Buzz Marketing for Technology

Social Search could it be a Google Killer?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:08:31 PDT

This morning I typed into Google the search term: VoIP (which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol) and I got 64 Million responses. 64 Million!!

How archaic is that?

Does Google have any idea how long would it take me to go through 64 Million responses? One day we are going to look back at the days of searching and getting 64 Million responses to anything and equate that to a Commodore 64 or Betamax tape.

I know, I know the point is Google is trying to bring me the best responses to the term in the first few pages (if not the first page). But the best responses according to who? Why don’t they know I work at Avaya (who sells products and services in the VoIP space) and therefore I most likely have a very different mission in typing in VoIP?

Microsoft just launched Bing a new search service which is supposed to rival that of Google. To me it looks like Google but in a new wrapper with a few enhancements. This post is not an indictment of Bing, my point is they didn’t take it far enough.

Someone can (and will) connect search to my social profile (say on Facebook) thereby making a truly intelligent search engine that will know where I work, and who my friends are. Then when I Google a term like VoIP – it will know I work for Avaya, it will know my friends and can present me with a way to filter the web based on my social profile – call it Social Search.

Then I will be able to narrow down a search for VoIP down in seconds based on the company I work for, members of my marketing team, friends I have in my network and get a completely different view of the internet that I can’t get now.

24 months from now Social Search should be common place – we should see social tools like Facebook Connect or OpenID which are already out there, used for search. I feel everyone wants to make the search market more competitive (right now Google has 87% of the US marketing and 90% of the European market) so perhaps Yahoo or AOL can revive their search business by going Social!

For more ideas like this please check out my latest eBook called 7 Ways Facebook will Change your Life!

7 Ways Facebook will Change your Life!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:00:50 PDT

So I have just finished co-authoring a book called Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley) due out this summer. It was a very eye opening experience to say the least. But the one thing it taught me was a profound respect for the Facebook platform.

What you are about to see is a number of ideas I have about the future of Facebook. These are not pie in the sky ideas or something I dreamed up - I feel these are very doable. In fact I wondered if I could get this eBook out fast enough to share these ideas with you before they actually happened!

So get ready to enjoy what I think is a sneak peek into the future of social networking ...

7 Ways Facebook Will Change Your Life

View more presentations from Paul Dunay

5 Tips for Optimizing your Facebook Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:31:22 PDT

One of the great things about the Facebook platform is that it provides you access to a large audience of over 200 Million people worldwide at a low cost. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a strategy in place for what you are trying to achieve. Whether you are a small local business, or even a well known product or service you will need to give some thought to your audience like, who they are, how do they want to be spoken to, what messages would you want them to receive, and what are the tactics for having them interact with your message. So let’s go through some of your options when it comes to the tactics of social networking marketing.

Have a Strong Presence

A Facebook presence, like a website, is a fundamental tactic and should be on everyone’s list of must haves for social network marketing. Similar to the .com land grab that happened in the late 90’s, you should secure your company name on as many social sites as you can.

Once you have your presence you will need a strategy for posting updates as frequently as you can with interesting content. Be sure to get your employees involved. Encourage them to become fans and drive the conversations to create a thriving community. The reason being, you will want Facebook users to be able to discover your Facebook Page through their friends’ profiles and with Facebook searches. This is the key to growing your fan base “virally”. Also keep in mind Facebook Pages are indexable so be sure to write your content with good SEO in mind.

Do some Advertising

You will find that advertising on Facebook is unlike any other advertising experience you have ever had. Mainly do to the unique ways in which you can precisely target a specific ad down to the person’s profile. For example if you want to target MBA graduates that are 3-5 years out of school and working in Southern Connecticut that like Classic Rock music whose favorite food is Sushi – you can do that!

There are 2 basic types of ads: Display ads and Social ads. And they can be purchased like banner ads with Cost per Click (CPC) and Cost per Thousand (CPM). And they work similar to online banner ads but try not to use them in the same way. Most Facebook users feel more comfortable staying within the Facebook environment. So try to direct them to someplace on your Facebook Fan page. With the new Facebook Fan page design, you can send them directly to a tab of your Fan page since each tab has a unique URL.

Create an Application

If you are going to send your ads to a specific tab why not send them to an application you built to engage them with your brand. Facebook Applications are similar to widgets or snippets of code that can be embedded in any Facebook Fan page to make it more distinguished. You can think of them like interactive spaces that can allow the user to take a poll, play a short game, or anything you can dream up.

Creating a Facebook Application has become widely popular because custom applications are not that hard or expensive to build. Some Facebook Applications have seen tremendous growth because they were built to take advantage of the viral nature of Facebook.

Syndicate your Content

Another tactic to consider if you already have a steady stream of rich content is using Facebook as an outpost for your content. If you already have a blog, podcast series or video series you can effectively use Facebook to attract another audience to interact with those assets.

There are a variety of ways to syndicate content on your Fan page. You can use the Notes page to import blog posts to your Fan page, you can use the My Del.icio.us application to import any bookmarks you may have made in your Del.icio.us account, you can use the Simply RSS application to bring in all the RSS feed you may have on your company website, you can edit your links section of have a variety of blogs or websites you may want to highlight perhaps by employees or partners of your company, and don’t forget to edit your Feed settings to include the complete versions of all your blog posts so they appear not only on your Fan page but on the Feeds of all your fans.

