Realize the Potential of New Media

New media surely isn’t new anymore, although if it is new to you, you are in danger of getting behind the curve. In the space of only a few years the power of the Internet has exploded like an ancient volcano, tending to cover a company’s well honed marketing structure with molten lava or ash. In the face of the new media onslaught, you should not try and desperately dig out your old marketing plans from underneath all those layers of ash, but you should embrace the potential and understand that we are now doing business in a very different world.

Traditional forms of media, print ads, television, radio, cold calling, promotional gimmicks and the like will all have their place in our future, but they must not be front and center anymore. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have, whether it is traditionally a complete “bricks and mortar” style operation, you must now have an online presence and a proactive one at that.

It is somewhat ironic that a medium as “faceless” as the Internet has in many respects turned us all into more personable and identifiable business people. The advent of social media means that there is now a human face to the corporate body and each organization should ensure that it engages social media this way. Never forget the social element, even though you are primarily focused on doing business. You may have a corporate persona, but people want to know about the human side of the business now.

Put every effort that you can into designing your website well. You must be super targeted when it comes to your keywords, the way that you describe your business. In a highly competitive business environment you need to set your organization apart and must focus on specific or long tail keywords and keyword phrases. Construct your website and optimize it so that your business stands out among its competition. Everything points back to your company website from a marketing perspective.

While your corporate website should adequately reveal who you are, what you do and why people should buy from you, including the ability to do so (a sales funnel), you should also have an educational and informative site for your business, through the maintenance of a top-quality blog. This is your opportunity to show just how much of an expert you are in your niche and don’t hold back when it comes to giving good advice, education or information. Your objective here is to reveal that you are “good guys” and that people should trust you, ultimately, to buy products or services to help assuage their needs.

Interact with social media platforms and do it well. You should have a Facebook page for your business, a Twitter presence, even your own branded YouTube where you show videos of products, services, solutions – video is a hot medium these days. Set aside time to maintain your social presence on a very regular basis. Don’t just set it up and believe that you have done everything you need to. These platforms and channels can work well for you, if you work at them.

Create good content, regularly and distribute it for maximum marketing effect. Once again, the more that people begin to realize that you know what you’re talking about, through the provision and distribution of such targeted content, the more they will believe that they should trust their hard-earned dollars to you when it comes to buying your associated products or services.

Are you still digging ash, or engaged?

Matthew Toren

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words

When you see some of the most creative infographics around today, it’s little wonder that they say that people skim through webpages, focusing on graphics, rather than getting themselves absorbed in all the text. This should tell us all a story, as while the written word is certainly always “king” as we know, if we jam too much of it into one particular visual screen, then the eyes of our dear viewers will tend to glaze over it. Always intersperse your text creatively with graphics and photos and don’t forget that captions can be very powerful, as the eyes will almost certainly focus on the explanation for the presented photograph on page.

Infographics represent intelligent and very creative ways to explain subjects that are, in some cases, rather difficult to get your mind around. We present some of the “cooler” ones here for your consumption.

Over at Digg Labs, the creative guys and gals there have come up with a colored wheel which allows you to interact and select a day, month and year, to be presented with the top 10 stories by category on any given day. Check it out, but be warned you could spend a lot of time here!

While we know that Twitter is hot stuff, did you know that only five of 100 community members can be classified as really active? Maybe this graphic and the information here will help you to visualize it better?

Still on the subject of Twitter, how does it stack up against the big daddy, Facebook?
This graphic sums it up very succinctly. For example, did you know that Facebook has almost as many members as there are people living in Indonesia?

If you maintain an active blog, as hopefully you do, you may have wondered where those blog posts actually go to and how pinging services interact with your post once you have created it. We found this great interactive graphic tutorial at wired.com, which should actually be required reading or viewing for all Internet marketers. It really helps you to get a handle on the lifecycle and might help you to prepare your blogging campaigns more successfully.

The Conversation Prism is an inspirational creation, designed to graphically depict the art of listening, learning and sharing. It is visually very attractive as you can see and is available to buy as a really neat wall poster should you wish. Each one of the leaves represents an element of communication and a social media resource, with the inner circles depicting the style of communication and method, all leading back to the central brand. A great creation by Brian Solis.

