Corporate Blogging – the Way to Spread Word-of-Mouth (and other musings)?
I’m back. It’s been a little while (read: one and half weeks), but I am now back on the bandwagon. Life has been crazy busy, but that is no excuse for leaving you, my friends, without me! As I jump back into things, I can’t help but ask myself “is Corporate Blogging the Way to Spread Word-of-Mouth?”
It’s time to do a little soul searching, is corporate blogging the way to go? Now, I might enjoy blogging, writing out my thoughts on the industry I work in, but is it actually helping our company?
In 2009, only 81 of Fortune 500 companies had blogs, but in 2012, two-thirds of the US Internet population (67%) are reading
MavenSocial
blogs at least once a month. If blogs have such a large following, why are companies slow to start their own? Companies have the perception that if given the chance, customers will generate negative content about the brand on its blog, creating another area for people to post negative things about the brand (whether warranted or not). Considering this, I have provided a few “industry standards” for writing a company blog.
Time Commitment
When writing a blog, you must know that it is a time commitment. This is not just something that you can do “every blue moon”. Whoever is writing for your blog should have that social media fire burning in their belly. If the passion is not there, the writing is not there (read: they potential company blogger should be jumping up and down shouting “pick me, pick me!”).
Guest Bloggers
There’s nothing like a few good guest bloggers to spice things up! Have guest bloggers on to write on their area of expertise. With guest bloggers, you are bringing multiple, unbiased viewpoints to a topic. Or even start a series, where you and your guest bloggers write articles on a specific topic, expressing varying viewpoints. This can create award-winning banter that is hard to ignore.
Forget 24/7 Marketing
One of the largest concerns with corporate blogging is that the blog is only there to push the company’s product or service. Mix it up! Let your personality shine! Write articles for the love of writing and the industry you’re in. If you only write articles that push your company, people will see your opinions as highly biased, and your credibility will suffer for it. Instead of always thinking W.I.I.F.M. (What’s In It For Me), try to connect with the industry and your readers.
Spread the News
Good news is spreadable (like a good peanut butter). People love to hear about exciting new technologies and ways to make their lives and businesses more effective (and profitable). Go ahead, share your company case studies with your blog readers, tell them about your latest technological triumph – but be approachable. Answer questions, and take criticism with grace; get out there and show them how awesome you and your product is!
Overall, it’s about the love of what you do. For managers and bosses, make sure that you are hiring people that are passionate about what you are doing. Iron sharpens iron. The more passion, discussion, and innovation there is at work, the more likely it is to shine through in how you serve your clients, which makes a great company blog.
The Power of Peer-to-Peer Sharing (Digital Marketing)
Yesterday, we conducted a webinar on peeer-to-peer sharing. In the webinar we discussed:
1) Peer-to-Peer advertising (Digital) vs. Traditional advertising
2) The importance of peer-to-peer sharing via social media
3) Industry examples
a. Procter & Gamble
b. Nike
Some of the highlights:
Traditional Marketing:
Traditional marketing is TV, radio, and print (newspapers, magazines). For the most part, traditional marketing is a forced type of
Traditional marketing is dying!
marketing. Users of these mediums are looking for passive interaction. Personally, when I watch TV, I am there at the end of a long day, desiring to relax and shut my mind off for a few minutes. Basically, I’m there to read, listen, or watch. In comparison, the objective of an advertisement is to get people to take action.
There is a contradiction of roles. People use TV, radio, and print to relax, while advertisements want people to take action.
The advertisements interrupt the viewer’s focus. If anything, it is an annoyance more than anything else. As a result of this, the average conversion rate, or rate at which people take action from traditional marketing is 1-2%.
Ouch.
Peer-to-Peer Sharing – Digital Marketing:
Digital marketing is about creating and fostering relationships with people. Digital marketing is connected through its relationships with people within their sphere of influence. MavenSocial is able to track social media influencers through our dashboard analyics.
There are two types of Influencers:
1) Mass Connectors: create a number of impressions about brands and services in social networks, like Twitter and Facebook.
2) Mass Mavens: create and share content about products and services in other social channels such as YouTube, blogs, forums, o ratings and review sites.
These two types of people combine influence, trust, relevance, and scale to create powerful advocacy.
The influencers provide a high Return on Investment (ROI) because they produce Social Lift, or free traffic to a campaign. With MavenSocial, we are able to track social media influencer’s shares with their peers, allowing us to better understand who are the campaign’s (or more importantly BRAND’S) social media influencer.
Digital Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing.Digital Marketing creates more connections and higher conversion rates.
