Word of Mouth Marketing - Social Media - Search Visibility

PDF Marketing on Steroids: A Discussion with Vitrium CEO, Peter Nieforth

BY JASON CORMIER

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Size: 11.1 MB
Length: 12:05

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Show Notes:

Room 214 Co-founder, Jason Cormier, interviews Vitrium's CEO, Peter Nieforth, regarding their new PDF marketing product, Docmetrics.

In this podcast, we discuss:

1. What is Docmetrics, and why should a marketer take a look at this product?

2. The limitations of using standard web forms as a resource to collect sales leads.

3. Statistics of engagement on forms within PDFs vs. standard web forms.

4. The new opportunity considering ROI and measurement: the ability to know who is reading your PDFs, who they are being passed along to, which pages are being read the most (applicable to newsletters, white papers, case studies, media kits, PDFs handed out on USB drives, CD's, etc.)

5. Docmetrics costs and use case

Note: Peter said if you go to Docmetrics.com and mention my name, you'll get a free USB device. There is a free trial on the website. I'd love to hear anyone's feedback on their experience with it.

TAGS: PDF MARKETING • WHITE PAPER MARKETING • TRACKING PDFS • DOCMETRICS • PETER NIEFORTH • PDF PODCAST •

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Customer Service as the New Marketing

BY JAMES CLARK

"My role was just a pleasant accident," Craig Newmark quoted in a recent article with Susan Kuchinskas of iMediaConnection.

The role Craig is talking about is going from founder and growing Craigslist, to being the public face of the company, working with the media and being part of a team of customer service reps. 

I personally find this role fascinating and refreshing. What better way to serve your company than to be directly involved in helping solve customer issues or responding to customer inquiries.

Imagine the insights and knowledge he gains from personally interacting with the customer.

Which begs the question: Why do so many companies look at customer service as a necessary evil?

Answer: EGO

The people best suited to handle the vast array of customer service issues are not people manning phone banks in India. It's high-level management with a true and deep understanding of the products and service offerings. But these individuals would need to check their ego at the door to start manning the gates.

I do think there is an opportunity in elevating conversational customer reps, those individuals responsible for the Twitter and GetSatisfaction pages to be more senior as these individuals will most certainly become a public figure in the company.

TAGS: CUSTOMER SERVICE • CRAIG NEWMARK • TWITTER • GETSATISFACTION • JAMES CLARK

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Advertising in Social Media: Good Science Notes

BY JASON CORMIER

The "Good Science" panel at the Online Media, Marketing and Advertising (OMMA) Expo were all in agreement yesterday about the value metrics around social media content needing to change.

Although this conversation is nothing new, it's good to see it continuing to bubble up beyond the uber-tech meetups and podcast conferences. As the topic gains momentum, it presses organizations like Comscore to the reality of how they must change to meaningfully address metrics for advertisers in social media. By the way, Comscore's message at OMMA was that advertisers must see metrics they are familiar with. Are you surprised?

Margret Clerkin, CEO of Mindshare Interaction, said yesterday, "it's wrong to do media placement on social networking because it's about conversations." I can't speak for Margret -- but if I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt, I'm guessing what she really means is that media placement within social networking shouldn't be measured by the normal standards.

If you think it's simply wrong, you should listen to our recent podcast with Bill Flitter, CEO of Pheedo. Bottom line: the creation of distributed media (content outside the website) is dramatically increasing. It would be irresponsible for marketers to wait for the perfect metric before engaging in this new world.

TAGS: OMMA • SOCIAL NETWORKING • ADVERTISING • DISTRIBUTED MEDIA • COMSCORE • SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING

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Distributed Media Podcast with Bill Flitter, CEO of Pheedo

BY JASON CORMIER

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Size: 15.7 MB
Length: 17:06

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Show Notes:

Room 214 Co-founder, Jason Cormier, raps with Bill Flitter, CEO of Pheedo, an RSS and distributed media advertising company.

We talk about:

1. Advertising within RSS feeds: How is it different from a common banner ad, how has RSS use grown, and does it work?

2. Understanding the intimacy of the (RSS) medium.

3. Brands creating emotional connections: How branding and advertising changes when considering life streaming and the neccessity of being a publisher.

4. Consideration of recent stats, a few tips, a little philosophy and the challenge of educating companies about RSS.

Personal Note: Bill offered some great insight regarding how the RSS, or "distributed media" space has grown.

TAGS: BILL FLITTER • PHEEDO • DISTRIBUTED MEDIA • RSS ADVERTISING • PODCAST ADVERTISING • CAPTURE THE CONVERSATION PODCAST • BLOG ADS

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Fired for Astroturfing: A Social Media Don't

BY JASON CORMIER

To partially quote from Wikipedia, Astroturfing is when an individual disguises the efforts of a commercial entity as an independent public reaction to a product, service or event. It's an orchestration of overt outreach tactics by covert means.

More to the point, it's something you don't do as a responsible marketer. The thing is, the rules are easily bendable, the tactics are highly tempting and the ethics are typically questioned. After all, what "harm" can it really do? Well, actually a lot -- and I have a fresh and unfortunate story to share with you about it.

Continue Reading...

TAGS: ASTROTURFING • SOCIAL MEDIA • BLOGGER OUTREACH • SOCIAL MARKETING • REPUTATION MANAGEMENT • ASTRO TURF

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