Author: Avi

Posted on

Technology as a Creative Craft: Colleen DeCourcey

Last month, I had the pleasure of seeing TBWA’s Chief Digital Officer, Colleen DeCourcey speak at Com.Vention, the largest Internet conference in Israel. Focusing primarily on digital marketing and digital innovation (as Israel is a known innovation hub), the conference featured innovators like Answers.com (based in Israel and the 55th most popular website in the world), Robert Scoble, face.com, Google, and technological innovation. Most people spoke about the sociological and marketing implications of social media, the radical implications of Facebook’s new Like feature, and how digital marketing is changing society. My favorite quote from Google EMEA head Meir Brand: “In the future, we won’t be talking about digital marketing, just marketing.” But, beyond speaking about technology, TBWA’s Chief Digital Officer, Colleen DeCourcey, spoke not about technology – but about art – and how technology can help us tell stories that weren’t possible before.

I can’t find her speech from Com.Vention, but I did find a similar speech she provided a few years ago:

Posted on

What the New York Times can teach businesses about Twitter

Today’s edition of the New York Times has a great article explaining how Twitter can help small businesses with their marketing. It also emphasizes how this service, with millions of members, is mainstream and requires community management.

Many businesses are struggling to make sense of Twitter, but even if it strikes you as an enigma or hype, consider this: many of your customers are already there.

The article points out several important best-practices:

  1. Listen – “What are people saying about your company? Unlike conversations by phone or e-mail, Twitter conversations usually are not private, and listening is fair game.” People are talking about your company, your competitors, topics that are of interest to you and your business.
  2. Engage – As I always tell clients, the first word in “social media” is “social.” It is not a one-way broadcasting message for you to tweet out your press releases or marketing material. If you do that, no one will listen. Instead, join and create conversations (that you were listening to in step 1), and interact with others. Be social.

    3. One sign of a company that engages with followers is a page filled with @ symbols (Twitter shorthand for a reply to a specific person). “You absolutely have to remember you are part of a community and you have to offer value to that community,” Ms. Erwin said. “It’s not about you. If all you do is talk about yourself, your audience will be instantly bored.”

  3. Be Useful — Provide relevant content that serves your customers and your community. One ice cream shop uses Twitter to keep their customers informed of their constantly changing menu. ““We have a product that changes daily. Our customers were asking, ‘How do you keep us up to date on the different flavors?’ Twitter was the perfect answer.””
  4. Respond and Support — Twitter is not just a marketing platform, but also a customer support and service platform. If your customers are having difficulties, help them and QUICKLY. “The company follows up to 2,500 Twitter postings a week, often from clients with technical issues, he said. “If we see those, we’re on them in 15 or 20 minutes,” Mr. Dunay said. “That’s providing killer support and customer delight.”” Marla Erwin, a Whole Foods staff member who oversees the account, estimates that customer questions generate three-quarters of its Twitter traffic.
  5. Get Feedback — Get instant analysis of what your customers like and don’t like.

    6. Chrysta Wilson owns the small Los Angeles bakery Kiss My Bundt. She likes to experiment with new recipes and use Twitter for customer feedback. “It absolutely is like a focus group, except the beauty of it is I don’t have to go and find people who are interested or knowledgeable about baking,” Ms. Wilson said. “My universe is already there — my Twitter followers and Facebook fans.”

    When Ms. Wilson wanted to try a new maple bacon bundt, she posted about it, put up photos and invited followers to stop by for free samples. Their feedback helped her perfect the recipe, which is now a favorite. She has more than 1,900 followers. “It’s great for getting input — they become your sounding board,” she said. “It’s a way to break out of the business owner’s bubble and get an outsider’s perspective.”

  6. Share, Inspire, and Educate — But Lay Off the Hard Sell – Let others know what you find useful, spread news about topics that are relevant to your readers, and create conversation

    7. He posts about interesting articles, blog links and anything that strikes him as surprising. “The key thing is being interesting,” he said. Mr. Berry said he believed that his Twitter stream generated 10 to 20 percent of the traffic that came to his company Web site. If he can pique interest and establish himself as a trusted authority, he said, customers are more likely to buy his products and services.

