Archive for November 2009
Do You Promote Your Blog Everyday?
I’ve been thinking about how much time a person or company should spend on Marketing / Promoting their Blog. Is everything you do on your Blog considered Marketing and or Promoting? I mean everyday you do things like branding, PR, adding content and making sure your name (company name / brand) is everywhere. Is there ever a time when marketing what you sell or do is too much marketing? I can’t imagine an executive ever saying we are advertising to much, we have our name out there too much we have saturated the marketplace with our Brand. If you do have someone like that, he or she probably won’t be there very long. I would rather have the problem of too much business and too much awareness than not enough.
Some of the tasks involved in marketing & PR today are changing subtly, because the rules are changing, now that Social Media has become mainstream you can’t just set it and leave it. You have to listen more than you do anything in todays new marketing environment. So, how much time should you spend listening? More than you are probably willing to spend time doing I’ll bet. If you aren’t willing to listen, how will you know what to do? How will you know when to do it?
So I keep asking myself, how much time should I spend doing PR & Marketing my blog? I think you should invest more time listening and then figuring out how you can solve what you just heard that day. So, do you market your blog everyday? How much time do you alot for that task?
Do you promote your blog everyday? I would love your input so please leave a comment below.
Why Corporation's Don't Get Social Media
This has been on mind for some time now, why corporations don’t get social media. I may be way off base here but there are primarily two or three reasons why they don’t or can’t wrap their brians around what’s happening in the new way marketing.
1.) They haven’t tried, touched, or even asked what the meaning of Social Media is or is not.
2.) Don’t have a clear understanding of Outbound & Inbound Marketing concepts.
3.) Only know how to Broadcast – push, sell products & services.
4.) View a relationship as a sale only.
I’m sure this list could be longer but it’s clear to me that unless there is a simple way of helping the highly educated (constipated) executives, this isn’t going to change anytime soon. Why do a very small few get it and the majority don’t? Fear of Change, Fear of Loss, Fear of not seeing the big picture due to a poor understanding of what they are being asked to participate in.
I know a particular business owner who has been picking my brain, wants to understand the details first, make sure he experiences somekind of ROI before commiting to this new marketing environment. This would lead me to item #5 – CONTROL – there is a fear of losing control like never before, look at the music industry, a prime example of the fear of losing money. Eventually, music will be free, or at least some kind of Collective License that allows for a mutual interest rather than a monopoly.
It’s not all the business owners & executives fault. The fault lies with those who consider themselves experts in this Social Media environment, provide poor information and relate the message that only confuses them more.
This has been written about before, I’m not saying anything new here. The truth is it will never change, just as there are criminals, Internet Marketers and Social Media Experts…there will always be people looking to find a short cut to success. Most people don’t want to wait, have patience and or do the work, they just want to cash grab and do as little as possible. Knowing that, I’m not shocked or surprised at how business owners respond when the topic of Social Media comes up.
So what’s the answer? Do your homework, get a good understanding of what your prospect or client is asking, learn what Social Media is, learn Social Media’s place in the marketing mix, and above all….if you don’t know, shut your mouth or say I don’t know but I’ll find out. Don’t spew crap so you don’t look bad, tell the truth and go on the journey with your prospective client, better yet, invite someone who does understand to the meeting. This problem #6 – poor representation which means the wrong information is being shared.
I’ve ranted enough on the topic, there’s a Social Media Mess out there and it’s up to us to clean it up. If Social Media is putting the power back into the hands of we the people, then let’s make sure we are using that power correctly and for good.
Why Corporation’s Don’t Get Social Media? You tell me, I’m just one voice, one person listening to business owners in my area, what are you coming up against and how are you being part of the solution?
Two Key Factors To Your Social Media Success
Technology is growing at an exponential rate; we truly have no way of keeping up via traditional means when it comes to tracking. Organizations struggle to stay focused, struggle to maintain, and struggle to provide systems and services that meet their business objectives. The shift in how business gets done is making it more and more difficult to maintain profit margins and business lifestyles that most are accustom to.
Today’s I.T. Strategic Planning is shedding its skin and taking on a new look and meaning. Ramping up I.T. staff is no longer the norm; reducing I.T. Teams and virtualization is; it allows organizations to be more financially responsible. CIO’s have a tougher time justifying their existence, the role is becoming more and more extinct, and is easily handled without the large investment in overhead. As much as it pains me to say that, I have to accept the new landscape of how Information Technology is implemented and managed. There’s still a need for CIO’s in large organizations but new companies are building streamlined teams, technology allows for startups to have fewer management roles. This new model allows for higher profits and less management of people.
