedIn work better for you. For example, Amber suggests presenting yourself beyond your work life.

“Someone is trying to sabotage your career. It’s your online persona,” says Candice Choi. Candice offers savvy guidelines for keeping a neat and orderly social profile. In particular, she makes recommendations on privacy settings, the types of photos to share, and personal views to avoid sharing on social networks. Visit Courier-Journal.com and offer Candice your thoughts on maintaining a quality online persona.

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Mike Nelson | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

Marketing to the Government with Jimmy Baker

February 17, 2009 – 12:25 am

winbizlarge-1.jpgWell, it’s certainly a hot topic with some, err, interesting posts going up right now. One of my favorites is this Mark Drapeau “goverati” post, which encapsulates the phenomena of the social media public sector swooning that’s going on currently.

It seems like a little context is needed right about now, so I asked my old buddy Jimmy Baker, an expert on the topic of sales and marketing technology products and services to government, to do an interview. Jimmy recently published a book “How to Win Business From the Government (Jimmy shares the same publisher as me).”

Before we get into the interview, some background information on why everyone is so interested in the government marketplace — beyond the Obama factor. The US Federal Government is one of the largest purchasers of information technology in the world. In 2009, the Federal Government is budgeted to spend over $70B in the purchase of information technology goods and services. If you are interested in this market, I highly suggest Jimmy’s book as it will literally teach you a step by step approach to researching the government, figuring out where the funding for IT deals exist, and creating an unforgettable presentation about your offering to the federal buyer.

BB: We are really in a time of change right now. How has the business of government changed in the last eight years as we end era of W and the Obama Administration begins?

JB: Whether you love George Bush or hate him, he did a really great job of making IT spending and programs very transparent to the citizen. As the Clinton-Gore administration was ended, we saw big government contracting shops closing down and the government was moving towards a more efficient way to buy goods and services through GWACs.

When Bush took over he created something called the Quick Silver Initiatives which was changing and improving the way government did business. We began to see agency’s have their programs monitored at www.expectmore.gov Business cases (300s) were publically posted on an agency’s web site. The budget was getting tracked using good accounting practices through LOBs (lines of business). For anyone selling and marketing to government- this is huge (I go into far more detail in the book on this information).

As we embrace our new President, I think the Obama-Biden administration has a really good platform to build from. Like many of us in the business, I am studying the new economic stimulus package and trying to help my clients be “shovel ready”.

BB: What do you think of the Government 2.0 Expert that has arisen?

JB: This is a hard question to answer. We still have not really seen what 2.0 will do in government like it has in the commercial marketplace. Over the last few years, we have seen the rise of many government blogs to help better inform the citizen about the government.

Our new president has his own blog at www.whitehouse.gov Just a few days ago I joined GovLoop which is like Face Book for government people. Because of the nature of government, I think many agencies will need to be careful about how much their employees speak to the public. I am sometimes surprised at how many people I find from government on Face Book and My Space and how they represent themselves to the public.

The other area that is exciting right now is the ease of use of video. Many agencies are using You Tube to reach out to their citizens. We have a very progressive CIO here in Cali where I live (Teri Takai) that uses You Tube all the time in a very wise and tactful manner to communicate her opinion. Instead of waiting for the news groups to show her information, she goes right to the masses.

This past August I was down in San Diego and had a chance to speak with Dan Green of the Navy. Dan said that many agencies are using the concept of social networks in a secure (government only access) way to collaborate on different programs and challenges.

To get back to your question, we are in the infancy of social media / web 2.0 and the impact of government. As we see the merger of video, social groups, and instant contact to people on whatever device they have, I think government will adapt with more citizen centric applications. There is a company called iQuestions that I think has a really good handle on where the Internet and social networks are going. The format of their site www.iquestions.com I think is the wave of the future for government and social media.

BB: How can social media types who are unfamiliar with how government works come up to speed quickly?

JB: Although the way we market is changing, there are some underline “Old School” principles to remember for anyone tech company that wants to get in the social media game. Always know who and where your target market is and what you should be telling them. What we now have to be aware of in 2009 is that our target market is very, very diverse and segmented.

You may need to promote a campaign several different ways to get the results you want using social media / web 2.0. Many of the retiring baby boomers are used to going to a web site and downloading a white paper. People who are in our age group (30 – 45) are used to adapting to whatever the new technology is and how it works. People in their teens and twenties will communicate and access information differently than ever before.

