The Wave of the Future: Geo-Networking Services (and thus local advertising opportunities)

In the marketing and advertising world, we must admit that we are always looking ahead for the next big thing. A few years ago, it was text marketing. Now, it is social media and mobile marketing. Emerging slowly, but with some force, is the use of geo-location services to reach and reward our audiences in new and unique ways.

Geo-networking Platforms

The combination of location based services and social networking are now represented on platforms such as FourSquare and Gowalla. And according to an article in the May 10 edition of Advertising Age, Facebook is setting up its very own location based capabilities. And with a platform as large as Facebook, which adds millions of users each day, location based marketing might take off on an entirely new level.

McDonald’s is said to be one of the first to sign up, allowing users to “check-in” at restaurants and share their food choices with their networks. This function will be going live shortly after Facebook releases its location based functionality.

Benefits

While location based marketing is still in the experimental phase, it brings great advantages to marketers. It gives you the power to communicate with an audience on an entirely different level. You can reward them for “checking in” with promotions, offers, or coupons at your store location (a la foursquare). You can also give them the ability to share what they love about your brand, service, or product with their friends, while they are at your brick-and-mortar locations. This helps your customers pass the word on even faster (beware: even if it’s negative!). Geo-location services are turning physical places into virtual avenues of communication.

Location based services are great for local businesses, too, allowing small business chains to reward their most loyal customers. They offer special promotions and offers to those that come into their store or restaurant the most often. It is a brilliant idea for driving foot traffic into the store, and making that experience an interactive one.

Concerns

While Facebook’s upcoming implementation of location based functionality might mean big things for marketers and consumers, there are some serious privacy concerns for users. With the overwhelming amount of negative feedback that Facebook received for their default privacy settings and Open Graph idea, we can conclude that users might not like the capability of letting their entire network know where they are and what they are doing. But hopefully, Facebook will allow share options once the location functionality goes live.

The Future

In most cases, location functionality is opening the door for further communication between marketers and an audience. More so, it attempts to bridge the physical gap between a company and its consumers. With the increasing interest in platforms like FourSquare, and the soon-to-be released Facebook location features, we may be looking at a new marketing phenomenon that will become part of the communication norm.

Social Media: Users vs. Professionals?

The other day I heard an interesting story from a friend. He was eating out at a restaurant, talking about Twitter and social media over dinner with a friend. A man comes up to them, and while handing my friend his card, he said “Couldn’t help but overhear. Email me. I’d like to talk about social media for my business”. Seems like a new business development dream, right?

While my friend excitedly shared this information with me, I couldn’t help but think “You aren’t in social media. You aren’t even in advertising. How are you going to help this man?”. I couldn’t help but be a little stressed out that a non-professional social media user was going to be taking the leap into professional social networking. Visions of this man’s potentially ruined online reputation flashed before my eyes.

But his experience begged the question: after the extent at which social media sites like Facebook and Twitter infiltrate the lives of the younger generations, what distinguishes a user from a professional? Is there even a difference?

The First Generation of Social Media Professionals

Since this social media stuff is kind of new, chances are that you can’t major in social media in college. Sure, there might be a class or two on the subject now, but I can guarantee that these are few and far between (at least for now). And I doubt all the “experts” out there learned social media strategy and implementation from a textbook or from a teacher. They likely learned it from early adoption of social networking sites, lots of experience, trial and error, social media conferences, and, let’s be honest, by reading a lot of Mashable. Maybe even by accident.

Don’t get me wrong, social users are great, and can understand the intricacies of web. They are tech saavy, influential, and smart. They are the reason that sites like Twitter and Facebook stay around and become so popular. But their dip in the pool of social media is more for personal reasons than anything else.

The Difference

Professionals, on the other hand, are a bit different. I’m sure that they all started out as a social user, at least to some extent. You’ve got to learn the ins and outs of the web before you can navigate effortlessly. But here is the rub: professionals use social media differently. We have actual training, from professionals and organizations that have been doing this stuff for years. Ya know, the ones who invented this kind of stuff. And now we are the ones doing the training.

We know that there is strategy involved behind every tweet, every Facebook update, and every blogger relationship. We do research and understand principles of advertising and marketing. We know how and when to see the bigger picture: that social media cannot cover all messaging or audiences (we are kind of obsessed with social media and traditional advertising integration). The professionals are the ones you are talking to when you tweet at Comcast about your cable connection. They run blogs for companies like Coca Cola. They create the Facebook page for Starbucks that you “like”. These aren’t college kids; these are marketing and advertising veterans with a keen eye on ROI.

So What Does All This Mean?