Throw an Event

Facebook Events are a great way of getting people together virtually or in person in support of your local business, brand or product. They are also a very economical way of getting the word out beyond your normal in-house marketing list by inviting the Fans of your Page. Fans can also help you promote your Facebook Event to their friends by sharing the event if it seems of value to a group of their friends.

Also don’t forget to follow-up after your event, it’s just good protocol to do so. If you had a very healthy debate with lots of questions – why not send a transcript out to everyone who attended or even those that didn’t attend. If some questions didn’t get answered because of time constraints – why not write up the answers and send them to the all attendees too.

The key point is try not to take a “set it and forget it” mentality to any social presence you have. While the costs of social marketing are low don’t let that fool you. The true cost is found in the creation of content. And your key to success will be the consistent participation and willingness to engage your customers you can create by using great content.

This article contains excerpts from Facebook Marketing For Dummies (September 2009, Wiley - available for pre-order on Amazon)

Social Network based Caller Routing

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:42:37 PDT

Ok, let’s say you are searching the web for a new fishing rod. You find the right website but you are having trouble locating the right rod and reel combination. Frustrated you consider giving up but give it one last shot and decide to call the 800 number on the site. And instead of getting the usual IVR tree – you are prompted for your Facebook id.

What’s going on here you think?

Reluctantly you give them your Facebook id and behind the scenes there is technology at work that matches you up with the best Call Center agent based on your profile information: Age, Sex, Hometown, Current Location, and Interests.

Instantly you are matched up with someone who you can relate to. Someone who now can give you the best service and hence the best customer experience of your lifetime. They know exactly what would be best for you because they share the same interests or age bracket and can talk to the product in ways you never heard before coming from a call center agent. Maybe they know someone in your social network and can even broker a chat with them (live through Facebook) about their recommended rod and reel combo for you.

Sound a little like Star Trek?

Actually it sounds very doable. Technology like Facebook Connect or Facebook personal URLs are already available. We are just beginning to see that technology harnessed more broadly for the web. In fact I predict we will see it start to appear in Search, on Amazon.com, on YouTube and Microsoft Xbox – in some cases this has already begun!

So why isn’t your call center taking advantage of this data as well?

No patience for the ROI of Social Media discussion

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:58:51 PDT

In a blog post last week, Dell revealed that it has generated more than $2 million in revenue from @DellOutlet, one of its many Twitter sites. Late last year, there were some headlines about Dell crossing the $1 million mark via Twitter and it’s only gotten bigger since then.

How did they do it? With a coupon code!

Wow, now that’s inventive. But this is not a dig at Dell it’s a dig at all of us marketers who say they don’t understand how to calculate an ROI from Social Media. My point is Dell isn’t using any secret sauce – its just plain old common sense. And at this point in social media or even in the development of the web - we have plenty of ways to track and measure lead generation coming from Social Media. So much so that I have lost all patience for this discussion.

In a blog post a few weeks ago called - Why is measuring Lead Gen in Social Media so hard? - I detailed a few ways that companies used to track lead generation such as: a unique 800 number in their white papers or a unique hotlink or email address embedded in their white papers. These would be only accessible via the various social media outposts they use to share their story like on RSS, syndicated Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. Same goes for Video or Podcasts – have a strong call to action and send them to a unique URL. Don’t have a call to action try sharing it with a service like Bit.ly – a unique service that shortens your URL’s and then provides unique tracking of them.

If that’s not enough try flipping the equation around and using Google Analytics to find out how much traffic was driven to your website from services like Twitter, blogs you syndicate to etc ... If your tracking system isn’t robust enough to do that then remember back in the early days of Pay Per Click advertising when we used to create separate pages (I called them Ghost Pages) to track the traffic and conversions of each keyword. So for example if you had purchased a keyword such as: VoIP, I would set up a landing page on the website for that, a unique page for Google clicks, a unique page for Yahoo clicks and a unique page for AOL clicks (remember when we used to buy keywords there – sorry Tim Armstrong).

My point is back in the early days of the web marketers found ways to measure and track lead gen with a lot less sophisticated tools then we have now. True the number of channels have blossomed but that shouldn’t have changed our creativity when it comes to measuring the ROI of Social Media!

Is Twitter a Critical Part of your Resume?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:20:50 PDT

The short answer is – YES!

In a recent article in the NY Times called Tweeting Your Way to a Job. They talk a lot about people who have found a new job Tweeting for an employer. Social Media roles are opening up in many firms and the Twitterati that have a combination of public relations, analyst relations and even customer relations are snapping them up. But what about those people that are interviewing for a job?

I think it is equally as important for those that are job hunting to be Twittering. Not just for job leads but for the differentiation. What better way for prospective employers to get a sense of the way you think and your unique point of view. And what better way to distinguish yourself amongst a short list of potential hires than to have a strong following on Twitter because of a unique point of view.

I feel that building your network personally is one of the best things you can do for yourself because I believe in the next few years your social graph (those that follow you and those that you follow) not only on Twitter but on Facebook and LinkedIn will be used very differently than you use it today.

