Social Media Marketing | Jason Cronkhite's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Social Media Marketing’

Can Social Media Really Make A Difference For Businesses?

// June 22nd, 2009 // Comments // Social Media Marketing, Thought Leadership

Right now many companies large and small are exploring the idea of social media. Many are unsure about how to develop a strategy. They don’t know where to start or who to trust. Moreover, what empirical evidence can a business turn to help it determine the value of building a social media strategy? Well, these are questions and concerns that I plan to address here.

Last week I raised the question, “How do you systemize social media”? In terms of process and daily practice, I was hoping to spark a conversation to understand and uncover other practitioners methods and systems of use. Little did I know it would create a deeper conversation on a more strategic level.

If you click on the link above you’ll see embeded in the post a conversation stream that took place. What I learned from a few social media colleagues is that in order for social media to make a difference in businesses, social media at a high level must first be understood. With out understanding the value proposition of social media at a leadership level, a business or businesses will be hard pressed to allow a socialized media culture to be adopted inside the organization.

Say what? Social media can only make a difference in a business if the company from top to bottom understands and believes in the value of such a dynamic culture shift. THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL!

“SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIRES A CULTURE & MIND SET SHIFT”

That is a very BOLD statement but, for social media to really make a difference for an organization it is an ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENT. Why is this the case?

It is required because most business were not built on the fact that everyone, no matter what you’re title or position, has the power and opportunitiy to make significant things happen because of the power of the internet. Everyone in the organization, has the power to produce content and build a following. People’s voices are the new currency that drives the influence to exchange.

If you’re a company of 10, then you most likely have 10 able promoters and content creators on your team. Now consider this, “It is estimated that the average person knows about 250 people. And each of those people knows, in turn, another 250 or so people. This means that for each new person you meet, you gain access to a potential pool of 62,500 people separated from you by just two degrees!” – Buzzy Gordon.

Don’t you think the ability to potentially influence approximately 625,000 people is pretty powerful for a small business? I do.

Now, of course, influencing that many people to actually make a purchase is far fethched but influencing just a small percentage of that group of warm connections by practicing social media makes for a pretty compelling business case. Would’nt you agree?

To accomplish this though requires leadership to adopt a culture of transparency and expression for the good of its customers and employees. Giving up control and truly leading is what is required here. And, leading with an educated understanding is a big step to social media making an impact on a business. In a future post I’ll show you an example of how social media activities are just starting benefit me.

CONSIDER THIS VIDEO AS A 1ST STEP TO UNDERSTANDING

(Note: A collaborative team I am working with are in the early stages of developing a resource to help companies understand and use social media. This video is part of recommended material to be reviewed).

Now that you have a better understanding of how social media might benefit your business, in a future post I’ll show you an example of how social media activities are just starting to benefit me. Do you have any questions that I might be able to help answer?

The Value of Thought Leadership for Your Business (kylelacy.com)
5 Steps to build Social Media team (marketing.blogtanker.com)
Social Media Questions for Small Businesses (theengagingbrand.typepad.com)
Small Business Matters: What Social Employees Can Do For Employers (graymatterminute.com)
Social Media for Small Business Webinar Archived (ducttapemarketing.com)

People Do Business, Tools Don’t: How Do You Systemize Social Media?

// June 18th, 2009 // Comments // #TwitterTalks, Social Media Marketing

: Image by luc legay via Flickr

I’ve been thinking about some of the things we’ve been discussing on building43 — A community for people fanatical about the Internet — and things that have been bubbling up for a while in other spheres of conversation.

We, as a western business culture, seem to be really caught up and infatuated with the amount of tools we use, not excluding me. I’m a gadget junkie and tool freak! I have so many accounts for different web applications and services it’s crazy. There is so much out there to experiment with and test. Part of me thinks there is a level of unproductivity because of this behavior another part me thinks there is a lot to learn through experimentation with these tools and technologies. What do you think?