When my clients starting coming to me about how to use some of the social sites, I read two books that really helped me understand how social media work. I recommend reading Now is Gone and Wikinomics. In my book I take several pages to discuss marketing and branding in the new social media market place.

BB: Give me a little history about you and how you got started with your career in selling to government?

JB: After I graduated the University of Maryland with a BA in Speech Communication, I got a job with the Gazette Newspapers. I was responsible for selling ads to churches. What is funny about this is during the early 90’s there was a famous TV evangelist named Jim Bakker who was having some trouble in his personal life, business, and ministry.

So imagine trying to sell churches ads with the same name of the publically known-very problemed pastor. I used to get so many “Tammy Faye” jokes it wasn’t funny. Anyway, I was able to take lemons and make lemonade. A good friend of the family was looking for some sales people for his technology company. He said if you can sell church ads with the name “Jim Baker” then you should have no problem selling computers to the feds. As Paul Harvey says “and that’s the rest of the story.”

BB: Why did you write this book?

JB: I simply wanted to help small businesses. I was giving one of my talks around the beltway and someone from the Executive Office of the President said you really need to take what you are doing and put it into a book because so many businesses really lack the research and sales skills to penetrate the government market. Shortly after this, I put in for a copy right and began putting the book together.

BB: How is this different from other government books on the market?

JB: This book is meaty, tactical, and based on real experiences from selling and marketing to government. To my knowledge, there is not another book like this on the market. There are a few books that talk about government marketing at a very high level. There are also some books on proposal writing.

I think Jim Flyzik, President, The Flyzik Group, former Government CIO and CIO Magazine Hall of Fame Inductee said it best, “Jimmy’s book is the first time I’ve encountered so much useful information put together in one place. He obviously “gets it” when talking about the importance of knowing the uniqueness of the government customer and all the necessary nuances of developing business in this sector. The book is not only a great learning experience but also a useful reference manual for business developers and sales representatives. A good investment for companies looking to gain competitive edge.”

I encourage your readers to go to www.governmentbusinessbook.biz and read some of the reviews of the book.

BB: What can the reader expect to walk a way with after buying your book?

JB: Literally, this book is a step by step guide how to create a sales pipeline, find money, and present to the government end user. The goal of this book is to teach four things to help your business change how it goes after business in the federal information technology market:

1. Critical Research Tactics to better understand your Federal Customer

2. Building a qualified sales pipeline and executing a call plan

3. Learning how to articulate your value proposition so the government wants to buy your services

4. Marketing and branding your company- Most campaigns are designed to fail because they leave out one very critical component in their marketing and sales approach to the government.

Contact Jimmy Baker here. Order his new book How to Win Business from Government today!

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)
Feb 15 2009

Tension from the Old School

February 15, 2009 – 2:06 pm
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Perhaps you saw the trashing of Scott Monty on Jalopnik by Ray Wert (full disclosure, I did some work for Ford last summer under the Social Media Group masthead). The issue seems to be the factual questioning of Monty’s superhero status as reported in a F@st Company blog (image: tension by DCJohn).

In his trashing of the Monty, Wert purports himself as a “Journalist” and says things like “thereby getting his ass banned,” and

Which is really all this huge social media circle jerk is — an attempt to puff oneself up.

Ironically, Wert’s “proper” journalism earns him 974 RSS subs, approximately 45% of what this blog gets, and approximately 30% of Monty’s subscribers. Yeah, go old school journalism. No wonder you’re angry.

Look, let’s not overdefend Scott. He’s definitely pitching Ford pretty hard right now, but I think he’s also very open and transparent about it. If you don’t like it, he encourages you to turn it off.

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What the Jalopnik piece shows me is an underlying tension. New media consumption is still rising, and old media is still the big loser. This is backed by empirical evidence of readership and trust. Some publications and journalists are having an easier time adjusting than others. Perhaps Jalopnik should get in line.

At the same time there’s a second tension brought to the fore. The accuracy of new media, and quite frankly, it’s a fair assessment, but it’s an old issue raised by Keen and others. We discussed it, too, extensively in 2007. Accuracy and new media are not synonymous, and anyone who takes social media voices as gospel, well, you get what you pay for. Eventually there will be a reconciliation. Yet, there is no doubt: Conversations are here to stay.

