What Is It And Why You Need To Harness It
Sociology 101 And The Fond Recall of Simple Social Network Maps
I will start with a confession: I always wanted to be a sociologist but never could see how to make an interesting, non-academic career out of it. Yes, that dates me. However, I did the next best thing, which was to focus on behavioral economics, moving ultimately into business intelligence. Extracting actionable information from data.
Now, PhD sociologists, of course, are in high demand. Particularly as the *big brands* wrestle with *big data* of which an increasing percentage is of the social signals kind. As I follow the unfolding of this social data era, I think fondly of my first social network maps. Back when I thought it was awesome just to map out how information flowed between individuals, groups or organizations.
The New Era: Big <Data> Relevance In Old Concepts
So just starting with the network map is useful, but there is a lot of other information that can be gleaned from social media data. When I think of social media, I consider at least every place that is now being referred to as ‘earned media.’ This is anywhere regular visitors can post content, including blogs, directories, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, SlideShare, Flickr, Instagram, etc. The list goes on. Changes will likely continue at this accelerated pace over the next few years; platforms will rise and will fall following patterns of user adoption of social media. I am particularly interested in where the early information will be posted, so I can see trends unfold and watch ‘mavens, connectors and persuaders’ influence outcomes.
Social media data, then, are simply the data produced by this explosion in user-based content. It is one thing to engage in social media, and quite another to step back to look at the aggregation of all the engagement to derive something that might be of value to you, to your business. There are a few things that are interesting here. One is just how much can really be known. Another is how credible and relevant the data really is to most businesses. And, finally, how actionable the derived information can be to those of us that are not the big brands.
Social Media May Be Deeper Than Your Next Tweet… And What In The Heck Is A Mechanical Turk?
I remember the day that I realized that this social media might be a lot of fun for an analyst. That is the day I first heard the term, “mechanical turk.” This term, in essence, is defined as the use of human beings to aid computers in areas that they stumble. Now THAT is a thought-provoking idea, is it not, in the age of sci-fi artificial intelligence that regularly takes over the world? It has some interesting undertones when it is we humans that now assist machines to accomplish their tasks more effectively. Before I digress too far, I will explain that the need for mechanical turking came from the early attempts to classify ‘sentiments’ in social media, whereas ‘bad’ is not always ‘bad’ and in fact, can be quite good. Understanding the meaning of ‘bad’ depends on the context, which is something computers cannot yet accomplish. So we humans assist them in classifying some ‘bad’ as truly bad and some ‘bad’ as good.
As an aside, check out this marketplace by Amazon: https://www.mturk.com. It is a bazaar for the buying and selling of ‘human intelligence tasks’ where we humans can aid machines. Interesting.
If you are like me, the whole concept of mechanical turking is quite stimulating to think about, and now you too might be off to the races to learn more about these social media data. And hopefully it is clear that there is more to this than meets the eye. So even if you do not personally *like* social media, even if you do not engage in it, it is much deeper than you might imagine. So, whatever you do, don’t dismiss it. It MAY very well be a critical part of the future of your business.
Why Should The Not-So-Big Brands Care About Social Media Analysis
The question is, what can be known? And then, what can you do with that information? Just as a way of introduction, I have already mentioned above that you can know the general sentiment about something, whether it is a company, a brand, a product, a sports team or an election. You can know how a sentiment trends over time, in terms of percentages of positive or negative commentary.
Other things you might know include:
- Volume, and changes in volume in sentiment over time. How many people are talking about this? Are greater or fewer people talking about this?
- Velocity of commentary. How much speed is in the commentary? Is there an increase or decrease in urgency, as reflected in people talking faster?
- Classes of commentary, whether highly emotional or more rational in nature, for instance. Is the nature of the conversation appear to be more toward rational discourse or emotional frenzy?
- Changes in classes of commentary over time. How is the classification of commentary changing over time?
- Trends in offshoot commentary, in volume, velocity or sentiment. So for example, the idea of ‘yoga’ might be growing in the US, and within that, ‘hot yoga’ might be really exploding.
- Physical location of sentiment. Where in the world or where in the US is the greatest positive sentiment for an idea, for instance?
As you can imagine, this list is limited only by your imagination. If you are truly inspired to learn something from ‘the crowd’ through social media data analysis, you can probably find a way to get it. This matters if you are not a big brand because it means that you too can access rich information that can drive many elements of your business strategy. You may no longer be inhibited by the staggering price tag of traditional market research to make important and well-informed business decisions.
The ‘Invisible Hand’ Of Self Interest For Social Commentary
Once you consider this, the first thing that may come to your mind is, “How legitimate is this data?” Or, “Can I trust it?” First the caveat that there is no perfect predictor. But I will quickly follow by saying that use of this type of data is supported by the Law of Large Numbers, a probability theorem that suggests that when you have enough votes, the expected value will closely approximate the actual value. So, assuming cleanliness of the social media data, the greater the volume, the more accurate the results.
The second thing that comes to my mind is John Maynard Keynes, the father of macroeconomics. Anecdotal, but illustrative, a fact I learned about him: he became very wealthy speculating on the stock market. What is interesting is that for all his economic knowledge, he bet on sentiment. He’d watch the nature of the commentary, the volume and the velocity, and then bet on it. And it was extremely successful as an approach.
Of course, there are much more interesting and current examples of social media data predictiveness. We’ve seen accurate predictions of social unrest, outcome of elections, and even movement in the stock market. Check out ThomsonReuters ‘Mood Index’ at http://www.marketpsychdata.com/ for an example of current application, an example of which (the Bubbleometer) is shown below.
