The problem with how we think about our natural abilities (and those of others) is that it also forces us to consider that the exact opposite must be true as well. After all, if you can be naturally good at some things, surely you could be naturally bad at other things, right? And being naturally bad at something is a great excuse to just avoid doing something. If you’re “not good with numbers” then you get someone else to handle that. Or if you’re not a technology guy (or girl) then you can justify not investing in better systems to optimize your business.

This is just silly. Having an inherent ability certainly helps, but it is not a prerequisite – particularly when you consider social media. Many small business owners falsely believe that the more technical you are, the more readily you should be able to use social media. Actually, being good at using social media has very little to do with your technical ability. It does, however, require learning some basic principles and to some degree developing the right instincts. These are guiding principles that anyone who effectively uses social media already knows – but will dramatically help you to use social media like an expert, even if you still think Java is a kind of coffee …

1. Be conversational. The first and most important instinct to develop when it comes to social media can be surprisingly difficult for some, and that is to speak, write, and share content in your own real voice. This means using conversational language and writing as you would speak. Social media is rarely a place for marketing or legal type of language – so leave those for your important documents and get as real as you can whenever you post anything.
2. Listen and respond consistently. It is often said that the basis of social media comes from listening. You insert any cliché here that you like about having twice as many ears as mouths … but the point is that through listening to what people are saying you will know what you need to respond to – particularly if someone posts a message about your business or industry and is seeking a response. The more often you respond, the more social credibility you can build for your organization as one that is listening and cares about the sentiment of the group.
3. Proactively comment and share. Responding to questions that involve you or your business is the relatively easy part. More difficult is to consistently find reasons to proactively share a comment on a blog post or share content that you find relevant or interesting (particularly when it has nothing to do with your business).
4. Use questions instead of statements. Open ended questions are a boon in social media, because they invite interaction. So instead of just posting statements of your thoughts or beliefs, how about turning them into questions and seeing who might have an interesting point of view to share. You’ll find this one shift makes a big difference in your level of engagement in the long term.
5. Participate with those who share your passion. There are hundreds of thousands of niche groups on sites like Facebook and also independently created through blogs and sites like Ning.com. There are bound to be groups of people who are in your industry or perhaps even just share the same passions as you. Now there are ways to find them, and doing so can give you an instant community to belong to.
6. Support online relationships with offline interactions. It would be a sad life if we could get everything we needed just from the web. Despite our advances in technology, there remains no substitute for knowing people in person, so whenever you can support anything you do with social media by going to a local event or meeting people, that would go a long way towards that.
7. Invest in karma. The last piece of advice is around karma – or the idea that “what goes around comes around.” It has been talked about often when it comes to social media, but what most power users of social tools online know is that doing things to help people, sharing knowledge and generally being open to those who connect with you are all good things that pay off in an uncertain way at some point in the future.

There are likely other tips from social media power users on how to build your ability to succeed, but these 7 essentials should help you to get a good start.

Comments

Indeed, we are programming the social web around our brand hub and as such, we’re required to capture attention and also hold it through the introduction of engaging dialogue, interaction, and the introduction of relevant information packaged and published as social objects.

Social Objects are the catalysts for conversations and occurrences — online and in real life — and they affect behavior within their respective societies. They are personified by our Tweets, our pictures in Flickr, videos on YouTube, events in Upcoming, profiles and updates in Facebook, the links we share in Delicious, our votes in Digg, the places we check into when playing Foursquare, the documents we publish in Docstoc, a destination or service we review in Yelp, a subject we host in Ning, a thought shared in the comment of a blog post or through a dedicated blog post, etc.

But once we introduce a social object, we must stand ready to handhold existing subjects throughout the social web as well as create a publishing calendar rich with relevant content, programmed specifically for each network in which we maintain a presence.

We Become Media

There’s a saying in theater, a big part of acting is reacting. This is especially true when we consider how many individuals, brands, and organizations engage in the Web today. Instead of seeking inspiration and direction from those around us however, we simply react to activity, which may or may not benefit us in the long run. In Social Media, many of the existing programs are either dictated by the community-driven conversations strewn across the web, with an emphasis on Twitter and Facebook, or creatively designed to elicit specific responses in addition to the crowdsourcing of brands and dissemination of corresponding messages.

But social media represents a greater opportunity that invites us to participate proactively, introducing new thoughts, ideas, and solutions through the people that inspire us to try something new.

Social Media is an earned privilege.

While establishing a presence is elementary, captivating audiences is artful. In the near future, brands and organizations will create new or augment existing roles to serve as editor and publisher to all channels with a primary objective of ensuring that timely, relevant, and captivating content is produced, distributed, and connected to both captive and desired audiences. This work is in addition to the other reactive and proactive social media campaigns that are already in progress, but held to a strategic editorial calendar that blends video, audio, imagery, text, updates, and other social objects and networks to reach, inspire, a galvanize communities.

As brands, we become media.

Through the democratization of publishing and the equalization of influence, we can create, connect, and attract a wider reach, establishing meaningful connections and building dynamic communities and interactive paths along the way.

Everything starts with creation of a mission and purpose and fortified by the content we create, the processes in which we distribute it, and the activity that supports social objects and the reactions they engender.

Perhaps among the most powerful rewards we procure through dedicated publishing is the generation of good will, social capital, and influence. It comes at a price however, and the price is defined by the cost of resources, production, distribution, and support. In the end, you get out of it what you invest in it and the investment represents time, money, creativity, and passion.

We not only become media, through production and engagement, we become influential.

Earned, Paid, and Owned Media

In media, there are several channels that populate and shape perception, intent and action – earned, paid, and owned media. Each require a dedicated management system that actively creates, monitors and stimulates strategic movement as we broadcast relevance directly to our main channels and syndicate aggregate signals to our network of branded satellites and streams.

