Marketing with Mike

This is a guest post by Chris Englund who writes "Chris is an MBA navigating Social-Mediaville. Follow him on Twitter: @cgenglund".

Paid tweeting is a good idea: phenomenal measurability, incredible reach and extremely high conversion. But, am I the only one who thinks so?

In the late 1860's Italian chemist, Angelo Mariani engineered a wine that had the ability to restore health, cure the flu, fortify the brain, etc. What distinguished Mariani's from the vast array of contemporary concoctions was the Pope Leo XIII Bump. His Holiness appeared in print advertisement for the wine and awarded it a Gold Medal. Vin Mariani flew off the shelves across Europe and North America. 


Let's imagine my client is selling makeup, not coca wine, and they're advertising in 2010, not 1873. Should I get the larger-than-life Kim Kardashian to influence her 2,875,876 followers:

"My skin is glowing & healthy. Way excited about this new foundation! Pick some up at Walgreens, RT & tell me what you think: http://url"

A Tweet From Our Sponsor

Through Facebook, Email, or Twitter the link remains connected to the original campaign. URL shorteners ensure the destination can't be deciphered and offers instant click-through stats for free.

Tweets go to fans and followers, individuals who have specifically opted in. This isn't an email list, these individuals show their appreciation for the message through intentionally following, replying, and re-tweeting.

Short messages are naturally intriguing and inspire action. Good tweets elicit response and reaction. Unlike text ads in search results, this message is unframed by other advertisements and does not appear distinct from other tweets.

Kim Kardashian is no Pope, this I know, but nearly three million twitterers hang on her every word. She's acquired social status and authority. Like a Pope urging Catholics to the wine shop, I would want Kim calling customers to the makeup counters.

What do you think the value of a paid tweet is?  Leave a comment and let's discuss.

This is a guest post by Ilya Mirman (@IlyaMirman), who has held marketing and engineering roles at several hardware and software companies. His last three gigs have been as VP of Marketing for SolidWorks (3D design software), and two venture-backed MIT spin-offs - Interactive Supercomputing (acquired by Microsoft) and Cilk Arts (acquired by Intel). During his free time, Ilya enjoys photographing rock concerts and political events. [Photo: Ilya in his "Florida Uniform"]

Serves me right. Here I was, recuperating from a bender in Vegas by relaxing with in-laws in Florida, when I saw Volpe's tweet ("I'm looking for GUEST BLOGGERS for MikeVolpe.com - @ or DM me with an article headline if you are interested") and sarcastically DM'd him the headline above.

Mike took the bait ("love it. email it over and i will print it. if u are serious") - but now I was on the hook to produce something. So here's my two cents on the topic:

7 Reasons Why Guest Blogging is a Great Thing:

#7 - Introduces new perspective, new content to your audience

#6 - At the same time - gives guest blogger a new audience to share their content with

#5 - SEO benefits for your site (broadens the scope of terms your site can rank for)

#4 - The links between your sites will make it easier for your audience to discover your guest blogger's site - and for his audience to discover yours

#3 - The links between your sites will make it easier for Google (and other search engines) to know the sites are related, and leverage each site's SEO juice to help the other

#2 - Helps establish the guest blogger as an expert on the topic

#1 - And YES... it is a bit of a lazy way out: a great way to have fresh new content on your site without actually writing it (though of course there's no free lunch - you're still your blog's editor-in-chief!)

Ok, if the above is wicked simplistic, and you're thinking, "Thanks, Captain Obvious!" - here's another angle: there might be something akin to Metcalfe's Law going on here. Instead of two separate audiences exposed to separate content, guest blogging exposes more people to more content, and the social nature of the web allows for that many more possible interactions - blog comments, tweets, sharing. Feels like this would be an amplifying, non-linear force in driving communication, awareness, activity - and ultimately some conversion relevant for your site.

Anyhoozle... Having guest bloggers participate is a great thing for everyone - for the people you are all trying to deliver valuable content for, for the guest blogger, and for your business - so give it a shot. (There's a few tips and tricks to doing it efficiently and successfully - perhaps a topic for another post :).

