Category: Copy & Content

Everyone always jumps onto Facebook and Twitter as one of their first social media activities. I recommend you think about blogging first. No other endeavor can be better to promote you or your brand as a subject matter expert.

While I always say that building relationships are the most important aspect of social media, you absolutely want to be perceived as the subject matter expert in the area your brand pertains to as you build relationships with your potential and existing customers. Once you have a core portfolio of reference pieces (blog posts or articles) your use of Facebook, Twitter and other social distribution and engagement channels becomes that much more valuable.

A number of months back, I wrote an article “Content is Super Important !!! (But Not King)” so you might ask, why the change of mind now as I emphasize the value of blogging? Well in that article, I declared, “Content is not King. Conversations around content used to be King. Now, sharing content is King. (Long live the King. )” And this is the crux of the opportunity blogging presents, not just for your social media efforts, but for your overall brand reputation. Your content not only allows you to tell your brand stories and reinforce your knowledge and expertise in the area you market, but it presents opportunities to engage in discussions with your target market. It also presents opportunity for sharing your content … not just you with your audience, but the passing of your content from your audience to their network. This is word of mouth marketing working at its best.

So if you have an inkling to blog, I have seven tips for you …

1) Consider topics/subjects – consider topics and subjects that you should cover. These topics should be relevant to the audience you seek to attract and they should reinforce you expertise.
2) Passion – You or the person that is blogging for your company MUST have passion for what they are writing about. Find the right people. They need not always be the top brass. It cannot be a person that sees blogging as the tenth area they are responsible for and is always dropping writing a blog post down their priority queue. Find the people who are excited to get the word out and share what they know.
3) Speak naturally – A blog is not formal corporate communication. Write like you talk and avoid jargon and being verbose.
4) Discussions – Invite discussion and make sure to respond. It is often helpful to end a post with a question such as “What do you think?”
5) Sharing – Think about how your content is going to get shared. Yes, use Facebook, Twitter and other social channels to post reference to your content. Make sure you include social sharing buttons on each content piece. Use tagging for SEO. Engage on other blogs and websites. Feel free to discuss your prospective in the comments section of others’ articles and posts. While you share your viewpoint, drop in a URL for your article from time to time (but do not just drop a reference to your posts).
6) Consistency – Stay with it and post constantly. Be patient and stay on a periodic schedule.
7) Commitment – It takes times to build a portfolio of material and build an audience that comes to read it. Stay committed to blogging, responding, and engaging.

Blogging should be viewed as setting your brand tone to reinforce the brand position. The combination of having your own media and the curation of other content that supports your position allows your audience to get a strong picture of what your brand stands for. Building brand perception is key to strengthening loyalty and relationships.

Hopefully I have inspired you to get serious about blogging. Are you ready to start? Or if you already blog, what are your experiences and words of wisdom? Join the conversation.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

This past week, a colleague asked me if I could help out her friend with some social media advice for her legal business. The first questioned that was asked was, “How should I use Facebook?”

In other instances, people ask me about social media use for brands. They want to know what they might accomplish, what they should expect, or what that they should aim for.

Let’s start out with a simple premise … use social media to establish yourself or your brand as a leader … a thought leader on a particular subject, the brand leader in a specific vertical industry, a leader for selected target audience. Would you want to accomplish anything less?

What does it mean to be a leader? I think if you research this question you will find countless answers. About ten years ago, I was part of a marketing leadership team in a big corporation. This leadership group was made up of a number of up and comers in the corporation. The group was formed as part of a succession planning for key positions within the corporation. At one of our sessions, we had our chairman come speak about leadership. He asked all of us, “What does it mean to be a leader?” There were some basic definitions answered as well as profound and esoteric answers. After everyone was finished, the chairman simply stated “a leader is someone that people want to follow.” This was his exact answer.

