Another nice piece of work from the Flowtown crew. Though I wonder what this will look like by the end of 2011 – not the beginning. Who will drop out? Who will hook up with whom. And just who will be judged “most likely to succeed” in this fast-shifting space?
Month: February 2011
The Social Marketer – Feeling the Social Media Love
There is one big difference between what I would consider “traditional marketing” and “social media marketing”. It’s love. Or perhaps more precisely, it’s passion. Mixed in with a bit of love. And as there are a bunch of posts on the love theme this Valentines Day week, I thought I’d climb aboard the love bus.
Now, if you are a brand marketer, you might love what you are doing, and love what you are creating through your brand, but that’s not the sort of love I am talking about. When you pour your professional creativity into a new product or service and stake your professional reputation on its success, your interest in the brand/offering you are building can consume you. And while this takes a huge personal commitment from you, there is no one else who will love what you are doing quite like you do. I know, and I’ve been there.
And even if you are tweeting from the dark side of the focus group mirror, or blogging on the behind-the-scenes tour, this is not being a “social marketer”. It’s sharing your passion. Sharing your love. Sharing your work. But ultimately, it’s sharing your brand. It is good brand marketing practice.
The social marketer, however, starts from a different place. As Michael Brenner suggests, it’s about feeling the love.
For the social marketer:
- The brand is a means to an end. The brand exists, the people exist – we don’t need messaging, but a tune to dance to.
- Marketing is about bringing the brand to the people, not bringing the people to the brand
- The glare of the logo is a distraction and a barrier to forming relationships. What we need is a name and a face, not a 12pt white space exclusion
Sure, the social marketer cares about (and is probably even MEASURED on) brand awareness, recall and yes – sales. But they are by-products of the main game.
The social marketer is in the process of transforming the way that we all do business. You probably have one in the ranks of your company. There may be more. How do you find them? How do you join them?
I call it “The Social Way”.
There’s more to come.
Where Are You on the Trust Barometer?
Whenever the social media conversation shifts to “influence” – who has it, how you can get it and what it’s worth, you know we’re talking trust. After all, what we perceive as “influence” is simply a combination of trust and relevance – a heady mix of the right audience, a trusted shepherd and a call to action.
Don’t believe me?
Nicholas Christakis has an interesting post on the power of twitter and its ability to influence a large following. As he explains, Alyssa Milano with her celebrity and her 1.3 million strong Twitter following would normally be considered “influential”. But when she tweeted out a link to the Amazon page of a book called Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks & How They Shape Our Lives, the roar of social media silence was deafening. There was not ONE clickthrough. Not one sale.
It seems – finally – that we are seeing the reality of trust and the power of relevance. That’s why I am particularly interested in this report from Edelman Australia – the 2011 Australian Edelman Trust Barometer.
Launched today (see the Tweetstream), this is the third survey to be carried out in Australia, but we are already seeing some interesting trending:
- Coming out of the GFC, we saw an upswing in trust in government (54%) and businesses (52%)
- Trust in NGOs (65%) is the highest of any Australian institution, with the Media well down at 32%
The full report is embedded below and can be downloaded from Slideshare. It makes for interesting reading.
But what does this mean for brands and marketers?
As one of the launch panellists, Vanessa Hall, pointed out, trust is created through the interplay of the message or story the brand wants to tell, the expectations of your customers/stakeholders and the promise that exists between the two (my interpretation here). This is where the challenge comes – after all, our customers are rarely interested in the brand story, and their interpretation of your brand promise is often different from where you (on the client or agency side) tend to see it.
And with social media, individuals are now well equipped to engage with brands in a public (and searchable) sphere. Positive and negative brand experiences can be published, shared and amplified around the world in minutes – and this makes “trust” all the more important. As the report points out, “Trust is a protective agent …”. And yes, it can lead to tangible sales.
But, we need to consider the following trends:
- Aligning our business purpose with a greater good (CSR is a good start)
- Strong support for NGOs (consider partnering with an NGO to build your trust profile)
- Multiple voices in multiple channels (while CEOs have increased level of trust and respect, use expert voices across your business and in multiple channels to build a network of influence)
Perhaps, most importantly, you need to think about all this in relation to YOUR business. Where do you sit on the trust barometer? And how are you going to improve?
