Social Media Expert or snake oil salesman?

image courtesy of Hugh MacLeod

It seems like everyday we’re introduced to at least a half dozen new “Social media experts” who will gladly assist your business with Twitter, Facebook, Blogging and whatever else is popular that day. With unemployment so high right now, a lot of would-be entrepreneurs are diving into social media, simply thinking that just by knowing how to use the tools, they’re capable of overseeing a brand’s image online.

This new sentiment is scary to say the least.

What a lot of businesses fail to understand is the true power of social media and where it is going. Yes kids, social media is the future, and I’ve got news for you, the future has arrived.

There are a few key questions to ask yourself when hiring a self-proclaimed “Social media expert.”

1. Would I hire this person to create and build my brand?

2. Would I put this person in charge of my customer service ?

3. Would I put this person in charge of my advertising campaign?

If you cannot give a solid yes nod to any of these questions, then you might want to think twice.  Social media is about interaction with your customers, future customers, partners and associates. It is about building trust and solid relationships. Social Media is about communication on the most fundamental levels.  These people will all form an opinion about you and your business based upon that social media experience.  Is this something you really want to put in the hands of someone who just knows how to post some pictures, play Farmville and re-tweet a motivational quote?

No matter what you hear, Social Media is marketing, customer service and relationship building all wrapped up in one. When someone walks in for a meeting about building your new blog or managing your tweets, remember, they are the face of your business on the fastest growing form of communication ever. Proceed with caution.

The Importance of Customer Experience and Branding

I just finished reading the AdAge Digital article entitled: “Why Search May Not Click for Retailers by Abbey Klaassen.

” According to the article, retailers are inclined to throw lots of money into search for this upcoming holiday season, but the truth is, the search trends are showing this may not be such a great idea.

Less than 10% of online retailers’ web traffic, on average, comes from search engines, according to an analysis by Nielsen Co.’s Online division.Nielsen found the majority of retailers’ web traffic (61%, on average) comes from people going directly to a retail site — consumers typing, say, Amazon.com into a browser address bar.

The article also claims that a bulk of the search traffic is attributed to “navigational searches” i.e. typing the name of the brand in the search bar as opposed to a product category.

So what does this all mean?

First of all, I do not think search engine optimization should be ignored. On the contrary, it is of extreme importance.

However, search is unlikely to be effective without a solid brand. This research and article is a prime example of how past customer experiences and branding are of utmost importance.  As a retailer, if your brand is not solid and your past customer experiences are lacking, your success in outward marketing efforts in general (not just search) will be wasted.

This holiday season, what can retailers (and other businesses that hinge upon customer experiences) do to ensure your brand stays ahead? Check out the following helpful links on branding and customer experience to get started.

• Attention Consumer-Based Businesses: Your Brand Represents 50%-80% of Your Value!
• Better Communication = Satisfied Customers
• Once your Advertising Has Done it’s Job, Positive Customer Experience Must Follow Through
• Sniffing for Market Share
• The Power of Words

Feel free to post other helpful blogs and articles!

Choosing the Right Traditional Media for Your Company

Using Traditional Media (newspapers, magazines, television, radio, billboards, etc.) may not be for everyone and it is certainly only a portion of your overall marketing efforts. Once you determine whether or not these advertising vehicles even make sense for you, it can definitely become a daunting task. With all of the options and media reps constantly vying for your business, it is easy to get distracted and not use the best choices for your business.

Now more than ever, companies are being extremely careful and cautious when it comes to spending money. It seems that advertising budgets are being cut left and right. Instead of thinking about cutting your budget, perhaps it is time to reevaluate your spending to make sure the best possible choices are being used. A few tweaks and changes could prove to be more effective, yielding you a much better result for the same amount of money! Who wouldn’t want that, right?

Here are some basic tips for making the best media choices:

When deciding on the right mediums for your business, take your target audience into consideration.

Many of my posts preach about carving out your niche and deciding on your target audience. This is because having a grasp on this information can save you a truckload of money and instantly make your advertising more effective. For example, if your ideal customer is female between the ages of 35-54, you may want to look into certain lifestyle magazines or radio stations that are programmed to attract this listener. The point is, do not purchase your media with the sole intent of reaching the most people. You will end up paying way too much money to reach an audience that may not be the best.