Well, I read a great post on ProBlogger this week by Nick Thacker called 5 Ways To ‘Systemize’ your Blogging. It really rang home with me as it is part of the practice I advise clients to take in developing their content strategy. I admit I need to practice better what I preach with my new blog here. Why is the this relevant to People Do Business, Tools Don’t?

People are the lifeblood of any business. People do the work. People work with customers - people. People manage people. People make the plans and people take action or don’t.

Tools on the otherhand — computuers, phones, web applications — are levers to facilitate and increase productivity of people. Productivity can be measured a number of ways based on what your job is right?

So, what I’ve been thinking about is - how are social media and internet tools making us more productive and getting business done. How are we selecting the tools we decided to use for business? How could you and I take the advice Nick gave and apply it to Social Media Marketing?

This is a question that I think should be discussed in collaboration with others as it is a problem that I think many businesses are struggling with today. How do you systemize the practice of social media?

Please share your thoughts as I would love to put together a collaborative document or “Best Practices” Starter-kit for Social Media or something to help businesses get over the change threshold. I am going to start working on how to ‘Systemize’ my own Social Media practices and will report back later.

Last, thank you Nick for a great post - you really got me thinking and acting.

>>>> UPDATE: I’m bringing the conversation that we had today on this topic today on Friend Feed <<<<

Social Media Marketing - Social Media Marketing for Growth (stompermom.com)
What should the definition of social media be for the layperson? (directmarketingobservations.com)
Social Media Productivity Boosters (howardgreenstein.com)
Baratunde Thurston on Content Curation, Real-Time Search, and “Analytics Porn” (readwriteweb.com)
What I Learned From… Community (middlezonemusings.com)
Put Your Ideas Into Action (slyvisions.com)

Monitoring The Conversation Of Tribes

// June 11th, 2009 // Comments // Social Media Marketing

The other day I had a meeting with a local TV personality — Tanji Patton — and her husband Mike. We discussed a few things about where she is headed with her site and web show, Good Taste With Tanji. I was happy to find out how much respect she has for the web and value she see’s in the internet as a distribution medium for her content.

We talked about many things from Search, to Social Media to Online Video Sydnication and other things as well. Even though Tanji has years of experience as a TV anchor and producer, she was very open about what she does not know and I was encouraged to learn this. Knowing your expertise and domain focus is the sign of a great leader and I know she will go far.

One thing we touched on in the conversation was identifying and leading your tribe, Seth Godin’s principle. Tanji certainly has the ability to garner a following and the capability to lead her tribe and I told her I would refer her to the video below but, I thought it was important for others that may be reading this to see it.

Watch this and then read below about monitoring the conversation.

Tools for Monitoring The Conversation

Picking back up from the conversation with Mike & Tanji, Twitter came up and blogging in general came up. Tanji made the comment about how much time it takes to use Twitter and she’s openly stated this on her site. Yet, most people that are new to it have the same reaction - I did too when Evan & Biz introduced it at SXSW a couple of years ago.

Twitter is great for connecting with people of all walks of life that have the same interests but, it takes some getting used to and there is a learning curve to understand how to listen. Since so many others have talked about this already, here are three links to dig into it more: 10 Listening Tools , On Twitter & Listening , Twitter Is All About Listening .

Taking it a step further are companies like Sysomos & Radian6. I had the chance to visit with Blair Cummings & Aubrey Podolsky with Sysomos yesterday who provided me with an in-depth demo of their MAP and Hearth Beat products. Man, are these products amazing!

If you are trying to lead a Tribe, I highly encourage you to look at companies like Sysomos, Radian6 or ScoutLabs as the intelligence they can provide you about what is happening in web conversations is extremely revealing and valuable to your strategic business planning efforts.

For someone like Tanji Patton, these products could help her significantly grow her following. By analyzing where the conversation is that’s relative to her Tribe, she could go there and jump right in and offer her opinion and value thus increasing her awareness and building new connections with people of similar interest and influence.

So, who’s your tribe - are you listening to them?