Remember we are still in the early years of Social Media and everything from a simple search to something more complex like job hunting will change as we start to leverage the social graph more and more. So don’t forget to build your network now before you need it!

Is Twitter the Next Channel for Contact Centers?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:57:53 PDT

If you have never seen this web page http://twitter.zappos.com/ - you should! With legions of Twitter-ers on staff - 432 to be exact - Zappos make customer service look: easy, decentralized, and inexpensive. But that begs the question - what impact will Twitter have on today’s customer contact centers?

History would tell us that just like the days when ATM’s were first being rolled out and people were declaring that the bank teller was soon to be extinct, that this never really materialized fully. In fact quite the opposite was true – banks ended up building more physical locations and support both channels! Channels yield choices!

So does that mean for every new channel that gets launched we need a separate grouping of customer service reps to handle it in our Contact Centers? Maybe not – but a certainly a portion of Contact Center experts can and should be trained in responding real time with Twitter.

Progressive companies are learning to integrate social interaction technologies to monitor brands today in real-time. It’s quite early in it’s use, but social technologies will continue to drive their way into brand management over the next 2 years and become a core part of companies overall strategy when it comes to Contact Centers. At least successful ones for sure!

Twitter will be another feed along with IM and Email into a Contact Center (support questions may even be crowdsourced by non-CC employees) and will be one more channel that agents will have to deal with. Much like chat and SMS the era of communications becoming more and more synchronous is upon us. And the race is on for how fast you can respond to your customers needs.

Social Media makes for Better Interviews

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:13:40 PDT

After reading Chip and Dan heath’s article in Fast Company called “Why It May Be Wiser To Hire People Without Meeting Them”. I couldn’t help but agree with the findings in the article having fallen into that trap myself over the last few years with some key hires. In short, they talk a lot about how the interview process has little to do with the success of a candidate in your organization.

It's true that every manager has their blind spots but I think marketing managers have it worse than other managers when it comes to hiring since most marketers are optimists by nature. Marketers want to believe in our products, marketers want to believe in our sales team, and most of all marketers want to believe in people. This is why the hiring process has always bedeviled me. Ask any of my new hires that I made interview with a half dozen people after I interviewed them! It was a way of compensating for my optimism.

They go on to say that: “Research has consistently shown that one of the best predictors of job performance is a work sample.” So if you agree with this premise I would say that those work samples should be the “social presence” of your candidate. What are they contributing on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Do they have a blog? What do they say?

Moreover my favorite sales guy here at Avaya (who writes the blog called: A Sales Guy) recently wrote an article on: Why Your Social Graph Will Be Worth as Much as Your Home - where he cites: “If employers, or recruiters can’t learn about you online, through your social graph, they won’t be interested.” Moreover he expects online vetting of dates, baby sitters etc will only increase and “having an online social presence will be the required price to play.”

And I agree with him – what better way to get inside the mind of a potential new hire than to see how they market themselves and whether their viewpoint matches up to your. Yet another use of Social Media we didn’t expect at the inception of Web 2.0.

Can Twitters growth continue?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Thu, 28 May 2009 05:58:23 PDT

The most recent numbers from Nielsen indicate that Twitter grew 1,382% year-over-year, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US. Not only is that huge growth in one year, but in one month like in January, Twitter.com clocked 4.5 million unique visitors in the US, meaning the service grew by more than 50 percent month-over-month. But can that Growth be sustained?

It is hard to imagine that any technology could sustain that kind of growth. But what is even more surprising and potentially derailing for Twitters growth, is the lack of Twitter adoption in the teen market.

My 14 year old son is an avid text messager and Facebook fan. So recently when he had some friends over I asked them about Twitter and got several surprising responses ranging from “what is that?” to “wanting nothing to do with it”. That is sort of a bizarre dynamic if you think about it. Many new and innovative consumer technologies are first adopted by the teen market. But outright rejection of the technology can’t be good for Twitter long term.

While Twitter is definitely is the shinny new object in town and stars like Oprah and Aston Kutcher are racing to build followings. Perhaps the adoption of mainstream celebs will help Twitter adoption at the teen level but that has yet to be seen. In fact Aston Kutcher threatened to stop twittering recently because of an apparent stalking attempt, which could have an adverse effect on the technology.

Without a strong foothold in the teen market Twitter’s growth may hit an air pocket and if the teen market doesn’t latch on that could spell trouble for Twitter. I think the teen market needs to be convinced more of the value of twitter over SMS or Facebook updates. And long term Twitter needs more adoption by teen idols and integration with prime time TV shows to help capture the all important teen market.

Why is measuring Lead Gen in Social Media so hard?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:12:40 PDT

This isn’t a new problem – how to measure lead generation from online activity is as old as the web itself. Not everyone had a shopping cart on their website year ago either, so ways of correlating offline business with online activity had to be devised.

Take for example a car company – if you were browsing a new car on their website and then walked into a dealer to check it out – there was no way that the brand manager could know that or even judge the effectiveness of their web presence.