“A leader is someone people want to follow.” Follow someone … isn’t this something that has direct meaning in a social media context and yet this was the statement a good five years before anyone even heard of the term social media. And now we have new meaning of what a follower is with the emergence and adoption of social media. There are a handful of reasons why someone gets a following in social media. The follower gets an incentives, gets valuable information, feels like they are in the know, is entertained, and others. Some of these reasons demonstrate leadership. Even if the reason was not due to leadership, it takes leadership to keep a follower engaged.

So now think about the relationship followers and leadership. If we marry these two concepts of following and leadership, I think we are on the path of social media success. Here are the 3 steps of accomplishing leadership with social media:

1. Produce content to reinforce your subject matter expertise. Before you even start with social media, you must think content. What are you going to produce to help your target audience? What peaks their interest and makes them want to come back to your page and get more information? What is it that you need to produce that makes the target audience say, “They get it” in reference to you or your brand? Consider this your pre-work before you ever start any social media endeavor. Not only will you need to have a number of content pieces prepared from the start, but you will need a constant periodic flow to reinforce that “you get it.”

2. Identify where your target audience goes to seek information relevant to your brand category. You cannot build “the field of dreams.” You need to identify where your target audience goes to learn and discuss topics and issues relevant to what you or your brand offer. Your social media plight starts there, not on your Facebook page or other social assets you manage.

3. Apply the A-Path of social media. A number of years ago, I defined the social media A-Path. Since that time, I have written a number of articles that reference the A-Path. I explicitly use this approach in the social media practice I lead at MediaWhiz. The A-Path is core to social media. It describes how to build relationships via social media. Attention > Attraction > Affinity > Audience > Advocacy.

Do not sell yourself short. Seek to establish and maintain ultimate leadership. Continually prove and reinforce this leadership by producing appropriate content. Don’t wait for your audience to find you. Go out and find them and engage with them where they already exist. Then work on building a relationship. A connection strong enough to warrant asking them to visit your digital assets. And then over time, a relationship strong enough that your audience becomes your source for marketing as they provide word of mouth referrals for your brand.

This is how you capture leadership with social media. Are you ready?

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

The (successful) marketing landscape is changing because the consumer and their behavior are changing. No longer does a person see a commercial on television, in print, or hear one on the radio and act. Intrusion marketing has seen its day.

Now the STDs that I am talking about are likely not the ones that first came to your mind. I am talking about Social, Timing, and Data. Let me put it to you this way. Remember the commercial for Trident gum that stated “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Trident for their patients that chew gum?” What if a brand could plant in your mind, “4 out of 5 of my friends prefer ?” Which is more compelling? Which is more worthy of having influence on your purchase decision?

Point number 2 … what if you were shopping in a store and you received a promotion that was based on your shopping history. The example I love to give is as follows … Say you were shopping at the Gap. You get a text message (or promo delivered by an app) that offers you 20% off of underwear. Now that offer will either make you happy or weird you out – simply based on purchase history. Do you buy underwear at the Gap? Totally relevant store promotion if you have purchased underwear there, and on the flipside, the promotion might give you the shivers if you never thought of the Gap as a place to purchase underwear.

So the new marketing landscape is a combination of getting referrals and word of mouth marketing from your trusted network, and getting timely, relevant information based on accurate and well interpreted data. STDs – social, timely, and data. Let’s work STDs in reverse order.

First data … companies need to collect important data such as customer preferences and purchase history. Most people have strong and understandable privacy concerns. But it is up to each company to prove to their target audience that they are going to use customer data in a fashion that is protective and beneficial to their customers. There is a point where brands can build the reputation of “you provide the right feedback and information to us and we will make it worth your while.” Collect data in a non-corporate way and explain your brand’s use. Don’t put this use information in “Terms and Conditions” that no one bothers to read. As you collect information (including purchases) give immediate feedback on how the data will and will not be used and reinforce that customer data is protected and not shared.

Once you start to collect appropriate, relevant information, you are now in the position to provide individualized, timely information and promotions. This helps to make your consumer feel like they are the brand focused customer. Not some speck in a mass of marketing advertisement. This will help to further the relationship between your brand and your audience. I cannot emphasize enough how important this aspect is to the new marketing landscape. Timeliness and relevance spawn brand action and brand action should be the marketing objective.

