Engage Daily Blog

Will Your Friends Donate if You Talk Charity?

I'm in the midst of finalizing a workshop presentation on social media for nonprofits to be given at Cal State Fullerton's Summer School for Nonprofits. It has gotten me thinking a great deal about why Twestival, Lance Armstrong and even Ronald McDonald House have found great success using social media. (They're personal, about social at their core, high value and engaging.)

It's also triggered the desire to let more people know about the charities I support. And as luck would have it, Mashable posted an article on how to use social media to support your charities today. It's worth a read.

(Image: My favorite children's book, The Giving Tree)

When You Tweet, Think "How Can I Help?"

Every time you get on Twitter, Facebook or your blog, you should ask yourself, "How can I help?" Before you begin to write, consider whether or not the tidbit, idea, event, link, photo or insight provides even a small bit of value to someone. Will it be worth their time to read?

When you start with "How can I help?" you minimize the risk of making mistakes such as maligning a client's hometown or revealing private company information. Even better, you plant a seed in your customer's mind. I'm more than just another customer. I matter to this company.

And that will positively impact your company's customer experience with it's target audience, increase visibility of the brand, create word-of-mouth and redefine your marketing.

And although I drafted this blog post a few weeks ago, this morning I felt the urge to finish and post it. I was listening to Stephanie Miller from Return Path on a webinar (hosted by Guy Kawasaki and Andy Sernovitz) and she said that with social media "you need to have something to say." That can be harder than it sounds.

Stephanie went on to say, that it's not as difficult as you think as long as you "start with, How can I help?" (Apparently we're like minded. Time for me to join her tribe.) Your communications should embrace the personality of your brand and at the same time add value.

Next up on the webinar was Andy Sernovitz (social media wiz, author, blogger). He emphasized that it is your job to "Make your audience fall in love with you. Love is the reason people talk about you." One way to create the love is to keep offering your audience free information, interactions, and giveaways (and amazing customer service and products). Anything that helps create and extend the love. Love is renewable and sustainable, but it needs flowers and a trip to Rome.

Then Brendan Hart from National Geographic made an extraordinary statement. National Geographic doesn't think of subscribers as paying customers who receive a product, but as members (of their tribe). You don't just get a magazine. You join a community of people who are passionate about making the world a better place. If only the newspaper industry could figure that out.

Guy asked Brendan what National Geographic would do if a passionate member grabbed an exclusive National Geographic photo and made millions of posters and bumpers stickers and other collateral from it? He answered simply, "we would work out a deal to get the person to donate to the community from which the photo came." It didn't even enter Brandon's mind to sue the person to stop the abuse. Everyone is a member. Part of the family.

Marketing is no longer a tagline or message. It's about what you do that makes other people love you and want to talk about you.

How Can I Help?

Social media drives organizations to reinvent their marketing as a service. What are your customers worried about or trying to figure out? What do they already love about your brand? Emphasize your desire to help by creating content that is rich with tips, creative ideas, insight, perspective and a point of view. Link to articles and blog posts that support or argue against your point. Create an environment that is so valuable, customers can't help but come back and tell their friends.

Don't push out information that is all about your company. Product releases, company events, and CEO talks fail on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. By now, it's pretty clear why. Self-serving content doesn't help your audience. How can you reshape the content to be about them?

Mix your content types. You can offer apps (Facebook and iPhone to start), video, images, games, and surveys. You don't have to rely solely on the written word. You can also enable your audience to add content of value. Skittles (that tasty, colorful candy) has garnered over 1,000,000 fans on Facebook who simply want to state that they love Skittles. I bet your customers have much more to say about your products.

Marketing online is more than pushing your message. It is about gathering followers and creating community. Treat your audience as members rather than as purchasers. Give them a reason to love your brand over and over again. And giving them every opportunity to talk about it.

Then next time you create a campaign, update your Facebook page or tweet, start with How can I help?

Small Business Communities Abound - 9 You Should Know About

If you run a small business, this has been a tough year. Supposedly the government is here to help you out with credit, loans and someday more cost-effective health care. Don't hold your breath.

Even though the government may not be there to help, big business is. There are a number of sites popping up across the Web to inform, connect and give visibility to small businesses.

Following are 9 of them.

9 Communities Targeted at Small Business

Sage's SageSpark

This is a well designed site with great content, free tools, easy navigation and a terrific look. The Sage Group has done an amazing job of aggregating the customer experience for the broad array of disparate software and service platforms they offer.

 

American Express Open Forum

Most people know about Amex's Open Forum. The site has been successful drawing a strong audience. A great deal of content is syndicated from top marketing and business bloggers. They've also done a good job of incorporating valuable video content.

