There are times when enforced time pressure and driven creativity can be very helpful for a business.  Read the last

Facebook IPO - pix 02 (Photo credit: k-ideas)

paragraph of the Economist’s appraisal of the Facebook IPO.

Mr Zuckerberg’s social-ist manifesto also made clear that Facebook would stick to what he calls “the Hacker Way” – a nod to the “HP Way” which encapsulated the ethos of the founders of Hewlett-Packard.  Facebook has hitherto been able to focus on fostering an innovative culture that encourages employees to move fast and take risks.  new programmers are encouraged to push out code onto its platform in their first week on the job and the company regularly holds all-night “hackathons”. 

This was echoed in a campaign we ran for a client this week for “Waitangi Day“.  This is the New Zealand national holiday remembering the signing of the treaty between the white settlers and the Maori natives.  Our campaign, like the Waitangi Treaty, was a rush job – we scoped the campaign quickly but getting 5 collaborative partners from other businesses on board in 4 days was a challenge – but the team pulled it off and delivered outstanding metrics.

The focussed work ethic and time urgency meant we all over-performed and the results were very pleasing.  We noticed an enhanced teamwork feeling of collaboration and mutual support as well.

Challenges for my business and for yours

• Why not set up a focused time-pressure deadline for some of your work once in a while?
• Can you create something akin to a ‘hackathon’ to drive value and deliver rapidly?
• What meaningful goals can you set for new employees?

Related articles

• For Facebook ‘Hacker Way’ is way of life (goerie.com)
• Mark Zuckerberg, the Hacker Way and the Art of the Founder’s Letter (wired.com)
• Waitangi Day ‘a time for reflection’ (nzherald.co.nz)

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So you’ve written an e-book and are wondering why people haven’t tracked you down, overloaded your inbox with emails and the news of your book hasn’t spread the online world like wildfire.  Well, the internet is a vast place, and you’ve got to make it easy to be found.  We recently did the marketing for our client, Norman Evans, who created a great e-book titled ‘Becoming an Entrepreneur’.   Below we share the secrets of marketing that we use for our own clients.

1. Become a force to be reckoned with.  AKA, get found.  Hopefully, you have a website and you can add a blog section to it.  If not, start a blog to develop a reader-base.  Start writing about your area of expertise, and get the word out that you know what you’re talking about.  The power of the internet lies in getting found.  If you create a reader-base first, your e-book is going to sell much better.  It’s all based on generating high quality content on your website, and helping people find you.  You can also start a newsletter to keep track of any followers.   Give them an incentive to join, by offering them special tips over time, or discounts on your products.
2. Get in on the conversation.  During your morning coffee, make it a habit to do a daily search on relevant content being published on other’s blogs.  Read what other people have to say and contribute to the conversation.  If you have something good to offer people will start searching for your name, and your own blog will come up.  This is not blatant marketing, mind you.  Don’t scrawl your blog site all over everyone else’s blogs in flashing letters—nobody likes that.  Simply contribute to other people’s conversations in the areas of your expertise, and traffic will come to you.
3. Tweet about it.  Number 2 flows right into number 3 here.  You already know who has good blogs out there and you’ve joined in on the conversations, now, share the gold!  Tweet about those great blogs you’ve found and show that you know what great content is, even if it isn’t your own.  The authors of these blogs will see that you’re linking to them, and then take a look at your blog.  If they see you know your stuff, they’ll link back to you too.  Do the same with Facebook, LinkedIn and any other relevant social media sites.
4. Listing the book. Selling your book through a variety of websites is key.  It’s this simple: the more hooks in the water, the easier it is to catch a fish.  Using sites such as Amazon, Fishpond and Barnes and Noble will open you up to a bigger audience.  It will also create links to a highly ranked website.  In addition you can sell directly from your own website (now that you have one!).
5. A discount for the loyal followers. By this time you have established a following that you are hopefully able to track, perhaps you have Facebook fans, Twitter followers, newsletter subscribers, etc.   Just before your book is released offer your loyal followers a limited time ‘buy early’ discount, to get the ball rolling on sales.  This also encourages more people to become your fan, or subscribe to your newsletter, etc.  They get special offers from it, and honestly, who doesn’t love a discount.

