Archive for February, 2010


Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

The Secret to Social Media

Trevor Eisenman

Social Media Strategist: Trevor Eisenman

Helping people design a useful Social Media internet strategy to generate interest and reach for their business is what I’m all about.  And since most of my clients weren’t born with a smartphone in their hands, there are usually a few key points to clear up about Social Media right from the beginning.  After all, Social Media is a relatively new topic.  Or is it?

If you step back and take a look how information moves in Social Media, it’s quite different than “Traditional Media.”   Back in the day, most people got their information from newspapers or magazines.  The direction of information is from the few (the writer or publisher) down to the many.  We’ve all seen this in action in our daily lives, maybe to the point of not even noticing it anymore.  Got a favorite newspaper columnist or TV show host?   One single person communicating to possibly millions of people with little interaction between the communicator and the listeners.

As we step into the Social Media arena, the direction and flow of information is between the readers and the writers.  The interaction (thanks to the internet) tends to be instant and the ripple effect from this sharing of information can spread far and wide.  With the users of Social Media able to contribute news and information to anyone willing to listen, we now have a conversation.  Just like the conversations you are already having at the local coffeeshop or at work.

Twitter small

The recent buzzing and tittering by the media about Twitter and Social Media in general, it’s no wonder business owners may feel forced into using these internet-based communication tools, or perhaps miss sales opportunities their competition is getting instead of them.  Not being familiar with the landscape, many make that sometimes fatal error of confusing Social Media with traditional advertising.

But remember: traditional advertising is the few pushing out information to the many.   No matter how you dress it up, advertising never was and never will be the same thing as a conversation.  Advertising flows up and down, and conversations flow back and forth.  If you are blasting everyone you know on social media with your marketing or business message continuously, ask yourself:  who am I talking to?  If the answer is everyone at once, you might be advertising mode unintentionally.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s OK to let everyone know what you are doing in general.  You’ve gotten those letters at Christmas where a relative runs off a bunch of copies of the family “newsletter” and sends it to everyone?  I like reading those.  It’s just an update, a catch-up session.   But when 90% of the people connecting to me on Twitter are saying the same message (“Want to get 16,000 followers on Twitter?” sound familiar?), we’ve crossed over that thin line between conversing and advertising.

So what’s the secret to this Social Media thing?   It IS faster than mailing a letter or a postcard.  More interactive than TV.   Cheap to boot!  Seems like the perfect advertising tool.   But to use Social Media as just another advertising channel misses the hidden power of Social Media.  What is that hidden power?  It’s so painfully visible, so obvious.  It’s something I call “Commonality.”

It’s where you and I share a common interest, or have similar background.   It’s liking the same funny movie, or both growing up in the South with fried chicken, or having visited the same restaurant in Europe.  It boils down to this:  if you and I have something in common (no matter what it is), we understand each other better to that degree.

petsIf you have a pet dog, and I have a pet dog, we instantly understand each other that much more, and, to the degree that we understand each other, we are enabled to create a personal, lasting, and genuine friendship.  Social Networks facilitate this instant understanding because you can share so many aspects of yourself in a quick glance.

Ever get a friend request on Facebook from someone that doesn’t even have their picture posted and hardly anything listed on their profile?  Little hard to cozy up to, isn’t it?   Kind of like getting a “friend” request from a statue.  Cold.

Social Media is a breeze, really.  Express who you are.  Make it personal (but not TOO personal!).  The more you describe yourself, or rather, profile yourself, on these social networks, the more aspects there are to resonate with for someone who doesn’t yet know you.  I know I prefer to do business with someone I like and trust.   Would you like and trust someone you’d never met before, but who showed up on your door with a slick advertising message?  Didn’t think so.

Does all this seem hard?  It’s not, because if you have already been in business (and thus sales) in any capacity, you’ve already been using Social Media.  Ever strike up a conversation with someone at an after-hours party?  Did they eventually ask you what you do for a living?  If you have, you’ve already got practice in Social Media.  I’ll bet you’ve even gotten a few new customers that way.  Now it’s just a matter of moving that same conversation to an online platform like Facebook or MySpace. It’s the individual and friendly (another word for social) conversations that will forward your business message, because people will like you, and even more importantly, understand you on a level they aren’t even aware of themselves.  Powerful stuff.

Social Media Networks are a fun, useful way to share the individual that is you with the rest of the world.  The steps to participating are as follows:  Join, listen to the conversations  that are already happening, participate where you are interested or can be useful to others, give where you can, and be prepared to receive what others give you in return.   In this way you can organically build a genuine community of new friends, customers and goodwill that may last a lifetime, no matter what business you may find yourself in down the road.

