Posts tagged ‘Blog’
Top 25 Social Networks
Recently, Compete.com posted new statistics on the Top 25 Social Networks ranked by monthly visits. While many social networks like to tout their number of users, monthly visits is a true measurement of usage. In other words, which social networks are getting used? The numbers are below:
(Credit Compete.com)
As you can see from the numbers, Facebook has taken over the top spot from MySpace and previously little known Twitter has climbed to the third spot after the two behemoths. In fact, if you read the original blog post on Compete.com, you will see a few other graphs that show MySpace’s numbers falling while Facebook and Twitter continue meteoric rises.
What’s even more fascinating is that, according to the CNET News blog, these numbers only represent web browser traffic in the U.S. According to writer Caroline McCarthy, “That means that you won’t be pulling in any international numbers, where most of Facebook’s users are now, or data from widgets or third-party applications, which are how many avid Twitter users access the service. That means that it’s likely that Twitter’s reach is bigger than the numbers indicate.”
How does this apply to you? I have often told people in conversation that I am an early adpoter when it comes to social media, which means I am not the innovator who jumps on every new technology in its infant stages but wait for a certain mass before it has business value. I follow many innovators (such as my friend Tac Anderson or Joseph Jaffe) in order to keep my finger on the pulse of what is the latest and greatest, but look for networks or technologies that can really add value for clients. If you want to know whether a social networks would add value to your business, the 25 networks above are a safe bet.
That being said, I have always held true to the notion that focus is better than mass. If there is a small social community out there that is extremely targeted to your core audience, then you need to be an active participant. Sometimes, these social communities are housed within existing networks, such as the 25 above, and sometimes they are separate. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the web is a collection of coffee shops with people around a table chatting. You need to find the coffee shop that best fits your audience and get involved.
As an old economics professor of mine used to say, “there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics”. While one thing that blogs are great for is spewing the latest statistics to prove a point, one thing is true. With numbers even close to these, businesses can no longer argue with the value of social media in facilitating and participating in conversations.
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How Has Social Media Changed Your Life?
The other day, I was pontificating (as I often do) about how technology has changed our lives. If you think about it, our lives are completely different than there were a mere 5 years ago, not to mention 20 years ago. I remember the days before e-mail, but I can’t remember what it was like in the workplace without e-mail. I remember that cell phones started taking off right when I got my first traveling sales job, which made my life so much easier. Technology has fundamentally changed how we interact, build relationships, and do business.
Naturally, my thoughts migrated to social media and the underlying question, “how has social media changed our lives?” So, I decided to pose the question to my various networks out there on the social web. The answers varied, but were fascinating and very telling. I thought I would share a few with you:
Sarah Lewis of Findable Blogs, a Boise based blogging expert, said: “Social media helps me both professionally (leads & collaboration) and personally (reduces isolation, even as a new mom).”
Mike Diliberto, Sales Engineer at MindTouch and fellow T-Bird, said: “Social media has increased my cognitive breadth; pre-social media, maintaining connections with hundreds of people would be impossible.”
Norris Krueger, founder of Entrepreneurship Northwest and noted social entrepreneurship expert, said: “Getting less done but.. maybe just maybe… getting better things done!”
Martin Johncox, PR Director for Alexander and Associates, said: “It’s opened up new business opportunities in lean times; connected me with long-lost friends; re-connected me with colleagues.”
George Condit, Account Manager at Seybold Scientific and distinguished curmudgeon, said: “I can ask the world a question and get an answer.”
Donna Geisler, principal at FusionSet, said: “Social media makes me feel overwhelmed with opportunity and underwhelmed with time. Otherwise, it’s great!”
Tia Markland, Publisher of Eagle and Meridian Magazines, said “Increased sales and awareness for business.”
However, I would have to say that one of the most personal answers I received was from Chris Barger, who is the Director of Global Communications Technology for General Motors, who wrote me a fascinating and in-depth answer. Here is a snippet from his response: “Social media turned out to be the Acme Rocket Pack strapped to the back of my career, and made my American Dream a reality.”
I would have to say that I have found my experience to be in line with all of these wonderful answers. Social has made life more meaningful for me. It has helped me create deeper relationships, build my network, and has proven to be an invaluable business tool. However, I would have to say my answer most closely aligns with Chris Barger’s. It is because of social media that I have the career I do today.
How has social media changed your life?
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All Media is Social Media
I have been involved in social media for about the last 5 years, although it has gone by many names: grassroots, word of mouth, new media, Web 2.0, viral, social networking, etc. It seems like we have finally arrived at a term that everyone is comfortable with: social media. It appears that the reason why most are satisfied with social media to describe the blog/podcast/MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn phenomenon is that what all these technologies have in common is that they are all about conversations. They encourage people to engage with each other.