Recently, Sean Corcoran, an analyst at Forrester Research, published a detailed post that described the differences between earned, paid and owned, clarifying the roles for brands who undertake the responsibility of embracing a new media role. Dave Fleet, a thought leader in new media and public relations, also visualized Corcoran’s thoughts through a series of graphics that represent the social media ecosystem. Fleet’s work inspired a new graphic of my own (coming soon).

As Corcoran points out in his recent report…

Increasingly, interactive marketers are being asked to manage a wide range of paid and unpaid marketing communication — despite the fact that many marketing departments are still organized around traditional paid marketing channels. All types of online media (whether “earned,” “owned,” or “paid”) can play specific roles in meeting marketers’ objectives — especially when seamlessly working together. To find the right balance between these types of media, marketers should take stock of their resources, listen for the impact of earned media, look for opportunities to shift short-term paid media to the role of catalyst, and begin to build out a solar system of long-term owned media touchpoints.

In other words, paid, earned and owned media require thoughtful programming and targeted distribution and must be linked to a systematic review of behavior and activity that surrounds each object. And, the analysis of activity and ultimately the end result should play a monumental role in the creation of future publishing and social activation.

Corcoran uses the word “touchpoint,” which by standard definition, refers to any point of contact between a buyer and a seller. Touchpoint is part of the greater opportunity here. But more importantly, these touchpoints require direction and the establishment of a path that offers a complete experience – a beginning, a middle, an end and a reward.

These experiences are definable by paid, earned, and owned media.

New Media necessitates a collaboration between all teams involved with creating and distributing content, including advertising, interactive, communications, brand, and marketing – with an editorial role connecting the dots. We are competing for attention and our success is dependent on our ability to not compete against each other. Producing content and lobbing it over the firewall to an “audience” will only confuse communities. Therefore, we are obligated to build pipelines that carry strategic communications each with calculated intents, targets and outcomes.

If we examine the differences between earned, owned, and paid, we can visualize necessary programming and dedicated channels for each.

Owned Media is media that essentially, we control. Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by control. We design the object; we own the content within the object. Most likely, we also own (or lease) the distribution channels that present these objects to our target communities. We do not however, control the impression and perception of our objects. We lose that control at the point of distribution. For example, in addition to standard Web pages, social media presences contribute to our portfolio of owned media including, Twitter accounts, Facebook Fan Pages, Blogs, YouTube channels, etc. By creating presences in the communities where our customers, prospects, partners, and influencers congregate and collaborate, we can set the foundation to contribute to “earned” media based on the value we contribute through each profile and the social objects we introduce through them. How we embrace and fuel owned media determines our social capital and influence and its value and prominence is representative of our contributions and participation.

Social Hubs are also gaining prominence in 2010 – 2011 social media plans as brands weigh options for directing traffic.  The creation of strategic landing pages can extend the rich, interactive experience within social networks (channels in which we partially own) to pages we do own, thus shaping the experience in a way that maintains interactivity and targeted options for action. I’m not necessarily recommending the creation of microsites, unless it’s warranted in the overall program, but a bridge that continues the desired experience, connecting people to value and benefits in a destination that serves their essentials.

Forrester’s Corcoran recommends that brands create a “solar system” of owned media. However, I suggest that brands instead create a focused ecosystem of media that establishes presences where their communities are already active – a brand or organization specific social media ecosystem. This requires research and in the process, we uncover not only locations that require our engagement, but also how, where, when and to what extent to participate. We just may find that the given locations for social profiles represent only part of the many opportunities rife within the Conversation Prism.

The differences between a solar system and an ecosystem are derivative of our actions and concentration. Meaning, we don’t need to be everywhere, only where our communities reside online with an emphasis on ultimately steering people in our direction (websites, hubs, etc.)

Paid Media represents the visibility we purchase, such as display ads, paid search, and sponsorships. When paired with owned and earned media programs, paid media serves as a hub for complementing, reinforcing, and polishing brand voice, directives, mission, and stature. While many argue over the future and fate of advertising, what’s clear is that online paid presences can benefit initiatives where action and experiences are defined and promoted through the click path. Current trends reflect a shift away from branding programs and place emphasis on sparking desired activity, empowering viewers and their social graph to share in the experience all in ways that measure the cost per action.

Earned media is the result of our owned, paid, and participatory media programs and is reflected in the blog posts, tweets, status updates, comments, and ultimately actions of our consumers, peers, and influencers. Earned media is linked to owned media campaigns as well as proactive initiatives that attempt to incite viral and word of mouth activity.  Garnered visibility is also tied to communications and public relations programs as they continually seek to gain the attention of reporters, bloggers, analysts, influencers and catalysts who can drive awareness and behavior based on the words, stories, and social objects they create and distribute.

This isn’t a one way street, however. Earned media is just that, it’s earned. Success is absolutely conditional on the techniques and methodologies that inspire dedicated programs focused on outreach, relations, and hopefully the engendering of productive and mutually beneficial relationships. Crowd-powered visibility also merits an official and devoted listening and response initiative to ensure that each respective community aligns with the story and our mission and purpose.

Participatory Media – Representing an extension of earned and owned media, participatory media takes the shape of a hosted hub where brand representatives and our communities can interact and collaborate. For example, go to examples usually refer to Dell’s IdeaStorm and Starbuck’s “My Idea” network which resemble branded wikis designed to elicit responses, dictate direction, establish community-focused governances, etc.  Participatory media equalizes the balance of power, providing a dedicated platform the gives voice to the consumer and a channel for their ideas to trigger transformation or change.

Sponsored Media - This new category fuses owned, paid, and earned media.  Sponsored media is one that is championed by companies such as Izea (disclosure, my company works with Ted Murphy and Co.), Ad.ly, Twittad, among others and is creating a new medium for packaging messages through trusted voices within highly visible and social channels. Sponsored media can take the form of paid tweets, blog posts, appearances, and featured objects on targeted profiles. And, whether you agree or disagree with the idea, the reality is that they work and they seem to benefit all parties involved, from brand to paid affiliates to their communities. In fact, Forrester’s Josh Bernoff and Sean Corcoran shared their thoughts for why sponsored media is worthy of consideration.