  7. Lay off the Hard Sell. – Nobody likes used car salesmen. People don’t buy from annoying telemarketers, snake oil salesmen, or the used car guy or Crazy Eddie. Don’t be that guy.

    8. “If you’re just selling, it doesn’t work,” Mr. Berry said. “If somebody starts selling, I stop following them.”

    Mari Smith, a social media speaker and trainer who lives by the rule “always be marketing” and has amassed more than 68,000 followers, agreed. Ms. Smith will not post a traditional “push” marketing message that explicitly advertises an event like a webinar. Instead, she might post something that arouses people’s curiosity and include a link.

    For Ms. Smith, Twitter is a way to maintain a personal touch — and scale it up. “Whether I’m chitchatting, retweeting, @replying, talking about my personal life, my products or services, it’s all marketing,” she said. “People buy people before they buy products or service. They’re buying into you.”

    The payoff: Ms. Smith said half her business came through Twitter.


    No one likes annoying car salesmen. Don’t be one on Twitter

  8. Start Small – Don’t get too caught up in numbers. Don’t expect a million followers. Maybe not even 3,000. It’s one to one and personal connections. of course, if your numbers aren’t going up, it probably means that you aren’t being useful and interesting, so keep that in mind, but if you have a small, core group of dedicated followers, keep that up.

    9. “It’s not so much about the number of followers,” said Emily Doan, La Boulange chief of operations and principal Twitterer. “It’s about making that connection and relationship to people. It’s keeping our company fresh in their minds each day.”

Posted on

Public Relations in the Web 2.0 World

I just read a fascinating article in Social Media Today about Media Relations in the Web 2.0 world. In short, there is more of a thirst for immediate and multimedia content as content and journalism migrates from paper — print — to web — digital.

Some key take aways and considerations for companies and organizations:

Media Relations in 2010

  • 98% of journalists start a story by doing a search in Google. Is your news search optimized?
  • Can they easily find your newsroom on your website? Don’t make them register.
  • Do you add multimedia to your releases?
  • Is the news in your newsroom in a format that makes it easy for journalists to use it? No PDFs. Embed codes added to images and video? Images and video web-ready and search optimized?
  • Does it have links to all your social media content?
  • Is your news available in a feed?

Are you prepared?

Posted on

BP's oil spill non-response

The current disaster in the Gulf states, with the BP oil spill (you know it’s bad when a disaster is named after your company) shows the importance of incorporating social media in your crisis communications plan, and the importance that social media plays in your communication strategy.

For the past month, millions of gallons of oil have been flooding into the Gulf as an oil drilling rig, owned by Transocean Ltd on behalf of bp plc, exploded, killed eleven crew members, and is now threatening the coasts of Louisiana, Mississipi, Alabama, Texas, and Florida.

Ultimately, while BP is in a horrible position, how they respond matters. And the appropriate response today is far different than what was accepted just a few years ago. Today, social media is part of the story – and you don’t control the message.

One of the core issues today is that people demand transparency and immediate news. Social and online media can provide it. According to Ellen Rossano, who used to be the Coast Guard’s public information officer during the Exxon Valdez oil spill:

“I advise my clients that they have to get the truth out as quickly as possible. One of my common-sense rules is you just can’t lie about what’s going on,” she told me. “You’re going to be found out. You can’t say ‘no comment’ anymore. It implies guilt. It implies you’re hiding something. You can always say to the media and the public, ‘Here’s what I can tell you.'”

She also notes:

“I’m thrilled beyond imagining at how the Joint Information Center has been transparent,” she says. “They’re posting situation reports everyday; there’s not much more they could be doing to be transparent, and I think that’s a phenomenal shift. The fact that anybody from the media and public can go to the sites and download video and audio … it’s just a huge improvement.”

Of course, you can’t always control the message. For example, Facebook recently introduced “community pages” which aggregates discussion about a specific topic. One of the important things for companies to be aware of, is that marketers do not control it. For example, bp’s community page has a lot of negative conversation about the bp oil spill.

bp plc’s Facebook presence is hard to find (I only found it by tweeting their account and asking for it), which means that they aren’t being heard or responding to the litany of complaints. Their Facebook page only has 741 fans. Hence, when someone goes on Facebook and looks for info on bp, instead of an official bp statement, they are more likely to find a group like this:

In fact, on Twitter, someone has created a fake account (@BPGlobalPR) with over 37,000 followers, compared to bp America’s real account (@BP_America) with under 6,000.