Not that social users can’t know these about social media, marketing, advertising, and ROI. Of course they can, with experience and time spent at a good ad agency. And while my friend has neither of these, he has continued contact with the man he met in the restaurant, and is looking to do social media consultation for him.  I continue to stop to ask myself if he knows what he is getting into. Is he going to be using the right tools to reach the right audience? Maybe he knows how to create a Facebook ad, but will the ad be compelling, and will it include a clear value proposition and call to action? Does he know how to find any audience on the web? Does he know how to wordsmith his emails, pitch bloggers, promote events, write blog posts, or analyze metrics? Does he have a knowledge of how to integrate social media with traditional media? Does he know how to effectively convey an ad message? Does he…ok you get the point.

While some can dabble, we’ve got the ability to research, plan, and implement, and we’ve been in the ad business for over 20 years. Feel free to question our abilities, because we’ve got the case studies to back up our expertise.

Social media for business to business businesses

With it’s emphasis on the individual, the social media space can be intimidating for companies that are primarily concerned with business-to-business sales. Here are some of the questions we’ve heard before:

• How can I increase my B2B sales through social media?
• How is Facebook going to help me, isn’t Facebook just for casual use?
• Why do people on Twitter care what I’m doing on a minute-to-minute basis?

Although each business requires tailored coaching on how to get the most out of social media, because each business is unique, there are definite overall social media concepts that will help any company in the B2B space. If we had to sum everything up into a few succinct thoughts, they would be: choose the right tools, and don’t just use those tools for the sake of using them. Many businesses think social media is a hoax because they haven’t seen any return on investment. Often that is because (1) they don’t know what to measure or (2) they didn’t have a plan or strategy. If you want some concrete and well thought-out lessons on social media, definitely check out this post at Mashable. It includes some great info for B2B businesses. We also decide to contribute a few of our own thoughts below:

Choose the right tools

Facebook is a great tool for some businesses to connect with their fans, but that doesn’t automatically mean that your business should be there. Throughout our work with clients, we’ve used all sorts of campaigns to help them leverage social media. Some of these campaigns involved the following:

• Linkedin – we train new business teams on how to leverage LinkedIn on a weekly basis
• Ambassador programs – getting business customers to spread the word
• Reputation management – finding and assessing reputation online, then taking steps to make it better
• Blog – Business-to-business relationships can be involved and can require a lot of back-and-forth before a sale is actually made. Blogs can pull in prospects through their stellar search engine optimization, they can remind prospects of services, they can highlight success stories, and they can keep your business top-of-mind when your leads are actively looking for the service you provide. Blogs can help support business-to-business sales in almost every step of the sales funnel, and can give your sales team content to distribute through their personal or business social networks. We are huge fans of blogs for businesses. We even have two!

So when you choose your tools, think about who your audience is, and what you intent to do with the tools…which brings us to our next point:

It’s all about how you use social media

If it were as simple as just using LinkedIn, then every business would be doing it. But the reason why so many businesses fail at social media is because they don’t use it in a way that befits their specific business. See below for an original video from a printing business. They let it all hang out there, and in the process created a hilarious video that conveys what their business is all about. They could have “just used” YouTube in a myriad of unsuccessful ways, such as just taking videos of their printing presses. Instead, they took a step back and thought about what they really wanted to convey and how to use that message to spark conversation with their audience. Now here we are passing the message along. Excellent use of social media.

So those are our thoughts. Let us know of your B2B successes/foibles in the comment section below.

Changing the World, Web 2.0 Style

It is pretty easy to say that the Internet is becoming a portal for a different kind of life: new communication, networking, news and journalism, shopping, you name it. And after the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti, the web became a haven for cause: donating money to help, reading stories of miraculous heroism and survival, and sharing opinions of how we as a people could help.

Noting the response and power to utilize and leverage social networks and Web 2.0 to help make change, Facebook’s co-founder Chris Hughes had an idea. He founded Jumo, a web site intent on in bringing people together for a common good: to change the world. Jumo looks to “connect people to the issues, organizations, and individuals relevant to them to foster lasting relationships and meaningful action.”

I don’t know if I am brave enough to call it “Facebook for Social Good,” but its a close call. From everything I’ve read about it, Jumo’s intent is really to open discussion about helping, doing it in a way that is relatable to people who “live” in the web 2.0 world. And while it won’t be fully up and running until Fall 2010, Jumo will give its’ users the ability to take part in change that is meaningful, yet comfortable to them; an tailored or individualized giving effort, if you will.

What do you think? Would you help try to change the world if you could do so from your computer? Is charity more appealing if the opportunities are individually tailored to you?

9 Great tips for local businesses

Usually we write blog posts, hoping that you will stay here at our blog, poke around a bit, and if we are lucky, visit our website. But the purpose of this post is solely to send you to another blog. It’s not just any blog, it’s one of our favorites, Mashable.com.

Shane Snow at Mashable wrote an article containing 9 tips for location-based marketing. Small local businesses can now draw a more direct link between their social media presence and their sales.

We’ve checked out the list of tips, and we totally love them. Here they are, just in case you are lazy, but we highly suggest you go check out the full blog post.

