Once you get an idea for their behaviour, go a step further and give your virtual mannequin a name, a personal style, a back story, and anything else that helps your model become more ‘real’. You’ll be amazed at how differently you look at your future campaigns when you have an actual face and a name to market to, not just an email address or PID (person id).

This past week I attended, albeit briefly, the TFM&A show in London. I normally love trade shows – the glitz, the glamour, the schwag - the buzz always gets me really inspired. This time it was all a bit different though. Maybe I’ve been getting used to the B2C arena in the last 1.5 years and become somewhat removed from the furore that is a B2B marketing tradeshow, but overall there was a strong theme I couldn’t shake – it’s all the same.

Turning down one aisle to another, every vendor’s booth might as well have been touting the same snake oil remedies to your problems. Unfortunately the snake oil was just a permutation or mutation on the basics: email marketing, SEO, CRM, viral marketing or the best/most potent of all – social media. The queue for the social media keynote alone was an unbelievable 4 wide, wrapping around booths and across aisles for at least 300 feet. Of course this is representative of the fact that social media has become an important tool in the marketer’s toolbox, and more importantly that our industry is booming, but is that it? For what it’s worth, I thought the exact same thing at the DMA show in Las Vegas in late 2008, and it seems to be a recurring theme or question of mine –what’s the next big thing in digital marketing and where’s it going? Why are the booths all touting the same old thing, or just a variation of it? Social media is our most recent revelation, but it’s a testament to how much like a fat kid on a smartie our industry has become. Are we so starved for newness that social media is the only thing that gets us out of bed in the morning?

We all know that marketing is all about getting to your target audience, and in the last 5 years it has become paramount to display the relevant messaging to your audience for the best yield. Digital marketing represents a medium that is extremely cost-effective, thanks in no small part to the internet revolution and how ubiquitous it is across all demographics and markets. As the web matures, behaviours mature, and products need to match those behaviours. In that respect, a part of marketing has always been inherently underhanded – we aggressively seek out and exploit new areas that show any sign of being lucrative. First it was the web in general (1.0), then it was communication channels like email, RSS, and now it’s all social (2.0). From a wider perspective, it just seems that marketing will always be moving 5 steps behind the general population, and playing catch-up to ‘fish where the fish are’.

It’s worth mentioning that not for one second am I inferring that I know any better than those many (clearly successful) service providers; nor do I know that the next big thing in digital marketing is X, Y or Z. I’m just saying that at this rate, digital marketing (and I’m not even touching traditional marketing here) is getting, for lack of a better word, predictable. As marketers, we have a basic set of tools, applications, systems and processes that we need to do our jobs effectively – a CRM for contact storage, an email platform for communicating, PPC for quality traffic, a web team for site optimization, and so on. But more and more I see these as assumed infrastructure rather than golden fleeces, and although vendors will always improve their offerings, they’ll always be offering effectively the same thing.

This post is sounding like I’m becoming jaded more than anything else, but I can’t help saying it: I can’t wait for a new paradigm - a fresh new way of approaching marketing (and our audiences) that stops us from being lemmings and instead lets us be part of the creation of products that promote themselves by addressing specific, real needs in a market. Until then, we seem destined to go buy the latest fishing rod by going to these ‘cutting edge, industry-leading’ tradeshows and getting swarmed by a sales crew who tout their ‘unique’ solution as the Holy Grail. Call me (very) sarcastic, but when one interested attendee actually asked a vendor ‘OK, so what are your USP’s’ I almost snorted. In the context of the show as a whole, I think I could have answered for him, although I don’t think my answer would have closed the deal.

This is the year for marketing analytics. We’re in a global recession that is showing no signs of abating, and will get worse before it gets better. It’s been well documented that digital marketing is in a great position to thrive during these economic doldrums, but good marketing still costs money and that money will be harder to come by in ‘09. As finance departments and C-level executives tighten their fists around marketing budgets, the only way you can be sure of acquiring new funds is with hard, definitive proof of what’s working and why.

