When you think about your social media marketing efforts, it may be easy to consume yourself with all of the facts, figures, demographics, psychographics, website visitors, and how getting it all just right will help your business to succeed. I have written what feels like a squillion words about reaching the right people, being useful, gathering data, dissecting the data to measure your marketing efforts, and other fine things.
Something that I find a lot of people underestimate is the value of being liked. I do not mean “liked” in the sense of somebody clicking “Like” on Facebook, either. I mean, actually being likable and not just because you are offering your awesome stuff at spectacular prices with free shipping. I mean giving people reasons to hold you, or your brand, in high regard.
Each and every one of us has a level of trust among our friends. Even the worst people you will ever meet have the benefits of clout. Even if it is only their mother, there is somebody who holds them in high regard and cares about their opinion. The most common reason is that they are liked.
It reminds me of something a good friend of mine says as he nervously awaits his results each election year. He says “As a politician, I can only count on two votes … mine, and my mother.” Fortunately for him, he is very well liked, and he was recently elected for his fifth term in the Kansas Legislature.
A truth that every successful politician knows very well is that even with the best political platform and massive visibility, it will all fail if they are not likable. This does not just mean being likable enough to get elected, but likable enough to create action in a desired direction. You can still polarize people and be liked and respected. In fact, polarizing an audience is a good way to know who really does like you.
With little exception, each one of us has a group of people who respect us, like us, listen to us, and follow our advice. Being likable is not always as easy to measure as we prefer, but if it was, we would probably all walk through our lives feeling really bold and confident about how we influence somebody … at least somebody.
In case you ever doubted it, this should come as great news for you. You have influence, but where did you get it? If you think about this, it often comes from being liked, more than from any other factor. You may doubt it, or have a bad day and overlook it sometimes, but being liked, or lack thereof, is a big factor in the success of almost anything you attempt.
Like and dislike are not the only two options. There is a wide chasm of indifference between the two. If you want to be liked, you must give people reasons. That is how you move them across the chasm.
Testing the Theory of Being Liked
As a test of the value of being liked, let’s picture two people. It does not really matter what they do for a living, but we will say they are “rocket surgeons”. They went to school for brain surgery and followed it up to become rocket scientists. Both are clearly smart and capable, but which one wins?
Rocket Surgeon Jim is a person you respect highly for his genius ideas and brilliant works in his field, but you do not consider him overly likable. He is polite, but he is just not the kind you gravitate to at a party. Something about Jim seems uncomfortable, and you sometimes wonder how sad and boring it must be to be Jim’s wife. Jim is not a bad person, but he seems a little bit “robotic” and not much of a people person.
Rocket Surgeon David is somebody who is perhaps a notch or two less genius than Jim, but you like David very much. He is quite competent, but his likability alone seems to open doors for him. Just the mention of David’s name brings about good thoughts, and he is the kind of person you like to be around … or maybe even the kind of person you want to be more like.
Which rocket surgeon do you think will find more success in their endeavors?
The value of being likable comes in widely varying degrees, but it always matters. In my estimation, you are probably not too excited to do business with “Rocket Surgeon Jim”, right? Further, you will probably not recommend him to others, like those people I mentioned, who are influenced by you.
Now, if you turn this around and think about how others will respond to you if they do not like you, it is easy to see how it can hurt a business. I mean any business, and even the most genius ones, doing the most brilliant work. Being liked does not just mean keeping people from disliking you, but also actually giving them reasons to like you.
I do not wish to imply that you must be a people-pleaser, but giving reasons to be liked and not just being “robotic” is worth the effort.
Likability Applied to Social Media
The power of being liked is especially evident when you apply it to the vast, and fast moving vehicle of influence, which is social media.
Being genuinely likable, whether as an individual, or as a brand, offers the best possibility to improve the chances of achieving your objectives. If you neglect the importance of being likable, and you just operate as a machine, you are missing the biggest of all assets. Even the least suspecting people you meet will influence somebody, and if they like you, something great could happen.
How much do people know about you? This is an important question to a lot of people, and particularly businesses. Another perhaps even greater question is “how much do they know about you that gives false indications about you?”
