I am always fascinated when people claim that a certain online channel or medium is better or more effective than another. I take a tool agnostic approach and prefer to only use a tool if it fits the specific role needed to contribute to the integrated campaign, rather than which one is better.

Today I came across two interesting articles that piqued my interest.

An article from Inside Facebook which revealed Worldwide Facebook Mobile Usage Up 300% in Last 12 Months and a study that revealed that More Viewers Watching TV and Web Simultaneously, Study Says.

The common thread is that I have heard frequently from people with the advertising background, that mobile has better conversion than social and that TV still has more attention share than online.

The problem is that these channels are not competing with each other as we have previously thought.

The 19-24 demographic have grown up attached to their cellphones and social media is not going to change that. However what they are doing with their cellphones is changing. Mobile access to social media is probably the biggest evolution I have seen in the last few years. With the shift in accessibility, social media is no longer just a channel for people that spend all day in front of a computer. With the big push from Facebook to become more accessible to cellphone users they are making it easier for Facebook to become a more integrated and richer part of their social interactions, which can be seen in the 300% jump in mobile interactions.

Secondly in regards to TV vs online, I have always thought the comparison was ridiculous. The modern reality is that people do not consume media in silos. In fact with our hyperactive consumption habits I would argue that I would struggle to identify time where I watch TV without either accessing the web via my smartphone or netbook simultaneously.

Communications in the digital age forces us to break down the silos previous enforced.

If you are devising an online strategy don’t look at which are the top 5 of anything but rather look at what your message you want to convey is and be prepared to dip your toes in many buckets.

The medium is not the message, the message is medium.

Photo credit, Travis Isaacs

I am a marketer that is invigorated and driven by the possibilities and opportunities of the online world. I look at it as an opportunity to quantify what we haven’t understood for years – attention, comprehension and the very fabric of our social interactions with each other and how that leads to buy into a brand experience.

The opportunity is in quantifying what was previously immeasurable not defending the new ‘immeasurable’ territory of social media.

Freemium isn’t an excuse to not make a profit, the brand experience does not supersede the need for results and finally coolness should not play a role in real business strategy.

Let’s not get carried away here. Slow down and don’t fall in love with the technology (email is still my bread and butter). It is still just a tool and has to be a part of a thought out business strategy with an laid out scope, objectives, expectations and yes, limitations.

At the end of the day your social media campaign needs to lead to someone picking up the phone and saying hi or walking down the street and thinking about the brand differently.

If that isn’t a part of your social media strategy, then you are a hobbyist (similar to day time television enthusiasts) not a social media expert, strategist or guru.

Lets not fall in love with the shiny and glittery things, there are huge opportunities to use these tools to make a real impact in the business world. How about we don’t put them to waste?

Photo credit Hubspot

This weekend my father and I were discussing purchasing a digital SLR camera to step up our photography hobby from point and shoot to something with more substance. A step which is significant both in price, features and the variety in models. Given my modest knowledge it was important to do my homework before recommending a purchase.

The way I research most of my purchases is online first, checking the major retailers and specialty stores looking at the all the options, specs and prices. For this purchase I visited several online retailers including Best Buy, Black’s Photography and Henry’s and quickly learned that as an uninitiated customer the 500 word feature outline can be overwhelming, intimidating (you can check it out over here) and if anything confused me, making me less confident in coming to a decision.

Then I went off to the blogs and found some great articles from Ken Rockwell who gave a great technical outline of how to buy a camera (hint: half of those specs on the website were BS) but still I wasn’t sure how the advice he was giving related to me personally and my unique needs.

So I went to twitter:

Within minutes of sending of the message to my network of about 1,000, I got great responses from some good friends and trusted online connections I have developed over the last few months. Their responses gave me a great ‘real’ idea of how the camera is used and shared their own experiences from using both products themselves.

Their input was great and edged me closer to the buying decision more than any other of the marketing channels.

