Love to think back to that time two years ago when Area 224 was just getting rolling as a marketing consultancy. Back when we were having tons of meetings with tons of businesses and trying to find out what was on everyone’s minds.
The everyone we met with on this particular day was the Chief of Sales for a B2B Concern. (Again, protecting the innocent here.)
This particular person (may have been a man, may have been a woman; protecting the innocent) wanted to buy a “solution.” “Viral marketing,” said s/he, “will solve our problems.”
And…what are those particular problems?
The long silence was deafening.
Seems the CEO had seen a video on YouTube and thought “we should do that.”
Seriously.
The knee-jerk response, two years later, from the C-suite, seems to be “Social Media will solve our problems.”
This possibly brings about the opportunity for us to help you – or for another top-notch marketing consultancy to help you. BUT not before you figure out what the problems are.
What business problem are you attempting to solve?
Dave from Area 224 used to work for a very smart guy who abhorred busy work. And, in the “pre-social media epoch” (right before the YouTube era), he’d ask the above question all the time. Saved us a lot of busy work, but also saved the organization a lot of wasted effort on things that just didn’t make strategic sense.
Your job – as a marketing executive, as a C-suite aspirant, as the guy or gal who needs to translate all this stuff for the bosses (or for yourselves if you’re one of the bosses) – is to ask these questions first. And here’s a little how-to guide.
Why are we doing this? Doesn’t quite matter what the “this” is – could be a video campaign, could be getting the boss on Twitter, could be blogging. The objectives for each could be radically different. You want a video so the CEO can show how passionate s/he is about the business so that your startup can raise its next round of capital. You need to Tweet because it’s the most laser-focused way to reach the 15 influencers you have targeted for relationship building. Your blog has to be launched because you have a network of people who can write insanely well and you want to be the centerpiece of a budding community.
What will happen if we don’t do this? Seriously – you need to think about the alternatives. You may even have to negotiate with your bosses.
Roger Fisher and William Ury wrote a best-seller called “Getting to Yes,” and they coined the term “Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement,” or “BATNA.” Consider the BATNA in your social media planning.
If we don’t get social with our marketing – will our competitors do that? If our competitors do that, will they be able to effectively tell the story that we can tell better? Will they win market share if they beat us to the market?
It might be likely that your competitors are NOT in the position to win lots of eyeballs and market share. It might even be likely that, while they focus on “social,” your focus on product excellence, or distribution channels, or fine-tuning your message could be the best thing for your business.
Upshot: Insert Social Media Here at your own peril – and not without some serious thinking and planning first.
Shared a story on Thursday’s Webinar that we’ll share again here. 10 years old, but gives you a sense of the continuum.
Do you “Get It?” Really, not the lower case “get it,” but are you in the process of that deep knowledge that can only come if you truly “Get It?”
10 years ago, Dave from Area 224 worked for a company in the HR Consulting space. And one of the projects seems trite at the time – an online portal for companies to use to give their employees access to benefits information.
But, back then, 2000, there was a ton of discussion about this type of thing. Companies were dealing with old “legacy” systems, and didn’t know what information needed to be online, and were afraid that online would replace paper, and they wanted to be in compliance with legal requirements.
One of the offices for my company had some sales and back-office employees who were asked to help with the project – sharing information with their contacts through emails, showing a demo to existing clients of this new technology.
Problem? The boss, the guy who ran the office, refused to give access to the World Wide Web to any of his employees.
The reason? “The web is a time suck.”
Productivity would drop, it reasoned, because employees who could access this demo website for the new technology could also access things like other websites.
Okay, then. Sounds really crazy now, but this mindset existed 10 years ago toward the Internet.
And now it possibly exists some places – maybe your company? – toward Twitter or Facebook.
Which brings us back to the webinar. We’re doing another one this week, you can link to the signup stuff here, and we’re hearing that, well, it’s not that the bosses “Don’t Get It,” it’s that “It” needs to be explained in the right strategic context.
IF we spend time on Twitter having conversations, we might learn what the marketplace really thinks of us.
IF we are on Facebook making friends, they might be quicker to tap us on the shoulder when they need our help.
If you missed last week’s webinar, we hope to see you Thursday, November 4, at 1 pm ET/12 Central/11 am MT and 10 am PT.
