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The personal weblog of Stephen P Smith

Posts Tagged ‘social media literacy’

Turning Free Content Into Revenue

In my post last week (Would you pay for Twitter?) I got a comment from a reader who asked:

“Here’s my question, if you are a business and offer a lot of things for free, how do you parley that into appropriate revenue without disengaging your audience?”

That is a very good question, and one that every business (or would-be business) should be asking. I started thinking about this a couple of years ago, posting this article (How Can You Measure the Value of a Conversation?) in October ’08. Here is the heart of the message:

Make money “because of”, not with

stacks of billsThe “because of” effect is much more powerful than the “with” effect. One of the commenters on Jason’s post, Mack Collier (The Viral Garden), hits the nail on the head with:

…companies that are NEW to social media, wanting to use metrics and measurements that they are used to when using TRADITIONAL marketing methods to ‘get their message out there’. Their thinking is ‘how do we make money from this?’, whereas companies that have been active in this space for a while, such as Dell, understand that by PARTICIPATING that they will make more money as a BYPRODUCT of their efforts. Dell has been in the game long enough to see the impact that their efforts are making, and as a result have shifted away from the ‘how do we make money with this?’ mentality.

Attempting to DIRECTLY monetize social media efforts is the quickest way to ensure they fail. But companies that aren’t familiar with this space don’t know any better. In a few years, after more companies are more familiar with these tools, I think we’ll see them looking to INdirectly monetize their efforts, while putting the focus on SM as a way to DIRECTLY connect with their customers.

One of the best lessons that I learned from the SOBCon event that I attended in May was that blogging (and Social Media in general) should be treated like a business. That business is the marketing of your products and services & establishing yourself/your business as an authority. The goal of that business is to make money because of your blog (or Social Media efforts), instead of with your blog.

Let me repeat that for you – “by PARTICIPATING [you] will make more money as a BYPRODUCT of [your] efforts”.

Money as a by-product of participation

Read More…

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The Perils of Productivity Tools

I am a fan of gadgets and I am simply in love with my Android phone. Now, thanks to the technology of the Digital Video Recorder in my cable box and the video camera in my phone I can share with you a moment that I captured on TV yesterday: a newscaster on location, giving a live report – caught on camera reading the report from her phone.

She must have been in a hurry to prepare this report, because her voice is clear and her delivery is tight, until she realizes that she is back on the air herself, no longer speaking over some other images. Then her delivery collapses. Here is Amy Coveno, WMUR Channel 9, caught reading from her phone during a live
report on 5 April newscast. (the audio is not very good, you’ll need to turn up your volume, but you can see her reading straight off of her phone)

I am not posting this to poke fun, on the contrary. This is an important lesson that we can all learn from. Believe me, I could not do any better (would likely do much worse) without a lot of practice of the delivery.

The tools of professional journalism, once the preserve of large news-gathering organizations, are now in the hands of the people. The techniques, on the other hand, are available to all, and we still need to learn and practice the skills of public speaking. The tools can’t do it for us.

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Learn How to Use the Sales Funnel from this Experience

Justin McCullough at Leader 4 Hire shares a recent experience with a newsletter and a sales push: A Failed Sales Push by Chris Brogan and How You Can Do Better.

This is a detailed look at trust, marketing, and execution on an online sales push from some of the biggest names in Social Media – the good and the bad and how you can learn and apply this to your sales and marketing efforts.

Follow every bit of this through (except the last part) and you will succeed in your next email sales push. The sections I call “What’s Happening Here” should provide the key elements for you to model in your online campaign and sales efforts.

Nearly everything here is actually a success story other than the fifth area below.
First – Chris Brogan eNewsletter

Subject line of email from Chris: “Email marketing and the folks at Blue Sky Factory

This is a great little sales piece from Chris. It clearly identifies his role in the email, why I (we) received it and who it benefits and why. On top of that, a nice bit of positioning and display of influence by offering an exclusive ebook download and discount to use Blue Sky Factory as a benefit to loyalty with Chris. Well done. This is the right sort of email marketing and who would expect less from Chris?

McCullough goes on to analyze the components of the newsletter, the links and sales pages, and the offers that are made. Pay attention to his description of how “marketing information” is captured when he has an opportunity to download a free e-book.

The big lesson in e-mail marketing

picture of woman holding business cardThe email marketing campaign that McCullough details is a good one, executed well, until the the final part – where Sales and Customer Service fail mightily. I urge you to read the entire post, and the comments – they are a textbook example of how to manage a situation like this. Before you go, however, consider this:

No matter how good your email marketing program is – no matter how professional your copy or how well-structured your subsequent contacts – the ultimate success of your sales effort rests with the structure and performance of your company, your customer representatives and your salespeople.

Read the whole thing here: A Failed Sales Push by Chris Brogan and How You Can Do Better.

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Hey Small Business – Commit to Your Blog

Merrit Colaizzi posted from the Online Marketing Summit on the 24th with Live from OMS: The 10-Step Content Strategy

I’d like to take a minute and discuss what I feel are the two most important parts of the strategy:

6. Commit to your blog. In Arnie Keunn’s business, Vertical Measures, 25% of his Web traffic comes from its blog. The blog should be the hub for your marketing activities, with platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, [and] LinkedIn as the spokes. Your blog is real estate you own, and you can control 100% how your content is presented.

Control. Something that every business wants to have, over every aspect of their marketspace.

Too bad. Social Media and user-generated content is outside of your control, but you can control the content that is on your own site. You can use it to do some things that can push the conversation in a healthy direction:

  • Promote the people that have nice things to say about your company, publish links to their Tweets, their websites, etc.
  • Engage them in conversations about your company.
  • Provide them with a forum to discuss their issues and problems – make a case study out of how they used your company to solve those issues.
  • Remember that it is your job to let the conversations take place. While the website is your hub it is your job to get out of the way and let people share.

Here is another important concept, that I just discussed with my colleague Kevin Ferrasci O”Malley: (@kfom on Twitter)

7. Make content educational, not promotional. Tell stories about problems your customers have, don’t just pitch your product. Consider asking for registration/further engagement with your audience at the end of your content — once readers are hooked — rather than at the beginning. Shoot for 200 to 400 words, which is the sweet spot for blog-post length, and don’t forget to augment your content with video whenever possible.

Video is important, and something that small businesses need to invest some time and energy in learning, because (sooner rather than later) video is going to be essential to your success. I am still experimenting with video, especially in my book review posts, and I have found these types of posts to be much more popular and successful.

Videos are fantastic tools for teaching, and for exposing the “wow” factor of your product or service. It is one thing to tell people about what you do, it is another to be able to show them and let them show other people.

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