Search
You use search engines and go to the information.
Social
The information is presented to you by your network.
Search
Since many years we use search engines to find information on the Internet.
This gives you the power to find information at the cost of taking time to search the Internet.
You use the search engine to filter out the most likely links and then manually visit and evaluate in order to find the interesting of matching content.
The investment is made when you need it.
Social media
Social networks present you the interesting information through your social network.
Your contacts in the social network will filter out the information and that is being offered to you at no effort. Your contacts are your search agents: selecting and filtering out data.
The effort and investment is in the build up of your social network – long before your need or can use the information.
Content marketing
Content marketing can be used in both cases:
The information available on the Internet – including on your website – can get found and filtered by both the search engines and the people in social networks.
The difference is the ranking and the chances of getting presented.
For search engines:
Content marketing is aimed at getting found by search engines: hence the need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keywords and Meta tags.
For social networks:
Content marketing is aimed at people as social networks are powered by people:
Hence the need to be remarkable, bring original content or valuable information.
Attracting search engines or people is quite different.
For example: the visual appealing content will attract and be remembered better by people than by search engines, especially if emotion is involved.
The end result should be the same:
Getting found and noticed by a possible buyer looking for valuable information in the content published.
Who is on your side? The search engines or the people in social networks? Invitation:
Would you be interested in www.popupbooster.com Beta? For dynamic websites presenting relevant content – behavioral targeting.
Sign-up here
The presence on the Internet presents a challenge for all: from large corporations over companies to sole-traders.
During different discussions with professionals who are helping us with our business, the subject of Internet presence was mentioned.
As we have experienced many different methods, options and alternatives for social media marketing, we have acquired a certain knowledge about it.
Hence we decided to write down our knwoledge in order to help people out, by writing and publishing: “Getting and improving your Internet presence” – a starters’ guide to social media marketing.
If you want to score quickly using social media in B2B or B2C, forget about it. It won’t happen!
In social media marketing blogging is the most used channel.
In the past people just started a blog and hoped to get readers and subscribers.
However social media like blogging, micro blogging or even just posting comments is almost like creating a complete product that requires market research, then it needs to be designed, developed, marketed, deployed and “sold”.
The goal:
Before starting anything the goal(s) need to be set and defined.
The market research:
The market research: what do your customers or leads want to read?
What is your market target? Market segment?
The design:
The concept: what are the subjects or topics?
The format: blogging, micro blogging or posting comments
The development:
The packaging: the layout, colors and fonts used
The type of illustrations or images to be used.
The setup of the RSS feed.
The production:
The daily content generation.
This is the real operational work.
The marketing:
Without any marketing the blog or micro blog will not be read.
- You need to submit your RSS-feed to all possible feed websites.
- Advertising
- Emailing
- Commenting on other blogs
- Getting links for your posts from other blogs
- Writing guest blog posts
- Getting other people to write on your blog
The goal is to build a group of followers or a community that follows your blog or micro blog.
The sales:
This is the final goal: generating traffic that brings interest for the advertising on your blog (page views and clicks) or your product (selling).
A blog is not just something you start and hope it becomes successful. As with any other product or service it needs to be designed, conceived and created with the end goal in mind.
Blogging into the wild will not lead to your goal.
How is your blogging going?
Cold call on warm companies: those who have shown interest on your website
The hype in marketing is social media marketing.
The advice seems that all companies should use social media for their marketing.
However we believe that in certain companies, market, industries it would be better not to engage into it:
1. Only a handful of large customers: you can call them all instead: more effective
2. SOX: all companies listed on a stock market better think twice
3. Companies with internal social problems: employees could/will turn against
4. Companies with external social problems: the neighborhood will fight you
5. Companies causing ecologic problems: ecologists will fight you on social media
6. Bad website: social media will increase traffic to a bad website: not good
7. Company living in the past: the culture shock will be too great
8. Companies blocking Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to their employees
9. Content would be only Press releases
10. Defense market: your customers don’t like any exposure
11. Surveillance / Security market: your customers probably don’t want exposure
12. Prime goods, ores: none of your customers will be interested
13. Really have nothing to tell: nobody is interested in your boredom
14. No employee is capable of writing interesting or readable texts
15. The decision and approval workflow is too long: not up-to-date
16. No budget: will only create uninteresting content: someone needs to take time
17. The CEO has never heard of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn: the culture clash will be too big
Be aware that the social media marketing myths might not be suited to your company, market or products.
