Promoting your content on social media it is not just making comments...

Social Media increased the number of content creators. Now we also see new platforms in where we can publish in different ways, for different purposes, different kind of messages, etc.

How to use Facebook, Twitter and a lot of social sites for marketing or branding reasons became also a trend. You can find a lot of books, blogs and web sites talking about that, but... as I mentioned in my previous post, there are a lot of implications and considerations on it.

I like to talk about my experience on blog comments.

I'v been receiving spam comments on this blog, and I also saw a very big amount of spam comments on other blogs. Comments like " hello I just want to share my site with you" , then you click the link and you find out an arbitrage links page or some other garbage stuff. But there are some other comments that you find useful and these are also part of a marketing effort. what is the difference? The famous "join the conversation" and not the "screwed the conversation"

Today it is easy to find who is talking about us or topics related to our brand / services or content, and we can add value to that blog, video, twitt, forum, etc if we do it right, but do we have to track ALL and post in all of them? the answer is obvious so here are some personal recommendations for this practice.

1.- How is your destination?

We work too much some times in promoting our content, but the experience on our sites is very poor, so the first task is easy, be sure that your site, landing page, destination its great (focus always in three things: utility, usability and likeness)

2.- Identify your keywords / topics

Like SEO, a very important activity for web 2.0 linking is identify the right keywords and topics, these will be the base for you to look for the right conversations in where you want to join in. Define specific keywords and sentences, avoid general things, this would just make you more inefficient on your conversations searching process.

3.- Search the conversation

You can search blogs / articles on blogger, google blogs, technorati, google news, digg, etc. When you look for things always focus on looking for very specific results and then, be sure that you just focus on those written on the past 5 - 7 days (not more than that). When looking for video content, look for videos posted on the last 30 days and when twitts or other real time platforms, posts from the last 3 hours.

4.- Second filter, site popularity

After identifying those relevant blogs, articles, twitts or videos. It is a very important task to select the most popular ones. You can see their total views (if you are in youtube), the # of followers, the # of diggs or the # of visits (you can find out part of this info on Alexa or using SEO digger tools). Once you know that you just found a very well written, popular and recent social media post... then you can proceed starting or participating on their conversation

5.- Undersand very well the content

Once at the blog, video or other, read very well, very, very, very well what they are talking about, what they are looking for with the content.

6.- Participate

After you understand, then you are ready to participate: Start writing your understatement of their publication, tell them what was valuable about their post and finally GIVE, deliver value to that post, do not just post your link, enhance their conversation, either with a reference from you, or your point of view and access to go dipper on the topic, either through you directly or your customer services channels, but be sure that you GIVE VALUE to them

7.- Always be you

Do not hide your self thinking that the audience will read better a 3rd person. that could work once, but it is not honest and once some finds, the consequence could be the worst (loose your clients trust). If you have to sign in order to post something, post with your name or your brands name and your position

The join participation process is not about volume, it is about value. Learn how to do this and then slowly and step by step, start growing this, either to more comments, from more representatives, etc

Finally, remember that it is more important to listen and answer, that just post words that do not give value to anyone

I'll keep a continuous improvement process on this and some other web 2.0 marketing practices and every month me and my team analyze the results (customers reaction and goals achievement)

Thanks!

Social, social, social... ok, but...

It has been a while since I do not write on my blog. This time I have some thoughts that I like to share again.

During the past years the digital marketing opportunity became more active (which is good). The web communications keep growing and growing and every day we see more brands and companies participating on-line.

But... during the past months all of them or almost all of them want to do something related to social.

I like their excitement about that, but... do they know what to do? do they have a real strategy? or we are starting to build just based on buzz?

How many brands are doing social web experiments right now, but they just are "doing" something, but they are not developing a strategy. How many brands are going to fail and they wont try to do anything else in the future years, because they tried, and they did not have any result as they expected?

Now we hear that they want to be on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or they want to build their own social platform, but just because they want to be there or build their own social network and not because they can enhance the client experience (better product, better service, support, marketing...)

Their main focus must be first in their own product, then on how to communicate it to their own targets and then build a relationship and YES they can support their commercial funnel using social platforms but only if it is necessary. Nowadays we can see that we can be part of a group, fan or follow brands and products that we might use, but our relationship with these brands do not motivate us to have an ongoing communication with them, or we do not want to share our private spaces with them or we do not want to share with others on sponsored platforms.

