WordPress Marketing Blogger’s Network Launches

What a terrific idea Rick Liebling from eyecube had in gathering a few of us together to create a coalition of bloggers on WordPress.

To the right, you’ll see we’ve added a short blogroll for the group – “WordPress Marketing Bloggers Network… WMBN”. It’s individuals and efforts like Rick’s that give marketing a good name – and prove the power of collaboration and social networking in today’s rapidly evolving market place.

As part of our collaborative nature, one of the group’s members, DJ Francis of Online Marketer, has posted a short selection of the group’s most notable recent blogs. Of course, we’d like to continue that effort here – through reposting those same comments and notes for your review and enjoyment.

Thanks again to DJ and Online Marketer for compiling this list, and allowing us to spread the same message to our readers.

> Rick from eyecube interviewed columnist and blogger Rob Walker about his new book, Buying In.
> DJ Francis offers up some wise advice on how to become an A-list blogger.
> Francis gives you a run-down of the news (with commentary) on the day’s most important marketing stories.
> Paul explains Coke’s vocal efforts in the UK.
> Jax discusses Volkswagen’s user-generated survey.
> Rich covers a very interesting topic: the plight of voice actors in video games.
> David at Marketing Integrity notes a confusing VW ad campaign.
> Nicola snagged some snaps of Banksy and other graffiti artists in England last week.
> Incremental marketing tweaks require that you keep overall goals in mind via Brady’s Crew.

Please take a moment to visit these insightful postings from the WMBN membership. We’re all looking forward to making a larger splash through our collaboration and association – so keep an eye here for the group’s newest developments.

Set A Foundation For Your Social Media Campaign

For the past few weeks, I’ve begun to notice that marketers in general haven’t tuned into the important differences between a social media strategy – and the campaign itself. One seems to easily roll into the other, and yet many rush into the campaign without considering the strategy as its basis.

To our experience, truly acknowledging the great distinction between strategy and campaign may well be the key to social media marketing success.

As a marketing collaborative that’s quickly venturing into a wide range of social media campaigns, we’ve been asked for both – often by folks that need just the other of what they’re asking for. So what’s the distinction?

> Social Media Strategy (SMS) is the birthplace of the social media campaign. If we had our wish, SMS would come at lease 6 months ahead of the intended campaign release date. For this period of time, you might gather internal assets and develop materials, analyze intended audiences, and begin to engage with the target communities – without ever asking for anything in return. This allows enough time to establish a bit of credibility with your target audience – while gathering some important information that could help steer the course of the campaign.

> A Social Media Campaign then, is derived from your social media strategy (seems simple enough, right?). In this launch phase, we should understand the audience that cares about your effort, and know a bit about where they are and gather. If you’ve spent enough time and effort giving away quality information to an increasing base of followers, you can more readily establish realistic goals for the campaign results. By now, you’ve activated your audience, and you are in a position to get something from them with reasonable projections to levels of success.

More than too often, clients wait to consider social media in their marketing mix until they have a campaign, and they’re under some pressure to set and achieve goals in short order. But to act on a campaign without the established base is rushing into a campaign without basis.

Once the platform of trust and communication has been established, you can begin to ask for response. And then you’ll have to re-assess if the offer is of real value to that certain sub-set of the population.

The challenge here is convincing clients to take the time necessary to establish the basis of the strategy before launching the campaign. And of course, for all of those search engines (like Google) to find and index it. And just a little time for people to find it…learn a bit about it, and establish a relationship with the brand that will enable them to share it without reserveration.

Once that sharing process begins in the campaign portion of the process – the true value of a SMM campaign can be revealed. And for the cost of setting the strategy and campaign into motion – there simply isn’t a better ROI in media for any marketing campaign

The Wonders of Springs Preserve

It was one of the first truly inspriational explorations into the sustainable market sector that we had – and what a start to a journey it was.

Springs Preserve sits squarely in the middle of Las Vegas. The $250 million, 180-acre project is nothing short of a wonderland of low-water, energy-efficient buildings and gardens. The actual springs on this site once provided water for all of Las Vegas, which, by the way, means “meadows” in Spanish.

Now the The Las Vegas Valley Water District and a team of architects have restored and revamped the site with sustainability displays intended to raise public awareness of green-building practices. There are six football fields worth of low-water gardens, with 20,000 species of drought-tolerant plant life, plus a 30-acre “Cienega” or desert wetland.

This new facilities cannot be fashioned any other way than to say it’s the desert’s true oasis. Certainly an oasis among the glittering lights of the Strip that is clearly visible from many vantage points around the facilities.