Sponsored Media fuses earned, paid, and owned as technically…1) the messages are owned, 2) the voices are paid, and 3) with more thoughtful approaches, the responses within targeted communities can inspire a positive wave of earned media.

Influence

As media, brands earn prominence and hopefully influence, social capital, and authority as rewards for contributing meaningful, genuine, and helpful content. On Twitter, brands can earn legions of loyal and responsive followers who in turn, become brand advocates and ambassadors, extending the messages, mission and purpose to their followers as well. In Facebook, brands can cultivate vibrant and dedicated communities where interaction inspires increased responses with each reverberating across respective social graphs. On uStream and/or YouTube, we can earn global audiences of viewers who tune in to watch our programming and to also interact with brand representatives in a live community that spills over to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. And of course, our blog is more important than we may realize. Through our posts, we can establish a strong alliance of readers who subscribe to learn something of value, to participate in the direction of future ideas, to share their views and experiences, and also to inspire groundswells that motivate industry authorities and compel them to respond through the creation of earned media within their channels of influence.

As Tom Foremski points out, we have the ability to earn noteworthy, equal, and in some cases, greater influence than those authorities whom we relied on over the years to help us reach greater audiences and communities. As influence is equalized, our ability to earn presence and relationships is derived from how we program, manage, and participate in all forms of media. And, it is through a balance of media and engagement where we also establish the foundation for affinity. People align with movements they can believe in and it is through the human, intellectual, and financial investment in sincere and empathetic content that define experiences and hopefully one day earn the attention and bonds that symbolize our significance – online and offline.

Comments

To cut to the chase, I can tell you that the impact is minimal at best. Sterling’s articles are always informative and insightful and in this one I think he hit the nail on the head with the following sentence:

While there’s enormous hype and coverage among tech-insiders about “real time search,” the public doesn’t really understand (or perhaps care) what the fuss is all about.

I say he hit the nail on the head, only because he is echoing something I have felt and said for some time. My position, however, is not particularly popular in Internet marketing circles because it’s a classic “I call BS!” position.

You see, I spend a good portion of my day reading about the latest and greatest in Internet marketing. This is never just reported though because everyone needs to add their opinion to each story because that’s how we become “important.” Important to whom, you ask? Mostly to each other inside the industry. This little popularity play leads to some interesting assumptions about just how important all of these earth-shattering Internet marketing developments really are to the public at large. That group,, by the way is significantly larger than anyone would care to admit

So back to Greg’s comment. He is at least willing to admit that “the public” likely doesn’t understand or even care about what we in the industry will prattle on about for weeks, as if world peace had been achieved. Don’t get me wrong, I do it as well, but I have become less comfortable with it. Why? Because my non-industry friends (which make up about 95% of my friends) don’t give a hoot about real-time search. They don’t know what it is and they actually don’t care. I don’t need to assume it. I know it. They couldn’t care less.

Now, here’s the catch. These are people that use the Internet and social media a lot. They are not online novices by any stretch of the imagination. They have really good jobs, make nice livings, have families, and much more. In addition, they don’t care about the latest and greatest toy that Google or Apple or anyone else has developed. They have too much living to do to worry about this stuff. They use Google to answer a lot of questions but wouldn’t even have a clue about how to do an advanced search let alone wonder about real-time search. Oh, and one other thing: They are online marketing’s prime targets, “Wouldn’t it be better to truly understand how the vast majority of people use the tools that we talk about all the time, rather than assume that everyone does what we do?” Maybe the industry struggles at times because we completely miss the point: Most people simply don’t care about the details. They want results. They don’t have time to waste and they are not all under the age of 30 and completely wired (which I contend is another foolish myth we like to perpetuate).

So, do you agree or disagree? Are we just a bunch of self-serving insiders that have lost touch with the actual users of these tools, or am I just whining? Let’s hear it.

Comments

But do you actually challenge yourself to do new things on a regular basis? That is the only way to succeed in Internet marketing, because the situations change, your customers change, your competitors change, the technology changes, and you can’t stand still.

So, make a promise to yourself to try at least one new thing today. Your Internet marketing will thank you for it.

Gee. What just happened here? I wrote my conclusion at the beginning of my article. It’s something that I have never done before. I broke out of my mold! Did you like it? Did it work?

Maybe not. Perhaps I should try something else the next time. But you get the idea. It’s possible that this dopey device will actually get you to pay more attention to my point. Or maybe not. But only by experimenting am I likely to find out what does work better. And in the long run, that’s more important than whether any one experiment works.

And that’s the point of experimentation in Internet marketing.
You need to embrace new things (give them a big old hug) and break out of what you’ve always done, because that is the only way to succeed in Internet marketing. You may not want to accept this, because experimentation is difficult — it is certainly less taxing to repeat old patterns, especially if they seem successful.

To prove it to you, let’s just imagine that everything you are doing in marketing is absolutely perfect. It’s flawless. There is no possible way that it could be improved. Now, that seems a touch unrealistic, but stay with me here. Even in that impossible situation, you’d still need to experiment in your marketing, because things don’t stay the same:

• Your customers change. They might change slowly, but they do indeed change. Even if you are perfectly appealing to them at the moment, you must keep adapting to ensure that perfect fit continues.

• Your competitors change. In the old days, your competitors didn’t change very rapidly, either, but the Internet has transformed things. Nowadays, competitors can watch your every move, right from the comfort of their own offices. Your competitors are probably adapting what they do every time you make a move.

• The technology changes. This factor is probably the fastest-moving of all. A cottage industry exists just to explain every way that marketers must adapt to these changes.

So, you can’t adopt a set of even truly best practices and believe that your job is done. Instead, you have no choice but to conduct marketing experimentally. The best travel directions in the world can’t account for all the mid-course corrections our marketing journeys must take.