Procter & Gamble: Old Spice campaign
Procter & Gamble has received a lot of press coverage over their $10 billion annual add budget, but with the introduction of digital marketing, P & G is announced that they will be laying off 1,600 staffers. When asked about digital marketing, CEO, Robert
Old Spice commercial, example of P & G successful digital marketing campaign
MacDonald told Wall Street analysts that he would have to “moderate” his ad budget because Facebook and Google can be “more efficient” than traditional media. MacDonald then went on the say that “in the digital space, with things like Facebook and Google and others we find that the Return on Investment of the advertising, when properly designed, when the big idea is there, can be much more efficient.
For the Old Spice campaign, P & G expected 3-5% growth for Old Spice body wash, but actually experienced 38% growth. Old Spice could not meet demand for their product, thus shelved remained un-stocked. The overall campaign results saw Old Spice saw their brand channel #1 on YouTube, and the #2 most subscribed to. There was also 3,000% growth to their Twitter account, and close to 300% growth in traffic on oldspice.com!
Nike Digital Sport:
Nike Digital Sport is a new division of Nike, whose goal is to develop devices and technologies that allow users to track their personal statistics. An example of their latest product release is Nike+ running sensor. There are now 5 million runners that log on to Nike to check their performance. This is all part of Nike’s plan to adapt their marketing strategy towards digital marketing. Their bottom line goal is to build an online community to connect and engage consumers.
Nike’s shift to digital marketing is the biggest change since the creation of “Just Do It” or since a graphic design student at Portland University created the Swoosh!
Nike Digital Sport - Nike+ products
Overall, Digital marketing is quickly over-taking traditional marketing as the best way for brand’s to create awareness, engagement, and see proven ROI on their marketing campaigns.
For the webinar presentation, check out the links below!
PDF version:
MavenSocial Webinar: Peer-to-Peer Sharing
Slide Presentation:
FREE Webinar: The Power of Peer-to-Peer Sharing
Understanding Value
Ever wondered why your business’ ads do not receive the response you expected?
Free Webinar - The Power of Peer-to-Peer Sharing!
On Tuesday, March 27 at 11:00am EST join us for our webinar on Peer-to-Peer Sharing, and discover how your business can encourage brand interaction and proven ROI.
We will show you:
1) Peer-to-Peer advertising vs. Corporate advertising
2) The importance of peer-to-peer sharing via social media
3) Real Case studies, with proven peer-to-peer advertising ROI
Join us for our webinar on Tuesday, March 27 at 11:00am EST to discover how your business can spark brand interaction and increased ROI!
Social Media Influencers and the Death of the Marketing “Bowling Ball” Effect
In the past five years there has been a marketing reset in the marketing industry. Marketing is evolving into a digitally focused entity, where it is becoming as much of a science as it is an art. While emotion can still be an asset to a marketing campaign, the results can be hard to track.
The Age of Digital Marketing. Marketing is all about Data!
In a client meeting last week, we had an interesting discussion with the Senior Vice President of a Fortune 100 company. He explained that he was looking for a new marketing solution for their company that would address their need to identify their brand influencers in order to increase sales. They also have a client network list that they would like to connect to their social media accounts (millions of names long). As a result of the extensive changes in marketing in the past five years, he said that their company did not know how to market in the digital age. They wanted to find a way to increase their client network list, as well as identify the influencers within this network, thus encouraging brand sharing to increase sales.
In the Past – the Bowling Ball Effect:
Marketing success depended on the size of your ball, your strength, and how far you could throw it. Marketing was not about precision analytics; it was about having the biggest ball to throw into the crowd of unidentified potential customers, hoping for the best. There was no way to track who influenced people to buy the product or service. The assumption was that if a campaign had taken place during the same time period there was a spike in sales, it “must” have had “something” to do with it – thus making the campaign a “success”.
With WhiteFire Social, software powered by MavenSocial, we are able to track a brand’s influencers and social media influencers,
We are in the Age of Digital Marketing. With WhiteFire Social, identify your brand's social media influencers.
measuring the effectiveness of every dollar spent on a campaign. Using WhiteFire, we see the Social Lift (free traffic to a campaign) to a campaign increase anywhere from 100 to 500% (check out our Canadian Tire case study).
In the age of social media marketing, companies need to have a strategy that is based on precision. Marketing is becoming a targeted pursuit of customers, as opposed the Bowling Ball Effect of mass marketing. The SVP of the Fortune 100 company we spoke to explained that they did not have a precision strike on marketing anymore. As a result of their lack of digital marketing strategy, they came to us for an answer that could help them identify their brand influencers. Marketing has gone digital, and is now scalable and measurable – does your company know how to navigate these new social media waters?
Check out our case study on Girls Night Out Wines to learn more about how MavenSocial identifies brand influencers.
The Power of Snap Trends – Social Observer System
Imagine being part of the social media conversation surrounding your company or brand, so close in fact, that you can search for
Snap Trends - a Social Observing System.