We’ve addressed “data” and “timely” … now on to “social.” As you provide timely relevant information, keep the conversation going. Stay social. It will build a deeper relationship with your audience. Identify your power users, participants, and communicators. Build one-to-one conversations and relationships with them. This is the start to acquiring advocates and strengthening your word of mouth marketing.

When you put social, timely, and data (STDs) all together, you will find that 4 out of 5 friends recommend your brand not only to those that ask, but unprompted in forums, platforms and networks. And that is the power of STDs in the new marketing landscape. Don’t be afraid of STDs. Embrace them.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

About a week ago, I was doing a social media briefing and I was talking about the importance of content. I made the comment “content has to be awesome.” I got a response, “does it really need to be awesome?” Heck – yeah !!!

Let me put it to you this way … when you share something with your network, do you ever share something that is just okay? Some people think the term “word of mouth” is over used. Frankly, I totally disagree. Word of mouth is the holy grail of marketing. There is nothing more compelling, more influential than word of mouth to tee up a potential sale. Marketers should do everything to charge and amp the probability of word of mouth.

“Content is not king. Conversation around content is king.” I’ve been known to comment, tweet, and post these two lines at least a few dozen times. I am not so sure about this anymore, and now it is time to change it … “Content is not King. Conversations around content used to be King. Now, sharing content is King.” (Long live the King. )

If you have seen my A-Path and/or The Social Media Marketing Funnel, you know that I emphasize the importance capturing brand advocates and provide some steps to do so. Advocates are the pinnacle outcome of social media execution. Advocates share content and produce “earned media” as well. Thus, content plays a very important role in producing advocates.

So it all starts with having a great product or service for a target segment. (Always has to start there.) And assuming that is in place, you want everyone talking about your brand. Your content (owned media) is the core. Forget advertising-type of content for social efforts. Think of your content strategy as:

1) telling your story,
2) associating your brand with specific topics and segments,
3) demonstrating subject matter expertise,
4) needing to be entertaining, informative, and/or deliver some quantifiable value, and
5) consisting of mixed media and mixed channels.

If you pull these 5 considerations together, you are really “sponsoring a topic.” What do I mean by this? Well start by thinking of “sponsorship” in a traditional sense. If you are a brand, you define places your target market goes and you sponsor an appropriate event, advertise on specific channels (TV, print, radio, etc) and things of this nature. And from a social media perspective, what topics or areas do you want to be associated with? Technology? Young adult clean fun? Easy, health choices for dinner? Sponsors look to get their brand associated with a topic that is of interest to their target market. Think of your content as supporting and adding value to the topic and thus associating your brand with subject. Use content in social initiatives correctly – do not advertise! (This is not to say paid social is not an important effort … it is a paid media initiative that should be part of an integrated media strategy.)

Awhile back, I gave you “4 Ingredients to a Winning Content Strategy“, but as content is the core of social media, let me give you some execution tips as well …

*** Social media is about building relationships (and ultimately advocates). Have you ever built a relationship with someone you have never met? This is reality in social media and it has ramifications. The fact that there is a good chance you will never meet those that you are socializing with (as a brand), means that you have to have even more emphasis on being human and personable. If you don’t come across this way, you have little hope of building relationships and certainly not advocates.

*** “Program your content.” Social and it’s content need to be a continuous thing, but also programmed. Leverage and use different channels (blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, livestream, podcast, virtual events, etc), different mediums (text, pictures, video, audio, and others), and work their integration and synergies.

*** Have a great copywriter. Social media has reinvigorated the importance of a copywriter. I am talking about a real time copywriter that has command of language to produce compelling content. Real time response and excellent prose are both required.