So, what are you doing?

You don’t need to twist yourself into a pretzel each day to do something dramatic. Instead, you can do something small — and it doesn’t need to be every day, either. It could be simple, such as commenting on someone’s blog, or signing up for Twitter. Or examining your Web analytics to see whether that new page update is working. We have to personally extend ourselves, just a bit, and to change how our marketing works, too.

Commit yourself to continually adjusting your campaigns and seeing what works and what doesn’t before deciding your next move.

You’ve got a mold, too, whether you believe it or not. If you’re having trouble getting motivated to break out, then re-read paragraph two.

Comments

But where do we start?

This is a recurring theme here as businesses typically jump into Social Media without crafting a strategic plan rooted in goals and objectives. Nor do companies weigh the impact of engagement on the brand itself as social media champions, depending on the department in which they reside, typically monitor and engage in conversations that typically would lie outside of its domain.

MarketingProfs conducted a survey of business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers and the results are worth revisiting as they typify a basic view of the opportunities rife within the social Web. Examining these numbers and more importantly, the social media programs currently employed, will help us innovate and evolve.

Successful Facebook Marketing Tactics

Created a survey of fans

B2B – 37.1%
B2C – 37.9%

Surveys are an effective way to garner feedback to continue to earn ongoing relevance. Surveys can range from satisfaction levels, behavior around the prospect or act of referrals, votes towards new policies and services or simply used for entertainment. At the very least, surveys inject variety into the Facebook stream to foster new opportunities for engagement and communication.

“Friending” recent customers with corporate Facebook profile

B2B – 34.4%
B2C – 26.3%

It should not go unsaid that this activity goes against Facebook’s Terms of Service. But with limited and hierarchical functionality of Fan Pages, creating a branded profile is one worthy of consideration. The interaction that fosters in profiles is radically different that those within Fan Pages. It’s the difference between peer-to-peer conversations and top-down broadcasting. Until Facebook realizes the value of commercial accounts, you must tread carefully. Facebook arbitrarily flags and deletes the branded profile accounts as they’re discovered.

Used Facebook user data to profile customers demographics or interests

B2B – 33.5%
B2C – 30.5%

In social media marketers experiment with programs that balance demographics, the categorization of people by age group, gender, education, income, etc, and psychographics, the grouping of people by interests, passions, and connections. Believe it or not, there are services that exist today that can mine data on Facebook to help marketers profile prospects. Outside of those services, many marketers also manually examine the individuals within their social graphs to garner insight into new initiatives and potential trends.

Created a Facebook application around the brand

B2B – 33.1%
B2C – 41.9%

Facebook applications are not guaranteed to earn an audience simply because they’re created. Users are overwhelmed with options for applications and their adoption of new apps are related more to the activity of their friends than to their allegiance to any particular brand. However, they are not ineffective either. According to the survey, MarketingProfs learned that applications were among the most “successful” tactic used by B2B and B2C companies.

Driving traffic to corporate materials through status updates

B2B – 29%
B2C – 28.4%

I’m a big believer in defining the experience. Eventually users engaged in social networks will click through to something, whether it’s something you shared or a social object they discovered. Where are we sending them? Chances are that they are landing on a message-rich, usually lifeless and generic web page or even worse, the company home page. Essentially we captivate people in a highly interactive and social environment and direct them to a static dead-end where they are left to define their next clicks without a renewed sense of creativity.

This tactic, I should mention, was reported as the most common tactic.

Buying targeted CPC ads

B2B – 24.5%
B2C – 27.1%

Targeted CPC (cost-per-click) ads on Facebook are only as effective as the intention and experience to which they’re tied. Many businesses use these ads to increase the number of fans on a fan page or also to promote corporate material. In my work, they have offered a minimum impact on increasing fans and delivered notable results in driving traffic to pre-defined experiences.

Marketers claimed that buying ads is among the least effective of the mix.

Successful Twitter Marketing Tactics

When we think of social media marketing, Facebook and Twitter usually go hand-in-hand.

Fan us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Like Facebook, marketers viewed Twitter as a primary source for generating traffic. As such, most marketers reported using Twitter to send users to marketing Web pages and they seemed to be pleased with the results.

Monitor Twitter for PR problems in real-time

B2B – 40.7%
B2C – 46.9%

1/2 of all B2C marketers polled reported using Twitter to unearth potential PR problems. As we saw with the now epic Motrin Moms example, a PR problem can materialize at any moment, with little warning. B2B marketers also reported monitoring twitter as part of a proactive crises communications program.

Created an in-person event using only Twitter invites

B2B – 37.4%
B2C – 36%

I smirked when I read this. The wording is a very specific and perhaps it doesn’t capture the true story behind the opportunity. Suddenly every brand wants to host a Tweetup. While businesses use Twitter-only invite services such as TWTVITE to promote a brand-related Tweetup, hitting only users on Twitter limits the scope of the potential audience. In my experience, I’ve learned that by extending the visibility of the event beyond Twitter to Facebook Events and also services such as Upcoming.org and Eventful, we can appeal to not only a wider audience, but also trigger highly productive and effective social graphs in the process – perhaps more so than possible in Twitter. A question for you though, if a Tweetup is promoted on any other social network, is it still a Tweetup?

Contacting Twitter users tweeting negatively about the brand

B2B – 36.7%
B2C – 44%

While this is a shared tactic between PR and customer service, this is a program that requires some form of workflow and process tied to it. It’s very easy to confuse who should respond to which tweets and who already did versus which tweets require response.

As you venture deeper into the world of monitoring and responding to negative or hostile tweets, you should note that consumers are learning that taking to Twitter begets a response. And, with every response they earn from brands, they along with others, are encouraged, and as such, conditioned to increase their activity of voicing complaints in a public spotlight.

