Marketing Talk

About 5 months ago, maybe less, I came very close to giving up on Twitter entirely. I would check in enough, that’s for sure, but I couldn’t seem to get over 75 followers (I appreciated all of them, I promise you). The people I was following tended not to respond to my tweets very much. Sometimes I would see a retweet and my heart would race, and I would see it was a spam bot offering me an iPad because I written a blog post about the new technology available. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with what I was doing, especially when I noticed that pretty conversational tweets from other people were retweeted all over the place while my VERY educational tweets (ha ha ha) were thudding.

Serendipity

A lot of my friends think serendipity plays a role in the world of Social Media. Well, in this particular case, it’s hard to argue with that. One Sunday night, I was posting along when someone mentioned something called #blogchat. “Hmm, I blog,” I thought to myself. I decided to check out that little hash tag. It was the best decision of my Twitter life. The person whom I had followed in actually left after a short while, but I stayed for a full 2 hours.

The #blogchat high

That night, when I went to bed, I had gained about 30 more followers, which was nice. But what I had really gained was an understanding of how Twitter at large works. In fact, if you had talked to me on the phone that night, I probably would have sounded like a Twitter brand evangelist. Some exclamations I might have made include:

Twitter is about sharing information with like-minded people!

Twitter is about conversing like you would at a coffee shop where you know everyone!

Twitter has some really really really smart people using it!

Twitter has people who are even smarter than me!! (well, okay, I was really tired, so that one might have slipped in)

That first night of #blogchat, I got pushed up to close to 100 followers, but here’s the thing about that. I realized then that the number of followers you have really doesn’t matter. Several of the new followers I had gotten were spam-bots who like to pick on people who are really active during chats. What I was happy about was that I had been able to participate in a 90mph conversation about things I’m passionate about. Much like any addict, I needed more.

Be a Chatty Cathy

One of the best ways to get a blank look from people who are really new to Twitter or who don’t use Twitter is to say, “Oh, I’m doing blah blah Twitter chat tonight. This has become a common line from me, and it’s not just because I enjoy confusing people. Here is my current Twitter chat schedule:

Sunday at 9PM EST: #blogchat

Monday at 8PM EST: #MMChat (Marketer Monday) – just started attending this one

Tuesday at 8PM EST: #TechChat, launched by MarketingProfs (to say it’s about “tech” is underselling)

Tuesday at 9PM EST: #Custserv (to say it’s about customer service is underselling)

Wednesday at 8PM EST: #IMCChat (Integrated Marketing & Communications Chat)

Thursday at 8PM EST: #B2BChat – just started popping in to that one as well

Now, why on earth would I spend prime time television time chatting on Twitter, you might well ask. The same reasons I’m recommending you do the same thing. Here are the top ten reasons.

1. Engage with people who feel the same way

2. You get to meet new people

3. You get to ask questions knowing you’ll get really good answers

4. You get to help people who come to the chats to ask questions

5. You get to build friendships, just like you do at a book club

6. You tend to be bombarded with links to blogs & articles rich with information

7. You learn something new

8. Topics are brought to your attention you had never even thought of

9. You are able to interface with some of the leading minds on Twitter

10. And yes, if you do things right, it can help you build your Twitter following

This is not a golden egg

If you start doing chats solely to gain more followers, you will likely be disappointed, you will not find the experience enriching, and you will have missed the primary point here. One of the reasons that I follow people and people follow me after chats is that we offer each other really useful information (well, that’s why I follow people) and we seem to be on the same page. If you go to a chat and sound off ads for you or your company, you’ll be ignored. If you put in the hashtag for the chat once and then throw your hands up in the air, it won’t work either.

Chatting means just that. It means engaging with people, commenting on peoples’ tweets, offering a courteous “I disagree” when you, well, disagree, etc. If you get some of the folks you engage with to follow you, and you follow them back, that’s awesome, but after you do a few chats, you understand that content means far more than followers in this world.

Join me at one of the chats I go to and let me walk you through it, or comment below if you have any questions, exclamations, or anything else.

1st Image by Andrew C. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/andreyutzu

2nd Image by Richard Dudley. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/bluegum

3rd Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/barunpatro

A few weeks ago (or was it days? I’ve lost all track of time) I started seeing a lot of BFF updates. “That’s nice,” I thought. I can’t really tell who I tweet with, so having an automated application which probably is sucking all of my info from my Twitter account out into a sales list or something is awesome. But I digress.

Around the same time, I started seeing a lot of these updates about Twitter newspapers. And then I started seeing these paper.li URLs popping up everywhere.