My point is:

1.- Brands. Please focus first on your product

2.- Based on your marketing strategies define what is the best medium to do awareness about the products or services

3.- If the brands want to have a conversation with their targets "maybe" the on-line platform could be part of the solution, but identify if your brand has a personality like the one the targets want to get in touch with or if the product / service or brands is only a commodity to their target or they do not want to see it next to their friends or interests.

4.- All on-line destinations could be the solution, but it is important to define what to say and then where to say it. I could follow the latest bargains to fly to a vacation destination, but that (to me) do not mean that I want to be a fan, be part of a group, enroll in a sponsored social networking platform related to an airline. I want to follow a topic, not an airline.

I learned that all implementation should focus on

Utility

Usability

and Likeness

All your communications should be useful for your target. Your website, your keywords, the comments on a blog, the posts on social platforms, display ads, etc...

Then all of the them should be on the right context. Maybe a social platform or maybe a lot of them, but also maybe just distributing your content on Non social sites, but highly related to your topic and audience. Think how usable your message would be on the environment you are planning to share it

Finally... work on the best way to show it (the best possible copy, image, etc...) if the message is the right one, on the right medium, but it is not attractive to your audience, then you could fail

I wrote all of these, because the web YES it is for everybody, but the social / web 2.0 platforms are not or at least you should think how to participate, maybe is just analyzing the content and not building a YouTube mimic site for your brand or company. There are more options that could give your better effectiveness.

Finally.. work with people who have real experience and not people who just finished a web 2.0 book or always read TechCrunch or other blogs. Work with agencies who understand the medium not who says they know how to do. It is incredible the amount of "consultants" who claim to know about this, but they just have good intentions, but any experience.

I know a company who wants to do something, leverage the power of the communities, but they want to build something and it is kind of obvious that their audience do not want to be in a brand sponsored environment... The real opportunity it is the connection development between the brand and its audience, but not having a site and track visits

Anyway these are just my thoughts and I wanted to share it with you

The content distribution strategy

Congratulations for the 2009!

3 years ago I was with a couple of brand managers and we were discussing about the right strategy for the Internet... I remembered that conversation during the past weeks and I like to share some thoughts.

First of all (I think) brands and companies should have a strategy and not an "Internet Strategy" and I am sure almost all companies and brands have their own annual or whatever strategy and they do not want to create a strategy for each channel (TV strategy, Radio strategy, etc) what they meant was that they were trying to understand how to participate, take advantage, use, implement and manage the Internet as a communication channel, because they did not know well at that time. 

After a strategy is designed (sales, marketing, etc...) it is important to identify which channels will be the ones which will maximize our efforts or the ones that we need to accomplish our tactics, etc. The Internet is nowadays one of the most powerful channels to start a conversation and/or deliver a message. There are a lot of tactics to bring  your audience to your message or to deliver your message to your audience (email Marketing, Search Marketing, Seeding, etc...) . All of this is not new to marketers today. All of the most common Internet tactics are helpful, but in today's environment are not enough. Some marketers believe that they can just create a website with their different messages and then implement tactics as Search or Display Banners to bring their audience to their content, but that is not enough... 

In today's environment we should  distribute our content and not just keep it in only in one place (our site). Social Media is increasing the content and perspectives from our audiences, but all of this is thanks to the different platforms which are offering an alternative to post or BROWSE content. Digg for example is an alternative to be updated from different content sources. It is not a blog or article search engine is a place in where the content from different sources is posted from different users who think that, that content is relevant now. Delicious is kind of the same, and there are everyday more and more different alternatives, inside the "famous" social network platforms (Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) and new different alternatives. 

So... how to use these tools? there are a lot of practices, but the way I see it and what I recommended to those Brand Managers 3 years ago was to use it to "distribute" your content.

Is your content ready to be published in these alternatives? is it possible to "digg it" or post it at delicious? Are you posting your videos at Youtube and the different vertical video sharing platforms? Are you posting your new communications at the Facebook, LinkedIn or other social networks groups, forums or shared links? Are you uploading your pdf's or other different file formats at Docstoc or ScriBD? Are you posting your slide decks at SlideShare? Do you agree with the content about you, posted at Wikipedia, Mahalo, Yelp (not as comment, but as your official description)? Are you giving updates through Twitter to your community? if yes... how often are you doing it? if not... when are you going to start?

Obama did it, a lot of artists and more top brands are trying to do it... and it is because is effective. Your audience is looking for you in different platforms, don't you want to "deliver your message"?

You should identify which are the most important platforms for your audiences and in where categories are they looking for info related to you or your product / service. Then, publish your content, customizing the title and description in order to be aligned with the platform. It is different to post at Twitter, than Digg, than Facebook. There are tools to simplify the posting process; to identify the most relevant sources and to track results. Do not forget to track. 