What in turn happened was the dealer eventually looked to measure the leads generated by the website and posted a car configurator to the site where you could configure your own car and then send it to 3 dealers for a quote or print it out and take it to the dealer where they in turn would check off a box signaling the fact that this sale had come in with a print out from the configurator.

There are other examples of B2B tech companies that put a special 800 number in their white papers to signal the call is coming in from a download on the website. Still others have added click to chat or click to call type of functionality that when combined with a slightly re-engineered process means you can totally measure the leads.

A more recent example is Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that has been marketing itself via Twitter. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day’s business.

Right now you have to think of ways to use social media as an “outpost” for your content and use that outpost to drive back to your website. I think in the next few years you will have ways of tagging pages with 1x1 pixels so you can effectively track the traffic to and from things like Facebook. Currently you can use tags in embed codes for video which is a step in the right direction for tracking. You can also track tiny urls used in Twitter feeds to see how many clicks you got to that url but its not integrated the way it is on your own website.

If we can get affiliate marketing right – paying people based on traffic flows. Then we certainly can get social media traffic flows right in the long term!

Growth through Disruptive Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:50:22 PDT

Takeaways on a speech by C. K. Prahalad speaker at the World Innovation Forum.

So we are beginning to see the impact of current economic crisis. The bad news is there is going to be significantly more regulation in the future but the good news is there is a tremendous access to global talent like we have never seen before. New competitors who we did not think could play on the global stage from India, China Brazil etc are coming online. In fact for the first time 4 billion people will be connected - that’s going to have an impact. 4 billion people who want to be part of the market!

So the question quickly becomes: How do you build disruptive business models?

Take a company like Build a Bear workshop which is the inverse of the typical toy maker. Typical Toy makers are usually: large volume – low cost – low margin – seasonal – instable market – mostly a fad. Build a Bear workshop’s model is: moderate volume – low cost – high margin – all year round – stable market – not a fad. And all the experiences are very personal and very contextual!

But you say “C.K. my company is in a more traditional business selling a commodity to other businesses.” So how about we try this disruptive innovation on the tire business. If I can show you how to disrupt the tire business then you can’t tell me your business is unique. Would you agree?

Here is how to disrupt the Tire business

Instead of buying tires, how about buying tires by the usage? You pay a rate calculated by sensors in tires so that you can pay by the mile! For fleet owners they could pay one blended rate based on all the makes and models of tires they have. You can also track with GPS how the tires are being used and give feedback to drivers on how to drive better which in turn can drive down your insurance costs. And then manufacturers like Bridgestone will have real time info on how people actually use their tires. All of this fundamentally changes the economics of this industry.

You need to think about how to create a single experience per user. This is the path to radical innovation.

The key drivers of the value will include:

Personalized experiences – think individualized experiences
Co-creation process – think the user has a say in the outcome
Delivery networks – different modes of delivery
Communities – for further innovation
Individuals – individuals rather than mass

To go from products to solutions to experiences the transformation requires:
Imagination, passion, courage, humanity, humility, intellect, and a little bit of luck!

You can’t Restructure your Way to Transformation

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:19:01 PDT

Takeaways on a speech by Dr Vijay Govindarajan speaker at the World Innovation Forum.

When you visualize your strategic plans visualize your plans in 3 boxes:

Box 1 - Managing the Present
Box 2 - Forgetting the Past
Box 3 - Creating the Future

Most organizations over focus on Box 1! And strategy is really about Box 2 and Box 3.

Strategy is about creating leadership in the year 2030. Right now strategy is about projects going on in 2009 to stay relevant! Strategy by definition has less to do with the present and more to do with the future. In other words – strategy is about creating the future while managing the past.

Competition for the present is about responding to linear changes in your industry – incremental improvements in your processes; call it Six Sigma or whatever you want. Box 1 is about closing the performance gap. But in 2009, 100% of your projects can’t simply be incremental Box 1’s, because the world is changing.

Box 2 and Box 3 are about - Discontinuous changes in your industry – fundamental business model innovation. You can not participate in the growth of emerging market by using Box 1 – because emerging markets represent a huge opportunity since they are fundamentally different.

For example: Ford in early 90s decided to enter India. Ford thought the typical India consumer could not afford the luxury car – so they took a Box 1 approach. They decided to form a design team in Detroit to design the perfect car for India. What the Ford design team decided was to cut the cost of the car for the market, one example of this was to only provide power windows for the front two windows – but what they overlooked was someone in India who can afford to buy a $15,000 car typically has a chauffeur – so the chauffeur got the power window and the owner got nothing! Did the price come down - yes but what they learned was a US Box 1 business model adapted for India won’t work!

Sounds so simple. The lesson is: don’t assume all markets are created the same. Emerging markets are micro markets. There is no mass market business model for U.S. that can be adapted to Indian mass market because of income level differences (mass market per capita is $1k, not like US $50k).

If you want to win in the US in the future, you may have to win in emerging markets first! The real question is not what you can do for India - the real question is what India can do to transform your globalization strategy.

Now think about how many projects does your firm have in Box 1 to restructure, down size, right size? And keep in mind - You can’t restructure your way to transformation!

