Posts Tagged ‘social media’
Monday, February 1st, 2010
 Having served in the Marine Corps for ten years as well as co-founding and operating a web strategy company, I offer a unique perspective on our military and its’ Web Strategy. The United States has the world’s second largest military, after the People’s Liberation Army of China, and has troops deployed around the globe. With an “All Volunteer” military force of 1,454,515 people serving on active duty and an additional 848,000 people in the seven reserve components, I think most people would agree that the military’s recruiting mission is of an epic scale compared to other organizations.
Having one of the most challenging recruiting tasks of any organization in America requires nothing less than an exceptional marketing plan. The five branches of the military each have a distinct military mission and therefore recruit a little differently. More specifically, I would like to discuss why I feel the U.S. military is using the internet to market more effectively than almost any civilian corporation in the world.
Just like any other organization, it is first necessary to have a thorough understanding of the military’s mission or business plan, in order to develop an effective web strategy. Let’s take a brief look at each branch of our military to gain a better understanding of their role in providing our overall national security.
I will be discussing the Military Branches in order from largest to smallest.
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Tags: air force, army, coast guard, Conversation, Facebook, fanpage, marine corps, marketing, military, MySpace, navy, online advertising, social media, youtube channel
Posted in Social Media Marketing, internet marketing, web strategy | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
 Are the same technologies that were skillfully used to crush his opponents during the 2008 presidential campaigns going to aid in destroying the President’s approval rating? Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama utilized various social media platforms to establish a grassroots movement that revolutionized presidential campaigning. He successfully connected with activists, donators, and voters in record numbers via the Internet. He was also able to set new fundraising records by gaining support from millions of individual small donors.
It is well known that the President has inherited a host of challenging issues including but not limited to the War in the Middle East and the economic recession. Most would agree that these challenges will take at least a decade to resolve regardless of who’s in office. The fact is that the President’s approval rating has dropped below 50% and many analysts suggest this number will continue to decline.
As social media communities such as Twitter, Facebook, and DIGG continue to grow at alarming rates, what will this mean for the President’s approval rating? Will he stand a chance for re-election in 2013? How much clout or social influence do his critics have on social media platforms?
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Tags: approval ratings, president obama, presidential campaign, social influence, social media
Posted in General, social influence | 6 Comments »
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
 Customers buy because of their perceived need. Most of the time, their perceived need is actually a want. Many companies fail to recognize this difference and therefore make costly mistakes by developing products and or services that don’t catch on. There are several factors that determine why customers buy a product or service from one source over others. The main factors are as follows:
Brand Awareness - Is your customer aware of your existence? They need to know about you as a source or option. Your location, whether it be brick and mortar or the first page of Google are important factors in determining your Brand Awareness and market penetration.
Product Features and Benefits - We are all customers. Have you ever compared features of a particular product or service? We all do it. A good example is when shopping for a Cell Phone Service Provider. We compare the features of various plans offered by the competing companies. Most importantly as customers though, we focus on the benefits. What will that cell phone do for me? Maybe it’s the security and peace of mind to know that I can call anytime or anywhere during an emergency? Or maybe it might make me feel good to know that my monthly bill will be a flat rate every month.
Product or Service Pricing - Let’s face it, there are customers that price shop. Then there are customers that are willing to pay more for what they perceive as a better value. Have you heard the term, “Getting the most for my money”?
Brand Reputation - what does your market think about your brand? Dominos Pizza recently learned that the majority of their market had the opinion that their product sucks. They learned specific details as to why their customers felt their product was inferior against their competitors. Dominos then used social media to their advantage by asking for customer input to develop a new and improved product.
Word of Mouth - What are your customers saying about your company, product or service? Results from studies have shown that a satisfied customer may share their buying experience with 1-3 people. On the other hand, if they had an unpleasant experience with your company, they are likely to share that information with 10 people. This is one of the reasons customer loyalty is so important. Social media and customer rating sites have made it extremely easy for customers to review and share their buying experience. Smart companies are learning these new marketing concepts and using them to their advantage.
The most successful companies today are leveraging their knowledge of the fore mentioned concepts with social media technologies. In my blog post titled, “Corporate Marketing– Simplifying the Social Media Challenge”, I discuss a simple and effective way for companies to approach their social media strategy.
Connect with me:
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Tags: Brand Awareness, branding, marketing, positioning, products, sales, social media, strategy
Posted in General, Social Media Marketing | 6 Comments »
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
In a previous post, How To: Create a Facebook Fan Page, I took you through the Fan page creation process. If you decided to create one you’re probably asking yourself, "Ok, I have this fan page set up, now what do I do with it?" Well it’s going to take some effort on your part to get the ball rolling, unless you happen to be a well known brand of course. As much as we all would love to have instant fans in the thousands, in this land of information overload, we are but a small glimmer in front of a big glowing sun.
So before you start inviting or suggesting your Fan Page to your Facebook and business connections, use the following methods to get the biggest bang out your invite. People will be more likely to join your page if they see there’s an effort being made to stimulate their interest.
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As I’m sure you’ve heard before "content is king", especially relevant and engaging content. One of the fastest and easiest ways of producing content for your Fan Page is to feed your company blog to it. Of course, this will only work if you’re company is posting to the blog at least 2 to 3 times a week, though more would be best. Your posts should be informative, helpful, conversational, and don’t forget to bring a little of your company’s personality into the mix!
