Social media is increasingly becoming an influential force in business and on the Internet. It has had an irrevocable impact on marketing and has led to positive changes in corporate culture, including increased levels of brand transparency and accountability and, as a result, a heightened sense of corporate social responsibility. This corporate social responsibility has opened the door for a number of brands trying to change the world for the better while still turning a profit.

The social web makes it easier for these companies to spread their social messages, to generate issue awareness and to build their brands, and blogging has become a critical component to driving and delivering that social message. Blog content helps strengthen connections with people that may have originated on Facebook, Twitter or even at a retail store. A blog creates an informal “voice” that the organization can use to build trust and engage people who care for and support specific social causes. Two brands that I’ve seen doing this particularly well, are Impact Foods and Seventh Generation.

Impact Foods – This granola company has an ambitious mission, ending hunger. For each bag of granola they sell, they promise to feed a hungry child for one day. Impact’s blog strategy is narrating their mission, describing the company’s journey as they travel and deliver on their promise to help feed children. This builds trust with consumers because it shows Impact’s credibility, and demonstrates their commitment to the issue at hand.

Seventh Generation – One of the leading brands in green household and personal care products, Seventh Generation strives to make their products from plants and not petroleum, while operating as one of the most environmentally friendly companies. Over the past few years, their blog has become a resource for consumers covering everything from green household tips to advice on cleaning showers. This blogging strategy helps extend Seventh Generation’s mission to consumers, providing people with the information they need to make a difference whether or not they’ve purchased Seventh Generation products. By pushing information that advances their cause and not their product, Seventh Generation shows that the issue is just as important as the brand.

These are two unique blogging strategies, but they are both successful because they build trust and credibility with consumers. Brands that strive to change the world and impact a global issue have to first show they are trustworthy and transparent. A company blog is the perfect platform to accomplish this, while simultaneously building brand awareness and developing a following.

Have you seen other socially responsible corporate blogs that are changing the world? How does their blog strategy help advance their cause, their brand, or both?

Photo Credit: LittleMan

Everybody loves a good viral video. Whether you are watching funny cats or the Old Spice Guy duke it out with Fabio, viral videos are sure to entertain. Companies consistently try to achieve viral status with their marketing efforts, as a single viral video can provide millions of brand impressions and a level of buzz unattainable through paid media. However, creating viral videos isn’t a marketing strategy, rather it should only be a goal. This is because the power to make a video or campaign go viral lies in the tweets and shares of millions of social users and not in the hands of marketers.

One danger to considering viral marketing a strategy and not a goal is focusing more on the video than the actual campaign. By this I mean allocating more time and budget to video production, special effects, and promotion channels than to the execution of the campaign strategy. To ensure the best chance of going viral, try allocating resources in the opposite manner. From what I’ve seen, simple videos documenting complex and creative campaigns go viral more often than complex videos documenting simple campaigns. Here are two such videos, which both went viral because of the creativity of each campaign, and not each video:

Tropicana Natural Energy: In France, Tropicana created a billboard covered in oranges with the words “Energie Naturelle” (natural energy) glowing on the front in neon. The catch was that the oranges provided 100% of the energy needed to light the sign, and this received a very positive reaction from the crowd.

Heineken Soccer (Football) Heist: After creating a fake classical music and poetry concert on the day of the biggest soccer match of the year in Italy, Heineken then recruited girlfriends, professors, and bosses to ask boyfriends, students, and coworkers to attend the phony concert. On game day the concert room was packed, and at game time the heist was revealed and everyone was thrilled.

Why did these campaigns go viral?
As you can see, marketing campaigns with the best chance of going viral use emotion to spark interest. Curiosity, joy, surprise, and awe are just a few of the feelings that Heineken and Tropicana successfully created with these efforts. The second reason they were so successful is that viewers appreciated the brands’ efforts to give something to them. In the Tropicana example, this was as simple as something neat and innovative for a Paris passerby to look at, while in Heineken’s case they gave people the chance to watch one of the biggest soccer matches of the year. Online viewers will likely remember these videos the next time they see a Heineken or Tropicana product. These memorable positive brand impressions are another reason that viral marketing can be so valuable and effective.