Opinions are very important, and also very easy to forge in social media. At least the bad opinions are easy to create, and so it becomes important to address things which may give early impressions about you, or your company.
There are millions of companies hot on the trail to compiling data about you online. It is easy to imagine that all of the data is just aggregate data which applies to you and millions of others like you, but there is also a shocking amount of data about you, specifically. This is not always a huge security risk, such as people stalking your social media usage to know when you are home and away, or anything so threatening as that. However, a risk that it may impose is an early impression that people or companies may create about you, or insights to your weaknesses.
Whether you are in the business of social media, or using it to promote your business, there are a lot of ways for people to make early, and perhaps false judgments about you. This is not limited to subjective statements about you or your company, and it is often presented with objective data.
I will point out a handful of the social media ranking and measurement tools that people may use to gather an opinion of you. Some may appear as little more than tools to allow people to boast, and promote themselves as being greater than reality. Others may cause a greater impact, especially when used to form a composite view.
It should be noted that each of these services are subject to errors, and often have network limitations imposed by their sources. The data should never be presumed as completely accurate, but again, when a composite is created, it begins to paint a clearer picture.
Klout: “The Standard for Online and Internet Influence”
Klout has some pretty compelling data collection and measurement metrics (see Klout website). Klout measures influence of users across the top social networks, Twitter, Facebook, and soon to include LinkedIn. The service seems to be making a lot of progress with improvements such as daily score updates, which used to be limited to every six days.
On the surface, Klout may just appear to be great for producing bragging rights. However, the emphasis is for discovering others who are measurably influential within given industries or topics. This gives it huge potential for networking as people seek influencers. On the other side of the coin, it could also show competition where you are lacking.
I like Klout’s idea, and with a large group of developers working on their service, it seems they are putting significant effort into it. Since the release of a recent plugin, users are able to view Klout measurement in the popular desktop social media tool, Seesmic Desktop. This makes it clear that people are viewing this data, and most certainly forging opinions.
I believe that Klout has some real potential to add value and move their service forward. I must also say that, although they may be completely wrong about this, I am definitely flattered by their assessment of me as a “Celebrity”. Heck, roll out the red carpet … the Murnahan limo tweeted from 48th Street and is headed this way! Roll Out the Red Carpet!
HubSpot Grader Tools
HubSpot has created a suite of individual tools for social media and website measurement, including a Facebook grader, Foursquare grader, Twitter grader, and more. I generally place much lower value on any singular social media signal when compared to aggregate data across multiple sources, but people are using them. The number of people using these tools to discover other influencers or forge opinions, as opposed to seeking bragging rights, is unclear.
Out of 8,213,218?!In my experience, most ranking services which only grade based on individual services are extremely easy to “game”, and especially with Twitter. I have seen my name at the very top of each of them when I wanted it there, and it often only takes a very short time (hours, not days). Twitter is a pretty challenging place to numerically assign accurate and meaningful values to users, but services like HubSpot’s Twitter Grader, Twitalyzer, TweetLevel, and many others are trying very hard. I have previously pointed out that any algorithm to measure Twitter can be cheated, and often with ease. Here are some reference points for that statement:
PostRank measures social media engagement of blogs. Yes, blogs are social media. If your company does not have a blog, please stand up and hold out your wrists for a good slapping. Didn’t you read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog“? Your competition probably did.
PostRank pulls data from many sources, which makes it far less fallible than others which only measure single points of data. PostRank is still limited to restrictions of networks, and simply cannot aggregate all pertinent data. However, it is more compelling than many measurement tools because it aggregates and assigns measurements from an impressive collection of data points.
The image below shows an example of a PostRank score for a given article which shows what PostRank knows about it. Again, I must emphasize that PostRank data can still be flawed, due to network restrictions and the sheer volume of data which is to be reported.
Example of PostRank Measurement
Advertising Age’s “AdAge Power150” Accuracy Through Composite Data
Advertising Age gives a great example of increasing relevance and accuracy by producing a composite view across more data points. The “AdAge Power 150” shows that if you selectively merge some of the many social media measurement tools together, the outcome can become more accurate and compelling.
