positive disruption by: Tom Martin | New Orleans based Social Media Consultant

Today's Thirsty Thursday of Knowledge - eMail Marketing

Have you ever seen someone use email in a way that is so brilliant, yet so simple that you smack your forehead and think, now why the hell didn't I think of that? Recently I did... my friend Sloane Berrent has found a way to use the standard "I'm out of the office" email as a marketing tool and frankly I think it's brilliant.

Why?

First, because it's free -- you don't even have to pay an email company. Second, who isn't going to look at the email and by look I mean open or read in preview pane? You just sent her an email and you get a reply back so of course you're going to open it. Third, because as a consultant, Sloane has found a nifty way to showcase her portfolio without you feeling "sold" or thinking less of her.

Just think about the power of what she's done when you apply it to scale. Think for instance if you were an ad agency and each of your employees did this when they were traveling or on vacation. How much more exposure would your portfolio receive?

  
Or what if you were a non-profit seeking to expand your message. What would happen if say you got someone like IBM or Coke to change all of their employees' "out of the office" email replies to a format featuring a message about your cause? I mean, that is huge and free.

Sloane has taken the ordinary email and made it extraordinary and now we can all go copy her ;-)

So what about you? What do you think? Have you seen anyone else doing this or anything like this that is super cool because it is super simple? Share. Share now please.

And hey, if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent directly to your eMail in box. And don't worry, I'll never share your email with anyone and I don't send anything but blog posts... because that's not what your here for right?

What's More Important In Viral Video ROI?

I've been thinking a lot lately about viral video metrics and what companies really should want or focus on when thinking about adding viral video to their marketing mix.

Traditional thinking/approach has been to create a video that will "go viral" or at least that is the hope. This approach is marked by the creation of a single or maybe a small batch of viral videos. These are then seeded on major video hosting sites, etc., and the brand hopes for the best.

In most cases, this fails. With an average of 24 hours of videos being uploaded every minute on YouTube, you have to ask yourself, is it any wonder? That's a ton of noise and variety that is in direct competition with your video.

Thus, viral video seems to be a fairly high risk, high reward kind of thing. Sure you can build viral videos for a fairly low price point, but if you factor in the human cost (labor) even the cheapest video has significant cost.

But I've been wondering if there isn't a better way to do viral video. Instead of placing a few big bets, would it not be better to place lots say 10, 20, 50, 100 smaller bets? Maybe the videos wouldn't be about your brand but sponsored by your brand. Or maybe you'd be part of a small group of brands that came together to underwrite the creation and distribution of a series of videos.

This would obviously lower your risk/cost as in a shared environment no one brand would foot the bill for the entire series of videos. Let's assume for a minute that the series had 20-50 videos. That gives you a lot of chances to attach your brand (even partially) to a pretty wide variety of video types, content, and chances to go viral. Further, depending on the publishing schedule, you'd be keeping your brand alive in the digital conversation for anywhere from a half to a full year, versus the few weeks a traditional viral campaign lasts. Add in custom tracking URLs on each video and you not only get click data but maybe a bit of insight into the mind of your consumer what kinds of content your audience likes and dislikes. Would that be helpful?

So this morning I'm sitting here wondering, is there something of value in the partial sponsor, long-term approach? I do know I have been involved in a few really interesting conversations about this approach lately and I'd love to hear what you think on the subject.

Ready? Go.

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Today's Thirsty Thursday of Knowledge - Twitter Hashtag Chats

 
I'm a huge believer in the power of Twitter Chats. If you've ever seen someone or a group of folks in your stream start appending their tweets with a common hashtag for an hour or so, chances are you are seeing your Twitter friends in a Twitter Chat and didn't realize what was flowing through your stream.

I find that Twitter Chats have a number of great benefits. Here are four that come to mind this morning.

First, Twitter follower growth. If you want to grow your follower base, especially if you want to grow it in a targeted way (think industry vertical) go find and engage in a Twitter Chat. Honestly, I can say that pretty much every time I truly engage in a chat I pick up 20-30 new followers. Maybe it was something I typed or maybe it is just that folks are looking to find new folks to follow, but it never fails. I always pick up followers and I'm sure you will to. So, instead of reading and applying the latest 10 tips to grow your follower blog post, drop into a Twitter Chat or two and engage in some good old fashion conversation.

