They are also REALLY REALLY annoyed when they do not lead to a call to action.

But I recently came across this article here about how Content marketing is becoming Key and KING in social media. You can see the full article here MIKAL E. BELICOVE Is the creator of this article and does a good job of laying out the key facts. I do want to pull out a few of those to highlight them.

“HiveFire’s B2B Marketing Trends Survey Report, twice as many B2B marketers now employ content marketing as they do print, TV and radio advertising, according to the survey.”

This is a great statement. I agree with it 100%.  Now that Google is dumping 100 million dollars into YouTube to make it more of a destination site similar to cable TV with quality shows its even more important to look at each PR, Marketing , and Event or Show you do and see how you can capture that on video to maximize your exposure and spread your costs out over each marketing channel. You control the content here and putting that content out to all those channels through video is very very cost effective.

“Part of the popularity of content marketing is its ability to generate qualified leads while engaging prospects in a branded environment without busting the budget.”

And in today’s world this is very necessary to do.  Not only do you want to maximize your exposure through content marketing but give the customers a direct call to action once you have convinced them of their need for you or your product. Don’t make them go to another site or go to another department in charge of leads get them now!

“Nearly 70 percent of content curators say lack of time hinders their efforts, with 66 percent saying a lack of original and quality content is a major drawback. Another 38 percent say difficulty in measuring results is the stumbling block and 37 percent say lack of staff to do the work is the hindrance.”

True good content takes time but in your weekly or monthly meetings see what your staff or departments are creating and see if other departments can take that same creation and re utilize it . Lack of time usually means lack of time management but if it truly is a small staff then focus on quality content not tons of content.

Content marketing can also come through your customers and fans. Look to them also to see if you can save time and energy by employing a small group of them as evangelists for you. Content marketing will only be growing more and more so the time to start is now.

With Spring finally showing up here in the Great Northwest there is a  penchant to get somewhat excited and good humored. That being so I have a link to share with you from our good friends Mashable.com. The article on Mashable is a series of videos showing good humored and very viral guerrilla marketing campaigns that were done for small companies, non profits, and very large companies. Some of these were costly and some were done for less then $2000.00 dollars. But its food for thought when we look at gaining business for our companies and for expanding our customer base without shelling out a lot of money. A lot of these campaigns could have done more with mobile integration and the UNICEF add does a great job of implementing mobile. Add number 6 in a German Airport could easily be done in any location ( think mall, shopping park, outdoor business parks, etc) for little cost.  I am particularly fond of number 5 ,number 10 and number11 for their extreme low cost. Some of these campaigns allowed for the viewers to pass info on to their friends through social media platforms. Again when you view these videos keep thinking how you can apply this to your particular companies products or services.  You may now click here to view.

So are there any trends here that you can use for your company? talk to your employees and customers about what they would like to see. If your at a loss or stuck in a paralysis of ideas contact us today for a consultation.

Great article from Information Week on the latest reports from a Neilson study on Americans usage of the Internet. You can read the whole article here from Alison Diana.

It is rapidly apparent that Americans are utilizing Social media portals/sites far more then they are using their email. Not only are they forwarding their thoughts and deeds and accomplishments to their friends. They are also using it to forward the best deals that they find along with what they have recently bought and from whom the purchased it from. What is interesting is that we are still seeing a larger growth curve in the baby-boomer population

In fact, U.S. Internet users spent 22.7% of their time on social networking sites — up 43% from the 15.8% they spent in 2009, the research firm found. By comparison, Americans are dedicating fewer hours to the once-ubiquitous e-mail: In this year’s report, users spent 8.3% of their online time reading and sending missives, down almost 28% from last year’s 11.5%, Nielsen said in its Aug. 1 report, “What Americans Do Online.”

Users of all ages are adopting social networking, the research firm found, with double the number of Americans ages 50 and above visiting these sites than the under-18 age group. The report tracked 200,000 users in June 2010.

So the under 18 population is rapidly transitioning to a mobile interface and Neilson found this information to be accurate here:

 The picture changed when Americans described their online usage via smartphones instead of computers. Americans spent 42% of their online time using e-mail when they accessed the Internet with their phone, Nielsen found. Last year, they spent 37% of their phone-accessed Internet time on e-mail, the study said. Portals were the second most used category, according to the report.

