We’re doing well (we think) with the edits on the book and the publisher has the first version of the manuscript. While all that is being thrashed out, we’re looking a some of the branding and marketing. Here are three (3) ideas we’ve come up with and we’re interested in what you think!
Trying out the PollDaddy app from Automattic i this post, so we are only collecting 100 votes – When it fills up, just leave your comments below – thanks!
In December we had a BlogTalkRadio.com session with Jason Baer of Convince and Convert. The session included Jay, Guy Powell and myself and we had several listeners who stayed with us for the 50 minutes of the program. When I got the show downloaded, we discovered that the quality of the recording was intolerable and, much to my disappointment, I am unable to provide the podcast here, but we did get a truly HUGE effort from our transcriber, Cynthia Propst and we did the get a transcription of the episode. The session was great and well worth the time to read!
How to develop metrics for an engagement and how the non-financial metrics are tracked and what they can mean
His perspective on agencies supporting a clients social media presence
Comparing an effort for a B2B vs. a B2C effort
How companies are starting to invest in social media and see social as an aspect of most all their media
The ‘lifetime value of a customer’ concept as it relates to social media
Why an online community connection does not mean ‘customer’
Opt-in messages in social media re much more powerful than traditional media exposures
Comparison of Word of Mouth and social media marketing tactics and how they are similar
How social media tactics are used in short term campaigns to support customer acquisition and retention
The computer and information technology group in the corporation is being driven out of the equation and marketing is taking over
He shares some simple tactics for checking the success of social campaigns
The event was a lot of fun and we appreciated Jay’s participation.
Next up in the series – Twitter influence measurement; see you all soon!
To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group. Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!
Equating a successful social media presence to a well-planned cocktail party is a common comparison. When plotting a strategy consider a variety of techniques based around the cocktail party model.
One of those tactics is a drawing or door-prize that uses a contest model. The conversation on how to develop an online contest has come often enough and over the holiday break, I took the time to use my favorite ideation tool to develop a model.
There are two legs to this model – one is low ‘hard cost’ and just requires a good deal of manual labor to implement, monitor and manage. The second leg assumes most all of what is in the first, but allows for a more robust implementation assuming a funded budget for custom programming and monitoring tools.
What would be the results of this kind of a campaign?
Increased awareness of the brand / message
Increased followers / fans
Some combination of the two
How would you determine the ROI of the effort? Begin with tracking the initial investments and setting the baseline of what’s happening now. Establish what a success looks like and monitor measure and readjust as needed.
There are probably a few more aspect than I have considered here though – what would you add?
The model used MindManager from Mindjet to create the Mind Map of the Online Contest Model. Make sure you are current with Adobe Acrobat8 and Flash9 installed and this mind map & player should work (MindJet requirements). Mac users may have issues – contact me to send you the MindMap itself if you have the Mac version of MindManager.
“…As I have said many times, it does not matter what you call the dog, as long as it brings back the bone.
I do agree with you about that boardroom conversation though.
That is the difficulty in obtaining the revolutionary changes required to cope with broadband empowered individuals. You need memetic branding to survive.”
I LOVE the SCVA dog! Then again, I’m a fan of the Wizard of Oz story anyway.
The name of the dog however is not a trivial matter. The dogs name in our discussion here is a metaphor for the concept of how we describe the development of respect and status in a social media setting.
We’re a society that counts on the semantics to understand the conversation, so we may participate in it. Whuffies is a great term, I like it as a rule, but to use it to refer to the reputation we manage & maintain, how will we involve those who feel a need to connect with the old to make a break though to the new? Only a brilliant few can make a clean break with the old and move to the new without hesitation.
Social media is changing how we connect to one another, it is changing how we interact and, for business, how we draw customers and stakeholders to us. Pull is the new paradigm, not the beat-you-over-the-head-and-interrupt-you push model of old – social media is the underlying model that pull marketing requires.
So when we’re in the middle of changing one part of the equation, should we try to change all the parts at once? The conversation HAS to be framed in a context that the audience requires and can connect to or else we lose them and the progress that could be made is lost.
Social Capital or Wuffie… let’s not scare off the natives…
Money Magazine published an article about a new search engine name ‘Cuil‘ ( pronounced ‘Cool’). Cuil was started by ex-Google engineer Anna Patterson, who started another product that Google bought and folded into the massive Google machine, her previous product was ‘Recall’. On the team too is Tom Costello, an ex-IBMer with a background in search engines and corporate computing that is pretty impressive.
What would drive Anna and Tom to the craziness of competing against Google? As I see it $33M in funding, a broader search capability (they claim the worlds largest, deepest index) and a promise to NOT gather your personal data.
Pretty cool, eh? Oh, sorry, that would be pretty Cuil wouldn’t it? I’m going to track these guys and see where they go…
“…As I have said many times, it does not matter what you call the dog, as long as it brings back the bone.