Seth Godin Explains Why You Need a Tribe and Why he is Not on Twitter (loiclemeur.com)
Is Twitter for Old Folks? And other gems from TWTRCON (beth.typepad.com)
5 People Who Broke the Rules of Social Media and Succeeded (mashable.com)
SXSW: Old Man Nielsen vs New Market Research (othersidegroup.com)
Pro Tools for Social Media Monitoring and Analysis: Sysomos Launches MAP and Heartbeat (readwriteweb.com)

It’s Gettin Hot In Herre And Your Brand Sucks…How To Change The Perception With Social Media Monitoring

// June 8th, 2009 // Comments // Social Media Marketing

YourBrandsSuck.com

Suppose for a minute or two that Your Brand became an innocent by-standard of an endorsement deal gone really wrong. I mean really wrong…so wrong that you got submitted to YourBrandsSuck.com and the world is bashing you for something Your Brand had no control over.

Yep, HE said that, “It’s Gettin Hot In Herre, So Take Off All Your Cloths” at a night club and took her back to a hotel room according to HER, which was written on her MySpace page and now thousands of people are talking about it.

HE is a super star athlete with hundreds of thousands of dollars in endorsement contracts for companies like Nike, Pepsi, and Your Brand, which targets married soccer moms. She is a young woman who also happens to be good friends with Paris Hilton, who was present when this interesting occasion occurred. HE is married to a faithful soccer mom and has just been accused of an extra-marital affair by HER. HE was apparently captured on video

: Paris Hilton via last.fm

with another woman, not his wife, early that morning leaving a hotel room wearing Your Brand’s T-Shirt.

Now, that video has been remixed on YouTube and has spread like wildfire all across the internet with millions upon millions of views and Your Brand is front and center of the conversations. Several popular Soccer Mom blogs and forums have started talking about Your Brand and how could Your Brand be associated with such an individual. As “Your Brand’s” Brand Manager, what are you to do?

Brand Managers: Wait & It’ll Be Too Late

Your Brand is quickly becoming associated with a lot of negative press of word-of-mouth buzz. However, you can do something about it and I would encourage you to strongly research and understand how social media monitoring can provide you the proactive technology and capabilities that can help you put out a firestorm such as the one described above.

Social Media Monitoring as an industry is in itself starting to take off like a wild fire with new companies and solutions popping up everyday. So, what can these tools and companies do for me and who are they? Radian6, ScoutLabs, Sysomos and a handful of others.

How can they help you? Well, Sysomos appears to understand the power of video marketing best as they are the company that has prepared the best overview video of their product - take a look below.

Changing The Perception by Being Proactive

If you’re still here and have not run off to Sysomos, I would strongly encourage you to read the following two blog posts Grudge Match by Jason Falls and Tools Analysis by Frederic Lardinois .

No matter which of these tools you use, they all provide a clear value proposition in that they can enable you to proactively change the perception of your brand through participation and conversational engagement with data and metrics. If you don’t know that Your Brand is in danger of its reputation being damaged before it’s too late, then it’s too late.

However, if Your Brand was listening and engaged in what is happening out there you will have a much better chance at being able to mitigate the risk of damaging your company’s reputation by not acting. Furthermore, developing a social media strategy with monitoring tools can provide your company an immense amount of business intelligence that could greatly improve lead generation, sales revenue and brand reputation.

With the landscape of the internet changing and moving so rapidly, you cannot afford not having a Reputation Management & Social Media Monitoring plan prepared and put into action for your company. Not taking action will only result in Your Brand being smeered and being submitted to websites like YourBrandsSuck.com .

What do you think?

Online communities as engagement tools at the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris (thecustomercollective.com)
5 Essential Traits for Community Managers (mashable.com)
New survey reveals who’s getting social (martinspalette.blogspot.com)
Viralheat Measures And Analyzes Real-Time Content On Twitter, YouTube And More (techcrunch.com)
Pro Tools for Social Media Monitoring and Analysis: Sysomos Launches MAP and Heartbeat (readwriteweb.com)

Video Marketing Is Powerful but How Important Is It?