The visitor attractions are incredible, and start near the front gate with The ORIGEN Experience:
A hands-on approach to understanding the fascinating history and fragile eco-system of the Las Vegas Valley.

There two main galleries, the ORIGEN Experience and the Desert Living Center.

The ORIGEN Experience enables visitors to sense the historic essence of the land. ORIGEN exhibits include a simulated flash flood, a gallery on the cultural history of the area and replicas of an ancestral pueblan village. Kids old and young are encouraged to dig for, and identify fossils and view live exhibits of local flora and fauna.

The Desert Living Center provides classes, training and exhibits that help residents learn practical tips about eco-friendly living that encourage and enable them to implement a wide range of green living tips into their daily lives.

The Las Vegas Springs Preserve offers a recreated desert wetland, a gift shop, a children’s playground with oversized replicas of various wildlife, a resource library, educational video games and a Nature Exchange, where kids can trade in their own shells, stones and other artifacts for other like items. There are also nature trails and 8 acres of gardens with over 1,200 plants species on site. An 1,800-seat amphitheater provides nighttime entertainment

While you’re visiting, you won’t want to miss the Springs Preserve Cafe operated by Wolfgang Puck with a surprisingly perfect view of the Strip skyline and in 2009 the Nevada State Museum will relocate to the Preserve. More on those incredible developments as they become available for the public.

The One Word Brand Audit

I found this site truly interesting… and a little disturbing.

Noah Breir developed a polling experiment via his brand tags site. His site asks for one word or phrase to describe the brand image displayed above the small response area.

For me, the disturbing part is “the basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads”. While I’d agree that the core values of any brand reside in the audience it seeks to attract and maintain, I can’t agree that it can be captured in a word, a series of words or phrases. Brands, in my experience, are a virtual sensory overload of touch-points that combine to make not just one – but many congruent impressions.

While those varied impressions do combine to create the “pillars” of any brand position and value – I can’t agree that there isn’t unmeasured value to in brand other than the gut reaction to its brand image – or the initial response to that image. Brands are experiences and expectations. Words simply can’t capture the depth of those experiences and expectations, from my perspective.

All that aside, the brief snapshot of response this experiment provides may be just the think we marketers and advertising people need. As it’s also anonymous, it may also be one of the most unfiltered, and accurate reflections of a brand’s positioning – however simplistic.

That said, I get the idea – and truly enjoyed reading through the tags given to these great brand images – and I’m betting you will too.

Start A Social Media Campaign

I think we can all agree that all types of organizations and campaigns will use some form of social media marketing in their mix. And like all emerging communication channels, the pitfalls will come first to the early adopters.

Establish And Measure Your Goal
Good endings begin with good beginnings. Seems simple enough, right?

But far too many social media campaigns are undertaken with the expectation that entering the sphere of conversations will, by their very nature, create the campaign momentum the company is looking to achieve. In fact, social media is simply an accelerator of that campaign momentum – and certainly not a creator of it.

The good news is… social media is somewhat easy and immediate to measure. Response to blogs, web offerings and overall sales can be tied directly to the social campaign itself – especially if personalized capture points are implemented as needed for measurement.

Provide Real Value

In the social media sphere, traditional messaging simply doesn’t work. Most savvy participants are careful to not to engage in conversations without understanding the context of that conversation. Authenticity, then, rings loudly to the social media audience. More so than the internet – rules of engagement are a sign of intelligence, and as in any social setting, no one wants to be thought or branded ignorant or immature.

And more to the point, social media enables us all to truly give of our knowledge, interests and discoveries. If that information is pure in it’s nature – then a relationship of trust can be built between the company, and the social media network at large.

Dollar for dollar – that is a level of brand loyalty you simply could not afford to buy in today’s tightening, competitive market.

It’s A Conversation, Not A Platform
The largest of corporations have tried their hand at social media campaigns – many (if not most) of them unsuccessfully. Part of the problem is obvious – any type of corporate dialog is suspect of being a thinly veiled attempt at sales – and not the hones conversation between brand and public it could be. Therein lies the challenge – to present and create dialog that is truly useful to all participants – and not just an attempt to announce a product or service.

Conversation is king – openness is the key to the kingdom. Restricting dialog because of self-imposed corporate brand standards simply doesn’t work in this truly social environment.

Give It A Go!

Once the decision is made to begin your social media marketing campaign (SMM), there are a few considerations that you might review before getting started.

> Message Consumption – hopefully, you’ll develop or have a blog. One surefire way to accurately measure engagement is through monitoring who is reading your blog, where they are from and exactly what content they are reading. Most blogging services provide some form of web analytics that will provide you with these reports.