Ignore the over-hype and stick to what has been successful if social media marketing is not suited for you.
Moreover social media marketing is not the magic trick that is pulled out of the black hat without any cost or creativity.
Of course any company or any marketer can experiment with social media but don’t expect huge instant success. Start with Tweeting this blog post using the green retweet button at the top of this article. (Thanks in advance)
Cold call on warm companies: those who have shown interest on your website
When Oprah Winfrey showed on her TV show how to use Twitter to the world in April 2009, she probably didn’t realize she was actually killing her own businesses:
- The interruption-advertising (the commercial breaks)
- The product placement advertising (Kindle from Amazon)
- The TV-personality-referrer advertising (She advices you to buy)
Internet search for experience / reviews
Increasingly people search on the Internet for information, reviews, advices and remarks on products and services before they buy.
This information resides on company websites, review websites, forums, blogs, and other social media.
Oprah stimulated the use of Twitter by showing it to the world using the conventional mass broadcast media.
Due to the real-time search war that Twitter, Google and Bing have started, mainly in order to compete with Twitter, the social real-time search has become even more important.
People can find instantly up-to-date information, evaluations and experiences about products and services thanks to the real-time search capabilities and capacities of the search engines.
The change from TV to social media
Oprah stimulated the use of Twitter like no-one did before by pushing the Internet into real-time information.
At the same time she initiated the demise of her own business that is based on interruption-advertising, product placement advertising and the TV-personality-referrer advertising as people are now more influenced by the Internet.
Her website is not part of the social media and is clearly promoting products too obviously to be trust worthy on the Internet.
Oprah probably didn’t realize the changes that are happening in the marketing and advertising space when she showed Twitter to the (consumer) world.
She was killing her own business.
How is your business and marketing being affected or influenced by search engines and social media ?
The year 2009 might be remembered as the turning point for Internet as the social techniques – social media have become the new SEO for marketing websites.
Previously the black art of traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) where
- Keywords, meta tags, description, internal links in the website
- The Page Rank defined by the importance of links
Ruled the game and were the measurement for the findability of any website.
Most of these parameters could be kept under control by the company or website owner. In most cases spending more money would mean higher SERP rankings.
The democracy of the Internet is now more important:
The more people talk about your website, brand, products, solutions or services the higher you will rank.
The number of mentions on the Internet is taken as indicator of popularity and importance.
Even if people post negative reviews and comments about your brand or products, the ranking in search results will increase.
Additionally the real-time has become even more important as there is a war ongoing between Twitter, Bing and Google to present the most relevant and up-to-date (real-time) information in their searches.
Democracy of the Internet
On the other hand people both at home as consumers and in companies use the Internet to find solutions to their problems, demands or needs, will select possible brands or vendors on the Internet and could even make decisions for buying using the Internet.
All without any interference of company sales people!
Reviews, advices and comments on social media have become most important in purchase decisions in B2C and B2B.
This is the democracy of the Internet with the evolution to social media marketing.
These changes pose a tremendous problem for marketing and brand managers as they are no longer in control and throwing massive amounts of money on advertising will not show up in search engine results or even generate more interest from potential customers.
It is time to take a walk on the wild side of marketing: social media marketing.
The interruption-marketing using interruptive-advertising (display ads) are no longer the success formula as people get better in blocking them out. Still these marketing methods will stay in existence: direct mail, broadcast advertising (radio, tv), billboards, print advertising, …
Social media brings data overload
Disruptive change brings the new problem of figuring out how to leverage and use all the possible social techniques and social media available for reaching the potential customers. It is not just learning to use all the tools of social media as it is also about optimizing the social media techniques for customer awareness and customer acquisition.
Using social media is very time consuming as individual people need to be behind every statement or information that is published on the Internet.