What other marketing campaigns have you seen go viral? In your experience, do these viral instances occur more often because of the creativity of the campaign or the video? Let us know what you think!

Videos via Adverblog and Guerrilla Communications

In Part 1 of this blog post, I stated that I didn’t believe that social media is the VERY BEST way to reach customers—that social media is just one tactic for reaching customers that should be driven by an overall marketing strategy. In this post, I’ll discuss some ways to achieve balance in your marketing approach.

Achieving marketing balance, to me, is taking steps to ensure that your marketing tactics are continually driving towards your goals and strategies. And it’s sometimes harder than it sounds. It’s easy to get distracted by new opportunities that present themselves every day, the changes in the market climate, by your competitors’ actions and even by game-changing events. Keep these tips in mind to help you continue to move towards your goal and weed out distractions that can tip you in the wrong direction. While goals and strategies should be evaluated on a regular basis, they shouldn’t be short-term milestones; tactics are the short-term levers that you can pull to move your business in the right direction, but your goals and strategies should tie into your longer-term business metrics.

1. Evaluate each tactic with the same lens.
If it doesn’t move you toward your goal and/or doesn’t align with your strategy, why do you want to do it? Yes, there are opportunities that could provide you with benefit. But if the benefit redirects the resources that you have slated to move you towards your goal, is it worth it?

2. Balance what you think you know with what you can learn.
We’re often surprised by the results of our campaigns. Consumers can be an unpredictable lot, and many of our assumptions about how our customers act can be very wrong. We need to stay open to learning as much as we can about what our customers want and acknowledge that those preferences change—sometimes very quickly. For instance, one of our customers asked their consumer contacts to provide their communications preferences across email, mobile, Facebook and Twitter. To their surprise, many of their contacts preferred to connect with the brand over Facebook and provided no email contact information—completely contrary to what they expected.

3. Don’t be afraid to alter your tactics.
Some marketers believe that after mapping out the perfect strategy and the supporting campaigns and tactics, they’re done. They execute the entire plan and THEN they evaluate. In today’s market, the immediacy of information gives us the ability to make changes to our tactics as we learn, and we shouldn’t be afraid to make those changes. Being a nimble marketer enables you to incorporate what you’ve learned and correct your course for the next tasks at hand—while keeping the end in sight.

4. Turn the channels.
What does email have to do with mobile and social media? Everything. Your marketing campaigns and methods should map to the demographics of your target audiences. However, the demographics of those using specific communications channels are ever-changing, and your opportunity to reach your target market through multiple channels is better than ever. Use one channel to reach your customer through another; for instance, use email marketing to drive your audience to your social media communities—and vice-versa. You shouldn’t be swayed into thinking that email marketing is dead for a certain demographic or that mobile marketing is only for the youth-oriented market. Facebook’s demographic used to be just college students; last year, the 55+ crowd was the fastest growing demographic on the platform. You never know when the winds will shift again, and you can maximize your impact by keeping agile.

5. Make it personal.
The broader the audience you target with a single message, the greater the chance that the message will get lost. By selecting smaller, highly-targeted segments and testing focused messaging on each of those smaller segments, you have the ability to continue to test and refine your messages and determine which messages are the most successful. Defining those segments is another matter (of course, we believe that JitterJam is an exceptional tool that makes this task much easier). It can be as simple as splitting a list into sections and A/B testing amongst small test populations or as refined as selecting segments based upon how frequently your contact base has engaged in conversations about your specific brand. The more personal and relevant the message, the better chance you will have of turning the contact into a customer and that customer into an advocate.

There’s a bit of social media hype going on in the marketing world today. Many claim that social media is the very best way to reach current and potential customers. I’m not convinced. I do not believe social media is the very best way to reach customers.

