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Posted on April 16, 2008
Real-World Friends and Family More Influential Than A-List Bloggers?
BY JAMES CLARK
Uh, yeah! I'm not shocked at all by the recent report from Pollara that garnered data stating:
"Of more than 1,100 adults polled in December, nearly 80% said they were very or somewhat more likely to consider buying products recommended by real-world friends and family, while only 23% reported being very or somewhat likely to consider a product pushed by "well-known bloggers."
Marc Macalua, had a great post referencing this study and how prevalent WOMM initiatives laser focus on A-List bloggers, forum veterans and senior Diggers to spread the message.
It's a strategy that if done right and the content is compelling, the story had a differentiation edge, there's good emotional content and it's simple to understand - you've got something that can go viral. So that equates to about 1% of all the stories out there that WOMM agencies are trying to work with.
Litmus Test
The true litmus test for an organization is to see if it's employees believe in the product, service or program enough to tell their "real-world" friends - many of which by the way they are connected to, and communicate with via social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace.
This of course would require that your employees are maintaining social media profiles, but even more importantly, would require that your employees are proud enough of the company, their role in the company and its achievements to tell their friends and family.
Swallow Your Pride And Do The Following:
- Ask your employees if they would be willing to discuss your company's product with their friends and family on their social networking sites.
- Find out how many of them actually do it.
- If people are not willing to do it, ask them why.
The answers might just be the solution to the problems that are plaguing your organization.
A few posts back, I did a video post on Social Media Starting Points, where I recommend that individuals start participating in social media via LinkedIn. The reason as I stated in that post:
"Because on LinkedIn you can quickly connect with individuals you have had personal relationships with through previous employers, universities, groups, etc. It's human nature to be more comfortable around the people we already know."
With the adoption of aggregation services like FriendFeed where in one place we can now see blog posts, family photos, articles they liked, restaurants they loved and music they are listening to - it's becoming easier for us to maintain communications and stay up to date with what our "real-world" friends are doing out there in the wild and wacky world.
More of a Reason to Encourage Social Media
So this report that states real world friends and family are more influential to purchasing decisions only strengthens the case for companies to actively support and encourage it's employees to participate in social media programs.
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Posted on April 9, 2008
Blogging and Book Authoring for Expert Positioning
BY JAMES CLARK
It's said if you want to be an expert go write a book. Even if the book is self published, as long as you walk in and hand someone a physical book - you're a perceived authority on the topic.
Playing off my public relations days, getting visibility and driving book sales is a huge, huge effort. There are publicists and PR agencies focused on planning, strategy, distribution deals, executing book tours, media tours, radio tours, author events, etc. The cost can be astronomical if you really want to hit it big.
Blogging and Amazon Changes the Landscape
Blogging has created a new entry point for expert positioning, and Amazon has created the simple and fast book distribution platform. The two combined provide a powerful, inexpensive and authentic approach to expert leadership.
Case and Point: Direct Response Radio
Our Room 214 client Brett Astor of Strategic Media has been blogging for close to two years now at Direct Response Radio Advertising Blog. After many posts and immersion into the direct response radio world, Brett realized that he had created enough content and more importantly knew the hot button issues people faced with radio advertising.
Using his unique perspective from his personal experience Brett was able to put forth a book that is now the definitive guide on radio advertising.
That book is now available on Amazon - for you or anyone in the world to buy.
Was it easy? Heck no. It took a commitment on Brett's end to keep the blog fresh, to look for ways to connect and integrate radio advertising in the overall marketing mix.
But he did it, and now he can just throw those business cards into the circular file.
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Posted on November 29, 2007
Why People Stop Blogging
BY JASON CORMIER
We met with a marketing director today who shared that her company's web traffic has increased due to their blog contributing to higher search rankings - but then in the same breath explained that the blog was dead, nobody wanted to write anything for it anymore, and they were on the verge of shutting it down completely.