Remember, like most things, persistence pays off… it may take weeks or months to get the audience and the traction that your book deserves, but keep going and little-and-often will definitely get you noticed.

We have 5 free E-books by Norman Evans to give away. Please contact us if you would like to be one of the lucky recipients!  This is actually true, so hurry and send us your details and see if you get to read ‘Becoming an Entrepreneur’ for free!

Now, get out there and market your e-book and let us know how it goes!

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Image by imjustcreative via Flickr

Sometimes it’s nice to be on the receiving end of some in-bound agency marketing.  There’s a nice branding agency we have been following based in Birmingham, UK.  They sent us a little slide deck.

It had some background slides about the company and some case studies of client work.  All very nicely presented.

BUT

There was no apparent purpose to the communication.  The deck arrived with a nice covering letter but no call to action, no reason for the email except to say they had some ‘exciting news’.

So we launched in to a critique and sent them this email

That’s a very interesting slide show you’ve presented. Thanks for sharing it.

However, you really do sell yourself short in an email shot like this – what would a prospective client like myself think after reading it…… “Nice slideshow. What was the ‘exciting news’ anyway? What now? Back to my work.”

Using some direct response copywriting in the covering letter/email can you provoke me to deliver a response? For example – get an answer to questions like ‘what did Rebecca think?’ and ‘could they do this for my brand?’ Both questions that will help to narrow down your list of ‘suspects’ and take them one step closer to becoming prospects and then clients.

What about building on the campaign like this?

• Having a special website landing page just for people who got the email?
• Use the landing page to measure click throughs and get a poll / survey / comments / discussion going?
• Sharing the slides on slideshare / docstock so others can embed them and let them go viral
• Putting them up on your website for others to ‘like’ on Facebook / Twitter
• Asking for a meeting in the email text so you can show your credentials in more detail
• Asking questions about my brand so I can see if I ‘suffer’ from the same problems you solved for your clients

Anything but just sharing your slide deck…

So that’s just my two pennyworth suggestions for you – free of charge.
You can take them and put them into practice yourself.

This is an unsolicited approach offering you some free advice on how to improve your marketing. I just happen to be on your mailing list and so hope I’m trusted.

And they replied

Thanks so much for your thoughts.

This soft launch does indeed have a plan underpinning it, with more activities to come.

That said your passionate response is appreciated. We will keep you in mind for future activities!

What would you do in response to an unsolicited email?

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Need a little mental stimulation during the Easter break?  We’ve just the thing for you.  We are running a guest post series by Feedblitz founder Phil Hollows.

Phil writes about the essentials of building a mailing list around your blog.  If you have been following our content marketing discussions, you’ll know that any brand that can consistently deliver excellent content online needs to distribute it to the audience.  And your most captive targets are those who subscribe by email.

During the series you will learn how to build your B2B brand using content marketing underpinned by a growing mail list of email subscribers.

Get reading – this is gold dust!

To purchase the List Building for Bloggers E-Book, Click here to visit FeedBlitz.

List Building for Bloggers

So you’ve started your blog. You’re on Facebook and perhaps even have a Twitter account. You’re rocking this whole social media thing; why on earth should you bother with email? It’s so, well, twentieth-century isn’t it? Isn’t email extinct, dead and gone?

Why bother offering email subscriptions at all?

Because you can’t afford not to.

Here’s why:

• Email subscriptions are WAY more popular than RSS.
• Email subscribers are your biggest fans.
• Email is everywhere.
• Email is accessible.
• Email is the most effective subscription mechanism available.
• Adding email subscriptions to your blog is fast and easy.
• Managing email subscriptions won’t take up your time.

You’ll grow your readership, build your community and monetize more effectively by combining your blog with email. It’s that simple.

Email Subscriptions are Very, VERY Popular

The facts are that email works: people want it. Email subscriptions – i.e. your newsletter or mailing list – are familiar to the vast majority of people online. They’re comfortable with the concept. When FeedBlitz partnered with FeedBurner back in 2005 to deliver their email services for them, email subscriptions were the #1 requested feature.

Moreover, the evidence shows that email subscriptions are significantly more popular than their most frequently cited social media equivalent, RSS feeds. (I’ll ignore for now the fact that most bloggers’ email subscriptions are ultimately powered by RSS; it isn’t important from the email subscriber’s perspective).

