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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
13 Jan 2010
by Michelle O'Hagan
In case there’s still anyone out there who believes social media/social networking is:
- a fad
- for kids
- for B2C, not B2B
instead of a pervasive shift in how all people communicate with each other, now comes yet another eMarketer report, Social Network Ad Spending: 2010 Outlook , that should put those beliefs out to pasture.
One of the most important findings concerns marketing, not advertising:
According to eMarketer:
“… paid advertising in social networks—banners, text ads and search advertising, as well as the more targeted advertising being deployed by Facebook and MySpace—is only a fraction of the spending … The researcher estimated marketers spent $800 million in 2009 on social network, word-of-mouth and conversational marketing, up more than 23% over the previous year. Further growth of 35% is expected for 2010 to more than $1 billion.”
Long story short: Marketers are spending truckloads of money to create demand online in social networks, because that’s where their prospects (consumers and business people of all ages and walks of life ) are.
Demand creation using social media and social networks is no fad, and it is not exclusive to any particular demographic.
Things are looking up. 
Posted in Brand Visibility, Content Marketing, Relationship Marketing, Social Media, Strategy | No Comments »
12 Aug 2009
by Jonathan Thomas
As I’ve written about previously, I’m speaking at Blog Indiana this year. I’m very excited about attending this year’s conference. Last year was very imformative and a fantastic experience.
I plan to blog here about my experiences at the conference. So, stay tuned for pictures, tweets and more. Check out my latest tweets in the sidebar or follow me: @jonathanwthomas
If you want to say hello, I’ll be speaking at 10:00am EST both days about How to Choose a Blogging Platform. Stop by and say hi and ask lots of questions.
If you can’t make it to Blog Indiana, don’t worry, I’ll try to post the presentation online after the conference for everyone to download.
Click here for more information on Blog Indiana.
Tags: blog indiana
Posted in Blogging, SEO, Social Media | No Comments »
24 Jul 2009
by Jonathan Thomas
This past Tuesday I had the opportunity to participate in a social media bootcamp for Tourism industry professionals based in the State of Indiana that took place in Indianapolis at the Eiteljorg Musem. It was an interesting and illuminating event.
Jeremy Williams and the great folks over at Visit Indiana has been spearheading some great initiatives to get local tourism boards to take advantage of social media in their marketing efforts. Visit Indiana is leading the way in successfully using social media for Tourism and have recently been selected as one of the top Tourism boards in the country in their use of social media.
I was able to sit in on two excellent presentations and participate in a panel on blogging for Tourism. Visit Indiana was one of the first state tourism agencies to embrace blogging and now have one of the most successful state travel blogs, the Indiana Insider blog.
The first presentation I saw was all about using Twitter for marketing and tourism. James Burnes from Indianapolis based internet marketing firm Mediasauce presented and he was fantastic. Even though a lot of what he talked about was old hat to me – I still picked up a few new things. I think the audience, whom are mostly inexperienced in using social media, learned quite a bit from his presentation.
During lunch I sat on a panel about blogging and had a chance to talk about how local tourism authorities can quickly and easily use blogs to promote their communities. I shared the panel with bloggers Erik Deckers and Amy Magan, both experts in the field. The overall consensus was that blogging is something that costs very little to do and can have a huge ROI for tourism. By simply creating a blog, they immediately make it easier for people to find them and find out about what their communities have to offer.
After the delicious lunch, Duncan Alney from Firebelly Marketing talked about how you can implement a social media campaign on a budget. Duncan had some great case studies and the audience was very attentive. A stimulating Q&A session followed with the overarching opinion being that using social media costs very little and when properly done, it can have an excellent return. Sometimes, though, it just takes a little creative thinking.
The one thing that I took away from the day of sessions is that there is one clear rule when it comes to any type of marketing – Content is King.
If you don’t have content to disseminate across social media networks – then you will be left behind. It’s just not enough to participate on social networks and engage in the great conversation – you need to have great content to back it all up.
The travel industry is uniquely placed to attract people based on great content. All it takes is a little knowledge of what people are searching for, connecting with them and engaging with them. It all comes down to Imagination Publishing’s first question: How Do You Connect?