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Posted on March 30, 2007
RSS Marketing on the Rise
BY JASON CORMIER
Just a quick shout out to Brian Haven at Forrester for publishing the latest results from their interactive marketers survey. Here is the word: 40% of marketers are using or piloting RSS (up from 10% last year). Blog usage for marketing is at 34% - up 13% from the 2006 study, and 25% 0f marketers surveyed are now podcasting.
A noteworthy mention: My co-worker, Kris Smith, spoke earlier this week at the eLearning 2007 conference about using RSS and podcasting for distance education. Incidentally, he spoke with a company right after his talk that said they would have missed the mark with their new initiatives had they missed his presentation.
A company that most effectively embraces the concepts he revealed will take the lead. Eventually, however, a company that does not will simply be considered behind the times.
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Posted on February 14, 2007
Link Blogs with Google Reader: Pros & Cons
BY JASON CORMIER
Link blogging (quickly posting recommended links to a weblog) can be a valuable way to keep your site findable and your online community engaged -- especially if you sometimes don't have time to write "real" posts.
As our new video tutorial Getting Started with Google Reader explains, one of the rather unique features of this popular free RSS feed reader is that it allows you to automatically publish a link blog.
In fact, Google Reader is perhaps the easiest link blogging tool I've found. On any feed item you wish to share, just click the "share" link and it will automatically appear on your link blog. No configuration required.
Of course, there are pros and cons about using Google Reader to create your link blogs. Before you decide to do this, you should consider these questions:
- Is driving traffic or improving your site ranking a key goal? If so, then realize that a link blog generated by Google Reader will not be part of your site. Rather, it will appear under a Google-related domain -- and with a long, ugly URL, to boot. For instance, the URL for my Google Reader link blog is: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17484824062998564750 You could try declaring a subdomain (such as links.yourdomain.com) and map that to your Google reader blog. That way, it would superficially appear to be part of your site -- although it may not count that way in your site statistics or search engine rankings.
- Do you want to tell people why you're sharing items? For many people, it's not enough to see which items of content you're recommending. They prefer to know why you thought each item was worth a look. If you think this is true of the people whom you wish to engage through your link blog, then Google Reader probably is not the right link blogging tool for you. At this point, it only allows you to share items -- not to make and share your comments about those items.
It seems to me that if your link blog is intended as part of your general search visibility and public content strategy, you'll probably need a more sophisticated tool that Google reader to generate it. I'll be covering such tools in future tutorials.
What is a Google Reader link blog good for?
If you currently don't have a blog at all, a Google Reader link blog is a very simple and fast way to get started. If you make sure to set your Google Account nickname to a term you want to be easily findable (such as your company's name), then that will show up in the title for your link blog and increase your findability somewhat. Be sure to subscribe your link blog's feed in feed aggregator services such as Technorati or Icerocket, for extra findability.
Personally, I think the best use of a Google Reader link blog is to share items with people you already know, rather than trying to engage newcomers. If someone already knows you or your company, that familiarity provides context so they can probably guess why you recommended certain links -- which partially makes up for the fact that you can't post comments about items you share via Google Reader.
Therefore, if you do create a Google Reader link blog, consider publicizing it mainly to people with whom you already have an established relationship. View it as a relationship maintenance strategy, not a general publicity tool.
Tag Blogs
As covered in my video tutorial, Google Reader also allows you to create separate link blogs where you share specific tags. These "Tag blogs" are link blogs, but they tend to be more specialized.
An excellent use for a Google Reader tag blog is to share links of interest to a smaller, defined community -- such as a project team, or users of a specific product or service.
For instance, the head of a professional association's conference committee might create a link blog that shares only conference-related links, such as potential speakers, issues to address in the program, or news about the conference venue or location. Committee members could subscribe to that tag blog's feed to keep abreast of that stream of project-related content.
...Regardless of which tool you use to create them, link blogs and tag blogs should only be part of your online content strategy. Engaging effectively with customers, colleagues, and communities generally requires original content, not just pointers to what's available elsewhere. If you're trying to engage people, they expect you to have something worthwhile to say.
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