In the example of AdAge Power 150, they have implemented measures of Todd Points, PostRank, Yahoo InLinks, Alexa Points, and Collective Intellect. Their calculations are explained on the Advertising Age website, and I think it makes a useful example of how social media measurement can be used to form a composite view. To further the depth of the data, most of their sources pull from multiple other data sources.
Summary of Social Media Measurement
Social media influence and authority of a company or individual is not easy to measure, but many people are seeking this data to make estimated guesses about you. This is becoming more prevalent as measurement tools are integrated with other services. It is easy to let down your guard and assume that nobody actually uses this sort of information, but they are, and in huge numbers.
If your online representation is weak, competitors can key in on that weakness and use it against you. On the other hand, if your online branding stands tall and reflects industry authority, it can lead to furthering your network and growing your business opportunities.
One common fact about each of these measurement tools is that in order to be viewed as relevant, you must make consistent efforts.
P.S. One of those measures of PostRank is comments. Strangely, my blog scores sky high, even with a considerably small number of comments, but you can still do your part! Tell me what you think, and how you feel about all of this measuring? How might it affect your business? Do you have a favorite?
In business, we all want the best marketing strategy ever. What often gets in the way are the tactics, and response to failed tactics, which cloud our strategy. Many companies will go through the motions of tactics such as social media sharing, SEO (search engine optimization), ad buys, and etcetera, and waste a lot of precious resources. Too often, the strategy is just out of reach, yet right under their nose. Going through the motions of tactics will not make it a strategy, regardless of how well you do it.
There are many pieces to a great marketing strategy, and bringing them all together can be tricky. I hope these ideas will inspire you, and help you in a good direction. Before you dismiss any of the points I will make, I want to explain that, although I am a marketer, I am not here to take a single dollar from your pocket. I will also share why I feel qualified to offer this assessment of the best marketing strategy ever. This really is for your benefit, so make no mistake about that.
I have been a marketing guy for my entire adult life. I started my first company just after I left school early at 15, and that was over 22 years ago. Even as a kid, I knew how important marketing would be in my business. I am pretty sure that you know this about your business as well, even when it is hard to implement. It is what puts the butts in the seats for your big show. Since my time as a zit-faced teenager, I have worked on marketing projects ranging from the tiny little spark when a company is at its inception, to the raging inferno that burns it down. I have started and stoked some big fires with my marketing. It took a lot of burning for me to uncover the biggest of all challenges, but here it is … I am going to help you put some fuel on your best marketing strategy.
I will break this down into some digestible segments for you, but be ready to spend some time and effort to discover how this applies to your business. It will be worth it.
Marketing Strategy Begins With Focused Desire
I remember a relatively early time in my business career (at age 15) when my stepfather gave me a book titled “How to Sell Anything to Anybody”. It was written by a Guinness World Record holding salesman named Joe Girard. Joe learned how to sell more cars than any retail car salesman, ever. He did not do this just as a car guy, but rather as a marketing guy. He figured out what people wanted, but before he could do that, he had to know what he wanted. In that book, there is a chapter titled “It All Begins With Want”, and in Joe’s case, it started as a bag of groceries for his family. I still clearly remember his message decades later. How do you like that example of marketing longevity? I still remembered it, even without double-checking it on Google.
This is a critical piece of your best marketing strategy: You must want it! The trouble for many people is how to define “it”. After all, if somebody asks you what you want the most from your work, don’t you stammer for just a moment and have a hard time coming up with something other than the typical cliches like financial security, world peace, happy family, good health, or whatever other first-glance wish that you can come up with?
I think the answer to what you really want is a huge challenge for many people, and many businesses. You are not alone in this dilemma, but in order to get it, you will need to develop a clearly defined answer to this question. It will require confidence, persistence, and moving beyond your comfort zone. It means putting complacence in the past, and pushing your marketing “go” button.
Wanting something and being able to define it is imperative. You must be passionate about it … whatever “it” is for you. You must love what you do, or uncover enough love for it to inspire the important work and sacrifices that will otherwise be neglected.
This brings up a point about professional marketers. An important task of marketing is to look at a company and find their passion. What is it that makes them worthy of their market share? What have they neglected that could make them better? What is missing that will reflect their passion and pass that passion along to the people they hope to gain as customers? What is their best value proposition? The questions relating to market growth are numerous, but they are hard to address without knowing the “want” of an organization and defining an overall purpose.
Marketing Beyond Visibility … Matching the Need
Visibility is the easiest and most common crutch to lean on for most companies in their marketing. In fact, it often surprises me to hear people express a sense of satisfaction in simply being visible. It is important, but when that visibility is not placed well, and with the right message, the visibility alone is not enough to drive responses. You can try to sell me knitting needles all day long, and it will not work.
If you want to develop a fanatical response to your marketing, be sure to make it useful. A great lesson can be taken from the character “Big Weld” from the animated movie “Robots”. Big Weld’s mantra was “Find a need, fill a need.”
Even if your product or service proves to meet all the logic which your research and development has come to embrace, it is not truly useful until the marketing matches the need, and solves the need. You must match your offering to the desires and needs of your purchasers.
You certainly need to make your marketing visible, but visibility is easier than making it useful in a way which resonates with buyers and helps them understand how it will benefit them.
There are a lot of ways to make things visible, and a unique slant on your market can be just the trick. Whether it is presented with humor, tragedy, assistance, or otherwise, making something visible is really not all that hard. It just takes a good look at what people in your market will receive favorably, and what they will have a propensity to act upon.
Branding is massively important, and you should never dismiss the value of high-visibility within your market. Let’s be clear, though, that visibility alone is not the whole strategy. Getting closer to home and looking at yourself can emphasize points about marketing visibility. In this case, I want to point out that I have still not purchased a single Old Spice product even after watching the many humorous videos they have produced. Although they have over 167 million YouTube video views, their website traffic still only ranks a relatively few small notches above the one you are reading right now. Sure, you are more likely to buy deodorant from them than you are from me, but the point is that visibility is not everything. Their visibility alone was not able to put the fire in my veins and make me brand-loyal. The call to action failed. Perhaps they just didn’t reach me at the right time, which further emphasizes that exposure is only one part of a strategy.
Timing and Placing Your Marketing
If I saw the funny Old Spice videos while walking through the deodorant isle in the grocery store, I would probably have a quick sniff to see if I like their product. Actually, I kind of do like their product, and I remember my dad smelling like it. As a kid, I would splash it on just to smell like him. He was my hero, after all.
My wife does all of our shopping. I am really bad at shopping, because I buy into all of the marketing. In fact, my wife dreads sending me to the grocery store, because I always come home with stuff that, according to her, only I would buy. It is ironic, yes? The point is that timing and placement is important. If you want to reach my wife while she is making her shopping list, you need to know where she is, what she is putting on her list, and you need to catch her at the right time, to be sure that she lists your brand name. It must seem wildly complicated, right? Don’t worry, it is not as hard as it sounds.
Success in producing “the best marketing strategy ever” will require some careful market research, but this is an area which is likely a very weak spot for many of your competitors. Research is a significantly underestimated and underutilized area of marketing for many companies. The good news is that if you have your “want” in place, you will find this research much easier to handle. Market research is one of those areas where the sacrifices I mentioned earlier will come into play, because it can take a lot of effort to get it right.
Build in Consistency
An unsustainable marketing strategy can be worse than no strategy at all. A brand message without consistency can create business volume in unpredictable waves, and can also show the competition your weakness.
A consistent and sustainable marketing strategy will create a much steadier upward curve in your business. It will also become far more measurable, giving you the data you need to further grow your market.
Make Your Marketing Actionable
I addressed some requisite factors to the best marketing strategy, but much is lost without measurable action that provides a positive return on your investment. Reflecting back on the earlier topics, let’s consider this: If your “want” is well-defined, it will be easier to uncover the creativity to make your marketing useful and visible, and the fortitude to make it consistent. If you do not shortcut the research, you should really understand how to place your marketing with the right people. The next piece is the action.
What is the action you want? Oh, there I go again with the “want” notion, but I did express that it all starts with want, and it is the basis for all these other things.
You must have an actionable purpose to your marketing strategy. Otherwise, you will have a lot of lost efforts to account for.
Do you want somebody to make a purchase right now, or do you want them to help spread your brand because they think you are great enough to recommend to their friends? Whatever the case, this part should only come after all of the other pieces I have listed are in place. If the rest of the pieces are well-formed and in place, the action should be a natural conclusion. Since you have already given them confidence and reason to take action, be sure that you point out the action you want them to take.
