On Labor Day (and other hollowed holidays)

No, that's not a typo. I did mean "hollowed" rather than "hallowed". It seems that as more years go by, these three-day holiday weekends are further and further removed from the origins and intent of the events that spawned them, so they have been sort of hollowed out. Now they seem to be uniformly about beer (nothing wrong with that) barbeques and much-needed time off for the beleaguered American worker, who works longer and harder than anyone in the industrialized world (if they get any time off at all in this service economy). And mattress sales. I don't know what it is about three-day weekends and mattress sales, but you could realistically change Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day to Mattress Sale Day One, Two and Three to avoid confusion.

Labor Day in particular has been hollowed out by the fog of time. It was originally proposed by an American machinist in 1882 to celebrate workers and promoted by the American union movement. It was formally adopted as a Federal holiday in 1894. International Workers Day, celebrated pretty much by the rest of the world on May 1, actually has is its origins in an American event -- the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1886, when police fired on workers protesting for an eight hour workday, killing four. Still most Americans are unaware of the union and socialist origins of Labor Day, and a Republican lawmaker even went so far as to say that Labor Day is a chance to express appreciation for all those business owners that create jobs. Now I'm a business owner but even I went -- huh?

So what does all this mean to your communications? Well, usually people in business feel compelled to say something about a holiday that sounds wholesome and appropriate, like one client who on Memorial Day insisted on using that occasion to thank the brave men and women around the world who are protecting our freedom. Well Memorial Day is about remembering men and women in our armed forces who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the past and hopefully the service men and women they were referring to will never have to make that sacrifice. Or on Veteran's Day, where it's more appropriate, thanking men and women for their service on your website or Facebook page becomes like wallpaper because everyone is saying it. So here are some tips for making the most out of acknowledging a holiday:

• Make it specific to the original meaning of the holiday
• Tie the origin of the holiday to how we live today
• Put some meat behind it: If it's Labor Day talk about what you're doing for your employees, if it's Veterans Day, talk about the support you give to veteran organizations and so on. 

If you do this, your message will resonate with more depth, will more likely get noticed on the Web and in social media and you just might educate a few people too.

Be a Real Local Marketing Hero

Why spend money on a human directional dressed as a chicken or a giant submarine sandwich? If you're a business with a local trading area, your best bet to get seen by your potential customers  is through local search. It's really just a matter swimming with the current (or dropping your line where the fish are swimming or whatever aquatic metaphor that you prefer) because that's how most people begin to search when looking for a place to go or something to buy. And with Google looking to return localized results with every search and mobile searches growing exponentially (where local results are most prominent) needing to succeed with local search is as essential as paying the electric bill to keep the lights on. In fact, it may just be the most effective way to keep the lights on!

So you may ask: "Larry, can I really get free visibility through local search instead of paying someone to stand all day in an uncomfortable costume in the stifling heat?" Not only will I say yes, but I'll tell you a few simple steps to get you started. So here goes:

• If you haven't yet claimed your Google Places listing (the one associated with the map, search for yourself (aren't we all searching for ourselves?) and click the Manage This Listing box in the right hand column. (If you've already have claimed your listing you can skip to the third bullet point.)
• Sign in with your Google account (if you don't have one create one; it's free) and the first thing you will see is a dialogue that will ask you to verify that you own the business. Chose phone verification (instant) or mail (takes about 5 days to get the PIN) and then return and read the rest of this post after you've verified.
• Make sure you complete all of the business information that Google asks you for (they give you a handy progress bar to let you know how you're doing. This includes choosing the category(ies) that most closely match your business, writing an about description using words that people use when looking for what you do or sell, adding hours and contact information (including your website). 
• Google has finally merged the Places listing management tools with the full Google+ Local panel with social functions. Using this dialogue you can upload a cover photo, other photos, add people to circles and post like you do on Facebook. You should post often.
• Encourage people to review you on your Places/Google+ Local page. Reviews count for a lot.
• Get your business listed in as many directories and local listings that you can. This not only gives you additional avenues of exposure but is a factor in how Google ranks your Google listing. This handy tool at getlisted.org can help you make that happen. 
• Make sure there are local markers on your website if you have one. This means having location words in the page title and main headlines but especially having location (including phone number) and directions on the home page if possible. If you want to take it a step further, you can put schema, or html markup language on your page for locations. There are a few tools out there, but here's one -- http://www.microdatagenerator.com/local-business-schema/ -- that's easy to use.
• Strengthen your website by sourcing quality in-links from other strong websites, preferably local ones.

So that's it. Give it a try and hang up that chicken suit for a while. If you have any questions, enter them here or call me at 904-744-8877. If you prefer to let us drive, click here to learn about our local marketing services. 

                                          

What the # is up with #hashtags?

I did get this actual question from a client with some letters surrounding the symbol along with a few other symbols. You know, like in comic strips when somebody stubs their toe and says something the writers don't want to explicitly show.