Driving traffic by linking to Web pages

B2B – 35.7%
B2C – 35.2%

Again, similar to Facebook, we need to redefine the experience. Sending prospects, customers, and influencers to Web 1.0 pages is not an extension of the Twitter culture nor the expectations that define it.

Provocative text to drive link clicks

B2B – 34.8%
B2C – 40.6%

I found this to be an interesting survey question. I suppose that if businesses are sharing content in a compelling wrapper that doesn’t employ sensationalism or the equivalent of marketing parlor tricks, then these numbers represent effectiveness. However, if Tweets are rich with gimmicks, then these numbers dictate an alarming trend. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” To earn attention nowadays requires a level of creativity that mirrors the methodologies of creative advertising and marketing fused with the grounding of strategic communications and marketing. Attention only continues to thin and therefore requires planning and editorial programming to ensure relevance and appeal.

Invite Twitter users who tweet positively about a brand to do…

B2B – 34%
B2C – 33.9%

There are many programs that are led by marketing, PR, and customer service that attempt to transform positive tweets into the basis for an advocacy or official ambassador program. As this tactic increases in ubiquity, consumers are getting wise to the power in social media. Like in the aspect of negative tweets, consumers are also learning that while money doesn’t grow on trees, it does grow on tweets. Meaning, consumers expect something for their loyalty. Consider this prior to engaging.

Increased Twitter followers using traditional media mention

B2B – 30.7%
B2C – 30.4%

Timing Tweets to maximize views

B2B – 26.9%
B2C – 30.5%

As attention spans thin, we realize that there’s an art and science to what we tweet and when. As documented by Dan Zarrella, there are various times and days that reveal when the attention aperture is open and people are amenable to hearing messages and clicking through to shared links.

This, my friends, is the true opportunity and challenge within Twitter. We become media programmers, and as such, our content as well as timing and promotion dictate the size of the audience and the resulting activity.

Driving sales by linking to promotional Web pages

B2B – 22.4%
B2C – 24.6%

Dell paved the way for this category and continues to do so. If you were to read the report, you might believe that they are the exception however. Most respondents claimed that this tactic was among the least effective. Perhaps that’s because many of the respondents didn’t anticipate the needs and drivers of their followers. Dell, among other companies, has learned that there are indeed triggers that engender responses in the form of commerce. What’s more important, consumers are reporting that they follow brands to learn of deals and special offers. And, 64% of consumers reported that they make a purchase from a brand because of a digital experience via a Website, microsite, mobile coupon, or e-mail.

In 2010, we are inspiring a new era of socialized marketing and engagement.

Comments

It’s just like the movie “Lost in Translation” by auteur Sofia Coppola. Just because you’re in Japan doesn’t make you a part of the community. Just because you can use a service like Michael Streko’s Knowem to landgrab your brand on every social marketing platform out there doesn’t make you a social marketing maven.

Consider the following failpoints in most marketing campaigns:

• Establishing a connection: Just because Facebook or Twitter allows you to either follow someone, or send an invite to become someone’s friend doesn’t mean I can mind read you and fathom your intentions. In his book “The Long Tail”, Chris Anderson talks about moving out of the information age (where facts and knowledge rule the roost), to the age of relevance (where filters and establishing context helps makes the millions of possible relationships and connections make sense). In a world of a million friends (on twitter) (or maybe 5,000 friends on Facebook), being able to establish the context for your relationship is a good starting point. I almost always insert a comment like “met at affiliate summit” or “wickedfire forum” or “we killed orcs together last night” as a social lubricant. On the receivers side, I use these contextual clues to filter friends into different lists/baskets on the social network. And no, “we have a lot of common friends and I thought we should be friends” is a pretty feeble excuse – it’s just like saying “oh well, everyone else is dancing, I’m here alone, so would you like to dance?”.
• Followup/Relationship build: So once you’ve established a connection, why do so many (I estimate 80%) of marketers do nothing – let the lead grow cold and die. It’s entirely a wasted effort in my view. There has to be some follow up, else why bother starting this in the first place. Whether you’re using a Google Docs spreadsheet or Excel, keep records of your interaction. Do you have some type of fixed or informal schedule for making contact? If someone mentions something interesting/relevant, are you taking copious notes – whether it’s the fact that they primarily use PPC as a traffic gen mechanism, or if they like double-chocolate cookie dough ice-cream? Information is an important form of social currency in my book, and if someone has taken time to share something useful with you and you’re not doing anything with it, you might as well throw it down the gutter.
• Social equity: Are you consciously making deposits into your social goodwill bank? More importantly, are you giving before you take? Besides the law of reciprocity (where people who receive feel an innate desire to give back), being labelled a “taker” doesn’t do you or your online rep any favors. That’s one reason why affiliate networks like Market Leverage, Convert2Media, TriFoxMedia, EagleWebAssets are a pleasure to work with – they’re giving – whether information, products or other forms of swag – to establish the relationship on a solid footing. This is in contrast to some other networks which will bug you over email, IM and the value they’re offering is not stated or an unknown. Given the choice between something which is totally random and something that’s relatively certain, it’ll take quite a bit of momentum to jump into the unknown.

Bottomline: If you don’t have a gameplan when it comes to the social media game, and if you’re not focused or invested in what you’re doing, there’s a high probability that your efforts are going to get lost in translation.

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Anyway, TopRank has been asked to participate in the “Migrate” themed event on the topic of search engine optimization and social media convergence.

After writing, presenting and most importantly: being a paid consultant and self-practitioner of SEO (12 years) and Social Media Marketing (5 years) respectively, I thought it would be a good appetizer for next week’s presentation to highlight some of the most popular blog posts covering SEO and social media marketing from  Online Marketing Blog.

Top SEO and Social Media Marketing Posts from Online Marketing Blog:
(by traffic in the past 12 months)

1. 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips (Apr 27th, 2009) – This popular post offers specific advice on justifying investment in social media strategy, how to decide on tactics and measuring success from in-house social media marketers including: Dell, Comcast, HP, Wells Fargo, Intel, Best Buy, General Mills, Ford, UPS, Home Depot, Cirque du Soleil and a mix of SMM consultants/agencies: Altimeter Group, Crayon, Ogilvy 360, Future Works, Doe Anderson, New Marketing Labs and others.