Second, dialog. God how I miss the good old days (and by old days I mean like 2008/9) when Twitter was more about discussion than publishing. It used to be that you'd see multiple Twitter debates throughout the day where one or more persons would engage in an ad hoc discussion/debate over an item that both had strong opposing POV's over. I first "met" @JasonFalls debating whether or not you can actually track ROI of outdoor advertising. From there the seeds of a relationship that I value highly sprung up and I now have a friend and excellent resource to call on when I'm trying to get a smart insight or alternative POV. You just don't get as much of that on Twitter as you used to so Twitter Chats are a great way to test your debating skills and your points of view.

Third, targeted prospecting. I love using Twitter Chats to find new prospects for Converse Digital. As a firm that is built around the idea of helping companies understand how to monitor, create and engage in digital conversations with customers and prospects, you can well imagine that the folks I want to talk to inside big companies are online and often in these Twitter Chats. Best of all, not only do I find them but I get a chance to see how they think, understand if we see digital marketing through the same lens and even engage them in a bit of discussion or debate to see what they'd be like to work with IRL. Again, I've found a number of these Twitter Chat discussions have evolved into ongoing Twitter relationships, phone conversations and requests for a formal proposal to work together. Not bad for something that I'd gladly do with no direct business prospecting benefit.

Fourth, getting smarter. There are so many smart people out there that you can learn from and many are in these Twitter Chats freely sharing information. This is not only a great way to keep your marketing skills sharp but if you're working in a new vertical or you're trying to get up to speed on a topic or technology, chances are there is a Twitter Chat for that. So you can pop over and lurk to learn a bit, find smart people to follow (so you can keep learning) and in general get a lay of the land.

If you're new to Twitter Chats and you want to find a couple of good ones to try out, here are a few that I find are good, lively and full of smart peeps.

#SMCChat, #BlogChat, #PR20, #IMCChat, #SocialMedia (which is usually tagged #SM(two digit number of that week's chat) and of course there are many more I'm forgetting right now but that is a great start.

Here is a list of over 100 Twitter Chats along with the host's Twitter handle and details about the chat.

So what about you? Do you do Twitter Chats? If so, why and what do you get out of it? Better yet, what Twitter Chats do you favor and why? List them out and together, you and me, we can create a great Twitter Chat resource that others can use to get them started.

Ready? Go.

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A Better Approach to Blogger Relationship Campaigns

Have you ever worked on the blogger outreach component of a social media plan? If so, what's the first question you get asked?

For me it is usually, where do we find the Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). Brands that want to engage bloggers in social media platforms to help carry the message always want the same bloggers -- the one with the most readers, the largest following and the biggest blogger brand in the vertical.

But what if that is the wrong way for your brand to go about things? Let's face it. If everyone wants the big bloggers to blog about their brand, then you have to either have something really amazing or work really hard to break through the in-box clutter to reach said blogger. Even if you've done your homework and you know you have a product, service, or a story that is perfect for that mega-blogger, it's still really difficult at best. But what if that isn't the most effective approach for your social media campaign?

Recently I read Dayna Steele's Rock to the Top. Lots of good little stories and tips in the book but the one that really stuck with me...the one I wrote down on the pad next to my bed was this. For rock bands to get radio play, they need to focus not just on the biggest radio stations but more importantly, they need to focus on who will play their music. Think about that for a minute. It's a different way to frame the challenge. It's not about reaching the folks who reach the most consumers. It's about reaching the folks that are most likely to like and play your music regardless of size of their audience. Now I'm paraphrasing Dayna here so if I got it wrong, blame me not her.

So, take a look at that blogger outreach program you're developing and ask yourself -- are you focusing on size or are you truly looking for who is going to play your music?

If you're looking for the folks most likely to play your music, how would you go about finding them? More importantly, how would you go about approaching them? Would you do it the same way you do for the big wigs or maybe try another approach? 