Need some data?

HubSpot ran a survey in 2009 and found that email subscription rates varied by audience, but could be as much as 12 times (not 12 percent, 12 times) more popular than RSS.

Darren Rowse, aka @ProBlogger, revealed at a session Blog World 2010 that ~75% of his subscribers were email-based; that’s 3 times the number of RSS subscribers.

Based on these data points, if you don’t offer email subscriptions you’re potentially missing three to ten times your potential subscriber base.

Your mileage will vary, but clearly the opportunities lost to connect are significant. Can you really afford not to grow your subscriber base that much with a simple step?

Put another way, if someone told you that you could boost your subscriber count four-fold or ten-fold with five minutes’ work, wouldn’t you leap at that opportunity? That’s what having email subscriptions in your blog can deliver over time.

Email Subscribers are your Biggest Fans

These days it’s work – it takes commitment – to subscribe to a properly run mailing list, what with CAPTCHAs and dual opt-in. The email subscribers on your list have made this commitment to you, and they are inviting you to barge right in and occupy their inbox (you need to do this respectfully, of course, but that’s for a later post in the List Building for Bloggers series).

Many people follow hundreds of “friends” on Facebook, Twitter accounts, and all those teeny-weeny, unbranded, untracked, undifferentiated, easy-to-miss messages fly by.

See too Jay Baer questions the current vogue of trumpeting the number of Facebook fans and compares the trend to email subscriber valuation:

“The psychology of Facebook “likers” is similar to email newsletter subscribers (I have enough kinship with this company to allow them to stay in touch with me). However, in comparison to your Facebook fans, your email subscribers usually provide far more important information to your business when they subscribe. It takes a lot more than one click to subscribe to an email list.”

Compare and contrast.

Your email to a subscriber is in their inbox, by invitation. Fully branded. Content rich. Tracked. Customized. Personalized. A Tweet? Not so much.

Your subscribers are your core audience.

They’re the foundation of your community. They advocate for you. Engage with you. Recommend and refer you. And email is the best mechanism for staying in touch – and for them to forward your messages too.

Email is Everywhere

You’re a blogger. You’re probably more tech savvy than many of your friends. Although you have already several email accounts (one from your ISP, cable or phone company, one from a free service like gmail or hotmail, one for your work, and one for your cell phone), you may prefer not to use email much of the time. That may be true of your blogging friends too as you all hang out online on Twitter.

So when you think subscribers, you may well think of RSS first. That’s fine; it’s natural to do so for you. But remember this:

You are not your audience.

Think about it. Your audience is probably less technically sophisticated than you are. They don’t know nor care what RSS is. They don’t want to download and install and learn yet another system just to get updates from your blog. And no, they don’t understand that little orange RSS icon in their browser and they don’t understand how to get to the browser’s integrated RSS reader to subscribe and track updates. It isn’t happening for them.

So, unless you are writing for a very tech savvy readership, your readers are not as likely to be comfortable with Twitter, RSS feeds or even Facebook. They don’t “get” it. That’s fine too – they’re not worse than you or me, just not as focused on new messaging technology. So stop trying to persuade them that they’re wrong (or, worse, stupid), and accommodate them.

Give them an email subscription option instead.

To purchase the List Building for Bloggers E-Book, Click here to visit FeedBlitz.

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I am heading over to Austin Texas for South by Southwest Interactive Festival next week.

1. SX Social website – the insiders registration site where you can create a profile, connect with friends and see what’s inside their freebie “Swag” bag.  Also SXSW Go which is a mobile app including a handy scheduling service.
2. Mobile Tweetdeck – you’ve gotta be able to track the conversation so set up a search on #sxsw now [better than in past years where you had to un-follow people who weren't at the congress in order to filter tweets].
3. Instagram – the photo sharing app that allows you to filter a ‘vintage’ look onto them.  Combine with Impression to watermark them with your URL and it’s a winner.

I am going to cheat and add another

1. Feedblitz allows your RSS feed to be sent by email – but also integrates Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and enables multiple feeds to be curated using the tags.  I’m going to create a #SXSW tag which will allow my followers who only want the updates from the interactive event to go to their emails.  Neat.