*** Actively use mixed media. There have been numerous studies and reports on the consumption of video and the importance of pictures and images in posts and tweets. I ran my own little experiment. Twice in the last month I tweeted “Some good advice here on Twitter … Give it some thought http://twitpic.com/64wzbv.” (Twitpic indicates an attached photo.) If you clicked on the URL, you would have seen this picture:

The click through rate on this post was on average 5x greater than simple text URLs both times. Takeaway – post and tweet pictures … not of your brand, but pictures of what you want people to associate your brand with. Pictures of the people in action and playing that are behind your brand. Stuff like this that will foster relationship building.

*** Seed you content in multiple (appropriate) places. You cannot just tweet the article title and URL. You need to find where your audience consumes content and appropriately introduce your content into the discussion there. Find blogs talking about related topics, go to LinkedIn groups that cover the subject. Engage there and over time refer your content as appropriate.

So there you have some food for thought. I want you to have an appreciation that while social media has spawned a need to respond in real time and post relevant content at lightning speed, this does not mean you can simply produce just OK material. If you want to stand out, produce awesome content. All of this is hard work. Social media is not free. But if your brand matters to you, social media matter to you. It is an investment that must be made.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

TV producers keep stacking the programs based on real life bad girls, bachelors, big losers, survivors, celebrity wannabes. Reality TV is huge. But drama continues to dominate the top of the charts. From my own highly unscientific five minute Google research, I found that 99.9% of shows at top levels of popularity are about work – what we do, how we do it, the people we do it with. Reality TV might get tabloid front-page exposure, but are we turning our attention elsewhere because aspiring idols are, for the most part, idle?

Advertisers study audiences, place ads, anticipate outcomes, measure results. They (we) see TV as an opportunity for business—my apologies for stating the obvious. The consumer sits down to dinner and may or may not notice that the actors who try to sell us the car, the laundry detergent, the body cream, the beer, the soft drink are doing all kinds of interesting things, though they are seldom pictured at work—often true also for guys who sell us computers. Sure we might remember the brands next time we shop. But mostly, what we remember are the people whose fictional professional lives play before our eyes in between commercials.

Gorgeous law enforcers (police, CSI, NCIS, and CIA officers, lawyers, fire fighters) and criminals (psychopaths, gangsters, terrorists) abound. So do buff and/or leggy doctors who could as soon intubate you as pose for the Old Spice commercial. One would think that splitting open a person, dead or alive, or plotting for world domination is what supermodels do after fashion week is over. This is the fun part of watching these shows – escape. I, too, would perform neurosurgery if I looked like Olivia Wilde. Since most of us don’t, we are keeping our day jobs.

But get into the nitty-gritty of how these people go about their jobs and we start feeling more at home.

Dr. House and the colleagues he tortures; the many casts of forensic scientists and investigators; the lawyers and judges; the outlaw bikers – all are passionate about what they do. Occasionally, someone questions their job or wants to leave the precinct, usually signifying some off camera event forcing the actor off the show. Else the doubter is a villain. Our heroes, to a T [except for the lazy bunch of The Office], are all doing what they excel at, what gives them the most satisfaction, the job that signifies the logical outcome of aspirations that stem from education, talent and natural inclination.

Well. Isn’t that what we all want to do, too? Get up in the morning knowing that we’ll spend the day at the right place, with the most exciting challenges, where there is the best opportunity for growth and development? For enjoyment? And if this is not happening to you right now in the job you have, aren’t you already fantasizing about the job that will give you all of the above? A great company can give you both: the right job for you today, a better job to aspire to tomorrow.

I speak in general. But I also speak of SolutionSet, where a talent for selling, servicing, creating and developing great work for our clients can (should, will) lead to great personal success. Where you can have the job opportunities that make you happy to get out of bed and into the commute. And, in our world, you’ll never have to remove a dead roach from a decomposing body in order to move ahead.

Dexter Morgan and Dr. Meredith Grey have something else in common. They are always on call. They may pick up the phone grudgingly at 3AM, or make a plot-moving mistake after a sixty-hour shift. But they are always available. I wouldn’t say that this is aspirational. But it seems to go with the territory. I love my job, I am happy with my job, I seem not to mind being always on the job.