I think that is a great way to describe the explosion of conversation technologies. However, I would argue that based on this definition, all media is social. All media encourages conversation, good or bad. However, social media simply captures that conversation in a nicely oraganized format online.
There are many who think of social media as a tactic only and fail to realize that it is, in fact, a cultural phenomenon. Much the same way that you feel frustration when you can’t fast forward through a commercial on a DVR because we have become accustomed to controlling our content, we feel frustrated when a brand does not have the proper tools for discussion online when we need to react to what they are doing. The conversation will take place, online or off. Wouldn’t you rather have take place in a way that you can faciliatate and participate in that conversation? This is what made shows like American Idol so popular is the ability for the audience to engage with the brand.
So while I praise the industry for arriving at a standard term for all of the online mumbo jumbo, let us remember that all media, when used correctly, should be social. So why not use social media to capture the conversation?
The Myth of the Social Media Marketer
I have mentioned this in presentations and on Twitter, but I felt it needed a blog post as well. I have been involved in social media for about the last 5 years. I have seen it grow from its infancy to a powerful communications and engagement medium. I have seen companies come and go and I have seen mega-brands created almost overnight. In my 16 years as a marketer, this is, by far, the most exciting and compelling trend to happen in marketing.
However, social media has spawned a not so pleasant side effect: so-called “social media marketers”. What I am referring to are the hordes of techies who figure out how to blog, podcast, or use social networks to build a certain following and then start billing themselves out as “experts”. How many “internet marketing experts” or “social media experts” have you seen boasting about their capabilities in their Twitter profiles or on their blogs? In a very short period of time (5 years) an entire service industry has been spawned by former engineers, unemployed college students, ex-sales people, high-school drop-outs, and housewives who are now marketing “experts”. Yeah, doesn’t make sense to me either.
One so-called expert posted a press release about how so incredibly awesome he was at social media. He has been getting coverage all over the social media networks, except it is as “The Biggest Douche in Social Media.”
If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this one key fact: there is a difference between users of social media and social media marketers. To give you an example, I know how to use Photoshop. Been using it for about 10 years to do little tasks here and there. I even delve into bigger projects occasionally and took a class on it at a local training facility. However, just because I know how to use Photoshop or Illustrator or Quark doesn’t make me a graphic designer. A designer has training and experience in colors, shapes, and the emotions of good design. The software he uses are just the tools.
The same holds true of marketers. Social media can be extremely powerful, but the rules of marketing still hold true. While social media may be replacing advertising as the communication vehicle, you still need to position, differentiate, and build an integrated communication plan. I have found that those who most ridicule the educated and experienced marketers as being “out of touch” with how marketing works today are those without an education and without experience. True, there are many marketers who are not keeping up with the changing nature of communications, by my prediction is that those who succeed long term in social media will be the classic marketers who learn how to adapt to the new realities of how consumers like to be communicated to. The Internet bubble burst because the realities of business had not, in fact, changed, only the delivery vehicle had. The same holds true for social media; the core principles of marketing have not changed, only the engagement vehicle has.
Are there social media marketers? Of course there are, and many of them are extremely effective. However, don’t believe every “expert” who tells you they can get you to the Top of Twitter or can build you a giant following on Facebook and have that equate to increased sales. The principles haven’t changed, only the tools have.
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The Missing Ingredient: Automation
For about the last 5 years, I have been involved in the word of mouth marketing and social media space. I have seen new technologies grow overnight and become relevant components of the online marketing mix. Names like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn were mostly non-existent 5 years ago. Using the term “blog” in every day conversation would elicit strange looks. The landscape has completely changed in that short amount of time.
Previous to my consultant days, I marketed and sold enterprise software. I have sold everything from enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) programs to accounting and retail systems. These software systems were all about automation. You automate the menial tasks and the critical path processes as much as possible.
As social media shifts from techies to early adopters and the early majority, people begin to ask, “where is the business value?” Honestly, that has been the argument for the last 5 years. Now that it has finally taken hold, people are beginning to see how social media can build relationships and grow businesses.
That being said, there are a lot of people who have the same problem with social media that they do with CRM systems, you actually have to go there and open them up and check them/input information. It takes time and effort to do the little things.
I have seen a new trend in social media where the combination of the automation principles from enterprise software with the ambient awareness of social media are creating integration, making social media simpler and more pervasive.