In the end, I think social data is more reliable than not because it is grounded in well-proven theory. It also reflects the uncontrived motivation of ‘individual self-interest,’ which we’ve all learned can be the basis of a very stable behavior over time.
Business Application: From New Products To Facilitating The Purchase Process
Now the question is: what can you do with the derived information you will gain? LocalDirective approaches our work from a strategic perspective, whether we are developing a website or creating some form of digital marketing. You don’t find us following the ‘ready, shoot, aim’ method of many agencies; instead, our tactics follow our strategy work, and social media analysis informs us greatly in both areas.
You may want to consider these uses as well. Some examples of how you might apply social media data analysis to your day-to-day business decisions might be:
- As you develop your next website architecture, you might want to consider trending topics. Developing pages around trending keywords can be places you can rank faster (from an SEO perspective) and where you might establish thought leadership with your target market.
- How about considering the development of new services or products based on social media signals? How about determining your next location based on where discussion is happening?
- Online and offline marketing could (and actually SHOULD) be developed to speak to the trends, to argue against the trends, or to otherwise stake some claim associated to the signals.
Hopefully these examples will stimulate some ideas about how you might apply this sort of information to your specific situation. In the next part of this series, we will tackle one specific use of social media data, which is to develop relevant content for your target market segment.
Don’t Believe Everything You Read – How Quality Scores Impact Adwords Campaigns. Part 2
In my last article, I talked about the flawed logic regarding Google Adwords Quality Score (QS) that some writers were presenting in articles. To summarize, many writers were stating that the QS was not only unimportant and should be ignored, but that the QS didn’t impact the cost advertisers were paying. I pointed out the errors in their logic and provided you with insight into what exactly QS is and how a higher QS could save you money.
As promised, this article will focus on giving you suggestion on how to increase your QS without you having to obsess over it. Read the rest of this entry
Storytelling and Your Business
“Storytelling” has become a word that has found it’s way into the business world. And though storytelling has been around for ages, only recently has the business community recognized the effect of strategic storytelling. Today storytelling is used to position brands, transform business, engage customers and align employees. When properly used, storytelling is a pull, not push, strategy as it involves engagement and interaction from the audience. Great leaders in history have long understood this power of telling a story to unite people and call for action. These leaders, and now the business community, understand the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with a story.
Telling Your Story
One of my favorite hobbies is cooking and I enjoy watching cooking shows on TV. One of my favorite shows is “The Next Food Network Star”. During the last season there were two contestants; Justin Warner, a “Rebel With a Culinary Cause” and Emily Ellyn, with her “Retro Rad” style of cuisine. In the beginning of the season Justin was quiet and a bit of a mystery, while Emily had a cool look and quirky style. The producers and judges kept asking these contestants to “tell your story of who you are or else people will not care about you, your food or your show.” By the middle of the season, Justin was telling the story of how he was inspired to become a chef by his father and reminisced about cooking with him before he passed away. Emily, on the other hand, kept repeating that she was “Retro Rad” (whatever that meant) and refused to talk about her past. By the finale, as you can guess, Emily was long gone and Justin was the winner.
The bottom-line is, that the contestant with a memorable, relatable story won. The producers knew that we all want to be told a story and even if you think a show is about cooking, it’s really about someone’s story of cooking. Think about events such as the Olympics. We become fascinated with the stories behind the people who are competing. It draws us to them and it makes us care. They are no longer names and faces to us, but people whom we have come to know and love. This is the power and magic that is storytelling. And you can use this same power and magic to get results for your business.
Everyone Loves a Story
Since the first cave paintings, telling stories has been one of our most fundamental communication methods. We start learning to listen to stories as a baby, and spend the rest of our lives telling stories. It gives our connections the chance to really feel like they know us. Think about it – when was the last time you asked a friend how their day was? You wanted that connection to them through their story. As you learn the stories of the people you are connected to, and they learn yours, your relationship inevitably grows stronger. The business world has learned that this effect applies to not only our relationships with people but brands as well.
We often think of brands as people and what better way to connect someone to your brand than through story. Abstract communications are dull and dry and people simply aren’t moved to action by getting all the facts and figures. But when we are absorbed in a story we are moved emotionally. Storytelling doesn’t replace analytical thinking but supplements it by enabling us to imagine new possibilities. An emotional connection through a story can make a company come alive so that the audience truly knows, likes and trusts what it has to offer.
Be Remembered With Your Story
Storytelling delivers and it delivers quickly. This makes it perfectly in tune with web-speed marketing where you need to reach people in a matter of seconds. People get the idea, not slowly and painfully by the accumulation of evidence and details. With storytelling, people can get the idea right away. Great storytelling touches our hearts as well as our heads and gets us to feel as well as think. The emotions produced from a great story resonate more effectively with people and the message stays with them longer. Something every company wants their message to do.
I had a friend who had a terrific story about how he received confirmation that he was meant to start his new business. It was a warm, genuine and true story that he told under 2 minutes and by the end you were rooting for him and his start-up. He confessed to me that it was “kryptonite” and made otherwise busy executives, who appeared to have no time for him, stop and hear what he had to say. I feel sure that this story, this kryptonite, helped him get the backing to achieve the success he has today.