Hey! Today, Area 224 decides it might be cool to pick out three Twitter folks to follow – and we’re using some different criteria.
It seems like everyone’s list of Friday Follows goes a little something like this:
Someone with mass appeal.
Someone who tweeted with us once and is still on a list.
And no real reason to follow them.
There are some alternatives, of course. @ginidietrich refuses to play that game and gives you a few on the Spin Sucks blog each week. Cool.
But, for the most part, it’s all about the #FF and big lists of confusion. Since we’re part of the team STILL working on the Nichification book (with Jim Alexander), we thought three nifty niche folks would we worth a follow. Here are our recommendations.
Kyle Thill – ToyotaEquipment. Yes, you heard right, I am suggesting that you follow a guy who tweets on behalf of a company that is in the lift truck business. He’s engaging and having conversations with folks in and out of the B2B space. Check out their blog here – falls right into the “Nichification” stuff we’ve been talking about at HQ. Find your niche, give them relevant information. Then keep giving it to them until you are the obvious expert.
Rick Bakas –Wine, Social Media, More Wine. Okay, this chap is rather popular on the Twitter front. (46,000+ followers.) And he has interests beyond wine (and food); spin through his site and learn that he actually designed the Denver Broncos’ branding.
Jennifer Vides – Outspoken Latina. Actually, it would seem like a bit of a cliche to say that you should follow Jennifer and check out her blog just because she’s a Latina and she’s outspoken. Yet, this week she has dialogue about the fact that, well, pinning down the Latino culture, and pigeon-holing folks into various categories is dangerous. Worth a read. Worth a follow.
What about y’all? Any good niche folks we should be taking a look at, or interviewing for the book? Let us know…
We’re trying to get to the bottom of a developing story here at Area 224 HQ. Much has been made of Rick Sanchez and his hasty departure from CNN; rather than discuss what was said, what was meant, or whether or not Jon Stewart is cool, we’d rather look at Rick’s Twitter Page.
But here’s the question: if it is really him, how can he go from using CNN’s reach to amass scores of followers to being just another guy on Twitter with tiny numbers?
Trying to figure out how to use Twitter? Here’s an example from Chicago’s Q101.
One buzzword that seems to have taken over Corporate America is “engagement.” “Let’s engage our customers in new and exciting ways.”
Sounds trite, and can also sound a little lame if you have no clue what engagement means to you – your company, your brand.
Q101 in Chicago, the alternative rock outlet that is part of the Emmis Communications empire, decided to use Twitter to ramp up engagement. And, dare I say, it’s pretty darn cool how they’re doing it.
It’s called “October on Demand,” and how it works is rather simple. Instead of relying on the old method of “give us a call and let us know what you want to hear and we’ll nod and say we’ll see what we can do…” they invite listeners to “tweet” a request. And they play the requests, at their discretion, but pretty darn often (at most hours of the day).
Advantage for you as the listener/tweeter is you can hear your song if you’re lucky.
Advantages for them, the radio station:
They can better take the pulse of listeners. The phone has been replaced with a real live comment stream called Twitter. If there’s a mini-trend — if there are lots of requests for a song called Chelsea Dagger (because the Blackhawks are raising their Stanley Cup banner), well, they can capitalize on the trend.
They interact with listeners through another channel. You tweet, they respond by Twitter, they play your song, they say who you are.
Help with programming: it’s no secret that radio stations are being whacked upside the head by things like Pandora. The beauty of Pandora is the lack of a set playlist. Playing a song that might be buried in the archives somewhere allows a radio station to be more “iPodesque.”
What can you learn from this “engagement experiment?”
Well, it’s a multi-channel whipsaw effect, and one that might run counter to what you’d expect to hear from a radio station. Are there ways that your brand, your company, you can use new channels to engage? For instance:
Search. Even if you’re not selling anything online, should you be taking the pulse of your target market by finding out what they’re saying? Do a quick Twitter Search and type in a term that’s important to your company. Even if you’re not on Twitter already.
Stick with what makes sense for you. You don’t have to chase trends just because they are popular – if they don’t make sense for your industry. A Q101 Foursquare check-in won’t make much sense. Tied to an advertiser, MAYBE.
Have a conversation. If you follow Q101 on Twitter you’ll see that they are actually having conversations with people. You have conversations with people every day – if your target market is using new media like Twitter, you can always extend those conversations online.