All the while through my information search I wondered, shouldn’t the brands be here? Is there value in them assisting me im the purchase of a $500+ piece of equipment?

Black’s has great offline programs to educate consumers on how to use and buy cameras but they are virtually silent online. Currently I am not brand loyal to either Henry’s or Black’s and I will most likely buy the camera from the store closest to me barring terrible service or a ridiculous price difference.

However if someone from the companies were to reach out and engage my questions, they would have themselves a sure sale.

Personally I would welcome either brands into the conversation of my buying decision, how about you?

Would you find the attention from the brand overbearing, intrusive or helpful?

What if they offered you a 10% coupon on the purchase if you bought it from them instead of the competitor?

Intrusive or an extension of great customer service?

Today Facebook announced several new developments to aid both brands and people increase the punch of Facebook as a marketing tool. Aligned with their recent moves to make Pages more business friendly, the development of public personal profiles and the elimination of regional networks Facebook is taking strides to increase the scope of who we interact with on Facebook outside of our circle of family and friends.

This means that brands can add more branding to their existing pages eg. http://facebook.com/coke instead of http://www.facebook.com/pages/sumol/17755744821?sid=b1873b411cfc9230ab5dd301af42fc59&ref=search

This important because from the perspective of search engine optimization as Facebook Pages or Profiles will show up more prominently in Google search results and will result in more ‘organic’ visitors to your Facebook Presence.

As marketers this is important because it increases the reach of Facebook marketing campaigns and it also increases the accessibility of promoting campaigns. Instead of having people remember a 50 character link, you can direct people to a far more memorable url such as http://facebook.com/danielpatricio or http://facebook.com/coke.

I have already created easier to remember urls for several of the clients I work with eg. http://bizlaunch.ca/facebook but this is a great step and should make it more easy for those who are less intuitive to share their profiles with more people.

Personally a big focus of my work with clients revolves around leveraging the offline interactions back online to a social media presence such as Facebook, so this is going to be a great way of redirecting those offline experiences back online with an easy to remember message.

Oh yeah and if your name is John Smith and you would like to own http://facebook.com/johnsmith, you will probably have to stay up until 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13 to even stand a chance.

I think this is a great step and really adds value to any corporate or personal Facebook marketing campaign.

Will you be adding your new custom Facebook Profile url on your business cards?

Photo credits, Facebook and Dubes

Customer service should not be a sidenote in the operational structure of an organisation, it should be an integral part of the corporate culture and value proposition to customers.

As marketing budgets shrink, traditional media advertising dwindles in reach and the balance of influence shifts from that of media buyers to empowered consumers we have to rethink the role of marketing.

Far too many multinational brands will give millions to design agencies to tweak their ‘image’ or to change the hue of their ‘branding’ yet customer service is often little more than a complaints department.

Far too many brands resort to public relations services as a band aid solution to a problem that stems from a fundamental people and customer experience issue.

As we hear the voices of consumers become louder and empowered, the more important the fundamentals become. Marketing and a PR isn’t a band aid solution for bad product design and bad customer service.

Proactive customer service not only adds value to the end product but also incites word of mouth, long term loyalty and improves brand image. Word of mouth, long term customers and branding, how much would you pay your agency for those deliverables?

Get out from behind the mechanical corporate phone system labyrinths and say hi to your customers.

For one week, instead of burying your corporate contact numbers post them on your front page like Zappos what would do you think is the worst that could happen. Perhaps you would spend more time taking care of your customers than jesting with marketing copy.

How does a company like Zappos do it? Well their customers love them, in fact 75% of their business comes from return customers. The money they would have spent on marketing is rather spent on investing in their customers and ensuring nothing but the best service.

Who do your customers listen to? The advice, suggestions, praises or horror stories of their peers or your shiny advertising campaigns?

Who are you investing in?