Develop Your “Kryptonite”
By connecting with people emotionally, storytelling opens a channel for mental connections to take place, a channel through which key messages, facts, and relevant information can flow. Information alone almost never changes people’s minds, let alone their lives, but logic with feeling can. So develop your company story, and make sure that it immediately draws the listener into the scene. Your story should have a beginning, middle and suspenseful end that is unforgettable. Also make sure that your product is integral to the story. And finally, be sure your story is easy to retell so others may share your story.
Once you have your story, use it in your Twitter profile, elevator pitch, cover letter, branding campaign or “about me” page as an opportunity to win people over. Create opportunities by communicating exactly who you are with your own “kryptonite”.
How To Drive Traffic to Your Blog
How can my website get more traffic? This is probably the most asked question in the internet marketing space. Even more important than rankings, traffic is one of the most sought after metrics for internet marketers and website owners alike. In this post, I will show you how to get additional traffic to your website’s blog using an advanced custom filter. Here’s what you will need to accomplish the task:
1. Access to Google Analytics
2. This guest post
3. A little patience
With these 3 essential ingredients, let’s dive right into it.
First and foremost, you will need to gain access to your website’s Google Analytics. If you do not have access or have not set-up GA, please read this blog. Once you have it all set-up, please login. If you hover over to the traffic overview section, you will notice that quite a few visitors usually come through referral traffic as seen in the image below:
This is an untapped source for additional traffic. How you wonder? Well, your site could be getting a lot of traffic from forums, blogs and discussion threads that you could respond to and get even more traffic. Say you commented on a thread that brings in referral traffic. Maybe you could go back and answer a question or continue the discussion. This would bump up the thread and bring in additional traffic. The only problem is that Google does not provide users with the complete URL of all the referral traffic. It only provides you with a path. To get the full URL, you will need yo set-up a custom report and a user defined value. That will be the purpose of this tutorial. So lets begin:
Step 1: Within GA, click on the “Admin” tab on the top right side of the screen
Step 2: Click on your profile
Step 3: Click on “Profile Settings”
Step 4: Click on “Copy Profile” at the bottom right of the screen. Rename the new profile “Referring URLS.” Your new profile should show up on the Admin screen.
Step 5: Click on your new profile.
Step 6: Click on “Filters”
Step 7: Click on “New filter” and name it “Referring URLS”
Step 8: Fill in all the required information that you see in the snapshot below.
Step 9: Click on “Save”
You are now done and ready to rock and roll. Now go back to your newly created analyticsprofile that you labelled “Referring URLS”. Follow this path Audience > Custom > User Defined. This is your newly defined value, which will show you all the referral traffic. Please keep in mind, you will have to wait 24 hours for the data to be populated and show up. Once the data comes in, you have a full list of all the complete URLS that drive traffic to your blog. Go to all the referring sites with the highest conversion rate and figure out how to bring in that additional traffic. You should perform this task at least once a month.
Good luck and may the SEO force be with you!
Are You Feeling The Love?
If you’ve read anything in way of marketing over the last year, you’ll remember how much of the focus of marketing has moved away from simply presenting your product or offer, and toward building a relationship with your audience, empowering them to become your biggest advocates.
Building Effective Relationships
When I think about building relationships in business, I think it correlates really well to how you build an effective dating relationship. There’s the introduction, some getting to know each other, a little trust, then either the magic happens or it doesn’t and you move on.
The process for business is exactly the same. Someone is introduced to your business, either through another relationship in their life, or through your marketing efforts. From there, it’s a process to convince your target market you are brand or product they like and can trust. As this trust develops further, they’ll be your brand champions for life.
Don’t believe me this actually works? Have you seen the marketing strategy Progressive Insurance has been using through their “Flo” character?
Fitting Social Media Into Your Business
Think about your relationships, your real life relationships. When you know someone, do you only talk about one aspect of life with them, or do you share many various parts of life? If you’re like most, the latter is true, and the closer you are to someone, the more you share with them.
Social Media Marketing is about the relationships you have with your consumers. When someone has a complaint, they want attention. However, people also like to feel good, to be recognized for various things and to know you appreciate them.
Social Media Marketing offers all of this in a way that has been difficult in the past. As you’re probably aware, people reach out to businesses through social when there’s a problem. Whether it’s a service provider whose service is interrupted, or a restaurant who’s made a blubber of a mistake (hello Applebee’s), people turn to Social Media to vent and try to get resolve.
However, people also love to hear from businesses when there’s not a problem, when businesses are just looking to help them feel good or motivated. Take for instance the two most engaged posts to-date at the LocalDirective Facebook page (Post #1 and Post #2)
The first think you’ll notice about these is they are both pictures. People LOVE to share pictures on Facebook. However, then you’ll notice that one is just a little about life; the other actually has to do with something related to business.
As you get your business geared up for 2013, be sure not to ignore the relationships and the powerful role they’ll play in your strategy this year. And yes, if you need help building a platform that crosses boundaries and is effective both for direct marketing as well as brand relationships, then give us a call to discuss how an integrated program might look for your business.
Trust and Credibility…Critical in Today’s Marketplace
The volatility of the global marketplace; the economy, terrorism, political corruption, corporate scandals, scam artists, and more have left us feeling uncertain, unsafe and not knowing who to trust anymore. People only want to buy from companies that have credibility and can meet expectations. People they trust! Both character and competence are vital to trust and sustained success. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) tagline is appropriately, “Start With Trust”.
Does your website have credibility? Do your prospective clients trust you?