I'm thinking you'd have to commit a lot more resources to finding those smaller folks. Yes, you're going to have to go deeper in the Google pages to find those lesser known bloggers who have smaller but possibly more devoted readers. On the flip side though, I think you'll find you don't have to work as hard to break through the in-box clutter.

Smaller bloggers aren't getting media kits and product samples or even brand outreach on a constant basis. They likely want it but they just aren't there yet in terms of size of following. So if you read their blog and find that they are a good match for your brand, product or service, then a simple email stating you've read their stuff and think based on blog post a, b and c that they'd love your brand/product/service and you'd like to send it along for them to check out might just do the trick.

So while you'll invest more time, effort and money into the research side of the equation, you might just save enough on the outreach side to make it all balance out.

Best of all, because you're truly focusing on grassroots instead of just the more traditional big bang theory of blogger relations you might just find you'll get traction faster and with far more authentic blogger support. Support that will bleed over to other channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. And it is funny how some of the big wig bloggers pay attention to lesser known bloggers in their vertical and often pick up ideas from those blogs.

So what say you? In blogger relations does size matter or should you focus more on who's gonna play your tune?

photo by xJasonRogersx

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Today's Thirsty Thursday of Knowledge

This week I'd like to introduce you to a neat little program I found that makes it much easier to manage new followers on Twitter.

The biggest challenge to processing new followers is that you really want to see a couple of different information flows in one place. You want to see their avatar, # of followers/followed, bio, and a handful of tweets. But alas no one service has shown me all of that yet. Until I discovered Tweetymail.

   

What is so great about the service is that it gives me everything I need to review to make an informed decision about whether or not there is value in following back this person. Best of all, I get it in an email and whether I'm on my laptop or my mobile phone, I can follow back by simply clicking on the "Follow" link which opens my email client. I can also tweet them back publicly or via DM by also clicking a link...so I don't have to open up a web browser or a Twitter client or anything. Super simple, super easy.

Now the service isn't free -- it's a couple of bucks a month but I have to tell you -- it's worth every dollar.
It's made me so much more responsive and has improved my ability to find and follow smart folks that just so happened to find me first.

It also does a couple of other cool things but I'll let you check that out on your own. In the meantime, let me know what you think about it OR if you know of other Twitter management clients/software/options - drop it in the comments please. Together we can make this post a lot more valuable for everyone.

And hey, if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent directly to your eMail in box. And don't worry, I'll never share your email with anyone and I don't send anything but blog posts... because that's not what your here for right?

Are You Playing Like a Champion Today?

It's getting to be that time of year again - football season and as you can guess, being from New Orleans, we're kind of ready to see our Super Bowl Champions hit the field again. I've had this video on my laptop since last year's game and watch it from time to time to remind myself that each and every day you've got to play like a champion.

In the game of football, it's easy to take a play off, maybe pop off the line a half a second late or put forth just a little less effort. Usually, when you go back and check game films, you find that is the cause of most big plays and scoring.

But in the game of football as in life, you need to give everything you've got on every down on every day of every game if you want to make it to the promise land.

So ask yourself... are you playing like a champion on every down, at every meeting, on every phone call with every email, tweet and update? Are you playing like a champion or just playing?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent directly to your eMail in box. And don't worry, I'll never share your email with anyone and I don't send anything but blog posts... because that's not what your here for right?

Words of Inspiration From The Gulf Coast

Have you ever listened to someone speak and simultaneously be inspired and utterly humbled? I was this weekend and I caught the experience on tape to share with you. Go ahead, it's only 90 seconds. Play it. Then feel free to answer the question yourself in the comments and invite others to chime in too.

I had the great fortune of spending the weekend in Gulf Shores and catching the Jimmy Buffett concert  thanks to the fine folks over at Meyer Real Estate. You might remember them -- they were one of my early Free Idea Day winners. But that isn't how this weekend started. It started because one of their owners, Jamie Sandford offered me the use of his house if I'd like to head over and blog a bit. Meyer jumped in to add tickets and help finding folks to interview and the outcome is this post and another I hope to write for my next Ad Age Small Agency Diary post. Ok, FTC disclosure time over.

