Category: Marketing Trends/News

By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

People are always telling me they don’t “get” Twitter. I took to it immediately, maybe because I’ve been doing social media marketing since 1995, and writing about it since 1991. In honor of being named one of the Top 11 blogs covering social media, here’s a 5-point Twitter success strategy.

1. Post some really worthwhile links, good commentary, etc.
2. Follow a few influential people and then send an appropriate @ message to them once in a while
3. Keep the signal: noise ratio high, but engage in human dialog–don’t make it all about you–pick a few people to engage in meaningful sustained conversation
4. Retweet when you find posts useful
5. Post often enough to keep active, not so often that you annoy people

Bonus tip: Your profile page should have a real photo, real name, web links, and perhaps something else of interest (I have my book covers). Here’s a link to mine.

And it takes care of itself. I joined in August and have nearly 1200 followers, haven’t chased them, just used the above method.

BTW, my new e-book, “Web 2.0 Marketing for the 21st Century” (which I include as a bonus with either of my Grassroots Marketing books, or sell separately for $12.95), goes into Twitter and Facebook strategies in much more detail.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Politics

Yeah, I know, I’m late to the party. Should’ve blogged on this five weeks ago. But I only just found the brilliant analysis by George Lakoff, the Left’s best theorist on the power of framing and language. He wrote “Don’t think of an Elephant” and many other books.

If you want to better understand marketing, patriotism, and a progressive agenda, click here to go and read it. Well worth the time.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

This is a company that is confident in its product and comfortable with social media. Go to https://skittles.com/ and you’ll see (Gasp!) the results page for a Twitter search on “skittles,” in real time.

The “real” nav bar is a window superimposed over the Twitter page

Especially remarkable considering that the product is much-dissed in literature as a quick sugar high that too often substitutes for real nutrition (going all the way back at least to a Doonesbury strip that has Mike asking incredulously, “Skittles is your DINNER?”–must be 15 years ago). And one post that’s visible on my screen as I write this is about “skittlefisting.” Abig BRAVO to them on the transparency front!

I can’t remember another example of a major corporation saying to the world, “we’re not going to control or filter what you learn about us on our own website, we’ll leave it to the randomness of the world.” The only control the site is exercising is demanding to know the age of a viewer and acknowledgment that the company isn’t responsible for the messages.

For people who’ve never used Twitter, it must be really weird. But then again, among the demographic Skittles most appeals to, Twitter use is probably very widespread.

How did I find out about this? I saw a Twitter post from my friend Patrick Byers over at the Responsible Marketing Blog. There’s apparently a whole #skittles thread running at Twitter (the hashtag allows people to search easily for topics).

Speaking of transparency, why did I put # at the beginning of my headline? My blog feeds automatically into Twitter (and from there to Facebook). So by putting the # at the front of this post’s title, I expect that this post will be on Twitter’s homepage briefly this morning, until it gets knocked down out of sight. As a grassroots marketer, I want my 15 minutes of fame. 🙂

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with

Fascinating. Paul Smith demonstrated a real-world example of how to use Twitter for powerful real-time research–in product development, marketing, or journalism.

He posed a question on behalf of a client who wanted to launch a Green product that would be made in China, and how that would be received by consumers–and posted several responses at the above link.

I’ve used Twitter to drive traffic to a survey, but this kind of direct and immediate feedback may be even better–because it’s much more human, not to mention faster. Who knew a year ago that Twitter could be used for market research?

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, media-general, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

Four years FedEx took over the Kinko’s copy and office services company, the Kinko brand was dropped entirely in 2008; those services are now grouped under FedEx Office.

When Marketing Sherpa interviewed FedEx’s Director of Global Brand Management, Gayle Christensen, she outlined eight steps the company took to smooth the transition in the public eye and retain/acquire market share. (Note: Sherpa’s content goes behind a barrier, for purchase, after a few days. “Norman,” referred to in the quote, is Eric Norman, of the marketing strategy firm Sametz Blackstone Associates,)

What caught my eye was “Step #6. Set up interviews with bloggers”:

High-profile people (e.g., new chief executives) should do interviews with bloggers, trade publications, and other media outlets to address weak speculations and preclude skepticism, says Norman. “You have to engage folks who are writing about you,” he says. “If you are not engaged, you concede the control of the message to them.”