There are 2,000,000 search inquiries on Google every minute! When an interested prospect finds you online and clicks to your website, will they contact you? Trust and credibility are the key.
Here are the Stanford University Website Credibility Guidelines: Read the rest of this entry
Don’t Believe Everything You Read – How Quality Scores Impact Adwords Campaigns. Part 1
Over the last couple months, I’ve seen several articles, from various sources, alluding to or even bluntly stating that the Google Adwords QS (Quality Score) should be completely ignored because it was meaningless. Since I strongly disagree with this sentiment and the logic behind the writers’ opinions did not make any rational sense, I simply dismissed these articles and went on with my day.
Recently, however, someone whom I greatly admire as an extremely intelligent business person forwarded me one such article and requested my thoughts. That made me realize these articles can be misleading and this type of information could result in the most savvy business people potentially making bad decisions. Read the rest of this entry
Customer Engagement Is The New Marketing
Most of us in marketing realize consumers have grown more and more empowered in the internet age, meaning traditional sales and marketing mediums are becoming less and less effective. To compete in this environment, businesses need to change their methods from traditional forms for marketing to true customer engagement if they want to succeed in building strong customer loyalty and ongoing relationships with their client base.
The last several years have brought about a fundamental shift in how people purchase goods and services in our society, and this has naturally been followed by a corresponding shift in how companies are marketing to those buyers. As consumers shift to Do Not Call lists, digitally record their favorite television shows and skip commercials while watching them or bypass their local cable company altogether and pay a provider like NetFlix to provide their favorite shows directly, our marketing culture continues to move away from the erstwhile effective “interruption-based” marketing model to one that is “permission-based.”
Some companies are doing this well, while others are most definitely lacking. Early in my sales career, I recall being taught a customer who has a positive experience with a company will tell three people while those with a negative encounter will tell 10 people. However, in this day and age that is no longer the case. Whether customers have a positive or negative experience, they now have the capability via social media to tell hundreds or even thousands of people.
Recently I saw a Facebook post from a friend, who was standing at the airport in New York and having an awful experience with her airline. In real time she posted her frustration on her wall, and this is a woman with over 4,000 friends on Facebook. Dozens of them joined in with comments to her post expressing similar dissatisfaction with the same airline.
Despite having never tried the airline myself, I know I will never use them because of a single experience a friend of mine had on a single trip to New York–that is the power of social in the age of the empowered consumer.
On the flip side of that, however, when consumers feel engaged by companies and form a relationship with the brand, the opportunities for businesses to leverage that brand awareness and customer engagement across multiple channels are virtually limitless if handled effectively.
Recently, my chiropractor shared a YouTube video he produced regarding headaches and relieving them naturally through spinal realignment. I am a big fan of my chiropractor! After experiencing lower back pain while working out for the past couple of years, I went to him and after only two treatments can now lift weights and go running with no back pain whatsoever. He also lets me stop by his house for a realignment if it’s more convenient some days than going to his office.
So when I saw the link to his video on his Facebook timeline, I gladly shared it with all of my contacts on Facebook and LinkedIn, giving him access to hundreds of additional viewers (read: prospects) than he would have otherwise been able to reach. Again, this is the power of social, and whether companies take advantage of the possible benefits of truly engaging their customers, or fall victim to the negative power of social because they are not effectively turning their customers into promoters, will determine the success or failure of their business in the age of the empowered consumer.
2013’s Biggest Investment In Marketing
Value Those Who Invest In Your Business
Your team, whether you have consultants, temps, contractors, or full-time employees give your business the one thing they can never get back: their time. Given that, they can be your most powerful asset as well as your most threatening detractor.
Here are some tips for how to get the most marketing benefit from your team.
1. Encourage Your Team To Talk
One of the biggest fears companies have is of their team talking about them online, especially on social media. While there is a bit of a risk if your employees aren’t satisfied with their job, there is also huge benefit when they are happy at work.
Encourage your team to talk about your business, in appropriate ways.
Is Your Internet Marketing An Uncharted Trip Into The Wild Blue Yonder?
From my experience, for many companies large and small it is just that. They move forward with well-intentioned but poorly planned websites, pay per click (search engine marketing), search engine optimization, social media marketing and perhaps email campaigns. All of that is done without out knowing exactly where they rank today with their internet marketing, how they rank and compare with their competitors, or how they could improve.
Would you take a road trip across country or to the far reaches of Canada or Mexico without a GPS or map of some type? If not then why do it for your internet marketing? In either case you can very well get lost or not be successful without a map. Did you know you can get a comprehensive evaluation of your website, SEM, SEO as well as SMM? Out of that evaluation you get a map as to where you are at with recommendations as to what makes the most sense going forward. It’s called an Integrated Online Marketing Evaluation and is well worth the fee charged to have experts do one for you. It is integrated in that it considers all aspects of your online marketing. If you fragment your efforts by having one company build your website, you or another company design your search engine marketing and yet others execute your search engine optimization or social media marketing programs you will have just that, fragments that don’t work very effectively together. I’m biased, however I believe coordinating with LocalDirective who has experts in all areas to coordinate and integrate across internet marketing specialties will give you your best results in the long run. They can do the evaluation, develop your map and illuminate the right direction.
When will you be ready to integrate and optimize your online marketing efforts and chances for success? It’s only November however it could very well be an excellent time for a New Year’s resolution that begins before the New Year. Get an edge on your competition by integrating and coordinating your online marketing efforts.
Success to you in 2013!
