What Makes a Modern Marketing Professional, Professional (part 1)

The best part of this digital content era is that anyone can get involved with marketing their brand, business and/or service and have immediate, unfettered access to literally millions of people at any time of day or night. The worst part of this digital content era is- well, you probably know what I’m about to type next, but I’ll do it anyway- the worst part is that anyone can get involved with marketing their brand, business and/or service and have immediate, unfettered access to literally millions of people at any time of day or night. While our  Age of Access is the single greatest communication innovation in the history of mankind,  it’s also a time of seemingly endless quesitons:

• How do you know if the person you hired is a real marketer or a talented community manager?
• How do you know if you’re a real marketer?
• How do you differentiate between community managers, marketing novices and marketing pros?
• Can’t I just do most of this digital/social media stuff on my own?
• Why was a show a brilliant as Boss canceled?

No seriously, Boss is amazing!

Really, when it gets down to it, the main question is:

What makes a modern marketing professional, professional?

Hint: It’s not a classy tablet/smart phone/earbud holster…

This is the first of two articles on what makes a modern marketing professional, professional. Like any near infinitely varied and all-encompassing field, it’s extremely difficult to nail down one specific attribute, skill or trait that defines a “Professional Marketer.”  What’s far easier however, is compiling a list of ‘Must-Haves’ and ‘Who-Cares’ for the modern marketing arsenal. The next article will cover the Must-Haves. This article, however, is all about the Who-Cares, or rather, five aspects, traits and/or other assorted, related stuff of a modern marketer you shouldn’t care too much about, such as:

AGE

That, for those of you who don’t know, is a scene from the US version of The Office in which Creed Bratton dyes his hair ink-toner black in an (absolutely futile) attempt to look younger. I get it, the digital space is new and current and you may catch yourself becomming a casual agist, thinking that a few more miles on the meter means that the person (or yourself) is out of touch. This is absolutely NOT the case. While it may be true, that adoption rates of social media, digital content and other emerging tech trends are higher among certain younger demographics, the ability to market products, services and ideas has no limitation on age.  Consider this guy:

If you build/borrow/buy/steal it, they will come…

In case you sort of missed out on the past decade or so, that’s the late Steve Jobs, the fomer head of Apple. I’m not going to get into debates about his managerial style, but his skills as a brand cultivator and thought-leader are unquestionable. Steve was born in 1955, the iMac was released in 1998, when Jobs was the not-quite-spring-chicken age of 43. Three years after that he gave us the iPod (aka, the CD and Radio killer). Six years after that, the iphone changed the mobile landscape and yes, it was just yesterday (well, 2010 actually) that he gave us the iPad. Whether you love or hate Apple products, it’s clear that Apple marketing (which Jobs had an extremely heavy hand in guiding) was current, cutting edge and most importantly, effective. But don’t take it wrong, you don’t have to be an industry game-changer to be effective past your thirties, you just need to be good. That goes for any age. Consider Jim Nichols or Joseph Tripodi or Ahmed Khattak or….

Blog, Blog(s) and Subscriptions

NOT PICTURED: Expert Chefs

This may come as a shock, but what you’re reading right now are words that I’ve written based on thoughts I’ve formulated based on my years of experience, education and training (actually, that shouldn’t come as a shock at all, though if it does, perhaps you should consult someone). All that accounts for exactly nothing if I couldn’t back up my words with action (which I have done, will do, and are still doing right now). The old expression about talk being cheap, is as timeless as it is apt. Me writing a blog or blogs or even worse, simply “curating” a bunch of blogs from others has absolutely no bearing on my actual, individual ability as a marketer. It may give you some insights into my tastes, concepts and thought processes, but as far as whether or not I can get the job done, you’re better off talking to a Magic 8-Ball.

…because you already know what a Magic 8-Ball looks like…

Just as there are billions of images of food and twice as many food blogs, but not everyone who writes/reads a food blog is a culinary arts master, there are billions of marketing blogs being written by all types of marketers (and non-marketers). You need much more than a few hundred/thousand words to prove your merit as a marketing master. And please, don’t misconstrue not valid as sole evidence as not valid. There’s nothing wrong with writing/reading blogs, hell, it’s damned necessary to stay up to date on all the latest information in most fields, but simply writing or reading a ton of content does not make you a professional  at executing initiatives and producing results.

