Web Site as Hub of Media Outreach

Still writing about last Friday's and Saturday's Social Media Integration conference . . .

One of the nice things of conferences such as this one is that you go at least in part because of "The Big Names", the celebrities and near-celebrities who headline the event and then the surprise often comes from a not-so-well-known presenter, who has a lot of good stuff to share.

That was the case last Saturday with Jesse McDougall ("a social media consultant and web programming geek living in the woods of Vermont") of Catalyst Webworks, whose topic was "Make Your Website the Hub of Your Social Media Outreach".

What he said made perfectly good sense (my clients will benefit from my notes!) and the best way for me to pass it on to you is to suggest you take a look at the companies Jesse mentioned:

Lonely Planet
Seventh Generation
Patagonia

Even though these companies may be a bit bigger -- if not lots bigger -- than yours, study them for ideas you can use on your own site.

SMI Conference -- Five ideas from Shiv Singh.

His presentation started with: “The purpose of a business is to create a customer”. (Peter Drucker).

Shiv’s expansion: “The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers”.

Not an original thought – it was already posted by Sean O’Driscoll on Ant’s Eye View on January 22, 2009.

Maybe Drucker said: “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” Who knows and does it matter?

I actually do not like the idea of “creating” customers; I like the idea of “attracting” them. For me, “creating a customer” has a feel of manipulation or even coercion to it. When I talk with a prospect, I hope I am able to convey to him or her that my skills as a writer and what I know as a Social Media strategist are of value to their business or career and that for that reason they want to hire me.

O.K. – on to the five ideas:

1. Create a digital franchise, e.g. a platform for a cause (or multiple causes) to support while getting your message out. Example, PepsiCo’s Refresh Project.
2. Reinvent display media. Example: add a Facebook “like” button to your banner ads.
3. Rethink the market model. It is more important to take care of your existing contacts than to acquire new ones. “The consumer experience is everything; branding is second to that.”
4. Redefine the agency model. Shift from the tradition of client’s brief - the agency’s Big Idea - the execution (with TV ads the main focus) to the new model of “consumer insights, the brief, a group of ideas, many agencies”. (Good for small businesses to know perhaps, but who among us hires an advertising agency for our marketing campaigns?)
5. Use a SIM (Social Influence Marketing) score to measure results. I don’t ”do math”, so let me just refer you to two others’ take on this:

Social Times: http://www.socialtimes.com/2009/07/razorfish-sim-score-fluent-repor/
Social Commerce Today: http://socialcommercetoday.com/social-media-metrics-sim-score-vs-net-reputation-score-nrs/

Coming back to the point here: your image matters; be sure that you participate in the conversations about you!

"Get Clients Now!" workshops

Since becoming a Get Clients Now! licensee, I conducted my first workshop last week, with seven outstanding students. I can't wait to see their progress, or to do the next workshop.

Top-down or Bottom-up

This year, when you designed and began implementing your marketing plan, did you decide to buy a list of prospects, slice-and-dice them, narrow them down, come up with X number of prospects, which you then began to contact at random in order to come up with Y number of clients?

Ouch!

This is what Rick McPartlin of The CEO Challenge (http://www.therevenuegame.com/ceochallenge/) means when he denounces the "top-down" marketing plans, which he names as one of the characteristics of a "Best of the Worst" type of company. I do not want my company to be a BOTW and hope you do not want that for yours, either.

Happy analyzing of your 2009 results, and continued success in 2010!

Gobbledygook

If you are using any of the following words or phrases in your press releases, web content, brochures or other communications tools, you are "communicating without meaning". Here they are:
Innovate
Pleased to
Unique
Focused on
Leading provider
Commitment
Partnership
New and improved
Leverage
120 percent
Cost effective

Who says so? David Meerman Scott, the author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, who did a Vocus webinar this afternoon, where I learned so much in one hour - for free! - that I now have a whole lot of revising to do for my own company, and tons to teach my clients. I wouldn't bother if I had any doubts about the validity of the webinar's content.

Do you know who Cindy Gordon is?

Branding

Quick - put a name (of someone you know personally) behind the following words:

Sales

Marketing

Coaching

Broadcasting

Image

Web design

Web development

Fashion

Cosmetics

Writing

Speaker

Communications

Training

Now post your comment, and I will let you know if this "branding exercise" has worked!