Dominate Your Online Space
Social Media Analysis – Part 1
What Is It And Why You Need To Harness It
Sociology 101 And The Fond Recall of Simple Social Network Maps
I will start with a confession: I always wanted to be a sociologist but never could see how to make an interesting, non-academic career out of it. Yes, that dates me. However, I did the next best thing, which was to focus on behavioral economics, moving ultimately into business intelligence. Extracting actionable information from data.
Now, PhD sociologists, of course, are in high demand. Particularly as the *big brands* wrestle with *big data* of which an increasing percentage is of the social signals kind. As I follow the unfolding of this social data era, I think fondly of my first social network maps. Back when I thought it was awesome just to map out how information flowed between individuals, groups or organizations.
The New Era: Big <Data> Relevance In Old Concepts
So just starting with the network map is useful, but there is a lot of other information that can be gleaned from social media data. When I think of social media, I consider at least every place that is now being referred to as ‘earned media.’ This is anywhere regular visitors can post content, including blogs, directories, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, SlideShare, Flickr, Instagram, etc. The list goes on. Changes will likely continue at this accelerated pace over the next few years; platforms will rise and will fall following patterns of user adoption of social media. I am particularly interested in where the early information will be posted, so I can see trends unfold and watch ‘mavens, connectors and persuaders’ influence outcomes.
Social media data, then, are simply the data produced by this explosion in user-based content. It is one thing to engage in social media, and quite another to step back to look at the aggregation of all the engagement to derive something that might be of value to you, to your business. There are a few things that are interesting here. One is just how much can really be known. Another is how credible and relevant the data really is to most businesses. And, finally, how actionable the derived information can be to those of us that are not the big brands.
Social Media May Be Deeper Than Your Next Tweet… And What In The Heck Is A Mechanical Turk?
I remember the day that I realized that this social media might be a lot of fun for an analyst. That is the day I first heard the term, “mechanical turk.” This term, in essence, is defined as the use of human beings to aid computers in areas that they stumble. Now THAT is a thought-provoking idea, is it not, in the age of sci-fi artificial intelligence that regularly takes over the world? It has some interesting undertones when it is we humans that now assist machines to accomplish their tasks more effectively. Before I digress too far, I will explain that the need for mechanical turking came from the early attempts to classify ‘sentiments’ in social media, whereas ‘bad’ is not always ‘bad’ and in fact, can be quite good. Understanding the meaning of ‘bad’ depends on the context, which is something computers cannot yet accomplish. So we humans assist them in classifying some ‘bad’ as truly bad and some ‘bad’ as good.
As an aside, check out this marketplace by Amazon: https://www.mturk.com. It is a bazaar for the buying and selling of ‘human intelligence tasks’ where we humans can aid machines. Interesting.
If you are like me, the whole concept of mechanical turking is quite stimulating to think about, and now you too might be off to the races to learn more about these social media data. And hopefully it is clear that there is more to this than meets the eye. So even if you do not personally *like* social media, even if you do not engage in it, it is much deeper than you might imagine. So, whatever you do, don’t dismiss it. It MAY very well be a critical part of the future of your business.
Why Should The Not-So-Big Brands Care About Social Media Analysis
The question is, what can be known? And then, what can you do with that information? Just as a way of introduction, I have already mentioned above that you can know the general sentiment about something, whether it is a company, a brand, a product, a sports team or an election. You can know how a sentiment trends over time, in terms of percentages of positive or negative commentary.
Other things you might know include:
- Volume, and changes in volume in sentiment over time. How many people are talking about this? Are greater or fewer people talking about this?
- Velocity of commentary. How much speed is in the commentary? Is there an increase or decrease in urgency, as reflected in people talking faster?
- Classes of commentary, whether highly emotional or more rational in nature, for instance. Is the nature of the conversation appear to be more toward rational discourse or emotional frenzy?
- Changes in classes of commentary over time. How is the classification of commentary changing over time?
- Trends in offshoot commentary, in volume, velocity or sentiment. So for example, the idea of ‘yoga’ might be growing in the US, and within that, ‘hot yoga’ might be really exploding.
- Physical location of sentiment. Where in the world or where in the US is the greatest positive sentiment for an idea, for instance?
As you can imagine, this list is limited only by your imagination. If you are truly inspired to learn something from ‘the crowd’ through social media data analysis, you can probably find a way to get it. This matters if you are not a big brand because it means that you too can access rich information that can drive many elements of your business strategy. You may no longer be inhibited by the staggering price tag of traditional market research to make important and well-informed business decisions.
The ‘Invisible Hand’ Of Self Interest For Social Commentary
Once you consider this, the first thing that may come to your mind is, “How legitimate is this data?” Or, “Can I trust it?” First the caveat that there is no perfect predictor. But I will quickly follow by saying that use of this type of data is supported by the Law of Large Numbers, a probability theorem that suggests that when you have enough votes, the expected value will closely approximate the actual value. So, assuming cleanliness of the social media data, the greater the volume, the more accurate the results.
The second thing that comes to my mind is John Maynard Keynes, the father of macroeconomics. Anecdotal, but illustrative, a fact I learned about him: he became very wealthy speculating on the stock market. What is interesting is that for all his economic knowledge, he bet on sentiment. He’d watch the nature of the commentary, the volume and the velocity, and then bet on it. And it was extremely successful as an approach.