Of course most marketers reading this are thinking ‘I already analyze my campaigns to death, I don’t need to change anything’, but A) many other marketers aren’t analyzing at all, and B) you can never have too much (worthwhile) analysis. This is the year of diligent, comprehensive analysis of anything and everything you do as a marketer – not only to adapt to your market forces, but to stave off economic ones.

Why is web analysis good for your business?

Not knowing what’s happening to visitors on your site is like owning a store but wearing a blindfold from behind the counter. Customers walk through your store’s aisles, but you have no idea where they’re going, why, and what they’re having trouble finding (but let’s not imagine them stealing stuff). You need to know what your site visitors are experiencing – good or bad - on your site, and act accordingly. This is all assuming they’ve arrived on your site ‘for free’ via an organic search result, but it’s a whole different ballgame (and a big old waste of money) if you’ve paid for visitors to your site but aren’t tracking what happens after that.

If you have proof that campaign ‘A’ generated XX visitors, XX of which hit goals 1,2 (but not 3), and that XX% of those goals resulted in a sale, then you have the hard numbers your bosses want and need in this shaky economy.

By keeping up-to-date with the analysis of your entire website – everything from keywords to ATOS (average time on site) to bounce rates, goal hits, even browser & resolution, you can be sure that the things you’re doing to market your site aren’t wasted. What’s better, if you find they are a waste, you can adapt and change. Alternatively, if you have proof that campaign ‘A’ generated XX visitors, XX of which hit goals 1,2 (but not 3), and that XX% of those goals resulted in a sale, then you have the hard numbers your bosses want and need in this shaky economy. Remember that conversion stats aren’t the end-all-be-all: using web analytics to know without doubt or intuition what countries outperformed others, what time of day visitors hit your goals, what browser type results in more sales, or which campaign worked best…can all mean the difference between economic success and failure.

So web analysis will save my business in 2009?

No, of course not. Web analytics are crucial in a downturn economy, but won’t save a flagging business or work miracles. Analysis is best used at all times – when any change you do on your site – no matter how big or small – can be tracked, measured, quantified and acted on. If it worked, you continue; if it didn’t work, you try again until it does. This same rule applies to all marketing activities you do in 2009, but no matter what, if you don’t analyze, you might be just another statistic by the end of the year.

What are some tools to help me analyze my efforts in 2009?

Without a doubt, Google Analytics is the best free analytics decision you could make for your business, but here are a few more free or low-cost tools that can help you make of the most of your marketing efforts:

• CrazyEgg - amazing heatmaps that visualize what your visitors are doing. Be sure to check out the Confetti reports, you’ll love them. (https://crazyegg.com/)
• StatCounter – real time viewing of visitors to your site is voyeuristic, but highly intriguing. ATOS, footsteps, and exit pages are crucial. (www.statcounter.com)
• Use Facebook pages or social ads? The FB insights analytics are great, with a slick interface. (www.facebook.com)
• 4Q – Numbers aren’t always enough. Sometimes it helps to hear it straight from your customer’s mouth. 4Q is a survey tool that answers the most important questions you need to know about your site. (http://4q.iperceptions.com/)
• ClickTale – Like CrazyEgg, but more. Visualize what your visitors are doing, on what pages, and every interaction they have with your site. (www.clicktale.com)
• Yahoo Web Analytics – Don’t like Google? Yahoo has their own version of Analytics and has some loyal fans and users. (http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/)
• Woopra – Desktop client that lets you manipulate data, connected to a web service for data capture. I’ve tried to use it, couldn’t believe I was expected to download the app but then wait 2 weeks before I could even start using it as they ‘validated’ my site. Your experiences are your own, however. (http://www.woopra.com)

Walked in at 8:30 am to find my desk as one massive present. This is the stuff of legend and lore.

