Chi Content Marketing
Posted on | December 31, 2009 | No Comments
I started running last summer and did what many first-time runners do – power run and overtrain. I injured my calf and ended up hobbling over the finish line of my first triathlon. So I’m at the library and stumble upon Chi Running – A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running by Danny Dreyer. Sounded intriguing… and after practicing Chi running (pronounced Chee) for one month I have not had one single issue with my calf. With all of this reading about Chi running and logging miles and miles on the trails, I started thinking about how I would like Content Marketing to be just as effortless (and painless!).
Visualize a child running. The child is usually laughing (positive mental state), propelling forward (core engaged), hair in the wind and probably chasing a ball, dog, or a friend (visualizing where they are going). Children run naturally and effortlessly because they are not thinking about “running”- they are having fun. Simplistically stating, Tai Chi’s fundamental principle is to keep the core engaged and everything else will follow effortlessly. When thinking about your Content Marketing strategy, what is your core content delivery method? This core content delivery method should be engaged at all times. Say your website (your abs) is your core content delivery method then think of a Blog, Facebook, Twitter, e-newsletter and custom pub’s (your arms and legs) as your periphery content delivery methods.
How do you keep your core engaged? Focus on your expertise and make the core your #1 priority. How do you keep your arms and legs moving effortlessly? Think about each employee, what are their strengths and interests? How could they be contributing? Content Marketing that is done with freedom and joy (less focus on the external goals or say how many keywords to use) frees up creativity and allows you to have fun, which will ultimately show in the quality and quantity of content. Chi Content Marketing is about implementing a plan to eliminate the stumbling blocks so that your energy (the essence of your brand) can freely flow from your business, out into the world.
Tags: blog > Content Marketing > custom publications > e-newsletter > facebook > twitter
The Naked Brand
Posted on | December 17, 2009 | 1 Comment
I expose myself to friends and family on Facebook daily. I disclose my real emotions in the moment, share candid photos, and give honest opinions. Facebook is a community which is built on trust and relationships. Just as in your local community, if someone isn’t being themselves it’s usually obvious. In the Facebook world your choices are to hide the disingenuous person from your feed or choose not to be their friend (the same as the physical world – to hang with or not to hang with). In the Facebook fan page world, the choice is to be a fan or not to be a fan. So corporate brands and small biz, it’s time to strip down to your birthday suit (the essence of your brand). Go ahead and reveal your true nature! You may feel unprotected and vulnerable at first, but your jewels will soon be discovered.
If the essence of your brand are the experiences and feelings created by your products and services, then celebrate in the sharing of these experiences by your fans via posts, comments, videos, and photo sharing. If you need to jump start the sharing, then do a giveaway, contest or promotion. The JEEP Facebook fan page has over 10,000 fan photos and 163 fan videos along with posts and comments from fans sharing their JEEP experiences. You will notice the wall is filled with experiences from JEEP owners, not with a corporate spokesperson posting.
Southwest Airlines does a great job of humanizing their Facebook fan page. They have two dedicated Southwest representatives, Lindsey and Christi, in charge of the page. They use the standard box (see image) under the logo to give out their first names so you know who you are conversing with. It feels true to the openness of Facebook and Social Media. Southwest Airlines also doesn’t separate their fan feed, which gives you the good community vibes.
A new study reveals Facebook profiles reflect actual personality, not self-idealization. If you are a daily Facebooker then this isn’t news to you. But how does this study apply to the Facebook fan page world? More than 700 million people worldwide now have profiles on Online Social Networking sites (Comscore, 2009). The study notes that creating idealized identities should be hard to accomplish because a social networking profile includes reputational information that is difficult to control (e.g., wall posts), and friends provide accountability and subtle feedback on one another’s profiles. The study concludes that people use Facebook to communicate their real personality. Consequently, lay observers should be able to accurately infer the personality characteristics of Online Social Networking Sites profile owners.