I’m sure you find that statement interesting coming from a company that focuses on providing tools for multi-channel marketing with a basis in social engagement. If you look at the the world’s 6.9B people, the 400M Facebook users constitute an impressive capture rate (5.85%). But that leaves about 6.5 billion people unaccounted for—people who could be buying your product but may just not care to Tweet or share their family photos on Facebook. Social media may be one of the ways—and even the very best way—to reach some of your customers, but don’t ignore the fact that it’s not the only way to reach them.

The new frontier of social marketing DOES provide a tremendous opportunity for companies and brands to build close and trusted relationships with their customers and discover new voices on the real-time web. But it’s dangerous to approach the market with a plan that ONLY focuses on the social landscape. You need to look at social media as means to an end, and only one of the means available to you. If you can’t define the end, then you’re missing a critical step that will leave you wondering why you spent all those resources to manage your social marketing activities. That’s where marketing balance comes in.

Marketing balance is utilizing the best practice of creating an overall marketing strategy that includes the most relevant and rewarding tools and channels that are available to us today. The answer to “How should I market my product” should not be “social media.” The answer should be a combination—an artful balance—of those lovely 4 P’s (thanks Mr. Kottler) that we all loved to hate in college. Social media should be part of the implementation of your strategy, not a strategy on its own.

So what are some steps to achieving marketing balance? We’ll cover that in Part 2 of this blog post. And while you’re waiting with bated breath for the Steps to Achieving Marketing Balance that I’ll describe in Part 2, please let know your thoughts on how your marketing strategy has evolved or changed because of social media. How have you altered your approach to marketing strategy, messaging and tactics due to the opportunities afforded by social / new media? Post a comment!

Last month on the blog, we spent a Fun Stuff Friday talking about translating online relationships into real world transactions by attending local events. But sometimes there isn’t an event in the area to meet your needs. And, if that’s case, it might be time to plan one of your own. Here are a few tips on how to run a successful local event to promote your business or brand.

Build a good team. Even the simplest events require a lot of planning. Don’t attempt to tackle event planning on your own. Whether you recruit from within your organization, from your own personal network, or from a social network like Twitter or Facebook, be sure to find quality people you can delegate authority to. Ideally, you’ll have someone to handle A/V for the event, someone else to handle the food, and at least one someone (preferably more) to check people in upon arrival. Spread the work around. This will allow every member of your team more time to take advantage of the major benefit of running a live, local event: networking.

Serve all corners of your market. While the majority of your target audience might live and work in one specific location, don’t ignore potential customers who may be more remote. If your one-off event becomes a series, make every effort to bring that series to each corner of your market. If you have one audience on the coast, another audience around the capital, and a third on the other end of the state, try to find ways to get each of those groups involved in your events.

Partner carefully. When seeking out locations for your meeting or sponsors for food or entertainment, keep in mind that any partnership you form is, at the very least, a passive endorsement of the brand(s) you’re partnering with. Vet potential partners and sponsors carefully.

Got any tips of your own to share? Leave a comment below.

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the advantages and disadvantages of Facebook and Twitter. Today, I’d like to wrap up my argument in favor of different content for different channels with some thoughts on email and mobile marketing.

Email: If Twitter is an enormous open-invite party, email is the one-on-one pitch you get to give someone in a quiet room next door. So, while there are no technical limits on how long your message can be, it’s important to keep in mind that you are interrupting your contact every time you send them an email. Your email messages should be relevant (and/or entertaining), should include at least one actionable item, and should allow the reader to get back to the party (or the office) in short order.

Also, keep in mind that, while email can be a useful tool for hammering home a point you’ve made elsewhere, email shouldn’t be a simple exercise in repetition. If all the customer hears are the same bullet points they’ve heard elsewhere, it doesn’t take much effort for them to unsubscribe from your mailing list. Make it worthwhile for them. They’ve taken time out of their day to give you their attention: give them something substantial and new in return.

Key Takeaways: Email can and should be used as part of a fully integrated multi-channel marketing effort, but it shouldn’t simply be a compilation of your best content from other sources. You need to include fresh, valuable material with every message, or else the effort is wasted, and the customer might just be lost.

