Our fearless protagonist: Diego Manchego!

Howdy, all.

This post is a bit of a departure from the usual content here.  This time around, the topic isn’t social media, digital media, management, or messaging.  It is tangentially related to social and digital media.

I’m writing a book.

But not a book on social media, content, management, SEO, or any of those topics (maybe some other time).  I’m actually writing a kids book.  I’ve had an idea kicking around for some time now, and I finally said “I’m going to do this!”  But I needed an illustrator.  And not just any illustrator.  A good one.  So, I found one: Michelle Poirier (Michelle is on Twitter, too).

Why is this book project gracing the pages of Subjectively Speaking?  Because the entire way we’re approaching the launch of the book is rooted in digital and social media.  I’m espousing all of the things I read about, experience, agree and disagree with, and teach others where I work.  I bought domains. I installed WordPress.  I shopped around for free or low-cost themes.  I’m mapping out chunks of content for the blog.  Michelle and I are putting the final touches on the first draft.  And we’re launching digitally.

Some people have asked me why we’re doing that, and we plan on covering that in one of our first posts.  It’s not some grandiose secret, but it will be a chunk of content we share there, so sit tight for that.

If you have a kid/kids, or are an aunt/uncle, or interact with kids nowadays at all, please stop by the site, give it a read through, and consider joining the mailing list.  And if you don’t have kids, consider signing up anyway.  You can essentially follow along the digital chronicles of a book launch and the associated blog, Twitter, and Facebook activities that go along with it.

Thanks for reading.

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Practicing What I Preach-Lessons in Digital and Social Media Marketing is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

A colleague of mine asked recently if I could help pull together a short presentation (see below) on getting some social media 101 content together for a partner in our ecosystem.  This kind of exercise is harder than it looks.  As with most industries (social and digital media marketing is no different), there is so much that can go into a “if you do anything, make sure you do this” presentation that it’s a challenge to pick the right content to yield a useful, short, and readable presentation.

Add to that the need for some real take-away actions – not just fluff.  So, I sat down and said, “If I needed to give just some high-level basics on social and digital media for a partner in our ecosystem” [and this can be for any partner in any ecosystem] “what would I suggest they do?”

I took the slides I prepared for my colleague and sanitized them a bit for general consumption.  Please note in advance that this is high-level, “101” kind of content.  Just about every item will need to be explored on its own to determine if it’s useful or applicable or just generally to make more sense.  This is by design: I can’t readily fit every bit of knowledge on every point into these slides.  So, note that if anything here is new to you, it will take a bit of Googling (or similar) to get smarter.

I tried to give examples where I could smartly do so (via links out to other content), as well as some additional content at the end of the deck.  I hope you find this useful, for either you or someone else you know.  Like always, please sound off in the comments section with any questions, tips, suggestions for a v2, or anything else.

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Social Media 101-Getting Started is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

Have you heard something like this before?

What are other B2C companies doing?

Or

What are other publicly traded, B2C companies, focusing on apparel doing?

Or

What are other publicly traded, B2C companies, focusing on women’s apparel, with $500k to $1b in revenue doing?

Or

We’re a start-up; we can’t do something like that big company.

Or

You have a degree and might be smart, but you’ve never run your own company.

It’s nice to benchmark yourself against others, in terms of performance.  But if you benchmark yourself against others for everything, including new ideas, things you might want to try, whether to get into something new (or avoid it) – you’re intentionally ignoring other viable opportunities and suggestions.  This isn’t to say that you should take all advice you get – but stop limiting yourself.

If you’re a decision-maker, chances are that your company (or you, yourself) believe that you have the capacity to take in multiple data points, ruminate on them, and produce a researched and cogent viewpoint.  If not, then the issue is much deeper than the lack of available data.

(This post was inspired by two readings I come back to on a few occasions – Seth Godin’s piece, called Walking Away From Real ; and Chris Brogan’s piece here, which has a quote: “No one ever won a race looking sideways.”)

image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spinkitty/2405857167/

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The Problem With Analogies is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

I railed against my car dealer for sending me some shoddy messaging earlier.  Just the other day, I got this message:

This. Is. Awesome.

This is customer service.  This is caring about your base.  This is saying, “Hey, thanks for spending your money with us instead of someone else.  We like that.  Here’s a way to say thanks.”

You know what?  I’d even pay full freight for these tickets, but would be excited for the sheer ‘exclusivity’ of the event.

I’m not looking for a year’s worth of handouts.  But I know that dealerships make huge margins on service. And they are probably one of the most reviled organizations on the planet.  So whenever they can engender good will (in a non-cheesy way), it’s probably a good thing.

Well-played, Alan’s-local-car-dealer.  Well-played.

Email Messaging From A Car Dealer – Take 2 is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

On Thursday, April 26, I co-moderated (along with Craig Bloem) a panel for a MassTLC Sales and Marketing half-day summit on Marketing Analytics.  The topic of our session was more focused on social media analytics.  For 45 minutes, we had about 50 or so people in the room ask questions, share experiences, and generally learn from one another about social media analytics.  The questions and skill levels and involvement were wide-ranging, which made it a really fun conversation.  I took a few notes on an easel pad (despite having horrific handwriting).  Below is an expansion of those notes, as a way to summarize the key points of the conversation.