Authored by: Trevor Eisenman


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Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

SEX

Sex

This article is not about THAT WORD the three-letter word that starts with “S” and ends with “X”. But it is about choosing words and topics that people find interesting.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to exclude SEX from this discussion but I’m just pointing out that the key to getting people to open their awareness and listen to your message is by using words and images they are interested in.

Of course, SEX is a pretty easy way to get someone’s attention.  Even the letters in SEX get massive attention – X, or XX, or XXX.  This makes you wonder about the people who thought up the name Exxon, doesn’t it?

Anyway, many are using SEX to market lots of things.  We try to find keywords that will attract just your target audience and not everyone on the planet.

But where was I?  I was distracted.  Oh yeah, finding out what words and pictures to use to connect with your target audience.  This is key to any marketing endeavor.

For a successful marketing campaign the creative people must know the target audience thoroughly. Just a short simple list would include: 1) Who is the target audience, 2) What’s going through their head (what problems are they focused on), 3) What they view as solutions to that problem and what solutions they see as valueless to the solution of that problem, 4) What images they reach for, and 5) What images repel them.

For example, if I know you love tennis, and you worship slender blondes from the former Soviet Union and I’m trying to sell you a Canon digital camera the chances are that I’ve got a pretty good shot at selling you a camera if I hire Maria Sharapova.

maria_sharapova_03I’ve used Maria to grab your attention and now I can deliver a marketing message.  On the other hand, if you hate blondes and blew your knee out playing tennis, my marketing campaign will probably miss.

OUR MESSAGE: Knowing your audience increases the likelihood of a payback on your investment.

Even though this is known we still see people skipping the research step and shooting in the dark. You know how many times you’re going to hit the target if you’re shooting in the dark?

Those who skip research have two choices: 1) just mimic what everybody else is doing or, 2) try totally new and never been seen before.

When you mimic your competitors you look just like them.  You blend into the wallpaper and waste your money.

When you try something “really out there” you end up with a real crap shoot.  Now you’re betting the farm on something totally unknown.

Why don’t we just jump out of the plane blindfolded. Somebody will yell before we hit the ground.

Let’s talk about “really out there” commercials. I bet you can name five commercials you’ve seen (that you can’t remember the product’s name) that were REALLY COOL and REALLY OUT THERE.  Problem is, you probably didn’t buy it. The client paid for your amusement but got no return.

If they’d known what you’re interested in, they may have grabbed you. Maybe they didn’t market to you an aspect of the product that would have made it appealing to you.

Marketing is funny that way.  If you do your homework, it will work much better than if you guess. The choice is do you want to guess what will interest your target audience or do you want to “understand” your audience so you’ll know how to engage them.

Geico has four or five TV ad campaigns running now.  I’m sure they’ve won many awards. Though extremely creative and memorable I question if they work well for the client.   I can repeat them verbatim but I won’t call for a quote. Why? I like geckos, cavemen, basketball players, Rod Serling, Charlie Daniels, Ed “too tall” Jones….

I’m not interested in the FUNNIEST insurance company. I want an insurance company who is there the day after the big storm knocks a tree down on our house.  If they’d surveyed me, they would know that.

And so, my friends, I come to the end of the article.  Let’s review.  I attracted you with SEX talk.  I showed you a SEXY picture (in the sense of athletic prowess = sexiness). I delivered my message: “Research makes for effective marketing”.

If I was writing a Pay Per Click ad, in which I’d have to pay for every click through,  I would had very specific words to only attract people most likely to be my leads.

So now that you know this, will you take action?

Will you call us? You might.

THE OFFER: What if I offered you a free Business Development Survey, which will clarify what can be done to get a payback on your marketing dollars? Hmmmm?

Getting interested?

BUT WAIT. THERE’S MORE: Wouldn’t it be SEXY to really have a rockin’ 2010?  New clients, big jobs, nice car, new place, bills paid off?

You can find out how…for free.  Call now.

Now that’s good marketing. Of course, if I knew you better I wouldn’t have had to rely on SEX so much to keep your attention. I could have talked about what you were really interested in.

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Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Simple Ways to get Complex Shots

REALLY Simple Marketing Solutions

This is a series on marketing solutions. Often the simplest solution is the best. Here’s one you might find interesting.

Are you surrounded by people who just can’t keep themselves from making things as complex as possible? They’ve got this idea that for something to be worthwhile it MUST be complex and very hard.

We don’t work that way.  Hey.  It may be our experience or we just like to have fun or some of both.  We think there is always a way to get what you want simply and easily.

