DreamGrow Social Media

New Free Social Media eBook

In the closing days of 2009 Pepsi decided against hiring Justin Timberlake, Cindy Crawford or even Britney Spears to speak for them during the 2010 Super Bowl. They would instead take the $20 million budgeted and use it to talk directly — and to listen back — with consumers through the web. It was the final and perhaps the most significant signpost marking 2009 as a year where emerging social media technologies mandated new strategies for anyone who deals with the public.

Download the new ebook released today (Feb 23): Who’s Blogging What About Social Media in 2010 eBook

What’s happening in social meida. The “Who’s Blogging What” ebook brings together the opinions from several bloggers including Ann Handley (MarketingProfs), Mitch Joel (Six Pixels of Separation), Paul Dunay (Buzz Marketing for Technology), and Mike Volpe (HubSpot). Read their thoughts about:

• What to expect in social media in 2010?
• What benchmarks can marketers use to measure social media ROI?
• How do you separate hype from reality in social media marketing?

Best selling social media marketing books

I got cold and some idle time. To pass time I browsed Amazon to check out what’s hot on the social media marketing shelf. Get some of these and you will get new ideas and tactics you can implement right now.

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk, rating 4.5/5. This book isn’t interested in making unrealistic promises while glossing over the work involved. Making a living by building content around your passion isn’t simple and it doesn’t happen overnight. What it is, however, is fulfilling and in most cases just as profitable, if not more so, than your previous job.

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, rating 4.9/5. Stop pushing your message out and start pulling your customers in. People are now increasingly turning to Google, social media, and blogs to find products and services. Inbound Marketing helps you take advantage of this change by showing you how to get found by customers online.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott, rating 4.6/5. Though it may not yet have affected the value of 30 seconds of Super Bowl advertising, PR insider Scott argues that understanding the growing irrelevance of marketing’s “old rules” is vital to thriving in the new media jungle.

The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success by Lon Safko, David K. Brake, rating 4.7/of 5. The book will show you how to build or transform your business into a social media—enabled enterprise where customers, employees, and prospects connect, collaborate, and champion your products, your services, and your way of doing business.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff, rating 4.6/5. Two of Forrester Research’s top analysts show you how to turn the force of customers connecting to your own advantage. Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li show how leading companies are gaining insights, generating revenues, saving money, and energizing their own customers.

Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business by Erik Qualman, rating 4.6/5. Social Media isn’t just for the Next Generation – it’s for every generation. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a media professional, a college student or a mom, social media will shape your future. Don’t be overwhelmed by it; read Qualman’s book instead.” – Jane Wooldridge, The Miami Herald

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin, rating 4.1/5. Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities for leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, readers. . . . It’s not easy, but it’s easier than you probably imagine.

The Social Media Marketing Book by Dan Zarrella, rating 4.8/5. This book guides you through the maze of communities, platforms, and social media tools so you can decide which ones to use, and how to use them most effectively.

Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans, rating 4.5/5. Put the buzz about your business to work for you. This comprehensive, perfectly paced guide will teach you how to make social media an active part of your marketing plan so that you can turn customer conversations about your brand, product, service, and company into a sustainable competitive advantage.

Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business! by Paul Gillin, rating 4.6/5. A handbook for marketers and business owners to use in deciding how to employ the new social media for online marketing.

Image credit Zsuzsanna Kilian

Seven Actionable Marketing Trends

Excellent! A collection of insights and ideas in relation to each of the before published seven actionable marketing trends.

Social Media Weekend: Measurability, Top Blogs, Resources, Trends

How-to: Do Almost Anything Online in 2010. If you’re looking to improve your life in 2010, we hope you’ll find these 40+ How-To guides useful. You can find even more How-To guides and tips in the How-To section of this site.

CMOs Plan for Higher Social Media Measurability in 2010. How do CMOs link social marketing with real, bottom-line results? 120+ CMOs shared their biggest challenges, plans, and expectations for social marketing in this 2009 survey by The CMO Club and Bazaarvoice.

Social Media Blogs Top 200. This is the real thing. The best list of social media blogs in the world. Why is this the best list?

Social Media as the ‘Last Mile’ – The Internal War. First up is the internal war. This is what I originally said: 1. Jealousy from the existing marketing teams towards the ‘new’ social media team. This results in internal political battles that cripple both sides.

Top 10 Resources for Keeping Up with Social Media. You need to know what’s developing, what are the best practices, what are the trends. Everyone has their favorites, but here are some must reads. Sign up for their newsletters or feeds so you don’t have to go chasing around the web to keep up with them.