Special thanks goes out to Jeremy Williams and the fine folks at Visit Indiana for inviting me attend the awesome event!
Tags: tourism, visit indiana
Posted in Content Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »
16 Jul 2009
by Jonathan Thomas
I wanted to let everyone know about a great blogging and social media conference taking place next month in Indianapolis called Blog Indiana. I’ll be attending the conference and I’ll speaking about Blogging Platforms.
Blog Indiana is a statewide conference featuring the best bloggers from all around Indiana. The goal of the conference is to learn everything we can about blogging from each other. Whether that’s improving our personal blogs or helping our companies make the best use of blogging in their business model.
The conference is jam packed this year with great speakers, including: Christ Brogan, Jason Falls, Chris Baggott and Brad Ward. Last year was awesome and everyone learned quite a bit. The best part was being able to meet and talk to other great bloggers.
On top of the two day conference this year, there is going to be three special summits running concurrently. There will be one about Higher Education, Non-Profits and Social Media.
I’ll be there representing Imagination Publishing and I’ll be speaking in two sessions about How to Choose Blogging Platform. I am very excited about speaking this year and it will be a great chance for people to learn how to best choose a blogging platform for personal or business use.
Blog Indiana is being held in Indianapolis, IN from August 13th to August 15th at the IUPUI Campus in beautiful downtown Indy. If you’re interested in attending, you can buy tickets on their website.
If you have any questions about the conference or have suggestions for what I should cover in my presentation, feel free to leave a comment.
For more information, check out the Blog Indiana Website here.
Tags: blog indiana, events
Posted in SEO, Social Media | 2 Comments »
26 Mar 2009
by Michelle O'Hagan
One of my colleagues, Rene Ryan, called my attention to a blog post on BusinessBytes, a small business technology blog. The Death of the Elevator Pitch highlights the fact that the “elevator pitch”–the supposedly succinct description of a business offering that marketers could use to entice a prospect when time was tight–is on its last legs. The blogger blames SMS and Twitter and mentions something about the downfall of civilization.
It’s way past time for the elevator pitch to go the way of the dodo, washboards and rotary-dial telephones. An elevator pitch is too long, and allows for too much fluffing-up. That’s right–if it takes you 60 seconds to describe the basics of what you do or sell, you have some work to do.
Too many people go into this elevator-pitch exercise with the goal of describing every wonderful thing about the company, the widgets, the service, and how they relate to every single customer segment or vertical. You’re not supposed to be doing that in an elevator (”Sorry, I pushed the wrong button, I’m getting off at 3 not 6″), at a cocktail party (”Um … I’ll be right back, I see my ex-boyfriend from high school over there”) or in professional or social networks (”un-friend,” “un-connect”).
If someone wants to know EVERYTHING about your company or service, they’ll come to your website or invite you to respond to an RFP.
First, make them want to come to your website or send you the RFP. And in a world of ever-shortening attention spans and information overload, anything more than the very basics takes too long whether you’re on Twitter or in an elevator.
The BusinessBytes blogger gave a wonderful example of what I’ll call a Twitter Pitch.
- Start with the basics; noun, verb, object. (i.e. We sell cloth.)
- Add a modifier to clarify what is special about you or your business. (i.e. We sell cloth made from bamboo.)
- Add a short modifying phrase to clarify what is not only unique; but niche about your business. (i.e. We sell cloth made from bamboo that is cheap, ample and green-friendly.)
- Edit the whole thing down by a third to one half and start with the most ear-catching words. (i.e. We’re totally green. Bamboo cloth. cheap & ample.)
- Exchange email addresses.
- Hook ‘em.
Marketers who can boil their company’s offering down to eight to 10 words or a single sentence have a firm grasp on what they’re selling and how to communicate effectively with their target audiences.
Hook ‘em.
Tags: BusinessBytes, elevator pitch, twitter, twitter pitch
Posted in Brand Visibility, Content Marketing, Relationship Marketing, Social Media, Strategy | 10 Comments »
27 Feb 2009
by Michelle O'Hagan
Below is a great slideshow from Bud Caddell, a strategist at Undercurrent. It makes a strong case for relationship marketing with the ideas that: there is no such thing as a captive audience, and “fans” (not awareness) are the only thing you should be focused on, especially in a recession.