Photo credit, Funky Bug

This morning Skittles. removed all semblance of what we have come to expect from a corporate website and taken up what might be the most voracious adoption of social media.

They have taken down their previous website and linked to an external social media website Twitter Search with a custom search of “skittles” with a little more than a small square overlay to differenciate it from the 3rd party site.

The basic concept of the search is that visitors to the skittles.com website would be able to see the conversations about skittles between users of twitter. Essentially leveraging the conversations about skittles as content for their website.

It seems as though the principle of identifying and engaging social media word of mouth is here. However the implementation is either horribly misguided or a cheap publicity stunt.

They have effectively thrown out their previous website and banked on a narrow channel.

Though they have benefited from unprecedented free coverage (at this time it is the #1 trending term), it is not a sustainable marketing strategy and not something that I think will or should for that matter be replicated.

Most people are more fascinated by the misguided and horribly irrelavant attempt at trying to create something viral rather than actively engaged.

It is great that they are leveraging the conversations already out there and I believe more businesses should do the same but every online media strategist that I have spoken to about it agrees that social media should not be the only tool used in a web presence.

This is clearly a gimmick, if you would like to see a more effective adoption we can look at Zappos or Freshbooks which use twitter in addition to solid, sustainable marketing.

Both encourage employees to be engaged and they are very active in leveraging conversations and word of mouth. Zappos in fact were probably a big influence on Skittles as they were the first to integrate the conversation feed into their web presence.

So looking through the noise and hype, what are the emerging trends to take away from this?

1. Word of mouth is louder than advertising

2. Marketing is becoming a two way conversation
3. Smart brands leverage real testimonials found through social media

Personally I am interested to see how people will react to the buzz around this. After all I have always found that Twitter Search is really the best way of driving home the reach of social media to new clients.

What do you think of the Skittles stunt? How do you think this is going to change the game looking down the road? How do you feel social media should be integrated into web presence?

Customer service should not be a sidenote in the operational structure of an organisation, it should be an integral part of the corporate culture and value proposition to customers.

As marketing budgets shrink, traditional media advertising dwindles in reach and the balance of influence shifts from that of media buyers to empowered consumers we have to rethink the role of marketing.

Far too many multinational brands will give millions to design agencies to tweak their ‘image’ or to change the hue of their ‘branding’ yet customer service is often little more than a complaints department.

Far too many brands resort to public relations services as a band aid solution to a problem that stems from a fundamental people and customer experience issue.

As we hear the voices of consumers become louder and empowered, the more important the fundamentals become. Marketing and a PR isn’t a band aid solution for bad product design and bad customer service.

Proactive customer service not only adds value to the end product but also incites word of mouth, long term loyalty and improves brand image. Word of mouth, long term customers and branding, how much would you pay your agency for those deliverables?

Get out from behind the mechanical corporate phone system labyrinths and say hi to your customers.

For one week, instead of burying your corporate contact numbers post them on your front page like Zappos what would do you think is the worst that could happen. Perhaps you would spend more time taking care of your customers than jesting with marketing copy.

How does a company like Zappos do it? Well their customers love them, in fact 75% of their business comes from return customers. The money they would have spent on marketing is rather spent on investing in their customers and ensuring nothing but the best service.

Who do your customers listen to? The advice, suggestions, praises or horror stories of their peers or your shiny advertising campaigns?

Who are you investing in?

Photo credit, Funky Bug

Dipping one’s toes in the buzz worthy world of Twitter for the first time can be quite an intimidating experience. It can either be a flurry of disconnected 140 messages or a lonely and blank silence.

Many established users of the micro-blogging platform Twitter will have anywhere from tens to hundreds or even thousands of followers. However, for the newcomer, the first question will be: “how do I get people to follow me?”