22 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2010. Here’s our own social media trend prediction presentation for this year. We were really amazed how much feedback we got from it.

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Image credit Sanja Gjenero

Social media weekend: Seth Godin, relationships, marketing is dead

Another collection of articles for people who want to stay up to date in all things social. Seth GOdin has released agreat free ebook. Marketing will die. What is a relationship and 50 tactics for social media. Share and enjoy.

What Matters Now: get the free ebook from Seth Godin. Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up. Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. Seth’s new ebook will get you started on that path. A page from 60 great thinkers. (Download PDF now).

Be of service. Always. Excellence! Never an exception! If not Excellence, what? — Tom Peters in the ebook

50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits

2010: The Year Marketing Dies… (Subtitled) Or at Least Marketing as We Know It! If marketing burns to the ground in 2010, a new and more powerful marketing will rise from the ashes. The role of the new marketer:

• Won’t be merely to imagine creative messages but to fashion programs that are seamless with the actual product and service experience,
• Won’t be to plan bursts of communication on a yearlong calendar but to respond to and be part of the ever-changing dialog with consumers,
• Won’t be merely to talk at consumers but to listen and engage one to one,
• Won’t be to build campaigns but relationships…

Clay Shirky: How social media can make history While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. The same change is taking place in advertising and marketing. Control is an illusion.

Social media-powered show to hit Web. From creator of ‘American Idol’ comes ‘If I Can Dream,’ a social media approach to entertainment. If I Can Dream. Ehh… I had similar idea with my friend. Interaction, between characters across all social media in real-time. In addition to that regular TV appearances that are backed by YouTube and Hulu. This project seems to bypass regular TV. Ideas cost nothing, innovation is in doing…

Relationships Aren’t Universal. You, as a business, may have all the best intentions to forge a relationship with me, meaning that you want to talk with me, interact with me, get to know me better, understand my motivations and my personality and demonstrate that you value me as a customer, and hopefully give me lots of reasons to adore you and express that adoration publicly. I, however, may just want to get a discount, buy your thing because it suits my needs, and move on.

Weekend social media reading

Social Media in the 2009 Inc. 500: New Tools & New Trends
The study compares adoption of social media over three years (2007, 2008 and 2009) by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies. Regardless of the particular technology, social media matters and is here to stay. Forty-three percent of the 2009 Inc. 500 reported social media was “very important” to their business/marketing strategy. And an incredible 91% of the Inc. 500 is using at least one social media tool in 2009 (up from 77% in 2008).

Online Video Advertising: Doubles Engagement, Boosts ROI (PDF)
Adding video to your online campaign can significantly improve your marketing results. Marketers are responding in kind with a larger slice of their advertising budgets. What makes online video advertising so successful? What can make your video campaign even better? In this in-depth bulletin, based on the knowledge accumulated at Eyeblaster from serving a large portion of the online video campaigns worldwide, we share our insights.

Consumers Open to Marketing Messages on Social Media Sites
Forty-six percent of respondents say they would talk about or recommend a product on Facebook. The survey of more than 3,000 U.S. consumers comprised 100+ questions to determine how various segments of consumers use social networks in their daily lives, specifically in regard to finding out about different types of products and in relation to other media channels. The study found that marketers who embrace the medium and communicate relevant messages in consumers’ language and on their terms could gain customers and grow sales.

Do Fortune 100 companies need a Twitter-vention?
With more than 20 million people on Twitter in the U.S. (50 million worldwide), there are ample opportunities for audiences to engage with corporations and brands. Weber Shandwick conducted research to evaluate how effectively Fortune 100 companies used Twitter to its full potential as an engagement platform. The results provide key learnings for companies who want to make sure their party is one that’s buzzing. Think of Twitter as the über corporate cocktail party. Your influential guests will stay only if the conversation is entertaining, valuable and interesting.

FEED: The 2009 Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report

FEED is Razorfish’s annual study charting how technology is changing the way consumers engage with brands. The report, and the blog, are written by Garrick Schmitt, Group Vice President, Experience Planning. Get the PDF.

Social Media Campaigns are a Waste of Money!

Social media is a place where people interact with each other and, if you are luck, this may include your brand. This is engagement. Everybody wants it, but to achieve that you have to think long term not one off campaigns. We have seen politicians do that a lot. The last tweet or blog post has the same date as the election day. A few months before next election they come out of hibernation and try to engage you again.

