Socialize Your Stuff

The Social Equation

Jeff — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:21:38 +0000

The social equation:

Contact + Content = Engagement and Engagement = Sales

What is the number one over looked social network? We have heard time and time again, that companies are posting content into the social universe and it feels like they are yelling in a forrest where no one is listening. And these organizations tend to not incorporate email into their social communication mix. Not only does email still sustain the largest click rate, but surround it with social sharing and it goes up.

"Twitter, Facebook Social Sharing Buttons Boost Email Click-Throughs By Up To 115%"

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-facebook-email-marketing_b17586

So our argument is that the power of social is getting people to engage in a conversation, and that conversations can lead to new sales opportunities, specifically for b2b companies. So use email as a social network, drive people towards a conversation using a weekly social digest. This is not new, it is being done everyday by LinkedIn for their Groups.

Now once you have started to understand how email is a viable part of your social strategy especially for initiating the engagement, we need to insure that we have strong regular content.

At Socialize Your Stuff we deal with many small to midsized technology companies, who often re-sell larger brands products. These companies struggle everyday to sustain and grow their business, but without strong content they will continue lag behind their competitors.

They are looking for easy way's to publish engaging content, so they too can have high value conversations that will lead to sales. We work with these companies and their vendors to provide original or sourced content with the specific objective of helping people get engaged in socially with the brand.

Here is an example of a program that has been specifically helpful for technology partners who sell Microsoft products.

http://community.dynamics.com/b/dynpartnercommunity/archive/2011/08/05/microsoft-dynamics-marketing-professional-community-call-nurture-butterfly.aspx

For Julie Fuller, marketing manager at Pennsylvania-based Dynamics partner Cargas, the Nurture Butterfly program helped her company establish a social media presence. "Without a consistent source of valuable content, we were nervous about adding social media marketing." Fuller said, "Now that we have reliable content and can interconnect the systems with an incredibly simple tool — it's beyond easy.” (Redmond Channel Partner, Barb Levisay)

So we have the two parts of the equation. We use email to contact then we add strong content and that starts to create the engagement. And as we know people who are engaged with a brand are more likely to purchase from that brand when a need arises.

Contact (w/ email) + Content = Engagement

COOL TOOLS: 10 Favorite Social Media Tools for Marcom Pros – Pulse | Pulse

Jeff — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:45:02 +0000

Socialize Your Stuff Cool Tool number 4! According to blog.commpro.biz

Did you know social can build your database?

Jeff — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:44:03 +0000

We have discovered that there are three basic challenges that organizations have when trying to figure out what to do with Social Marketing:

How do I create and sustain engagement
How do I increase message impressions
How do I build out my database

The challenge most organizations seem to have is that they put Social into a box, where it tends not to interface with other marketing area’s.

For example we ran a program with an organization that sells software to students and educators. We started posting content and programs on just their Facebook page and got a very limited response. The next time we decided to send out the social content via email, and the email asked people to share with their friends on Facebook.

The results:

increased engagement,
increased impressions by over 100%
Not only did they grow their database, but they saw an increase in product sales.

So the lesson that was learned is that integrating your social and email helps to create a much better result.

But, lets be clear on something – just trying to socialize a typical email campaign is not as affective as emailing a social campaign. What we mean by this is: if the main thrust of the program isn’t thought of as a social program first, you will not achieve the full power of what a social program can do.

A real example of the difference is as follows:

Provide a gated offer where people need to share information about the brand on social networks in order to qualify for it. By doing this with a properly constructed program you will get:

The information about the person who qualifies for the promotion
Your brand messaging to a larger audience
New opportunities from the people who found you through their friends

We ran a program like this for a major oil brand. They gated an offer with a requirement to share the promotion online. As a result, they received 3,000 registrations, 1,500 new leads, and over 100 new sales.

Social is a powerful mechanism for improving your business. You just need to have clearly defined objectives to leverage the true power of the medium.

Is social marketing about being authentic or is it about providing motivation for people to share content?

Jeff — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:45:17 +0000

Is social marketing about being authentic or is it about providing motivation for people to share content? Read More

Connecting Social and Email Marketing | ClickZ

Jeff — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:03:01 +0000

A Q&A with Rusty Warner exploring the latest tactics for email marketers attempting to combine their email efforts with social media sites.