And you need to train your agencies (PR or Digital) to do this in an effective way. They probably know, but in my experience they say they know, but they do not understand well how to do it, and that is fine, this is new, but they need to understand the purpose and create a method.

Google is a great starting point and the official news sources like Yahoo! News, CNN, etc are also great platforms used by the consumers, but they are also increasing day by day the usage of the different platforms which are offering them an alternative to browse in a different user experience, what they are looking for. The list of emerging platforms is longer every day and you should define how to approach to them, how often to manage your content posts at there and how to manage a "conversation"and not only a one way message. I agree that there are not to many professional services who can help you to manage your communities, but if you find one ask them to manage not only the community questions or requirements, but to distribute your messages also.

Agencies, we need more community management professionals. 

Brands, we need to hear from you in the different platforms. 

Platforms we need a better user experience every day and APIs to be able to manage the conversations in a better way.

This content distribution concept, plus the traffic management practice will become a day by day task for top performers in all categories of brands.

Thanks and remember that you can find more about me at my LinkedIN profile

In my next post, I will be talking about how to track conversations or what your audience is talking about you (and where) using platforms like Radian or JackBe

The sites and tools that I liked the most during 2008

Something that I really like about the web are not only the tons of info, but the great tools for different purposes and all of them with great results.

During 2008, the tools that I used and liked the most were:

1.- Animoto (http://www.animoto.com)
Great platform to create videos. If you need to create a great quality video at a low budget or without budget, then Animoto is a great solution. You can automatically create videos (in minutes) and the outcome is even better than some "professional" produced. I really like Animoto

2.- Get Satisfaction (http://www.getsatisfaction.com)
This is a free tool to implement a suggestion in-box to your site. It helps not only to manage the feedback for the site, but it does it also by page or category as well.

3.- ScreenToaster (http://www.screentoaster.com)
If you have a site and you have a FAQ section, then a video (walk through) would be the best answer illustration. Now you can do it for free with Screen Toaster. I like it a lot for my sites help sections

4.- SlideRocket (http://www.sliderocket.com)
I did not use slide rocket as often as I wanted to, but it doesn't mean it's not a great tool, because it is. PowerPoint can not deliver final presentations like the Apple Keynote ones, but with Slide Rocket, you will be able to upload your ppt and make it as nice as an Apple's Keynote presentation (or even better)

5.- Google Insights for Search (http://google.com/insights/search/)
I see it as the evolution of Google Trends. It is just great. Try it, you will see great insights from the search terms that you are interested into. From Google I also strongly used the Webmaster tools, Analytics, Maps, Documents. When I was at Yahoo! I tried to look for similar things from Y!, but Google is far away with this kind of tools. you must try a lot of these tools

6.- Scribd and Issuu (http://www.scribd.com and http://www.issuu.com)
These are not just sites in where we are able to search for different kind of documents (like SlideShare or DocStoc also) but the thing that I like about these two, is the capability to use their document browsers at your site, so you can provide now a better user experience in your own site and it will be powered by Issuu or SricBD. You do not need to invest in code or wait for the development.

--

The other links that I will post are related to the sites (not tools) which I consider interesting to me. The design, experience, innovation, etc are the things that made me went there more than 10 times, just to see the site, read it or use it.

7.- Pandora (http://www.pandora.com)
I do not need to explain Pandora, for me... the best on line radio experience, with an awesome user experience in terms of the GUI and how do they post the ads inside the site, that is something that I admire also

8.- Razorlight (http://www.razorlight.co.uk/)
What???? yes this is a band web site, and... WOW!!!! what a great way to use video in a site. just go there and see what I mean. I hope they still have the full screen video experience... reduce the browser window (do not minimize it, only make it smaller) and you will see how the video goes smaller also, with out loosing the streaming delivery. The GUI, the music, etc... what a great site. I used to design a lot (more than 8 years ago). If you are a designer, then try it. The full experience is the music, image, video, font, etc... that is design, the hole package

9.- TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/)
My number one source for new things, news and for my own daily entertainment is TechCrunch. My proffered blog. I strongly recommend it

10.- Revision 3 (http://www.revision3.com) and other through Apple TV
Diggnation, Tekzilla and GreekBrief.TV (http://www.geekbrief.tv/) are my top video resources through my Apple TV, also the CNet content and much more. Try the video blogs through this video streaming boxes (like the apple tv) It is truly something better than TV

Thanks for 2008 and I hope we can have a better 2009. Let's not just hope it, but fight for it. It has to be a better year.