You may have “friends” who turn to you only when they need something. This is the same thing as a campaign in social media. So, don’t do social media campaigns! I took the last sentence from Brendan Hughes who dug deeper into the matter of campaigns versus engagement in social media:

What’s wrong with a campaign then? In a campaign approach, you’re missing the essence of the nature (and thus the opportunity) of social media. It’s about relationships, and to draw a parallel, a social media campaign is a bit like a one night stand. Everyone had a bit of fun, but ultimately I feel a bit used.

In our work we meet a lot of agency people. What strikes me as odd is that if they go into all that trouble to make and launch a campaign, why wouldn’t they go one step further and make it a long term program? This campaign mentality seems to be a rule rather than exception. You should take that last step and really connect with people.

Social media statistics and data for the weekend

New empirical data for SEO and social media marketing strategies – measuring is he key to widespread corporate adoption. Really great post.
Without units of measurement it’s hard to experiment, and without experiments it’s hard to have data to drive conclusions. This is a sucky situation for the scientist in me. Recently, however, I’ve come across several sources of empirical, experimentally-sound data sources that do tell us how to be awesome at both SEO and social media.

Retailers use social media to advertise Black Friday deals
One in five shoppers plans to use social sites in their holiday shopping this season, according to Deloitte Research. Hundreds of Black Friday bargains from retailers such as diverse as OfficeMax and Old Navy already are being leaked on deal sites, even though the big sales blitz is still a couple weeks away.

Gen Y women share product and brand secrets via social media
Gen Y women actually are less likely to try something mentioned in a blog by professionals or subject experts (22%) vs. the 28% of a blog by someone they consider their peer. Gen X women appear to give them the same credit, 16% likely to try something new whether hearing from subject expert or random blogger. The original survey is here (“Why Y Women http://media.onsugar.com/static/imgs/WhyYWomen.pdf PDF)

Social Media Users Open to Branding, Marketing
After seeing an ad on a social media site, 34% of respondents have used a search engine to find information on a product, service, or brand; 30% say they have learned about a new product, service, or brand from a social media site.
Among Facebook users who have connected with a brand on the site:

• 46% say they are likely to talk about or recommend a product.
• 44% say they are likely to purchase a product.
• 37% say they are likely to link to an ad for a product.
• 27% say they are likely to post an ad for a product.

Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study
Nearly 65% of respondents reported using social media as part of their normal work routine,including reading blogs, visiting business profiles on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn or using Twitter to find information and/or communicate about business-related matters.

Interview with Seth Godin

This is an interview I did with Seth Godin when the Tribes book came out. Until now it resided on our Estonian web site as we didn’t have the English site. I decided to copy it here so that all our English content could be found on the same site. If you haven’t seen it before, enjoy.

Seth Godin is the marketing guru who talks about how marketeers shouldn’t spam people and how we should gain permission to communicate by being remarkable. He predicts that average products for average people will become invisible as mass media advertising loses effectiveness. He has written a lot of insightful books on the subject. Some of them are free Unleashing th Ideavirus and Knock Knock.

On 22 October 2008 Seth introduced his new book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. The presentation was excellent in helping to better understand the the idea behind the book. It is not just a marketing book. It’s about leadership. How leading a tribe is a much more rewarding activity than just trying to yell at them. You can find the audio of the presentation here and the slides here (slides are with notes). If you take marketing seriously check these out. It is a time well spent.

Few weeks ago you helped us to put together a bunch of questions for Seth and here are the answers:

Priit Kallas: Your last book about tribes is leadership-marketing-motivational. Are product/marketing related tribes created or they just happen? If marketer tries to create a tribe, isn’t that just another trick to push his product?

Seth Godin: No one accidentally joins a tribe, and if we’re tricked into it, we won’t stay for long. But yes, it’s clear that some politicians and marketers are able to intentionally create tribes.

Priit Kallas: Marketers are afraid that if they let people to talk freely then a lot of negative will be said, that will erode the brand and all kinds of bad thins will happen. How would you respond to that?

Seth Godin: They’re right. Things will be said. If you create a movement that’s honest and a product that matters, those things will be largely positive. The only other choice is to be ignored, and we know that this doesn’t work very well.

Priit Kallas: It seems to me that to be remarkable and gain permission you need to know what people want, but for that you need to talk to people who haven’t yet given permission. Do you just do something hoping it will be a hit rather than a miss?