They’re questioning what drives and motivates us to open up our daily lives to anyone and everyone, when it’s possible that no one’s listening.   They can’t imagine opening a Twitter account and talking to an empty room, so why do we bother?

It’s a good point.  Taking a step back for a moment (from whatever social medium you’re reading this in), you might wonder how we - the users who aren’t necessarily using social media for financial gain – measure any type of return out of social media? 

What’s the underlying factor that lets us get a return out social media, and makes us keep using it?

First, just skip the marketing-centric, revenue-generating B2B/B2C user who recognizes the potential in social media, so they tap into like it was the Klondike.  For these users, social interaction is a business decision, and going social is often associated with a brand or product to result in revenue.  Identifying why they’re using social media is easy – it’s money.

For the other type of user - the everyday social media/network user –identifying value and drive gets tricky.  There’s no money involved, so they’re simply doing it because they want to.  These ‘C2C‘ (consumer to consumer) users share information and opinions across their network(s) with like-minded people, gaining knowledge and contacts in the process.   So what drives them to continue using social media?

Interaction = Confidence = Value

Some seasoned social networkers might be reading this and thinking ‘There is no immediate return, stop thinking like a marketer.  The return is the interaction itself.‘ 

So what happens when you get no interaction? Do you stop?

Social media is linked to confidence, and that confidence is linked to value for the user.  In fact it’s a lot closer to tracking a basic marketing campaign than you might think, although perhaps not as easy as looking at a finite percentage or number that represents how many people X/Y/Z’d your product.  There are little value-trackers - different to each network - that we all look for and use to show us how we’re doing.   Any significant lack of these value-trackers often leads to low confidence, which results in a user asking the question ‘Why are you doing it?’  Conversely, get a lot of interaction, and you know you’re doing it right.

There are little value-trackers - different to each network - that we all look for and use to show us how we’re doing.

Take Twitter.  First-timers clearly find it daunting to broadcast what they’re doing, but the minute they get an ‘@’ reply, broadcasting becomes interaction, and they’re hooked.  The same goes for blogging – comments are crucial in knowing that people out there are actually reading your blog.  Lack of comments means lack of confidence, which means lack of value, which leads to no more blogging.  Even having a post bookmarked on Delicious means your hard-worked content has been deemed valuable by someone, somewhere, which spurs you on.

Of course there are ton of these ‘value-trackers‘ out there, each particular to a network, but the most obvious might include:

• New Twitter followers
• @ replies
• retweets
• trackbacks
• comments
• favourites
• friend requests
• diggs
• bookmarks
• ratings
• and many, many more.

Get any of the above in a respective network, and you start getting personal value out of it.  Your confidence goes up, and you keep going.  At this point it’s easy to answer the doubters why you’re doing it – because you want to and you have proof that it’s worth it.

Do we need social media KPI’s?

Does this mean all social networks should have ways to monitor performance so that users know what they’re getting out of them?  Or does it totally defeat the gregarious, organic nature of social media and risks making them yet another way to track popularity?   Does the lack of performance indicators lessen the likelihood of adoption by ‘newbies’, or is it a good thing that you either use social media because you want to, or don’t use it at all?

What do you think? Add your comment below.

Why submit a static, physical document when it doesn’t even include numerous glowing referrals of your past or present work?

LinkedIn is where social networking meets the CV, and the 30 million strong network is quickly becoming the ‘second stop’ on any potential employer’s checklist when shortlisting candidates. The thousand dollar question is: When will it become the first? Why are job seekers still submitting paper pages to a prospective employer when they could just send a link to the most comprehensive, dynamic and multi-faceted representation of our professional experience they have?

Check out LinkedIn’s growth on Ignite Social Media’s great list of ‘The 2008 Social Network Analysis Report - Geographic - Demographic and Traffic Data Revealed’.