Facebook is the perfect nude beach for brands to show off. At times they may feel naked, but in this new world of social media marketing, getting real and down to the bare essence is what it is all about. Click here to read the complete study: Facebook Study
Southwest Airlines Show Personality
Southwest Airlines New Facebook Contest – Fans Fly Free With Some Turbulance (TO OTHER AIRLINES!)
Posted on | December 9, 2009 | No Comments
Southwest Airlines Fans Fly Free on Facebook
I love to start my morning with a soy latte and Facebook. The 10 plus farmers, artists and dreamers who meet at the local Rexville Grocery (small town hang-out) every morning feel the same way about their morning ritual. Good friends…good coffee. Facebook has become my morning community. I can get together with my community of friends and family in my pajamas in the comfort of my home before I head off to work. I can also enter to win contests and giveaways. Now mind you, I’m not one to buy lottery tickets or fill out contest forms. However, in one click and two seconds I have no problem becoming a fan on a Facebook fanpage to possibly win something I could use.
Southwest Airlines announced a contest yesterday at 4:00 PM to build up their fan base (which needs building!). Fans Fly Free! boasts the advertisement to the right of my Facebook wall. At the time of joining Southwest Airlines Facebook fanpage this morning, Southwest had 177,756 fans. I predict the fan base will be a crazy different number at the end of the contest (December 31st) When clicking on the ad, I was directed to the Southwest Fans Fly Free tab. “Hey Fans! Check out our fancy schmancy new tab: Fans Fly Free. Enter for a chance to win a pair of roundtrip tickets on us! Thanks for being our fan 
” is their latest post 17 hours ago. Southwest Airlines is giving 100 pairs of roundrip tickets anywhere they fly - as a “thank you for our fans”, says the tab.
As a person who is always curious about the fine print, I click on the official rules. Sweepstakes runs December 9, 2009 from 4:00 p.m. CST through December 31, 2009 11:00 a.m. CST. Wait a minute! I became a fan this morning, December 9th, BEFORE 4:00 p.m. CST. Does that mean I don’t qualify? SIGH. I thought this was going to be easy! THEN, I read further…To enter without purchase, visit http://apps.facebook.com/fansflyfree. Once you are a fan of Southwest Airlines Facebook page, you must complete the contact and personal information in the registration form within the sweepstakes tab.
I’m not going to “click to enter” this morning, as I don’t believe it will officially count. So…I will update you on any further turbulance I encounter. “Julie, What is your prediction of fans by 12/31/2009?” you ask. Well, all of the major airlines are a bit slow on the Facebook uptake with Southwest Airlines leading the pack with the most fans. To be perfectly honest, the advertisement got my attention because I thought I could win 100 tickets (I can’t believe I just admitted that…but I was only half way through my latte). I’m thinking about 2 million fans by 12/31/2009.
12/10 UPDATE: WOW…excellent Facebook customer service example:
-
Julie Burgmeier I just became a fan. The Fans Fly Free rules state the contest doesn’t start until 4:00 CST today. Does this mean I need to wait until after 4 to officially enter?
Brand Awareness and the Pink Glove Dance
Posted on | December 4, 2009 | 1 Comment
I received an e-mail today from my sister-in-law to check out the Pink Glove Dance video on YouTube. Obviously a couple of other people spread the word as there have been 3,063,623 views just three weeks after the pink glove dance was uploaded. Now is the season to use uplifting, heartwarming, and inspiring videos to get your message across via social media.
Tags: non-profit > Social Media > video > video creation > youtube
Facebook Announces 350 Million Users in Just 5 Years
Posted on | December 2, 2009 | No Comments
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, announced via an “open letter” banner at the top of every single users Facebook feed at 6:23 PM yesterday (December 1st) the big 350 million Facebook milestone. The letter’s purpose was to announce the elimination of regional networks (such as China) so there can be better privacy control. What does this mean for your personal Facebook account? Check out your privacy settings as they will be recommending new settings for you in the next couple of weeks. What does this mean to the world of Social Media Marketing? Let’s see. Facebook has now surpassed the entire population of the United States by about 42 million. At this rate the population of Facebook in 5 years will be over a billion which is close to the population of the United States and Europe (including Russia) combined.