This Norm Taylor spot is a good example. It was a difficult TV commercial to do.  The storyboard called for a distraught woman in a car which had broken down at night on the freeway.  She almost gets hit a number of times.  Her car’s a lemon and, as the narrator says, she needs to call Norm Taylor to get her money back.

Well, as you may know, it costs a godzillion dollars to close a freeway, plus permits, traffic cops, firemen etc. Even renting a piece of asphalt big enough for background trucks and cars to zoom past in the background was pricey and we would have to rent a generator to fake the lights overhead.

So, we decided to shoot the foreground of the woman in the car against green screen and then marry it to a background shot of freeway traffic at night.

We thought it’d be fun to shoot a time lapse of the green screen shoot so we didn’t bore you to death.

We call the time lapse video “Gone in 60 Seconds”.

Our pro’s really did an excellent job.  Better than some of the green screen in Die Hard 3.   If you want to see the final spot, click the picture below.

Written by: Fletcher Murray of The Association

President of The Association

Fletcher Murray

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Monday, February 1st, 2010

Small Business vs Big Business

In Social Media Marketing an Hour a Day, Dave Evans remarks on one of the reasons a company wouldn’t want to start an online social networking campaign.  Not enough happy customers!  In the online world, it takes seconds to share information with hundreds, even thousands of millions of people.  If your customers mostly don’t have good things to say about your service or product, opening the door to social media and the uncontrolled conversations that occur online could be costly.

Because small business owners tend to do a lot of the work themselves, and the customers often have direct access to the owner, it usually is easier to get good service.   Even custom service.  The result is that the customer tends to be happier and there is a better chance customers will be become Brand Advocates.  Compare this to a franchised operation!  The whole reason for franchising is so you can make a ton of money, in most cases.  Customized service tends to be a little lower on the list of priorities.

Ok, so as a small business owner you probably have more happy customers than your larger competitors.  And this is where your edge is over big business when it comes to social media.  The big companies tend to forget about the past customers and all of their efforts are on gaining new ones.  A great example of this are cell phone companies that give the best deals to the new customer, leaving their long-term customers out in the cold.

Why is this an edge for you?  Well, because in the case of a small business with a high ratio of happy customers, the customers can do the heavy lifting for you in the “new customer” department.  Remember, we are talking about happy customers here.  This edge doesn’t exist if your customers are mostly unhappy with your services.   The happy customers, however, by blogging and tweeting about their experiences, can affect the new customer’s opinion and decision to buy.  Do you research a purchase on Google before you commit?  Well, so do your customers!

Here’s a really simple strategy almost any business owner can use:

1.  Create a Facebook Fan Page for your business.

2.  As you come into contact your leads, prospects and customers like you normally do, work out a way to capture their email address with the purpose of inviting them to your Fan Page. This could be as simple as a sheet of paper on a clip board for their name and email address.  Tip: When a customer is interested but declines to purchase “right now”, mention you have a Fan Page on Facebook. 9 times out of 10 they are on Facebook and will agree to be sent a link to the Fan Page.

3. Schedule time each week or each month to email the Fan Page URL to these specific customers.

4. Keep updating the content on the Fan Page with news, photos, event dates, etc.  Make sure to add the “Reviews” application to the Fan Page!

5. Ask customers to write reviews and have promotions from time to time that give an incentive for your customers to share your company with their friends. Facebook has applications for that too.

A really, really good reason to have a Facebook Fan Page for your business is because it is completely indexed by Google.  One of my smaller clients has only been on the Internet for about 4 months, if that.  She doesn’t have a website yet, but she has a Fan Page.  With minimal content, she is now on the first page of Google when you search for her product by name.  Ever since we started that Fan Page her phone orders have been steadily increasing as well.

There is a lot you can do with a Fan page, and it’s free so it’s a good place to start!  As long as you keep your customers happy with good service, keep inviting people to join your page, and interact (read “listen”) with your customers, you’ll find that in most cases, your customers start marketing for you.  At the very least, you can improve your ranking on Google.

Having a Fan Page doesn’t mean you should avoid getting proper SEO done, or avoid getting a website or even avoid doing marketing and advertising.  All of those tried and true actions are valid and should be done if you can.  But if you can’t afford them, Facebook Fan Pages are a great way to get started.

Anyway, the point is, as a small business owner you have something the big guys don’t have.  YOU.  As long as your customers can easily “share” you with their friends (who are likely in the same demographic as your customer!), they can pioneer in areas you couldn’t reach for lack of a budget or other reasons.  I can’t think of any other medium where it’s easier to share than Social Media and online Social Networking . Ok, maybe preschool.   But 4 year olds are probably not the right demographic!

Written by: Trevor Eisenmen

Social Media Expert: Trevor Eisenman

Social Media Expert: Trevor Eisenman

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