Event Attendance

Every festival, every convention, everywehere….

The thing about events is that they’re subjective. Some people consider attendance to SXSW Interactive mandatory every year. Others live and die by everything the AMA hosts. Some can’t not go to every networking meet & greet or local club/affiliation meetup. Some people don’t do any of that. The thing about it all though, is that while a strong network of colleagues and contemporaries is extremely valuable, spending literally thousands of dollars on airfare, hotel, registration fees and cash bars is not the mark of a marketing professional. Like blogs, it’s critical to get your name out there and establish strong bonds and healthy relationships with other marketers and potential clients, however, simply attending these events qualifies you as a marketing pro to the same extent that watching Doc McStuffins makes you a cardiologist.

Slightly less gritty than Boss, but still a brilliant program…

Being invited to present a keynote address, or contribute to a breakout session or panel however, is different. That is an indication that you did more than just fill out the paperwork, submit the fees and make it through airport security. I’ve received literally dozens of resumes and requests for referrals over the past few years, on which the person listed activities such as “attended the past four SXSW Interactives” or “went to Digital Marketing Meetup Happy Hour” or “sat in local TEDx and spoke to speaker afterwards” as a professional achievement, one person once listed the fact that they were in the audience at a conference where Larry Winget was speaking as an accomplishment. Those aren’t professional achievements, because they don’t have professional requirements. Really, have so many people not heard of Dictionary.com?

Gadgets

Just because you’re plugged in, doesn’t mean you haven’t checked out! Ooh, Burn!!!!

Some former colleagues and I used to refer to this as “New Shiny Syndrome.” Every so often, the leadership at the company  would read an article or see something in the news or hear about some new device/website/app from their kid/grandchild/neighbor/barista and come into meetings demanding we acquire said device/website/app and develop a strategy around it. Or worse, they wouldn’t consult us at all, and would go out and blow a bunch of money on some passing fad that they new would be the next big thing!

“iPhone? From Apple, the computer company? No, I think we should go with Palm Pilot phones. They’ve got longevity”- actual quote from a VP

Much like having a blog or attending conferences, by itself, this is no indicator of ability. Possessing the latest technology means nothing if you can’t deliver consistent, measurable results every time. Confession, I didn’t have an iPad until about six months ago or so. I had a Kindle Fire (1st gen, not an HD)with  the SplashTop app (still have and use it, actually). It was all I needed and I delivered on time, every time. I won’t lie, it was a lot of fun walking into meetings and seeing a bunch of people with iPads look at me with condescending disdain when I pulled out my KiFi. But when I presented the results and anlytical data of my campaigns, the expressions changed immediately. The tool doesn’t make the marketer, the marketer makes the most of the tool.

Advanced Degrees

Woo-hoo! We’re all guaranteed jobs now, right?….right?…hello?

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with an MBA or a Doctorate. On the contrary, get all the education you can, while you can, whenever you can. But just as events and blogs aren’t everything, neither are credentials. In a past blog, I talked about leading from the front. I opened that post with this line: “Leadership, particularly in digital content marketing and social media strategy, is rarely about title or position, it’s about skills…” The same goes for professional marketers. It’s not about how many initials come after your name, it’s about skills.

Jargon

“Aren’t words like ‘paradigm’ and ‘pro-active’ just words that stupid people use to sound smart?”                   -The Simpsons, Episode 4F12, : Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie

It’s not what you say it’s…no, it’s also what you say…

In order to proactively collabo-strate pan-strategic stickiness across the verticals we should synergize and utilize heavycore eBrandgelists and fanbassadors to ensure engagement with transmedia fecundity through the omnichannel swimlanes for t-shaped cultivation of our…SHUT UP!!!

Jargon is necessary at times,  certain acronyms and terminology is unique to certain fields and so it makes sense to use industry-specific shorthand, but then there are times when it goes overboard, when the jargon isn’t being used to make communication more efficient, but rather to make the user sound more knowledgeable than they are or to cover the fact that the user has no real information to express- as demonstrated masterfully in this clip from yet another brilliant television show, Hou$e of Lie$:

If you can’t communicate your marketing messaging/strategy/concepts to your clients, colleagues, superiors and so forth in a language that they understand, they’re not the problem. You are.