// May 18th, 2009 // Comments // Video Marketing

Video Marketing Expo

Last week I attended the 1st Video Marketing Expo in Austin, TX which was put on by a couple of good friends and savvy entrepreneurs, Chris Justice & Kelly Shores. If you are a business that wants to learn and stay on the cutting edge of how to use video marketing I highly recommend that you attend next year.

So, how powerful is video marketing? Well, you know how powerful TV advertising has been over the years and you know that online video is exploding but why?

With 57% of internet users consuming online video and growing, there is actually a scientific reason why TV and online video commands our attention as consumers. Backed up by Forrester, Ominture and other scientific sources; video stimulates over 40% of the brains cortex thus commanding in depth attention. Since video stimulates the human brain so much it is why we love our action-thriller movies, sports on TV and other genres of video based entertainment. We just can’t get enough video and it’s why video based marketing is one of the most important ways to market.

Wanna see how powerful it is? Watch this commercial for Grasshopper, a telecommunication system for small business owners. Then find out how they could have spread this message further using a unique video syndication system!

Spread Video Far & Wide Online

Grasshopper has done a fabulous job with this video commercial and has done a great job using social media to enable the opportunity for people to spread their message on their website. How could this message have been spread even further?

If Grasshopper wanted, it could have used TubeMogul to spread their video to several of the most popular video websites. TubeMogul provides you a single point of distribution by allowing you to upload and distribute your content to some of the most popular video sites. Here is Brett Wilson, Co-founder and CEO explaining how TubeMogul works.

With that, how important do you think video marketing is now for your business? I’d love to hear from you.

Why Is Social Media So Cool For Businesses?

// May 1st, 2009 // Comments // Social Media Marketing

globe In the context of marketing your business, social media has many amazing advantages to accelerate the growth of your company and quality of your product or service through real, transparent customer feedback.

When used appropriately, social media provides you the opportunity to connect with many people in a very short period of time.

Not to mention that you can reach many more people at a significantly lower cost, be more efficient in your targeting, be more effective with your message and measure activity through web analytics. Further, social media mindshare or engagement is earned through time and work but is often more effective to attracting customers that are more likely to buy.

Rather than spending thousands of dollars to promote something that may only net you a small amount of business with negative ROI, why not invest some time into building some strong relationships that can come at a much lower cost and yield greater ROI?

Social Media Marketing & Efficiency

As a small business marketer consider this, instead of just going to business chamber and networking events which are localized, compliment your prospecting efforts with social media opportunities where you can target and grow your business awareness globally. Of course, this depends on if you are running a business that is not just based on a localized economy.

Still, if you are trying to market a location based product/service you can achieve localized awareness much easier, quicker, and often for less money than you could by taking out ads in local papers, buying billboards, direct mail, local TV, etc. However, if you have the budget to do these types of things I would think about how you can use these mediums to drive traffic to a web property for your ability to track customer conversions or tasks such as; subscribing to an email list, blog or following you on Twitter to further strengthen or deepen a potential customers trust in the value of your product or service.

Social Media Video & Monitoring

Consider developing a promotional video about your product or service that can be distributed on your website and through other web properties. Once you have this done, you can promote your video through various social media properties. Asking for help from your friends and community is a good idea rather than trying to push your wares on people.

I guess the last thing to touch on is the capability to monitor buzz and conversation about your company through social media monitoring tools. Some of these tools out there have amazing capabilities that I plan on getting into a bit later but, setting a tag in these software applications will notify you every time your company, product or service is mentioned. This of course allows you the opportunity to be proactive in thanking someone for positive praise and to further engage the person and conversely this provides you an opportunity to manage events proactively that could be detrimental to your business reputation.

What Are Your Thoughts?

I’ve just touched on a few things that I think makes social media cool for business and now it’s time for me to practice the coolness of social media. Tell me what you think or what ideas you have about how to use social media to market your company. Lastly, please feel free to Share This post on Digg, Twitter, Facebook, email, etc. Thanks in advance as I greatly appreciate you visiting and participating in the discussion.