Getting to Know robots.txt
We all love visitors to our websites. We love the recognition, the sense of connectedness and the thrill of fame on whatever scale we happen to achieve. There is also a fascination with the numbers, pure numbers – where visitors came from, how they found our sites and what they are interested in. All this is good. The tingle of recognition ignites our passions and makes us want to improve. To make our sites better for our visitors, our customers and yes, even our communities.
But how do people find your site? How can you make sure that Google, Yahoo and all those other search engines are indexing your site in the right way? For example, you might want only Google to index your site. Or you might want to index everything except your photo gallery.
OR better yet … you might want to STOP search engines from indexing your site while you are still tweaking it prior to launch.
If you are using WordPress, you will be able to setup WordPress so that it hides your site from search engines with the click of a button.
But the rest of us have to rely on the Robots Exclusion Protocol.
Why use robots.txt?
Because the vast majority of us find websites via search, the careful management of robots.txt can have two particular impacts for marketers:
- Messaging – you can ensure that the bots index the pages that you want and specify the descriptions and information that tell your story – even before your customers get to your site.
- Customer experience – craft and refine the experience of your site by focusing on the experience of discovering your site and engaging your customer’s imagination early.
Of course, you may just want to funnel traffic from particular engines, or exclude indexing altogether.
What is robots.txt?
As the name suggests, robots.txt is a text file designed for automated web robots. It is one of the first files that a web bot scans on your website amd it tells the bot what to scan and what not to. Of course, if the person who wrote/designed the bot chooses to ignore robots.txt, then there is not much you can do about it (beyond putting a password on your site).
Where do you put robots.txt?
It’s very simple. Put your robots.txt file in the top level directory of your website – the same place as your home page.
What’s in robots.txt?
On the first line of robots.txt, you specify which bot you are targeting. Using * indicates that robots.txt applies to ALL bots.
On each subsequent line, you specify the “rules” for indexing your site. For example, you may want to disallow your personal photo gallery and the directory that runs your website programming scripts (cgi-bin). If so, your robots.txt file would look something like this:
User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /photos/
Blocking all search bots in robots.txt
User-agent: * Disallow: /
Allowing only ONE search bot in robots.txt
User-agent: Google Disallow: User-agent: * Disallow: /
Learning more about robots.txt
There are a few other tips and tricks that you can use to direct search bots to optimise your messaging and your customer’s experience. Check out the robotstxt.org website for more details.
This is part of my Digital 101 series – designed to explain the technical aspects of the digital landscape in a way that helps marketers do their job better.
Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week
It was Super Bowl week last week, so there was ad world overload. But if you looked beyond the replays of TV commercials, there were some seriously good blog posts published last week. These five caught my eye – but I am sure there were others.
Did you see them? What did you like? Let me know!
- An interview with Shiv Singh – How Pepsi’s crowdsourced ads beat the Super Bowl beer spots makes for interesting reading
- We’re all in the business of producing content – but how much should you charge? Chris Brogan has a great post on Pricing Digital Content.
- It’s nice to be customer centric right, but Tara Hunt takes it a step further. She claims that The Customer is the Center. Think I agree.
- BBH Labs consistently publish quality, thought provoking articles. This one is great – Five Things Agencies Can Learn from Music Labels
- It’s been a long time between drinks, but Sean Howard is back blogging again – and asks do we always have to create something new?
LinkedIn Takes Personalization to a New Level
Apparently almost 300 of my LinkedIn connections changed jobs in 2010. That’s about 40% of the people that I know on a professional level. Astounding! And while that does sound like a lot, it’s fairly standard in the marketing /advertising industry. In fact, without LinkedIn, I wonder how I’d keep up with you all!
But I am less interested in the fact that you all changed jobs and more interested in the way in which LinkedIn is changing. They really are becoming a social force to be reckoned with. The email (which you probably received as well) is a brilliant piece of personalisation – bringing LinkedIn’s database to bear on my personal network thereby making this email communication laser-focused in its relevance – but it also signals a serious shift.
LinkedIn is demonstrating very precisely the power that social networks have at their command. They are showing how this network of knowledge and connectivity can be deployed in pursuit of a business purpose. And they are showing how relevance, and yes, even trust, within that network can prompt engagement and action.
Interesting?