LinkedIn not only highlights present and past job roles, it accumulates real, glowing praise for your work at those roles. It allows you to join like-minded professionals in groups relevant to your professional interests, or allows you to showcase your knowledge (or adding to it) by questioning or answering questions posed by industry peers. It lets you reach employers who otherwise would be totally unapproachable, and through LinkedIn you can strike up professional relationships that might ultimately bear fruit in the form of a job, partnership or simply a valuable friendship.

What’s more, with LinkedIn’s new open application platform, you’re able to pull in different media and channels into your online CV that was previously impossible. Have an industry-related blog that highlights your grasp and knowledge of a particular subject? Pull it into your profile. Give great presentations? Display them on your profile. Tweet profusely about your industry? Pull those tweets in.

LinkedIn is quickly representing a one-stop shop for a true, priceless indication of someone’s knowledge, experience, talents, functions, activities, and sociability factor (increasingly a huge factor when employing) in an employment context.

The question is… when will LinkedIn become the primary tool of choice for job seekers and employers?

When will placement and recruitment agencies request an invite to your LinkedIn profile over your faxed or mailed paper CV? When will the big guys like Monster either attempt their own version, or simply take LinkedIn into the fold? When will the ‘Green Police’ catch on and push the use of LinkedIn over paper as a conscious effort to save the environment?

I think the change is happening, and I’m not naive enough to imagine a paper CV-less world, but I’m sure it will change the employment game if LinkedIn (and the obvious emulators, imitators and clones that will arise) becomes a viable, easy-to-access channel for employers to explore before they make their shortlist decision.

What do you think? Do you have a LinkedIn profile? Feel free to add me to your LinkedIn network. Do you think it will ever replace the paper CV, or will it always act as a supplement or second fiddle? Give your thoughts below!

SweetCron is one such platform, and is quickly becoming the first choice for many lifestreamers. Offering great functionality, maximum extensibility and high customization, it lets a lifestreamer input their feeds, tweak the code (and design) and let the software do the rest.

Did I mention it’s highly customizable? Without further a do, here are 25 of the best SweetCron-powered Lifestreams out there in no particular order. As always, if you have suggestions or think I’ve missed a great example, post a comment below!

http://me.noeruiz.com/

http://Ba21.us

http://ancyru.net/

http://cronthemes.com/

http://dailymax.limpag.com/

http://www.lifestream.papertreedesign.com/

http://colinanawaty.com/

http://simon.dynamicmushroom.com/

http://life.colorlab.nl/

http://cockscomb.info/

http://www.lushanoperera.com/

http://www.bochenn.com.ar/

http://www.ogurosouhei.com/

http://www.pitofdarkness.com/

http://sati.sh/

http://inkh.net/

http://in.jurio.us/

http://roycifer.com/

http://mikesheetal.com/

http://robertpolmear.com/blog/

http://steveeller.com/sweetcron/

http://demo.sweetcronthemes.com/plainsimple/

http://www.unravel.ca/blog/

http://www.qultr.com

Not only is he the president, he’s also a client!

http://www.yongfook.com/

…and coming in at #26

…yours truly.

http://lifestream.carbongraffiti.com

View the full post at: http://freelancefolder.com/35-social-media-tools-make-life-easier/ or keep reading for the quick n’ dirty version.

Social Aggregators

• EventBox EventBox is a mac-only program that integrates the top 5-6 social networks into a single program. From the looks of the site, it’s pretty too.
• http://www.flock.com Flock is a full-blown web browser that has been designed around social media. It integrates with dozens of services and helps make it easier for you to stay connected.
• FriendFeed FriendFeed help’s combine all of your different social networks into a single feed. Make yourself easier to follow, or make it easier to follow others.
• Yumeo Yumeo is a social network that allows you to control many other social sites in one place.
• Ping.fm Ping.fm makes it easier to update your social networks by connecting the most popular networks into one service.
• Second Brain Organize all of your content in one place, including bookmarks, files, etc…
• Plaxo Plaxo is a service designed to make it easier to stay in touch with people you care about.