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Image via Wikipedia

Devising appropriate ways to measure your social media campaign for new business development is key to proving that your work is delivering results.

Today we suggest some ways to measure the success of your work

1. The number of Followers on Twitter
2. The number of Fans on Facebook Fan Pages, Events
3. The number of tweets & RTs on Twitter
4. The number of Shares & Likes on Facebook
5. The ratio between Followers-Friends
6. The authority of the people that follow you
7. The authority of the people that share your content
8. The average quality of your previously shared messages
9. The number of unique mentions/shares (similar to Link Diversity)
10. The rate and the source of links that you share

Moreover search engines are expected to use Social Media buzz to determine:

How fresh a particular post is

If an page is still useful/valid/up-to-date

What are the current trends

Which terms are related to the particular post. They are likely to use the keywords and the hash tags that can be found in the content of the shared messages.

The theme or the topic of expertise of each author.  Users that tend to post high quality messages about a particular topic are likely to be considered as experts.  Bing already uses this feature by recommending users on Twitter.

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There are a lot of places online where your personal and company profile is visible.  This is the modern-day equivalent to directory listings that used to be a very important part of B2B marketing in the past.

I was reminded of this by a recent follow request from StrewIt.  I have no idea what the service is but if you “visit them and start Strewing!!!” apparently all will become clear.  Not.

Twitter biography

So much for them.

Well to take our own medicine, we created the Creative Agency Secrets Linked In company page.

Other places where  your personal and company information could be kept up to date:

• Facebook page
• Skype
• Delicious [topical right now]
• Website about page
• Industry specialist directories
• Techcrunch directory
• Industry magazine website listings

Why not add in a new calendar item for yourself every few months – to update your online profiles?  Set a reminder as a task or a diary date so you don’t forget.  Include in the task the list of sites to check and add in any new ones that have become important in the intervening period.

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The Daily Beast summarised a great experiment for a new Facebook joiner by testing various ways of getting his content seen by other FB users.

Facebook’s 10 biggest secrets

Tom Weber set up a great experiment and used his connections to test theories about how the FB algorithm works.  Here are the findings…

1. Facebook’s bias against Newcomers – following 500 million people into a party means that a lot of the beer and pretzels are already long gone
2. Facebook’s Catch-22 – you need friends to get exposure
3. The Velvet Rope: “Top News” – this is a selective feed versus the ‘fire hose’ “Recent News” which is everything
4. The “most recent” news is Censored too – know the difference between Most Recent and Top News – check your settings.
5. “Stalking” your friends won’t get you noticed – if you stalk others, your status updates won’t automatically appear in their news feeds
6. Having friends who “stalk” you WILL help your popularity – your updates can make it into their Top News feeds
7. Links Trump Status updates – FB wants ‘user engagement’ i.e. spending more time on Facebook
8. Photos and Video Trump Links
9. The Power of Comments – when people comment on your updates, it builds your profile
10. Why Facebook is really like High School – include friends with huge networks builds visibility for all

See the full test here.

Can your brand leverage Facebook?

Getting a fan page or an event off the ground and noticed on Facebook means you’ll have to follow the same principles.

• Set up your campaign carefully – tick off each of the 10 above for inclusion
• Have pre-assigned roles for key people to boost ‘clickability’ on launch day
• Set key stages through the campaign to re-initiate activity among your target audience
• Have some mega-users on your staff to drive promotion into Top News feeds
• Obsessive clicking DOES work
• Plan a commenting strategy with a range of ‘teaser’ questions to engage viewers

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Image by luc legay via Flickr

When you have taken the time and effort to create original content,I have always believed in using it two or three times in different ways to extract maximum value.

And so a press release becomes an article which is reproduced as a flyer and is mailed to clients or included in the corporate brochure as an insert… you get the picture.

It's much easier than that online these days.  Five things to do in order to "amplify" your work i.e. get it used two or three times in different places.

1. Set up Twitter Feed to automatically cross post from your blog to your twitter account.
2. Use Tweetdeck's Facebook integration to automatically cross-post to Facebook from your Twitter stream
3. Set up FriendFeed to include all your social media feeds and get that feeding Facebook
4. Find Ning groups, eCademy or Linked In groups that align with your specialist area and cross-post onto them from your blog
5. If you are an agency get approved to stream your blog (or just your best work) onto Marcom Professiona l

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In the good old days every company and every salesman had a card index file of contacts.  Rolodex ruled and nobody's desk was complete without one.  As the electronic database grew, the complexity of fields increased – I remember my first database [run on Smart integrated software, sigh...] when I wanted to introduce a new field, I had to copy the entire database to a floppy disc, create a new field on the computer and then merge the data back in.  I loved that database.