So we are seeing that any business today needs to have a presence not only on Social media sites ( Facebook, Youtube,myspace, etc) but regionalized sites as well ( craigslist, oodle, olx, etc.) and now a presence on mobile devices ( www.appinkling.com) .

Social media marketing and social networking are superb marketing tools…. if they’re used right. Use them wrong and they’re a major waste of time.

If you’re one of those people who say “Tried it. Social media doesn’t work for my business.”, here are sixteen reasons why you might not be seeing success:

1. You don’t have a plan.

Social media is marketing, and successful marketing requires a plan. Scattershot tweeting or posting is a waste of time and effort.

2.  You don’t have a goal (you would if you had a plan).

What do you want to accomplish with your posts and tweets? Visibility for your business? Roll out of a new product? Drive traffic to your website? Establish yourself as an expert? Get people to your workshops? You need to know what you want to achieve before you start. How else do you know what to talk about?

3. You don’t have a target audience that you want to engage (yep, you would if you had a plan!). Pretty tough to know what to post if you don’t know what your followers are interested in.

4. You’re all about self-promotion.

This is about as effective as thinking networking is all about telling everyone why they should buy from you. If the bulk of your posts include “I” or “me”, fix them. Fast!

5.  You don’t get the “social” part of social media/networking.

Being social requires some sort of interaction…..like sharing and connecting. Commenting on other people’s posts, retweeting, sharing posts that you find interesting, sharing posts that might help someone else, responding when a friend asks a question. If you’re not doing that, you’re doing “solo” media. Lots of luck with that!

 6.  You’re not following anyone.

I don’t go along with the “follow everyone who follows you” theory, but I do know that I learn a lot from following the right people (those who tweet about what I’m interested in or fun quirky things). So I’m always looking for interesting people to follow. And I periodically go through my new followers to see if I want to follow them in return.

7.  You’re boring people.

If your posts aren’t of interest to your followers, why should they follow you? Or recommend that others follow you? Your network will stagnate.

Make your posts and tweets Interesting, timely and relevant.

If your goal is to gain visibility as a real estate expert, talk about real estate issues and news. Trends you’re seeing (or reading about). Helpful tips for prospective buyers. Things that new homeowners need to know. Posts that will get real estate reporters to follow you.

And don’t be afraid to throw in the occasional quirky post just to make it fun. Posts that make people smile get shared.

8.  You’re inconsistent.

It’s not necessary to tweet daily….but it doesn’t hurt. I’ve read some tip sheets that say 4x /day is optimum but that’s assuming you have something of value to tweet about.

Watch the people who have lots of followers, and see what they tweet about and how often. Same goes for Facebook. Don’t post and then disappear for a month. Your followers will do the same.

And don’t forget that your ranking in Google is affected by Twitter and Facebook. The more you tweet and post, the more Google finds you and the higher you appear in search.

9.  You over post and tweet endlessly.

Ever opened your Twitter feed only to find eight tweets in a row from one person? Then you know what I mean. Try and space your tweets out during the day. Don’t inundate your followers. You’ll lose them.

10. You’ve turned social media over to an intern or an employee who doesn’t “get” marketing or understand what you do. Bad move.

11. You’re outsourcing social media to someone who doesn’t understand what your company does and what you want to achieve. Equally bad move, not to mention a waste of money.

12.  You forgot about keywords.                        

One of the coolest things about Facebook and Twitter is that your posts and tweets get picked up by Google. This not only gives you more visibility but moves your rankings up.

You should be using keywords since new followers will use them to find you. This means using them in your profiles as well as your posts.

13.  You’re using an auto responder to thank people for following you.

I don’t think I’m alone in saying that this is using Twitter to spam. If I’m following you, I’m doing so because I think you’ll tweet about things that interest me. Cluttering up my feeds with messages that say “thanks for following me” or “have a good day” are nice and all but hold no value. They’re automatically generated so it’s not like you’re sending them to connect with me. It’s just one more tweet to delete.

14. You’re pretending to connect but you’re really all about selling.

I had this happen to me the other day. After receiving a nice invite to connect (to which I responded and mentioned what a nice message it was), I got a generic sales pitch the next day. And my new follower got blocked.

