Author Archive

What’s the Plan, Stan?

We encourage every business, every campaign and every cause to have some kind of online strategy. That means an online presence with a purpose. What we see time and time again is one of two things: no real online presence at all, or a spray & pray type of online presence where every online tool imaginable is engaged but…poorly.

Some people say you should just dive right in and try social media, which we support. What we don’t support is opening multiple Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, blogs, Flickr accounts, and even websites – having them falter and then abandoning them. Abandoning them but not *removing* them. It’s a bit like getting a goldfish, not feeding it, and then never throwing it away.

Something else we see a lot are companies opening a social media account, and then someone else within that same company, opening one as well. And then a repeat of those actions by someone else a few months later – or on another coast – or in another department. Suddenly one company has 3 Facebook Pages and 4 Twitter accounts. The profiles are active – but each has a different fan base with different messaging. Talk about diffusing your online potential and confusing your online audience.

These are signs of diving in without a plan. It smells of “We should be online. Let’s make it so.”. Yes. Do make it so. But do it strategically. Do your homework. We promote the idea of doing an online assessment first to understand what you should do online and how you should do it. Then comes a strategy to get it done right.

Tags: assessment, audience, facebook, strategy, Twitter, website

Your Choice. Your Voice.

One thing we have a lot of these days is choice.

Want olive oil? There are a hundred to choose from.

Want to host your website on a reliable server? There are many, many options at your fingertips.

Choice is great.. until there’s so much choice you feel overwhelmed. My brother had a great line in one of his films from a few years back, which was “Why is it there are hundreds of cheeses to pick from, yet only 3 political parties?”. The political parties seem to be catching up with the cheese these days.. but I digress.

I’m sure many an article has been written about choice paralysis… not being able to make a decision due to too many options. This is what makes personal endorsements so powerful. If someone I know and trust recommends something – I am considerably more likely to get it. A friend’s endorsement offers needed guidance in a world stuffed with multiple choice.

This is why the latest evolution in Facebook Ads is so brilliant. This month Facebook started experimenting with friend’s ratings of ads.
This means people in one’s personal network can like an ad, rate it (out of five stars) and leave a comment. This allows friends to see what each other has liked – personalizing the advertising and making it more relevant to the target audience. Products or services endorsed by a friend you respect and like, are more likely to get your attention and your business.
You can read more about that here.

Google Places has enabled reviews of ads for some time – but this too is evolving. Now, business owners can respond to the reviews people write and post on Google Places. Additionally, business owners can now post real-time updates to their Google Places listings – to offer customers timely specials or deals, or even coupons compatible with mobile phones.

Yelp is another directory all about customer reviews. (Interestingly, Yelp was almost acquired by Google in 2009 when the deal fell through.)
It helps too when businesses respond to reviews. It’s only fair and I, personally, appreciate hearing the other side of a story. However, some people need to be reminded of just how publicly permanent their written words are. This particular Yelp response to a review is one that should be a lesson to us all. The business owner blasted the reviewer and accused him/her of being the competition in disguise.

Well, at least such a vitriolic response helps to eliminate that business from your basket of choices…proving any voice can shape your choice.

Tags: ads, customer reviews, facebook ads, Google Places, marketing, yelp

Free Your Brand

My favourite quote of the day:

“…Old Spice parent company Proctor & Gamble exhibited incredible bravery in allowing his team to write marketing content in real time, with little to no supervision.”

I love this quote because I think that is the future. Companies must start easing up on the tight controls they’ve historically had over their brand. If you need to control every word that is spoken and written about your brand – forcing writers to submit every word they write for scrutiny, you’re doomed. Not to say you should let writers run wild with your brand, but creativity is so quickly quashed when the pen can only write one of 12 “approved” words to describe a product.

Honest exchange, meaningful engagement and worthy interaction in social media comes when speed (aka: real time) is a part of the equation.

Picture this: someone poses a tough question on Twitter to a company (well, hopefully a *person* with a name and a head shot, representing that company). Two days pass and no one has responded. It’s not because the tweet wasn’t noticed. It’s because the person managing Twitter for that company needs to get approval on the response before they can post it. In the meantime, the person who posted the question has grown increasingly frustrated and is now bad-mouthing the company due to the lack of timely response. It even starts to appear that the company is trying to ignore or dodge the tough question.