Now I have been thinking about the increasing numbers of people I have on my database stored in a 'catch-all' category which I started calling "Blogger" or "Freelancer"/.  There are nearly 60 people who don't work for an organisation, who I connect with regularly and who are beginning not to fit into the data fields provided.  These lead withorganisation as the principal field.  No organisation = create a fake one (Blogger) = not really representing this person accurately as there isn't an organisation called that and these people don't all work together for that organisation.

And that's just the start.  What about the people with whom I correspond via social media platforms?  It's pretty easy to add in a field called "Twitter ID" or "Facebook profile link".  But what's the point?

1. I can't mail / contact them in a traditional-style mass mailout
2. I can't contact them using links from inside my database
3. The style of contact in social media doesn't enable a mass mailout approach, if you're following me you'll see my message

I am thinking that the days of a single customer database aggregated from across the organisation is dying.  

Welcome to the interim new world of a distributed contact database and the world of aggregators to enable cross-platform viewing.

[note this is interim as the market moves towards the day when consumers hold their own information and companies build trust in order to access it = VRM]

So how might it all work?

Social media has some key attributes that are very different from old-world corporate marketing communications:

• Sharing and discovery
• Real-time information
• Feedback and re-iteration

Now that hardly works with a traditional 'campaign nor with database marketing techniques.

And so we'll need to change the nature of our "campaigns".  Of course they will continue to be called campaigns but that will become a mis-nomer.  Conversations will have to become the norm. There's a spectrum of information from broadcast (fixed point in time and not editable) to one-to-one conversations (infinitely editable, fast-moving and continuing over time).  Campaigns of the future may start in the broadcast mode but will need to move through the middle ground where peer-to-peer conversations and social media sharing is the broadcast medium and then move back to the organisation on an individual conversation business as the moment of transaction gets closer.  

 I think there's still a role for a database and some direct communications in this scenario – but its influence will be different.  It'll be a "conversational stimulant" not just a marketing message.

The anatomy of a "conversational campaign"

1. Each will be more time-co-ordinated: judged to be delivered, developed and amended in real time
2. Starting with some broadcast channels and including easy sharable content for social media
3. On-the-fly improvements and changes with several possible directions will be needed as the peer-to-peer messaging happens
4. Tracking and measuring must flow through all three parts : broadcast / peer to peer / direct conversation with the brand organisation
5. The customer contact team (?call centre) will work as part of the delivery team at the conversational end to close the marketing loop and fulfil the transaction

Unresolved issues and changing behaviours

In no particular order:

• We will still segment our audiences.  But by behaviours not demographics.  How to define?  Sales cycle stages?
• How do you send a message out only to the parts ofyour SM profile and followers that you want?  Multiple online profiles / rss?
• How to get an overall view of a multiplicity of sites with your brand / organisation profile and the differing audiences and conversations?  Aggregation and tracking tools needed.
• What to do with your company database as its utility slowly dies.  Maintain stasis?
• Stop worrying about collecting customer data via social media- they will come and go.  Track numbers but don't try to record them until near the point of transaction.
• Anticipate the rise of customers holding their own data and feeding it out to brands / organisations on a trusted basis.  Privacy intermediaries may control this?

What to do now

 Transitions take a long time to happen.  We're all going to be running parallel systems of old-databases plus new social media contacts held on third party platforms for a while.

1. Get a presence on SM platforms
2. Sign up to an aggregation platform like Friendfeed
3. Track changes in numbers of subscribers
4. Run old campaigns with a SM link-in so that the broadcast elements can migrate into peer to peer social media with ease
5. Run new campaigns on SM with direct conversational opportunities back to the brand / organisation
6. Continue to try to link 4 and 5 ever closer
7. Practice good database marketing but track customers who are on both SM and old database.  This will give clues about % take-up and when you'll be able to switch off the database
8. Stop buying data lists.

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