World Wide Rave: Book Review

by Charles Sipe

World Wide Rave is the follow up to David Meerman’s Scott’s previous hit, The New Rules of Marketing and PR. I really enjoyed this book even though I downloaded it for free (people tend to value things less when they got it for free). It is about how to spread ideas, which is at the core of what marketing is about. In the book Scott shows us how we can use the new tools of social media to spread ideas about our brand to millions. He uses a ton of examples of how people have successfully used social media tools to tell a story to a large audience, and in doing so have made a significant business impact. Here are some valuable lessons that I learned from reading World Wide Rave.

Don’t Focus Too Much on ROI

Although social media campaigns like Will it Blend can be quantified in the growth of sales since their videos were uploaded to YouTube, Scott warns that you shouldn’t focus too much on ROI. He makes the excellent point that companies do a lot of things that they can’t measure. For instance has anyone ever quantified the ROI of working in the office building or providing customers with bags? Does that mean we shouldn’t do those things? Of course not. Scott says worrying about ROI causes marketers to be boring.

I love this tweet by @copyblogger on the ROI of social media marketing-

The ROI of social media marketing: 1. Social media is about people, 2. People buy stuff, 3. Any questions?

Give Away Your Content For Free (No Strings Attached)

Scott argues that giving away your content drives interest. Groups like the RIAA who try to prevent the spread of their content are being counterproductive. Why would you want less fans? Scott also argues that if you shouldn’t even force people to register their personal information. According to Scott, not requiring a registration can increase downloads by a factor of 50. If you require a registration process, you could be losing a majority of the potential audience who wants to connect with your brand! I know a lot of sales-driven organizations would flinch. They might say “but what about those leads we’re losing!” Scott says that you should think in terms of spreading ideas, not generating leads.

For SEO, Just Focus On Great Content

Scott might infuriate many SEO’s by saying that it doesn’t matter if you tweak your site if you have poor content. Instead of focusing on tweaking the little things, Scott suggests focusing solely on creating great content that people want to link to. Also using provocative or negative titles to your post like “10 Reasons Why Not To Hire Me”, you can generate a lot more clicks than a boring keyword loaded phrase like “Increase Productivity and ROI”.

This post was republished with permission from CoolMarketingStuff.

How Home Depot Uses Social Media to Engage Customers

Social media is the hottest topic in marketing right now and larger companies are starting to test the social media waters. Home Depot has been one of the front runners and in this video from the Blogwell Conference Home Depot’s Nick Ayers describes their successes and challenges in social media.

Groundswell: How to use Social Technologies to Market More Effectively

by Charles Sipe

I really liked Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li, for several reasons. It not only gives examples of how social technologies have been used effectively and made a significant impact, but also provides examples of when the best intentions in using social media have blown up. It discusses several possible uses for social technology in marketing, such as marketing research, customer support, providing information for customers in the middle of the sales funnel, building long term relationships with customers, empowering promoters, dealing with a PR crisis, getting customer feedback, building a community for customers, and several more uses that I can’t think of right now. I also like that the authors delve into the ROI of social media tactics, and provide estimates of ROI, which can help marketers to convince management that they should support social marketing initiatives.

The biggest reason I liked this book is because it covers a tremendously significant trend that is currently changing marketing. Old marketing tactics are becoming obsolete (to a degree) and the marketing world is in the middle of a once in a lifetime shift due to advances in technology, especially the most powerful media ever invented- the internet. Change presents organizations with tremendous opportunities to become leaders in a new brand world. This book presents a compelling case why utilizing social technologies can propel your organization to market leadership, or at least achieve better results than you are currently getting from traditional media.

Learn more at The Groundswell Website

One Giant Falls as Another Giant Rises

Paul Travis is a principal at OneAccord which provides interim executive services. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He has also co-authored the book Leadership on Demand: How Smart CEO’s Tap Interim Management to Drive Revenue. His blog is www.60-Second-Marketing.com. Paul can be contacted at 206-910-2222 and Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com.

In the past week, there has been a palpable feeling that our national government is going to march to a different beat than we’ve seen for the past 8 years [couldn't have come soon enough, IMHO].

Just as evident over the past week has been the nail in the coffin of the news print industry. Since the dot-com bust 8 years ago, we’ve seen media companies “dabble” in the online business while they rearranged the deckchairs on the proverbial Titanic. Look no further than the bankruptcy, sale, or pending exit of the venerable Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Austin American-Statesman, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Rocky Mountain News, and on and on.

But here’s the real kicker…

In covering the Obama inauguration, CNN.com and Facebook had almost 14 million people streaming and chatting online — blowing away the past record of 5+ million simultaneous video streams on Election Day 2008.

So…

You’ve been hearing the change was coming. Online media advertising now exceeds that of television. You’ve been told — we’re experiencing the change as we speak. Things are different.

Now how does your present marketing mix compare with that of 2 years ago or 4 years ago?

It’s a race between who changes first — you or your competitor. Drop me a line if you need some help getting started down this path.

Paul Travis, Principal OneAccord
phone 206-910-2222
Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com

Photo by adria richards

The Marketing Paradigm Shift Animated

This is an interesting animation of how the marketing paradigm has shifted from the days of traditional media’s dominance of consumer’s attention to the present in which consumers are bombarded with so many messages that they ignore or distrust marketing. The video shows how social media may be the key to gaining back consumer’s attention and trust.

Scholz & Friends: “Dramatic shift in marketing reality” from Michael Reissinger on Vimeo.

Christopher Penn Discusses Marketing Applications of Twitter

Christopher Penn Discusses Marketing Applications of Twitter on Six Pixels of Separation.

Image by bpolensky

How Does Social Media Affect Search Marketing?

Newstex – Social media and search marketing: Are they two peas in a pod, complimentary or two very distinct channels? The answer is all of the above, depending on the situation. The growth in attention to social media as a marketing, communication and community building opportunity deserves attention by all sorts of online marketers, especially those in search marketing.

Searcher expectations have changed. Searchers no longer have the sole expectation of searching to find information for a specific outcome. As people spend more and more time connecting, sharing and interacting with the social web, they now often expect to interact with what they find in the search results. Another aspect to searcher expectations is that consumers search social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo Answers, MySpace) to a small degree, as alternatives to standard search for information, references and recommendations. There is something inherently more trustworthy about recommendations made by others willing to take the time to review products/services and share their opinions.

So, how do searcher expectations in regards to social media affect SEO efforts? Does it affect landing pages for PPC or other online search advertising? Keywords and links aren’t the only tactics SEOs employ with content optimization. Usability comes into play as well and making it easy for consumers of a web site’s content to socially save, share, submit and interact with that content helps meet increasing social expectations.

With PPC and landing pages it’s the same thing, but not to the degree that it takes away from the objective of the conversion of course. The objective for a landing page is to motivate a specific action, not bookmark the landing page – but why not make it easy if customers choose to do so? With online advertising, there are increasing numbers of companies enabling rich media ads with social features. Links are added so that viewers of the ad can share, rare or comment.

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