The Visa Business Network (on Facebook)

Because it is an app on Facebook, The Visa Business Network has a very different feel from Amex's community. It's more personal and designed to be more interactive. They highlight specific small businesses each month. The downside is that the conversation doesn't appear in your feed so you have to remember to go back to the app.

Dell's Social Media for Small Business (on Facebook)

Dell set this up as a Facebook fan page. They get very good interaction from readers and provide valuable beginner's tools for social media.

Intuit's Small Business United

Intuit's site is similar to the SageSpark site but it has been around longer. Intuit also promotes their products more on the community. There's lots of good information. They run contests and encourage users to share information.

 

The U.S. Government's Business.Gov Community

As you might expect, this site is packed with useful information for all of the paperwork and processes around starting a company: registration, license, permits, and taxes. The social side is set up as forums where readers can post questions.

Bank of America's Small Business Online Community

This community is fairly basic. Some original content is created in the form of articles. And there are forums for customers to ask questions or offer answers.

The Wall Street Journal's Journal Community

This community isn't targeted specifically to small business but it is a great site to join groups, talk about the news and give you or your business visibility as well as additional knowledge.

BusinessWeek's Business Exchange

Much like the WSJ Community, BusinessWeek's Business Exchange isn't targeted directly to small business but is a useful platform if you have the time.

 

You will find valuable information on all of these sites. But to get visibility for you or your business you will need to dedicate time every day to creating and responding to content. So pick one or two that make sense for you.

Related posts:

Join Communities That Matter
Connecting People in OC

6 iPhone Apps You Should Have Built for Your Business

You already know that everyone has a mobile phone. They keep it with them all day, most of the evening and even on vacation. Wouldn't that suggest that mobile apps are a critical element of your customer's experience (and therefore your business)? Have you thought about how you can re-purpose content and provide productivity tools, fresh content and other useful applications on the iPhone that essentially brand your company every time a customer clicks? (Let alone, make your customers love you more.)

Here are 6 iPhone application examples to get you thinking about how you can apply mobile to your business.

This app is from PetTech and Jive Media. The information can be applied to any business or any industry. What can go wrong? And how should customers respond? List the symptoms of a problem and tips to fix. Remind customers the basics for keeping the product in good running order. You get the point.

MarketingProfs may be a content network, but any business can re-purpose content in a useful, easily accessible format for the iphone. MarketingProfs does a terrific job.

Another app. from MarketingProfs is Q&A. Just ask any marketing question and get an answer right on your phone. Does it get any better than that? Don't you have customers that would find a tool like this useful?

This is a business intelligence app for the iPhone from Extended Results. (It's a great way for this Microsoft partner to stand out from the pack.)

What knowledge can you give your customers to help them make better business decisions? Do you have fluctuating fees, service rates, financing that they would want to track or be alerted to?

Does your company go to trade shows, hold events, seminars or webcasts? This type of tool implemented by Ypulse for the Youth Marketing Mashup is perfect for helping your customers get the most out of the activity.

Here's another take on providing strategic business information to your customers by Corda Technologies. This is a private login tool so that proprietary information is kept private.

When you build your app, make sure you mock it up first and have customers try it out. It's critical that the information or tool is useful or highly valuable, but the app also needs to be intuitive.

What companies do you know that have built great apps for their customers?

Are You a Cat or a Dog Online?

Are you eager to get something someone else already has? Do you follow people around wherever they go? Are you compelled to sniff in places you really shouldn't? You probably have a dog personality online. You kindly follow others while sharing a sense of joy and shear abandon. You readily dive into anything new. And you're happy to encourage others to dig in too.

Best feature -- you quickly forget any injustice and easily build back trust when it is earned.

Cat personalities, as we all know, are quite different. Cats have their own agenda. They follow no one. A command is no more than a request -- they will get to you in due time. Cats may be divas but they are also curious. They have an amazing fascination with anything that moves. And their best feature is their extraordinary hunting capability.

If you break their trust, be patient. It will be a long time before you earn it back.

It's not too difficult to tell a dog from a cat online. Look at someone on Twitter with 30,000 followers who only follows 10. Now, that's a cat. Anyone on Facebook with 5,000 friends is a dog (and I mean that in the nicest way).

What do cats and dogs have in common? They are fiercely loyal to a select group.

If I had to venture a guess (and I will), Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) and Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) are dogs. Pete Cashmore (@mashable) and Jason Calacanis (@jasoncalacanis) are cats. (Don't be fooled by Jason's love for dogs.)

Which would you rather have in your tribe?

(Image: www.n-e-ability.co.uk/index.php?s=1&pageid=173)

Creating Your Brand Chutzpa

What's the difference between a billboard and a print ad? The space in which you have to communicate. But it's not just the space is it? Each medium requires a custom approach. Audiences think and behave differently depending on when, where and how they are reached.

We know a TV commercial requires a different content strategy and execution than a print ad. Yet, when it comes to new marketing vehicles such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, we can't seem to get out of the box. We keep stuffing old content through new mediums.