Regards
Jorge A. Herrera Rojas

The marketing effectiveness analysis future

We have been looking for better ways to reach our customers and to deliver effective messages to them.

Behavioural Targeting gives us the opportunity to deliver messages to our audience, during its related to us decision process and through segmentation we can reach our potential consumers. These practices are evolving better day by day and their purpose is to give to marketing the ability to be more effective with the marketing investments. If we can deliver the right message to our potential consumers and/or if we reach them when they are planning to buy something from our category, then the marketing investment would be more product ivy, right? well, that is correct "in theory", but to have the information to analyze the segments and behaviours demands a lot of data and that process is not standardized (until today) between all the targeting and behavioural targeting vendors and consultants. There is now a new association looking for the standardization of the concepts and methods. Today some of them offers the same information, but they develop this knowledge based in different data and the outputs are different. Some of them are correct and some of them are not accurate, the risk in the future will be the lost of trust from the advertisers in these practices.

Thinking about what info could be the one that I as an advertiser would need or the one that would help me to analyze my segments, its behaviour and my marketing / channels effectiveness, I developed a simple ideal scenario, which I hope to see in the future (maybe by 2015)

It would be great to have a tag to follow all my customers cycles:

1.- The channel delivers a "tag" to its audience.
It will be great if the TV screen, newspaper, pc, radio or other channel could deliver a piece of data to its audience. Today almost all these channels can have a data delivery component and it can deliver it to other component in a wireless environment. The TV and laptop can deliver a piece of data to those consumers who are watching a TV ad or banner (any kind of internet ad). There is now also "ePaper" and we know that the future of paper is not in jeopardy, but it will evolve to dynamic paper, with electronic components, so it will be ready also to deliver data to its readers.

2.- The audience collect and host data from different channels
The channels are ready or almost ready to start delivering data to its audiences, but how the audience can receive it and host it? are we going to host a chip inside of our body? more or less... yes. Today the credit cards can host data and this data can interact with different channels. The chip in the cards would be able to host info from different channels and related to the ads and info that we saw. This info could be managed based on different business and gov rules, for privacy and also for data analysis, etc... the info could be also hosted in other different personal and portable receptors like music players, watches and mobile phones, so the data wont be only hosted in 01 (one) device, but in all our personal devices (to ensure be accurate)

3.- The transactions, buyers, ads, channels, demographics, etc are all together now.
When the consumer makes a purchase through any channel (life, telephone, internet or other) the ads info, frequency, channel and other could be delivered on regular bases and integrated with all the purchasing information at the point of purchase and with all of this info I can analyze what was the last ad, the frequency, my competence effectiveness, etc and obviously evolve from one consumer to all consumers and redefine, find or manage my current and future segments and their behaviours

If we can have all of this data, in an open environment, the advertisers will be more effective, but the most interesting thing for the consumers will be that this will increase the competence level between business and the winner always is the consumer. Better marketing, products, distribution etc its always the result of better competence. Today we keep hearing incredible sentences or superlative adjectives in almost all ads and we should be hearing only the true, so if we have an open environment the consumers can analyze also what is the best product for similar segments.

I am assuming that we will be able to deliver TV, radio and paper ads also based on targeting rules and behavioural strategies. The ads could be based on the watcher(s) id from phones, credit cards or other devices, if we can do this we will be able to deliver ads based on consumer(s) info, content and context. family wathcing a movie on starudary night, will be different to couple watching the same movie or a alone 40 year guy. so we will be able to deliver all the ads personalized

Well, maybe this is a dream, but that is why I will be looking forward to see in the future

This is a simple diagram to illustrate my idea

Do not copy these examples, make them your benchmark, your food for something new and good, but do not copy them

We have been talking about how to deliver a message or drive users to our message. Social Advertising, Traffic Management Marketing, Rich-Media, Behavioural Targeting, Mobile, etc... and what about the content of the message? the landing page? the site? the game? the beef of our message? many times great campaigns increase your expectation and the final destination is a total disappointment. Last MIXX finale, is a "Gala Award Night"where they award the best efforts in many categories: Brand Awareness, Product Lunch, Search Marketing Campaign, Mobile, Widget Marketing, etc... you can see all the winners at http://www.mixx-expo.com/2.8/awards_gallery_2008.aspx

What interested me the most was the ability of almost all of them to impress me. I consider my self some one who browse, surf, analyze, research and search a lot in the Internet world and I love to be in this kind of events, because its like a 2 hours (or 3) of creativity. Like a guided ride through the best places of the Internet, its like seen the future but you know is the past for them. Many times you want to be ahead but there are others who are really ahead.