Connecting to customers using emotion

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:23:31 PDT

A case study on how GlaxoSmithKline is building an emotional strategy in its business
GSK was represented by Donna J Sturgess at the World Innovation Forum

Now more than ever before emotion is saturating buying decisions and marketing needs to tap into this and use new ways to research and connect with customers.

A recent study determined:

15% of decision making is rational
85 % of decision making is emotional

Another Harvard study said that only 5% is rational. Major industries are clearly focused only on the rational. But marketers are clearly ignoring the 85% that really drives the buying decision. A good strategy should have 2 parts the rational and the emotional – and don’t think the rational isn’t important – it is - but it needs to come together with emotion to form a powerful bond.

For Example – Imagine a woman who goes to Channel for shoes but buys towels for her home at Costco. It makes you wonder if we have segmentation all wrong? Perhaps people segment to brand rather than brands segmenting to people. Because in that example - She is behaving one way in shoes versus exhibiting another behavior for home décor.

Brands don't segment consumers -- consumers segment brands

You have to get up close and personal with your customers – you will never get this kind of insights by reading a chart or a fancy spreadsheet.

By the way, the emotional side gets messy – and most of us are incredibly busy and don’t feel like we have the time for this – which is why only 8% of marketers have shopped with their consumers lately.

I am convinced this is the next frontier in marketing. When you are highly relevant and deeply resonate with your customer base you can thrive in tough economic times.

Change is Never Linear

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:11:55 PDT

Notes from a speech by Paul Saffo, Professor from Stamford University, the opening speaker at the World Innovation Forum.

Any interesting change looks like an S curve – except in Silicon Valley where it looks like a hockey stick :-)

The ghost behind the S curve is Moore’s law – i.e. the number of circuits that could fit on a chip was doubling every 6 months and the performance was doubling every 6 months.

But we are really lousy at understanding the net effect of the S curve running through our lives. Otherwise we would be standing right at the inflection point of the S curve and monitizing it, even in Silicon Valley.

Cherish Failure

Especially if it is someone else’s failure. Silicon Valley is built on the rubble of other people’s failure – big companies grow and have their day then collapse and restart. And progress is built on other people’s failure and in the last year we have seen a lot of rubble!

How do you find a short term success? – find something that has been failing for YEARS. Take Virtual worlds – ex Habitat vs Second Life – took 35 or more companies that tried virtual world between when habitat started and second life started to make it work.

When someone says they have a new idea and you hear "we tried that but it failed and its been failing for 20 years" – quit the company and get venture capital – because it is going to be a big success.

Inversion

The world of inversion is all around us. Most advanced technologies began to appear in places like NASA. But now the most advanced technology is now appearing in computer games. It’s coming in at the bottom of the market and for consumers and now companies have to wait!

The future has already arrived it just hasn’t been distributed to everyone yet.

There is an leading indicator that showed up a few years ago – take a look at the personal excellorometer (aka the cardio watch) do a search on the web or on Facebook and you will see people publishing their personal workout plans and results on the web!

Again more obscure technology is all of a sudden in consumer devices like Nike and Apple who created shoes that talk to your iPod and collects data. Now Nike holds virtual races online. This is a specific instance of a larger trend – it’s not the semantic web – its sensors!!

Go back in history and look forward – new fundamental technology arrives every 10 years – like cheap micro processors in 70s which set the stage for the innovation of the personal computers in the 80s – then another new technology came along – cheap lasers came along in the late 80s and set the stage for cheap optical storage.

I am here to tell you the next big thing is Robots – it’s already starting to happen.

Look at the Rhumba – it’s a robotic vacuum cleaner (by iRobot). And people even give them names. The Rhumba thing is an indicator – look for clusters of indicators that tell you that you are starting to get into the trough in the S curve. A robot revolution is a lot more than people building robots. It’s about the start of an era of innovation that will be coming into our lives for years.

Do not fear change embrace change.

If I had a dollar ...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:50:45 PDT

Last week, I was interviewed by a technology services marketing team looking to improve their Demand Generation activities.

They had a very cohesive but small team and they wanted to ramp up activities to drive brand awareness and lead generation. But as you might expect they had limited funds and bandwidth (don't we all).

I suggested a few different places like investing in more Content Marketing, Lead Nurturing and Social Media. And here is how the conversation went:

Content Marketing - is the bait you need to have out there that attracts the type of customer you want to talk to - in fact the entire first experience(s) of your brand online are all around the quality of content you put out there AND what people have to say about it. It’s time to crank on the quality of your content machine not just the quantity!

Lead Nurturing - if this isn't high on your list, it should be. If the best place to get make a sale is with your existing customer base then the SECOND best place to make a sale is contained in your lead nurturing system. A person who downloads the paper and opts into our database becomes a lead start (notice I didn’t say lead). And with the lead nurturing system we have in place we can then develop a lead to the point that they are willing to talk to someone from our sales organization.

And finally ...

Social Media - unlike traditional media – Print, TV and Radio - which can cost big money. Social media’s upfront costs are very little and we actually use money within my team to experiment with it so we get A) get a better understanding of the technology and B) start to understand how we can use it and measure the results along with all the other media we have. Also try to map your tactics more to the buying cycle when you deploy them. Don’t think this next podcast is going to drive awareness through the roof – it might – but the goal should be to feed those that are already in your long sales cycle with more good quality content on what your company can deliver.

