Bailey’s Journal – Blog Posts from Cyphers’ Newest Employee

Bailey Whittaker, a recent graduate from Towson University, has recently joined The Cyphers Agency Push ‘N Pull team. She will post regularly on our blog as she learns more about how we use word of mouth marketing for our clients, so you can learn what we do from an inside perspective.

Social media is way more extensive than I imagined.  Being a recent college graduate, and 22 years old, I thought I knew a lot about social media.  I was wrong.  I thought if I knew how to use Facebook (which in my mind is the fastest growing and most commonly used social media site) I was good to go.  I was also vaguely familiar with MySpace, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Flickr,and some other sites.  As it turns out, there are many more sites online that allow people with common interests/goals to come together, and each in a different way.  I didn’t realize so many people were using online resources to find each other.  Social media is effective because it changes constantly, and people can become interactive with other customers, or the company itself.

I was also surprised at the wide audience range of people using these sites.  I think of the older generation as being generally internet incapable (sorry!).  As it turns out, lots of baby boomers have set up their own blogs, groups, and websites.  Maybe some of them could even teach me a thing or two.

In terms of cool websites I’ve learned about, I think MeetUp sounds awesome.  I’ve never used it, but it’s a really cool concept – I’m impressed. It shows that we can use online tools to find people online, but reach them in the real world too if we want.

I’m really excited to keep learning about all the things that we are doing for our clients. I’ll keep you posted!

5 Tips on How to Pitch Bloggers

Our clients hire us because they want advertising. They have a message that they want to get out to their target audience. Blogs are an excellent tool to use, because they attract specific audiences. The only problem is that we don’t have control over what is posted on a blog, because blogs are completely controlled by their creator, the blogger.

This is why the act of pitching bloggers can be so vital to some of our word of mouth campaigns. In this blog post we will show you 5 tips on how to pitch bloggers so that they are most likely to write about you in a favorable light. This will increase your website search engine optimization, and more importantly get your message out to your target audience.

Tip 1: Create an outreach plan.

We never talk to bloggers without a lot of planning. First, we make sure that we are reaching out with bloggers that make sense with our client and our campaign. Just because our client is a chain of restaurants doesn’t mean that all food bloggers are appropriate. If our client’s restaurants are high-end, then we might reach out to foodie bloggers. If the restaurants were low-end we might reach out to blogs that focus on saving money. It all relates back to the overall campaign and how we are positioning the client. Our blogger outreach has to sync with our creative work so that the messaging is consistent.

After we’ve created a database of bloggers and their contact information, we get creative with our pitches…

Tip 2: Think about the blogger and the blogger’s audience. What’s in it for them?

Bloggers only want to post things that their audience will find valuable. However, that doesn’t mean that every blogger outreach has to involve some sort of contest or giveaway. Sometimes we offer an exclusive discount on our clients product. Sometimes there is such a good match between what our client does and what the blog audience wants that simply hearing about our client is value enough. It can even be as simple as offering a link exchange or writing/featuring a guest post for the blog.

In short, you need to be creative and strategic in what you are offering bloggers. Make sure that there is something of value for  both the blogger and the blogger’s audience. For example, offer the blogger a free trial product and have them run a contest on their blog for their readers. You get exposure, the blogger gets free product and a cool blog post, and the blogger’s audience gets gets a message and giveaway tailored to their interests.

Tip 3: Make your email personable

We never mass email our bloggers, for several reasons:

1. Bloggers get pitched all the time. They can sense a spam email from a mile away.

2. We want to create a relationship with this person. We treat them as more than just a name and an email address on a list.

3. We offer each blogger a unique incentive or discount. An “exclusive discount code” doesn’t do much good if the same code is posted on about 10 other blogs.

Tip 4: Can’t find their email? Do some research!

Bloggers often refrain from posting their email address on their blogs because of spam or other reasons. This can make it difficult to contact the blogger, but it’s not necessarily impossible. Worst case scenario, you can always leave a comment on their blog. But often there are other ways to contact bloggers. Try their facebook page, twitter page, linkedin profile, or even try googling them. We’ve had success by interacting with them on other social networking platforms, and they appreciate being contacted in a new or different way.