> Content Response – Who’s actually interacting with your content? Comments may very well be the easiest way to find out – and if your message is compelling or thought provoking – you’ll receive comments from both positive supporters and negative comments. Either way – you’re making progress.

> Social Media Bookmarking – Who’s adding your content to sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit, and Stumbleupon. Engage your web analytic tool and run a click map report and see how many web visitors are clicking on the social bookmarking icons. Or, simply create profiles in each of the individual bookmarking sites and search for your specific web addresses.

> Who’s Subscribing to your RSS feed? An easy way to measure how many of your readers are actually engaged is to monitor how many of them are directly subscribing to your RSS feeds

> Who’s referring and engaged about you? Many blog platforms have the ability (like WordPress) to tell you who’s linked to your site. If that’s not an option in your blog platform, you might a blog search engine Technorati for your domain’s current interaction.

> Profile Engagement: Even if you don’t have a blog, you might have a profile on Myspace, Facebook, or Mybloglog. Simply use the same methodologies for any blog, and you’ll watch the growth of friends and profile visits in real time.

Successful social media marketing (SMM) campaigns will likely be a key catalyst i for a small to medium sized business to grow their business strategy. Without a great deal of expense, and if implemented correctly, it will increase brand equity and public relations reach at a small fraction of traditional advertising costs and effort. Not to mention it can also provide market research and product refinement guided directly by the target market for little, or no extra cost.

Clearly, having a comprehensive SMM strategy for your business is essential in today’s increasingly competitive market. If you’re interested in jumping into this powerhouse marketing strategy, but simply don’t have the time or expertise to do it yourself – give us a call.

Social Media Opportunities

Just about anyone in today’s marketing/advertising/pr community can tell you – social media is here to stay, and may very well be the most powerful channel media in today’s marketplace

Creating an accurate list of social media/branding opportunities is impossible, as the exponential growth of services like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (to name just a few) continue to provide new layers of connectivity and interest. However, there are a few major opportunities that each of these channels share, each of which is well worth the investment of time and brand equity development.

Engage Truly Loyal Brand Users

No matter what the topic (product or service), there’s an audience discussing it in detail somewhere…. and if there isn’t, the opportunity to create one is immediate and at virtually no cost. It’s never been easier to reach interested and loyal prospects and users than it is today.

These opportunities are very different than in the past. Advertising basically employs disruptive practices to communicate with its audience – reaching greater extremes with each layer of communication to rise above the clutter of messages bombarding the market every day. Social media provides the opportunity to engage these audiences on a one-to-one basis, without the need to interrupt or disrupt their stream of consciousness.

Building Loyal Relationships

By allowing your audience to build a relationship with your brand on their own schedule, you’ve begun the communication process without having to force your viewpoint, or worse yet, interrupt the audience to literally “cram your perspective down their throat”. Which is more effective, cold-calling sales, or responding to a request for a sales contact?

Through your perspective and a “insider expert”, new traffic to websites and blogs can be generated without relying fully on traditional and digital channels of advertising and marketing. Establishing these channels of information allows the audience to build their own sense of loyalty, at their own pace of acceptance. While that may not reflect in direct sales, it does establish the baseline of loyalty that builds the long-term brand affiliation that will, in fact, impact sales in the long run

Creating A Deeper Basis of Brand Loyalty and Recognition

Through the shift from sending messaging to engaging messaging, brands and their companies can reach out to enable new and old prospects to discuss their brand affinity, and expand that experience through dialog and promotions. Through social media, a brand can create an endless array of way to enhance and sustain the brand experience to customers that voluntarily choose the message – suddenly, communication is now two-ways, and not just a “shout into the void

The Truth and Nothing But The Truth

Ask a company what’s important to them, and if they understand their brand, they’ll tell you that “feedback is king”. Online forms gather a narrow set of criteria when evaluating a brand, but that methodology requires effort from the participant – which can easily lead to skewed (or even frustrated) responses.

Get a response to your company blog, however, and a world of communication opportunities opens both positive and negative comments from customers

The immediacy of tapping into public response at virtually no (or low) cost enables the company brand to adjust to immediate input – allowing for product revisions and offerings to be updated with current, and valid input trends.

Value, Measurement and Refinement

Needless to say, beginning a social media campaign can be a tremendously cost-effective portion of any marketing/advertising/pr campaign. If the budget is in the millions to promote and establish the brand, an investment of $30,00-$300,000 can be the most cost effective, highly measureable arm of the campaign’s arsenal.

Add that to social media’s ability to measure the effectiveness of campaigns and re-shape them for greater impact and effectiveness, and social media then becomes a necessary portion of any comprehensive brand campaign

Next up?

How to take the first steps toward your social media campaign.

A few easy, interesting points to consider as you ramp up.