So for the uninitiated, hashtags (a word preceded by the # symbol) originated on Twitter as a way to organize conversations or topics. So in theory, it became shorthand or a shortcut for people to find a topic that they were interested in, users to see what topics are trending and for image-obsessed brands (personal or otherwise) to see if they were trendy, trending or whether they needed to start or jump on a trend before there were forlorn and forgotten.

But lo and behold hashtags starting appearing in other social channels like Facebook and even Google+, which I always believed to be the hippest and least trendy of the social channels and only in part because it was the least used (I always was a sucker for digging bands that nobody else had heard of). And I think I overheard people walking down the street actually talking in hashtags the other day and not just those who were wearing those goofy Google Internet goggles.

In any event, as a practical matter hashtags can be tricky. I find them annoying because they invariably take up a crucial character in a tweet that puts me over the limit. And if your hastagging a phrase, it's all run together, like #everydaymarketingadvice. If you are hashtagging inclined, you should a) see what's already out there that your tweet or post can tag onto (pun semi-intended) or b) create a hashtag that you think will be of topical interest to people who are searching. This article on Social Media Examiner has some helpful tips.

The premise behind all of this is that people are actually searching for stuff on social media, but are they? Ah, the topic for yet another future blog post.

How socially effective are you?

No, I don’t mean whether you invariably spill drinks on people at parties or find it hard to start up conversations with strangers (although there are probably virtual equivalents to both). I’m referring of course to your social marketing efforts.

Plenty of businesses spend lots of time on social marketing. Some measure effectiveness by the amount of followers or likes, how many comments they get, reach, or how many “influencers” they create (people that can affect other people’s purchase decision). Others even trot out the vintage Larry Tate (of Bewitched fame) or Madmen adage of brand awareness. Few can tell you what they're actually getting out of it when it comes to booked business.

Many do it because they read they should be doing or because they like it (hey, I’m on Facebook and Twitter all the time anyway). This is the equivalent of a job candidate saying I like to work with people because I’m a people person.

This article from Web Marketing Today makes a valiant attempt to give you a framework for putting some metrics around social. What strikes me is that of all of those listed, only one -- clicks to the website from social channels and the resulting conversions -- are hard metrics. That’s not the fault of the author, it’s simply the nature of the beast. From social interaction through engagement to the sale is a complicated chain and it can be difficult to discern what generated the behavior that resulted in a sale. A person could go to your website directly or through branded search (typing in your business name). There is no definitive way to know what generated that behavior -- advertising, social influence or even a prior search.

So the bottom line is, you have to be careful to calibrate the money, time and resources you put toward social with what you think you are tangibly getting out of it. Now if you can marry social with the search dynamic, that’s a whole other story. And yes, the topic of a future blog post.

Building A Social Media Plan

Here's a really good article from Social Media Examiner on building a social media plan. It contains a lot of good commonsense advice and steps that every small business can take.

Just a couple of things that I would like to amplify (and I would feel a little guilty or lazy if I just blogged a link; it seems like an unbloggerly thing to do). One of the best points this article makes is about committing the effort to social media and I find that many clients are ill-prepared to do just that. Too many businesses don't post enough or when they do, it's self-promotional material that doesn't engage the audience. Contests and exclusive expert information go a lot further to building a following than doings at the business or "hi, we're really excited to be us."

Businesses also don't realize that this is a long-haul effort with results that are likely to be incremental and supplemental rather than monumental. This is sometimes an outgrowth of misguided expectations as social media proponents and the media have been pounding this for so long as the next big thing that people almost jump in as a reflex reaction. However, just because you won't get huge results doesn't mean it isn't worth doing, it just means that social should be one component of an overhaul marketing plan, with the amount of resources you put against it (including sweat equity) in line with the potential return on investment. (Another related point that the article also makes: pick your spots, find the social channel that makes the most sense for you to be in based on your customer profile. Trying to be in all the social spaces or to make a splash in the biggest of them may not be the best place to focus your efforts).

In any case, enjoy the article and by the way, helping you build and execute a social media plan is part of what I do, in conjunction with an overall marketing plan that includes things like advertising, promotions and even direct mail. But more on that in another post.

What's Really Behind the Facebook Disappointment

At market's close today, Facebook's stock price stood at $30.97, significantly below the IPO price of $38. Talk continues to swirl around pending or potential shareholder lawsuits and even if the Facebook brass did not reveal to the general public what it did to private investors, trading at 100 times earnings should have had everybody's eyes wide open, or at least anyone old enough to remember the last dot com bubble.

What's really underlying the disappointment in Facebook I think, is a growing disillusionment with Facebook as an advertising and marketing vehicle -- a disillusionment that is at least partly the outgrowth of unreasonable expectations.  The dynamics of interactions on Facebook make it less than marketing or advertising friendly and recent Facebook format changes like the timeline make it even less so.

