So the book is a couple years old, so what? The Acronym POST still works in Social Media Marketing. Here’s a snapshot.
“Groundswell” was, and still is, a “ground-breaking” book. Even though the co-authors are heading different directions these days (Charlene Li heads up The Altimeter Group and Josh Bernoff, still at Forrester, has co-produced a book called “Empowered,”), the acronym “POST” still guides our thinking when we talk with clients about the emerging Social Media Marketing landscape. Follow along…we’ll use an emerging industry as an example.
P: People. What people are you trying to connect with? Here’s a for instance: you want gearheads to fall in love with your electric car. You research and find that a large percentage of influencers are sharing information about this emerging industry on a few blogs. That’s where your “people” are, so that’s where you should plan on interacting with them.
O: Objective. But why are you wanting to connect with them? Great question. Do you want to sell them an electric car? Do you want them to be aware that electric cars are coming — eventually — but there’s a heck of a lot of work to be done (electric grid, availability of charging stations, relationships with businesses that might have a charging station…the list could go on).
Having an objective is key. Sounds trite, but it’s true with social media marketing: “Why do you want to do this?” The road to business heck is paved with social media launches without objectives.
S: Strategy. Note how the strategy comes AFTER you figure out what people you’re connecting with and whether your business marketing objectives are aligned with what you’ll find in the social landscape.
In this case, your strategy may well be to launch your own blog about electric cars and use dialogue to raise awareness about the industry — so there’s awareness, in turn, of your services for the electric car industry (whatever those may be).
T: Technology. Ah-ha! Blog may not be the “thing” for you in this case. This is why Charlene and Josh put the “T” at the end. Tech stuff may change: maybe you should have an iPad app that helps people find your special electric vehicle charging stations. Or maybe the blog makes sense — but the tech you use is a killer blogging as a service platform.
Funny enough that this book STILL gets mentioned as the go-to for setting your business (or personal) Social Media Marketing priorities. Or it’s not funny – it’s a great acronym, POST, and a great book.
Folks: Dave from Area 224 has been working on a book with Jim Alexander, from Socially Mediated. We’ve conducted interviews, written chapters, re-written chapters. It’s coming along…but not as quickly as either of us would like.
Last month, we did a Q&A with Chris Brogan. Yes, that Chris Brogan. Found him to be an extremely accommodating gentleman.
Rather than make y’all wait for the book, we thought it would be nice to let you see what he said now.
Nichification:
We love the concept of the niche within the niche – but, as we’ve been talking to business owners and marketers, it sounds like the “niche within the niche within the niche” or a combination of niches is really where it’s at. (Like Kogi – Korean food, Street food, gourmet.) Are there any examples of this type of business that you really like?
Chris: My friend Doug Quint (we went to school together back in 8th grade in Maine) is a professional bassoonist for the NY Philharmonic, but decided to take his free time in the summer and launch the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. He sells gourmet ice cream, things like olive oil and salt ice cream (I’m not kidding), and gets quite a great turnout by using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook and a blog and lots of photos of his customers to keep it moving forward. He even has merchandise for sale, because people love the concept and how Doug presents it.
Nichification: Dave has a theory – one that Jim isn’t arguing with yet – that the dirtier or less sexy the niche, the more money that’s in it. Recycling, pool cleaning franchises, landscaping, etc. What do you think of this concept?
Chris: Dave’s not wrong. Waste removal is a huge business. Huge. If I had a few hundred thousand laying around, I’d buy up a franchise opportunity in that space, because guess what: we’re making more and more trash, not less and less. Back in high school, this guy we all knew worked as a trash collector. He got teased about it. At the end of the summer, he bought a Mercedes. Cash. Everyone stopped laughing.
Nichification: You work with big businesses and big brands — ones that are not often thought of as niche marketers. BUT…one man’s “niche” is another’s “market segmentation.” Any good examples of niche businesses within bigger companies that you’ve come to really like?
Chris: Take a brand like Pepsico. What I like about them is that they have soda pop. But they have Gatorade, which is being retooled to really appeal to sports athletes. They have Quaker Oats, which is great for the health conscious. They have Sobe Lifewater, which puts them in that flavored water category. I love it, because the storytelling can be totally different for each one. Heck, even talking within a soda pop vertical, Mountain Dew is marketed to the extreme sports crowd where Pepsi is the everyman drink.
Nichification: One theory that is playing out in the book – niche franchises can be the way to go, as buying into someone else’s concept that has already been proven could lead to, in effect, buying a blueprint for success. Do you agree?
Chris: There are two ways to make business work for you: run someone else’s system, or create your own system. Starting a franchise is great, if you are someone who wants to just learn a system and execute it as it’s laid out. There’s not a lot of creativity permitted in most franchising systems. Depending on the size of the company, you’ll find that they’ll want to rigorously control everything (if they’re big) or you might have some wiggle room in marketing (if they’re smaller). Sam Walton started Wal-Mart because Ben Franklin stores got mad at his methods.
Nichification: How valuable is the “personal brand” in niche marketing? You’ve got a solid personal brand – how can niche marketers learn from you to make sure they keep their brand first and foremost in people’s minds (within their niche, of course)?