Targeting also allows you to use advertising consistently. Back to my previous example, TV spots in the evening news may be too expensive to purchase consistently. You may have reached more people, but you were not able to achieve the amount of repetition necessary to be effective. Instead, looking to certain cable channels that appeal to your demographic will allow you to spend less and hit this targeted audience more frequently.

Become familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of each advertising vehicle. Click here for a list of some of these advantages and disadvantages.

Determine your advertising goals.

Are you suffering from a wrong branding perception? Then it would not benefit you to run a one week radio schedule. Are you holding a blow-out fall celebration sale? Then a heavy campaign during the week leading up to the campaign would be appropriate and beneficial. Weigh your goals against what each medium does well.

Weigh the costs

Cost to your budget is usually the main concern when buying traditional media. How much are you willing to spend for a customer? Based on the cost of the advertising and the amount of people in your target audience that you will be reaching, is it worth it? What do you need to break even? Are the results you desire a reasonable expectation?

Hopefully, using these tips as part of your overall marketing plan will help alleviate some of the stress of traditional media buying. Have other tips? I would love to hear them!

Working for Change vs. Making Changes – How Community Involvement Benefits Businesses and Their Causes

I just finished reading AdWeek’s article “How Change Happens,” by David Mitchell and Kirk Souder – it talks about the difference between working for changing and successfully making changes. It focuses mostly on non-profit initiatives (getting more people to put on seatbelts and getting fewer to drunk drive, for example), but it’s an idea that all companies and organizations can use to their advantage.

A lot of attention has been paid lately to companies who are focusing their attentions on making a difference – Dawn is used to clean cute animals covered in oil, Dairy Queen is partnering with the Girl Scouts, and TOMS shoes gives a pair to a needy child for every pair sold. Part of the idea behind publicizing these charitable actions is to give them an advantage over their competition. I know that when I bought dish detergent last month, I picked Dawn because I associated them with adorable ducks being rescued (I’m a girl and cute things appeal to me, sue me!).

This partnership is valuable to Dawn – if you can gain one indisputable competitive advantage over the product next to yours on the shelf, you win. But now think about how valuable it is to the volunteers to cleaning up oil spills – they could have asked their neighbors to bring in extra donations of soap, but that would have an extremely limited reach. They could have written to their state government and asked for funding and publicity, but that’s still limited to their state’s borders. They could have started a website, and maybe people already interested in cleaning up oil spills could have found them (but with the amount of information on the internet, even that wouldn’t yield much). Short of getting a spot on Oprah during Sweeps Week, there really isn’t much they could have done to grab the attention, and more importantly the donations, that their partnership with Dawn is getting them.

Dawn has a map of donations on their website, and every state has contributed something. It’s mutually beneficial relationships like this that are the key to making change happen on a large scale.

If you have an organization you’d like to support, don’t just think about what you can do for them. I have a friend who works closely to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and she said something once that really stuck with me. “If I had millions of dollars,” she said, “I wouldn’t just give it all to St. Jude’s. I’d pay to have people visit the hospital to see the work they’re doing, and see how important it is, so that they’ll be just as motivated to go out and work for their own donations.” That’s the key – one person, even one important person, can’t change things as well as communities. It’s about getting others to want to make the change too.

From a business standpoint, your reputation grows with every potential customer who hears about the good you’re doing. From a personal standpoint, any opportunity to get others to support your cause means it will benefit from the wide net of support you can give them. There’s nothing wrong with working for change – just make sure you’re going about it the best way you can, and soon you, and everyone who is helping you, will be making those changes.

Is your company making a change? We’d love to hear about it!

Loving the new retro Pepsi

I just started seeing the special “throwback” Pepsi bottles. Love it! Additionally, I loved that they used the term “throwback” instead of the more obvious “retro” (read: my title). Pepsi is so good at identifying with the new generation even when looking at the past. They could have chosen to use “old skool” but, even Pepsi knows, that is “old skool.”