Based on my direct experience and other available data, display advertising on Facebook performs at par or at times below other properties on the Web, which is to say not all that well at all. The only truly consistent performer in online advertising, at least on a click-through-rate basis, is search advertising and as any search advertiser knows there's a big difference in performance on Google for ads based on search and ads displayed on Google's content network.

Now many Web properties, including Yahoo and AOL, have tried to compile the information they have on their users and combine it with their Web behavior to lift banner ad results, as in Yahoo's short-lived SmartAds program of a few years back. This has had limited effect and so far Facebook has refrained from using people's profile information (beyond location) to trigger ads, relying mostly on friend associations and Likes.

And then there's the social marketing aspect of it or as some would have it, the holy grail. All those millions of people are on Facebook, we should be able to sell them stuff right? As I used to say to my clients, constantly pitching what you have on Facebook is like going to a party on Saturday night and spending the entire evening talking about what you do and handing out your business card. You're unlikely to make many friends. The social space is great for starting conversations with clients and prospects, establishing relationships and getting direct and indirect endorsements via Likes. But it will never be a primary marketing driver and give you "free" results, any more than PR can replace paid efforts with "free" advertising.

What should be your primary marketing drivers then? A judicious mix (driven by your business goals) of on and off-line advertising, search, direct marketing, promotion, PR and yes, social. More on each of those in future posts.

Is B2B Sociable?

As with the snack cracker whose name is similar to a word in this post's title (Sociables) social marketing should be served up in very specific business-to-business situations, when at all. There's a good article on the TargetMarketing.com website that deals with this issue head on.

I agree with the author that Facebook is fundamentally useless for a company whose target is primarily B2B. The exception would be the weekend get-together syndrome, as when someone as an individual mentions they need help with marketing their business and another individual says I know this cool guy Larry Bassani who provides affordable, effective marketing support and gives personalized service too (you can simply cut and past that phrase into your Facebook stream and thank you in advance). However, if your audience is primarily business and you're thinking of standing up a Facebook fan page you're pretty much wasting your time.

Now LinkedIn is a primarily a "professional" social space, but it's dominated by people who are looking for action and who want to burnish their reputations by linking or getting recommendations from other people looking for action. The exception would be recruiters, who are of course looking for people who are looking for action.

If you're a business who has tried to build a following on Twitter beyond the follows that come through your website, you know that most of the followers you get are like-minded people looking to sell you something. Of course, if you're a B2B company, that might not be such a bad thing.

The writer of the Target Marketing piece makes a lot of very good points on how to get people to interact with you on your primary website, instead of spinning your wheels with social. Also, I would say that YouTube and Google + are also good bets for search engine visibility, at least partially because they are owned and promoted by a search engine company.

And besides, if you have a really important potential client, you might want to serve something other than crackers.

Want Someone to Like You? Give Them a Reason

Too often, people put social links on their website or say like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter and then wonder why they don't get any likes or follows besides their friends and relatives. As I often say to my clients, just like in real life, if you want someone to like you give them a reason.

I recently got an email from Staples that dealt with this issue as directly as I've ever seen. The subject line? "Join us on Facebook and Twitter. Here's why."

The email goes on to talk about the exclusive offers, giveaways and special extras available to followers. And that's it in a nutshell. If you want likes on Facebook, followers on Twitter or if you want to get into people's circles on Google +, you have to give them something that can't get on your general website, whether that's deeper information, a chance to get questions answered, coupons, discounts, contests or special offers. Otherwise, there's no motivation for people to take action and getting people to take action is what marketing is all about.

You can view the Staples email here. By the way, the Like button at the top of this post is for illustration purposes only, but thanks for the thought!

The Social Role

Recently in my Twitter feed I shared a link of this article that discussed the advantages of search marketing versus social. Predictably the article concluded that you should to both, but in my mind it's really not a case of one or the other or even of doing both to cover all of the bases.

In my view search and social really represent two very distinct dynamics. Search marketing reaches people who are looking for something very specific, often to meet an immediate need. Social marketing is where people share experiences, ideas, likes and dislikes, which can help them discover new options or influence a purchase decision. It can also lead them to a need that they didn't initially realize they had -- what we used to call creating need awareness in the old days of sales.

So you really need to operate in both spheres for two entirely different reasons. If you don't have a strong search presence (paid or organic) you'll miss out on all the people who are in the real-time behavior of looking for a solution that you may offer. If you don't have a social presence, you won't have the advantage of people propagating your sales message for you or bolstering your brand credibility with recommendations.

You also won't get the chance to expand interactions with customers. Search tends to have a very direct chain -- users click over, come to your page and they either buy or they don't. Social gives you a chance to have expanded and ongoing conversations with your customer base -- in fact the best social dynamics often expand a sales conversation that was initiated on the website, eventually returning it to the site to close the deal.

Despite what people may tell you, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who is successful selling purely through social. And although search can have very predictable cost and conversion metrics, it's only one step in building deep and profitable relationships with customers.

So my take on it is that you should engage in both search and social marketing, but for very different reasons.