In order to be fan-focused, your organization must have three things:
- a point of view (you cannot court everyone)
- a belief in infinity (b/c fandom defies time, space and material)
- open-source relationships (b/c fandom requires exposing yourself to the mechanisms of culture)
Bud’s slideshow provides a few examples fan-focused organizations, mostly large brands you’ve heard of.
Question: What companies do you know that are fan-focused???
Tags: bud-caddell, fandom, undercurrent
Posted in Brand Visibility, Content Marketing, Custom Magazines, Custom Publishing, Digital, Distribution Marketing, Relationship Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, User Engagement | 1 Comment »
12 Feb 2009
by Michelle O'Hagan
An earlier post about Facebook’s user-base made the point that if you’re a marketer, and your target audience includes women or people over the age of 26, your audience probably has a Facebook account.
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal is further proof of the mainstreaming of social media in general, and Facebook in particular. It seems Facebook and Nokia are “discussing a partnership that would embed parts of the social network into some Nokia phones … contact information stored in Facebook would be integrated with the phone’s address book: When users looked up a contact, they could see whether their Faceboook friends were logged on, send them messages and post comments on their profile pages.”
And Nokia isn’t the only handset manufacturer that Facebook is chatting up; Palm Inc. and Motorola also are in discussions, according to the article.
So, for marketers it seems the writing is on the Facebook wall: if you haven’t done so already, start developing targeted, relevant custom content in order to engage your audience on Facebook and mobile devices.
Tags: facebook, motorola, nokia
Posted in Brand Visibility, Content Marketing, Custom Magazines, Distribution Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, User Engagement | No Comments »
11 Feb 2009
by Michelle O'Hagan
A great Twitter / social media story for all you marketers out there:
Just a few minutes ago, I responded to a Tweet from @acmaurer. She asked who out there reads the *paper* version of a daily newspaper.
I responded to her with this Tweet:
“@acmaurer I read at least 2 PAPER papers every day. Sometimes 3. WSJ, Chicago SunTimes, NYT.”
Within 10 seconds (seriously, 10 seconds) of sending that Tweet, I got a new follower, @SunTimes, who responded to me:
“@mohagan And we love you for it! Still only 50 cents! 
”
So, I was feeling a mixture of “what the? …” and pure awe at @SunTimes Twitter abilities, when I decided to ensure that I knew exactly who sent the original Tweet looking for info about newspaper useage. Umm … @acmaurer is the Social Media Producer at the Chicago Tribune. Whoops.
(Shout out to @Amaurer: We get three papers here at work every day: The Tribune, the Sun-Times and the WSJ. I actually read some of all of them, but neglected to say that in the Tweet.)
So, these are the lessons learned for marketers, or anyone else on Twitter:
1. Quick responses get noticed.
2. Always make sure you know to whom you’re responding.
Tags: marketers, tweet, twitter
Posted in Brand Visibility, Content Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »
6 Feb 2009
by Michelle O'Hagan
If there still is any doubt about whether your audience is using social media or on Facebook, ask yourself:
Does my audience include women? Does my audience include people over the age of 26?
If you answered “yes” to either question, your audience probably is on Facebook, willing to engage with marketers who provide compelling content.
The number of U.S. women over age 55 using Facebook grew by 175.3% since September 2008, making mature females one of the fastest growing demographic groups on the social network, according to usage statistics released by independent blog Inside Facebook.
Key Facebook stats as of Feb. 1, 2009, from Inside Facebook:
- There are 45.3 million active U.S. Facebook users.
- The number of Facebook users are growing in every age/gender demographic.
- Facebook use among women is growing faster than among men in nearly every age group.
- The fastest growing age group by total users is 26-34-year-olds; 45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.
Get thee to Facebook, marketers. Distribute your custom content, engage your audience.
For more ideas on how to use Facebook for business, check out the Facebook Marketing Bible.
Tags: facebook, women
Posted in Content Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »
