In Plain English: Social Media for Business

This is a simple story of the forces that shape social media. 

Using the example of an ice cream maker, this brief and charming video succinctly explains the value proposition of social media for businesses.

Informative and tasty. 

This video gives you a sense of the primary differences between social media and legacy media: 

• People rely on the ratings and recommendations of their peers in making purchasing decisions.
• People who enjoy a product play a role in determining what is findable and popular.

It also demonstrates the benefits of social media both to companies and to their customers. It's easy to see how social media (inbound marketing) is a powerful influencer when combined with legacy media (outbound marketing).

Ciao for now!

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Produced by Sachi and Lee LeFever of Common Craft.

Let's Twitter: @WanderNot

Google: Impress a French Girl

These days, when Google is starting to look a lot like Microsoft in its quest for total world domination—CNBC’s Inside the Mind of Google makes the search giant’s happy logo seem a bit disingenuous—this ad reconnects us to the beauty and purity of Google’s original value proposition.

So wonderful! (Was that a tear I saw in the corner of your eye?)

This is a great example of what can happen when you approach legacy media from a social media mindset. If you connect with what your customers really want from your company and your product, social media will take it viral.

And that’s the kind of reach and frequency that no amount of ad dollars can buy you.

Ciao for now!

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Let's Twitter: @WanderNot

It's Not Personal, It's Business

There's a marketing mindset that believes social media is a waste of time. These are the people who tend to say things like, “It’s not personal, it’s business.”

These are the same people who approach social media as an additional channel for their hard sell. You know the type: 

• They immediately DM you with a pitch for their product, their blog or their seminar as soon as you connect with them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn — or anywhere else, really.

• They offer you a “free” white paper in exchange for your contact info, then bombard you with phone calls and emails demanding an appointment.

• They invite you to a “free” 1-hour webinar where they refer to their (wildly overpriced) ebook no fewer than 14 times, and then follow up with three emails in three hours pitching said ebook—which you ceased to care about after the third mention.

What they don’t get is that the hard sell never actually worked to begin with. When you live and die by your quarterly results, always focused on the next three months instead of on the long-term, then you’re moving your product in spite of yourself. You may meet your quarterly goals, but if you haven’t built a relationship with your customer then you’re starting all over again the next quarter.

The outbound, always-be-closing, hard-sell marketing style is a dying dinosaur. Social media isn’t a new marketing gimmick, nor is it a passing fad. “Relationships first, business second” is actually the tried-and-true inbound marketing formula of the old-fashioned mom-and-pop store on Main Street.

The only thing that’s new about social media are the tools.

Ciao for now!

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Photo credit: “The Salesman” by Pete Williamson via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Let's Twitter: @WanderNot

Why Connecting Matters

 "Only connect!"  — Howards End

We can still relate to the struggle of E.M. Forster’s pre-WWI Victorians to forge meaningful connections. Of course, we have it easier than they did. We’re living the delightful irony of an era in which we can enjoy a “personal” connection with someone on the other side of the world, yet never meet them in person. Connecting is easier than ever, yet simultaneously more remote.

Connecting is the “new” marketing and branding mindset, yet it’s actually been around forever. We all have a primal urge to connect with others.  It’s why we shop at the mom-and-pop instead of the big chain store whenever we can. It’s why we walk the extra block to the friendly drycleaner instead of using the one that’s closer. It’s why we buy our morning coffee here instead of there.

Inbound marketing is steadily replacing traditional outbound marketing because we’re all tired of being “sold to.” Tired of people and products we don’t care about clamoring for our money and our attention. Tired of brands trying to pick our pockets rather than trying to understand what we really need from their products—and from our relationship with them.

Yes, you and I are marketers and we’re professional communicators. We make our living finding channels for our products and outlets for our messages. But we’re all people first, and so are our customers and clients.

And remembering that simple fact is really all that social media is about: First we connect as people. Then we do business.

Ciao for now!

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Photo credit: “Oh the society! Oh the networking!!” by [busy] via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Let's Twitter: @WanderNot