Bottom line - this team pushed me by asking "ok but if you only had a dollar, where would you put it?" My response - Content. You can have the best Lead Nurturing system and the best Social Media plan - but without content you aren't going to get very far.

Facebook Marketplace - Time to take another look

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:54:33 PDT

I am sorry I haven't updated my blog in a while - with my new job and writing the book on weekends - spare time has been even more at a premium!

But this weekend while writing a chapter of Facebook Marketing for Dummies I was very impressed by the Marketplace on Facebook. The old marketplace was a owned and operated by Facebook but the new one is a much more elegant platform by oodle which opens it up to over 200 local and national sites affiliated with oodle.

The Marketplace is truly different than other popular sites like eBay or Craigslist since it is integrated into the fabric of Facebook allowing you to search by your friends listings, your network listings, and your location settings. All designed to give your own unique views on the Marketplace that you don’t get with eBay or Craigslist. Additionally there are features like Sell for a Cause, or Giving it Away that you don’t see on a site like eBay that needs to charge for listings so unlike eBay every listing on the Facebook Marketplace is free of charge!

During my all day writing extravaganza about the Facebook Marketplace - I saw the listings grow from 70,000 to 71,000 (1.5% increase in a day). Categories like Housing – For Rent accounted for over 19,500 listings (which is 28% of all listings), Books & Magazines accounted for over 16,000 listings (or 23%) and Electronics accounted for over 5,400 listings (or 7.7%).

As you might imagine many of the listings are the "Sell It" type (approximately 84%), followed by the "Ask for It" type at 14%, then "Give It Away" type at over 1% and "Sell for a Cause" at just under 1%. Clearly if you have something to sell this is the spot for it.

This site is truly a differentiated offer compared to eBay and Craigslist as as Facebook integrated in more payment features on the Facebook platform - this could become a real killer ap. Business should consider taking another look or at least keeping an eye on this platform.

Going from Me 1.0 to Me 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:28:56 PDT

In a world of changing business practices and uncertain futures, Me 2.0 offers practical and proven advice about personal branding from an authority on the matter. In the first book about personal branding written for the millennial generation by a millennial, Dan Schawbel bridges the gap between the current business climate and the progressive best practices of the future. Covering a variety of topics all crafted to improve one’s success in the job market, Schawbel proves that just being in the game is not enough, and that one’s success lies in being ahead of the game.

Some highlights from the book include:

A proven 4-step process for building a powerful brand (discover, create, communicate, maintain).
Tips on using social media tools for personal empowerment, confidence building, and professional networking in order to attract jobs directly to you, without applying!
Tested advice on how to create an online and offline presence for career protection and self-promotion.
Over 40 expert quotes from leaders including Don Tapscott, Guy Kawasaki, Penelope Trunk, and David Kirkpatrick of Fortune Magazine among others.
More than 70 research reports, three personal case studies and examples to give you a broader perspective on the topic.

Bottom line: This is the handbook for surviving and thriving in the digital age. I am currently reading it and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to build a personal brand. Find Dan's book Me 2.0 on Amazon.com.

Also check out my podcast with Dan Schawbel for some of the inside secrets to building a personal brand.

Social Media speeds Onboarding

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:14:39 PDT

I am officially up and running now in my 6th week here at Avaya and loving my new role. And what has been really interesting for me to see was the difference between organizations when it comes to things like social media.

One of the things I was pleasantly surprised to find in the first few days was that Avaya has their own Yammer account within their firewall. So naturally I signed up and started sharing.

Within days I had identified a group of really smart people inside Avaya that are totally switched on and not only sharing but discussing real issues in our Yammer forum with other like-minded individuals. I immediately asked my entire team to join since I wanted us to post some discussion threads and get reaction from sales people on our upcoming programs. And at last week's VoiceCon conference I got to meet some of these folks face to face and it was like we were already long time friends.

One of my biggest concerns about coming into a new environment and managing a whole new group of people was - how am I going to build a network of trusted peers and sales people who I can tap into? I am happy to report that within a matter of weeks that piece is well on its way. Now we can get down to the business of making an impact for the organization.

So often I read and see discussions of Social Media and Social Networking ROI but hidden in that discussion is the unique ability for new employees to get up to speed quickly and build a network while building credibility in the organization. It would have taken me months to do that the traditional way, but with the power of Social Media and Social Networks it took weeks. What's the ROI to Avaya on that? To borrow a phrase Social Networks like this are indeed Priceless.

Avaya makes Business Communications more Social

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:13:56 PDT

It's a very exciting day for me here at Avaya. We just launched a new product that is a true leap frog from where most enterprises are today and will make it easier for enterprises to integrate social technologies like Facebook into their overall communications and contact centers while saving them real dollars in the near term.

As the co-author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies - I couldn't be more excited about this product which allow companies to be much more social in the very way they communicate.

What Avaya has done was to centralize all communications heading into the enterprise with a new product called Aura - this server will act as a "central nervous system" and control all types of products not just Avaya but competitive products like Cisco, Nortel, Siemens, as well as iPhones, Blackberries etc , all Modes of communications like SMS, Twitter, Social Networks and any special applications in every location of your business.

