ethnicomm – the blog part I

Facebook is working on facial recognition. Initially, they will recognize that a face exists in a photo and provide the opportunity to identify the face and tag the person simply by typing in the name. No more having to make sure your mouse clicks on the centre of the face first – Facebook will automatically create a box around what it believes is the face. With over 100 million photos uploaded every day, I guess Facebook realized that they must make tagging faster and easier.

What does this mean for businesses? Uploading pictures of your staff and customers (with permission of course) will help spread your Fan Page across their networks. Since you’re already using social media, it is wise to strategically leverage the marketing tools that are available.

Almost every Facebook user has uploaded at least one photo. I think every Facebook fan page should have at least one photo – even if it is just of yourself!

Ever wonder how much your Facebook Fan Page is worth or what you could do to make it more engaging and effective? I just tried out vitrue’s beta Social Page Evaluator service. I’m not sure what beta signifies other than the fact that the service, terms or aesthetics may dramatically change? Google Alerts launched in 2003 and still shows beta.

The Social Page Evaluator told me that my Facebook Fan Page is currently worth $245 with a potential value of $1836. The site suggests three contributing factors to my page’s current value and “potential applicable suggestions”: Posting Frequency, Post Type and Short URL. I was not impressed by the suggestion they provided for Posting Frequency. Apparently I am either posting too often or not often enough. This is the kind of suggestions I’d expect from a politician – wishy washy, non committal…but having the appearance of taking a stand! My Post Type is good. I am making effective use of multimedia and dynamic wall posts but could do better by using wall apps – this would allow me to utilize Facebook’s “share” function and hopefully get friends of friends to become fans. The description under the Short URL section is that URLs should be short and easy to type so that it increase the chance that a visitor will click on them. I did not understand what they meant here – should I not use my bit.ly account so I can track people’s behaviour?

Three additional points could be seen by clicking on the “Other Best Practices” button. These were really good tips for the average fan page creator or owner.

1. Build an audience – drive traffic through cross-promoting on other associated official fan pages.
2. Optimize your fan page by completely filling out the profile and blurb box information.
3. Engage the fan by posting 2-3 times per day; solicit comments and respond in a timely fashion. They suggest using bit.ly as your branded URL shortener….woohoo that’s what I use!

Additional features on the site allow you to compare your fan page value with other brands; see what impact increasing your posting frequency or level of engagement will have on your page value (called fan-tasize); and track your page value over time. These features will probably be more useful once some history is collected on my fan page as well as other fan pages.

Let me know what your fan page is worth and if you feel the Social Page Evaluator is a useful tool.

I came across this really interesting infographic on social media demographics and just had to share it!

As you can see, Facebook does have a lot more females than males but I was surprised to see MySpace up there as well. LinkedIn has the most educated users. What I would like to see is a cross-tabulation or cube of age/income/gender/education level. Any excel wizards out there?

I conducted an SEO workshop this morning that was hosted by the Town of Newmarket (Ontario). The main topics were:

• Overview of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Benefits of SEO
• Principles of search engine-friendly design
• Tips on how to apply SEO to your website
• How to avoid the biggest SEO pitfalls that could lower your rankings
• How social media can help boost your search engine ranking

I wanted to share much more but unfortunately the 3 hours went by rather quickly. Instead of sending each attendee an email with additional links, I thought I’d share this with the community so all can benefit.

W3C Quality Assurance Tools – use these tools to see where you need some work! There is even one that finds broken links on your site.
Add your URL to Google – start that relationship!
Google Analytics – helps you see and analyze your website traffic what your visitors are doing.
A Free keyword phrase list generator – helpful as you continue to tweak and improve your website.
A search engine that tracks what is being talked about using Google Buzz – find popular search terms/trends – incorporate that into your blogs to get more traffic (blogs don’t necessarily have to be 100% related to your business).
usernamecheck - check to see where your username is registered on a wide range of social media sites.
50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business – for those of you still not convinced!

There are many more tips and tools out there – if you find others, please share them. If you need more help with search engine optimization or your web strategy, let me know.

A growing trend in internet marketing is the use of videos to establish a deeper connection with the target market. Online video marketing is being used to educate, inform and entertain viewers or (potential) customers. Some examples include: testimonials; news bulletins; how-to videos; about us videos with talking heads; and even sweeping panoramas of the corporate showroom or warehouse.

Now that Google has announced that they are adding automatic captioning to all English-language videos on YouTube, the opportunity is even greater if you think about search engine optimization (SEO).

A problem with video is that sometimes you want to go to a specific part – skip the preamble etc. Or, there is a particular segment that you want to highlight. In the past, I have directed (potential) clients to my YouTube channel so they can see how I look on national television or to highlight my marketing experience. Instead of having them sit through 20 minutes of content, I created a link that takes them directly to the first instance where I appear. Other links allow them to skip ahead and go directly to the pertinent information – in this case, me!

How do I do that?

1. Make note of the specific time (in minutes and seconds) on the YouTube video that you want to link to.
2. Copy the URL of the YouTube video and add “#t=” followed by the time in minutes and seconds to the end of the URL (i.e. #t=2m53 means the 2:53 minute mark on the video)
3. Bam! That’s it!