Social Followers

Internet Famous: like regular famous minus real value

Yep. I totally went there. Marketing is not, nor should it be a popularity contest among it’s professionals. Good marketers are such because they do good work. Good isn’t synonymous with recognition or widespread fame. Seeing a marketer that has tens or hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers is cool, because it has always been cool to be popular so when you see someone that’s seemingly popular, you naturally think it’s cool. But cool isn’t good. Cool isn’t bad either. Cool is just cool. A marketer needs to demonstrate how they can make your service, brand and/or company cool and popular, not necessarily themselves. Granted most marketers are in fact, marketers and as such are excellent at self-branding, but this again is not indicative of a skilled marketer. Consider this, if they had so many clients, would they still have as much time to self-promote? Maybe yes, maybe no, but either way, their ability to work digital content magic for others is what you’re looking for. Being skilled at acquiring social media followers is not as important as being able to create transferable, scalable and consistent results. My interns can build followings (even my retired, non-marketer parents can build followings), but it’s my professional colleagues and I that analyze the data, differentiate between engagement, passive, active and interactive habits, create the behavioral profiles and projection models to then execute the campaigns that have the most impact and assess the results and adjust for maximum ROI.

Granted these aren’t make or break skills, however, if as someone looking to hire a marketer (or as a marketer yourself) you need to find someway to gauge abilities, this list is a good beginning. Although bear in mind, it’s really about what works best for you. Next time, we’ll talk about the Must-Haves. Are there any Who-Cares skills or traits I left out? What do you consider Professional?

Build A Better Twitter Audience

Depending on who you ask, Twitter is either a great tool for digital marketing, the worst thing to happen to mankind or some strange combination of both…either way, a whole bunch of people, companies, organizations and others have an active Twitter account. And by ‘whole bunch’ I mean a WHOLE BUNCH….

I love follow Fridays…LOVE IT!

Like it or love it, it’s here to stay and it is in fact, pretty damned effective. There are dozens, if not hundreds of strategies out therefor how to make an impact on Twitter…

…this is mine.

In 2010, I was joined the marketing department at a national media company with a focus on building and expanding (primarily digital) communities around both the brand and the produced/distributed programming. One of the aspects I enjoyed most about the job (in addition to having direct contact with some great programs) was the amount of liberty I was given to develop strategies on my own to present and occasionally implement. My most lasting and arguably,most successful of these was Following Followers.

I’ll start at the beginning.

In my first few months, I’d been having trouble with Twitter strategy. Facebook was doing well and going as planned. Coordination between the digital-social presence of the programs and our own was cohesive and consistent. Twitter however was lacking. I was waiting in line to purchase tickets to an Atmosphere concert for my wife (she’s a huge fan). While waiting, a conversation about great live shows broke out among the fellow members of the queue. It was really engaging and lively and we even joked that it would be awesome if some of the acts we’d been so passionately discussing, would lend their two cents in on the conversation. That’s when it hit me. Apply the same energy to Twitter that I had just spent in the conversation- and in the same vein. The same way I built quality engaged interaction with Atmosphere fans, I could build quality, engaged Twitter followers rapidly by following the followers of larger accounts who demonstrated shared interests- rather than of abiding by the best practices (at the time) of following, retweeting and direct messaging large accounts in the hopes of gaining attention, mentions, etc.

Using my own Twitter account, I gave myself 30 days to test my new concept, (which I misguidedly thought would be cool to call “Barnacles & Battleships”), the only difference in activity being I would follow at least 12 people a day who both followed a “battleship” (Twitter account with at least 100,000 followes as well as a shared an interest- which I judged based on their Tweets, bio, etc.  I would make no changes to my tweet, retweet or mention/message activity.