I am 2 weeks into my Inbox Zero experiment.  So far it is great!  After having 300+ emails in my inbox on a regular basis, about a month ago I started trying to be more diligent about email and was able to get down to a steady state of 150.  Inbox Zero got me over the top, and while I have not hit zero, I am under 10 on a regular basis.  I feel much more in control of my email (rather than the other way around) and email is taking the same or less total amount of my time as before.

The 10 second version of "Inbox Zero"

Stop "reading" email and start processing it.  If you open a message, you need to DO something with it: delete/archive, delegate/forward and delete/archive, respond and delete/archive, or add to "to do" list and delete/archive.  The main point is to stop using your inbox as a "to do list" because you end up wasting time because your inbox is a messed up mix of things that need hours or days of work and stuff that needs a quick read or response.  Re-reading all the messages that you read but did not process ruins your productivity.  If you open the email, do something with it right then.

If you want to learn more, check out the slides below, or watch the original 2007 Inbox Zero Video.

This is a guest post by Marijo Tinlin, who is the principal at Sunrise Business Consulting (@SunriseBusiness) which helps small and emerging businesses and entrepreneurs get traction in business, sales and marketing. Her specialities include all facets of marketing including inbound marketing, content marketing, database marketing and search engine optimization.

Just as you may have a personal Twitter account and one for your business, you may want to separate the Twitter feeds for your company to specifically address certain parts of your business.

This could mean that you separate out the Customer Feedback feed from the Company News feed. Or if you are a technology company, you might want a Tech Support feed so your corporate feed doesn't need to address technical issues.

There are several advantages to this:

1. You can serve different audiences easily, by interest or by geography (include foreign offices)
2. Your readers can set up mobile notices for just the information they want from you
3. You can help your search engine rankings by the sheer volume of your brand being out there because the search engines search Twitter in real time. Here's a link to an example of how this works from Andy Beard @AndyBeard .

Zappos is a perfect example of addressing different customer and employee needs through different Twitter feeds. There are almost too many to list here but besides CEO Tony Hsieh's famous feed on @zappos, they also tweet for the following:

• Inside Zappos @inside_zappos
• Zappos Help Desk @zappos_helpdesk
• Zappos Service @Zappos_Service
• Zappos Pipleline @Zappos_Pipeline
• Zappos Tweetup @Zappos_Tweetup
• Zappos Kids Team @Zappos_KidsTeam

In addition, specific employees tweet as well, including the COO. So you can see they get granular about how they address the needs of customers and employees.

Keep in mind that once you have a customer service Twitter feed, everyone who follows that feed can see the back-and-forth conversations you are having with your customers. In the new paradigm of real-time customer feedback, as a company, you must be prepared for what you'll see and use this feedback to get better, not defensive! Happy Tweeting.

I found this post "The Marketing Hipster Dictionary" by Craig Rosenberg (aka The Funnelholic) and enjoyed it.  (Yes, I found it through a vanity search since he mentioned me... but Craig is a good guy, already in my RSS reader and I've done a webinar with him before.)

Craig mentions a number of concepts in this post, but one intrigued me because it hit home - "Maven Marketing".  Craig says:

"Maven marketing: I just made this phrase up too, and I'm hoping it sticks. Today's marketer does two things with mavens:  (a) Courts and/or works with mavens to create helpful buyer materials that don't necessarily ever mention their product - that's right. Mavens get more downloads than you and are TRUSTED. Today's buyer trusts two people: their peers and their mavens. Those two groups far outweigh the vendor.
(b) Creates mavens from their organization. Here's one for all those people with social media budgets. Start by creating an internal maven. Here's an example from the marketing industry: Mike Volpe (@mvolpe), VP at Hubspot, has 15,872 people who follow his every move on Twitter. They read him, respect him and re-Tweet him. That's hipster marketing."