Summary of The Best Marketing Strategy
I have had a lot of recent reflection on what my career in marketing boils down to, and what it has always really been about. I think I have a good answer to the burning question of “the best marketing strategy ever”, and it truly does all begin with what you want. Without focused desire, there is a lot of waste in marketing.
The best marketing strategies will come with a lot of passion. Caring, or lack of caring, is a huge determining factor to business success. I have witnessed it for over two decades, and I am not the only person who has expressed this notion. I would like to share what Gary Vaynerchuck said in his book, “Crush it!” He tells it well in this short video, and I recommend it!
If you do not have the passion, it is best to discover the people who do. That may mean asking people around you, and social media is great for this. It also may mean hiring a marketing professional to help you uncover the passion and guide you through all the other many elements for your best marketing strategy.
I said that I am not going to take a dollar from your pocket, and I meant it. I recently made a pact with myself to stop providing marketing consulting for clients by mid-2011. This is because I am far more fulfilled by long-term projects which often only come from working with the exclusivity of one company at a time. I simply do not get the same enjoyment by working on the ever-increasing number short-sighted projects thrown at me. I am following my “want” by moving into greater exclusivity and focus in my work. That is what I want, and I am passionate about it.
My only actionable request is that you share this with people who will appreciate it, and let them know that a guy named Murnahan is “for hire” and seeking that one company to feel passionate about enough to create the elements addressed here. I know what I want, and that is to enjoy my work marketing for a company with courage to grow. My passion slants toward the automotive and other gearhead-oriented industries where the people have motor oil in their veins and gasoline in their coffee, like me. I could market feminine hygiene products just fine, but I know what I want, and I know that I will find it.
I hope you will help me to create my best marketing strategy. In return, I am delighted to answer your questions, comments, and your telephone calls. I am always open to your brainstorms. Ring me up any time at *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*).
I have added very simple links below to help you with my call to action. Please share.
There surely must be some tension between the social media giants, Twitter and Facebook. After all, social media is a fiercely competitive and also very profitable industry. Once in a while, there is a blaring case of irony to make us laugh.
Irony:“… situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions.” (source: Wikipedia)
Maybe you will not find this as amusing as I do. After all, I laugh at a lot of absurdities that I discover online. Social media is fantastic for a laugh, and I may never get the pictures of people with back-boobs and front-butts out of my head. Yes, that’s right, I said back boobs and front butts. See for yourself at your local Wal Mart store, or follow the humorous links I provided.
NOTE: I know some fine people with back boobs and front butts, but let’s face it Snuggies are cheap, and they could disguise that stuff better than Spandex!
Now back to this social media irony of Facebook and Twitter. We have all heard that we should be using Twitter, right? Anybody in the marketing industry will, at a minimum, recommend reserving your brand name at Twitter.com.
Twitter grew like influenza since 2007, and millions of people flocked to the service to find out what a “tweet” is all about. I must say that it was not without merit, and I have participated quite heartily in the conversation surrounding Twitter.
Long before Twitter … centuries before Twitter (in Internet time, of course) we had Facebook. Facebook really hit the world by storm, and grew to over 500 million users in short order. Do you realize how big 500,000,000 is? It is big … very big!
Obviously, Facebook has a stronghold in the social media industry, but we still cannot overlook Twitter for its complex simplicity. I like Twitter enough that I wrote a book about the service, so this is certainly not a bash on Twitter. It is just an observation.
I also like Facebook, and I can spend hours spying on the lives of nearly everybody I ever knew. Then, of course, there are those many companies who do not even see it coming while I am compiling the information I need in order to crush their business with marketing intelligence that I pick up on Facebook.
A logical and meaningful bash against Facebook is like slapping a hungry grizzly bear with a slab of meat and then hoping I can outrun it. It is one of those things that sounds stupid even when smart people say it. Facebook is a winner in the information age. Knock Facebook if you like, but 500 million kind of speaks for itself.
