JournaMarketing

Using content to find customers

2009-04-30T10:39:01-05:00

Copyblogger has a good post today about using content to find customers. Bottom line: don't think you can just write a blog and have customers flock to your website. You need to do some marketing along with the content. A couple of highlights...

"Contrary to popular belief, you do want marketing messages in your birthday cake content. But they have to be palatable, subtle messages."
"...create an audience of buyers, not just fans. You begin to call on your copywriting bag of tricks, adding more persuasive elements to your writing."

The point here is that your content is about establishing trust, demonstrating authority, and helping the people you most want to engage. But at some point, you have to let people know that you have something to sell them. If you've done your job right on the content side, some of them will be eager to buy it.

NAMA social networking session

2009-04-19T13:08:13-05:00

It's safe to say there are lots of smart marketers in the ag industry who are trying to figure out how social networking fits into their plans. The big turnout and great questions at our NAMA session prove that. I had a great time being on the panel with Dave Coustan and Kyle Flaherty (and with moderator Chuck Zimmerman) -- and I especially enjoyed the interaction with people who weren't even in the room, but were participating via Twitter. I promised a detailed recap, but this won't be a comprehensive summary. Feel free to add a comment if there's another issue you want to mention. (AgNewsCenter also posted a summary of the Tweets during the session.)

As I said in my opening summary, social media is about figuring out what information people want to receive from you, and how they want to receive it. And only after you answer those questions can you determine how using those tools can improve your business. Here are a few of the highlights as we addressed those issues:

Measurement & ROI
Among the 30 respondents who returned a pre-session survey, the overwhelming concern was tracking results and measuring ROI. All four of us agree that the first step is to measure the right thing. Don't go into a campaign expecting huge numbers, when you really want to reach 200 people (dealers, or industry influencers, or some other relatively small group).

From my perspective, the value of social networking is in building relationships, and you don't necessarily need a deep relationship with 1,000,000 people. Use social networks like Twitter or Facebook to engage people with interesting information and conversation. And when those deeper relationships have formed, some of the people you've engaged will become evangelists for you, telling others about what you're up to, because you're providing something valuable.

Having said all that, measurement is really not a problem with most of these tools. As long as you know what you're measuring, it's very simple to track who's reading your content, who's engaged enough to pass it around to others, who's leaving feedback in the form of comments, etc. And Facebook, especially, has added more tools to help you do that in recent months.

I used a quick example to show how social media helps you reach the right people (even if it's a small group). I work with a state health department to help them promote a statewide fluoride program for kids. They have just 5 employees to cover the entire state, enlisting and training community volunteers to run events. We put together a Web program using social media tools, and made it an extension of the program itself. Because they're using social media to communicate more efficiently with a very targeted group of people, they've saved time and money on travel, and grown from 8,000 to 25,000 kids in the program in less than 2 years.

How do I convince a conservative, regulated company to take the plunge?
A couple of things here. First, many of the social networks do have tools built into them that allow you to control how public your content is. Look into them -- and if you have questions about that, email me and I'll track down an answer.

Second, it's important that you not try to "sell the tools." Don't go to management and tell them your company "needs a blog," or "needs to be on Twitter," or "needs to have a podcast." Instead, point out that your customers are increasingly hungry for valuable information about your industry -- and that companies who provide that information are seeing their businesses grow.

Instead of using the word "blog," use the word "website." A blog is a website, after all -- but "website" doesn't carry the same baggage. If you see value in using Twitter as a tool to communicate industry headlines to an important audience, sell the concept, and leave Twitter out of it. You can use Twitter's RSS feeds to move informaiton without anyone ever seeing the Twitter logo, if that's what you want to do.

How do I keep up with all these social networks?
This is a big one. I can barely keep track of passwords, let alone follow everything. We had three suggestions for following what's going on -- whether it's your own content, or what people are saying about your company. Kyle suggests using Google Reader to pull in the RSS feeds from various places (your blog, your Twitter feed, a blog search and a Twitter search for keywords involving your industry, etc.) Almost every source of information in the social network space includes an RSS feed now, and it's easy to import those feeds into Google reader and scan them every morning.