If LinkedIn is not marked out as part of your digital engagement footprint, you may want to reconsider your approach. Pick it up for Round 2 of your continuous digital strategy.
The Words of a Visionary: Marshall McLuhan Speaks
Much of what we are living – in terms of digital technologies, connected social networks, information saturation and knowledge search was imagined by theorist Marshall McLuhan. His books like Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and 
This year is the centenary of his birth and in his honour, the site Marshall McLuhan Speaks has been setup to share a collection of clips. It’s a great way to watch, hear and learn about McLuhan’s ideas as spoken during lectures, interviews and speeches. While it’s unclear who is behind this great media resources, it’s believed that McLuhan’s daughter, Stephanie, is involved.
Some Events in Sydney February/March 2011
Late last year I was asked to speak on social media and innovation as part of the GE Global Leadership Education program. It was fascinating (and challenging) to be face-to-face with 50 of GE’s hand-picked future leaders – with a focus on one topic: digital strategy. But not all organisations have the ability to bring their leaders together in one room. For many of us, the closest we get are industry conferences.
Over the next month or two we’re heading into conference season here in Sydney – and there is plenty to see and do – especially for those interested in marketing, advertising and social media.
I am particularly excited to be participating in a some of these events:
- Social Media Marketing: The Way Forward – Feb 28 and Mar 1. I’m the “distinguished chair” for this two day conference. There’s a great client-side lineup including Chris Smith from NAB, Rupinder Toor from Dell, Vanessa Paech from Lonely Planet and Andrew Giles from Canon, backed up with Hannah Law from Switched On Media and Tiphereth Gloria from George Patterson Y & R on the agency side. This is an AMSRS and Communications Council accredited event. Come along!
- Circus – The Festival of Commercial Creativity – Feb 22 to Feb 25. The Communications Council is working to transform this annual event from an awards focus into a feature event for the advertising industry. They are shipping in some great keynote speakers such as Rob Campbell (W+K), Jess Greenwood (Contagious Magazine) and Josh Spear (Undercurrent). This year I am serving on the judging panel for digital AWARDs. Should be interesting!
- Vibewire Fastbreak – Feb 25. One of the best innovation and entrepreneurship events around. This month’s event asks “are we headed back to basics?” A great way to start your Friday.
- Ad:Tech Sydney – Mar 9 Mar 10. It’s a veritable feast of technology, advertising and gaming, with Brad Jakeman (Activision), Daniel Alegre (Google), Iain McDonald (Amnesia Razorfish) and Steve Patrizi (LinkedIn). I hear the two days of Ad:Tech will link in with other events to create a week of Digital Sydney Events. Sounds like fun.
But what about you? Are you attending events this year? Have you got budget/time? What’s important?
And don’t forget, you can contact me here about speaking.
Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week
How many blogs do you read each week? How many each day? How do you find them and why are they useful? Do you come back to them? Do you subscribe or add them to your favourites? How do you keep up-to-date?
All good questions. Yet while statistics indicate that blogging is growing – modestly – my feeling is that we are seeing higher quality, more thoughtful writing and keener insight. So while there’s not the massive growth that we have seen over the last five years, we' are seeing a spike in quality. That’s only a good thing.
- As we approach conference season here in Australia, you’re likely to witness some atrocious attitude, bad behaviour and schoolyard silliness. And that’s just the presenters. Jason Falls has an excellent rant – suggesting it’s time we took a walk in the hall of mirrors.
- Valeria Maltoni regularly publishes thought provoking articles (so be sure to subscribe to her blog). But last week’s How Do You Influence the Influencers is worth a second look.
- Last week, fashion brand Kenneth Cole earned the ire of the Twitter community through a poorly judged tweet. Olivier Blanchard explains what every brand should not do on Twitter.
- This post from Annik Skelton made me laugh out loud. I Went to Yogi Dancing and it was Weird is a great piece of storytelling – and may just see more people signing up.
- Craig Wilson shares the Internet 2010 in Numbers – perfect fodder for your next presentation (please see point 1 above).
Volkswagen Uses The Force
They say that you should never share the stage/screen with an animal or a child (otherwise you will be upstaged). But can you use this to your advantage? Sure. That’s what VW did with this ad for the new Passat. But will it change your Volkswagen experience?