Now, I like to think that I’m pretty good about staying up on the new developments going on in my little sphere of the universe. I mean, staying up on Facebook’s changes of heart is a full time job just on its own, but I do okay with it. Even so, I have been so swamped that I just did not have time to check out this paper.li thing. Until tonight. So, if you are like me and have been itching to figure the whole thing out, let me save you some time. I’ll even give you some analysis!

What is it?

I thought that the whole concept was going to be pretty complicated because when I looked at some of the newspapers, it looked confusing to me. I couldn’t figure out what tied the stories together in some of them. I looked at the “#custserv daily newspaper” and saw that there were various contributors, but I had no idea how that was all worked out.

Once you sign in to paper.li it all becomes pretty clear – and pretty self-explanatory (in a way). You type in either a username, a tag, or a Twitter list, and Paper.li grabs contributions from whatever you set up. So, the #custserv newspaper probably pulls everything with that tag every day. Guy Kawasaki has a Holy Kaw paper that gathers a lot of the links he shares into one central location.

So What?

I know. I kind of thought the same thing at first. Great, so, anyone who tags “worthreading” will appear in the daily “paper.” Well, actually, the ramifications of paper.li could have huge implications for marketing if used correctly.

– Imagine creating a daily “newspaper” based on #yourcompany or #yourproduct. Every day you could print out your daily paper.li newspaper and show your client, your C-level executive, whomever, what the daily spin is on Twitter regarding your company. The next day, you can see if you’ve altered the conversation. Same thing for competitors.

– Let’s say your company manufacturers shoes. You create a paper that is based around all of the links you collect every day about shoes and shoe-related topics. Every day you tweet out useful information. You can also link to your newspaper from a blog or from Facebook or LinkedIn, like this –> http://paper.li/bearbull/blogroll

– If you’re a marketer, you could create a newspaper for #SM or #marketing and have a newspaper, literally, every day with up-to-date links about what people are talking about.

Really, this could become quite a powerful tool in your business or marketing toolbox.

So, check out paper.li. Let this application suck out the information from your Twitter account. At least you can do something truly useful with it. Not that there is anything wrong with the BFF thing. It’s just…well…

I’ve said my piece.

I participated in my first ever B2B chat last night on Twitter. One of the questions that was discussed was whether or how to integrate a blog into your marketing campaign. My response was that a blog should and can be integrated with everything you do. This response garnered some interest, so I thought I would expand on it a bit here.

Blog as Hub

First, let’s talk about online marketing. Since blogs are online, it can seem easier to connect these dots.

Most people think of the company website as the hub through which all marketing comes and goes. The obstacle these days is that websites tend to be chock full of sales talk in addition to lots of important information. This can muddy the waters, especially if you have an aggressive Social Media campaign that avoids the sell. In order to get around this bump in the road, many experts now recommend that online and Social Media initiatives drive traffic to a blog which then in turn can refer people to the company website. You’ll notice, for example, that my Twitter account, my Facebook account, and my Disqus account all lead you here (even on that 1,000th click that you do). But I refer people to the Clayman Advertising site from this blog so that it’s easy for you to access.

There are literally millions of ways to integrate a blog with Social Media and other online initiatives. Here are a few.

This idea actually was mentioned by @KseniaCoffman, so big credit to her. If you are doing a webinar, lead people to your blog for the Q&A

Use your blog posts as content for your Facebook fan page, either via links or notes

Promote your  blog via Twitter to show that there is content behind those 140 characters

Ask a question via an online ad and have the click-through take people to a blog post that answers the question in detail

Don’t forget to include your blog link in your email signature

Blog and Offline Initiatives

It might seem like it would be more tricky to integrate a blog with other offline marketing initiatives, but this is not the case, and in fact, an offline initiative integrated with a blog can greatly strengthen the impact of both tactics. Here are some ideas.

Launch an ad that includes a call to action for visiting the blog. In this case, your blog is like a white paper – free information.

Direct questions that your customer service department receives on a regular basis to blog posts that answer the question in detail

Use the blog as an inter-departmental communication tool – this will help sales, marketing, PR, and other departments stay on the same page – literally

Blog events from a trade show

Make sense?

Do these ideas give you, well, ideas? If you’d like other ideas, or if you’d like help in implementing any of these ideas, just let me know. 2011 is closer than you might think!

Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/arte_ram

Last week I had the idea that I would ask for 30 posts, I’d pick my 5 favorite, and I’d post those 5 on Thursday. I was calling this #30Thursday on Twitter. However, the posts that I got were so good that I knew it would be too hard to pick just the top five. So instead, every week, I’m asking people to send me blog posts of interest – their own, others’, however you want to do it. And I’ll post the first 30 I get on Thursday. I hope that other people begin to do this as well. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of just reading the same blogs. It’s nice to read new blogs and to promote other peoples’ blogs, too. So here are this week’s top 30 blog posts (in my world).