What I find interesting is that is isn't just me at HubSpot that we use as a maven to build community.  That would not be scalable, and would not be a smart way to build the company.  We're developing lots of people in the company as useful (not salesy) resources for the marketing community.  Some examples (and I left out a LOT):  Dan Zarrella, Kyle James, Rick Burnes, Ellie Mirman, Beth Dunn, Karen Rubin, Peter Caputa, Jeanne Hopkins, Rebecca Corliss, Prashant Kaw, Pamela Seiple, and many, many more.

What do you think?  Does your company develop mavens for your market?  Leave a comment...

Recently an industry guru who is compiling a study/book on transparency emailed me and asked "What are the practices that you think an agency should follow when it comes to transparency in writing content for a client's social media channels?"  This is what I emailed back:

I think if it is for the brand/company, then it is fine to just go ahead and post as the brand and not disclose exactly who the post is coming from. Just like a number of different employees might post on behalf of the company, you might also hire an agency to do so. And there is not that much difference between the agency and the employees, especially in today's world of contractors, part time workers, outsourcing, etc. People who see posts coming from a brand should understand that it is a person or a team of people posting on behalf of the company, and they need to consume the communication in that way. Just like you might get an advertisement or letter or email from a company and it is not "signed" by the marketing person or agency that created it, you might get a Tweet from a company but not know who exactly wrote it.

Now, in the case where you might be posting on behalf of a person, say the CEO of a brand/company, then I think complete transparency is called for. People deserve and expect to know if they are actually speaking with Marc Benioff or someone posting on his behalf, because there is a real person in the conversation. By the way, this does not mean that it is bad to have people post on your behalf. I think Guy Kawasaki on Twitter is a great example that being interesting is much more important than posting everything yourself.

I love data.  Netflix makes available rental data by zip code.  Mash that up with a map and you can get some cool stuff.  This article on NYTimes.com has a cool graphic that allows you to see rental popularity by different titles and zip codes.

I've always thought that marketing people, especially those on the creative and advertising side of the industry loved the show. In fact, I started watching it during the first season after 3 different advertising/PR people told me about it.  Now I might have some data that agrees with me?

Hat tip to Kirsten, who sent me the link.

What do you think?  Is my assumption correct?

What is the future of Search Engine Optimization?

How can you be successful in SEO in 2010 and beyond?  How does social media affect search?  Will Facebook replace Google?  What about video?  What about other social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, will they affect search?  This SEO in 2010 video covers the basics of SEO, and then goes onto more advanced topics to set the stage for you to be successful in search engine optimization in 201.

FYI, this webinar is in support of my Movember campaign to raise money and awareness for men's cancers.  The webinar is completely free, but I will ask you if you like the webinar to make a donation to support my Movember campaign.

<-- Download Webinar Slides -->          <-- Donate to fight cancer in Movember -->

Download video for iPod and iPhone.

Have you heard of Movember?  It is an international foundation that raises money and awareness for men's cancers (prostate and testicular cancers).

Why the name Movember?  Well, they ask volunteers to grow a moustache during November and then ask their friends to donate a little something in support.  Sort of like a walk-a-thon, except you get less exercise, more insults, and it lasts a heck of a lot longer.

And, most importanly, you have this crazy new thing on your face every day for a whole month.   Which is why it is great viral marketing.  A cause you can't help but care about, paired with a trigger that gets people to ask you "are you growing a moustache" and then you explain to them why.  I have explained Movember and Team Boston about 100 times already.

Below is a slideshow below of my current "growth".  (Yes, I am currently growing more of a beard than a moustache, but honestly, I can't pull off the moustache and am also worried what the in-laws will think when I see them for Thanksgiving :)  I will do only  the moustache before the end of the month, at least for a day.

And, I will blog more about this later this week, but I am going to do a special webinar on SEO in 2010 to support Movember, you can pre-register here.

Again, don't forget to register for the webinar or donate.

• Start by growing your following and publishing interesting and useful content
• Then, next to the content you are promoting in social media, include calls to action and offers next to that content - the second and more detailed content piece or free trial is what drives the leads
• Make sure you have content both at the top of the funnel and at the middle of the funnel

Download file for iPod and iPhone.