Moreover as the produced and published amounts of information and data about a brand or product are becoming massive, it cannot be controlled by a company any more. It is data overload.
The damage control is even harder to do as just one person can publish negative information that will spread faster than positive news or information.
The challenges for marketing and brand managers just got almost impossible thanks to real-time social media that have become premium importance for Google, Bing and Twitter.
The disruptive social media will change your marketing for ever.
Platform used: Facebook
Attributes: pictures – images and pictures help to engage people
Engagement: contest – the first person that tagged the picture won
Their friends noticed the win of their friend and spread the news.
More pictures were demanded.
Pictures spread to thousands of people promoting IKEA.
Of course this is consumer social media marketing for a giant retail store.
Could anything similar be applied to BtoB using one of the typical business social websites like: LinkedIn (US) Ecademy (UK) Viadeo (FR) Xing (GE)
as a platform using the existing functions?
Engage the members by offering something related to your business services.
The bigger the company the more cautious for experimenting with new methods in marketing and sales and thus they will use the traditional channels further on as they know and control them:
Advertising, Press Releases, Advertorials, PR and even paid reviews.
Only a few of the larger companies will take the risk of entering the Social Media Marketing.
Especially public traded companies have issues to use social media as all their communications need to be controlled and in line with their other communications due to (internal) regulations and SOX.
This requires a long approval process. So long the market or marketing opportunity has probably passed by a long time ago.
Due to the shorter and less hierarchic approval process, the smaller or medium sized companies will be leading in social media marketing. Whereas bigger companies are sitting on the side, not being able to make any movement or take any decision.
Social Media Marketing: reluctance to engage
On the other hand there are more reasons why companies don’t take a walk on the wild side of social media marketing:
- The scary image
- The uncontrolled magnitude
- The required time
- The 2-way communication
The scary image of social media marketing painted by consultants
In order to sell at a high price and make themselves indispensable, consultants will paint the image of many dangers and hazards of social media marketing.
If they make it look simple, then there is no reason companies would pay for their services.
Thus mainly larger companies will have fear using social media marketing.
The uncontrolled magnitude
However it is partially true as the effects, the reactions and the magnitude of social media marketing can reach far beyond the traditional marketing channels.
Social media marketing takes time
Instead of immediate results like email marketing or advertising, social media marketing requires time as it needs to grow on a large number of people.
Social media marketing is not hit an run like many other marketing methods.
The 2-way communication
Companies were used to have one way communication using the interruptive marketing of advertising and email marketing.
Social media marketing is two way: social interaction;
This is something new and difficult to handle: especially for companies that have been used to one way communication since many years and their sole feedback was a controlled customer service facility.
The time is now to embrace Social Media Marketing
Still the time is here for all companies to take a walk on the wild side of social media marketing.
Experiment and start small in order to learn.
Don’t fear social media marketing – embrace it for the better.
Be the Transformer of your company.
This is especially true as the economy and thus companies are coming out of a recession and a new era lies in front of us all.
Don’t stay behind.
A new world with different rules of the game of Marketing.
Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Interruptive marketing gets blocked
Technology gets ever better in blocking out content that we don’t want:
- TV recorders jump the commercial breaks
- Spam filters filter out spam messages
- Browsers have plug-ins that filter out ads
People also get better in filtering out messages we don’t want to see:
- People zap commercial breaks
- People scan over or ignore a online advertising
- People don’t click on online advertising
- People don’t open email marketing messages
Content marketing: Content nurturing spots instead of fishing nets
This is the change from interruptive marketing into content marketing.
People will look and search for interesting content or content that suits their current need or interest.
Instead of setting out fishing nets as with advertising, content marketing is quite different as you set out many nurturing spots in many places with the hope of attracting the fresh fish that will eventually land into your trap by paying attention to your proposition.
The content marketing has one big advantage in case your content gets duplicated and distributed as if your food at the nurturing spot was distributed freely by the visiting fish.
Social marketing: beyond your controlled environment
Advertising, advertorials and the company website are all controlled environments.