Terrible name…just terrible…

I started on March 2nd at 10:34am with 134 followers. By 4:41 pm, I had 158 followers. No extra tweets, no extra retweets, just followed 12 people who followed a big account I followed (I believe it was @GuyKawasaki) and picked up 24 new followers. To put that in perspective, from the time I joined Twitter in 2008, to the morning of March 2nd 2011, I acquired 135 followers. Granted,  I wasn’t a heavy user, I mostly just tweeted about my day and shared links to interesting articles, but my followers were solid and engaged. I was, and still am, a huge proponent of quality over quantity when it comes to building a social audience. I increased my followers by a 7th, in less than 24 hours! But would it be consistent? Was this a fluke? There was only one way to find out…

Date    Followers
3/2    158
3/3    215
3/4    335
3/7    500
3/8    526
3/9    568
3/10    603
3/16    696
3/17    710
3/18    729
3/21    732
3/22    737
3/24    736
3/25    723
3/28    721
3/29    723
3/31    728
4/4    741

When I finished the test,  I had acquired 741 followers. That’s not a typo. I picked up an additional 607 followers in four weeks. Wanting to figure out why the results were as they were, I referenced dozens of virality studies, white papers and reports (such as The Plaxo Virality Index and many, many others) but the answer was shockingly simple:

The above picture is a graph demonstrating how a series of self-sustaining relationships were built. N1 is a popular account. N3 is me. N2 is a follower of N1, and N4 is a follower of N2. T is an interaction interval (ie, a follow). V means “Follow” and F means “Friend” (defined by activity such as a retweet, mention or message). In other words:

T1- N3 follows N2.
T2- N2 follows N3. N4 notices and follows N3
T3- N3 has successfully acquired Friend status with N2, follows N4 back
T4- N3 has successfully acquired Friend status with N4.

The reason behind this is that the followers I was following tended to have smaller groups of followers of their own, making activity between the myself and the follower more noticeable. Thus the followers of the account I follow, tended to follow me as well and in most cases, those new accounts also had a small group of followers creating a cycle. I took the results to my boss, got the go ahead and applied Following Followers to the company’s main account. Within a similar amount of time, our growth mirrored that of my initial test.

So at this point you’re probably wondering why I didn’t post anything earlier (like say, after the success of the main account). The reason I waited so long to post this blog is that I wanted to have enough cases (to date, about 40 from friends, colleagues and clients) in which the Following Followers strategy had been implemented. I’ll be the first to say that again, it was not a wholly scientific experiment,  but it’s worked for me and many of my colleagues so I can comfortably recommend giving it a go.

Damn it Jim, I’m a digital marketer not a scientist or statistician…

Like many Twitter strategies, it’s not guaranteed. It may take longer or shorter, or the results may not be as dramatic, but it’s been extremely effective for me and many others who I’ve shared it with. The last time I applied Following Followers was this month and the results have been varied, (on August 6th we had 1603 followers, on August 10th we had 1746, today we have 1782) but they’re still quite positive.
The best part of this strategy  is that because we’re only following accounts that share similar interests, the followers acquired are quality followers who are engaged and interested in our content. Like many things in life, quality is more valuable than quantity….

This Is Sparta…

Leadership, particularly in digital content marketing and social media strategy, is rarely about title or position, it’s about skills and personality. Even if you’re an unpaid intern clocking in a handfull of hours per week, you can still demonstrate leadership- be it directly, in taking charge of projects and tasks, or indirectly by collaborating with your colleagues authoritatively and confidently from a place of experience/expertise. When you factor in the title and position, your management style becomes all the more pertinent, as it’s literally your job to lead the team, project, campaign and/or department. I’m no expert in business management. I don’t have an MBA (yet) but one of the most important aspects of working in a team environment is leadership style. Are you a lead from the front or lead from the back? Or, in slightly more geeky terms: Are you a Spartan or are you a Senator?

What? You don’t wear a Mohawk helmet to work?

You may recall from Frank Miller’s wholly entertaining-though not exactly historically accurate- graphic novel, 300 (and subsequent film by Zach Snyder) that King Leonidas led his 300 warriors into battle, he was not doing so from an indirect vantage point, watching the events unfold on the battleground.  On the contrary, the ruler of Sparta was the first into the fray, leading the charges, fighting alongside his soldiers. He was a Spartan.

Casual Friday can, in fact, be taken too far…

Leonidas’ managers, in the story it’s the Senate council, never leave Sparta but instead brainstorm concepts and spend their time debating, pontificating and in the case of Senator Theron, scheming. They knew little of the situation impirically, and rather hid behind their stations, calling out decisions that had significant impact on the tale.  SPOILER ALERT: It’s their fault only 300 Spartans are sent to fight the armies of Persia, as their consultations with the Oracles (and Senator Theron’s treachery) lead them to hold back the full army pending further review.

