Your Hip Grandma

What am I: An internet property that organizes and filters Web content for its users. A place where people can keep in contact and share things with family and friends. A service you can find like-minded people with similar interests in groups. And it includes a messaging application where you can instantly chat with anyone with whom you chose to connect.

Of course I'm describing Facebook, right? Wrong. I'm talking about AOL. Yes your grandma's AOL.

It's not that much of a secret that the idea of a "behind the fence" or "gated" internet community was first manifested by that old dinosaur AOL, and is what in part inspired Mark Zuckerberg to do the same. It's also apparent that the old AOL "away" message is the antecedent of the Facebook status update.

But there are important behavioral differences and these are critical to marketers. In addition to providing access to the Web, AOL was a place where people sorted through the internet for solutions to their problems, conduct research, access services and to buy things. So in many ways it was closer to Google than Facebook.

And hence there's the rub with Facebook. Facebook is not the place where people go for information, to research solutions or to buy stuff.  They go to keep up with their friends, for amusement and, let's face it, to be diverted. Someone who's looking for diversion may not exactly be in the buying mode. Even when it comes to news, I know very few people who use Facebook as their primary news source, and if they do, I fear how they might vote in the coming election.

So yes, there are millions and millions and millions of users that spend hours a day on Facebook. But just because they are there, it doesn't make them ripe for the picking. There used to be the same numbers of people watching Friends on TV in the 1990s, but,

except for the most big-bucks marketers, were they looking to buy what businesses had to sell?

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.

Getting Saturated (And Not Just by the Rain)

As Hurricane Hermine was preparing to strike the Florida Panhandle last week, here in Northeast Florida I was deluged by a torrent of another kind -- wall-to-wall "storm coverage" by both local and national news outlets.

Now although the storm did create some serious havoc along its direct path, we along the fringes were subject to breathless speculation about wind speeds, rainfall levels, storm path possibilities -- all widely varying and as it turns put completely wrong. On top of that you had local politicians posturing to be somber and leader-like, intoning on how prepared they were and why we should take this threat seriously.

This scenario has played out several times over the last few years as we've been lucky enough to escape major storms here in the hurricane capital of the U.S. (Hermine was the first hurricane to strike Florida since 2005). And you get the sense (justified or not) that the media weather departments can't wait to put their crack storm watch teams into some live action, sort of like invading a country because you want to do something with all that gear and training.

The problem with all this of course is that people start to tune the information out -- sure, whatever you say, heard it all before -- and then when there's a real need to, they won't be listening. But Larry, you might ask, beyond your usual grousing, what does this have to do with marketing since this is a marketing blog? Well I'm getting to that.

I've run across so many companies who think that more is necessarily better. Flood the Facebook page with posts. Send out those email blasts every other day. I actually ran across a prospect who placed the same print ad every day in the same position in the paper.

This is obviously counter-productive from a communications standpoint. You become like wallpaper and people start to tune you out. What's more, with email marketing, open and click-through rates diminish with increased frequency and with Facebook, the more posts you throw out there with no engagement, the less likely you are to get in anyone's feed.

So pick your spots carefully. Make sure you have engaging content with something that will hook your audience. And don't feel the need to beat them over the head with it. Take your cue from David Byrne and the Talking Heads' Psycho Killer:

"When I have nothing to say my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?"

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. 

                                          

In Praise of Videos of Videos That Don’t Go Viral

This article in the New York Times gives helpful and practical tips for creating watchable, informative videos that may or may not get rapidly shared. But the hope of going viral is kind of like the hope of winning the lottery -- no matter how strategically you play the numbers it’s probably not going to happen.

That doesn’t mean businesses shouldn’t have videos -- in particular YouTube videos -- as part of their marketing mix. Of far more practical value is the opportunity to get a stronger presence in the search engines. A video, strategically targeted to search terms that reflect what you do, can:

• Give you another way to appear on the search-engine results page as Google blends video or YouTube items with the other results from the search query
• Strengthen the content on your website, helping to optimize it for search
• When uploaded to your Google Places/Google+ Local listing, optimize your business for local search (learn why local search is now so important)
• Gives you another avenue to build links to your site.

This article gives some useful tips on how to use video as a search engine tool. Some of the highlights:

• Open a YouTube channel and include in the title keywords that are relevant to what you do
• Add descriptions and video transcriptions
• Strategically use tags
• Embed your videos on your website, including text that describes the video and even include a video transcription
• Create a video sitemap.

Email me or call me at 904-744-8877 if you have any questions on how YouTube can benefit your business or simply post a comment here.

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.