Chris: Personal brand definitely matters. If I think of soap, I by Glynne Soaps because Gayle & Jenn have spent lots of time building their brand. My favorite hamburgers are in Milwaukee at AJ Bombers, not the least bit because Joe Sorge makes the place a wonderful place to be. If I stay at a hotel in New York City, you can bet it’ll be the Roger Smith Hotel, because Brian Simpson and Adam Wallace make it a very personable place to be.
Nichification: You’ve been at this business thing for awhile — are there examples you can point to of great niche ideas that just didn’t take off? Why? What would you have advised them to do differently?
Chris: I think that most niches that fail usually fail because they’ve misjudged the prospective buyer’s interest in needing their product or service. Someone selling iPod accessories that doesn’t adapt into iPhone and iPad accessories is doomed, for instance, to pick a very simple product set. People selling into the bicycling community will have trouble unless they’re selling something that stands out.
Nichification: Oh, and do we have your permission to attribute these quotes to you in the book? (If there are any examples that we should “sanitize,” let us know.)
Chris: By all means. You have permission. Sanitize nothing. : )
Editor’s note: we are still working on the book. Promise. There’s more gold like this to come.
While you’re waiting for the absolute right time to launch that business of yours, someone else is coming up with the same exact idea.
Except they are implementing on it.
Ideas are like water, folks. Really. My first startup, U Sphere, was really not anything new — a portal for college-bound students to connect with colleges.
In my case, the right time presented itself and I launched and didn’t look back.
It wasn’t wildly successful, but that’s okay — I learned a ton. Including what not to do next time. How to test and learn. What type of people to avoid working with — and who to gravitate toward.
Groupon? Nothing new, right? People buy stuff at a discount. One deal a day. Part Woot, part coupon site.
Oh yeah, and they probably hit a couple bumps in the road when they launched. But they were — are — first to market. HUGE advantage. Category killer — even though, again, not really a completely original idea. Beside the point.
Like everyone else, we’re watching BP and wondering if the oil spill will ever stop.
It may not. In the event that we’re still having this discussion in July 2011, here are three moves that BP can make right now to minimize loss of brand equity.
1. Cut prices at every one of your service stations by 25% effective immediately.
Why? You’re going to lose tons of business anyway.
For instance, heading out of town this weekend, I filled up on gas. I bypassed your station in Evanston, IL. Better to support the Marathon guy down the road. I made this decision simply because I didn’t want to give you more money than I already had to.
Then, on the Indiana Toll Road, my hands were tied. BP or nothing. Darnit. So I filled up at a BP station.
But there’s more to this, right? I mean, local dealers who sell BP have franchises and buy gas from you and all that stuff I don’t understand.
So it’s these guys that are gonna lose business. And lots of business.
Thus the 25% cut in prices. That will make me think twice. Right?
2. Buy an acre of Louisiana swamp land for every hour that the spill continues.
Pay market prices. Donate the land to the State of Louisiana. Call it a day.
3. Accept any Louisiana fishing claims without batting an eye.
If I have a shrimp boat in Louisiana, and I’m toast, I probably don’t have Environmental Insurance. Business Interruption Insurance. ANY INSURANCE. I’m not saying people can make crazy claims, but if a 40 year-old guy in the Bayou says he makes $75K a year fishing and will lose everything, cut him a check.
4. Know all that “Beyond Petroleum” stuff you have been doing? Do it again. And again. And again.
I want to see wind farms. I want to see soy biodiesel. I want you to revisit all those ads from a few years ago where you talk to people on the streets and they tell you what they want out of an oil company.
I want to see those ads and I want to see them now.
5. Get a YouTube Channel NOW.
See the ad up here? It has 200,000 hits.
Search for “BP” on YouTube and stuff like this comes up.
Not press conferences, updates from your executives, video of your own.
Something’s bothering us at Area 224 HQ. Maybe you can help…
A few months ago, Steve Johnson in the Chicago Tribune profiled Eric and Kathy, the highly successful WTMX-FM morning show hosts. (If you’re not in Chicago, keep reading…there’s something in this for you.)
Very very early on, Eric implemented a rule: no fraternizing outside the office. Why? He didn’t want it to seem like a private party that the listeners couldn’t attend.
It works.
So, what’s bothering us?
The party. The one that everyone seems to attend, except you. This party takes a few shapes:
The “I’m better than you” Party
No one has all the answers, people. No one. In Social Media, in Marketing, in whatever industry. There’s a fine line between idea-sharing and aggrandizing. Please don’t cross it.
We’ve stopped engaging with some people who don’t engage back because they’re too good. They want to tell you how great they are, but when you question them, you get a blank stare.
The “Hidden Agenda” Party
We spend a ton of time on Twitter – and cannot stand the hidden agenda. The agenda that says we’re just creating a presence so we can sell you stuff. The agenda that wants to talk with you, but really wants to broadcast TO you.
The “All About Me” Party
I have made friends in social media. People who I would call up at the drop of a hat because they are just genuinely good people.
But there are others who refuse to engage in the give-and-take that NETWORKING requires. (Remember “networking?” The precursor to “social networking,” which spawned “social media?”)
We unfriended and completely removed from our life one such person in early 2010. Lots of reasons, but they all were part of a pattern of behavior that was, sadly, one-way.