Continue reading “BP's oil spill non-response”

Posted on

Small Business Administration: The Question of Social is Not Why, But How'

While some companies are still debating whether they should market online, it’s a settled matter, at least according to the Small Business Administration.

Adding Social Media to the Business Marketing Mix – No Longer a Question of “Why?” but “How?”

According to the latest *Small Business Success Index™ 61% of small business respondents use blogs, Twitter and Facebook profiles to expand “…external marketing and engagement including identifying and attracting new customers, building brand awareness and staying engaged with customers.”

How are small businesses using social media? According to the report:

  • 75% have a company page on a social networking site
  • 57% have built a network through a site like LinkedIn

But social media is not a magic panacea. Nor is it a task that should be done in addition to other tasks and something that just requires a few status updates. As I’ve written previously, social media takes time. A lot of it, and a lot more time and investment then most people realize. Some people are sucked into promises of “free” – as in free tools – and instant results. They are usually disappointed, because they were mislead.

  • 50% of small business social media users say it takes more time than expected

According to the Small Business Association, “17% express that social media gives people a chance to criticize their business on the Internet” and “6% feel that social media use has hurt the image of the business more than helped it.” However, it’s important to recognize something:

  • Whether you are online or not, your brand is being discussed. Whether it’s customer service on Twitter or Facebook’s new community pages, people are talking about your brand. The only question that you should ask is “Are you listening? Are you a part of this conversation?”

According to the Small Business Administration:

Done Right, Social Media Marketing Levels the Business Playing Field.

As Janet Wagner of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business explains:

“Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service. Time spent on Twitter, Facebook and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete…we (are) at the point now, where…the question for business owners should no longer be ‘why use social media marketing’, but ‘how’?”

For companies that are more interested in how social media strategies can help their business, be in touch with The Cline Group’s digital marketing strategists or check out the Small Business Administration’s great list of resources.

Posted on

The ROI of Social is "Will Your Business Be Around in 5 Years?"

I first blogged the latest edition of Socionomic’s now ubiquitous video about how the media landscape has changed to digital and its social implications back in December. Now, six months later, the world has changed again and Socionomics has come out with a new video called Social Media Revolution 2 (though not the second edition of their video, which has been around for over a year – an eternity in the age of the iPad).

A few facts, from Socionomics:

  1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
  2. 96% of them have joined a social network
  3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
  4. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
  5. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.
  6. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
  7. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
  8. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
  9. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
  10. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
  11. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
  12. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
  13. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
  14. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
  15. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
  16. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
  17. Only 14% trust advertisements
  18. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
  19. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
  20. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
  21. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
  22. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
  23. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
  24. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
  25. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
  26. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
  27. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years

How is your company reacting?

Posted on

The Brand of Me – Or How Journalism Is Changing

I frequently say that digital media and digital marketing is not about the tool. It’s not about Twitter or Facebook or YouTube. It’s about the fact that communication — and how people get their information — are changing.

People don’t get their information from the daily newspaper, get their local paper — if you’re lucky and live in a big city you get the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times or Chicago Tribune — or go out to the local store and purchase a newspaper and read whatever’s in their paper. Rarely pay attention to who the journalist is that wrote the piece. Or are lucky to read papers like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal with an amazing array of editorial writers.

In today’s digital age, people don’t look for news. News comes at them and to them — at an amazing, rapid rate. Millions of people are getting their news from links on Twitter – whether retweets or posts from their friends or network, celebrities like Ashton Kutcher with 4.8 million followers, corporate accounts, or news sites like CNN with over 3 million followers. Twitter is a news source.

People find out about what’s happening in the because they see a link posted on Facebook or Twitter. A recent study by some Korean researchers argued that Twitter is less like a social network and more like a news source; Twitter is the new CNN.

This was also discussed at Israel’s Com.Vention, the country’s largest annual Internet convention. At one of the sessions, with Robert Scoble, and several high tech executives, about digital content creation, it was mentioned by one of the speakers that today, because we get our information at us — and not dependent on any media outlet — journalists are dependent on their own personal brand. Instead of getting our news from a print newspaper, we read journalist’s — people who have credibility and write quality, regardless of what degree they have or what outlets they write —  blogs – whose links we found on Twitter or were shared on Facebook.

