Brain Vibe

marketing muses to stay engaged

April 24, 2009 • 1:03 pm 1

Tribe Attraction

I was conducting hash-tag searches in Twitter and found one tweet that peaked my interest.

sengseng ”Where/what are the “pheromones” in online/web organized societies?”

Now that IS a question. It’s what every marketer needs to figure out to build their social network. It points to the fact that there is something we need to create in our marketing DNA to build attraction.

The best marketers all talk about relevant content. SEO experts talk about building routes and sign-posts. Brands experts talk about personality and experience. In it all, there is “pheromones”.

Pheromones is the real attraction component in social media. It is the underlying component that gets you noticed. It is what brings the right people to you. Connections are made at a subconscious level. There may be an effort, or a lot of effort, to getting noticed. However, it is the pheromones that are the tipping point pulling a tribe together.

I think there is something in the way a blog is written and a voice comes out. It may be the way a comment is constructed. Could it be the pictures and images that enhance a profile or perspective?

I don’t know that I have an answer to this, but it is an important thing to think about. sengseng, thanks for asking the question!

What do you think?

Filed under: customer relationship, networking, social media, brand, leadership, social media, social networks, tribe, tribes

April 22, 2009 • 12:44 pm 0

Brand Identity – What Should You Care About?

A while back I got to thinking about shortened URLs and how that diminished an entities ability to brand and extend their identity. Afterall, companies will spend a lot of money to buy back parked URLs to maintain their brand footprint. It’s why people bought them up in the first place. Well, it seems like I wasn’t the only one thinking about this as SEO experts criticize Digg and other website/blog aggregators, and even URL shortening services for hijacking website brands and traffic.

What’s the next thing to worry about, who is using your username? KnowEm is a service that helps you protect your user name and vanity URL across 120 popular social media sites. Type in the user name you want to use and see where it is already being used. If it is available, the service allows you to buy up the user name across the social media sites.

I know all the brand managers out there are going to be up in arms about this, but I don’t really see the point. I’m not losing viewership because my blog is tweeted in a shortened URL nor am I losing followers. In fact, I’m gaining readers and followers. My user names across my social media properties don’t matter much because I offer up my real name when commenting or posting. My sites are embedded in the profile name. And, on social networks, it’s there in plain view my full profile for those that care. People will know who I am. Besides, that’s what profiles are for, it’s not about the user name.

Talking to a friend of mine on this, his opinion is that the social networks will shut this this down.

[Paraphrase] Like Facebook policing its masses and kicking out spammers, parked user names aren’t contributing to the social network experience and will suffer the same fate. Some may allow it initially to beef up their numbers. Although, in the end it will be treated like spam.

The point of social media and social networking is building trust and interacting. Brand isn’t about a logo or a name – those can change and do. Brand is about an experience, trust, and connection. Look at Twitter, it’s name has been stretched and morphed across a variety of tools that have hooked into its lead. Twitter gets that these surrounding applications add to its brand equity and fosters it.

Let’s focus on what matters, building relationships.

Filed under: networking, social media, brand, branding, copywriting, marketing, online profile, personal brand, trademark, URL, user name

April 21, 2009 • 1:25 pm 4

My Twitter Connection

To be honest, I’m still working on the Twitter thing. I haven’t written much on this little tool mostly because I’m still trying to get my arms around it and what I want from it. Although, I think maybe this is what Twitter is all about. Instead of a tool that comes with deep instructions on what to do with it – a real purpose – Twitter lets you figure that out for yourself. How cool is that?

I’ve had my head down for most of the past week working on a research report. For those that follow regularly, I apologize for the long pause of conversation. But, I found out something about myself and Twitter in the process. The interesting thing is that as I was consumed by data, spreadsheets, charts, and prose, the way I stayed connected was through Twitter. My trusty Tweetdeck was up all the time chirping away as the people I follow kept me informed of what was going on through news and comments. I ignored email, which took too long to read and would detract me from my work. I let my calls go to voicemail unless caller ID told me I really shouldn’t ignore this person. My time on Facebook and LinkedIn was as quite as my blogging – except for my wistful call for the cold Guinness my dear husband was bringing home on Friday. I never even read my newsfeeds, web surfed, or turned on my IM. Yet, Twitter made sure I didn’t truly fall off the face of the earth.

Right now, Twitter is my dutch door to the world. I try to provide content I think people want to hear about, whether it is my own or from others, and I avidly scan and read what others send. Even if last week my clicks on shrunken URLs didn’t happen, the headlines that came with them kept me in touch. Amazing what can be said with 140 characters! On the other hand, the bottom of the dutch door, ‘conversation’, is still something I’m working on. Haven’t quite figured that one out for myself. Probably because I’m a bit of an introvert.

On that note, it seems that my Twitter crowd has gotten interested in Twibes. I joined several Twibe groups and look forward to connecting this way. Maybe this will help me open the bottom of my door. Anyhow, looks like an interesting twist on the Twitter community and can’t wait to really work it.

What do you use Twitter for and why is it powerful for you?

Filed under: networking, social media, blogging, micro-blogging, social media, social networking, Twitter

April 7, 2009 • 4:09 pm 0

B2B Social Media: Breaking Out of the Noise

Paid search and SEO are the buzz to get your message out in internet marketing and thus social media marketing. However, my experience has been that this really doesn’t break through the noise.