1. Learn the Platforms (duh)

2. Determine Your Goals

3. Establish Your Presence

4. Customize

5. Implement Compelling Promotions

6. Engage With Your Customers

7. Track Everything

8. Be Prepared to Adapt

9. Avoid Common Pitfalls

So there they are. We’d elaborate, but we think Shane summed everything up pretty well. So go check it out, and let us know if you have any questions. If you are a local business, there are 11ty (pronounced “eleven-ty”) billion reasons why you should be using social media. We’d love to tell you why. Shoot us an email, tweet at us, post on our facebook wall, call us…you get the idea.

How to: create a viral video

This past weekend the internet was abuzz about a certain workout video, featuring UFC fighter Chuck Liddell and his girlfriend exercising. Why was the video so popular? Maybe people want work out tips from a UFC fighter? Or maybe it’s because Chuck and his girlfriend are completely naked.

It turns out that this is a viral video created by Reebok to showcase their new ZigTech shoes. We really like the video (for marketing reasons only!) and think that several lessons can be learned from Reebok:

1. Be controversial, but not offensive – the video has the private parts blurred out, but besides that doesn’t leave much to the imagination.

2. Seed the video with influencers – in this case, TMZ was the perfect outlet for the viral video. It gave the paparazzi-like video some credibility, and was a huge catalyst for reactions and the spread of word of mouth.

3. Don’t push the product too hard – the video doesn’t focus on the shoes, which makes it more entertaining for the viewer and less likely to be an obvious contrivance. Rather, let the buzzers (like us)  speak about the product afterward.

We think that Reebok successfully garnered buzz around the brand and the product (ZigTech shoes). The video might offend some, but those aren’t the people that Reebok is trying to please. All considered, we think this was a great execution. However, we’re going to have to watch the video a few more times just to be sure

The Reach of Social Media: From Runway to Twitter

This past weekend, I had the privilege of attending a little known thing called New York Fashion Week, which started last Friday and runs throughout this week. Because of some amazing friends and once in a life time opportunities, I attended the Christian Siriano Fall 2010 Collection, as well as Naomi Campbell’s Fashion Show for Haiti Relief. But aside from shoes and dresses, everyone seemed to be armed with something that, until now, was unrelated to fashion: tools for social media.

Once inside the tents, I was amazed to see how much the fashion industry has grasped the digital era. Forget digital cameras: girls in stilettos snapped pictures on their iPhones, instantly uploading to Twitter. Members of the press were interviewing fashion celebs, recording  questions and answers on their cell phones instead of tape recorders, shooting emails to their editors simultaneously. I had a friend Google a celebrity’s name to see his picture, to ensure she was taking a picture of the right guy. There was even a section dedicated to fashion techy gurus, sitting on benches with their Mac books open, balanced on their thighs. Above them, a screen displayed a real time feed of tweets featuring the New York Fashion Week hashtag (#nyfw), constantly updating and changing.

But the fashion industry goes beyond just the diffusion of fashion week news through social media. This was the first year that typically industry exclusive shows like Marc Jacobs or Rodarte were being shown digitally, bringing access to anyone with a computer. Even more than that, designers are embracing social media on an entirely different level. As mentioned in this recent Mashable article, the industry has begun to accept “outsiders” by inviting them in, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, or the blogosphere. They’ve become more open, tapping an a huge audience that had, until recently, been completely ignored and unheard.

Like in all other industries, some have chosen not to adopt social media as a new and influential practice. And just like in all other industries, they are going to be left behind. Those that adapt will stay relevant, and ultimately, in front of consumers.

Social Media Measurement

Tim Trefren recently wrote one of the best blogs I’ve ever read in regards to social media tracking (although that’s not necessarily saying much, because people seem to write vaguely about the issue).

I wanted to commend him on his “3 new ways to measure the social web” even though none of them are new. We’ve been using them to track social media and online interaction for several years now. I might sound a little cynical (I am) and I might be using a lot of parenthesis (it’s just my style), but I sincerely thank him for getting the word out about conversion tracking, engagement tracking, and repeat visitor tracking. For some of us in the industry, this stuff isn’t new at all, but many businesses refuse to acknowledge the extreme trackability of social media, and how to use that data to make informed marketing decisions.

I’m not going to take the time to outline our tracking system here because I already wrote a blog post about it several months ago. Some of our metrics change depending on the client, but our philosophy hasn’t changed: social media is as trackable as you want it to be.

What does that mean for us as marketers? I’ll lay it out, plain and simple for you:

- More data = more information = better market research.

- More data = more accurate ROI = better informed marketing decisions

- More data = more targetability = more effective advertising

And these points say nothing about the other obvious benefits of increased communication, positioning, search engine optimization, promotions, etc. Hopefully social media tracking doesn’t seem as daunting as it once was.

If you have any questions, give us a call (410-280-5451) or send us an email. We love to teach companies how to measure their social media efforts!