Find out who’s talking about the merger on social media outlets, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or niche online forums and blogs. Search for the merging companies’ names or set up an email alert, such as Google Alerts, for the company and brand names.

Make a point to comment on blogs or social media sites talking about the merger, especially if something is false.

I’m fascinated that setting up interviews with bloggers warrants a main headline, while traditional media is mentioned but glossed over in the paragraph. It shows how far we’ve come that bloggers are considered opinion molders, while traditional journalists are barely noticed. This is a growing trend, I think, and it has many implications for how we (as a society) deliver and digest news.

I’m a big believer in citizen journalism, including the blogosphere (I’ve blogged since 2004, after all), and participate actively in social media.

Still, I question the decision to pretty much ignore the mainstream press. There’s also a place for the trained and skilled journalist, who knows how to ask deep questions, has a really strong BS detector, and understands the importance of telling a story that encompasses multiple points of view. I, for one, am not ready to give that up just yet.

But I also note that for many years, some “mainstream” journalism outlets have had a very clear point of view, and have thrown objectivity out the window. While in recent years we’ve seen this very dramatically with, for instance, the strong right-wing bias of Fox News or the somewhat less strong liberal tilt of NBC, even during the golden news decade of the 1970s, there were news outlets such as New Hampshire’s Manchester Union-Leader that were unabashedly partisan and sharply opinionated.

With huge budget cutbacks, bean counters making policy decisions, and corporate ownership sometimes casting a pall over the selection of stories and the decisions about how much resources to use in pursuing them, the future of professional news gathering looks a bit shaky from here. I hope it pulls out in the clutch. It’s an important perspective, despite its flaws, and we’d be poorer for losing it.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, media-general, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

Want to know why right-wing pundits far outnumber those on the left in mainstream US TV? Bloggers Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald shared a theory on Bill Moyers Journal: having someone like Amy Goodman of Democracy Now would interfere too much with the construct disseminated by US mainstream media that the US government and major corporations are our benevolent friends, and they don’t want to air views that might help explain why the US has enemies abroad.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter, those preachers of hate, are OK in their view because they are simply putting out a more vitriolic version of the Reaganite “mainstream.” But the soft-spoken, highly articulate and very well informed Goodman (who I consider one of the best interviewers in contemporary journalism) is considered a threat!

Of course, this doesn’t explain how another articulate and well-informed progressive,
Rachel Maddow, gets air. But it says a lot about the nature of today’s corporate media.

In the “know your enemies” department, fans of intelligent TV must read this brief transcript or watch the video. It’s a shocker.

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By Posted on Posted in Customer Service as Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, media-general, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with ,

Lostremote.com has an astounding post: a traditional print journalist ranted that a TV station allowing its viewers to select one story for the nightly newscast was the death of standards. The station, in best-practices Web 2.0 fashion, invited him on the show to debate the issue publicly.

And this is how the journalist responded:

“I’m told that this multiple-choice reporter has called me out with a public invitation, on her blog or her twitter or whatever, to debate her before her ubiquitous Web camera with its on-line audience of literally dozens of voyeurs and three or four lonely, misfit bloggers who spend all their time communicating only with each other. I need not lend my experience and credibility to draw her a crowd.”

Talk about clueless! This kind of arrogance might have worked for The New York Times 100 years ago, but it sure doesn’t work now for an unknown journalist working for a newspaper in Arkansas! What he doesn’t get is that he has no credibility with the audience he’s rejecting (other than he apparently writes a blog on politics)–and that his appearance on the show might have built credibility for his position, and might have gone viral, being seen by tens of thousands.