2. Guide to Twitter as a Tool for Marketing and PR (Nov 15th, 2007) – Excerpt: “The key with Twitter is not to look at microblogging as individual posts, but think of the overall impressions and value that can be created over time. Each 140 character or less entry serves as a seed of an idea for an overall objective. Over time, you’ll build a footprint and brand of influence within the Twitter community”. This post also includes tips from other early adopter Tweeple including:Andy Beal, Todd Defren and Michael Gray.

3. Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing (Feb 12th, 2009) – Many marketers are unsure about the difference between best and worst practices when it comes to commercial participation on the social web. Identifying best and worst practics is a work in progress of course, as communities develop, grow and change.  This post outlines the basic best/worst practices that will hold true for years to come. Internet years that is.

4. 25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog (Jun 15th, 2006) – An oldie but goodie, this post contains many of the fundamentals for creating search engine friendly blogs and has been cited by over 14,000 web sites including Search Engine Land, Copyblogger, Mashable, Stuntdubl, SEOBook, Duct Tape Marketing a and HubSpot.

5. What is Your Social Media Marketing Strategy? (Mar 25th, 2008) – Social media is hot, every body’s doing it. But the question needs to be asked: why? This post offers several good business reasons why companies should invest time, money and resources into social media.

6. Top Ten SEO Tips for PR Professionals (Apr 29th, 2009) – After presenting these ten tips at a public relations conference, I blogged the presentation and wrote another blog post detailing each of the ten tips. It should have been an ebook, but I decided it would reach more people as a series of 11 blog posts.

7. 16 Rules For Social Media Optimization Revisited (Aug 4th, 2009) – A follow up to a post originally published in 2006 that defined a new marketing category, this 3,117 word article by TopRank’s Adam Singer offers an update that resonated well with Online Marketing Blog readers. Is social media optimization still relevant and why?

8. 5 Link Building Tips for New Websites (Mar 20th, 2009) –  KISS, as in Keep It Simple Stupid. It’s sage advice for many things, including blog posts. This link building basics post from TopRank’s Dana Larson hit the nail on the head for many new web site owners in search of those ever elusive first links to boost search engine rankings.

9. Lowdown on Press Release Optimization (Oct 24th, 2005) – One of the first really popular blog posts we ever published, still gets new links every week from sites like WebProNews, Bruce Clay, Techipedia, LED Digest and Yahoo.

10. SEO Basics: 6 Tips for Google Webmaster Tools (Apr 7th, 2009) – Google set the stage for formal search engine support of the webmaster community by developing Webmaster Tools (thanks Vanessa Fox) and TopRank’s Thomas McMahon wrote up this popular tips post highlighting some very useful features.

BONUS!  While not one of the most popular posts overall in the past year, a few recent entries made on Online Marketing Blog speak specifically to the presentation I’ll be giving at the MIMA Summit next week:

SEO & Social Media Roadmap – How do you plan for a social media strategy? How do you leverage the Yin/Yang benefits of both SEO and Social Media for objectives, tactics, specific tools and measuring goals? This post attempts to answer those questions specifically.

Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success – This post was published over at Mashable and focuses on making the most out of combining SEO insights with social media marketing tactics through development of a roadmap.  Like any digital marketing effort, a combined SEO and social media program is most effective that identifies a target audience, specifies measurable goals and a strategy to guide implementation of tactics.

Hopefully your appetite has been stimulated enough to come to our  MIMA Summit SEO/Social session right after Seth Godin’s keynote. If not, you’ll definitely have actionable tips you can use in your SEO and Social Media Marketing efforts today.

Session Details:

The Intersection of SEO and Social Media

Oct 5, 2009 – 9:45 am
Tactics Track, Salon C
Hilton, Minneapolis

Session Overview:
Successful social media efforts build community, better connect brands with customers and can influence both media coverage and increased sales. Yet implementing a social media marketing program without optimizing content for search is literally “leaving money on the table.” Useful social content (blog, video, images, audio and applications) that cannot be discovered via search is a lost opportunity to reach audiences that are looking.

Why do so many companies fail to leverage their participation on the social web for SEO? This session will provide specific “Do’s and Don’ts” of social media optimization and provide attendees practical examples of how companies can leverage SEO and social media content to improve their search marketing performance.

If you like video, here’s an interview with Phil Wilson of Minnov8 & myself talking about SEO/Social and what I’ll be presenting at MIMA Summit.

Win a Free Pass to the MIMA Summit!

Want to attend the sold-out MIMA Summit in Minneapolis next week but didn’t get your ticket in time?  Or maybe you’re a Seth Godin fan and just can’t stand the fact that you’ll miss hearing him speak in person.  Well dear readers, we just might have the solution to that problem.  TopRank Online Marketing has one extra ticket from the corporate table we purchased for the MIMA Summit and we’re going to give it away.

All you have to do is leave a single comment below with a creative and/or compelling reason why we should give YOU a free ticket to next week’s MIMA Summit ($595 value) OR if you Tweet a similarly creative link to this post, that will show up in our comments too. We’ll pick one lucky winner on Thursday Oct 1st.

Sound easy? Sound doable? Then get to it.  If you comment, be sure to enter your email address so we can contact you. If you Tweet, be sure to follow @toprank so we can DM you. We will ONLY contact you if you win and will not rent, sell, post, hack or do anything unsavory or sinister with the information you provide.

Obligatory Q and A:

Q: Does it include gratuitous coffee in the morning before Seth speaks?

A: If MIMA provides it with the corporate table tickets, then you get it. Pretty sure they’ll be offering coffee. Maybe even some bacon.

Q: Does it include lunch?

A: Pretty sure lunch is included. If not, I’ll buy you lunch.