15. You’re not being authentic.                                                         Authenticity and transparency are two of the key attributes for a solid social media/social networking connection. Try and portray yourself as someone you’re not, and you’ll get called on it. 

16. You’re not big on sharing.

Since that’s pretty much what social networking is all about, if you ‘re not into sharing, you shouldn’t be here.

By no means is this a complete list, but it’s a good starting point.

If you’re doing any of the above, you’re sabotaging your social media efforts. Start over and do it right. Or don’t do it at all. You’ll free up a ton of time.

But they don’t go out of their way to advertise it.

DeLorean as you can see does go out of their way to show you where online you can find them and the coolest car of the 80s. YouTube and Facebook are boldly shown and they have done some interesting low cost fan contests. They also effectively utilize their Facebook fansite with these contests. If you hurry you can get into their latest contest, a paper DeLorean, by Dec, 31st.

So take a look at these two brands and your own company and see how best you can utilize social media or not utilize it. Do you have a strong enough fan base to let them go ahead and worship your product or do you need to motivate and support you fans? Just remember to make 2010 a strong marketing year for our rebounding economy and from all of us at Smmee have a great New Year!

Now the Leno show is a big experiment for NBC according to the press. Its cheaper to produce compared to hour long drama’s or comedies and its a known brand. The different time slot has proven to be tough but Leno has persisted. In fact when he started doing the tonight show his ratings were horrible for the first three years so he knows to stay persistent. And its great to see that they are trying to be innovative by going after user generated content from the web. So if NBC can do it with the Jay Leno show why can’t your company do the same? There are lots of quirky talent out there that is screaming to be seen and is very cost effective.

77% of all Americans online each month watch a video on YouTube.

YouTube spans all age groups with an increase recently in the age group ranging from 35 to 49 ( how to get a job videos?)

470 million people visit YouTube a month so if it was a country it would be the 3rd largest in the world.

And companies are now looking at YouTube stars ( like the annoying Fred to help promote their brands and products and are specifically creating YouTube commercials( low cost and can be experimentally edgy)

Some interesting ideas there since anyone can create a YouTube channel and as we have seen from Dominoes pizza ( who did not capitalize on their presidents apology video) a great way to squash naysayers and reveal your opinionated truth about your products and services. Some examples?

• Electronic Arts has used YouTube to address bugs in their Tiger Woods video game( great spoof of Tiger walking on water).
• Nike has used this with Kobe jumping over a car ( and spawning many new and improved versions)
• Armor games now uses YouTube as the channel for their instruction walk through videos for their games.
• Carls Jr launched a new hamburger on YouTube
• Burger King and Seth McFarland teamed up to promote burger king in hilarious videos.

So take a look at how you can get talent from YouTube to help your brand out or create your own videos with company employees in crazy and unique ways to get your companies message to the people. It’s cheaper then late night cable and reaches more people.

What Is Social Media?

I was browsing through my RSS reader today and came across an interesting post from Brian Clark, titled Since When Are Blogs Not Social Media?. Here is a quote from it:

I’ve noticed a strange trend lately.

For some reason, people seem to be equating social media with social networking.

At the same time, they seem to be treating blogging as something other than social media.

I found his post interesting because that trend is something I have been noticing myself. It looks like for many people social media is the collection of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

Well, it is much more than that.

Social media are the various forms of user generated content and the collection of websites and applications that enables people to interact and share information online.

Complicated? Well here is a list of things that are part of the social media:

• online forums (e.g., DigitalPoint)
• blogs (e.g., WordPress)
• social networking sites (e.g., Facebook)
• social bookmarking sites (e.g., Digg)
• video sharing sites (e.g., YouTube)
• photo sharing sites (e.g. Flickr)
• streaming sites (e.g., Ustream)
• user reviews (e.g., Amazon)
• crowdsourcing (e.g., Wikipedia)
• content aggregators (e.g., FriendFeed)

As you can see, social media is much wider than what some people think. It is also much older. We could say that the first Usenet (a form of distributed discussion system) developed in 1980 was already social media.

That being said I came across a great article a friend forwarded to me called the five P’s and come interesting comments on it as well. Let me know what you think.