Balance of inbound vs. outbound activities – One participant asked if he should dump all traditional (‘outbound’) marketing and go all inbound.  I suggested that it be a mix of both, at least in the beginning.  If inbound fails (perhaps because one is new to the game), then you’ve got nothing on which to fall back.  This is akin to financial advisors suggesting diversification.  Secondly, one should conduct a listening exercise to determine how much of (or if) their audience is online.

Listening and monitoring as a first ‘way in’ with social media with some companies – Sometimes getting executive or even peer-level buy-in is a challenge.  Showing that the conversations are indeed happening online is a good first step in this process, and listening helps.  Additionally, conducting a short listening exercise around one’s competitors is also a good idea.  This could uncover some potential product/service improvements, as well as help inform a content strategy.

Tools mentioned – Radian 6, Sysomos, Google Analytics, Chartbeat, Sharedcount, Topsy, searchhash, SocialMention

Internal subject matter experts – One of the frustrations with content creation is an apparent lack of content creators.  In many technical organizations, engineers and others involved in a product lifecycle often know an immense amount of information.  These are people that can be leveraged as content producers.  If they are shy or otherwise not particularly good writers, consider having someone with stronger writing skills interview these people, and create content from that.

Bottom up or top down – An audience member quick-polled the room with respect to the impetus for a social media movement in their organizations.  The crowd was mixed.  In my mind, a bottom-up approach works well, because the people who need to product the content are the ones behind the initiative.  Yet the initiative needs to be championed or at least supported from the top down.  Having only one or the other is likely a recipe for failure.

Know your audience – Several questions arose about what kind of content works on which channels, and the like.  My response is ‘know your audience’.  If you’re marketing to teenagers for fast fashion, LinkedIn is probably not a good strategy.  Similarly, if you are shopping around for funeral home preparations, Facebook might not be a first choice.  In these hyperbolic examples, it sounds obvious.  But in the real world, it might not be so apparent.  How can you tell?  Conduct a listening exercise across multiple networks and see where your audience is spending their time.  Look to your Google Analytics (or similar) web logs, and see what people are searching on to arrive at your site, and from what referring sources of traffic.  Moreover, understand what they are saying and what kind/s of media they are using.

What’s your point? – A few questions were asked about which network should be used, whether or not to gate an asset, and things of that nature.  A great way to determine this (and one audience member indicated that she and her company does this) is to determine some objectives: what are you trying to do?  If it’s to increase awareness, then form-gating content and not optimizing for SEO is probably bad.  If it’s lead-generation, then perhaps some content is free, while other content is gated to collect information.  If it’s a real-time thing you’re going after, then Twitter is a good strategy, and long-form content might want to be avoided.  Match the medium to the message .

Use content to create community – Someone asked how to scale up a community on something quickly.  First and foremost, a company or an individual needs to have a good product.  If not, then no amount of marketing can fix that.  As in, the product needs to be remarkable (see item #2 here). Then, use content and all its forms to find people in these social outposts (Twitter, Facebook, and even other places like Yelp and things on Amazon) as a way to connect with them.  Bonus points if you can generally corral them into one area.

Is there value in Google+ ?   – Some people are toying around with Google+ and seeing some limited benefits.  It’s still early days.  One comment was that if one uses Google as a search engine, and one has the Search Plus Your World feature enabled, then Google +1s from your circles and connections now influence search results.  The effect of this cannot be underestimated.

What metrics are people examining? – There are some classic web 1.0 metrics, like visits and clicks.  And those aren’t necessarily bad (go back to your objectives and ask again what it is you are trying to do; clicks and visits may be just perfect).  Some other metrics to consider are reach, engagement, sentiment, source/referral, linking to revenue, time spent on site, and click depth.

How do you attribute media/touch points to revenue? – This is, perhaps, the $64,000,000.00 question.  I think many people are asking this, and there are some ways of doing this, and I think just about all of them are terrible.  Last-touch attribution, equal touch apportion among media types, and the like all are prone to error.  In my mind, the best way (though probably the most expensive) is post-purchase survey of customers, with a large enough and random enough sample size.

This was a good session, and I’m thankful to MassTLC for giving me the opportunity to participate.  If you attended the session, did I miss anything?  Or do you have a comment on anything above?

image source: http://instagr.am/p/J4gq_5vuEF/ , via @AstonishResults

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A MassTLC Topical Discussion on Social Media Analytics is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

Using Social and Digital Media to Find a New Career is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

The WordStream 150: The World’s Best Internet Marketing Software 2012

A Snapshot of Internet Marketing Software in 2012 is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

You’d think in 2012 that some definitions and common agreements to a few things would have been settled and in place…

No wonder people say social media is confusing.  Ask nine experts and you’ll get ten opinions.

image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/4261987342/

If you like what you’re reading here, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or signing up via e-mail (upper right corner) to be alerted when more new posts are added.

The Social Media Two-Face is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.