WebSite Marketing Strategy

Let’s see … is social media about conversions, traffic, click though rates and sales; or is it more along the lines of conversations, authenticity, transparancy and building a sense of community? I guess it really depends on who you ask. My colleague at Intel, Bob Duffy, who works on my team came up with this awesome cartoon that illustrates my point precisely (his post also touches on this subject).

In Bob’s post, he talks about being “in” the conversation versus “at” the conversation. Clearly, being “in” the conversation means participating in online discussions; and “at” the conversation could mean buying a banner ad on Techcrunch or Facebook, for example. As someone who is passionate about social media and is responsible for driving conversations about Intel, I believe both approaches are important … as long as the end result is centered around the latter, conversations.

One way to think about it is the following:

Strategy = participate/facilitate conversations and community building
Tactical = buy a banner add on Techcrunch driving traffic to those conversations.

Thoughts?

If you found value in this post please subscribe to my RSS feed and receive all of my future posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Tags: social media, conversational marketing

Last weekend my laptop crashed. When I restarted it, it said that the systems.32\hll.dll file was corrupt and that I need to reinstall it. I called Dell, they couldn’t help me. I stressed about it all night because I have some really important data there. So Sunday morning, I brought my laptop to Best Buy/Geek Squad so they could at least save my data. Someone had told me that they were awesome and can fix anything.

I got a call this morning from the Geek Squad and they told me that they couldn’t retrieve my data; and that they could send my laptop to their offices in Kentucky and use advance data retrieval techniques but it would cost me anywhere between $400 - $1600. Ugh.

So I posted my no-so-rant on Twitter.

A few hours later, I get an email from Robert Stephens, the Founder and Chief Inspector of the Geek Squad. He asked me what my issues were and that he would look into it. Let’s see if he lives up to his promise of personally resolving the complaints of those who read the The Consumerist(lol, not really a consumerist reader though).

Nonetheless, this is a great illustration of how a company can use social media to track conversations and (hopefully) take action. We will soon find out if the Geek Squad is going to create a loyal customer, with lots and lots of friends, family and acquaintances. ; )

UPDATE (6:30 PM): Got another email from Robert. He did follow up with the local technician at Best Buy and confirmed that my issue could not be resolved at that facility. While I am a little disappointed that I don’t have my data; I take my hat off to Robert and team.  This is exactly what conversational marketing is all about!  Good job Geek Squad.

If you found value in this post please subscribe to my RSS feed and receive all of my future posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Tags: social media, conversational marketing, the geek squad, twitter, Robert Stephens

I just finished reading, “Digg is Not Social Media Marketing” and I’d have to agree that using Digg alone is not social media marketing. While this may be an important tactic in the overall scheme of things, there is much more to social media than Digg. And, It is quite apparent that many marketers spend a considerable amount of time trying to game the Digg algorithm, grow their friend’s list, and seed content in hopes of achieving front page placement.

Why? Well…usually in the form of linkbait, most savvy SEO practitioners have found that achieving front page placement on Digg equates to high visibility, traffic and links. Here is a quick and basic formula:

(Digg front page = high visibility = many links = higher rankings = even more traffic)

But as a marketer, what else can Digg do other than drive short term traffic to a site coupled with a few hundred links? Is it really worth the effort and can a positive ROI be extracted from the amount of time invested? Is there a transparency and authenticity issue when building a sense of community for the sole purpose of getting others to digg your story? This is a clear example of Digg-Enomics; where there is an over abundance of supply (content) with no real demand.

Could it be an ego thing? Bragging rights of achieving front page placement?

Marketers are aware that conversion rates from Digg are minimal. And, despite the many efforts to camouflage marketing messages in content, Digg users are sharp and notice the little details. All it takes is one person to notice it, comment on it and then bury it. I even know of one of the top SEO agencies that was banned from submitting content to Digg; and it wasn’t even their fault.

In my opinion, Digg is just another customer touch point in the long list of social/traditional media outlets. It’s a potential distribution channel for content to reach a target consumer group just like paid/natural search, display advertising, traditional media, community related marketing, etc. If you are tying to reach main stream consumers (stay-at-home moms, baby boomers, college students), Digg is obviously not the place you should be spending all your time and effort.

Here’s an analogy.

Digg is a one night stand. You submit your content, get it on the home page and reap the rewards of a ton of traffic, links and more traffic. Then you wake up, reality kicks in, the fun is over and perhaps you sneak out the back door before she wakes up.

My point is simply that the core of Social Media is embedded in the conversations between marketers and consumers, whether it happens on-domain or off-domain. It’s about cultivating long-term relationships and empowering brand ambassadors of your product. It’s a multi-directional conversation, with no room for marketing messages. It’s about acknowledging, listening and creating a sense of community.

Direct marketing is important. Don’t get me wrong. But, perhaps social media in general is not the best channel for customer acquisition. Unless, of course you are a new Web 2.0 start up with an innovative technology.

There is so much more to social media than discussed in this post. Look out for additional posts on this topic real soon! If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed and recieve all future posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Tags: social media, conversational marketing, digg, banned

The new blog is launched! Please tell me what you think and be honest. I actually designed the look and feel myself in Photoshop; and then hired the guys over at Unique Blog Designs to program it and build in the functionality. We ran into some problems with the latest version of Wordpress not being compatible with the version of MySQL database on my host; and we were locked out of the control panel for a few days because the license expired on Plesk (I hate Plesk by the way). Customer support was horrible; well…a good friend of mine was hosting the site for free so I should be nice (even though he was so darn non-responsive for like two days). Nonetheless, we moved hosts and everything seems to be working properly.

So please take a moment and click around the blog and tell me what you think. Do you like it? Hate it? Envy it? And, please be specific; if something doesn’t work, please tell me. So far I tested it in IE.6, IE.7 and Firefox. And, if you like what I have to say, you can always subscribe to my RSS feed and receive all future posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Now that I am up and running … let the posts begin!

test

It’s been a while but the new design is finally up. Please tell me what you think!  I actually designed the look and feel myself in Photoshop; and hired Unique Blog Designs to code it and build in the functionality.  We ran into a few database issues with my old hosting company. Well … to tell the truth, one of my close friends was hosting it for free using really old software. This was all ratified once I moved hosting companies.  Then we had a problem upgrading to Wordpress to 2.5.

Please do give me your feedback and if something doesn’t work, let me know!  So far I have tested all the functionality in IE.6, IE.7 and Firefox; and everything seems to be working properly, with the exception of one thing, the comments.

When you leave a comment, it takes a while (3 – 5 seconds) before the comment is actually submitted.  Hopefully, this will get fixed soon!

 

Read this eBook now – Customer Service: The Art of Listening and Engagement through Social Media, written by Brian Solis. You can download for free (PDF or Word). It’s short, sweet and gets straight to the point. One of the key takeaways was what many refer to as conversational marketing. Here is Brian’s take from [...]

I just finished up reading Search Marketing Standard magazine (a great read by the way and I would recommend it to all my friends and colleagues); specifically a few articles/interviews about social media marketing.  In an awesome interview with Cameron Olthuis about the State of Social Media Marketing, he talks about achieving front page [...]

Yes, that’s right and I hope you are listening!  You see, I just left your restaurant and twittered my network (via my cell phone) about my experience there.  And then when I get home, I am going to go online to YELP and write a review about you.  I hope for your sake, that [...]

While focus groups and research are valuable methods to learn about market insight, online conversations are a great way to gain real-time feedback about your products and/or services. It’s immediate, more cost effecient, and I would argue that the conversations are more authentic. In focus groups – and I know this because I participated in a [...]