Q: Does it include door to door pickup service from my home in Ham Lake to downtown Minneapolis with sidetrips to Starbucks on the way there and Lucia’s Wine Bar on the way home?

A: I don’t think so.

Q: OK, what about cab fare?

A: Nope.

Q: Transit pass?

A: Not going to happen.

Q: Bus fare?

A: That would be, ah, no.

Q: Schwag?

A: MIMA Summit events and sponsors have been amazing with their schwag generosity. Can’t imagine this year will be any different.

However, we might bring a TopRank mugs. We’d bring the TopRank Old English Sheep dog, but he has a sinus infection and believe me, you don’t want to be around when a 90lb sheep dog sneezes.

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There are a number of ways to monetize a site. Aaron covers the options in extensive detail in the “Monetization” members area , however today we’ll take a close look at just one aspect of monetization, Affiliate Marketing.

What Is Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a marketing method whereby one business rewards another business for sending customers, visitors and/or sales.

Mostly, affiliate marketing rewards come in the form of revenue share on a sale. Site A (the affiliate) funnels visitors to Site B (the merchant). If a transaction is completed by the merchant, the affiliate receives a commission on the sale. Do this numerous times a day in a high-margin area, such as loans, and both the affiliate and the merchant can make a lot of money.

Affiliate marketing is nothing new.

In the carpet markets in Turkey, you get pestered by salesmen whos job is to tempt you off the street and across the threshold of a carpet shop. He – its invariably a he – might get paid for bringing you to the door (the online equivalent is equivalent to cost-per-click), or, if you buy a carpet he receives a commission (cost per action). Or perhaps a mixture of the two.

The benefit to the merchant is that he doesn’t have to pay the full time wages of the salesman, and he only pays him on performance. The benefit to the salesman is that he doesn’t have to own a shop, carry merchandise, deal with transactions, or any of the other costs associated with running a carpet shop.

Win-win.

In 2006, MarketingSherpa estimated online affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions

The Players & How It Works

The Affiliate Marketing industry consists of three core players:

• The Merchant
• The Affiliate
• The Prospective Customer

As the affiliate model became big business, further levels emerged, including sub-affiliates and affiliate networks. We’ll take a look at the role of the networks shortly.

The Pros Of Affiliate Marketing

Easy To Set-Up – You simply need to select a program, sign-up, add the tracking code to your site, and you’re good to go.

Focus On Your Core Skills – If SEO is your key skill, you can focus 100% on rankings and traffic generation. You leave all the customer handling, sales, returns, legal issues and transactions to someone else.

You’ll also be amongst esteemed company. The top affiliate marketers who use SEO to generate traffic typically rank amongst the highest-skilled SEOs. They live or die based solely on their ability to rank well in highly competitive areas.

Low Startup Costs – setting up commerce delivery online can require a lot of start-up investment. The affiliate need not invest anything other than some time. If one area doesn’t work out, the affiliate can quickly move onto another area. The merchant has to too many sunk costs to do likewise.

Multiple Income Streams – once you’ve honed your sills in one area, you can apply them to any area you choose. There is no limit to the number of merchants you can work for, so you are free to develop multiple revenue streams. Some merchants will give you ongoing revenues based on customer activities, too.

Cons Of Affiliate Marketing

Low Level Of Control – Unless you have a close relationship with your merchant, you have little control over offers.

If their competitors are offering better services and/or lower prices, you can’t counter unless the merchant changes their offer in line with the market. You’re also pretty much stuck with the same standard offer available to every other affiliate you’re competing against, making it difficult to differentiate.

There are exceptions.

Sometimes super affiliates – those affiliates who consistently put through high sales volumes – get offered special deals. It’s unlikely you’ll know what these deals are unless you become a super-affiliate. Some programs allow pricing control, but mostly, you’re dealing with cookie cutter offers.

Customer Base Not Locked In – The merchant keeps the customer.

Typically, you deliver the customer, the merchant pays you a one-time commission, then that customer remains theirs for all subsequent purchases. The value of the merchants business increases the more customers they have.

As an affiliate, you don’t tend to have lock-in on the customer. Some affiliate deals offer you on-going revenue, however.

High Competition – One of the pros of affiliate marketing is that is is easy to sign up and get started.

This is also a negative.

If it is easy for you to sign up, then it is easy for everyone to do likewise. There are new affiliate hordes arriving each and every day. The incentive for the merchant and affiliate network is to sign on as many performing affiliates as they can, so they don’t really care if you face ever increasing levels of competition.

This is why top affiliates look for private deals. More on this shortly.

PS: As I stated above, you’ll be amongst esteemed company. The top affiliate marketers who use SEO to generate traffic are typically very highly-skilled SEOs. They live or die based solely on their ability to rank well in highly competitive areas. These people will also be your competitors

Pay On Performance – This is a great option for the merchant. They only pay when they sell something. What this does is transfer all the advertising risk to you.

You may spend weeks or months on SEO and make no sales. This might not even be your fault. You get great rankings and traffic, but the merchant has an uncompetitive offer, or loses customers at the point of sale.

Middlemen – As the affiliate area has grown, so too have the number of middlemen.

The biggest middleman in the chain is the affiliate network. The affiliate network is the go-between linking the merchants with the affiliates. Commission Junction is one example.

The network often provides valuable reporting tools and tracking, as well as affiliate and merchant support. Of course, all this costs money and places an additional layer between the affiliate and the merchant. Whilst the network may provide benefits in terms of reporting and support, it also reduces the level of control and contact the affiliate has with the merchant.

Limited Growth Potential – Because you can’t lock in your customers or adapt deals to suit changing market conditions, growth potential is limited. Like the carpet salesman, you rely on a new stream of visitors each and every day with no way to grow what you do, other than by adding sub-affiliates.

There is a solution to many of these problems, however.

Direct Partnerships

There are many affiliates making very good money following the model I have outlined above.