OK so imagine this ...

I write on my wall that I’m looking for a good deal on a new TV before the big March Madness game this weekend and a friend writes back that he found a great deal at Crutchfeld. When I click on the link he provides me to Crutchfeld I can be added as a friend with a direct communications link from Facebook. Crutchfeld can now stream information to me that I am interested in based on my profile.

In turn, I let them know that I am interested in a TV. Avaya’s new product will set up a session between me and Crutchfeld so they can show me TV's, answer any questions, conduct a purchase, and get a customer review - right in the comfort of my home and without ever having to leave my Facebook account! Which in turns posts to my wall for my friends to see and the cycle can start all over again with someone else.

Bottom line - as my Uncle always told me - you have to fish where the fish are and this certainly allows B2C brands to fish right where you are and right off of any personal recommendations you might be getting on a Social Network.

On another note - Happy 3rd Birthday to my Blog - you have treated me and even my friends very well!

The Future of Advertising is one word ...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:43:55 PDT

Contextual

Now I know this isnt such a new statement - but consider these clues ...

When the folks who created ET the movie (I hope I am not dating myself here) wanted to use M&M's as the candy that ET was most attracted to - Mars said no but Reese's Pieces said yes. Following the release of the movie Reese's Pieces sales went up 65%. That's no small feat to move the needle of a candy manufacturer that much! And some might say that's just good product placement (read Contextual).

How about Pontiac, who decided to launch their new car the Solstice on The Apprentice. By using a clever call to action on the ads featured in The Apprentice, ads that said something to the effect of - register to be one of the first few able to buy this car (not register to win). They were able to drive sales and search traffic went through the roof (like 4X that of normal traffic to the Pontiac site), again I would argue good, smart product placement (read Contextual)

Product Placement and Content Placement

In thinking about this post tonight, I was considering the effect of TiVo and DVR, lets face it, its a game changer for the 30 second TV spot. And when (as I predict) you can get search on TV like you can on the web to watch whatever you want when you want - the 30 second spot is toast. Ok, then the only advertising will be within the TV shows themselves - hence product placement or contextual.

If we learned anything from Google and their business model it's that contextual ads work and they work really well. I think the strategy going forward is for TV - product placement, Print - Contextual (ie I wont advertise unless this issue addresses something I am really hard core about) otherwise I am going to spend online where I can place my content where I want as an attraction vehicle or where someone else has content I would like to located near.

Hat Tip to Bill Tancer author of Click

Facebook MythBusters

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:44:07 PDT

Would you ever have imagined that your relationship status determines whether or not you're likely to use a Facebook app? Me neither! And, the common belief is that the more wall activity a person has on Facebook, the more likely they are to send virtual gifts. Nope. Not true.

BLiNQ Media just released an unprecedented white paper that debunks common assumptions about social media behavior indicating branders may be missing the mark on their "sweet spot" of target users. No one has ever analyzed 117 million records in Facebook and the results are surprising!

The research is based on the analysis of Facebook application usage data comprising more than 9 million users and 117 million records. Some of the revelations include:

A small percentage of the users accounted for a large percentage of the activity. For example, only 6% of the users were responsible for 56% of the activity.
Not all users are in the 18-24 age bracket as assumed: The top 50% of high activity users of the social media app were 32 or older, while the lower app activity users were predominately 32 and younger (80%).
While females represented the largest group of application users (73%), 54% of the men were more likely to be heavy app users.
The majority of users (70%) took over 30 days to respond to a gifting request. Acceptance activity picked up after 30 days and continued until 132 days later.
The most active wall posters are not the most active application users, at least for this app.

Bottom line is what seems like logical conclusions can sometimes be illogical on social networks like Facebook!

With Facebook Pages - Who needs a Website?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:11:08 PDT

I was talking to a small business owner last night. They are in the middle of a very costly redesign of their B2C website and I couldn't help but ask if they had plans to set up on Facebook as well.

Right now, I have Facebook on the brain. As you may recall I am in the middle of writing a book called Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley) due out at the end of the summer. This book is in collaboration with long time friend Rich Krueger who is the CEO of AboutFaceDigital - an agency devoted to helping companies setup and optimize their marketing efforts on Facebook. Something they call - Facebook Marketing Optimization.

Anyway I found myself thinking - why does any business need a website any more?

With Facebook Fan pages you can build your own website on the Facebook "Platform". A website that is totally FREE of hosting and server costs, public and indexable on all search engines, with unique URL's for individual landing pages that you can tune based on if they are Fans or Non Fans, where you can host all your video (so long as it is under 10mb) and upload your product catalog with detailed descriptions (and get feedback from Fans), where you can throw an event or show presentations on a Slideshare ap, run a contest or a survey, host your blog or retweet your status updates (or better yet - just use Facebook instead of Twitter). Oh don't forget send emails to your Fans for FREE and if you want to buy targeted ads you can do that too.

With all that in your favor - Why would any business need a website anymore?