If you haven't yet, watch the video above. Shaul Zislin is the owner of The Hangout, this really awesome, sprawling restaurant right on the beach with the world's biggest bubble making machine for your kids. Hilarious video of that here. He was such an incredible interview and it will be business leaders like him, not BP that will assure the survival of Gulf Coast tourism.

Another key cog in the Gulf Shores save our coast machine is Sheila Hodges. Sheila is the owner of Meyer Real Estate. A lot of her interview will find its way into that future Ad Age post. Here is a woman whose primary form of making money is utterly threatened by the effects of the BP oil spill. And yet, she's not mad or angry or depressed. She's.... upbeat, hopeful and dare I say, excited about the opportunities ahead.

So check out the video. It's only a 90 seconds long and feel free to share it with someone who need a pick up or a reminder that there is always a silver lining. Just focus on what's important and roll.

And hey, if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent directly to your eMail in box. And don't worry, I'll never share your email with anyone and I don't send anything but blog posts... because that's not what your here for right?

Three For Thursday is Now "Thirsty Thursday of Knowledge"

 

Well the votes are in and Knowledge Thirsty Thursday inched by Random Ramblings of a Raving Revolutionary. Hmmm starting to sound like a horse race around here.

Now I find the submitted name a tad hard to say so I've taken the liberty of slightly refining it to the new official title -- Thirsty Thursday of Knowledge. Heck, I might even start doing these via video along with a drink of the day or something ;-)  Anyone know a good liquor sponsor? But I digress.

So a big congrats to Brian Ricard - a college student in Rhode Island. You can learn more about him at his blog http://bryanricard.com.

And I think it is really cool that Brian won because a) all college kids need money and b) Brian is one of my most active readers, commenters and sharers on Twitter. So I think it is cool that y'all voted his name best of class. So congrats Brian. DM me a physical address so I can mail you that brand new $100 bill.

That's it for now. Next week I'll be sharing my first official Thirsty Thursday of Knowledge post -- it's a new service I've been using to do a better job of managing new followers on Twitter. It's email based and gives you a perfect snap shot of your new followers. Think y'all will like it.

And hey, if you enjoyed this post or you just like to win things, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent directly to your eMail in box. And don't worry, I'll never share your email with anyone and I don't send anything but blog posts... because that's not what your here for right?

Is Your Advertising Writing Checks Your Company Can't Cash?

When I started out in advertising almost 20 years ago, the firm I worked at had a simple mantra. Promise a lot. Deliver more.  And we did. It was our "ad" you might say and the founder of the firm believed that every day we had to live up to that ad. If we didn't, then over time we'd fail and eventually that failure would cause us to lose many a client. I've never forgotten that lesson but alas I'm reminded every day that companies around our fine country have.

I don't mean that they are not living up to the promise of over delivery, no I mean the simple promises of their ads. They make promises in advertising that they fail (sometimes spectacularly) to deliver.

And then when the consumer gets wise and moves on to the competition and sales suffer, what does the company do? Yep, usually fire the agency or at a minimum, run new ads.

Case in point -- AT&T. Now AT&T is routinely hammered in Social Media for all kind of suckiness so I'll not bore you with all the details of my entire 10 day saga of pain, suffering and utter blood boiling stupidity. But suffice to say, I believed their ads.

I have two wireless phones, a wireless 3G card, landline and DSL with the company. So when I saw a bundling offer on TV or in direct mail or ads, it made me feel kind of foolish. Why was I overpaying? Why was I dealing with three bills when I could have it all on one? I mean, I'm a college educated man for goodness sake -- and I was over spending!

So about two weeks ago I made the call. And should have known when it took me almost an hour and a second call to another division of AT&T just to start the bundling process that I was in trouble. In short, the phone stopped working on 6/28 and I'm told that a tech will finally make it to the house to fix it by 7/8. 10 days to dispatch a repair tech... seems long by my standards but you decide for yourself. And last night, the DSL stopped working at precisely 6:40pm Eastern Time. Why is that important? Because the only folks that might have been able to help me -- the folks in the sales group -- go home at 6:30pm Eastern Time. 