Now, the first thing you will learn when diving into the twittersphere is that there are many different approaches, philosophies, and strategies on how to use Twitter and no real right or wrong answer. Twitter is essentially an open communication platform and there are few restrictions on exactly how you should use it. There are puritans, that revile any commercial influence in their world of twitter; the ‘get rich quick’ people that spam and will try to sell you something new at the turn of every tweet; twitter celebrities; bloggers; socialites and many personalities as varied as the offline world.

Personally I use twitter to network, discuss and collaborate on new ideas, engage people with personality, and connect with people in my industry that are working towards the same objectives as myself. As a result I have made some great business contacts, connected with those already in my network more intimately and learned lessons from some of the greatest minds in my field.

The following tips are a part of my personal strategy that has evolved from my objectives. This is not a blueprint but rather a conversation starter to evaluate your own personal strategy.

Define who you are
Twitter is not like facebook or MySpace where you have the ability to input pictures or reams of text to convey your message. Often times the only way people evaluate you is by the 160 character description and your last twenty tweets. This makes it all the more imperative that you concisely convey who you are, what you are interested in and what exactly people can expect you to tweet about. Often people will determine whether to follow you or not, based on your 160 character description, effectively deciding whether to continue the conversation or not.

A few questions that an effective 160 character description should answer: who are you, what are you interested in and who should follow you. Don’t try to close the sale in the first 160 characters, it puts out a bad first impression and most people probably won’t follow you.

Follow wisely
There are some interesting theories and strategies on following. Some will auto-follow anyone that chooses to follow them, others are very selective about whom they add, and those that will add and then once you follow, unfollow – a ploy to buffer follower numbers.

People will tell you to identify and connect with the ‘influencers’ in the community. However you will come to learn that the true influencers reached that point by engaging people at the grassroots level. If you want to become an influential voice you have to build relationships, there is no quick fix.

I have found that often the obsession with follower numbers is often vain and ego satisfaction. Many of the most interesting and influential (real world influential that is) people I have connected with, wouldn’t be considered influential on twitter from a purely numbers view point, as a lesson – focus on connecting and engaging not on numbers.

Any strategy such as auto-follow and any form of mass-following is counter-intuitive to the true objectives. Twitter is what you make it and your feed is a summation of who you follow, therefore, what you get out of twitter is a result of who you are following. By following without consternation you are filling up your twitter stream with noise which makes it much harder to engage the important conversations or from a marketing or PR point of view: the key conversations.

Here is how and why I follow people:

• People I meet in person
  When I meet a person at an event and we share the same interests, I continue those conversations from the events online through twitter.

• I read their blogs
  I read hundreds of blogs but even the best bloggers only post a few times a week. I like to continue the discussion in between posts

• Followers of a friend
  Often the most effective method of finding new followers is identifying smart comments and conversations with people I already follow. That is why it is far more important to reply, retweet and engage rather than just broadcast your own content if you want to grow your network.

• Identify conversations
  Following hashtags opens you up to conversations outside of your network and you can connect with smart people outside of your local social circles.

Engage and Provide value
This post may have lured you in with the headline on how to develop a following but really my intention is to get more people to not just focus on developing a large following in terms of numbers, but instead aim to build an engaging and rewarding connection to the community.

When engaging the community, it relies less on strategy and more on being active, giving back and being yourself. Here are four ways you can engage the community more effectively:

Reply

Ask questions, answer questions, ask for advice, give you opinion, basically engage in conversations and build relationships.

Retweet and contribute relevant articles
Share the knowledge of your followers. Forward interesting articles related to your common interests and develop though communities. Only pushing your own blog content is not considered engaging, it is called broadcasting. Be an active part of the conversation, contribute and build relationships.

Extend your brand naturally
Your twitter stream should be continuation of your offline identity and train of thought. Talk about what is relevant to you, not just what is trending. Develop and extend your brand naturally, be yourself and the audience will follow.

If I have learned one lesson it is that if you stop counting the number of tweets and the number of followers and focus on engaging and connecting, not only do your followers increase but the return on your investment will follow suit.

Photo credit, Misfitgirl