Archive for 'Social Media Marketing'
The importance of content
May 19th, 2009. Published under Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
Content marketing is not an easy concept for businesses to get. I can understand why some companies can think that posting content can be a waste of time but content is exactly what you are pitching to prospective clients in your sales call. I know there still are many companies who feel that sales calls, cold calls, direct marketing or telemarketing is more efficient because it feels like you are doing something but who really believes that cold calling works?
I know that times are hard and everybody is stressed but please take a step back, take a deep breath and think about it. What are you doing in sales calls? You are trying to demonstrate value in order for your potential clients to buy your products or services. What is content? It is demonstrating why your product or service is valuable. It is showing your clients how it is of value to them.
The only difference is that rather than being unsolicited, good quality content is solicited. It is only the packaging that is different. What is the point of a really good product when nobody is listening? If they don’t listen, it doesn’t matter how valuable your products or services are.
This is the beauty of the Internet. Now that anybody can be publishers, you don’t have to hope to get picked up by the media or pay the media in order to have people listen to you about your products. Not only that, Social Media is like word to mouth marketing on crack. Social Media makes it so easy for people to share and be instantly exposed to the message.
Before Social Media, before Internet, word of mouth was not as efficient. If you liked a product, you might only tell a small group of people about it and it was on a long period of time because you are not in touch with them as easily. Now with Facebook and Twitter, if you like something, content you like, you can share it with hundreds or thousands of people in an instant. “Sharing” is essentially talking about it. Not only that, rather than being exposed to the product after a couple of days, because it is not accessible, nowadays hundreds or thousands of people can be exposed to the product within seconds. That is the power of hyperlinks. Moreover, they can even learn more about the products with a quick search. Hence, the importance of your content being found easily and the importance of your branding, the experience, you transpire through your website.
Content Marketing is the content of your sales call. Just packaged in a form that will be solicited ie: white-papers, videos, webinars, blog articles, images, etc.
Photo by: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Google Events for Business
April 17th, 2009. Published under Social Media Marketing. 1 Comment.
Google is opening Facebook to the web. In a race between the two eGiants to dominate the web socially, Google has opened Facebook’s event to the world. Websites can now bring people together more than ever with the launch of their new event gadget.
The function is simple, by installing the gadget on a web page, you can promote your event without having any web page programming knowledge and allow people to RSVP to your event online easily, as well as allowing other people to see who is attending the event. Google is making it easier for Social Media Marketing to complement event marketing.
What this means for your business or organization :
- You have more control on your branding because rather than creating a Facebook event, thus having to be restricted to a small logo and a dull format controlled by Facebook, you create the page the way that you want and insert the gadget in.
- You can measure, with web analytic tools such as Google Analytics, you can find out how many people have visited your page, where they come from and by the amount of people attending, you can calculate the conversion rate and determine your efficiency.
- You can reach a non Facebook audience. As attractive as Facebook’s population is, not all of your target market (eg: decision makers) is on Facebook. However, anybody can connect with their Google, AIM, Yahoo or Open ID account.
- Set up a poll on the page or in the future for feedback to learn more about your target market and why they did not attend your event. Learn from the comments and do it better the next time around.
- Use a URL shortener like Bit.ly to promote the event online in emails, Facebook page, Youtube or Twitter and offline through word of mouth or promotional products easily eg: bit.ly/myevent.
What else do you think Google Friend Connect’s new event gagdet can do for a business?
Google’s official video explaining how to use the event gadget:
Youtube Analytics and SMM ROI
April 5th, 2009. Published under Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
Youtube Insight has existed for a little over a year now. Youtube Insight allows the uploader of the video to learn more about the web analytics of his viewers. It allows him to perform market research on the gender of the viewers, their age group, their geographic locations and even how they landed on the video. Was it done by a search or did it come from Facebook? Youtube Insight also reports the community engagement. How many people has set the video as their favorite, it reports information about rating, comments, etc.
A tool I think Youtube Insight lacks is web analytics about the sharing of the video. I think Youtube did a great job at improving the viral nature of a video by making it easy for viewers to share the videos through social media. However, I think it is unfortunate that Youtube does not gives information about how often it was shared and track how many times it was viewed based on that share. It is possible to have an idea because Youtube informs you of the sources from where the visitors landed on your video and you can make an educated guess but it would be much more favorable for marketers and corporations who spends the marketing/advertising dollar to have better information about the viral effect of their content. It would be a great tool to calculate the ROI (Return on Investment) of Social Media Marketing.