Mobile: Text messaging has become one of the most active conversation streams in the digital age. Like email, it’s a one-to-one pitch. But it’s a one-to-one pitch that happens just as the elevator is reaching your customer’s floor: you’ve got thirty seconds, and then they’re gone.

When you market by text message, your call to action has to be relevant and timely. Text messaging is all about immediacy. Our phones buzz and blurt out alert sounds, and we pick up right away, because we never know if an emergency meeting has been called, or if the kids have locked themselves out of the house. So, your message better be worth that kind of instantaneous attention.

Key Takeaways: Marketing via text message must be relevant, brief, and actionable. Mobile marketing is more disruptive than marketing through any other channel, and must be handled with extreme care. It’s not about conversations—at least not for marketers—it’s about alerts.  Craft your content accordingly.

Do you differentiate your content across channels? Or, do you see benefits in keeping the message the same across all platforms? Let us know.

With services like Ping.fm, it’s easy enough to blast all of your digital marketing channels with the same message. But is that the best idea? Each channel has its own advantages and disadvantages when it comes to the dissemination of content. So, why not tailor your messages accordingly?

Facebook: Facebook has a lot in common with the dry erase boards my classmates hung on their dorm room doors back in college. As long as you had access to the walled community of our campus—and as long as the dry-erase marker hadn’t run out of ink—you could write on the wall of anyone you chose. Conversations were focused and easy to follow. And because these things were so ubiquitous, you could communicate with almost anyone in the community.

If you extend that metaphor to include the notice boards that dotted campus hallways, it was also theoretically possible to communicate with organizations you were a part of (groups) or a fan of (fan pages).

Facebook, like those dorm room doors of old and their bulletin board counterparts, also has the advantage of being able to hold additional content alongside text. So, in addition to near ubiquity, the service offers the opportunity to communicate through a variety of media. The same can’t be said for Twitter and mobile marketing, and can barely be said for email.

The service’s major disadvantage is the wall that surrounds it. On Facebook, you have to be invited to join a conversation, or you have to start one yourself (and recruit others to join in). This may change in the future, but, for now, it’s much harder to serendipitously stumble across a relevant discussion than it is on Twitter.

Key Takeaways: Posting your Twitter feed to your Facebook Fan Page and doing nothing more with it is not taking advantage of all that the platform can do. Try including photos, audio, and video. And take advantage of Facebook’s ability to handle multiple links if it makes sense. Also, remember that your audience is limited to those who have already signed up to receive your updates. So, target accordingly.

Twitter: Twitter is like an enormous open-invite party where you can join a conversation about just about any topic, so long as you listen carefully enough to find it.  And, because conversations on Twitter can be shared and discovered much easier than they can be on Facebook, there is a potential for wide, fast dissemination of content.  Quantity of followers on Twitter counts for far less than quality. A select group of influencers can help spread your message much further than you could by yourself within the walled garden of your Facebook Fan Page or group.

Of course, the upside of Twitter is also its downside. Because everyone in the room is talking, all at once, it’s much harder for one voice to be heard. Your efforts on Twitter need to begin with a small conversation over in the most relevant and receptive corner of that overcrowded party hall. You should never begin by pulling out your megaphone and trying to get everyone’s attention all at once. On Twitter, anyone can turn your personal volume knob down to zero. And once one person’s done it, it’s likely that more will follow. Remember that.

Key Takeaways: Content posted to Twitter should be short, relevant (and/or entertaining), and easy to pass on. Yes, you technically have 140 characters to play with. But, if you use all 140 characters, you’re making it that much harder for your followers to pass your message on via retweet. And the viral nature of Twitter is one of its key strengths.

And, while you should certainly take advantage of Twitter’s ability to include links, you should make sure those links aren’t always sales pitches. Don’t be that guy (or gal). Be helpful, be educational, and, most of all, be cordial—eventually, someone will ask you what you do, and then you’ll have your chance to pounce.

In 140 characters or less, of course.

Tomorrow: Part 2: Email and Mobile

Many of the products we use (or are advised to use) in social media are free to access. But no product, regardless of the price tag or lack thereof, is free to use. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, or the latest and greatest service that bloggers, Twitterers, and Facebookers are raving about — there are always costs involved, particularly in staff time.