This party is a total brodeo…

In your role are you a Spartan or Senator? Success can be had both ways, but achievement can only be had from the front. When things don’t go as planned, as they often do, are you there on the front lines to assess and revise immedeiately, ensuring that your audience and clients and customers are getting the fastest service possible, or are you waiting for more input, which in turn forces your customers and audience to wait for results as well?

Race you to the bottom…

In our modern marketing landscape, you literally can’t afford to wait. The public expects answers and responses as quickly as possible in real time, in all aspects of your business. When your new subscribers join do you immediately thank them? When you receive customer service correspondences, are you following up to queries within a reasonable window of time? When problems arise with the project, do you jump to action to alleviate the possible damage to the overall objective? Or are you and your clients loitering in digital purgatory? There’s no wrong way to handle customers per se, just ways that are effective at driving engagement, satisfaction and retention, and methods that drive customers to the competition.

See this chair? I built it using revenue from your dissatisfied customers…well, that and slaves, lots and lots of slaves

If you’re not using Spartan approaches to leadership, rest assured the competition, be it internal, external or both, definitely is. When you lead from the back, what you’re really doing is saying I don’t care enough about this activity to dive in, and as such, you’re allowing someone else to step up and take charge and achieve. In your current position, if you brought your boss original concepts that pushed the company forward versus bringing the boss someone else’s work that could push the company forward, in both cases, wouldn’t your boss probably lean towards the originator of the concepts?

Joe’s Myspace campaign idea was met with a less than favorable response…

The era of the middle man is long in the past. Someone is breaking new ground and leading innovation in your organization. Someone is assessing data, resolving issues and making revisions quickly and accurately. Someone is poised to bring about the next big thing in your company. Is that someone you?

If it’s not, it should be.

Just what the hell is SEO anyway?

Marketing, like many industries, uses a ton of shorthand, jargon and acronyms to…actually, I don’t know why we use it, it’s not like it takes noticeably longer to say SEO  as opposed to Search Engine Optimization, but we do it anyway. For writing, sure, conserve characters and all that, otherwise it’s pretty much just a way to show everyone you’re in the club.

Granted, some clubs are more desirable than others

Anyway, SEO is one of those acronyms that throws a lot of people off, even those who are already in the club. Put simply, SEO is all about getting traffic to your website. But traffic isn’t as important as ‘engagement’ you might be thinking and you’re somewhat correct, however when it comes to getting people to engage with your site, step one is getting them to your site.

There are two kinds of traffic, Natural and Paid. Natural traffic comes from search results whereas Paid traffic comes from well, paid sources (think advertisements, Google AdWords, etc). Neither is really better or stronger than the other. Both are critically important components of your marketing strategy.

The five points of a stellar SEO (see what I did there? Stellar means “star,” stars have five points) are:

• Quality Content
• Keywords
• Optimize
• Links
• Report

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QUALITY CONTENT

Quality is not in the eye of the beholder

 

Like everything else in marketing (both online and off) Quality content is crucial. Doesn’t matter how amazing your site looks or even how high up in search rankings your site appears. Consistency and habitual behavior are the keys to long term traffic generation. If your site is lacking in content, word will spread quickly and traffic will suffer.

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KEYWORDS

some people don't really 'get' keywords

Being aware of the language, terminology and keywords used by your target audience is essential. Keywords are what people use for search for sites and what search engine sites use (along with their cryptic search engine algorithmic magic) to provide the sites people are searching for. It all comes down to the number of searches performed and how many websites are using the same terms. Keywords that are too popular have too much competition while keywords that are too unique may not yield much traffic at all. Striking a balance is a challenging and ongoing procedure, however above all you should focus on the terms that are most relevant to your business and target audience.

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OPTIMIZE

No, I said Opti-MIZE, not...nevermind...