I suggested using Friendfeed for the same purpose. And Dave C. pointed out that Radian 6 has some good tools for helping you track what people are saying about you or your brand.

Are farmers using social networking?
Someone questioned whether farmers are actually using social networks. The consensus of the panelist is "yes." I thought Chuck summed it up best when he pointed out that farmers are not that different from other groups of people. The broadband gap is closing quickly, allowing farmers and others in rural areas to be online.

One of us also pointed out that Facebook has 200-million users now. If it were a country, it would be the 6th-most populous country in the world. That's a lot of people, and it's not just techies or college kids. A couple of stats from memory show that this is not just about young people:

The fastest-growing Facebook demo is women in their 30s and 40s.
Twitter users are much older than you may think, averaging in their 30s and 40s.

I think it was Kyle who made another valid point here. Even if your audience isn't online in huge numbers now, there's no reason to believe that will continue. They will be online in the relatively near future. And that means you have an opportunity to be there waiting for them, with an established presence, when they arrive.

Conclusion
To sum up, social networks are about engaging people with valuable content. And that's true whether you're having a conversation with a friend, or discussing different brands of fertilizer. If you try to use a social network as just another avenue to get a commercial in front of people, you'll fail.

But if you engage them with interesting, relevant content; if you think first about who you want to engage most deeply; if you make sure every piece of content addresses one of their needs, you're on the way to integrating social media successfully.

A reminder, if you have more specifics you want to discuss, leave me a comment or email me. I though it was pretty clear we could've gone all day on this topic, and not run out of stuff to talk about. And finally, thanks for your participation! I enjoyed meeting a lot of you at NAMA, and I'm looking forward to continuing our conversation about social media and agriculture.

Content marketing essentials

2009-04-18T07:29:10-05:00

Sonia Simone at Copyblogger writes about how providing good content to people can improve your business, and she's come up with three essentials of breakthrough content marketing. In summary:

Make sure everything you give your audience solves one of their problems or entertains them.
Present your content in a way that's personable and show's your trustworthy.
Don't try to sell, sell, sell all the time.

Sonia goes into more detail on her post, and it's worth a read.

Social Media & Agriculture

2009-04-17T22:06:46-05:00

I just got back from Atlanta, where I was part of a panel on social media and agricultural marketing, at the annual NAMA conference. It turned into a great live example of the power of online networking, using Twitter to involve people both inside and outside the room.

But we talked about lots more than Twitter, and I'll be recapping some of those things here over the next day or two. A few points of preview:

Ag marketers, like all marketers, are looking for better measurement. And the good news is that measurement is built into a lot of social media tools.
ROI is the #1 concern -- and there's positive news on that front, too. I want to cover that in more depth in my recap.
And moderator Chuck Zimmerman, along with fellow panelists Dave Coustan, and Kyle Flaherty are really smart guys who know a lot about social networking and how it fits into an overall marketing plan. They contributed good answers to questions from the audience in the room and on Twitter, and I'll be highlighting some of those answers, too.

In the meantime, check out this Twitter search result for some of the things we discussed during the session, along with some responses from me and the others.

Establish authority by aggregating news

2009-03-13T12:25:42-05:00

Services like Friendfeed make it easy to pull together information from a lot of different sources. So if you're looking for a way to become an authority in your field, find the 5-10 top sources in that field, and pull their feeds into one location -- on your own website. You'll earn the goodwill of those other sources by linking to their content. And you'll gradually become the 1-stop shop for anyone looking for information in your field. The widget above is an aggregation of news from Missouri sources, including the Twitter feeds of some individual reporters who are covering the legislature. In an hour, you can create exactly the same thing for yourself, whether you write about child advocacy, health care, or sports.

Missouri agriculture & new media

2009-03-11T10:44:48-05:00

I love pointing out success stories in new media, and the Missouri Department of Agriculture is a great example of a government agency that understands the power of online communication, and capitalizes on it. And it's because of the work of just a few people, who've taken it upon themselves to make lots of engaging content available to people online. (Disclaimer: I consult with the department on some of these projects.)