If a business is willing to pay to place an ad in a magazine because it approximates how many eyeballs might stumble across it I think the same business can be very interested to see how many times the video they created was viewed but also, how many times was their video handed to the next person and next person after that? Time magazine has the highest pass along readership and I am sure if marketers are willing to pay for an estimated number of a static picture, I am sure marketers would be very interested to see how many people shared the videos and how many more people have viewed the video on Youtube thanks to the share?
Don’t forget that you can embed a hyperlink in the video description and with Youtube Annotations, you can improve the level of engagement from your users ie: have a call to action for them to check out your landing page by clicking on the link in the video description. After that, just open your Google Analytics and continue the tracking!
Just make sure that your link is associated with a campaign!
Here is an video overview of Youtube Insight:
Youtube Sampling – the future of Hip-Hop?
March 26th, 2009. Published under Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
This Youtube clip is a song (or is it a music video?) created with samples of other Youtube Clips. One word: Phenomenal! The artist is Kutiman. Genius!
It is a great time to be living!
This post is a dedication to Pizza4all. A musico-visual pizza4u!
UPDATE:
If Kutiman made an e-musicovisual pizza, this would be the live musicovisual pizza version (by Playingforchange)
International Development Week Workshop @ Ottawa U
February 7th, 2009. Published under Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
How to use video in a social media marketing mix strategy by using Youtube and blogs:
Due to security reasons, certain people who were shot on video asked for the Youtube clip shot at the International Development Week Workshop to be removed from the Internet. In order to show them how quick and easy it is to publish a video on their own website (or blog) I embedded a video of mine instead.
Good rule of thumb: Go where your audience is. If they are on myspace, go on myspace. You can be on Facebook, but focus your time and energy by updating and being involved on Myspace. Same for Youtube vs Seesmic vs Viddler.
Another rule of thumb: Don’t be afraid to ask questions.
As promised, here is the list of social media sites discussed at the workshop:
Dear Mr. President…
January 19th, 2009. Published under Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
MySpace vs Youtube: X-Men Origins Trailer
December 16th, 2008. Published under Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
I stumbled on the new Wolverine (official) trailer today on MySpace (Thanks to Mafia Wars who got me to return to Myspace to play) and I got curious. Since Youtube is the #1 reference for videos on the web I decided to make a quick search there and while I am at it, why not Google the new movie as well? I was surprised to see MySpace beat Youtube by 3 days.
X-Men Origins published the MySpace Video on December 12, 2008 and racked up near 1.7 million views after 4 days.
On the other hand, TrailerAddictHQ and Madblaster6 posted the Youtube videos on December 15, 2008 and racked up a combine count of over 60k views.
After I found the official web site of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie (which by the way took me over 5 Google search. I had to search for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine official” to find it. “Wolverine Movie” doesn’t even bring up the web page on the first page…), I thought it was interesting that the web site doesn’t even have an embed of the movie. Instead, it encourages the visitors to visit Myspace to watch the trailer.
I think it is a great marketing strategy of MySpace. They have obviously established themselves in the artsy/creative/media sectors of the Internet/Social Networks/Social Media. To quote Anna (0r) Simon Johnson (?) of kikabink:
When it comes to things that are NOT life or death: speed trumps perfection.
Of course, they were talking about softwares but I believe this is also true in Social Media Marketing. Thanks to social media, sharing is very easy, therefore if you are the first, you have the monopoly and the advantage the longest. Despite Youtube being the largest and the first video reference on the web, MySpace will have the most viewed version of this trailer because it has been shared many times before Youtube got the version. This effect is also exponential and Youtube is playing against the odd in this situation. The more the MySpace trailer is shared and embeded on the internet, the harder it will be for Youtube to match MySpace’s visibility.
I am aware that this is a simple trailer but it is important to understand that this is true for any campaign and once the campaign becomes bigger than the media, in this case Youtube vs MySpace, Youtube will have to wake up and understand that it cannot just sit back and expect to be the #1 video reference of the web by default. I believe that Youtube Live establishes Youtube as an entertainment powerhouse in mind shares but Youtube must also execute web strategies to maintain it’s position. Vimeo and other video sharing/streaming websites are far behind Youtube and might never be able to overthrow the giant but MySpace is showing how it can be done if Youtube is not paying attention. I believe this is good for social media competition because it will force Youtube to step and it makes sure that the giant cannot be lazy.