“It’s Got to be the Shoes (or Content)” – Content that Drives Sales

Jeff — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:41:20 +0000

Was Nike’s “Air Jordan’s” of the late 80′s and 90′s any better than any other shoe? It’s “GOTTA BE THE CONTENT”

Steve Jobs built out an amazing army of marketers! From the beginning Steve Jobs new that it was content that led the way, followed by the “wow” of the product. This commercial was aired only once, but its impact was felt for many years to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

Obviously replicating the genius of Steve Jobs is no easy task, but we can again take a key lesson and try to figure out how to apply it. Job’s used product and content to excite a customer base.

But, if we were to examine how Nike excited an audience, it had nothing to do with the product (although folks at Nike may beg to differ). It was the content. It was pure genius leveraging Spike Lee and Michael Jordan ,”It’s Got to be the Shoes”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abr_LU822rQ

Okay, we are smaller businesses, we can’t get Michael Jordan or Spike Lee to speak about our products, how can we excite an audience?

A more recent example of exciting an audience base is Groupon. They used deep discounts and the gimmick of working together with your friends to get great deals on products or services. This created an event, where each day people would wait for the email regarding a great deal. Then they would reach out to their friends by calling, emailing, and “facebooking” to actively sell the promotion to their friends so that they can take advantage of an even better deal.

Today, Groupon is more of a deal of the day site than a group deal site, however the lesson is still real.

So what can we do? We can work to engage our customer base with the most interesting and relevant content we can come up with. We can use references to other pieces of great content like I did here. Plus we can use triggers to get those people to share content with their friends and colleagues.

Here are some real time examples of that.

A toy company has a data base of people who have purchased from them. They engage their base with content about play date ideas, and way’s to engage kids in group play. Then, they send a promotion. The promotion is a contest: create a virtual play date with 4 other friends and be entered to win $500 worth of free toys. What happens is an email is sent to the customers who are already engaged with the brand, and that email creates a viral spread of the brand over Facebook and Twitter. The toy company has created a fun and engaging content program and campaign that has increased brand awareness by over 100% and increased the size of the target marketing list by over 50%.

This is an example of a program that a small business can run for at or less than $500/month.

What campaigns can you do? If you have thoughts and ideas, feel free to submit them here.

Should social and marketing be separate? See what Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald of HBR have to say.

Jeff — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:51:54 +0000

Should social and marketing be separate? See what Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald of HBR have to say.

“The goal of social media is to turn customers into a volunteer marketing army. “( @JayBaer ) http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-marketing/18-social-media-quotes/

Jeff — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:06:13 +0000

“The goal of social media is to turn customers into a volunteer marketing army. “( @JayBaer ) http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-marketing/18-social-media-quotes/

I’ll Take Two 2; A Lesson From Steve Jobs

Jeff — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:26:44 +0000

Thanks to @jeffreyhayzlett for posting our article on his Blog. I Hope you all enjoy

Guest post by Jeff Mesnik, Socialize Your Stuff

The Year 2008! The weather much like today, cool fall day, the place, a restaurant in downtown Boston, known as The Elephant Walk. I had just checked my coat and sat down at a table with my wife and another couple. When!!!t …

The Marketing Paradigm created by Steve Jobs – SUPER ADVOCATES

Jeff — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:49:32 +0000

Steve Jobs left us many gifts, one he left us marketers w/ was to strive to emulate the army of advocates he created

It was Fall 2008, and after finally sitting at a table with my wife and another couple after searching for a parking spot in Boston, my friend introduced me to the iPhone 3G which he had just purchased. He was espousing the wonders of this new and amazing product for a good part of the meal.

As he continued his pitch I looked around the restaurant, and saw something truly amazing, at many of the four person tables there was one person who had an iPhone out, and talking about how much they loved their new gadget!

My next step? Was I bought Apple Stock!

But, as a marketer what is the real lesson here? Well I concluded that nobody sells product better, than a consumer who just bought it and loves it!

I believe one of Steve Job’s greatest legacies is that he left an ARMY of advocates to carry his message, to help his company continue to sell new and better products faster than anyone else. It is this lesson that we as marketers should take forward, and the communication divices we have at our disposal now makes it easier than ever to engage with potential advocates.

When I speak about social marketing, people often ask me, how do I get started? Or I only have 50 followers what can that do? How do I build out my Fans, and followers? My answer back to them, is that I do not believe that simply increasing a fan and follower base is the true win we should be striving for. The true win, is getting other people to carry our message, to give them a reason to share your product and information with their friends. How do you get people at a virtual table in a virtual restaurant to tell all of their friends why they should buy your products?

This is the question that needs to be explored and will be explored in my series of articles coming up.