This week, since I’m just getting started, I didn’t get many recommendations, so a lot of these are blogs that I want to pass on myself. However, starting every Thursday afternoon, let me know of a blog post you think I should read and tell my readers about. Hopefully next week we’ll have a full 30! In the meantime, enjoy 🙂

1. Interesting post from my friend @KnowledgeBishop on grreat leadership

2. A refreshing reminder to slow down, from @ty_sullivan

3. Why do you socialize? How do you use Social Media? Thought provoking stuff from @MayaREGuru

4. Did you know you can share videos on LinkedIn? Do you know how to share videos on LinkedIn? @suzannevara maps it out.

5. A break from business – really funny post on crazy fantasy football fanatics from @salamicat

6. @HeidiCohen tells you what you can learn from New York City pizza if you’re a marketer

7. Why do companies fear crowdsourcing? @bsdalton hypothesizes.

8. An oldie but goodie from @pushingsocial: Why smart readers prefer dumb bloggers.

9. @MitchJoel wonders if conversation is dead in Social Media.

10. @LisaBarone wonders how to prevent community rot

11. I really liked this post by @chrisbrogan. The Game You see

12. An amazing post by Sonia Simone at @copyblogger: 49 Creative Ways You Can Profit from Content Marketing

13. Thoroughly enjoyed The Body Remembers by @julien

14. Great example of integrated marketing in real life: The 3 Amigos, by @JayBaer

15. Great post on community by @sueyoungmedia:

Image by Michal Zacharzewski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mzacha

When I was in high school, I always had an assignment book. Well at the beginning of the year I’d have an assignment book, anyway. The assignment book was like a planner except that, appropriately enough, it catered towards my needs as a student. You could look at a day, a week, a month. Heck, you could look at a year at a glance if you really wanted to.

Of course, there was always a problem with my assignment book. I never took the time to sit down and write what I had to do. “By the time you write down everything you have coming up, you could already be halfway done doing the first thing,” I reasoned. By about the middle of November, my poor, forlorn assignment book would be buried at the bottom of my bookbag, its cover curled and torn beyond recognition.

I think back on those days a lot. I spent a lot of time “freaking out” in high school because I always felt I was being overbooked (ha ha, what high schoolers don’t know). I was on the schools’ speech team, I had volunteer hours to do for The National Honors Society, I had homework in every class every day, and I was fastidious about doing all of my reading because I was consciously trying to graduate in the top ten. I remained pretty organized and I got the job done, but I sometimes wonder how much better my quality of life might have been if I had taken the time to fill in that beautiful assignment book with the faux leather cover.

“I don’t have time to plan”

A lot of people and companies today are just the way I was when I was in high school. I don’t mean hormonally (although…), but a lot of us just feel like we have too much going on. We freak out. If someone tells us to sit down, calm down, and write it all down, we tend to flip out, for lack of a better phrase. But factually, at least when it comes to marketing, planning is the single best way not only to make your quality of life better, but also to improve each and every one of your marketing initiatives.

“I should really know the answer to that question”

One thing that we have found as we have helped our clients and prospects plan over the years is that sometimes questions come out of the process that no one had planned on. We can’t really predict what these questions will be or where they might come from. Sometimes questions about a company’s corporate identity pop up as we look at their website. Sometimes questions about a company’s long-term sales goals come up when we look at their existing sales methodologies. This can be an arduous journey, especially when loud tick tock of the clock can be heard all of the time. But there’s one thing I can tell you. Those questions, if they exist, will pop up at some point, whether you plan or not. We tend to think it’s better to have a chance to answer the questions when there isn’t a whole lot on the line immediately. The best answers come when there’s time for thought and no stress from a problem or time shortages.

“Plan for the worst, hope for the best” is not a marketing adage

There was a question on LinkedIn today about how to drive more readers to a company e-newsletter. I see questions like this a lot on the various sites where I chat with other people. “How can I promote the fact that we just launched a new product?” “How can I promote my Facebook page?”

These questions are symptoms. They are not symptoms of a disease. Perhaps they are not even symptoms of a problem within your company. What they are, though, are symptoms of a lack of planning.

Very few things in the marketing world happen accidentally. Sometimes you can meet the right person at the right time. Sometimes you can write something that just happens to hit someone influential in the right way. But generally, marketing success is the result of conniving, sweat on the brow planning. Why is that? A marketing plan means that you don’t just plan to have an e-newsletter. You plan to have promotions within your e-newsletter to attract interest. You plan to invite one reader a month to write a guest story. You plan to share your e-newsletter via your Facebook page and your blog. In other words, for every marketing action that you can think of, your plan should ride the ripples out to the edge of the pond to see all of the ways that single action could be integrated with other actions, with a follow-up plan, and with anything else you might need.