Personal Brands RULE on Social Networks

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:05:08 PDT

On Facebook you can’t be a Friend of a brand but you can be a Fan of a brand. While it sounds like a subtle difference it is actually an important distinction. Brands are the sum total of the experience a customer has when they are interacting with your brand. But on Facebook that interaction is relatively low and un-engaging. The interactions people may have with your brand will be limited to the people they interact with from your company.

Yet many companies limit the use of Social Media at work which I think is very short sighted.

"Of those not allowed to use social media at work, 65 percent said their managers block access to sites like YouTube, Facebook and Flickr because they're afraid employee productivity will suffer."

Blocking social media sites entirely may not be a good idea. There will always be people who abuse trust and spend time on social media sites with non-work related activities, but I believe the benefits outweigh the risks in the long run.

Building and allowing personal brands to flourish is important to having a strong Social Brand. It’s the sum total of many personal brands that make up that experience people have with your brand on Social Networks like Facebook.

Guidelines for companies to allow Personal Brands in Social Networks

So if you are going to allow access to Social Networks spend some time pulling together some guidelines for your employees. The IBM social computing guidelines have been called “The Constitution” of Social Media / Blogging guidelines and a good place to start.

3 Takeaways for Companies who want a strong Social Brand

Allow as many personal brands to grow in your company
Empower them with tools (guidelines, group blogware etc)
Train them on how to be a brand ambassador

Brands cannot make an impact by shouting at you with advertising anymore – and in Social Networks it doesn’t even work! It’s the people of the brand that can make the difference. So empower them with the tools and training they need and watch as your social brand grows!

Social Media Expert: How long does it take to become one?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:45:25 PDT

So I was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book The Outliers the other night and he goes into a discussion about Violinists and on how long it takes them to become a master at their craft. So without spoiling the book for you – the bottom line was – it takes 10,000 hours to become a Master Violinist. This got me thinking about how it could apply to Social Media and how long it would take to become a Social Media Expert.

If you listen to popular books on becoming an expert in your field of study – most of them say “read an hour a day in your field”. Members of my team will recognize this from their goal setting with me as I often coach them to read an hour a day of good marketing material. But 1 hour a day x 5 days a week means you would be a social media master in about 38 years! Let’s say you are really dedicated and you up that to 1 hour a day x 7 days a week means you cut that time down to 27 years just in time to retire!

In my new role at Avaya I am traveling 3 hours a day (1 ½ hours each way) by car – listening to podcasts like MarketingOverCoffee, HubSpot TV, Duct Tape Marketing – essentially turning my commute into a rolling Social Media university. So if I factor that into my calculation – 3 hours a day x 5 days a week means I could master social media in 12.8 years. Assuming I throw in 3 hours a day on the weekend and it drops to 9.1 years! By the way 10 years was also an average that Malcolm Gladwell cited in the book for most people to master pretty much anything.

But wait – I also practice Social Media on the job for a few hours a day. So let’s say 3 hours a day learning more about social media and 2 hours a day practicing social media x 5 days a week means I could become a social media master in 7.6 years. Throw in the weekends and that drops to 5.5 years!

People like Dan Schawabel (one of the hardest working people in Social Media I have ever met), have the luxury of practicing social media 40 hours a week as the Social Media expert for EMC – 40 hours a week x 5 days a week means you reach social media mastery in 4.8 years. But Dan also blogs, writes books, a magazine and more so say he works 80 hours a week (including weekends) and you can reach social media mastery in 3.8 years!

My point being Social Media is still relatively new and there are plenty of people out there calling themselves Social Media Experts but in reality they would have to have a pretty aggressive schedule of social media learning and practicing to become one. In essence, there are a handful of people who truly have a good head start on the pack but it’s not too late for you to get started in creating your own plan to become a Social Media Expert. So what’s your plan? I would love to know.

Spray and Pray Marketing 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Dunay) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:54:06 PST

No matter how you look at things these days marketers are becoming more like publishers than ever before. And their tactics are shifting from more Outbound Marketing like email and direct mail to more Inbound Marketing using SEO, Blogging and Social Media.

So the game is changing right before our eyes! If you are pursuing a balanced approach of Outbound and Inbound marketing – you will quickly find you have a tremendous need for content!

5 of the top 10 media properties are blogs – and blogging has become a “quantity game” with the most successful blogs being multiblogger blogs who can post 5 times before lunch. As a solo blogger or corporate blog - you have a lot to compete with. Plus don’t forget the 50 Million bloggers that China has going strong.

But the stat that really scares me is User Generated Content has surpassed that of publisher content – so now we marketers and publishers are “white noise” to their Content.

So what can you do?

Some people call it getting content where the fish are – I am calling it Spray and Pray Marketing 2.0. And while that sounds harsh I don’t really mean it that way, I mean that media is fragmenting and like the retailer who takes cash, check, credit cards, debit cards, food stamps they have to take it all and you have to get your content out into every corner of the web possible.

There are things like Ping.FM – that can send it out for you – I don’t subscribe to that model but I do subscribe to the model of posting your content in as many places that make sense. So a blog post on you blog should go to your feed, to your Facebook account, your Twitter feed, your FriendFeed, maybe even a friend can StumbleUpon or Digg it if they like it. This way it gets in front of as many of these audiences as possible since you never know how someone will consume your media today.