Thankfully my 3G card is still working so I can write this post! [well at least for now ;-) ]

Now there are lots of other details that I won't bore you with but suffice to say, when the Elevated Customer Support Center called me back (as promised) I had hope... right up until I realized it wasn't an actual person, but the Hal 9000 Customer Support computer at AT&T headquarters. And no, I'm not kidding. I still have the voice-mail to prove it!

Here I am, a loyal customer that spends nearly $4,000 a year on AT&T services, trying to do something that the advertising purports is easy and will save me money and time now stuck living through a service delivery nightmare of epic proportions. And why? Because as I've learned, at least in AT&T's case, the company simply cannot cover the check. They are still a byzantine of divisions and subdivisions with systems that don't talk to each other and no overarching customer service or operations strategy to deal with the inevitable systematic crashes that will happen.

And what will happen when I yank my landline service and DSL and move them to Cable? What will happen when I follow my beloved iPhone to Verizon? I'm guessing someone in advertising will hear about it (well after a bunch of Tom Martin's do the same thing). But will the company look at its Customer Support Strategy? Will they do an Operations Analysis to discover and solve operational inefficiencies like the ones that have my entire home off the grid?

Would your company? Or would you just come up with a new ad campaign or announce that you're going to hire a bunch of social media folks to engage the consumer?

Success today and in the future (IMHO) will mean delivering Write Home To Your Mama level of service. You've got to deliver something spectacular. Something I'll not just want to tell folks about but something that I'll make sure I tell folks about because I want everyone to find what I have found and ensure you'll be wildly successful so that I can ensure (selfishly) that you will be around to keep delivering all that great goodness to me.

So take a minute today and review your advertising. Your direct marketing, PR and social/digital campaigns. And ask yourself -- are you shining yourself and your customer? Are you promising a lot and delivering more... or are you simply writing bad checks that you know you can't cover?

And hey, if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent directly to your eMail in box. And don't worry, I'll never share your email with anyone and I don't send anything but blog posts... because that's not what your here for right?

UPDATE: Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while know that I'm happy to call out a brand but strive for fairness. If you don't believe me -- read this Pizza Hut post. So I wanted to update this post/rant with a bit of good news. As of 11:35am Central Time, it seems someone at AT&T is in a check cashing mood -- Tiffany in their Escalation Help Desk (may not be the real name of the dept) has been on the case all morning. I should also say that Nathan in their DSL Tech Support rocks too... he couldn't fix it last night but I have a suspicion he is the one who flagged my case as an EMERGENCY.

But Tiffany rocks because she called once just to say, still working on it and then a second time to give me good news - a tech will be here today. Best of all -- and the reason I'm adding this update, she did something so simple, so easy but SO IMPACTFUL. She gave me her direct dial and told me to call if I had ANY issues or just to check on the status of the tech if it started getting late. And she's East Coast. In other words, she did something human and helpful. Which might just be the two most important words in this entire post IMHO - companies need to do what they say and then when they don't, just be human and helpful. I think consumers can forgive helpful, human companies. 

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Do you really hear your consumer?

Have you ever stopped and thought about things you can do with Social Media outside of communicating? I have... and I think one of the coolest things you can do is use a monitoring service like Radian6 or ScoutLabs or any of the others to help you decode your consumer's language.

Using Social Media To Decode Consumer Language

View more presentations from Converse Digital.

I wrote the deck above a few years ago and to accomplish the exercise we had to actually go an talk to consumers one-on-one. But as I was reviewing the deck this morning for another project it occurred to me that using social media monitoring services could take the place of the one-one-one sessions and help you to better understand how a consumer talks about your brand. From there seems you could develop brand positionings, ad campaign and PR campaign language as well as customer relationship management strategies. All by just investing in social media listening and then applying a bit of rigor to the analysis.

What do you think? Are you using social media like this? If so, what kinds of things are you doing with the data. Let me know... I'm all ears.

And hey, if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent directly to your eMail in box. And don't worry, I'll never share your email with anyone and I don't send anything but blog posts... because that's not what your here for right?