Facebook Fan Page Best Practices
June 20, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
I have been managing a couple of brand’s fan pages directly for some time – Savvy Cellar Wines (which I’m a Co-Owner of) for over two years and Organic Wine Review (which was video blog launched last year). My consulting practice SmokeJumper Strategy is increasing being called upon to assist software and Internet companies with their social media and marketing strategy, which inevitably includes Facebook. I was also recently asked by Facebook to become an Advisor to their Local product and marketing efforts.
During this time, I’ve experimented with many aspects of managing a fan page for a small & local businesses: from times to post, different media types and observing and measuring what types of posts seem to drive social interaction. Along the way, we’ve managed to grow our fan base (now at 2,100), hopefully engage them in a positive way and taken advantage of the advances Facebook has engineered into their tools and apps for fan pages, their advertising platform and their analytics to measure audiences and responses to actions.
Why Physical Collateral Still Matters (in an Online World)
May 26, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
“The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here! . . . I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.” Nathan R. Johnson, The Jerk
In a world that has gone mad over all things digital, is physical collateral necessary? It is an interesting question. Many businesses these days forgo what was once the bedrock of local marketing – the yellow pages. Instead they are faced with a bevy of interesting and often interactive ways to connect with their consumers and communities: Websites, Facebook, directories and review sites such as Yelp, online marketplaces, Twitter, YouTube, mobile phones, daily deal sites, Foursquare and other geo-based check-in services. So given this, why would a local business invest any time and $’s whatsoever on physical collateral? After all it is expensive, often is out-of-date shortly after printed, can’t be shared, is not viral, does not scale, <insert your favorite Internet marketing hyperbole here>, etc.
Social Marketing Best Practices | A Planning Checklist
April 29, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
As I worked through assessing a new client’s existing social marketing efforts, I turned my attention to assembling a set of best practices to rate them against. In preliminary search of existing data on the subject, I was pleased to find one of my clients, Marketo a leader in B2B marketing automation, had published a practical guide to social media marketing: The Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media.
Within section 2 of the guide, “Laying the Foundation”, there is a very practical checklist outlining what a company must be prepared to undertake in order to market using social media effectively. I have taken that list and extended some of the concepts, added a couple more and simplified others.
The result is a Social Marketing Best Practices Planning Checklist.
1) Establish clear goals for social marketing.
- Be specific.
- Keep objectives in mind for every initiative executed.
How SEO Can Drive Non-SEO Marketing
April 4, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
A year ago I was asked by a friend and former colleague of mine, who is now a Partner at a prominent Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm, to come be the lead speaker at a “Marketing Meetup” they were hosting. It seems that many of the companies that the firm had invested in were struggling with (or at least hesitating) to take advantage of online marketing (e.g. search engine optimization, search engine marketing, email marketing, blogging, social media, etc.).
How Marketing Changed in the 2000’s
I was recently reflecting on that session and thought it would be interesting to go back and see what, if anything had changed in my perspective. When I gave the talk, I did my best to provide some context of how marketing had changed during the last decade (or at least back to when my former colleague was pushing product out the door for Netscape Communications).
- Access to media, thought leaders and influencers was somewhat limited and pre-defined by the traditional bounds of print (and even early online) publications and the relationships that Public Relations (PR) professionals had with the media whose coverage they sought. Read more
I’m Tired of One Night Stands
February 21, 2011 by admin · 6 Comments
At the risk of mixing metaphors, Luke Hohmann recently described Groupon, Living Social and other daily deal sites as enticing businesses into one night stands. At first I laughed but as I thought about my direct experiences with a plethora of group buying sites, I think he may be right. There is no doubt that these daily deal sites can deliver a deluge of coupon-grubbing customers to a small, local business’s door step. But at what cost? Negative margin, stretching service delivery to breaking point, alienation of regular loyal customers, attracting customers who don’t spend more than the deal amount and won’t ever come back are some of the well documented potential pitfalls. (And hopefully not STD’s!)
I often describe Groupon, Living Social and other daily deal sites as providing small businesses a large, fishing drift net to cast broadly into the ocean; the result is you will no doubt collect a lot of sea life, but only some of which will be the targeted species you are actually fishing for. Luke’s metaphor is certainly more colorful and may, in fact, be truer than mine.