Tip 5: “Blogger” is a loosely defined term

You don’t need to have a blog for us to want to reach you. We like bloggers because they have specific audiences that pay attention to them, but with the advent of social networks, they don’t necessarily need a blog to have an audience. For example, Ashton Kutcher doesn’t have a blog, but he does have over 5 MILLION Twitter followers. We never pass up an opportunity to reach out to influencers, whether they have a blog or not.

BONUS TIP: Bloggers have a strong sense of loyalty to their readers. If they don’t think that your product/service/event is up to their standards, they may not post about it, or even worse – they could write an extremely negative review. This just emphasizes how you need to ensure that the bloggers you are reaching out to are a good fit. You also need to be confident in your product. If you think there is a chance a blogger might not like your product, you might want to think twice before sending it to a highly influential individual.

Now that you understand some of the issues surrounding blogger outreach, you are better prepared to get some visibility for your company. But be careful, you don’t want to start something like this without a plan, or without considering the risks. What are your overall goals? Is this the best way to achieve them? Are there other marketing tactics that would compliment this outreach? If you have any questions, feel free to give us a call. We’re happy to help.

5 Great WOM Resources You Should Know About

Many of our clients are still getting aquainted with WOM tools and strategies, and are far from actual implementation. That’s why we thought we’d pull together this list of great resources that can help your WOM education. Everything from Facebook tutorials to WOM case studies – it’s all here. And if you read all this stuff and want more specialized recommendations for your business? Then feel free to give us a call.

So, in no particular order, here are 5 great Word of Mouth resources:

1. Facebook Guidebook

Compiled from Mashable blog posts (like the Twitter guidebook below), this guidebook shows you how to use Facebook for business, and gives you tons of resources.

2. Twitter Guidebook

The Twitter guidebook gets you started on the basics of Twitter, but will also show you more advanced uses if you want. If you want a bunch of followers, and you want them to love you, this is a must-read.

3. WOMMA Case Study Library

WOMMA is the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, and they are an essential resource for any company taking that wants to learn about word of mouth marketing. This section of their site contains tons of case studies that can help you learn more about WOM or help you brainstorm for your own WOM campaigns.

4. Meetup.com

If you don’t already know about meetup.com, you are seriously missing out. It is one of the few sites that connects online communities in real life. Are you trying to target golf players? Stay at home moms? They are all on Meetup.com, and are open to your communication if you know how to reach out the right way. Find your audiences here, and use them to spread the word.

5. Google Keyword Tool

If you need to find and target your audience, you need to know what they are searching for. This tool tells you the keywords you should be using/targeting, based on a few that you give, or based on your website. This is very helpful for increasing your organic search engine optimization.

So get started on your WOM education, before it’s too late! Let us know if you have any questions by email, phone, or in a comment below.

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.

Word of Mouth Marketing Toolbox: Flashmobs

Definition (from Wikipedia):

“A flash mob (or flashmob) is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse.”

What are the benefits?

- Flashmobs create lots of user-generated content

- Flashmobs stimulate online and in-person buzz

- If it’s creative enough, a video of the flashmob can go viral online, constantly increasing awareness

- They get attention like no other tactic. If you are near a flashmob, you will notice it, it’s that simple.

But be careful:

In can be tough to make the connection between performance and brand, so make sure to think things through. Tons of people will be exposed to this event and posting their pictures/videos online, but if they don’t know why it happened then your brand won’t get credit. How do you avoid this pitfall? Make sure your event has a strong brand presence or call to action (but be judicious, as an over-branded flashmob will come across as kitchy or contrived).

How to create a good flashmob:

- Use a high-traffic area, where there will be tourists with cameras. This will stimulate user-generated content.

- It’s not absolutely necessary, but if you can afford it, use high-quality performers – the performance shouldn’t be a gamble. If the flashmob looks bad it can make your company look really lame.

- Alert traditional PR, but don’t tell them everything. Just let them know why they might want to have a cameraman in a certain area at a certain time.

- Use the content afterwards. Send a video to traditional PR outlets. Send the video to bloggers. The possibilities are endless.

Here are some examples of flashmobs:

Flashmobs for fun:

Too bad Chiquita didn’t think of that!

Flashmobs for business:

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