Most people think of content as elemental. It's not. It's strategic. What you create and how you produce it is fundamental to a successful online strategy. That same-as-always speech by your CEO splattered across the Web just doesn't work. Regurgitating press releases on your Facebook page is even worse.

So why do companies do it? It feels safe, and it doesn't eat up too much resource. Does that sound like the basis for a winning strategy?

Marketing must make you stand out in your audience's minds. That's branding. And without a little chutzpa, you're wasting precious marketing $$$.

The Content Franchise (aka, Marketing as a Service)

It was bold for Nike to create and organize it's own 10k and marathon events. It was audacious to organize the global Nike+ Human Race with 25 sponsored sites and anyone anywhere in the world able to participate locally by connecting through the Nikeplus.com site. The company makes shoes. And the social Web gave them the opportunity to think beyond the technology or comfort of the shoe and the celebrity pimping the brand, to the customer and the entire experience around running. They've done a brilliant job of integrating online and offline content, something every company can learn from.

Each marketing medium requires its own content strategy. On today's Web, we have the power to go far beyond what TV, billboards, or print can do. We can extend our brand into a franchise of services and information -- branded forms of expression that are of value (sometimes greater value than the product) to our customers. Check out Open Forum from American Express or Visa's Business Network on Facebook. Better yet, take a close look at Nike+ and see how the company offers "services" through the site (reminders, encouragement, goal-setting). To revive the Hot Wheels brand, Mattel added a comic book, an animated series and free video games.

Hollywood has built brand franchises for years. They start with the core product (a movie), then churn out characters as dolls and action figures, online video games, a book series, and cartoon. If the movie isn't a blockbuster, it's these franchises that can still build brand. (Okay, many are designed to rake in revenue). Pirates of the Caribbean extended the brand through a free community, video and game site. 

Sure you should reuse content for multiple platforms. How you do it matters. Each time you have to think about the audience, how they will access the content, and what functions would encourage them to share it or comment. Your audience has different expectations when they find you on Facebook versus Twitter. You need to build content around their needs (not yours).You can exceed their expectations by providing valuable information, access to people who can help them, or services that make life (or business) easier or better.

Each part of the brand franchise requires a strategy consistent with the goals of the brand, a set of resources similar to managing a product line, and a marketing plan. If you aren't going to put the time and resources behind a Facebook presence, don't go there. Focus your resources where you can be successful. Just because Facebook is popular and free, doesn't mean it's a good idea.

You can actually hurt your brand by allowing online sites to wither or creating social media without follow through. What kind of message does that send customers? If you're implementing social media, build out a complete content strategy, show your company's personality, and go at it with gusto. Customers will take note of your chutzpa.

(Image: http://ubiquity-design.com/wordpress/index.php/category/launch-ideas/)

The Sky is Falling - Part 3: Time to Fix the Failing Blog

This is going to be a tough year for most companies. And marketers, I feel your pain. To focus in on the realities that you and your company face, I'm writing a multi-part series of blog posts titled, "The Sky is Falling." The goal of this series is to dive down into the issues, barriers and unattainable objectives you're buried under and talk through the ideas, tips and strategies to overcome them. I've planned out 6 articles, but I'll take direction and input from you and continue the series with your ideas if that makes sense. So let's continue.

It took a great deal of hard work and convincing to get a corporate blog started. Your CEO was worried there would be negative comments and customer complaints about products. Your CMO just didn't have time to focus on it (and by inference, wasn't prioritizing the blog's importance).

Even so, you got it off the ground. Now you have a new problem. Few people are interested in the blog. You get few comments if any and Compete.com and Quantcast show that only 2,000 people read it each month. That's just a tiny fraction of your customers, not to mention the entire marketplace.

You may be using other metrics to define the success of your blog. There are many. But without interested readers, you will have a difficult time getting management excited about any other forms of social media. And worse, you will lose interest in writing the blog, ensuring its complete failure. The bottom line: it will be a huge missed opportunity.

So start now and revive the blog.

7 Crucial Steps to Blog Revival

1. Take an objective look at your blog. Are you spitting out posts that are regurgitated press releases? Are the posts focused solely on the company and what it's doing? If yes, stop it now.
   
   • It's fine to write about what the company is doing every now and then as long as you are giving it a personal spin and offering insight readers wouldn't otherwise have. Insight, I said. Meaning insider knowledge, secrets, unknown facts, or real people stories.
   • The rest of the posts should be focused on your customers and what they're thinking, worried or talking about.


2. Oh, did I say customer? Who exactly are you writing the blog for? If you're thinking, our market, that would be wrong.
   