It’s true that there are things you can’t plan for. Maybe the idea for a new product or service comes up that wasn’t involved in your initial plan. That’s okay. A marketing plan doesn’t have to be locked down to the letter. You don’t have to adhere strictly to what you write up. But the structure for planning should be something you always plan on. Avoid the rush tactic of promoting your new product willy nilly. Sit down and make a plan just on how to promote that product. You will find that doing so pays dividends.

What fills the planning hole?

Of course, it’s possible to survive just fine without a plan. The “seat of the pants” crowd has a loyal membership, and it’s because it’s fast and most of the time, maybe, it works. But here’s the problem with the “seat of the pants” approach and marketing. Without a plan, and with all of the pressures that we exist under every day, it’s really, really easy to fall into traps that result in huge mistakes or messes. Imagine a new toy being rushed to the market in time for the holidays without appropriate testing. The results could be tragic! Well, the same holds true for rushing your marketing initiatives to the industry. Maybe you pick a product name that has already been trademarked. Maybe you send out an ad or a news release that has a typo in it (for example, maybe the name of the product or the company name is spelled wrong). A marketing plan can serve as a safety net. You can see when things are coming. You can glance ahead, just like I could have done in my assignment notebook. I could have avoided disastrous meltdowns (or at least the ones caused by the amount of work and persecution I felt I was experiencing). You can avoid dangerous situations like trying to create a slogan in 12 hours.

That sounds like a lot of work

Planning is a lot of work. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of massaging, and just like the potter with the potting wheel, sometimes you have to just mush the whole thing and start over again. Then again, sometimes you can end up with a campaign that is cohesive, sensible, fully thought through, and effective. Is that a fair trade? We tend to think it’s a pretty good investment of some elbow grease at Clayman Advertising. I’d love to hear what you think.

1st Image by Hilde Vanstraelen. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/biewoef

2nd Image by sanja gjenero. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/lusi

One of the weirdest things happened about a month ago. I was on Twitter chatting with my good buddy Stanford Smith (@pushingsocial). Somehow, we got to talking about his hometown. As it happens, we grew up probably no more than 10 minutes apart. Even though Mr. Smith no longer resides in our forlorn Buckeye state, I still count him as ahometown hero. In addition to being native Akronites, we share a lot of the same views when it comes to Social Media (except, as you will see, when it comes to blogrolls). So, I asked the always gracious Mr. Pushing (as I like to call him) if I could interview him. Here are the results.

The Mad Man: At PushingSocial.com, you write a lot about authenticity. There seems to be a lot of buzz these days that authenticity in Social Media is at a premium. Do you agree? How do you define when someone is being inauthentic?

SS: I believe someone is being inauthentic when they are not speaking from a place of passion and experience. For me, blogging is about introducing yourself to the world. I think that many of the problems we grapple with spring from poor communication. Social Media excites me because we can finally create and respond TO EACH OTHER in ways that make a real difference.

The Mad Man: You’ve already made a lot of waves with people listing you as an important resource and a blog to keep an eye on. What are you hoping to accomplish in 2011?

SS: I’m really focusing on creating deeper experiences for my readers. I feel in my gut that reading a blog should be an ACTIVE experience where you get inspired, get equipped, and get whipped into action. So I’m working on an ebook that will be ready in the next month or so and actively helping people to get their passions and blogs noticed. I’m also taking a serious look at how we can revolutionize cause related social marketing. Cool stuff.

The Mad Man: As a fellow Akronite, it must pain you, like it pains me, that the major hubs for Social Media activity are Boston, Chicago, and then the whole West Coast. Do you think we can make the Midwest a respectable player?

SS: Absolutely, I’m proud of the growing SM community we have in Southeast Michigan. I would love for you to organize and get Akron/Cleveland pushing the boundaries…Although Social isn’t confined by geography you definitely can see its impact locally when people take what they learn and apply it to their businesses and organizations.

The Mad Man: What do you think is the biggest mistake people are making in their Social Media marketing right now?

SS: Following so-called Social Media Rules. I can’t stand hearing people parrot the latest “formula.” As you know, I feel strongly that your rules are set by your audience. I’m 110% dedicated to my readers. If they only need to hear from me once a month then I’ll put my heart and soul into it. If my audience hates Facebook – I won’t be there. Simple.

The Mad Man: Just for the record, tell me what think about blogrolls again… 🙂

SS: I swear…blogrolls represent everything that is wrong with the world.

You can learn a lot from Mr. Smith. I’d direct you to link to him from my blogroll, but out of respect, I don’t have his blog listed there 🙂

Thanks, Stanford, for the time!