There are different methods of connecting your blog to the Fan Page. It can be as simple as setting up your Fan Page Notes to Import your Blog, or you can use a 3rd Party RSS application. We use NetworkedBlogs to feed our blog which is much more robust than the Notes option. It’s also a great way to find your Facebook friends’ blogs, if they have it registered on NetworkedBlogs, as well as subscribe to some of your favorite bloggers.
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Create a "Landing Page" tab that will encourage people to join your Fan Page as well as give them a "Call to Action". The CTA should be something easy and non-intrusive. We use the Static FBML application to create custom Landing Page Tabs, it adds a box to your Page in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for enhanced Page customization.
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Upload Images or Videos of your product(s) or service. If you are uploading videos, make sure they are short and to the point. The YouTube Box application is an excellent tool to publish and manage your videos from your YouTube profile if you already have one or are planning on creating one.
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 Place a Fan Page Badge on your company website and/or blog. Let your current visitors know that they can now interact with you via Facebook.
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Keep your fans engaged! They joined your page because they found it interesting, make sure they stay interested. Update your page with new content as often as you can and then let them know about it. Use the Insights tool to keep track of what works and what doesn’t and then adjust as best as your company can.
I hope you find this post helpful in getting your Fan Page started and on the road to great success. As long as you’re providing quality information you will begin to see an increase in your fan numbers. Just make sure that if a Fan posts a question or comment on your Wall or Discussion board you or someone at your company responds in a timely manner. After all that is why we’re doing this in the first place 
Please feel free to share your experiences in the comment section below or if you have a suggestion to add to the list, I’d love to hear it!
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Tags: facebook applications, facebook fan page, group, profile, social media, social networking
Posted in Social Media Marketing | 9 Comments »
Friday, January 8th, 2010
 Building a Brand with social media is a long term commitment and is time consuming. With that in mind, you need to have a strategy to leverage the support of your fans. The most successful companies are benefiting from their fans acting as evangelists. In order to do that, your fans need a reason to get excited about your brand. Here are some questions that may help you with that challenge.
What is different about my product or service? What will make my fans tell others about my product or service? What digital information or media can we produce for people to share that is useful, interesting, or humorous? How can we tie it in with our product or service? Who are our fans? What are their likes and dislikes? What are their fears and concerns? Can we solve a common problem amongst our fan population? What have I seen from other companies that I have liked and passed on? Why did I pass it on?
Can you think of more questions? Please comment with your thoughts and suggestions…
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Tags: brand management, celbrity status, celebrities, public relations, publicity, reputation management, rock bands, social media
Posted in Social Media Marketing | 4 Comments »
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
I hope this list gives you some useful ideas so that you can create an amazing blog.
- Create a good, unique design
- Easy to navigate site
- Posts that are Consistent and regular
- Content that is helpful and useful
- Create blog posts on niche topics that aren’t oversaturated
- Original content using your, unique voice
- Easy to share content- social media sharing tools/widgets
- Comment on other blogs to become known
- Make it easy for readers to subscribe
- Organization with categories and sub-categories
- Content variety including multimedia
- Functionality- the ability to interact
- Announce your latest blog posts on Twitter
- Write powerful headlines for your articles
- Don’t sensor yourself- Be You!
- Monetize your blog- Banner Ads, Text Ads, etc.
- Reference and link to other blogs
- Engage with commenter’s
- Who, what , where, why, when format
- Use storytelling
- Conciseness and brevity
- Inspirational thoughts and ideas
- Accuracy, sourcing, and references
- Provide examples and demonstrations
- Blog Post Topic diversity
- Imagery and Illustration
- Humor and occasional fun
- Quotes and Acknowledgement
- Controversial discussion
- Sticky CTA’s (Call-to-Action) Entice visitors to return
- Participate on LinkedIn “Answers”
- Distribute posts using social bookmark sites (Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Etc.)
- Proofread, Proofread, Proofread
- Scannable Posts
- Create relevant “Top 10” Lists
- Create “How To” articles
- Write a “series” post
- Don’t duplicate other people’s content
- Provide a picture of yourself and an “About Me”
- Optimize the blog for the Search Engines (SEO practices)
- Use Squidoo and Hubspot to write articles that point back to your blog
- Use Youtube to host and embed video to your blog
- Use Google Analytics to Analyze and Improve Traffic Demographics
- Write content that will still be relevant tomorrow
- Offer a download (free E-book or Guide) to build a e-mail distribution list
- Develop a personal brand
- Add your Blog Link in your E-mail Signature
- Tweet useful news articles on Twitter besides your blog posts
- Don’t over promote yourself or your products
- Submit your blog to blog directories
If you have questions on blogs, blogging, or social media in general, please contact our website design company.
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Tags: Blogging, Blogs, help, ideas, inspiration, marketing, social media, tips
Posted in Blogs | 20 Comments »
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
You finally made a profile on Facebook and have reconnected with friends and family. But how do you utilize this technology for your business or company? Simple, you create a Fan Page! A Fan Page really is the best way to network and promote yourself, your business/company, or organization on Facebook. This tutorial assumes that you are already familiar with setting up a Facebook profile. If not, please feel free to contact us.
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Tags: business, Facebook, fan page, how to, social media, social netowrking, tutorial
Posted in Tutorials | 4 Comments »
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