Of course, there are much more interesting and current examples of social media data predictiveness. We’ve seen accurate predictions of social unrest, outcome of elections, and even movement in the stock market. Check out ThomsonReuters ‘Mood Index’ at http://www.marketpsychdata.com/ for an example of current application, an example of which (the Bubbleometer) is shown below.
In the end, I think social data is more reliable than not because it is grounded in well-proven theory. It also reflects the uncontrived motivation of ‘individual self-interest,’ which we’ve all learned can be the basis of a very stable behavior over time.
Business Application: From New Products To Facilitating The Purchase Process
Now the question is: what can you do with the derived information you will gain? LocalDirective approaches our work from a strategic perspective, whether we are developing a website or creating some form of digital marketing. You don’t find us following the ‘ready, shoot, aim’ method of many agencies; instead, our tactics follow our strategy work, and social media analysis informs us greatly in both areas.
You may want to consider these uses as well. Some examples of how you might apply social media data analysis to your day-to-day business decisions might be:
- As you develop your next website architecture, you might want to consider trending topics. Developing pages around trending keywords can be places you can rank faster (from an SEO perspective) and where you might establish thought leadership with your target market.
- How about considering the development of new services or products based on social media signals? How about determining your next location based on where discussion is happening?
- Online and offline marketing could (and actually SHOULD) be developed to speak to the trends, to argue against the trends, or to otherwise stake some claim associated to the signals.
Hopefully these examples will stimulate some ideas about how you might apply this sort of information to your specific situation. In the next part of this series, we will tackle one specific use of social media data, which is to develop relevant content for your target market segment.
Don’t Believe Everything You Read – How Quality Scores Impact Adwords Campaigns. Part 2
In my last article, I talked about the flawed logic regarding Google Adwords Quality Score (QS) that some writers were presenting in articles. To summarize, many writers were stating that the QS was not only unimportant and should be ignored, but that the QS didn’t impact the cost advertisers were paying. I pointed out the errors in their logic and provided you with insight into what exactly QS is and how a higher QS could save you money.
As promised, this article will focus on giving you suggestion on how to increase your QS without you having to obsess over it. Read the rest of this entry
Storytelling and Your Business
“Storytelling” has become a word that has found it’s way into the business world. And though storytelling has been around for ages, only recently has the business community recognized the effect of strategic storytelling. Today storytelling is used to position brands, transform business, engage customers and align employees. When properly used, storytelling is a pull, not push, strategy as it involves engagement and interaction from the audience. Great leaders in history have long understood this power of telling a story to unite people and call for action. These leaders, and now the business community, understand the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with a story.
Telling Your Story
One of my favorite hobbies is cooking and I enjoy watching cooking shows on TV. One of my favorite shows is “The Next Food Network Star”. During the last season there were two contestants; Justin Warner, a “Rebel With a Culinary Cause” and Emily Ellyn, with her “Retro Rad” style of cuisine. In the beginning of the season Justin was quiet and a bit of a mystery, while Emily had a cool look and quirky style. The producers and judges kept asking these contestants to “tell your story of who you are or else people will not care about you, your food or your show.” By the middle of the season, Justin was telling the story of how he was inspired to become a chef by his father and reminisced about cooking with him before he passed away. Emily, on the other hand, kept repeating that she was “Retro Rad” (whatever that meant) and refused to talk about her past. By the finale, as you can guess, Emily was long gone and Justin was the winner.
The bottom-line is, that the contestant with a memorable, relatable story won. The producers knew that we all want to be told a story and even if you think a show is about cooking, it’s really about someone’s story of cooking. Think about events such as the Olympics. We become fascinated with the stories behind the people who are competing. It draws us to them and it makes us care. They are no longer names and faces to us, but people whom we have come to know and love. This is the power and magic that is storytelling. And you can use this same power and magic to get results for your business.
Everyone Loves a Story
Since the first cave paintings, telling stories has been one of our most fundamental communication methods. We start learning to listen to stories as a baby, and spend the rest of our lives telling stories. It gives our connections the chance to really feel like they know us. Think about it – when was the last time you asked a friend how their day was? You wanted that connection to them through their story. As you learn the stories of the people you are connected to, and they learn yours, your relationship inevitably grows stronger. The business world has learned that this effect applies to not only our relationships with people but brands as well.
We often think of brands as people and what better way to connect someone to your brand than through story. Abstract communications are dull and dry and people simply aren’t moved to action by getting all the facts and figures. But when we are absorbed in a story we are moved emotionally. Storytelling doesn’t replace analytical thinking but supplements it by enabling us to imagine new possibilities. An emotional connection through a story can make a company come alive so that the audience truly knows, likes and trusts what it has to offer.
Be Remembered With Your Story
Storytelling delivers and it delivers quickly. This makes it perfectly in tune with web-speed marketing where you need to reach people in a matter of seconds. People get the idea, not slowly and painfully by the accumulation of evidence and details. With storytelling, people can get the idea right away. Great storytelling touches our hearts as well as our heads and gets us to feel as well as think. The emotions produced from a great story resonate more effectively with people and the message stays with them longer. Something every company wants their message to do.
I had a friend who had a terrific story about how he received confirmation that he was meant to start his new business. It was a warm, genuine and true story that he told under 2 minutes and by the end you were rooting for him and his start-up. He confessed to me that it was “kryptonite” and made otherwise busy executives, who appeared to have no time for him, stop and hear what he had to say. I feel sure that this story, this kryptonite, helped him get the backing to achieve the success he has today.
