Social media

Marketing using social bookmarking

February 14, 2009 by Susan Getgood

Earlier this week, I had an interesting phone call with the marketing person from a game portal. He had called to avail himself of my “one hour free” offer. He primarily wanted to talk about the potential of social bookmarking — such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Kirtsy, Mixx and Reddit — as a marketing tactic.

I suspect he was disappointed in the call. Unlike an analyst, I don’t have great pronouncements about trends. What I do is discuss your business issues and make concrete suggestions for your marketing and social media plans. There is no single answer, just avenues for exploration.

Here’s what you should look at regarding social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking as a tactic is a bit like Google Ads. Easy to do but hard to do well. To be successful with Google Ads, you need to look at your stats every day. Adjust keywords. Tweak content.

Social bookmarking is the same.You need to look at your web analytics, understand what the social bookmark sites deliver to your site and be willing to tweak your content to be appealing to the ones delivering real traffic, real prospects.

Black hat tactics like paying for submissions are a non-starter. They may deliver traffic — until you are caught — but the traffic won’t convert. They won’t buy, they won’t come back.

And that’s what you are looking for. Buyers and loyal visitors.

Unlike Google Ads, though, you can get some benefit dabbling in social bookmarking. If you aren’t willing to invest the time to understand which of the social bookmarking sites are productive for you, you can still get some incidental benefit by placing the links or a widget like Share This on your site. Or by occasionally pinging your friends to Digg a post. No real investment, no expectation, no worries.

If you want to spend the time though, here’s my suggestion.

First, look at your referrers. Which social bookmarking sites are delivering the most traffic, and the most productive traffic, to your site? It is bound to be different depending on what you write, what you offer. Every social bookmarking site has a user base and possibly even a perspective. You need to understand which ones are important to you, to your customers.

Then look at the type of content that attracts these visitors. If it is consistent over time — the same type of content attracts the visitors from a desired social bookmarking site, you have guidance for what to write to attract them in future. It’s not that different from the process used in television ratings. The networks tailor their content to the most productive audience.

It’s simple marketing math.

Making social media measure up

January 30, 2009 by Susan Getgood

As I mentioned in a previous post, I led an advanced workshop on blogger relations at a local pr agency last week. A significant portion of the discussion centered on measurement which offered a great opportunity to revisit my thoughts on the topic. This post covers some of the material I prepared for the workshop.

Measurement isn’t magic.

It’s also not the same as monitoring even though the two activities use some of the same tools and we often confuse them. Monitoring is qualitative. It looks at outputs — media coverage, blog posts, microblog streams. It’s purpose is to evaluate attitudes. It’s extremely important at the outset of any marketing campaign and it can inform part of the measurement. But it is not sufficient in itself. A clip “book” and a calculation of reach (how many people were potentially exposed) is good information to have, but it only measures potential awareness.

And last I heard, no one ever went into business or ran for office to make folks more aware. The goal is to sell some product or win the election. A result.

Monitoring is “tell me everything you know.” Measurement asks specific questions. What was the result? Did we achieve our objectives?

Measurement must be based on a desired behavior or action, not attitude. Outcome, not output.

It is important to choose a measureable outcome, not some squishy thing that can’t be assessed by an action or behavior. The best measures are action or behavior: evaluate a product, intend to buy, recommend, purchase.

Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to link marketing campaigns directly to sales and other purchasing behaviors. So we are often left with web metrics. Useful ones include unique visitors, referrers and path, time on site, and for blog-supported programs, inbound links and comments.

These indicators are better than nothing, but the key to success is to define the measurement at the outset, not as an afterthought and build it into your program.

For example, a dedicated microsite gives you a set of web metrics 100% related to the social media program. A coupon or online discount code lets you track campaign-driven sales. Even something as simple as a badge that customers can put on their own sites can provide some basic information.

The $25,000 question is, why aren’t more people measuring at this depth? Why are we still talking about awareness, not about purchase behaviors?

It’s a combination of fear and ignorance.

Let’s start with the ignorance. We aren’t asking the right questions. If you set your objective as something squishy like “raise awareness,” your measurable result will be equally squishy and irrelevant to business success. Fine and dandy if we could magically pull unlimited money for marketing programs out of a hat. But we can’t.

This is where the fear comes in. We’re afraid that robust measurement may show that all that wonderful awareness didn’t translate into actual purchase. The more money we spent on the program, the more afraid we are. Safer to stay in the comfort zone of awareness.

Except that won’t fly. Not in this economy, and really, not ever. We must be accountable for results.

We need to shift our thinking a little bit. Big programs that don’t work can be career, or at least job, ending events. No one wants to be the guy that put forth a huge social media flop.