If Facebook is not part of your current marketing strategy, you have a gaping hole in your strategy. If Facebook is a current part of your marketing strategy, think about how well integrated Facebookis in your strategy. Some questions to ask yourself. Does my profile reinforce my brand? Is my Facebook URL and badge integrated throughout my business? Are all of my social media tools integrated with my Facebook account? Do I update daily to Facebook? Have I offered a promotion or discount via Facebook? How often do I analyze my Facebook fanpage insights? Do I have measurable social media goals? And most importantly, am I offering resources that offer value to my customers? Take a moment to analyze how much you are spending on print advertising versus social media implementation.
Social Media marketing is centered around communities. Communities are about common interests, relationships and trust. Utilize Facebook to gain trust by offering valuable resources. Take this approach at a multi-platform (print, web, mobile) level and ultimately become a leader in your industry.
Corporate Brands – Stand By Me
Posted on | November 23, 2009 | No Comments
You’ve probably seen the Stand by Me video on YouTube by now – the one where street musicians from around the world each sing a part. The video has over 15 million views and 17,000 plus comments. But it wasn’t produced by a major brand or media company. It was made by a group of 5 individuals. The video is from a documentary this group created back in 2003 and uses music (something we can all relate to) and street musicians (people we have all seen and experienced) to tell a story and to build community at an international level. A small budget video and sound crew managed to evoke a transformative experience for viewers who (fast forward to 2009) then further spread the word using social media. It doesn’t take a large corporate budget to create humanistic advertising and distribute to millions via social media. It does take a new way of thinking for corporations – not what does advertising do to people, but what people do with advertising.
Small businesses by nature takes a humanistic approach to marketing by being an integral part of their community through face to face interaction, participation in local events, membership in service organizations, and contributions to local charities. The individuals in the community who support their local businesses crave this connectedness. In this modern day society, communities are eroding because of the changing economic and social institutions. As a result, the Internet is creating new communities every second. The Buy Local campaigns have been successful by using advertising to create social identification and cohesion. So how does a corporate brand collectively connect individuals to an advertisement in such a way that the individual is enlarged? Create humanistic advertising that individuals will want to share. And T-Mobile does that literally with the Life’s for Sharing YouTube video – the improv styled video where 100’s of individuals started dancing together in a Liverpool Street Station. Over 15 million views, 14,000 plus comments and zero cost for distribution on YouTube.
The democratization of the internet has created a new birth of freedom for corporate marketers. Social media provides a platform where corporate brands can loosen up with lower risks. In general, corporations tend to keep to the surface or the veneer of the brand’s story. However, people relate to humanistic ads and the emotion that is revealed by the ad as opposed to effect-driven ads which are more about aesthetics than what is real. In this day and age, this approach is not connecting with customers who are craving community. This holiday season Starbucks, the #1 brand on Facebook with over 5 millions fans, is cutting back on TV buys and pushing forward with a humanistic social media approach. Starbucks is offering a “Love” cd with purchase (music), increasing their giving from a five-cent donation to a two dollar donation (charity), and creating a holiday photo sharing campaign on Flickr and Facebook (community).
What stories are coursing through your organization? Which stories want to come into the world through your brand? Something wants to come into the world through the individual – better serving the soul and self. What are the forces of energy behind the success of your brand – these are archetypes which are not nouns but forces of energy. In the past individuals only received a glimmer of your brand story by a TV commercial, print ad, or billboard. Today, when used wisely, corporate brands can utilize humanistic advertising through social media to open the aperture to illuminate their brand’s story and create a transformative experience for the individuals who are co-participating and connected to the story.
Soy Mocha Please – Facebook & Community
Posted on | November 10, 2009 | No Comments
La Crema Coffee Facebook posting from yesterday:
Offering $2.00 16oz Any Flavor drinks for the rest of the day and just for a special someone soy mocha’s are $1.00 for a TALL.