As social media marketing is the preferred method for 2009, it has leapt out of novelty and into a noisy market. Everyone is on Twitter. Everyone is creating fan pages. Everyone has a blog. Everyone is on YouTube. Everyone! It is not easier today to get your message out than it was in 2008 when you had budget. In fact, it is harder. Social media made it harder.

The reality is that even if you use your social media marketing vehicles to push out content or have active communities, you can’t rely on a single tactic of social media confined to your B2B website and brand. You have to find your market and move up through various avenues to surround your market. Simply creating a more interactive website that is socially inclined and pointing to it through paid search and SEO will only get you so far. You need to act socially as well.

I started this blog at the end of January as a way to talk about my thoughts on marketing, which then seemed to morph into a discussion on social media marketing. I didn’t have any real objective other than trying to connect with others and expanding the conversation. But, I am an analytic marketer by nature and so I track everything I can to see how things are progressing. This past week I watched several things happen that created the tipping point I’d been wondering would happen. I achieved a Google page rank of 4 and when my technorati tool is working I see I have an authority of 14. Yahoo has almost 16,000 links to me and I’ve seen my Twitter followers organically increase – I don’t promote outside my blog. The result, deep reach in traffic from long tail search. Search traffic is above referral traffic for the first time ever and set a new steady state that equals my steady state of referrals. Naturally, I wanted to know why.

There are a lot of blogs out there that give SEO how-tos. I’ve read most of them and tried most everything in the last couple of months. They all talk about the necessity of heavy linking in you blog posts to grab the long tail. They talk about actively posting comments across other blogs that point back to you. They talk about reciprocating links. They say that where you have your tags on your sites and blogs make a difference. Your are encouraged to blog often. This might work for your company website. I say, it helps, but for social media, that isn’t it. I’ve done these things from the beginning. Linking still seems to be the trick but it is tied to social media participation rather than links that act like banners.

This is what I found…

The biggest way to break through the noise in social media marketing is to participate in social media.

Participate in non-company communities. Learn from your customers as much as you educate them.
Become a featured blogger. Become a thought leader.
Use Twitter to promote other’s content as much as you promote your own (RT). Pay it forward.
Blog often, but blog with relevance. If you have nothing to say, don’t say anything.
Don’t be snarky. Encourage and educate rather than berate.

Now that you are using social media in marketing, try participating to get that extra boost and break through the noise.

Filed under: b2b, networking, social media, Google, Internet marketing, marketing, online communities, PageRank, paid search, Search engine optimization, social media, social media marketing, social networking, Twitter

March 25, 2009 • 1:28 pm 1

B2B Social Media is Not One-Size-Fits-All Part 1

Social media opens up a wide array of possibilities for marketers as well as cost savings. However, how or if it is used for marketing will look entirely different depending on the company, industry, and products and solutions sold. Social media marketing is not “one-size-fits-all”.

The hype of late has really told the story of social media marketing within the consumer arena. The picture is quite different in business-to-business. When Forrester talks about 50% of marketers increasing their spend in social media, take out business-to-consumer and you get a very different perspective. Supporting this, agencies see the big push in social media spending is really still from consumer focused companies.

In a recent Q&A session on LinkedIn, I asked marketers what percentage of marketing spend was for social media marketing and what that number was last year. So, even if everyone said they were increasing spend, this could provide a perspective on how committed they were. One reply provided an article from from eMarketer and included a graphic on social network advertising spend. To my surprise, the biggest increase of spend was not this year (2009) 17% but last year (2008) 46%. No wonder all the hype over the past year.

But, this still doesn’t show what is happening in B2B. That came from responses from marketing and business development. The B2B social media marketing spend answer: no marketing spend. None. Zero. However, that doesn’t mean that no effort is spent on social media marketing. Dani Lee, Director of Marketing at Copanion says, “(This) is partly due to the fact that our B2B SMB target audience has low adoption of social networking. However, from a time perspective, we definitely spend more time on social networking this year compared to almost no time last year. We drive content to our social networking sites with the goal of creating more engagement with our audience over various channels.” Another contributor doesn’t see that social media makes sense in highly complex solution sales.

The big question is, what does social media marketing do for B2B? Or, is there also a factor that social media marketing as it is defined today does not represent B2B marketing perspectives for marketing overall.

Where social media marketing and advertising is focused on the consumer, the engagement is much more relaxed and, well, social. In B2B, there is a lot of vested interest on both sides of the deal. Sending tweets to customers may not be the answer to relationship building. There also may not be an audience to connect to through social networks and communities. B2B is going to have to figure out what the conversation looks like from their perspective and map to social media outlets. It all boils down to conversational preference.

You can watch the Q&A session on LinkedIn by going to http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/internet-marketing/MAR_ADP_INM/443710-575533?searchIdx=0&sik=1237987444226&goback=%2Easr_1_1237987444226

Also, if you would like to participate in a survey on budget and resource allocation, you can go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=9ccwmeJJoa_2f_2fcSl_2bwgr_2fDA_3d_3d

Part 2

Related Articles:

You Don’t Have to Get Social Media, You’re Doing It

Conversational Preference in B2B Social Media