Sci-Fi shows are particularly telling in this regard. After all, if you live in a ship that’s crossing the galaxy, personal and work time tend to blend in inevitably. In the old Star Trek The Next Generation, people had to beam up to Risa, a pleasure planet they passed by about every few million light years, to get a break. Otherwise it was all Enterprise, all the time. Can you relate?

Put in another way, TV shows are not great on work/life balance, but they make up for it by giving characters a job they absolutely love, thus life balance may matter less. Those of us who identify (liking it or not) with this aspect of the work life as seen on TV can, in real life, look forward to the company holidays and vacation time and beer Fridays that provide a breather after a long stretch, which people on Bones barely know exist.

After all, were we to put in the non-stop dedication of our TV role models, we would enter the world of soap. Of friendships and romances and personal conflicts of people with no home life - an HR minefield of extraordinary proportions that I may tackle in my next contribution: If McDreamy Worked Here.

For now, let’s say that TV sells us the product and the lifestyle. Not the pretend lifestyle of leisure, luxury, fun or games of advertising. But the hard-working, committed, professional stories of people we’d like to meet in real life. And if anyone has Dr. House’s cell phone, please pass it along.

At the very least, as the HR Lady, that’s how I see it.

When is the last time you saw something advertised as being “FREE” and believed there was any real value there?

Thoughts like “you get what you pay for,” “what’s the catch?,” or “let me read the 5-point font disclaimers to get the real story,” probably went through your mind.

You’re not alone.

Consumers are growing immune to “FREE OFFERS.” The term FREE is overused, typically overpromises and consumers are just over it! Mistreatment of the term FREE with bait and switch gimmicks that end up requiring an actual purchase has eroded consumer trust in this term. Plus, FREE offers most often serve to cheapen your brand; if you can afford to provide a product or service for free then it must not be of any value anyway.

Let it go. Give it a rest. Set your FREE OFFERS free.

In this age of the “New Normal,” consumers are craving VALUE and their perception becomes reality. So, how do we get consumers to perceive value?

It’s all in how you frame your offer. At Getmembers.com, we spend a great deal of time each day working with our clients to craft value-driven offers that drive strong results. We have learned that positioning introductory offers as a purchase for less than face value really stimulates demand. For example, an offer of “$20 for $50 worth of personal training” has real value because the consumer is clearly buying more for less. This is perceived as being no different than exchanging a $20 bill for a crisp, new $50 bill. Equally as important, this offer protects your brand value because your new client will be getting training which they still value at $50 as opposed to $0. And assuming you deliver a satisfying, sweat-producing training session that leaves your new clients wanting more, they will more likely sign up for future training packages at a higher price that will support your desired profit margins.

Another value driver is the word “unlimited.” What a great concept. It implies no limits and no rules and can be yours for just one value-set price. It’s the new “all you can eat.” Look at the success Netflix is having with its unlimited monthly rentals versus Blockbuster’s a la carte rental model. “Unlimited for one month” makes a great introductory offer that gives your new clients time to get hooked on your products or services and then purchase going forward at your regular rates. And don’t worry about being at risk for “unlimited” use – having eyes bigger than our stomachs, we all bite off more than we can chew. Consider the offer “unlimited boot camp classes for only $19/week,” versus the overused, traditional “free week of boot camp classes.” With the unlimited offer, you are establishing your classes as having greater value than those being offered for free plus you are still collecting $19.

Take this free advice: Consumers know that nothing worthwhile is free. The value in this lesson is unlimited.

So, you are communicating with your best customers using email. And, your strategic business objective is to append more of your customer file with email addresses, and increase the number of opt-in addresses you email. Because, of course, email is much cheaper than marketing using other channels, it presents opportunities to better target, and personalize, and improve relevancy.

But do your customers see it the way you do? Do your customers sense the value you have for their business as a result of your email communications?

Arguably, email does not enhance the emotional connections you want your best customers to have with your brand. Email doesn’t say “thank you” or “we appreciate your business” or “you’re special” very well. Certainly email allows you to cost-effectively increase the frequency of contact with your customers. But your customers know how cheap email is to send: that’s why they get so much of it!