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in PR Industry Trends | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)
Feb 12 2009

Distracted

February 12, 2009 – 4:33 pm

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Let’s be frank, many people are distracted these days.  More so than normal. Of course, the economy is the big reason.  But there are many things that can cause distraction in one’s life. And as David Mullen reminded us, sometimes life offers damn good reasons to become distracted.

In fact, right now I am distracted in London, England for a very good reason (image: Big Ben, London by 13Bobby).

But eventually distractions cause us to lose focus and fall into wayward patterns at work (let’s not get too excited about marketing in this post, OK?) and in life.  So where do you strike that balance?  I don’t know today any more than I did 15 years ago when I entered corporate life. I do know that understanding your goals and acceptable levels of performance are real ways to ensure the engine doesn’t get too far off the tracks.

For our content creating clients, we like to recommend an editorial mission to keep performance on track. In Mastermind groups, CEOs are encouraged to list their personal, family, financial and business goals daily (in that order, too), something I still do. 

In the end, I guess these tools and other philosophies always remind us to keep the eye on the prize.  Whether that’s family or affecting change or simply doing well at work.  But somehow there’s still no finite answer. Ultimately, distracted or committed, here or there, whatever really matters to you, it’s presence, real true presence that counts.

What do you think?

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Comments (1)

Buzz Meter: Snitch.name

February 12, 2009 – 10:15 am

The beauty of social media is that the relationships you build in person can extend to online social networks, blogs, and other social media tools. Snitch.name, also known as “The Social White Pages”, allows you to find information about almost anyone on specific websites.

To find information about a person, input their first and last name and select from an assortment of sites categorized in social, professional, academic, blogs, general search engines, and regional. Snitch.name will provide snapshots of the results all in one page and it’s free. Some popular sites include Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Myspace, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, and Wordpress Blogs.

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Buzz Meter Ranking: 2 out of 4 Buzz Bees

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Positive: The results are two-fold, you get the information you’re looking for from the person you searched and now you can connect with them on the networks you haven’t.

Negative: Concerns for privacy is always a factor when joining a social network or signing up to use a specific tool. For Snitch.name, there is no way to stop anyone from searching your name and retrieving information about you.

Conclusion: Snitch.name is a good way to find information about someone – especially since you don’t have to go to these sites separately to find if a person is on Facebook or Twitter. You’ll be surprised as to what information anyone can find about another person on the internet just by using Snitch.name. I suggest you try this tool on yourself and see what comes up!

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Marinel Mones | Posted in Digital Marketing | Comments (5)
Feb 11 2009

Getting Social Media Approved By Your Boss

February 11, 2009 – 5:45 pm

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Our final Georgetown U. Social Media for Social Good class post on the Groundswell deals specifically with Chapter 11, which discusses strategies on how to get social media improved inside the organization. Before I begin, a very special thanks to Charlene Li, who guest lectured last night via Skype (full photo set here).

Rather than comment on this excellent chapter, I’d like to offer our experiences working with organizations to get social media approved. At some point, all nonprofit, corporate and government social media efforts require approval. While most executives understand that social media has become a must have in the larger media environment, many organizations still view it as experimental marketing. In large part, that’s because most of them fail in their initial self-started efforts. 

So, that being said here are some tips to getting your boss to say OK. This post is in the form of tactics or ways to nudge the process along. Several Twitters also weighed in and their answers are included.  Thanks to Andrew Wright, nishland, Philip Zorn, Larry_Slo, Chris Allison, Robin Yasinow, Chris Gasparro, and Mark Chrisman.

First off, we recommend using a pilot project to get through the door.  Reticence is often conquered by a win, and the best way to provide a win is via a pilot project.  Tips to ensuring you choose the right pilot project:

  • Begin with some form of listening or monitoring. You must be in tune with your social web community if you want this to work. Hopefully you are doing this before you begin, but just in case…
  • Simple and relatively low cost is good.  When there is fear involved, an easy, relatively affordable project is an easy thing to sign off on.
  • Short timeframes help, too. You want to make this a quick test.
  • Make sure you have a measurable goal. Look at your strategy, it will tell you exactly what to measure. You must be able to attain ROI.  That is why attaining something worthwhile is essential, whether it’s  micro-donations, market intelligence, feedback on a new product, click-throughs to a store, registrants for a value added webinar, or some other measurable result. You must be able to declare victory.
  • You have to feel confident that you can attain said goals. Make sure it’s doable. It may be worth bouncing off someone else who has more experience.