Seth Godin: I think the art is in understanding what people want, not running a focus group and having them tell you what they want. Smart marketers have an empathy that allows them to do this.

Priit Kallas: In small markets (like Estonia) some tribes fail due to the fact that there just isn’t enough people to keep the tribe going. But with spam you could reach enough people to turn a profit. Do you have examples how to deal with that.

Seth Godin: Spam always works in the short run, but it fades out very quickly. The long term win is in building a tribe, and since it’s not limited by geography any longer, that tribe can be larger than Estonia.

Priit Kallas: You have said that we need meatballs (average products for average people). To market meatballs you need to do things the old way and spam people. This is going to be less and less effective so the meatball model won’t work and we don’t have metaballs… Do you see some kind of equilibrium developing between old and new (spam and permission)?

Seth Godin: I think it’s likely that society will accept a certain amount of spam as background noise. It won’t ever go away. The opportunity for growth, though, doesn’t lie in doing something that people merely tolerate. The real wins will come, over and over, from marketers who are welcomed, not shunned.

Priit Kallas: TV-Industrial complex is/was a repeatable model. What can you say about a new model emerging to replace that. Is there a model? Do this, then that, profit?

Seth Godin: Do something worth talking about. Word spreads. Make a profit. Repeat. Along the way, earn permission to make it easier to spread the word next time.

Priit Kallas: Media is atomizing. Currently you can buy ads in a TV channel, a news paper and a few billboards. If we need to use thousands of channels to deliver relevant message is this going to be all automatic (like Google AdSense).

Seth Godin: I think ad buying is not ready for a one-stop shop, but there’s no doubt that much of it will be consolidated and automated….

Priit Kallas: What will happen to the traditional media?

Seth Godin: Media doesn’t go away, it just evolves.

Priit Kallas: Are you wearing mis matching socks all the time or just on the events?

Seth Godin: I wear mismatched socks every single day. It’s a nice reminder.

Priit Kallas: What we need to do to get you to Estonia?

Seth Godin: Alas, it’s just too far to travel.

Questions from our blog and email:

Lembi Sander: How to market a DVD of a small theater, so that it would get attention and be remarkable?

Seth Godin: The question isn’t how to market the DVD. The question is how to change the theater. What would the theatre have to become in order to earn the expectation that people would talk about it?

Silja Oja: The market is down, sales are down and the company is in the red. What would you suggest to a marketer, where to focus their efforts?

Seth Godin: This is a great opportunity to build relationships, to lead a tribe, to create a movement. Everyone else is scared and quiet, looking for leadership. That should be you.

Peep Laja: What do you think is the best way to develop relationships (online) with potential and current clients?

Seth Godin: Do things for people. Relentlessly. Be helpful, be generous. Don’t ask for anything in return!

Successful strategies for marketing in the social networking platform?

What are the differences in online and offline advertising and marketing. Why do campaigns fall on their faces when marketeers are trying to use old strategies in new channels. This excellent paper looks at the social component and tries to find key points to achieve success in social marketing.

It is clear that social networking marketing is very different from traditional marketing. In fact, online and offline advertising are two different fields. One cannot use the old model of advertising in the new landscape.

In this 162 page paper by Weng Wah Wong looks into online advertising, social advertising in the social media environment. The main question of the research is “What strategies can be successfully employed by advertising and marketing practitioners within the social networking platform?”

To address the main question three sub-questions were answered:

• What elements do current social marketing campaigns exhibit?
  A social marketing campaign exhibits five types of characteristics which are participation, openness, conversation, community and connectedness
• What elements make marketing with social networking unique and different from other forms of online advertising?
  The flexibility, the precision targeting and the viral element that is in built in a social networking site are the main reasons that make marketing with social networking unique and different. It allows brands to target specifically to their target audience while no other forms of online advertising can provide such accuracy. Harnessing on the social power of recommendations, the consumer no longer hears only from the brand but hears the brand message through friends which increases the credibility and trust of consumer and the brand.
• What strategies can be devised to enable advertisers to maximize success on the social networking platform?
  An integrated campaign, offline and online will be the most strategic strategies that will maximize their success on the social networking platforms because it reaches the consumer through all touch points and driving traffic to the web through offline activities and online activities. In order for the web strategies to work, advertisers need to understand their consumer and learn how to interact and engage with the consumers without being intrusive. Successfully executing this will allow the brand message to be passed along (that is, by word of mouth).

The research is from 2008 but not to worry, the findings are still valid and probably will be for some time. You can find the full paper in Scribd.