Explore the social media landscape at fredcavazza.net and see which sites are linked according to purpose or intent. A handy little graphic to remind you which social media tools or services would be most appropriate for your needs.

Have you spied any cool infographics? Let us know.

Adam Toren

Send Money with Paypal and Facebook

PayPal has become pally with Facebook recently and you can now send money to people right from your Facebook site. All you need is your e-mail address and PayPal takes care of all the rest. Here is the link to the PayPal page within Facebook where you can get started.

It seems that Facebook is starting to get quite serious about its monetization. You can of course interact with Facebook financially right now, as you buy advertising space through their credit card portal, for example. They have been rumored for some time to have been looking at a “Facebook payments” program and it is only a matter of time before we start to see highly targeted and personalized advertisements appear on our Facebook homepages.

PayPal Send Money has a fan page on Facebook. This takes their level of customer service to another degree, as you can post your questions and concerns on the wall and receive a timely response from a PayPal employee. More and more people will be introduced to PayPal this way and they now allow money to be transferred to a total of 65 different countries around the world in 17 different currencies.

This development comes amid a rumor mill of Facebook versus PayPal stories circulating the web. When Facebook allowed some of its users to buy virtual and physical gifts through its new “gift shop,” this was seen as a direct shot against PayPal, still a leader in Internet based sales. The rumors were further fueled when Facebook hired Prashant Fuloria, one of the key designers of the Google Checkout platform, and other would-be PayPal competitors. Indeed, the biggest news appear to be that for the first time tangible gifts could be purchased through Facebook’s initiative, rather than just virtual gifts. Four developers were participating in the gift shop tests, including American Greetings Interactive, Greetbeatz, Somecards and Real Gifts, the latter providing physical gifts of candy or flowers.

The so called “alpha” test of the Facebook gift shop was said to be, by a Facebook spokesperson, simply a test “to explore possible new ways for users to share with their friends around birthdays and special occasions.” This latest news would appear to point toward a collaboration between PayPal and Facebook, rather than a direct competition. What was once termed to be a “PayPal killer” could in fact turn into a lucrative association for all parties. With 300 million monthly active users, Facebook could be poised to make significant income from a “Facebook payments” program. Meanwhile, Google Checkout remains curiously subdued in the background…

Matthew Toren

Unusual Uses for Google Wave

Google Wave continues to enthrall and confuse at the same time. This is a whole new line of communication and is fundamentally much more than just a revision of the basic e-mail concept, as some have said. E-mail as we know it is basically a static concept – distributing notifications back and forth, where they reside in a “box” as a dead object until somebody responds by creating a similar static object, which in turn is distributed for further action. A wave is more like a collaboration, which can be in real time, between interested parties. The concept can be discussed, elaborated, enlarged and supported and made available for input from any number of interested parties. While we are only just getting used to the concept of social communications through the likes of Twitter and Facebook, a wave is likely to represent a far more interactive and real-time collaboration between participants. For many people, it’s concept is still somewhat alien and in truth we have nothing to compare it to as yet.

Google Wave is still in the process of development, but a number of really cool uses have emerged to support its potential. While the heading of this blog refers to “unusual uses,” the fact is that every use of this emerging medium is innovative and while some are still trying to decipher how to really use a wave for best effect, others seem to have hit on some productive reasons.

Topically, the group responsible for distributing H1N1 vaccine for the dreaded swine flu realized that they were allocating a considerable amount of time and wasted resources to meetings and other disjointed two-way conversations. They relied heavily on e-mails, instant messages and so on between distribution points, administrators, scientists and overseers. By setting up a wave, they would all be able to work simultaneously on an issue, cutting through all those duplications and the needless checking of documentation, allowing the message to get out to the public and other interested parties very much faster.

At a tech savvy conference called Ecomm, wave accounts were doled out to attendees who could then collaborate in real-time and interact with content as it was being presented. Fundamentally, a wave would first be created by an audience member and then others could edit its content on the fly. This resulted in a far more detailed and richer transcript, enabling fresh thoughts and points of view to be recorded while they were most appropriate. This type of approach will undoubtedly result in a much more accurate and productive rendition of an interactive conference.