This is the hardest part of SEO and the reason why businesses hire SEO professionals. Front end (what the visitors see) and back end (the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the site) are both equally important in driving traffic. Optimizing your site requires a technical understanding of search engine functionality, site analytics to create comprehensive visitor behavioral profiles, and a strong grasp on digital marketing communications as revisions and improvements to your site have to occur in the three C’s-  the Content in the site, the Copy written on the site and  the Coding of the site. If you don’t have the resources to hire an SEO professional, you can work with your web designer and developers to optimize your site.

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LINKS

If you know why I used this image, congrats! You're a nerd too!

Links are a deceptively easy way to increase SEO. Bing, Google and the other search engines measure the relevance and popularity of your website for the keywords you have selected based on the number of outside links leading back to your site. There are many unsavory and somewhat unethical ways to create more links like creating dummy sites and/or keyword farms, but most search engines (especially Google and Bing) keep an eye out for this type of activity and will pull your site from rankings. Generating links is pure marketing, at the very least, you should promote your site via your social channels, and execute targeted strategies to create virality (ie, other people sharing and retweeting your links). Banner ads are effective as well. Work with your marketing team to devise a solid plan as to getting links.

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REPORTS

Red staplers just staple better, right Milton?

The single most important aspect of SEO is that it’s trackable and measurable. Ongoing assessment and interpretation of your analytics should be the core of your online strategy. If you have the resources and time, daily monitoring of analytics is ideal, however, you should be looking over and revising your strategy based on the analytics on at least a monthly basis. Activity for activity’s sake is a waste of time and resources. Try to avoid doing anything on your site that isn’t data-driven, meaning  unless you’ve got numbers to back it up.

Show, Don’t Tell: The Absolute Necessity of Visual Content Marketing Strategies

This past January, Pinterest  saw just under 12 Million unique visitors. We upload 250 million photos a day, on Facebook and according to one study,  over two-thirds of Facebook activity involve interaction with photos and videos. Nearly every phone, smart, average and ‘dumb’ alike have a built in camera. The average person takes 2000 photos per year, that’s 166 per month, over 5 a day. People upload 3,000 images to Flickr every minute! Basic marketing savvy tells you to go where you customers are, find out their interests and model your content/message/product to suit. Numbers like that are impossible to ignore. In addition to digital content, social media and mobile/QR strategies, you absolutely need a visual content marketing strategy.

In designing your visual content marketing strategy, you’ll want to keep the focus on engagement. Images for images’ sake are a waste of time and resources. With every video you produce and photo you take, ask yourself how can this visual content increase engagement within my current fan/user base? How can this visual content increase acquisition of new fans/users? Basically, you need to ask yourself, Why?

A media page on your website, comprehensively detailed Facebook galleries, infinite TwitPics and Pinterest boardsrds are a fantastic way to catch and hold viewer attention, but cultivating engagement is about being selective, using only the most impactful, compelling, funny or mind-blowing pics and videos. Think of it like a recipe. The right choice of seasoning can make an otherwise bland dish a party for your tastebuds. Over season a dish, no matter how bland, and you’ll find yourself exploring new and exciting ways to curse the day you were born.

1 potato + 18 tablespoons of garlic = 1 bad night

It’s the same with visual content. Your clients will tire quickly of over saturation, especially if the product or service doesn’t necessitate a lot of interesting content. Try to limit your visual content, both on your web pages and social sites to what will be the most striking.

Making It Viral

Another vital component of your Visual Content Marketing Strategy is virality. It’s not enough for you to share pictures and video, you want your audience to share it as well. It’s important to note that there’s no guaranteed process or formula to ensure virality. If there were, we’d all be using it to make everyone and everything famous. Even though there’s no set map, but the following simple but effective tasks will definitely increase the likelihood that your content will be shared.

Capture/produce interesting content.

"I can't wait to see your empty conference room!"- Nobody

Pictures for business are different than pictures for personal use. I shouldn’t have to say that, but there are so many companies that put up images of employees, offices and locations with no context to their product or services. Hire a professional photographer/videographer when you can, and in cases when you can’t, only shoot what you need to shoot. Imagine that every picture you take will be the first and only  image someone will see of your company.  Picture every video you shoot as a client’s first and only impression of your organization. Doing so will help guide your eye to ensure that you’ve got interesting subjects and great visuals.

Make your content easy to access and share.

These products look amazing if you use your imagination...