As the prey is now blocking and ignoring your advertising your marketing has to mingle amongst the people in the social marketing – even for BtoB.
This is stepping out of controlled and safe environments that just required money and somewhat creation.
Now you need mainly creativity and inspiration to reach your target customers.
Still social marketing will not solve your marketing problems as it is only a part of the complete picture..
Take advantage when the rules of the game change
People block your advertising, then you need to adapt and change. Else your company will be extinct: the natural selection of Darwin (‘The survival of the fittest’) will be applied.
The rules of the game have changed and companies need to take advantage of this change.
Instead of interruptive marketing, content marketing and social marketing is here to stay.
One of the main problems with content and social marketing is to know who the visitor is as you cannot ask his ID.
Previously with advertising or emailing campaigns more was known about the targeted interested party. This implies and requires new solutions to find out about your visiting fish.
How effective is your advertising lately?
How much of your advertising actually reaches your target market?
The trend spotters and the marketing guru’s promised the social media marketing revolution.
As a result every brand:
- Needed to have a Facebook page (or a MySpace page in 2006)
- Was editing and publishing a blog about their brand (that nobody interested)
- Was posting Tweets on Twitter like a spammer (amongst all the automated spam)
- Was writing comments on blog posts like a parasite.
Probably the contrarian is true: the social media marketing revolution has become an evolution instead.
A blog post is a lot of work and posting frequently then a blog becomes real work.
A micro blog post is fast and short, still it doesn’t catch on: hardly anybody on Twitter tweets.
Some people do comment on blogs, but these are a minority and mostly the same people.
Maybe the reason for this is because creating content requires inspiration, effort and creativity.
Rapster Miley Cyrus says Goodbye to Twitter because she started ‘living for moments’ and wanted to start ‘living for people’ instead:
Passive people instead of participation in social media
Ever more people watch YouTube, however passively.
That’s not social media as social media requires interaction and participation: YouTube, Seesmic, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Viddler all have become a broadcast system like TV has been since ever.
Content is probably still king, but the number of successful or influential sources will become limited.
Instead of creating new content, people are lazy and just share content (Bookmark or ReTweet) by clicking a button next to the original content. The lesser the effort required, the higher the likelihood of getting propagated over the Internet.
Social media will continue to exist especially for specific interest groups but instead of an explosive revolution that changes the world overnight, there will be a slow evolution.
It will take several decennia before social media will be used throughout all layers of the industrialized world.
Social media killed the journalist
Journalism and news media will never be the same again as anyone from anywhere in the world can get attention using the Internet: the decline of newspapers and magazines.
Isn’t it strange that gossip magazines seem to survive over all the serious information sources? Is this related to the type of people reading these gossip magazines?
However as many are shouting or crying for your attention, they will need to be shouting the right keywords on the right moment. As many are shouting every now and then a few some will get the demanded attention.
What is the chance the message from your company will be ever heard amongst all the shouting?
Interruptive advertising is dying
If social media has achieved one thing, it is the interruptive advertising marketing has become an unsustainable model. People will turn away from the online advertising just like nearly everybody zaps away during TV-commercials.
Interruptive advertising is dying a sure death.
This causes a new problem as good old advertising has become hardly effective. What should businesses use in order to announce products and solutions?
How should they get any attention?
There is no evolution without revolution
Probably we are currently seeing the typical hype curve where we just passed the hype and are now descending before the masses start to pick up the trend.
As the hype cycle is over the top, social media is here to stay and to grow by more general adaptation by most layers of the population.
Still irrevocable damage has been done to journalism, newspapers and magazines together to the interruption advertising which has ruled for so many years.
Slowly brands will adapt to the evolution that social media marketing has to offer with new rules: As the rules of the game are known, the windows of opportunity have log been closed.
How is your company using Social media effectively?
What has been cancelled or is no longer being updated? The company blog, the Facebook page, Twitter ?
What is being used? Advertising or Social media?
How does your company achieve to be heard by potential customers?
Do click on the ReTweet button (at the top) or share this by bookmarking (below) – Thanks in advance
Interruptive marketing gets blocked