Wal-mart Re-Branded

Wal-mart… we all have certain feelings associated with the retailer, but through their new campaigns they are trying to change these previous feelings. The task is to create a new image still resonating with those tightening their budgets, but adding the aspect of high value and sophistication. Hence, “Save money. Live better.” They began with their logo change months back that introduced the “sunburst” and took them from Wal-mart to Walmart. But their re-branding efforts have continued (as they must in order to break the thought patterns of millions Americans toward the store).

Remember those smiley commercials with the smile bouncing on prices and watching them “rollback”? Instead, we are seeing clean, simple, ads, with much more sophistication.

Magazine ads are also clean and chic carrying messages such as “beauty for less” and showing models next to the Walmart products. Whether you like Walmart or not, one can hardly ignore the cleverness of such a campaign in tight economic times like this. They are basically saying, “Hey you gotta spend smarter and be more careful, and that’s okay. You can still live your life with all the luxuries you did before. Going to Walmart makes everything better.”

I just had to share this design…

From the Mary Kay Website

Pepsi – Let’s look again

I don’t mean to be the devil’s advocate here. (Well, maybe a little). But I wanted to throw in another twist to the previous Pepsi blog. Yes, it may appear that Pepsi has just updated their logo frivolously. However, what brand is causing a stir to the point that people are talking about it? PEPSI! Did you even noticed Coke sitting there? I would guess not. How many other people will see the new logo and take notice?

The new logo is hip and fun. Yes, a brand must always hold true to its legacy, and I think it still is holding true. We do not look at the new logo and say, “What is this new brand I have never heard of ?” Of course not. We look at the new, funky red, blue, and white circle and go “Wow. Pepsi got a makeover.” Seeing that symbol still conjures up the same feelings toward the brand and we still recognize it as such. In my opinion, becoming hip and cool is smart. Change is not always a bad thing!

Also, let’s not forget about the younger demographics. I would guess that Pepsi would like to snag some of these people making the all important choice: Pepsi or Coke? Which brand appeals more to them? Yeah, traditional legacies are great, but so is being innovative.

New Pepsi Logo?

So we are driving home from a wonderful night in Bethesda Maryland, got thirsty and stopped at a Sheetz for a “refill.” Much to our surprise we came across the new Pepsi can and logo design. Hello?! What is going on here? I’m not quite sure what to think. The last logo update in the mid 90s was good. It was more of a refresh and hipster update. The new 2009 update looks more like someone in marketing said, “i’m sick of the logo, everyone is doing a refresher… why not us too?” Folks, you can’t just update a logo to update a logo.

Is Pepsi smiling?

The text (font) is a throwback to the mid-80s “diet pepsi” look. Like everything, that style has somewhat come back into “vogue” but not for Pepsi. Yes, this look is much cleaner and more streamlined -I’m all for that- but the update looks forced. The famous RED/BLUE/WHITE swoosh is the biggest change. Throughout the years it has had various treatments, but the concept was still the same. Now, the whole design has been turned on its head! Am I the only person who thinks it is smiling?

Pepsi has always been the hipper brand when it come to the fight between Coke & Pepsi, but they big mistake you make when trying to be hip is maintaining your legacy. Staying true to your heritage, especially when you’re a heritage brand, is probably (above all) the most important thing you can do. I think Pepsi’s new look will not sell more soda, nor will it inspire faithful coke drinkers to make the leap.

Congrats Pepsi — you’re hip. But you’re still not #1. For advice on how to keep that #1 spot for more than a century look at Coke’s new logo… wait, they don’t have one.

I should note, I’ve always preferred Pepsi.

Apple Store

Yes, they’re genius. If you really want to follow someone’s lead (although at 3rd Idea, we prefer to set the trend), Apple is a great example! They “get” “it,” especially when it comes to complete brand follow through.  Why am I saying this?

Right now, I’m using a new “MacBook Pro” at the Apple Store in Lancaster. 3rd Idea is in the process of converting to a complete Apple setup and we’re excited be apart of the “Apple Revolution.”