Make sure you host your content well.  Don’t cover your images in watermarks or bury videos in the back of your webpage. Tag your Facebook photos, encourage sharing, leave the watermarks to the studios and stock photo salesmen. You want people to see and share your image. It’s one thing to protect IP, it’s another to be so protective that it turns people away. Remember, you want this to go viral.

Promote your content directly to fans.

You've got to see this!

So often people, organizations and companies just post a video with nothing more than a line reading “check out the new video” or “see the pictures from such-and-such event.” You need to seriously promote your content like a new parent showing off pictures of their baby. Before the event/activity where you’re going to create content, promote it. Post a line on Facebook saying “we’re going to be shooting a new video next week” or send out tweets asking for suggestions on best places to take product photos? Make the making of your content an event.  Even days/weeks/months/years after the content is posted, refer back to it. People love retrospectives. Something as simple as a Top Ten of the week, or Year in Review list are great ways to breathe new life (and gain new attention) into old content.

A targeted visual content strategy won’t guarantee success per se, but not having one will definitely put you at a disadvantage.

How Do You Spell ROI?

It seems that when it comes to social ROI (Return On Investment), every marketing professional, online community manager and savvy blogger has their two cents- but there’s no universally accepted solution. What’s good for one organization may not be as effective for another. An amazingly successful strategy crafted for the staff writers of a publication to increase readership, may fall flat for a group of freelancers.

I addressed this issue in an eBook. I published last year. In the book, entitled “Best Better Practices” I stress the importance of focusing not what works, but rather what works best for your needs. Nobody knows (or rather nobody should know) their customer base better than you. You know how your audience and clientele respond to your activities and thus you should use that knowledge to create strategic plans that get you closer to your company’s specific social media and digital marketing objectives. All businesses, regardless of size have to determine if a strategy is effective, if it’s getting you the results you intend. Even though this fact prevents the marketing world from crafting the ultimate measuring stick by which all digital users are compared, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create a smaller measuring stick to compare your own achievements by.

Again, because of the subjective nature of social success, the following is just a guide to help you establish criteria, not what that criteria should be per se.

Knowing What You Don’t Know

Whether you’re the only employee of your business or one of thousands, to establish objectives and goals, you need to ask some questions. If you’re the only employee, those questions can be asked in your head, or outloud to your investors, friends, confidant, etc…or to a mirror if you want to go the Stuart Smalley route.

Marketing Genius?

The first question- what do you want to measure?

Often, it’s easier to start with quantitative questions. Quantitative questions deal strictly with numbers. Some basic examples would be Acquisition (how many fans? How many repeat customers/visitors?) Virality (how many retweets or shares?),  Action (how many people click my links, donate/buy my products?) and Duration (how long does my content stay in people’s minds? How long between my posts and customer response?).

Once you have that list in place, you’ll want to find out where you are currently.  This is the easiest part. It’s just a matter of looking at the data. Once you have this preliminary list of questions and answers down, it’s time to start asking what I like to call, the Impact Questions.

Boxing gloves aren’t usually necessary in digital marketing...

Examples of Impact Questions are-

How did my actions influence the current number?

What outside factors contributed to that number?

If I did nothing else, how would my numbers change?

These are the tougher questions to answer and often times, it may be hard or even impossible to answer them with 100% accuracy right off the bat, but a good overall goal is to make sure that as many results as possible are deliberate. Basically, if it happens on your site or with your audience, it’s because you did it.

It’s The Thought That Counts

Another way to assess your activities is by looking at qualitative data. Qualitative data is a little trickier as it’s absolutely objective. Sentiment (customers/audience speaking negatively, neutrally or positively about you), Influence (customers who have their own base of fans, followers, etc) and to some extent Virality fall under the qualitative label.

So which is more important, Quantitative or Qualitative?  It’s Girl Scout cookie season, so we’ll use them as an example.

Don’t let the smiles fool you, they’re here to chew bubblegum and sell cookies…and they’re all out of bubblegum…

Let’s say Janis and Joni are two girl scouts who have both sold 50 boxes of delicious, tasty shortbread cookies (I’ve got nothing against Thin Mints or Samoas, but I’m a Shortbread man). Joni is in a high traffic area downtown, so she’s selling 50 boxes per hour at a rate of 1-2 boxes per customer. Janis is in front of her neighborhood grocery store and she personally knows all of the people who buy from her. She sold 50 boxes in an hour a rate of 4-5 boxes per customer.  Joni is an example of quantitative success, whereas Janis is an example of qualitative success.