Boy did that get MY attention! And what perfect timing. I was getting ready to run my ballot to the drop-off box in front of the library, so I grabbed my buck and skipped across the street. To my pleasant surprise, a friend I haven’t seen for a long time is at La Crema ordering a coffee too. Between good banter and laughs I feel connected to my community. (Social Media made that interchange happen.) I can’t wait to spread the word to all of my Facebook friends the next time La Crema Coffee posts a special. (Viral marketing at a local level.)
Now let’s take a look at a corporate giant, Starbucks, and its Facebook fan page. Starbucks has almost 5 million fans, 587 discussion topics, 15 fan videos, 1073 fan photos, and their info box states “follow Starbucks on Twitter”. However, there isn’t much interaction between the fans and Starbucks. It’s as if the Starbucks fans are all just talking at each other and even using the platform to promote themselves. After checking out a days worth of Starbucks fan page action, I noticed Starbucks did post once and had 3200 fans give the post a thumbs up and left 203 comments within 5 hours of the Starbucks post/announcement. I thought that was pretty good interaction. However, why doesn’t Starbucks answer some of the questions asked by fans?
For comparison, I checked out the community effect of a Facebook fan page at a local level. The Black Drop Coffeehouse in Bellingham, WA has won many local “best coffee shop” awards, so I thought I would start there. Their Facebook fan page stats: 366 fans, 36 fan photos, and their info box states “we make kick-ass coffee”. The Black Drop posts are interspersed with customer interaction and personality. The Black Drop wall appears more like a conversation where the Starbucks wall feels like a crazy crowd of people not knowing which direction to go. I became a fan of the Starbucks page in hopes a free coupon might come my way someday. I joined the Black Drop fan page to get a feel of a community different than mine.
La Crema doesn’t even have a fan page, but uses Facebook to create community which in turn has a viral marketing effect. Starbucks has a huge fan base across the world and the Facebook fan page brings it all together. Black Drop uses their Facebook fan page to build community at a local level. Facebook now has over 325 million users and is gaining approximately 10 million users a month. Facebook users now surpass the population of the USA which is right around 304 million. Whether you are building community at a local level or an international level, Facebook fan pages should be a part of your social media strategy.
Think Vertical Storytelling – Think Web-Weaving
Posted on | November 8, 2009 | No Comments
Carl Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology - aka Jungian psychology. Jung believed that mythic stories, whether they were creation tales, legends, sagas or fairy-tales, were wisdom stories. He defined the stories as very dreamlike, a condensed perspective from the unconscious, except that we have created these stories collectively. To Jung mythic stories were a metaphorical way of expressing how we all face what are challenges in our everyday lives. After attending the Jungian Society of Vancouver’s presentation by Jungian psychologist James Hollis recently, I started thinking of stories and social media in a Jungian context.
You have heard it … advertising-as-interruption is over, and we are in the post-advertising age. How do you move your organization’s marketing from a linear storytelling model to a vertical web-weaving (permeable/integrated) model? The latter is what makes up this democratization of the internet by ways of social media and the new publishing channels. Democratization – of the people, by the people, for the people was once just a line you read in American government textbooks and is now the basis of social media. Marketing has a “new birth of freedom”.
Myth means story. The etymology of myth means “to scrint”. Think of it as an optic aperture which is an opening, usually circular, that limits the quantity of light that comes in and controls the image illumination. By following the aperture, the customer will be lead into greater depth of your organization and story. What do you want to illuminate for your customers which will help them? A myth is an affectingly charged story which is capable of moving the viewer or end-user. When affect has been generated, the story has had it’s power. How do you create a story for your organization that moves the reader in a way that they might not even realize? Use metaphors, symbols, patterns and eddies. The core myth or “tribal story” is your overall mission. The sub-stories are your narrative and when weaved with your customer’s stories becomes a vertical web-weaving model.
How do you collectively connect your customers to your story so that the individual is enlarged? If you have accomplished this goal of enlarging the individual then you have created community. Creating community is the ultimate goal of storytelling in the realm of content marketing and social media. In this modern day society communities are eroding because of the changing economic and social institutions. The internet is creating new communities every second because of this craving from the individual.