Think smaller, think pilot programs. Test, measure, evaluate, and then scale up.

Be more tolerant of failure. Fast, less expensive failure, but don’t dismiss a marketing tactic if a program doesn’t have the initial results you wanted. Figure out why so you don’t repeat the same mistake the next time.

And for goodness sake, ask the right questions so you can know, not guess, that you succeeded.

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Finally, a quick plug for my contest over at Snapshot Chronicles. Prize is a $100 JCPenney gift card.

Presentation matters

January 12, 2009 by Susan Getgood

In artistic sports like ice skating and gymnastics, there’s a score for skill and a score for presentation.

Marketing is pretty much the same. It’s the idea AND how you express it.

Now, without the skill, or good idea, the presentation is irrelevant. But, make no mistake, presentation matters.

It’s often the difference between gold, silver and bronze. Or a pitch that hits its target or misses. Not by a mile, maybe only an inch. But misses all the same.

Here’s an example. KB Toys recently announced that it would no longer accept its gift cards. Competitor Toys-R-Us saw an opportunity and today announced it would give KB gift card holders a coupon for 15% off at Toys-R-Us. Nice idea, nice gesture.

Except that’s not quite what it said in its pitch to bloggers and its press release.

Instead it announced the “great news” of its “gift card exchange program.”

Except “great news” is a bit of an exaggeration. It’s not an exchange — it’s a 15% off coupon. With a fair number of restrictions.

Why wasn’t the company more honest? I realize the corporate wordsmiths are probably cringing, but the truth is that Toys-R-Us is capitalizing on the misfortune of its competitor as well as helping the potential customer. Everybody gets that.

So why not just tell the truth? In a perfect world, Toys-R-Us might accept the KB gift cards in a true exchange. But the world isn’t perfect, and that would be a bad business decision. But it can give the KB gift card holder some value in exchange for trying out Toys-R-Us, and that’s better than nothing, which is what the card is worth at KB Toys.

Say so. “We wish we could simply accept the KB gift cards at our stores, but we just can’t afford to do that,” said Toys mucky muck. “But we can offer this discount to encourage KB shoppers to try our stores and experience all that Toys has to offer.”

I also wish the coupon didn’t have all the restrictions. A gift card wouldn’t. How cool would it be if you could use the discount for any single item you wanted.

It’s not just what you offer. It’s how you say it.

Sometimes that makes all the difference.

The importance of value and values in social media

January 11, 2009 by Susan Getgood

A few months ago, I wrote a post called the Secret Sauce for the Perfect Pitch. In that post, I outlined a recipe for a good pitch to bloggers.

Central to the recipe was “adding value:”

What does adding value mean? A personal blogger writes about things he is interested in, generally from the perspective of how they impact him. He’s telling his story, and you need to give him a good reason to include your story in his. That means putting your product or service into his context, not talking at him from yours with a press release, list of features or carefully crafted message point.

I also listed some ways to add value:

Provide access to exclusive information.
Offer evaluation products or samples.
Offer products to the blogger that she can give away to her readers.
Events and junkets.
Support the charities and causes the community cares about.
Put the blogger at the center, not your product.

Now, this is just a list of tactics. Some may work for you, others may not. We need to develop a program that balances the value to the company and the blogger.

Just as in the commercial equation, where we make a purchase decision based on whether the value of the product merits the exchange of our currency — is it worth it? — we need a balanced value exchange when we reach out to bloggers. This is true for any social media program aimed at a community, including both blogger relations and programs for a defined online community or social network, whether run by a company or independent.

If the value tips too far to the company, it will seem like it is just asking for free publicity without compensation or consideration. The blogger says no. Run an ad. If the value tips too far to the blogger, it’s probably not cost effective for the company. A non-starter.

So we need to add value and balance value.

The key is in our mutual values. What is important to the company, to the blogger, and where do they intersect? That’s where we find the “thing” around which we can build a blogger relations program. I suggest using mind-mapping to find the intersect.

I’ve been working on a model (illustration below) that focuses on finding the shared emotions. What do both the blogger and the company care about? It’s not simply the features of the product, as much as the company might wish it so. Those may be enough to trigger a purchase decision, but not a decision to cover the product or service on the blog.

So here are some key ingredients for your perfect pitch:

What are our shared values? What do we both care about?
How can I use this knowledge to create a program that adds value for the blogger or community? Which of the secret sauce ingredients make the most sense for us?
Is the value balanced? Are we both getting enough from the deal? If not, how do I fix it?

In an upcoming post, I’ll show you how to apply this model. And to make the point, I’ll use some pretty generic products. Maybe cotton swabs….