Consider an Information Week report that came out today, regarding a study from Symantec. Spam is on the rise, and as of July, 2010, spam comprises 92% of all e-mail messages. This is the context of your best customer email marketing communications: a sea of spam.

Think about the most meaningful messages you’ve received from companies. Remember the hand-written postcard from the Nordstrom sales associate after your big purchase? Remember how the head chef in a fine restaurant you frequent came out to the table to greet you (and your friends), thank you, and buy that bottle of wine? Remember when your Zappos order came, including ’surprise’ free overnight shipping? Remember your stay at the Ritz-Carlton and how the Ritz-Carlton motto — “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen” – was put into action in the most basic and yet surprising ways? Remember the birthday card from a store you like, and the special thank you gift inside? Remember the genuine and highly personal contacts you have experienced that actually do engender loyalty, and repeat purchasing? Most of these experiences that stand out occur in the offline world, the real world.

Yes, email is part of the marketing mix, and an excellent channel and effective means of communicating with customers. Yes, you have objectives to retain customers, up-sell and cross-sell other products and services, increase the lifetime value of your customers, and generate more sales – and email helps you get there.

But, your best customers are your greatest asset. The 80/20 rule probably applies in your business, suggesting that 20% of your customers (your best customers) drive 80% of the revenue, and likely, most of your profit.

Customers want to know their business is valued. With so much competition, and commoditization, it’s easier and easier for customers to go elsewhere to buy product X or service Y. In a world of homogenized email, faceless companies, and other options just a click away, it’s more important than ever to stand out, deliver quality experiences for your best customers, be truly personal, and add meaning to the transaction.

People don’t want to be numbers, or treated like everybody else. People want recognition, and “surprise and delight” experiences that reinforce their brand choice. For your best customers, spend more, deploy direct and highly personal initiatives that go way beyond email, and let them know you care.

Would you pay $193.50 for a small figurine of the Russian saint of extremely fast dancing? The Significant Objects Project proves that “narrative transforms the insignificant into the significant” and people pay big bucks for tall tales.

NY Times contributor Rob Walker and author Josh Glenn challenged a group of writers to find random objects and create fictional stories that added a certain je ne sais quoi to them. Between July and November of last year, $128.74 worth of these dust collectors sold for $3,612.51 through eBay auctions.

(It should be noted that the founders said they “did not set out to hoax eBay customers” and that they took care to avoid the impression that the stories were in any way true. A second phase of the project is underway that focuses on charitable fundraising.)

Whether you’re selling an HDTV or a sea captain pipe rest, just know that engaging narrative helps move merchandise.

Dan Ariely, behavioral economist and author of Predictably Irrational, made a highly enlightening and entertaining presentation on the flawed nature of the human decision making process. Using examples ranging from magazine subscriptions to organ donor registration forms, Ariely shows how the wording, selection, and arrangement of choices can have a massive influence on the outcome:

In his analysis of research from Carnegie Mellon on the persuasive power of confident individuals, Robert Dooley of the fantastic blog Neuromarketing makes a strong connection to the world of business. From the source:

“I’m not suggesting that we develop false bravado to manipulate others. Rather, we should use time-honored strategies to develop our confidence. Salespeople should truly believe in their product. Every persuader should achieve mastery of the facts. Confidence will flow naturally from these. And, of course, we should resist the tendency to waffle or spend too much time discussing alternative possibilities - this will leave the audience confused and doubtful.”

Some excellent thoughts for marketers to keep in mind when figuring out how to speak to their target. Makes me think of the Albert Einstein quote: “If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

While history has given us countless examples of what can go wrong when a confident communicator gets reckless, Dooley chose this video of CNBC’s Jim Cramer as a cautionary tale:

Be sure to check out the paper database of the Carnegie Mellon Center for Behavioral Decision Research. It’s an absolute gold mine of insight on consumer behavior.