Here are four particular cost areas to consider:

Resources. You need people to make these things look good, and you need people to keep them running. WordPress blogs come out of the box looking very much like thousands of other WordPress blogs. They also end up looking like very lonely places if they’re not updated on a regular basis. It’s blatantly obvious to even the most casual Web user — whether they’re 100% conscious of this or not — when the blog or Website they’re looking at has a cookie-cutter design. And users are also well aware of the virtual tumbleweeds rolling by on sites where there’s less life than they’d find in a ghost town.

Setting up a Twitter account provides similar hurdles. And while it is theoretically easy to change your background, to fill out your full profile, and to tweet on a regular basis, theoretical ease isn’t quite the same as actual ease. You need to get it done, or you need someone to get it done for you. And it takes time!

Dedication. We live in the age of the Next Big Thing, in a world where it’s ridiculously easy to find something new to obsess over, something new to occupy our precious free time. If you’re not delivering constant content through your marketing channels, people will forget about you and move on. Regardless of your market, it is crucial to keep customers engaged in the product and the message year round, on a weekly (if not daily) basis.

The flip side of that, of course, is not to overdo it. But I’m a believer in going all-out, then listening to your audience, seeing if they’re feeling oversaturated, and only reigning things in as necessary.

Messaging. Just as press releases, white papers, and other more traditional marketing efforts require serious thought, so too do social media campaigns. It’s harder to create a meaningful message in 140 characters than you would think. And then there’s the issue of how well the information coming through these new channels is tying in with the rest of your marketing message. It’s easy enough to hand responsibility for your Twitter profile and your Facebook fan page off to an Intern. But if that Intern isn’t clued into the master plan, you could be sending out messages that are erroneous, poorly executed, or, in the worst-case scenario, flat-out false. Once something’s out there on the Internet, it’s out there to stay. And that means that, even if you do farm this work out to someone else, a portion of your workday is going to have to be devoted to making sure that the messages which come out from your brand, regardless of which channel they are distributed through, are on point.

Monitoring. You also need to track how effective these free messages you’re sending really are. Ask yourself: which posts, tweets, and status updates are driving the most traffic? Which are generating conversation in the comments section? And which are being shared on Facebook, or retweeted on Twitter? If you can’t answer these questions now, you need to find a way to answer them. Because, while these products might be free to access, there are always going to be costs associated with actually using them. And you need to be able to justify those costs, whether to yourself, or to your boss, or to your shareholders. Or else you may be out of a job. Or out of business.

Does this mean that you need a full-time staffer whose sole purpose is to execute your social media masterplan? Well, no. It would be nice, but it’s not 100% necessary. What you need, at minimum, is someone who is thinking constantly about how to put these free tools to good use, and how to get the most bang for your staff-time buck.

Photo Credit: free-sign by koka_sexton. CC BY.

There has been a great deal of attention placed on social media as the next great channel for marketers to reach customers–and for good reason. Social media has provided consumers with a voice in the market. Companies that engage with those vocal consumers have the opportunity to gain greater insight into their customers and markets, develop direct relationships with their customers and hone their messages for their intended audiences. As a result, they have the ability to reap higher returns on their efforts and provide a better experience for their customers.

While social media offers great new marketing opportunities, businesses should consider social media as one element in their marketing strategy and marketing mix.

According to Edelman’s recently published 2010 Trust Barometer, 65% of people need to hear something about a company three to five times from multiple sources to believe that the information is likely true. Edelman goes on to say that “to advance reputation, companies need to be everywhere, engaging everyone.” Between 40% and 50% of people trust stock/industry analysts and business publications for information about companies while 35% of people believe information gained from conversations with peers.

What this study points to is the need for businesses to utilize many different avenues to get their message out and to reinforce the same positive brand, product and company reputation across multiple marketing channels. Social media can be–and should be–a core component of that marketing mix, but it should not be the sole focus of a company’s efforts.