I first heard the term “ambient awareness” in a New York Times article discussing the rise of Facebook and Twitter. The concept of ambient awareness is the ability to passively monitor what is going on in all your networks until something sparks your interest and you comment on it. Facebook took off once it added the News Feed. Twitter grew solely based on ambient awareness. The beauty of ambient awareness is that through RSS, you can integrate your networks in order to consolidate your monitoring. Twitter can even act as a consolidation tool.
Let me give you a few examples:
I can connect my Twitter account to Facebook so that Twitter updates Facebook’s status field. Everytime I update my status in Facebook, it shows up on the News feed of my entire network. You can also comment on someone’s status in Facebook. Therefore, I have held conversations on both Twitter and Facebook from a single Tweet. That’s automation and integration.
Also, you can connect RSS feeds into Twitter. This means you can have a new blog post, a social tag, or any other form of social media post automatically to Twitter. I have found Twitter to be a very effective tool for blog promotion. Everytime I post a new blog post, I see a spike in traffic from Twitter. It is also great for furthering a cause using social tagging.
However, I have found a tool now that will allow me to use e-mail (which has a much higer adoption rate than any of these other tools) as an ambient awareness vehicle. I have mentioned InfusionSoft in previous posts, but I wanted to talk about why I became a Certified Marketing Automation Coach for InfusionSoft.
I am a technology junkie and I have been looking for technology that could help me deliver what I preached. I stumbled across InfusionSoft (actually they found me) and was impressed with its automation capabilities. Combined with social media, I had finally found a combination that could drive sales and give me the ability to track almost every aspect of my customer interaction. Best of all, it was automated and didn’t require people to have to go in and input all the information.
I can produce some great content (white paper, blog post, eBook) and create a web form from InfusionSoft that will allow someone to enter their information in order to download it. That information is automatically entered into my system and a follow-up sequence set in motion to keep my subscriber posted on what I am doing. Each month, I aggregate all of my social media content into an eNewsletter and push it out to subscribers with links to the social web. Now I can use the great content I produce with social media to build relationships and move people down the sales pipeline.
Whatever the tools, integration and automation are where social media is headed. Even Google’s OpenSocial initiative is all about integration. With the number of social media sites and tools out there, you have to be able to integrate in order to lower the switching costs and maintain your sanity.
How are you using technology to integrate and automate?
McKinsey Agrees: Web 2.0 is Not a Marketing Tactic
I have been involved in selling and marketing technology products for many years. Regardless of the technology, there is always one fatal error that too many companies make. They think that implementing new technology will solve problems when, in reality, processes and strategies solve problems – technology just speeds it up. Technology is meant to make processes, strategies, and cultures more efficient, not to take their place.
I have mentioned before in my blog that Web 2.0 technologies are not merely marketing tactics. Like many other technologies, Web 2.0 is simply a collection of tools that are meant to improve transparency and interaction. However, if you maintain a “closed-door” approach where you continue to think you are in control and play the “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” game, Web 2.0 can hurt you more than it can help.
A friend of mine (who will remain anonymous to protect the guilty) forwarded to me a recent study done by McKinsey and Co. of over 2,000 companies worldwide who have implemented Web 2.0 technologies. McKinsey dissected the information between those satisfied and unsatisfied with their Web 2.0 efforts as well as by region of the world. You can read the study here: McKinsey on Web 2.0.
It is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it, however, I would like to point out a couple of the findings. First, those who were the most unhappy with their Web 2.0 results were those who had these tools forced upon them by the IT department. Those most happy with their Web 2.0 results were those who implemented the tools themselves with little to no involvement from IT. In other words, they believed in the philosophy first and then found the tools to help them deliver on their vision. (As a side note, this may also be a result of the fact that IT enjoys over-engineering everything while there are many free or low-cost tools out there for Web 2.0.)
The final factoid I would point out is that those companies who were most satisfied with their Web 2.0 results were those who made the internal organization changes to match the tools. Not only did it create major new roles or functions in the organization, it fundamentally changed the organizational structure. This plugs directly into the Navel Model – make the internal changes first and then find ways to communicate them.
Take a read and let me know what other gems you think are important to point out (besides the fact that McKinsey should take it easy on me for posting this report).
What should I blog about?
This seems to be one of the most oft asked questions I receive. It typically comes right after, “I want to start a blog.” Most often this comes from the fact that this person has heard the term “blog” so many times, they feel like they are missing the bandwagon and need to get on board. “Bobby has a blog so that means I need one too.” Well Bobby may just be more interesting than you!