Now, mind you–I am trained as a traditional print journalist. I have enormous respect for people who follow the old principles and standards–who do research before they write, who understand the importance of objectivity, and who try to tell the important stories that are very hard to find on mainstream broadcast media–and I’m horrified by the decline both in journalistic standards within a story and in the general willingness to go after a tough (and expensive) but important story. That failure in part led us to the Iraq debacle. Journalists absolutely need to ask hard questions, grapple with the answers, and filter the world for their public. In an era where we all have far too much information and limited ability to process it, we still need traditional journalists as intermediaries. Citizen journalism is vital, but it’s not the whole thing. Professional journalism is crucial, still.

But I think you can have both journalistic standards and an openness to listening to your readers/listeners/viewers. You can have deep investigative journalism and a viewpoint, even in nonprint media–look at the amazing radio/TV show, Democracy Now, if you want an example. And you can have dialog without threatening your position. I think this journo was extremely short-sighted.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, General Commentary, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice

Miscellaneous items in the news of late:
1] The Weekly Spin, an always-provocative newsletter from PR Watch/Center for Media

and Democracy, reports that corporados and their hired PR guns have stepped up campaigns against citizen activists. Not only are they infiltrating these groups, but also going through activists’ trash, using their spies to release deliberate disinformation campaigns, undermine citizen actions, and generally abuse the public trust. Yeech!

This is not new–here’s an example from six years ago:

“Inside information gives companies a strategic advantage,” wrote Amsterdam-based investigative reporter Eveline Lubbers in the 2002 book “Battling Big Business.” Lubbers helped uncover an eight year-long scam by a Dutch security firm, where one of its employees posed as an activist. He collected discarded paperwork from at least 30 different activist groups, saying he would sell it to recycling plants and give the proceeds to charity. Instead, the documents were carefully reviewed and often used against the groups.

But apparently it’s still very much going on, in both the US and UK, probably elsewhere too.

CIW began being “vilified online and in e-mails that can be traced to the Miami headquarters of Burger King,” reports the Fort Myers News-Press. The emails and comments were posted under the names “activist2008” and “stopcorporategreed.”

2]MarketingProfs.com offers six don’ts for effective e-mail marketing. Item #1–don’t e-mail too frequently; you don’t want people unsubbing because you bother them too much.

But the first reader comment points out that MarketingProfs itself mailed three times within a week about a particular conference.

3] But PR isn’t just for influence; it can also be fun. My friend Ken McArthur is on a campaign to popularize the coined word “zingwacker,” which is in his new book “The Impact Factor.” As of early April, the word brought zero results in Google. As of before I hit the post button, it’s up to 393. Not bad, Ken–even if the Squidoo page misspells your new word in its URL.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Arts & Entertainment, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Web 2.0/Social Media

Artists, authors, and other creatives, take note: Kevin Kelly, the guru of Wired Magazine, says you don’t have to be a starving artist anymore. Instead of grabbing for crumbs at the very end of the long tail, build a base of 1000 uber-fans. All you have to do is add one person a day for three years (not that long to pay your dues, really–historically, many artists spent decades to achieve this kind of fan base).

Better yet, Kelly outlines how to make this self-funding without anyone worrying about not getting their money back if you don’t make your goal, through a very cool Web 2.0 website, Fundable.org

Over the years, I’ve always liked Kelly’s work–although sometimes the layout of Wired makes it rather unapproachable. This article, however, is on a blog called The Technium, and it’s very easy to read.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News

Over at Publishing2.com, Scott Karp takes the Washington Post to task for using the same old coupon-style discounting offers they’ve used for decades–when in order to get him to pick up a physical newspaper, they’d have to speak to why it’s a better option than just logging on to read online.

He cites one motivation that might have worked for him: enjoying an unplugged no-computer day kicking back with in-depth analysis he wouldn’t normally have time to read.

Fr me–and I still read the print form of my local daily paper–a key argument might be reduced eyestrain. I’m always looking for ways I can get offline to do some of my work.

I discuss in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and elsewhere, why discounting is often a poor strategy for lots of marketers. It’s always better, as Scott points out, to show the real value you add.

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