What stories are coursing through your organization? Which stories want to come into the world through you? Something wants to come into the world through us – serving the soul and self better. Co-participate in your story. There is risk to being who we are. The opposite of cruise control is scary but far more interesting. What are the forces of energy behind the success of your organization – these are archetypes which are not nouns but forces of energy. In the past clients/customers only received a glimmer of your organization by a TV commercial or a print ad or a company brochure…these are tiny apertures. Let each sub-story be an aperture into your organization.
So hop on over to your right brain, get conceptual and creative to generate an emotion affect and co-participation- then you will get the behavior change you are looking for. Story telling and web weaving has immense psychological power.
Tags: advertising > aperature > myth > Social Media > story > storytelling > web-weaving
Facebook “Soy Mocha Please”
Posted on | October 31, 2009 | 1 Comment
I’m working in my boutique feeling very tired from a late night of consulting work. I decide I just need to put it out to the universe via cyberspace.
I Facebook on Wednesday: “can someone please bring me a double soy mocha? i’m SO TIRED!”
Strategic Planning for Social Media Marketing
Posted on | October 23, 2009 | 1 Comment
I walk into the EDASC (Economic Development Association of Skagit County) presentation room, not feeling too networkish,or networkey, and choose a chair in the back of the room. I immediately get heckled by the event coordinators. So I move closer to the podium, choosing instead, the desk with an overabundance of trail mix packages. Then for good measure I grab a couple of cookies from the snack bar, set my water bottle where everyone can see I am health conscious, and slip slowly into a sugar coma.
The big question for me is, okay, I am familiar with social media sites, twitter, facebook, myspace etc., and I am familiar with websites, weblogs and such, but how can I be the most efficient at connecting all of the media venues to help my clients reach their goals? After all, the world of marketing is getting turned on its ear, and its about time, but what does that mean for business owners who are trying to comprehend a world where the consumers have control of the marketing message, wait, what once was old is new again, Well, the framework of an answer on how to adapt was nicely presented by Kevin Hoult, MBA, Certified Business Advisor from the Renton SBDC.
In attendance were business owners, managers, employees from private enterprise and public service institutions, all learning how to use social media to educate, inspire or motivate people to do something related to their own enterprise. Social media sites are being used more and more in professional workplaces as a means for internal dialogue to exist between groups that would not normally have much contact with each other. I heard of different Boeing engineering groups using a blog to discuss R&D successes, lessons etc., questions or problems being presented and solved by mean of a very efficient interface.
I have watched too much Star Trek, I think of Boeing Engineers wired like the “Borg” and their “hive mind” where all conscious is connected, the life experience of each individual added to the “collective”, is that where we are going? Will we ask the collective their opinions of products before we spend? At least our interface presents itself as tool, not yet “assimilated”, we can still unplug, for a little while longer, the writers obviously being aware of these societal issues/questions for some time now.
Okay so I can’t ask the “collective” for what to do next, I have to figure it out myself and let the masses tell me if I got it right.
What do we want to do? What are our relevant business goals. What resources can I appropriately commit, we all know how the hours can fly buy once in the web. We need to focus on actionable goals that are timely and sustainable. It could be as simple as increasing visits to your website, just keep asking, “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO”.
Strategic Planning in business means you use SMART goals:
- Specific, focused and detailed
- Measurable inputs and outputs identified and measured
- Assignable tasks that can be given to specific people
- Realistic and achievable given resource and time constraints
- Time-Bound with a time frame
Who do you want to reach?
- Who are your ideal customers?
- What is your unfair advantage?
- What are the target market segments for your social media campaign?
- What, specifically do you want these customers to do?
- How can these customers to take the desired actions using social media?
Now we have some goals, don’t forget the “Universal Truths of Social Media Marketing”.
- You must listen before you talk
- You must give before you can get
- You must be transparent and authentic
- You must facilitate rather than dominate
- You must follow rather than lead
How do you begin?
- LISTEN – Start by listening, and tracking the relevant conversations taking place
- RESPOND – Start participating, show gratitude for nice comments, fix problems
- INITIATE – Invite the conversation into your space
Have fun and be careful to stay focused on your objective!
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