Curation Revolution

Live Events & Social Media
Love this quote:

"Social media is a fantastic complement to compelling, live television content," said Toby Byrne, president of advertising for Fox Broadcasting Co. "Not only is it a great marketing tool for us ... [it also] opens up additional ways for us to connect brands with our audience."

Duh! This new partnership is a victory and a defeat. Victory because it signals brands are getting social media. Defeat because the new partnership seeks to make social media just another push network.

Let's hope people smart enough to realize social media can rock live events also understand "live event" means there are threads that should be followed instead of simply pushing more disconnected ads at us.

The Future Is Happening NOW
Instead of Future Shock are we suffering "Present Shock". Maybe, but as an Internet marketer I know and can see in our numbers an important trend - real time. 

The closer our marketing is to NOW the better it does. Now is the only TIME the web knows and so now is where we will market in the future that is always happening right NOW :).  

Email The Register Of Ecommerce
Email out performed all other channels when I was an Ecom director. Email contributed more margin to the bottom line and was the cash register of other "lost leader" channels such as PPC. 

Email also creates important diversification. People on YOUR list put you in control at least as far as you don't irritate or spam. If more than a tiny group on your list complains you are marketing insensitive to their needs (spamming in other words) and your ISP will black ball your website and it can be hellish to get off. 

Email As Mobile Life Curator
Email marketing is not without its new challenges. Batch and blast the same message means conversion will go down as spam complaints go up. Email's role is changing with the dominance of smart phones.

Smart phones and pads are the easiest way to manage emails. Email deletion is easiest on mobile and mobile fills up the free time of waiting in lines and sitting on the subway. Wonder why your open rates are going DOWN? A: Smart phones. 

All of this means you need personas and segments AND responsive emails in your email marketing these days. You MUST create relevant messages. Use personas, fully articulated archetypes for between 3 and 7 "super groups" within your list. 

Know what segments within your list such as "multi-buyers" or VIPs are the most profitable. Combine personas, which THEY ARE with your financial segments what THEY MEAN to you to create campaigns that will appeal to THEM and make money for YOU. 

Email Marketing In Mobile World Tips
* Subject Line is beyond important.

* Create responsive email (email must look great on all devices).  

* Use PERSONAS and SEGMENTS together.

* Tell STORIES over TIME.

* Curate User Generated Content INTO your email marketing.

* Count and trend unopens as a NO.

* Create & Trend new KPIs such as $ / sent, $ / opens.

* Keep emails OFF your website (dupe content and hurt heuristics).

This last bullet needs some explanation. Your email marketing needs a "can't see this email view it here" link, but keep your creative in a NON-SPIDERED folder.

Allowing your emails to get spidered can cause duplicate content problems and the heuristics of your emails don't help since, if you are creating great Call To Action emails, your audience will not spend much time on your emails as they are simply attention getter pass through to points of conversion. 

Google Header Eats Los Angeles

Yes the Google+ Header just got bigger along with 41 other feature improvements to the leading search engine's social network. Recognizing that the most popular content on Facebook is pictures, Google+ boosted its ability to compete. Here is a quote from the Economic Times post:

"But the most compelling new attraction may be a new photo-management tool that promises to test how much control people want to cede to computers. It will also further blur the lines between a real moment in time and augmented reality."

The Same Message Over And Over
Social Is Different and we keep getting this message over and over. The problem / opportunity with social media marketing is it doesn't respond well to typical Stimulus - Response advertising so favored everywhere else.

Once you break the S - R curve TIME changes. When you reinforce a behavior you created it feels like you gain brand advocacy. I think you make a transaction and advocacy comes AFTER the sale. 

Social media flips this response. Social media builds a relationship first, secures advocacy and then comes money. If that sounds EASTERN and not very capitalist you are right and beginning to see some of the reasons we S - R marketing pros are having such a hard time with social media marketing.

The answers are NOT to attempt to simply cart one set of tactics from paid to social. No, the answer is to form and find new ways to judge ROI vis brand advocacy and social support. Soon we will see just how much social media creates a base for success IN ALL OTHER MARKETING. 

Marketers are a distrusting lot. Instead of looking hard at our efforts and preconceptions we want NEW things to walk and talk like OLD things, things we understand and trust. Life in a digital age can't afford such singular thinking.

Fuzziness prevails and the over, what we stand to gain, exceeds the under, what we stand to loose well enough to demand and open minded participation as we define the new marketing on the back of the thing we trust (paid).  

I'm old enough to remember having knockdowns about paid too. There was a time when what is trusted NOW was distrusted then. Best to keep that truth close at hand since it reminds us how important ACTING and LEARNING have become in modern marketing. 

Personality Sells

There is a real "anti-sales" movement afoot. I'm sitting in a car dealership as I write this and I blame them (lol). The archetype of a used car salesman who believes deals can benefit him and him alone is a hard archetype to shake.

Willy Loman is long gone. Anyone, used car dealers included, who don't create mutual benefit will be hard pressed to survive in a time when I am using a car dealers wifi to type this post.

Once the web is present it is much harder to create unilateral benefit. Even car dealers, the good ones, realize every action creates an equal and opposite reaction in social media these days.

We are still a distance from where we need to be, but progress is clear and unmistakable. We will know we are there when car dealers sell cars like Apple sells iPhones.

So my favorite tip from this post is #3, use social media to create a personality. Personality is truth since it is impossible to fake that you are over time. Short term anyone can lie and fake anything, long term not so much.