Twitter Tools

• TweetDeck TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that helps organize and make sense of your twitters. You can group tweets based on search terms, time frame, and many other ways.
• Twhirl Twhirl is another desktop Twitter client. It adds the ability to cross-post tweets to other sites, post images to TwitPic, and search tweets (among other things).
• TweetBeep TweetBeep is like Google Alerts only made for Twitter.
• TwitBin TwitBin is a small Firefox Extension that allows you to receive and send tweets anywhere in your browser.
• Twidget Twidget is an OS X dashboard widget that let’s you keep up with your twitter account.
• TwitterBerry TwitterBerry is a mobile twitter client for Blackberry users. It works over the data network with no need for SMS.
• Twittelator Pro Twitelator is a newer iPhone app for twitter. This one has been recommended by several top users.
• TwitThis TwitThis is a social button to put on your website that helps promote your articles on twitter.
• Minggl.com A browser plugin that integrates friends and feeds from Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

Digg Tools

• Digg Toolbar A quick an easy toolbar that integrates with Firefox and provides most of the common Digg functions.
• Website Cache View Shows multiple cached versions of any website in case of the “Digg effect”.
• Digg Alerts It’s like Google Alerts for Digg.
• Digg Notify Digg Notify is a desktop app that will display a little notification box with information every time someone Digg’s one of your stories.
• Digg Alerter Digg Alerter is a really cool desktop app that shows you a lot of Digg info. One version of this actually shows information about who’s ‘buried’ a story.
• Digg Defender This is a Wordpress plugin that will save your site from going down under massive traffic by redirecting it through the Coral Cache network.

Tools For Webmasters

• Digg Website Widget Put a list of your latest Digg submissions into the sidebar of your website.
• Wordpress Twitter Tools This is a Wordpress plugin that let’s you pull your tweets into your blog.
• StumbleUpon Website Buttons These StumbleUpon buttons make it very easy for visitors to stumble your articles.
• Delicious Tagometer The tagometer is an advanced Delicious button that shows how many users have tagged a post and with what categories.
• TwitterFeed TwitterFeed takes your latest post titles and posts them to your twitter account.

Miscellaneous Tools

• Spokeo Search Social media search that makes it easy to find information from 41 different networks.
• Jott.com Voice-to-text, task organization, and much more. Post to twitter and many other services by calling in from your phone.
• Gathera Gathera is an internet explorer plugin that aims to connect social media, email, messaging, and many more features into a single place.
• Nielsen BuzzMetrics Search the blogosphere and track/find trends.
• Infegy Social Radar (Commercial) Social Media Monitoring tool that helps track the web.
• Open ID Open ID is a single sign-on solution that is supported by many of the most popular web-apps and networking sites.

Got any more? Comment below, or comment on the original author’s post at: http://freelancefolder.com/35-social-media-tools-make-life-easier/.

The award night was great, you can see my pics on Flickr, or my videos on YouTube of the actual awards ceremony. Kudos to Plugin Media for their great application of glowsticks, and my congratulations to the eventual Farm Freelancer of the Year award winner, Bevan Stephens. See Bevan’s winning site here.

Ecstatic is an understatement!

I’ve just been confirmed as a shortlisted candidate for the Digital Media Awards: South ‘Freelancer of the year award‘, with the actual award ceremony (and judging) to take place here in Brighton on November 27th.

The Farm Freelancer Award is sponsored by FreelanceAdvisor.co.uk, an online resource for freelancers. It offers every hint and tip to help you thrive not just survive, including podcast interviews with professionals from all industries who have been there and done it.

The award will be judged by members of the Farm, the Brighton-based networking group for web designers, developers and people with related new media skills. They will be looking for examples of innovation, technical and creative skills, business success and the ability to establish successful client relationships and keep to brief.

The event itself is organised by the lovely people at Wired Sussex, and very ably supported by the hard work, resources and brains of the good folks at Midnight Communications and Sussex Community Internet Project (SCIP).