I apologize that the sound is not very good, as I took this video from my cell phone. Start at 2:00 in particular, where it talks about how journalism and content consumption and creation is changing, and especially at 3:00 where the speaker talks about the “Brand of Me.”

Posted on

Five Things to Do When Developing a New Website

The world has moved online and, despite the explosion of mobile marketing and social networking, your website is an even more important component of your marketing strategy and brand identity than ever before. Yet, many companies still have sites that look like they were designed in 2003 or earlier.

There are a lot of things that go into web design – usability, content writing, SEO, SEM, functionality, content management systems and IT decisions. But there are a few easy things that everyone who has a company and a website needs to know about today. Before you sign a contract with a web designer, here are five things to discuss. Here are five things every company needs to do when developing a new website:

5. Meta Description – As with titles and links, Search Engine Optimization is a complicated process, which factors in many considerations. Good SEO is also not enough to get your site found and building customers but best practices are a minimum. It’s important to learn about these factors when designing your website. But as soon as your website is live, there are a few things that you need to learn how to do and evaluate on your site.

One of the major things that you need to check that each individual page has a unique metadescription. A metadescription is a short (ideally 154 characters or less) description of your page. It’s not visible to your reader, but rather written in your XHTML code. If you’re lucky, and one of the reason to include it, instead of trying to guess what your page is about, Google and other search engines will use your meta description in their site description.

For example, when searching for “brand development”, the focus2 agency has no metadescription and when there results appear in Google’s search results, I have no idea what they are about – and therefore am likely to search elsewhere.

Note that this isn’t just about SEO. Focus2 still showed up on the first page of Google when searching for brand development, albeit at the bottom. Other pages that have metadescriptions appear on the second, third, even thirtieth page. Although maybe this company would have ranked higher had they had a compelling metadescription on their page. But it’s not helpful to their potential customer.

Alternatively, look at the first result. Even though it’s not what the whole site is about, this insider page shows up as the first result in Google. More importantly, the reader learns more about the topic of the page.

The same can be seen when searching for CRM system. Without a meta description:

With a meta description:

4. Title – Does your page title adequately reflect your content or is your homepage title “Homepage”. If your title of your landing page is “homepage” well, your readers don’t know what your site is about and you certainly aren’t showing up in search engines.

Do each of your individual pages have unique titles or is every page the same, repeated title? Besides not being helpful, duplicate titles (and duplicate metadata) can hurt your search engine rankings. Yes, it means that every single page – including individual blog posts, about pages, and boilerplate content – needs to be unique and original.

3. Links – Are people linking to your website?  While link exchanges reflect the worst of the web, and hark back to banner exchanges at the birth of the Web in the early-1990s, the more quality links your site has, the better ranked it will be in the search engine. Consider press release distributions, finding like minded trade groups, blog aggregators, and partner organizations, and asking them to link to your site. Start building quality links – and don’t stop.

However, don’t rely on the low-wage, offshored labor that promises you 25 links for $10, frequently found on eLance and other services. That’s link farming. Those links may include links to black-hat sites or other low-quality sites and may actually do more harm than good. Farms are for growing food, not website traffic.

2. Mobile – The Internet isn’t just for the Personal Computer anymore. It’s gone portable. With the iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Nexus, Nokia phone, Symbian, WebOS, Android, or other mobile operating systems, the Internet has gone mobile. A recent Nielson study has shown that 43% of all mobile phone owners are able to access the internet with their handsets, with about 29% of those now actively using the internet via their phones. Additionally, smartphone users are most prominently using their smartphones for searching, with 73% of mobile internet users having conducted an internet search on their mobile. The iPhone and iPod Touch, which have been around for almost three years now, have roughly 85 million users. At the same point in their histories, Netscape and America Online (AOL) had just 18 million and 8 million users, respectively, according to ReadWriteWeb.

1. Usability – How do people use your site? Is it easy for them to find what they are looking for or do they have to click through a variety of menus to find their information. If your potential customer can’t find what they are looking for quickly, that potential won’t be realized and the sale won’t be made.

Conduct usability research, invite others to try to perform tasks, and think about what tasks your potential customers will perform.