Develop Your “Kryptonite”
By connecting with people emotionally, storytelling opens a channel for mental connections to take place, a channel through which key messages, facts, and relevant information can flow. Information alone almost never changes people’s minds, let alone their lives, but logic with feeling can. So develop your company story, and make sure that it immediately draws the listener into the scene. Your story should have a beginning, middle and suspenseful end that is unforgettable. Also make sure that your product is integral to the story. And finally, be sure your story is easy to retell so others may share your story.
Once you have your story, use it in your Twitter profile, elevator pitch, cover letter, branding campaign or “about me” page as an opportunity to win people over. Create opportunities by communicating exactly who you are with your own “kryptonite”.
How To Drive Traffic to Your Blog
How can my website get more traffic? This is probably the most asked question in the internet marketing space. Even more important than rankings, traffic is one of the most sought after metrics for internet marketers and website owners alike. In this post, I will show you how to get additional traffic to your website’s blog using an advanced custom filter. Here’s what you will need to accomplish the task:
1. Access to Google Analytics
2. This guest post
3. A little patience
With these 3 essential ingredients, let’s dive right into it.
First and foremost, you will need to gain access to your website’s Google Analytics. If you do not have access or have not set-up GA, please read this blog. Once you have it all set-up, please login. If you hover over to the traffic overview section, you will notice that quite a few visitors usually come through referral traffic as seen in the image below:
This is an untapped source for additional traffic. How you wonder? Well, your site could be getting a lot of traffic from forums, blogs and discussion threads that you could respond to and get even more traffic. Say you commented on a thread that brings in referral traffic. Maybe you could go back and answer a question or continue the discussion. This would bump up the thread and bring in additional traffic. The only problem is that Google does not provide users with the complete URL of all the referral traffic. It only provides you with a path. To get the full URL, you will need yo set-up a custom report and a user defined value. That will be the purpose of this tutorial. So lets begin:
Step 1: Within GA, click on the “Admin” tab on the top right side of the screen
Step 2: Click on your profile
Step 3: Click on “Profile Settings”
Step 4: Click on “Copy Profile” at the bottom right of the screen. Rename the new profile “Referring URLS.” Your new profile should show up on the Admin screen.
Step 5: Click on your new profile.
Step 6: Click on “Filters”
Step 7: Click on “New filter” and name it “Referring URLS”
Step 8: Fill in all the required information that you see in the snapshot below.
Step 9: Click on “Save”
You are now done and ready to rock and roll. Now go back to your newly created analyticsprofile that you labelled “Referring URLS”. Follow this path Audience > Custom > User Defined. This is your newly defined value, which will show you all the referral traffic. Please keep in mind, you will have to wait 24 hours for the data to be populated and show up. Once the data comes in, you have a full list of all the complete URLS that drive traffic to your blog. Go to all the referring sites with the highest conversion rate and figure out how to bring in that additional traffic. You should perform this task at least once a month.
Good luck and may the SEO force be with you!
Are You Feeling The Love?
If you’ve read anything in way of marketing over the last year, you’ll remember how much of the focus of marketing has moved away from simply presenting your product or offer, and toward building a relationship with your audience, empowering them to become your biggest advocates.
Building Effective Relationships
When I think about building relationships in business, I think it correlates really well to how you build an effective dating relationship. There’s the introduction, some getting to know each other, a little trust, then either the magic happens or it doesn’t and you move on.
The process for business is exactly the same. Someone is introduced to your business, either through another relationship in their life, or through your marketing efforts. From there, it’s a process to convince your target market you are brand or product they like and can trust. As this trust develops further, they’ll be your brand champions for life.
Don’t believe me this actually works? Have you seen the marketing strategy Progressive Insurance has been using through their “Flo” character?
Fitting Social Media Into Your Business
Think about your relationships, your real life relationships. When you know someone, do you only talk about one aspect of life with them, or do you share many various parts of life? If you’re like most, the latter is true, and the closer you are to someone, the more you share with them.
Social Media Marketing is about the relationships you have with your consumers. When someone has a complaint, they want attention. However, people also like to feel good, to be recognized for various things and to know you appreciate them.
Social Media Marketing offers all of this in a way that has been difficult in the past. As you’re probably aware, people reach out to businesses through social when there’s a problem. Whether it’s a service provider whose service is interrupted, or a restaurant who’s made a blubber of a mistake (hello Applebee’s), people turn to Social Media to vent and try to get resolve.
However, people also love to hear from businesses when there’s not a problem, when businesses are just looking to help them feel good or motivated. Take for instance the two most engaged posts to-date at the LocalDirective Facebook page (Post #1 and Post #2)The first think you’ll notice about these is they are both pictures. People LOVE to share pictures on Facebook. However, then you’ll notice that one is just a little about life; the other actually has to do with something related to business.
As you get your business geared up for 2013, be sure not to ignore the relationships and the powerful role they’ll play in your strategy this year. And yes, if you need help building a platform that crosses boundaries and is effective both for direct marketing as well as brand relationships, then give us a call to discuss how an integrated program might look for your business.
Trust and Credibility…Critical in Today’s Marketplace
The volatility of the global marketplace; the economy, terrorism, political corruption, corporate scandals, scam artists, and more have left us feeling uncertain, unsafe and not knowing who to trust anymore. People only want to buy from companies that have credibility and can meet expectations. People they trust! Both character and competence are vital to trust and sustained success. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) tagline is appropriately, “Start With Trust”.
Does your website have credibility? Do your prospective clients trust you?