AgriMissouri Showcase: This is a blog and a podcast series that highlights Missouri-grown products, from fresh vegetables to barbecue sauces. Sarah Gehring does a great job of keeping the blog up-to-date with news about events, photos from the road, and even a weekly recipe using Missouri foods. My company helps out by producing audio and video shows about interesting Missouri products. It's a great example of providing consumers with interesting cotent in a way that goes beyond a brochure-style website.

Missouri Farmers Market Blog: Lane McConnell travels the state visiting farmers markets to give them advice on marketing themselves. Ninety-nine percent of the people in her job would be content with occasional email blasts to the directors of the farmers markets. But not Lane. She keeps up with her very active blog, and she even has a pretty cool photo stream to highlight the kinds of things you can find at a Missouri farmers market. We're going to be adding videos to this site, starting soon. (If you want some great down-home recipes, check out Lane's personal blog: Home Cooking is What I Like.)

Missouri Wine Girl: Danene Beedle is a wine lover who just happens to have a job promoting Missouri wine. But her blog is a great example of where profession meets passion. It's not a commercial for Missouri wineries -- except in the sense that you can tell she loves what she's doing, and reading her blog makes you want to experience some of those wineries for yourself.

Every one of these projects are miles ahead of what we would normally expect from a state government agency. But the passion of Sarah, Lane and Danene have led them to create lots of interesting content that benefits consumers. They have the makings of an entire "Missouri Agriculture Channel" online, and they're showing no signs of letting up.

Online Communications Seminar - Oral Health Programs

2009-02-19T09:39:47-06:00

This week, I held the first in a series of online communications seminars I have planned for this year. This one was focused on state oral health programs. It was based on a program called MO Healthy Smiles, which we've implemented with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. We talked about how the program has helped them increase the number of participating children from 8,000 to 25,000 in less than two years. And they did it with "content marketing"--offering up compelling video, audio and text to help them communicate more effectively with the people they most need to reach.

How to make your multimedia stand out on the Web

2009-01-13T11:00:41-06:00

If you're into multimedia, that's great. But lots of interesting text should accompany everything you do -- even audio and video. Steve Rubel makes a compelling case that text -- not video -- is still king of the Web. Why? Here are some highlights:

It's scannable - according to Jakob Nielsen users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average site visit and 20% is more likely

Three letters: SEO - For all that Google Universal Search has done to elevate video, search results are still largely made up of text and everyone wants better SEO
Distribution - Nothing flies like text. It's so easy to cut and
paste it and send it somewhere or to clip and re-syndicate it via
email, RSS or social networks

I think he's right, and my experience with blogs and podcasts bears that out. I think multimedia is still very important. It's easy and inexpensive to do, and it adds a lot of information you can't convey very well with text. But all your multimedia content should be accompanied by text. It makes it more findable, more sharable, and more scannable. And those are three important factors in making yourself and your organization more influential.

Why your word-of-mouth marketing plan may be doomed to fail

2009-01-13T10:45:09-06:00

If you think of "word-of-mouth marketing" as a way to get people to tell your story to others, you're doomed to fail. Copyblogger's Brian Clark has a great explanation for why that's true. He points out that people really aren't that into telling stories your story.

People tell stories about themselves. They even buy things in order to say something about themselves.

They don’t give a hoot about your story unless it furthers their own
personal narrative. If it does, your story comes along for the ride.

And this is why providing good, interesting content is so vital to your communications effort. People are willing to talk about the product or service you provide, only insofar as your product or service makes them look good, or makes their lives better. If you can help people become better-informed, or more enthusiastic, you're encouraging word-of-mouth marketing in a way that's far more valuable than if you simply "tell your story" to them.

Fancy writing isn't good writing

2009-01-08T10:25:06-06:00

Sonia Simone at Copyblogger has good advice. Don't be fancy. Write simply.