No, this is not a bashing, but I question how they see each other. What is a good way to open a dialog of speculation on how the two social media giants view the others’ service? Make up your own mind on this (and please share your comments), but to me it seems that a look at each of their usage of the others’ service should say something. What it says could be taken different ways, and I will let you chime in with your thoughts.
Twitter on Facebook
Twitter has a Facebook account with hundreds of thousands of fans. My logical assumption would be that Twitter may actually have something more than 140 characters (the character limit on Twitter) to say to all of those adoring fans. Sure, they have a blog, and of course they have Twitter, but it seems that Facebook is not just “the competition”, and it could serve some great uses for Twitter. It seems that Twitter did not ask for, nor act upon my opinion … or the opinion of the 714,256 people who elected to “Like” them on Facebook. As the image below illustrates, “Twitter has no recent posts.” Surely they have something available if you click on “older posts”, right? No … nothing at all. They signed up for an account and did not use it, just the same way as the overwhelming majority of accounts created on Twitter. Irony? Just wait, because there’s more!
Twitter on Facebook
Facebook on Twitter
I guess I never really pay much attention to Facebook on Twitter, but they are there, and using the service. When I want to know more about Facebook, I either look at Facebook or find it on one of my favorite Facebook-focused blogs. Facebook really does not need Twitter, but they apparently found value in embracing Twitter as another tool. I commend them on the choice to use Twitter, and it just makes good sense to me.
In contrast to Twitter’s blank Facebook page, Facebook sends updates using Twitter. As illustrated in the image below, Facebook is not a huge user of Twitter, but has sent 683 tweets since their account was created in March 2007.
Facebook on Twitter
Does Twitter Really Hate Facebook?
I guess it is a stretch to say that Twitter hates Facebook, but it is pretty clear that they do not have anything to say to the people who chose to “Like” their Facebook page. It seems that they could at least try it out and perhaps come out and say “tweet”.
SEO and Social Media Chicken Poop
I have heard many arguments separating SEO and social media by trying to decypher which is more valuable. Many of the people arguing this point are on one side or the other, and miss the point that they are both tactics which work together toward an overall strategy. Many people also seem to miss the fact that they are largely the same thing.
Here are a few questions that marketers use for producing arguments:
Which is more important … SEO or social media?
Which discipline provides the higher return on investment?
OK, that last one was my own personal interpretation, but seriously … how can people get this so mixed up that they stand in their corner arguing their respective knowledge without coming together in the center and having a big group hug?
SEO opens a lot of doors for companies. Having their greatness spread across the Internet in a way that people will find it when they search for something is extremely productive. People still ask me the question “how will people find my website?” To me, the question seems pretty easy … they will search for it! Having great information on a well prepared website and making it available to search engines is a “no-brainer”. Well, it is a “some-brainer”, because a lot of people still don’t really grasp it. In any case, it is very valuable, and backed up with a lot of facts. It also provides a lot of value to back up your social media marketing endeavors.
Social media is a great way to discover the people who may be interested in searching for you. It is often a proactive approach where you can add yourself to the mix. It is also a great way to learn more about those people who are already searching for you, will be searching for you, or may never search for you but will take a recommendation from others they trust. It also provides a lot of value to your search engine optimization endeavors.
I find that a lot of people get these two fields very confused, both by trying to separate them and by trying to merge them. SEO and social media both have their own unique qualities, but the reality is that trying to separate them is about as easy as picking chicken poop out of your toothpaste.
Both of these areas of Internet marketing are the same in many ways. Search engines use popularity of a website measured by incoming links pointing to the website content as a major factor for ranking. Social media also uses the popularity of website content as a major factor for ranking. What a lot of people fail to realize is how much they both work the same, and they both work in synergy.
I would be pleased to carry on in my typically lengthy way of writing until my brain hurts from extolling the values of these various marketing tools, but I have already done that. After all, have you seen my blog title? It is titled “SEO and Social Media Marketing Blog“ for a reason.
Today, I want you to jump in and help me to explain how both are intertwined yet diverse.
If you can offer a better way to describe the relationship of SEO and social media than to say that it is like trying to pick chicken poop from your toothpaste, I will offer you a kiss full on the mouth. I have nice fresh breath, but I can assure you that I have found a whole lot of “chicken poop in my toothpaste”.