Customer service is making a huge shift in what it means, Customer Service or Support is NOT fixing or adding a new feature, it is about Communication and Solving problems. This gap is hurting far too many businesses, they need to pay attention and listen to what their customers are saying about them, what they want from them.
Small businesses are literally taking a fetal position when it comes to understanding the change taking place, that the Internet is empowering the individual rather than the large organization. The power of the person has been lifted to a level no one saw coming, all because of the Internet. The Internet is the game changer; the Internet was and is clearly misunderstood by the smaller Mom & Pop businesses. The Internet solved the problem of digital distribution, this is an Access Based Economy where we click to get. The transition for small business can be easy to most difficult, undertsanding technology or how technology will help them is the key.
If there ever was a need in your local marketplace it’s helping those small business understand that they won’t be able to continue as they have and enjoy the life they hoped to build when they opened the doors. More importantly, those business owners need to learn about humility, be willing to say they don’t understand and do indeed need help with the Internet. Most small business owners had an Entrepreneurial Seizure, they thought because they knew how to do the work they knew how to run a business. I recommend reading Michael Gerber’s book, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
Today a couple of things scream for attention in my humble opinion:
1. Listening – Listen to what is being said about your brand and or business.
2. Filtering Content is more important than creating it.
Listening & Filtering Content are two key factors to your Social Media success, small & big businesses at large still haven’t grasped these two concepts with any kind of clarity.
We are in an Extreme Reputation Economy, popularity is becoming a Social Capital, and it will be as valuable as real money in the coming months if it hasn’t happened already. How you present yourself, your product, and your business will generate a reputation, take the time to craft your reputation.
What do you think?
How I'm Spending My Saturday Afternoon
I had to get out of the home office today, I drove down the road to a great little coffee shop called Gourmet Gallery. It so happens I had come down to my church to let the cleaners in so I had an excuse to get out, right next door is the coffee shop, so I brought my Laptop. One of the great things about getting out is you run into people you normally wouldn’t meet during the week, I even got to help setup the Christmas Tree here today!
Here’s a cool pic of the shop:
The tree is tucked way in the back of the shop, they have two already setup and a third back in the left hand corner of the picture. While here I did some research online and hunkered down to a London Fog, have you ever tried one? They are so yummy. Here I am sipping on one:
Owen Greaves
It’s a great day, you should be here! Cya Later.
RTs & Tags – Will They Help You Rise To The Top?
The conversation of Ubiquity makes the early adopters and experts cringe, it means quantity over quality. By that I mean, Social Media allows everyone to participate, be all things to everyone, build a niche, create a following and then brand. Part of the problem is Social Media attracts poor quality and mediocrity, not too mention the Spammers and unethical Internet Marketers. It will water down everything and make it harder to be found or heard because of all the noise.
Frankly, mediocrity is what we’ve had under the control model, big business, traditional marketing and so on. Social Media’s mass ubiquity model changes the control model, the control model deals with people formerly known as consumers. Today we all do things to get traction, to get attention and be heard. That traction is the result of engagement, exposure and attention. Whatever is good comes to the top. The key is to find the point of attention, being different and unique, that is not going to change.
It’s true the biggest challenge is the noise and staying on top of trends. Finding the point of attention helps solve that problem, there’s more to it of course but it’s a start. Filtering content these days is becoming more important than creating it, there is much to be done here, tools that make it easier and faster to filter content will help the best of the best rise to the top. One of the useful tools to rising to the top is being tagged & RT’d to be heard. RTs & Tags will play a huge role in identifying quality content and quality people.
So what does Mass Ubiquity mean? How does the cream rise to the top? It’s simple really, it’s based on Merit. I’m generalizing here but the masses will put you on Lists, RT your work, Tag you and Like you for the work you’ve done. These features will help you rise to the top. Measuring these indicators will be another interesting equation, but we have great people out there like Olivier Blanchard to make sure we focus on the right metrics.
RTs & Tags, these WOM (Word Of Mouth) tools and terms are becoming the secret sauce of Social Media Rock Star’s & Trust Agent’s we know today. But in the end, quality is good and crap is not. The RTs, Tags, Likes and Lists will work towards that end, manage your brand, do the right things and you will live long and prosper here on the Internet. Social Capital will be as important as real money. Why? Because we are in an extreme reputation economy, word of mouth matters more today than it ever has.
RTs & Tags – Will They Help You Rise To The Top?
What do you think?