However, as affiliates get more and more successful, they often look to partner direct with merchants. This way, they cut out the middlemen – leaving more profit for the affiliate – and gain a closer relationship with the merchant.

Some affiliates structure the entire deal, and take a percentage of the merchants earnings over time. Whilst this approach requires upfront organization, the long term payoffs can be huge compared to the traditional network-driven affiliate model.

But how do you do it?

First, you need to look at areas where there is high returns and low levels of competition.

Make a list of merchants who have a web presence in your chosen area and have the ability to take online orders or inquiries. Approach these merchants directly. It’s a good idea if you can demonstrate potential traffic levels and sales, so come armed with this information.

Look to sign up exclusively i.e. you’re the only affiliate working with them. Also try to get a cut of ongoing revenue i.e. if the customers becomes a repeat customer, you receive repeat commissions. The bonus to the merchant is that you’re a salesman willing to work on a commission basis. There is little risk involved for the merchant, and most will be only too happy to at least consider your proposition.

These types of deals require a high deal of trust and transparency, so it’s unlikely you’ll get everything you want right away. Suggest a trial run to prove your worth, then negotiate favorable terms once you’ve proved yourself. If the merchant turns you down at that point, then you simply go to his/her competition, with your accumulated data, and make the same offer.

This way, you should be able to build up a private label affiliate system. You can bring on your own hand-picked sub affiliates to work with you, too, and if you’ve selected your market correctly, you should face little or no competition. As you have a close, direct relationship with the merchant, you can work on structuring product and service offerings that remain competitive. It becomes more of a partnership that can be nurtured and made valuable over time.

Some of the biggest money-making affiliate opportunities you’ll never hear about.

That’s because they involve private label deals.

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Today we have a wide variety of options to support email marketing and service functions for our companies. I typically categorize these email companies into four categories: small business, specialty applications, enterprise solutions and then marketing automation.

The small business applications are the ones you know and love: cheap, easy to use and all available through hosted systems. While they won’t work in a high volume production world and aren’t supported well if you have heavy data or integration needs, they will solve problems for 70% of the marketers in the space.

The specialty applications are those that are designed for niche industries such as not-for-profit and call center support. Their value is predicated on wrapping the email automation functionality in a subset of services that support niche needs: fund-raising, managing ecommerce, managing call center inbound/outbound requests, inbox queing, routing.

The enterprise space is the one most on this distribution list know well. They are set up to support larger organization with heavy data needs, providing high volume sending, advanced personalization and more advanced workflow/production environments. They offer both hosted (Saas models as we like to call them) and on-premise solutions (or licensed software).

The marketing automation space is what is most intriguing to me these days. The emergence of the middleware Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) space is merging to support email operations on both a systematic way (event-driven, lifecycle-driven and workflow-driven), but also opening up their interfaces to support full campaign management controls; cross channels. They are merging into the Interactive space to support the need to rapidly deploy forms and Web pages, manage digital assets and provide campaign control that supports print, mobile and email, along with e many other core functions. These systems rely on heavy data management for targeting and rules-driven programs. They’ve invested heavily in aggregating data from the Web, commerce, retails systems, third party data and providing real-time analysis (modeling) that helps make marketing decisions.

What’s prevented these companies from really making a dent in the enterprise email marketing space is the lack of infrastructures to support deliverability and the lack of a user interface and workflow engine that is intuitive and flexible enough to support a high-production email environment.

Why I get so excited about this space is, these companies are investing in building out these tools and even though they aren’t as efficient to use in a production environment, the value they bring in campaign management (cross channels), access to data and multichannel analysis will bridge this production gap over time.

I’m excited to see some of these advances. The space began as an enterprise CRM world, and then evolved into what I call a world of point solutions, solving disparate business needs with many applications. All the indicators are there that dictate a shift in the market. Not sure if the Microsofts, SAPs, Unicas, Siebels (aka Oracle), Aprimos make the commitment to bridge these gaps or if the Alterians, Eloquas, Neolanes of the world will capitalize to take market share from these enterprise companies, but I do believe it will shift how you look at email tools and platforms in the next few years.

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I was reminded of this when I spoke at the Marketing Executives Networking Group meeting in New York City on Monday evening. (Follow the link to download the slides on “How the Internet Is Changing Marketing.”) The room was about evenly split between marketers who had made the transition to Internet marketing and those who had not. Luckily, I was able to spend enough time with the audience that I was able to address the needs of both groups in the audience, but I was especially struck by what a disservice some of us so-called experts do to marketers struggling to adapt to the Internet.

Often we show up dressed all in black, so that everyone knows we are the cool ones, and we passionately explain to these poor dinosaurs that the world has passed them by. That everything they know is now over. That this is a mind-boggling change that sweeps out the old for something new and different.

And that’s just a load of crap.

It might make us experts feel self-important and cutting edge and oh-so superior, but it just isn’t true. Internet marketing is still marketing. The difference is how you do it.

Now if you want to tell people that doing keyword research for search marketing is breathtakingly new, go ahead, but it’s really just a new way to do market segmentation. If it makes you feel smart to tell people that viral marketing is like nothing anyone’s ever seen, fine, but it’s just word of mouth marketing on steroids. If it’s important to you to describe social media as though it’s never been done before, great, but I know a lot of PR people who have helped me immensely with what they know. And if you think Web analytics is the biggest change ever come over marketing, I bet you don’t hang out with too many direct mail marketers.

The truth is that all of us experts would be wise to learn about all the marketing, public relations, market research, and sales techniques that have already been done. That way, we could explain the new stuff as variations on the old whenever possible, so that we’d help the people trying to adapt instead of scaring them into the fetal position.

And maybe we’d also realize that we experts don’t know everything, either. It’s rare that I work with traditional marketers when I don’t learn something more about their craft that I can apply to Internet marketing. I’d rather understand more and be able to explain it better than frighten people with apocalyptic visions of the brave new marketing world.

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