It may be the most counter-intuitive to let up on brand control.. but the wild success of the Old Spice online campaign proves that if you’re brave enough, and trust enough, it can pay off in ways you never imagined.

If you disagree – let me hear it.

FYI: the quote came from here.

Erin.

Tags: brand management, branding, engagement, interaction, Social Media

Social Media Strategy? Spare Me

A friend of mine quietly sent me a slideshare presentation yesterday.  It was created by a long established advertising and interactive agency in town.  She sent it to me quietly because it was entitled “Why You Don’t Need a Social Media Strategy”. I guess she thought I should know I might soon be out of work, if word of this got around.

I enjoyed going through the slideshow.. and I didn’t entirely disagree with its point. However, there is an “it all comes down to semantics” argument to be made against it. Let me explain.

The presentation stated you don’t need a social media strategy.  Instead, you need an engagement strategy, or an influence strategy. My take on the presentation was that it was capitalizing on the nausea widely experienced when hearing the ubiquitous phrase “social media strategy”. Fair enough.  However, in our shop, engagement and influence are key parts of every strategy. Doesn’t that go without saying?  Perhaps what the slideshow was trying to get at is the fact that it is vitally important to venture deeper than social media when designing an online plan. Mobile, website content, optimization, online advertising are all important, sometimes more important than social media depending on the business objectives for the strategy.

There is no question “social media” is getting way too much airtime. But for people new to the concept of having an integrated online strategy, this term can really help get them in the right line of thinking, despite its shortcomings.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?

Tags: digital strategy, engagement, influence, Social Media, strategy

Privacy Online: Possible?

This post was inspired by an article entitled Social Media Privacy is an Oxymoron. It sparked some thoughts for me around how one can achieve at least *some* privacy online; assuming this is important to you because for a surprising number of people, it isn’t.

First off – Facebook.  Many informative posts have been written about controlling your privacy or removing yourself from Facebook altogether.   Some high-profile Facebook users are taking a stand against recent changes on Facebook affecting privacy. And you may have heard by now that “Quit Facebook Day” is scheduled for May 31, 2010. Before you quit, you may want to first determine what amount of your private info on Facebook is exposed. This application, as well as this one can help you do that.

But while all the attention and heat is on Facebook, what about everything else? Among, what is undoubtedly, a myriad of vulnerabilities on the big old web, here are just a few ideas that may help you stay a little more private.

To prevent the tracking of my every click, I like to use CoolPreviews. This is a tool that allows me to see what’s behind a link without having to click on it. I like to use this a lot when logged into LinkedIn or Twitter, as the tracking of where and what you click can be scrutinized. For example, if you notice a tweet was posted via Hootsuite, and the link provided is an OWLY link, your click will be counted. Not a huge deal perhaps as your click, in this case anyway, is in no way connected to your account. (At least, not that I’m aware of.)  On LinkedIn however, if you are logged in and you check out someone’s profile, your “click” as it were, *is* linked to your profile. This enables this cool-but -creepy feature:

There is a long list of ways to add more privacy to your browsing habits. Many browsers like Safari and Firefox now offer ‘Private Browsing‘ ensuring you that no website you open will be kept on record. Anywhere. There are also many types of ‘scramblers’ you can use that mask your IP address. These are called proxy servers. This can help prevent data collection on where you are in this universe, what browser you’re using, what kind of computer you’re using, among other things. Want to know what your IP reveals about you? Go here.

Google Analytics and Quantcast, as two examples, are now offering “opt out” options. Google Analytics, for one, is allowing people to opt out of being monitored for receiving targeted ads.
Quantcast, an American based service that measures audience statistics for websites, is offering something similar.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for ways of preserving privacy online. The questions I have are:

Is it too little too late?

Is it time to redefine what online privacy means?

Should we care this much? Everyone is up in arms over the privacy principle, but is the privacy practice (the way our private info is being used) really that offensive and/or scary?

I’d love to hear what you think.

Tags: advertising, facebook, Google Analytics, LinkedIn, opt out, privacy, proxy servers, Quantcast, Twitter