I do not mean that I saw new technologies, but different and effective ways to support a commercial purpose through technology and really admire that and that is why I was so impressed. I respect the work of this guys and agencies. And I do not mean only that this are great graphical executions or awesome code, but all of that attached to a unique concept, which supports a commercial strategy.

I will talk about some examples:

1.- Layer Tennis.
what!!!!! yes... Adobe lunched a site http://layertennis.com/
Adobe looked for a different way to advertise and lunch the CS3 (now Adobe is in its #4 Creative Suite, so this was lunched at least one year ago). Layer Tennis is a great concept, where every Friday there are design matches. The participants have 15 minutes to create something and posting (that is a volley or the length of a turn), then they post the result and the other competitor have other 15 minutes to add, change, edit or evolve the piece of art. Both competitors have 5 turns and at the end a panel of judges selects a winner. The viewers in the mean time can comment about each posted piece. WOW!!! right? the site is an archive of all the produced pieces and you can see past matches. ...Well all should be produced using CS3 and its the best advertising. Great and incredible pieces of art, produced in 15 minutes. The best part (for the business readers) is that through this tactic / channel, Adobe achieved more than 60% of its annual CS3 sales, and they did not spent a penny in other media advertising channels (off line).

The result is amazing and showed us the benefit of the digital marketing, through viral and social tactics and an open platform for the designers community.

2.- American Express Open Forum
Amex is looking to be a partner for business owners, and that is why it brings the platform and the content base for this site / community. It is a great site with guides, training information and blogs about finance, marketing, innovation, leadership and management. Do you want to know how can you have a B2B relationship using the social media, networking and web 2.0 new tactics? well Amex did it great and their goal was NOT to use the tech trendy tools, but they saw an opportunity to develop a better relationship with their client community in where they can provide something that their client community can consumer, maximize, growth and value.
http://www.openforum.com/

These are only 2 examples of great strategies on the digital marketing arena. more than video, webinars, web 2.0, wikis, mobile, etc. these brands were taking risks and now they are receiving the benefits and showing to the rest of the industries how to take advantage of the on-line marketing

Is very frustrating to see how other brands copy the concepts. if could work for you, then do it, I do not agree but do it. Many times the brands copy with out an impact or benefit analysis, without trying to develop something tailor made for its own brand, some times brands just follow other brands and that is why I ask for the "Do not copy these examples, make them your benchmark, but do not copy them. I am sure that all can do something that fits their needs, that will helps the consumer, to the brand, to the media, etc... lets build and do not copy something as it is. You can take and apply best practices, that is different, but copycats are just wrong

Android,The Google's mobile platform is ready and I do not why I am angry....

First of all I am happy to see that they accomplished what they promised, even though many analysts envisioned that Google would fail on the Android Project delivery for this year.

Here you have a fast demo of the phone and the platform:



Ok... why this makes me angry?

Apple launched Macintosh in 1984, Microsoft was part of the application developers and had access to the Macintosh platform and information months before its launch. Months after the first Mac launch, Microsoft lunched Windows.
Mac only for Apple Computers and Windows for any other personal computer.

why is this relevant? I will copy and paste the paragraph above and I will replace only the name of the brands and the year.

Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Google was part of the application developers and had access to the iPhone platform and information months before its launch. Months after the first iPhone launch, Google lunched Android. The iPhone software is only for Apple telehphones (so far) and Android for any other phone.

We know how the story evolves. Windows developed a not very good system (until now) but they own the pc market. Microsoft was able to bundle MS Office and they are the market leaders of the productivity applications and finally they were able to take Netscape out of the business, because they bundled Internet Explorer and they forced to their partners to take out Netscape from the pre-sold pcs. Microsoft has a monopoly thanks to windows and they did it based on a stole idea / creation.

Are we going to experience the same with Google? Apple will never learn? Why Google complains about Microsoft if they are doing the same in other arenas like mobile, display advertising, browsers, productivity apps, etc...?

I am a Google user but a monopoly decelerate innovation and we are not ready yet to slow down. The Internet opened again the technology race, but the years before it were the worst in software innovation .

This is another Android video, this is from Google. you will see why I am so angry


By the way... and related to the new Microsoft ad



I am a forced pc at work but I am a Mac at home, an Apple TV, an iPod touch and an iPhone. And I also ware glasses