There are 2,000,000 search inquiries on Google every minute! When an interested prospect finds you online and clicks to your website, will they contact you? Trust and credibility are the key.
Here are the Stanford University Website Credibility Guidelines: Read the rest of this entry
Don’t Believe Everything You Read – How Quality Scores Impact Adwords Campaigns. Part 1
Over the last couple months, I’ve seen several articles, from various sources, alluding to or even bluntly stating that the Google Adwords QS (Quality Score) should be completely ignored because it was meaningless. Since I strongly disagree with this sentiment and the logic behind the writers’ opinions did not make any rational sense, I simply dismissed these articles and went on with my day.
Recently, however, someone whom I greatly admire as an extremely intelligent business person forwarded me one such article and requested my thoughts. That made me realize these articles can be misleading and this type of information could result in the most savvy business people potentially making bad decisions. Read the rest of this entry
Customer Engagement Is The New Marketing
Most of us in marketing realize consumers have grown more and more empowered in the internet age, meaning traditional sales and marketing mediums are becoming less and less effective. To compete in this environment, businesses need to change their methods from traditional forms for marketing to true customer engagement if they want to succeed in building strong customer loyalty and ongoing relationships with their client base.
The last several years have brought about a fundamental shift in how people purchase goods and services in our society, and this has naturally been followed by a corresponding shift in how companies are marketing to those buyers. As consumers shift to Do Not Call lists, digitally record their favorite television shows and skip commercials while watching them or bypass their local cable company altogether and pay a provider like NetFlix to provide their favorite shows directly, our marketing culture continues to move away from the erstwhile effective “interruption-based” marketing model to one that is “permission-based.”
Some companies are doing this well, while others are most definitely lacking. Early in my sales career, I recall being taught a customer who has a positive experience with a company will tell three people while those with a negative encounter will tell 10 people. However, in this day and age that is no longer the case. Whether customers have a positive or negative experience, they now have the capability via social media to tell hundreds or even thousands of people.
Recently I saw a Facebook post from a friend, who was standing at the airport in New York and having an awful experience with her airline. In real time she posted her frustration on her wall, and this is a woman with over 4,000 friends on Facebook. Dozens of them joined in with comments to her post expressing similar dissatisfaction with the same airline.
Despite having never tried the airline myself, I know I will never use them because of a single experience a friend of mine had on a single trip to New York–that is the power of social in the age of the empowered consumer.
On the flip side of that, however, when consumers feel engaged by companies and form a relationship with the brand, the opportunities for businesses to leverage that brand awareness and customer engagement across multiple channels are virtually limitless if handled effectively.
Recently, my chiropractor shared a YouTube video he produced regarding headaches and relieving them naturally through spinal realignment. I am a big fan of my chiropractor! After experiencing lower back pain while working out for the past couple of years, I went to him and after only two treatments can now lift weights and go running with no back pain whatsoever. He also lets me stop by his house for a realignment if it’s more convenient some days than going to his office.
So when I saw the link to his video on his Facebook timeline, I gladly shared it with all of my contacts on Facebook and LinkedIn, giving him access to hundreds of additional viewers (read: prospects) than he would have otherwise been able to reach. Again, this is the power of social, and whether companies take advantage of the possible benefits of truly engaging their customers, or fall victim to the negative power of social because they are not effectively turning their customers into promoters, will determine the success or failure of their business in the age of the empowered consumer.
2013’s Biggest Investment In Marketing
Value Those Who Invest In Your Business
Your team, whether you have consultants, temps, contractors, or full-time employees give your business the one thing they can never get back: their time. Given that, they can be your most powerful asset as well as your most threatening detractor.
Here are some tips for how to get the most marketing benefit from your team.
1. Encourage Your Team To Talk
One of the biggest fears companies have is of their team talking about them online, especially on social media. While there is a bit of a risk if your employees aren’t satisfied with their job, there is also huge benefit when they are happy at work.
Encourage your team to talk about your business, in appropriate ways.
Is Your Internet Marketing An Uncharted Trip Into The Wild Blue Yonder?
From my experience, for many companies large and small it is just that. They move forward with well-intentioned but poorly planned websites, pay per click (search engine marketing), search engine optimization, social media marketing and perhaps email campaigns. All of that is done without out knowing exactly where they rank today with their internet marketing, how they rank and compare with their competitors, or how they could improve.
Would you take a road trip across country or to the far reaches of Canada or Mexico without a GPS or map of some type? If not then why do it for your internet marketing? In either case you can very well get lost or not be successful without a map. Did you know you can get a comprehensive evaluation of your website, SEM, SEO as well as SMM? Out of that evaluation you get a map as to where you are at with recommendations as to what makes the most sense going forward. It’s called an Integrated Online Marketing Evaluation and is well worth the fee charged to have experts do one for you. It is integrated in that it considers all aspects of your online marketing. If you fragment your efforts by having one company build your website, you or another company design your search engine marketing and yet others execute your search engine optimization or social media marketing programs you will have just that, fragments that don’t work very effectively together. I’m biased, however I believe coordinating with LocalDirective who has experts in all areas to coordinate and integrate across internet marketing specialties will give you your best results in the long run. They can do the evaluation, develop your map and illuminate the right direction.
When will you be ready to integrate and optimize your online marketing efforts and chances for success? It’s only November however it could very well be an excellent time for a New Year’s resolution that begins before the New Year. Get an edge on your competition by integrating and coordinating your online marketing efforts.
Success to you in 2013!