   • For a corporate blog to be successful, it must address a specific audience with a clear point of view, topic focus or personality.
   • The same blog isn't interesting to customers, press, shareholders and resellers. Not unless it's the CEO's blog.
   • If your target is customers, do you have only one type? Are they very different by industry or by product purchased? Define exactly who you are writing for or the very specific subject that would entice readership from across your customer base. If it draws in other people, that's icing on the cake.


3. Make it absolutely clear who is writing the blog posts. This may seem like a minor point, but on today's Web it's huge. When I get to a site and there's no photo of the author, no bio or even a title, I leave pretty quickly. What are they trying to hide?
   
   • Post pictures of the authors and some biographical information above the fold. Just let readers know what they do for the company and who they are in their own words. (It shouldn't read like a press bio.) On Johnson & Johnson's corporate blog each post states the author's name and title. You have to click through to get a picture and a few facts, but it works. Kodak does a nice job.
   • Even the CEO's title should appear. He or she may be a rock star in your industry, but it's possible people in far corners of the planet haven't heard of him (or her). Dave, I love your blog as pointed out below, but move the "About" link up from the very bottom of the sidebar to the top.


4. Have a world view. Know what's going on in the world (economy, war, natural disaster), in your industry (trends, issues, new regulations) and inside your customers' companies (significant growth, regulatory changes, economic impact) and wind these views into your posts. Illustrate that you are about the customer and what they need to know.


5. Market the blog. Don't assume people will just find it.
   
   • Put a link (better yet, a badge) on the corporate website homepage.
   • Commit to the success of the blog and put links on all product pages in your online store.
   • Put the blog on product packaging, inserts, and marketing materials.
   • When your marketing folks comment on blogs across the web, have their signature (or login) point to the blog, not the corporate website.
   • Have everyone in the company add the blog URL to their email signature line, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts.
   • Post about and link your most interesting blog posts with captivating thoughts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook fan pages and so on.
   • Use keywords/tags to get better search engine optimization.
   • Comment on lots of other blogs. People who think your comments are interesting will click on your link and land on your blog.
   • Do everything possible to make sure your audience knows you have an informative, humorous, insightful blog they must read.


6. Write to entice. If you need ideas, read CopyBlogger, ProBlogger, DebbieWeil.com and ChrisBrogan.com. Brian, Darren, Debbie and Chris are great bloggers, and they have fantastic blog writing tips and advice.
   
   • In my experience, offering tips and advice really seem to work.
   • Titles matter.
   • Don't be esoteric.
   • Write shorter blog posts packed with information that are broken up by white-space and easy to read.


7. Get your CEO to blog. Okay, only if he or she is dynamic, full of personality and enjoys showing it. You can't miss the extraordinary posts from Tony Hsieh and Dave Hitz. If your CEO just won't (or just shouldn't) find people who are a good fit. Personality blogs do well. There are people who feel comfortable online, connecting on every social site, writing often and letting their personality show through (aka, Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester Research). Find them and sign them up.

Other posts in this series:

The Sky is Falling - Part 1: Slashed Marketing Budgets
The Sky is Falling - Part 2: A New Direction is Needed

4 Steps to Help You Stop Finishing

Can you imagine buying 30 seconds of prime Super Bowl airtime then delivering black screen and silence? The idea being your customers should fill in the blanks. That's what social media is asking marketers to do. It feels as though we're walking on stage bare naked. And the social media digerati are surprised some folks still don't feel comfortable with that.

In marketing we're finishers. We start with an idea and bounce it around. Develop it. Then we turn it into a program with details and deliverables. Each person tuned and playing a role as a violinist or cellist in an orchestra. The program isn't complete until the last note is played and the crowd roars. Of course, it doesn't always go that well. If not, we start again with an idea and a plan.

Now marketers have been hit between the chords with a new concept. Don't finish. Define a program as open-ended. Undone. Build a platform and leave it bare. Step back and let others (aka, "outsiders") take the lead.

What was MySpace at the very beginning? Blank pages. What about Chris Brogan's blog? No comments. Twitter? Just one tiny tweet. It takes chutzpa to put up a blank page. But when you let other people fill in the blanks, you give them a sense of ownership, a place to express their views, and an emotional attachment. They not only remember your brand, they keep coming back to it. Now that's better than 30 seconds of airtime few will remember a week later.

4 Steps to Help You Stop Finishing

1. Make sure you have a strong, unique angle or idea that will draw people in and compel them to comment, add ideas, or express themselves.


2. Make it extremely easy for anyone to create their own content. Could a seven-year-old do it without help?


3. Entice people with points, discounts, freebies, advance information.


4. Ask your audience to get involved. Seriously, I'm amazed at how many people simply don't ask.

Now, you can't risk a blank page for long, so go out and ask your advocates to help you at the beginning. Be responsive and say thank you to everyone. And remember, you're still the conductor. Stay involved. Keep pushing, adding, evolving, and responding.