Twitter tweets in any area on the map, and then tweet them back! This would have huge implications for marketing, as businesses in real-time address consumer complaints and comments, offering coupons, or URLs to answer their tweet!
In conjunction with our social media campaigns, MavenSocial employs Snap Trends to observe and join the social media conversation surrounding our campaigns.
Real People – Real Time
Snap Trends is a social observer system that identifies the social media conversation around a specific word or phrase through tweets on Twitter. Users are able to change the location and radius of their observing to ‘tap into’ the conversation across a specific area (check out a Snap Trends demo here).
Snap Trends allows you to identify any keyword-specific tweets across the globe!
Automatic, Highly Targeted Leads
Searches for company or product specific keywords can be run automatically, aggregating the information for later use.
Join the Conversation
Through Snap Trends, one can set-up an automatic response for specific keywords or phrases. For example, if people are tweeting about needing a new laptop for back to school, if your company sells laptops, you can directly reply to these people through your own tweet, with a special offer. These tweets can be sent en masse to people who tweet with that specific keyword.
Social observing technologies like Snap Trends are changing businesses social media marketing strategies as they learn how to monitor their brand any time, and anywhere around the world. Snap Trends is a great way for businesses to join the conversation and create a positive brand experience (and raising sales!!).
Would your business be interested in using a social observing system like Snap trends? How would Snap Trends help your business?
Are Social Media Networks Here to Stay?
With the world population totaling over 7 billion people, 2 billion are online. The Internet has been such a powerful tool because it has been the platform for freedom of speech and information, crossing sovereign state borders, allowing people to have a voice across multiple platforms.
The power of the Internet is its ability to connect people.
Human beings are relational entities. We flourish through interactions with other people. With 2 billion people online, 1 billion
Over 1 billion people use social media to connect with others.
are on social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These social networking sites are at the very least an incredible connection tool.
Over 600 million people use social networks daily, while Facebook has 58% of its users log-in at least once daily. In the United States, Facebook has the highest membership rate of all social networks, with LinkedIn, and Twitter hot on its trail.
The Evolution of Social Networks: Brand Integration
With social networking sites evolving (as with everything else) there have been changes over time. After realizing what a powerful tool social media networks are for connecting with people, brands decided they too wanted to join the conversation. If people were already talking about their brand online, why not join the conversation and make it a positive one? Social networks have become prime territory for brand dissemination.
Is the Message Being Heard?
In some parts of the world there is a discrepancy between Awareness and Penetration of social media networks. People who are simply aware of social media networks are not necessarily interacting on the site, while penetration refers to people who are aware of social media networks, and have taken the second step to engage with these networks.
For example, in Australia, there is a 96% awareness rate, with a 67% penetration rate. In Japan, there is an 86% awareness rate, and a 34% penetration rate. Brazil heralds a 97% awareness rate, with an 86% penetration rate, while the United State is not far behind with a 95% awareness rate, and a 76% penetration rate.
Oh Canada!
In 2010, Michael Dewing, from the Social Affairs Division, Parliamentary Information and Research Service, Library of Parliament reported on Canadian social media use. In 2007, 34% of Canadians aged 16 to 34 contributed content on the Internet by blogging, participating in discussion groups, or uploading photos. In comparison, only 13% of users aged 35 to 54 contributed content, while 9% of those aged 55 to 64 and a mere 4% of those aged 65 and over did so. In June 2009, Ipsos Reid reported that 86% of Canadians aged 18 to 34 who used the Internet had a social network profile, as compared with only 44% of those aged 55 and over.
U-S of A
Pew Internet surveys found that in the United States, 65% of adult internet users now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago. Pew Internet surveys identified that this was the first time 50% of all adults were found to use social networking sites in one of their surveys. The Pew internet survey found that the most common
Pew Internet Survey Word Cloud, illustrating how people describe their social media experiences
word used to describe one’s experience with social media is “good” – as evidenced in the word cloud.
“The graying of social networking sites continues, but the oldest users are still far less likely to be making regular use of these tools,” said Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and co-author of the report. “While seniors are testing the waters, many Baby Boomers are beginning to make a trip to the social media pool part of their daily routine.”
Why Should I Care?
With such a high percentage of people using the Internet and social media networking sites, it simply reinforces the necessity for all businesses to have a social media strategy in place. People like to connect with others online, putting a friendly face to your company can be the difference between a prosperous and troubled brand.
With social media sites providing the platform for communication and interaction on the Web for over 1 billion people, it is important that brands embrace social media in their marketing strategies.
2012: The Year of the Mobile Phone Part 1: Mobile Phones Overtake the PC as the Most Popular way to Surf the Web
Mobile is quickly taking over the web surfing sphere, supporting e-commerce, and innovative technologies that are having an impact on the dissemination of brand and product awareness for companies.
MavenSocial 