In the short term, Joni will most likely outsell Janis at the end of the season because the traffic rate is higher. Although there’s no guarantee that she’ll be able to sell the same amount of cookies next season. Janis probably won’t get a lot of her friends and neighbors to buy more cookies once they’ve made their initial orders, but she probably can count on duplicating this year’s success because she knows them.

So what does that tell us?

Quantitative and Qualitative are equally important parts of a well-balanced social strategy. Keep that in mind when you’re developing your activities.

Once you’ve got your Initial questions answered and your Impact questions, it’s time to start setting goals and crafting benchmarks around those goals. If your goal is to get 100 new fans to your Facebook page and you have 50 fans right now, and you’ve noticed that you pick up one new fan every time you post a link with a mention to a related company’s Facebook page, then you’d start including links with mentions to related company’s Facebook pages twice as many times. If you increase the number of posts with links and mentions, and you see a decrease of no change in fans, then the ROI of that activity is low and you need to determine a method that raises the ROI.

Overall, success is subjective but if you know where you’re going, it’s a hell of a lot easier to figure out how to get there.

Facebook Timeline, the Basics…

There’s been a bit of talk around Facebook’s Timeline for pages. It’s really not that huge  of a change, but the changes that are present are significant enough to warrant some input. Considering Facebook will be making the changes to ALL pages at the end of March, I figured what better topic to address for the first entry than the basics of the new features on the Facebook timeline.

Cover Photo

Perhaps the most striking of changes that come with the Facebook layout is the ability to select a large photo to brand your page distinctively. The available space for the cover photo is 851×315 (that means 815 pixels wide, but 315 pixels tall). The image must be high resolution and at least 399 pixels wide.  851×315 is a safe minimum. If the image is larger, you have the option to reposition the photo. There are a few rules governing the type of image used.

You may NOT:

• Have any call to action (i.e.,”Click Like” “Like Our Page” “Refer Your Friends” “Donate here” etc).
• List any contact info including phone, email, websites, physical addresses
• Display internal FB aspects like an arrow pointing to the Like and Share buttons
• Any marketing/sales language (i.e. “Download free” “Get 10% off” etc.)
• Infringe on copyright, trademark or intellectual properties (the image must be yours)

Be mindful of these restrictions. Any pages found in violation of these restrictions may be blocked, suspended and/or deleted. The user responsible for any pages found in violation may have their accounts suspended and/or be banned from creating pages altogether.

App Label/Image

The App label and image are the buttons at the top of the timeline that allow visitors to navigate to various areas of your page.  Previously, they were contained within a tiny list on the left side, but now you have the opportunity to create something eye-catching that will drive visitors to explore you page further.  The app label should be compelling, intriguing and straightforward. The image should grab their attention and standout from the other menu elements.

Milestone Posting

Milestone posts may be dated as far back as 1800, allowing companies to enter their entire history from their founding date, along with other significant milestones. When you click the “Milestone” link, you’ll enter the event name, location, specific date and a story about what happened. You can upload photos as well. An example of a Milestone would be the first property sold or the opening of your office, obtaining new certification, etc.

Pinning

If a particular post is timely and important, you’ll want to Pin It. Pinning keeps it at the top of the timeline for seven days (you have the option unpin it prior to that as well). At the end of seven days, the post returns to its place in the timeline as a regular post.  Pinning is ideal for promotion upcoming events, new properties, articles and so forth.  Note, you cannot Pin and Highlight the same post.

Highlighting

Noteworthy posts that you’d like to feature can be highlighted. Highlighting expands the post across the entire timeline rather than delegated to either the left or right column. This practice is best for announcements and events that may be of particular interest to your visitors, but conceded priority to a more urgent post (since you can only pin one at a time).

These are the basics of the new Timeline layout for pages that will have the most impact on your business.  Though the layout and some functionality may have changed, the general essence behind Facebook’s role in your digital marketing strategy is the same- Action, Reaction, Interaction.