In an airport, so much information needs to be shared between so many people and can be the subject of critical safety awareness. An air traffic control wave could incorporate real-time weather updates, particular ground delays or situations, construction problems or data from other parts of the country affecting arrivals. Generally, being able to keep everyone abreast of situations as they arise (or even before) can only help to achieve efficiencies within such a time critical environment.

Potential applications for waves are almost limitless, as soon as the public in general becomes more comfortable with the actual concept. Adoption is likely to take some time, though.

Do you currently “wave” at anybody?

Matthew Toren

Top Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing does not have to be rocket science. Many people make it more complicated than it is and tend to shy away from it. They know that they should engage, but still fundamentally do not understand the intricacies and as such, they are missing out on a whole new way of communicating with their clients and would-be prospects. Once you have learned that it takes a different mindset and its not about the hard sell, you just need to be dedicated, believable, valuable and repetitive. And no, repetitive does not mean spamming the same message to the world, it means you must take time out of your schedule on a regular basis to interact.

1. Don’t believe that there is a magic formula.

Sorry to shoot down your dreams in the first sentence, but there really is no magic wand here, either. All these different platforms and sites may offer free membership, free enrollment and a free platform, but this approach takes work. Lots of it. Be assured, however, that if you approach this the right way and make it a long-term project, you will enhance your reputation significantly and will invariably benefit from your efforts. Avoid any schemes that promise instant success.

2. Do focus.

You can certainly get out of your depth very quickly if you try and expand your reach too broadly or employ a scattershot approach. Your aim is to make contacts, good ones and you must be able to sort the wheat from the chaff. Keep a note of everyone you come across in your industry who appears to know what they’re talking about, has a good following or has a special aura. Keep track of these contacts and make sure that you keep in touch. You should aim to read their work regularly, the blog posts, Facebook postings or tweets. Make sure that you respond and get to know them as they get to know you. Yes, it will take some work.

3. Do reach out.

You are rightly proud of your blog, its content and your contribution to the niche. Reach out to others who also contribute good material, by linking to their posts. Over time, people will link back to yours and you will be creating a network of great, interconnected content.

4. Do integrate.

Part of the process of building up your brand is to use a variety of relevant social media platforms and to ensure that they are all appropriately linked. Your Twitter feed should show on Facebook, your Facebook postings on your blog page, your YouTube account videos should be bookmarked and your blog point to your hub website. You are building your social media presence and creating a certain stance for your organization. Make sure that your branding is consistent and that you update your various accounts regularly.

5. Do give value.

In order for any of this to work, you have to be a contributor. You have to be able to listen and learn, find out what all the buzz is about, pick up on some of the problems and write posts and messages that contribute to the issue. Try and resolve problems. If there is a major conversation thread about a subject of interest, make sure you contribute and keep on top of the thread until it naturally dies away. You are not selling anything and you should not suggest that you could, even if you think you have a solution to whatever problem is on the table. You’re building up your presence and making people aware of your existence and, by extension, your brand.

6. Don’t sell.

This follows on from the last point. If you try and directly sell your products or services within any social media network, you will get nowhere. It simply is not done. That isn’t to say that you won’t see thousands of people or businesses trying to do just that, but they are essentially uneducated in the finer points of social media interaction. Remember to educate, inform, entertain and enlighten and watch what happens over time.

7. Do build your brand.

Calculate which social media networks could be of most interest to you from a holistic perspective. Don’t try and focus on every blogging platform, social network, bookmarking site by trying to be active in all, but be selective. Once you have committed, build your brand consistently within and keep up with your profile. Make your presence feel genuine.

8. Don’t be anti-social, be personal.

Probably the biggest mistake that people make when they set out to “conquer” the social media networks is that they forget what it’s all about, to be social. You must get to know the person at the other end and build those relationships one at a time. You can build your list of interested parties exponentially by strengthening individual relationships. By doing this, you can reach out to the contacts of the person concerned and even further, to their contacts.

In social media, what are the biggest “no-no’s” from your point of view?

Adam Toren

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