    Common Objections

People who are skittish often demonstrate their reticence by throwing out objections.  Here are some of the more common ones and methods to handle them.

1) If someone references past failures, show them successes, preferably your own.  Often best practices have not been deployed, and your asking for dollars to achieve best practices.

2) If they believe you need to publish on Facebook or a blog, and that’s not what you’re recommending, focus on the stakeholder (e.g. donor, customer, advocate), not the tool. It’s all about where your community is.  Find them before you meet with executives, and understand what they care about. Bring evidence with you. A blog or Facebook group is often not the answer.

3) Our community isn’t out there is a common objection, particularly for any stakeholder group over 30 years old. Show them real conversations over a significant period of time that the stakeholders are having – without the organization. My favorite way to do that is to type relevant key words or the corporate name on search.twitter.com. Another method is to use market research countering those misconceptions.

4) Control.  They don’t want to engage in negative comments.  There may be little you can do about this, but I always like to show folks 1) that people are already talking negatively about them and 2) tangible evidence through prior case studies that direct engagement actually reduces negativity and builds relationships.

5) Invented here syndrome. I remember serving as in-house communicator. We may have had some fantastic ideas, but sometimes because it came from the in-house department executives were skeptical. That’s when you trot in a friend or a bonafide consultant who has outside experience. Let them tell your executives the facts and set them straight (so to speak).

I know we’ve got a lot of experienced readers out there.  What would you add to this post for our students?

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (45)
Feb 10 2009

Five Social Media Strategies

February 10, 2009 – 11:27 am

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In our class this week, we discussed several strategies presented in Groundswell. To augment next week’s reading and to benefit Buzz Bin readers in general, I’ve compiled several other social media posts that have  been published here or on the Now Is Gone blog.  These  methodologies and frameworks can either form strategies or inform larger, more complicated efforts (image: chess set by striatic).

Influencing Journalists Using Social Media – The Fifth Estate manifesto outlined the dynamics between traditional media (sometimes dubbed the fourth estate in communications circles) and social media. This strategy was also discussed on Now Is Gone in the Public Relations Long Tail.  Intelligently deployed influencer relations strategies can be used to cause a “fifth estate” social media “groundswell,” which attracts the attention of newspapers, TV reporters, etc.:

In essence, the community informs the media when a story reaches a level of importance. The Fifth Estate has become the ultimate source.

Confederated Social Media – Large unwieldy corporate and nonprofit organizations cannot deploy social media from corporate communications. “Instead of trying to control the social media effort under one roof, confederated models try to empower individual stakeholders in the larger organization. A confederated model for a company or non-profit assumes and includes the following:

  • Lack of control on the local frontline
  • An engaged communicator who will use social tools, regardless of corporate communication activities
  • That same communicator will likely cooperate if they are free to communicate as they like
  • Corporate decides to build a framework of tools for local chapters
  • Tools include social network and blogging platforms, graphics, tagging guidelines, and social media best practice training and guidelines
  • A corresponding corporate initiative that embodies best practices
  • “Wayward” efforts are met with suggestions for betterment rather than enforcement
  • A continuing commitment by corporate to highlight great local case studies
  • A continuing commitment to enhance, better and promote the framework”

    •  

    Water Strategy – In Think Liquid (the final chapter of Now Is Gone), it’s important that the strategist acknowledge that tools and technologies and applications evolve rapidly in social media. The community moves relatively rapidly from social network to social network, from blog to blog. Popularity can be measured in years or even months. To remain relevant, marketers will be forced into a constant social media adaptation process. They will need to be liquid, moving with their community.

    Participation Is Marketing – With a fractured, traditional media marketplace and new social media channels, message control is dead.  Participation is marketing is not new (as Rich Becker likes to remind me), but it is reborn because of social media. Most marketers can recognize the traditional participation approach with community evangelists (usually non-profits and philanthropic efforts — see the National Business Community blog). Successful social media marketing efforts require companies to become a part of the community. Case studies are listed.

    Team Social Media – Small businesses and consultants often feature an individual as the face of the company. But companies and organizations that want to market on the social web for the long term need to deploy teams.  This allows them to avoid the pitfalls of a “personal brand” departure and nurture a social media presence built to last.

    Additional Resources

    Social Media Content Process: This process on Now Is Gone helps new and old communicators alike build social media content strategies from start to finish.

    Strategy — A primer on what exactly strategy is…  

     
    AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Comments (18)