I give Myspace a thumbs up and I will keep my eyes open to see if MySpace will step up and become more aggressive. I am curious to know if they have anything else under their sleeves. Is this the beggining of a great rise for MySpace in becoming Hollywood’s #1 social media outlet or is this a simple fluke? I stumbled on the video because MySpace proposed it to me. I hope it wasn’t simply an advertising initiative from the motion picture’s marketing team and if it was a fluke, I hope that MySpace wakes up and build on this great door that just opened to them. I leave you with the trailer of the movie (which by the way, I am super psyched about, I really hope marvel develops a sub genre in Hollywood!)
09/01/09 UPDATE:
I removed the MySpace video because it loads automatically and really annoyed me. I’m guessing it is also very annoying for anybody visiting this page. I couldn’t find a way to edit the code to not make it load automatically (if you know how, please tell me). So I replaced the video with a Youtube clip. So much for a MySpace advantage huh?
BURGER KING® WHOPPER® VIRGINS
December 11th, 2008. Published under Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
Economy, recession – Myspace will die.
December 11th, 2008. Published under Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
The biggest social media will survive. Plain and simple. Youtube and Facebook are here to stay. Personally, I don’t even know why Myspace is still alive. It looks to me that their numbers/stats are inflated. Sure they have over 100 million users but how many of them are actually active? Facebook has much more conversation going on than Myspace and that is why Facebook is a shoe-in to still be alive passed this recession.
- Suggest “friends” to me because they are a great Hip-Hop band or an up and coming soul band and you, Myspace, know that from me because of the data in my profile, my listed interest, the profile of my friends, etc.
- Allow members to rate songs or bands or any art work.
- Allow friends to share songs with other friends.
- Leverage your video platform, you have a great one (especially compared to Facebook) leverage it, make it easier to share within the community and to share outside of the community.
- Promote the fact that it can be shared in different ways.
- Encourage your members to upload videos.
- Inform them that it is a great way for their garage band to gain exposure.
Social Media Marketing in the Music Industry.
November 23rd, 2008. Published under Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
Lately, I have been addicted to Jason Mraz’ song “I’m Yours”. I decided to “Youtube” the song’s video clip and it hit me how social media is powerful and how under utilized it is.
Jason Mraz has a great thing going on right now, a lot of people are making covers of his song and posting the videos on Youtube. Why isn’t the marketing team behind him utilize that, appropriate it and build on it? It’s FREE!!! It is also much more powerful than displaying print ads about the album. People can actually experience the song.
A quick look at Jason Mraz’ official website, show that they are aware that social media exist, they have a Youtube channel and I like their idea of the Polaroid book and their idea with the cell phones, Jason Mraz details in a photo, but that is barely a decent effort. They get a B for effort and A for creativity but come on. How did you have the great idea of using your public and engage them in participation by allowing them to display their (low quality) pictures on the screen but aggregate them so poorly? A quick google search for these pictures doesn’t show up in the first pages…
Let’s focus on Youtube for this blog post. The marketing team should embed all the best covers his fans are doing on Youtube and leave a text comments on the respective Youtube clips to thank the fans and let them know how great it is that they are doing covers then link to the jasonmraz.com media section of the website where all the clips can be aggregated, that will drive even more traffic to the websites. This will create a much bigger following and will also strengthen the exposure of Jason Mraz. The website is Jason’s home on the Internet, it is a controlled environment where the marketing team can expose their best marketing messages. Drive the traffic there! Bring them into your home.
Set up a contest! Encourage your audience to submit their best cover over Youtube, supply them with the instrumental. Ask visitors to vote for the best cover and have the winner win tickets to his next show with a VIP pass, an autographed CD whatever. How many of these cover artists’ friends do you think will go to the website and support their friends? The bigger the exposure, the more chances these visitors will want to attend Jason’s next show in town.
Have Jason Mraz make one quick webcam clip to comment and thank all the covers out there and have them linked to the covers as a response to these Youtube cover clips. Chances are, these artists have a Myspace page. Friend them up!
That’s it for now, I will add more in another blog post.
Here are a few of these great Youtube Covers:
UPDATE: The following paragraph is not relevant because after the blog post was published, the artist had to take down the original video due to being scared of copyright issues (heh). Basically, she had annotations urging her viewers to go buy Jason’s album.
Notice the great annotations. Unless the marketing team is behind it, you have free advertising. The fan is a free postergirl and encouraging viewers to buy the album. How great is that? Capitalize on it! The video has been viewed over a million times.
That is over a million hits that could of been driven to the controlled marketing environment web site.
Here is a list to all the covers of Jason Mraz – I’m Yours song on Youtube. Anybody knows how I can embed a list of related videos from Youtube?
photo by: {{Brent}}