The DiMAS came about through the work of SCIP and Wired Sussex delivering the legendary Brighton and Hove Web Awards down the years. We recognised that the digital cluster in the south (and especially in Brighton) had become much more than the web agencies alone and we wanted to reflect that in these awards whilst maintaining that uniquely Brighton spirit which always made the Web Awards such an entertaining evening.

Please, wish me luck!

It was only a matter of time that email marketing and social media would collide (I’ve been racking my brains for the last few months trying to find a way to marry the two) and kudos to Silverpop for bringing their version to market first.

Disclaimer: I’m no tech journalist or product reviewer, but I think this is big, great news - hence my quick breakdown of what their offering is and what, in my opinion, it means to email marketers. If you have an opinion or thought, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

A quick analysis

Called ‘share-to-social‘, Silverpop’s offering allows email marketers to include an ‘Addthis’-style button to any outgoing email campaign sent using their platform.  The addition of the button allows recipients to share their personalized email message with friends on the social network of their choice (although from what I can see, Facebook and MySpace *update: and Digg* are the only supported networks so far).

Once posted, any dynamic content in the original recipient’s email is kept intact after posting to a social page.  An example (as per Silverpop) is that a geographically-segmented, personalized email announcing a Golf sale in Tucson would retain its dynamic attributes once posted to a social networking site.  The same applies for a recipient of the same email in San Diego, whose content was targeted to them via email segmentation.  Once they post the email content to their own social networking page, others will be able to see the sale details and attend the sale in San Diego.   While from a marketer’s standpoint this functionality almost writes its own copy, it seems to assume that most ‘friends’ in a social network are local.  As anyone who uses Facebook (or MySpace) will attest, most friends are far from local, effectively nullifying this functionality. However, it’s better to have it than not have it.

Regarding tracking, it seems Silverpop have really nailed it here. All posted campaigns contain a unique tracking code, allowing the original sender to not only report on which social network their message was posted on and how many clicks that network generated for future use, but also which recipients were responsible for future viral activity.  This advanced tracking allows the email marketer to segment future lists and target content specific to the most (or least) active social networkers as they see fit.  Furthermore, this same unique URL can be used to track conversions originating from those social sites, allowing the marketer to gauge which networks drove the most interest, interaction and conversion. As Silverpop put it:

One of the most powerful benefits of Silverpop’s Share-to-Social feature is its ability to pinpoint which recipients share your message on their social network and cause it to go viral. You’ll be able to quickly build list segments targeting recipients who post your message or who generate the most opens or clicks from their shared items. For the first time, you’ll be able to understand which recipients are your most influential and ardent evangelists. With a few clicks, you’ll be able to target those individuals with specific offers and content that rewards them for their efforts or encourages them to share new content.

What does this mean for email marketers?

Silverpop have addressed something that needed attention – as I said it was always coming, it was just a question of who did it first.

Social networks are on the rise.  As I’ve stated in a previous article, just visit this page by Ignite Social Media and scroll down quickly.  The overall prominence of left-to-right climbing is clear. They’re here to stay; humans are innately gregarious and socializing is in our blood.

What’s more, email marketing and social networks have always had a steady relationship. Email is not only the vehicle of choice for all communication between a social network and a new member, it also facilitates intra-network messaging and retention.  While these methods aren’t always email marketing per se, they reflect the importance of email as a tool that compliments social networks and media.  Effectively, Silverpop’s new offering inverses that relationship, making email the primary tool to engage and leverage the power of social networks.

It might be too early to tell, but it looks like Silverpop have hit a goldmine here.  I’d assume they’ll start to roll out more social sites as their technology permits, and would be more than happy if they considered productizing this functionality as a standalone offering, complete with en suite reporting.  They’d stand to make a whole lot more than restricting it for use on their platform alone, but we’ll see! If you know of anyone who has used it, or have creative related to it, post it here!