Having a blog is one of the easiest things to do, but one of the hardest things to do well. The first shocker I give people is to tell them it is not a marketing tactic. Blogging is a way to create transparency and, most importantly, start a dialog. It would be like asking someone ” would you like to chat” and then after they say yes proceeding to give a long lecture about how so dang cool you are. Simply maddening.
So why have a blog and how do you do it right? The first step is to first have a cause – a compelling reason to write. As I have often said to clients, customers buy products but evangelists buy causes. They buy into something. And no, selling more stuff is not a cause. Come up with a higher, holier calling about what you do.
Step 2 is to explore the cause. Make it conversational. Explore the different opinions on the topic. Ask for input and feedback. Make it stream of consciousness.
Also, remember the key rule of blogging – make it compelling. That means you need to piss them off, make them laugh, tug on their heart strings, or spark their interest in some way.
Don’t blog just because some marketing guy told you to. Blog because you are passionate about something. Blog because you have some expertise in a particular area. Blog because you want to change the world in some small way.
There are a lot of bloggers out there with some great success. What do you find makes a good blog?
The Blogging for Business (B4B) Conference
Recently, I was asked to speak at a conference in Salt Lake City on June 6th called the Blogging For Business Conference. Now I must be honest, I had never heard of it before, but as I found out more about the conference, I became impressed. You can find out more about the speakers and details here and you can visit the main website at www.bforbconference.com.
I have long admired GM for their leadership in blogging and social media. I have used them as a case study on multiple occasions. The B4B conference is lucky enough to have Christopher Barger, GM’s Director of Social Media keynote the conference. There are also sessions on SEO, Building Customer Evangelists, and my session on how the consumer revolution is driving transparency in marketing.
While blogging has taken off as a consumer journaling tool, it appears to still be in the early adopter phase when it comes to businesses adopting blogging as a marketing tool. I think there is some great content in this conference to showcase the value of blogging in a business environment.
If you are in the area, stop by and attend the conference. If you are not in the area, there is always that whole telepathy thing. Also, I will post a blog afterwards with some of my thoughts and observations. Feel free to keep checking the conference website as well.
Web 2.0 Media Use in Business
A new report just came out that talks about how new media and web 2.0 technologies are permeating the business environment. It is interesting to note that these technologies didn’t even exist 5 years ago. However, according to a new report released by Awareness (via Marketing Charts) titled “Trends in Adopting Web 2.0 for the Enterprise in 2007“, more than half (54%) of enterprise-size organizations use Web 2.0 technologies and an astonishing 74% of companies with fewer than 500 employees.
While Web 2.0 technologies have had several hiccups along the road to adoption, this study show that they are clearly past the tipping point, chasm, ignition point, or whatever other marketing analogy you want to use. The simple fact is people are using the technology and using it effectively.
The study goes on to say that 96% of those surveyed say all Web 2.0 technologies they’ve used have been successful with 83% reporting no clear failures. What? According to the critics, these were great for hobbyists but they had no real business value. I think we are starting to see otherwise.
The biggest obstacle to implementation? Most say limited internal resources. Part of this comes down to the fact that most companies are used to paying someone to place ads, run trade shows, or design cool brochures. However, new media, or Web 2.0 technologies, are engagement tools that require your personal time and attention.
The last tidbit of info I will share with you are the benefits of external-facing social media. The top 3 are:
- Increased customer engagement: 68%
- Increased brand awareness & loyalty: 64%
- Effective market research: 58%
I hate to be “Mr. I-Told-You-So”, but the facts are clear. Web 2.0 is becoming pervasive in business. It increases awareness, engagement, and loyalty with your customers. It provides an effective feedback mechanism on your company and its products and services. Last of all, it is a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. You simply can’t get a better return on investment for your marketing efforts. Combined with other marketing tactics, Web 2.0 tools can change the way you interact with your customers.
I encourage you to read the report.
Blog Neglect
First of all, I have to apologize. I feel like I am at a confessional, “Father, I have sinned. How long has it been since your last confession? 2 weeks!”
For someone who preaches consistency to his clients, I have been a poor example. However, there is a nugget of wisdom in there as well. Many of my clients have complained about the time constraints of blogging. The reality is, however, that it takes 15 simple minutes out of your week. The problem isn’t time, it’s scheduling and prioritization.
Blogging is not only a brain dump, it is cathartic as well. I could give you an excuse like I was out of town for the last 2 weeks or that I started my MBA program, but the reality is that I need to blog as much for me as well as anyone else who reads my rants (hi Mom).
So take it from someone in rehab, don’t neglect your blog. Your audience is waiting!