This is what it should look like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K–jbw_l4oU#t=2m53

Want to see a link to a specific part of a YouTube video in action? Clicking on this URL with the time appended takes you to the two minutes and fifty-three seconds point of the video – where I am first introduced by one of my favourite anchors…Dianne Buckner of CBC!

With so many social media sites out there, it is easy to spend too much time being “social” and “networking” and not enough time building your business. Without a proper marketing strategy, your efforts are as beneficial as trying to compete against The Hurt Locker or Avatar for attention.

In school, a cheat sheet helps you get to the answer faster but if you don’t know your stuff, the cheat sheet will not help. In fact, you often waste time that would have been better spent answering the question in the first place. The cheat sheet that CMO.com created (see below), nicely categorizes the key social media sites on customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site and SEO (search engine optimization). Now you can apply your knowledge of social media to help guide your marketing efforts.

You can download a larger view by clicking on the image.

Remember: your social media efforts should be consistent with your marketing or web strategy. Use the cheat sheet wisely!

What is the difference between Marketing and Sales? I was asked this question and thought to myself…”

if ONE person was asking, many more are probably thinking the same thing”

Marketing gets the attention of the prospective customer through a variety of means like advertising, public relations, viral marketing, guerrilla marketing, direct marketing and promotions. Marketing seeks to persuade the prospective customer that there is value in whatever they are marketing. They help create the “intent” to purchase the good or service.

Sales engages that prospective customer on a personal level via one-to-one contact, presentations, phone calls, emails and other direct communication. Sales tries to convert the “intent” into an action, a SALE.

Sales also feeds market knowledge and customer experiences back to Marketing. Marketing can then take that information and other market research to tailor future communication so that the right customers are targeted with the right message. They work with the information to tweak their marketing mix (product, price, place and promotion) so that it resonates with the target market. As a result, the sales efforts should be more successful since they are connecting with customers that are more apt to purchase.

Marketing and Sales is distinct but exists side by side..they are reliant on each other.

Studying solely from the textbook and reviewing lecture notes sucks (except my notes of course)! Many textbook publishers have really useful websites where you can watch video cases, do online quizzes, mess with flash cards and click on related links that unfortunately are either dead, outdated or horribly lame. There are many creative people posting helpful videos that make the marketing concepts easier to understand and even more interesting.

Pricing Strategies

Product Life Cycle

The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy

Consumer Market Segmentation

Postpurchase Behavior

Post-purchase satisfaction

THE CORPORATION [14/23] A Private Celebration

THE CORPORATION [15/23] Triumph of the Shill

Brand Experience vs. Brand Promise

How to Perform Customer Segmentation

Trademark and Tradedress in Product Package Design

Motivating Sequence for Copywriting: AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action!

London Barber Whacks the Competition

Selecting the distribution channel.

Channel Marketing: How and Why?

I sincerely hope the above videos have helped you review. Let me know how you did!

I recently went through a rather exhausting exercise creating a “tagline” for a client.  A tagline – you know…those succinct and often memorable statements that capture the essence of the brand.

Think of some of the classics and soon-to-be classics:

• A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste® (United College Negro Fund)
• Don’t leave home without it (American Express)
• Melts in your mouth, not in your hands (M&M’s)
• Just do it (Nike)
• Broadcast Yourself™  (YouTube)

It seems so simple. One line – two or three words even! How hard can it be? It may seem pretty easy to come up with a tagline, but not one that is destined to become a classic. Let alone one that your customers instantly “get”.

So how do you create a good tagline without hiring someone like myself? 

Consider the 5 elements of a great tagline:

1. It is connected to the brand

   Your tagline must make sense. It must be consistent with your company’s vision, culture and values. You can’t do this without knowing who you are, how you’re different from the competition and how your customers see you. If you are just starting out, think about how you would like your customers to see you.

   Lucky Charms “Magically Delicious”
   

2. It is “ownable” (aka Randy’s litmus test)

   The tagline should tie into the core of your company. My former boss used to do the same thing with advertising – I call it Randy’s litmus test. He’d ask – “if we switched logos, would this ad still work?” If it did, then we would not use the ad. The same rule applies to taglines: if one of your competitors used your tagline, would it work for them? If it does, time to try again.

   Can Microsoft use Apple’s “Think different”?

3. It is dead simple

   Simple is so important. You see it everywhere. Memos are simple. Instructions should be simple. Blog posts must be simple! No one has time for complexity – if they do, you don’t want them as customers (they’re too much work)! A tagline that needs to be explained is obviously no good. A long-winded, multiple-sentence tagline is also likely to be ineffective.

   Lay’s Potato Chips “Betcha can’t eat just one”
   

4. It is clear

   This is the really tough part. There are a lot of options but finding the one “gem” takes laser-like focus on your brand and how you want to position your company.

   CNN’s “Go Beyond Borders” does it for me.

5. It is consumer-focused

   It’s not what’s so wonderful about your company or brand but the benefit to the consumer. Consumers don’t care that you’re the leader, the first whatever, the sole supplier, the least hated, and so on – They just want to know why they should buy from you.

   Allstate says it best: “You’re in good hands”.

Here are some words I would suggest you avoid when brainstorming your tagline:

• Anything that starts with “A History of…” or “A tradition of…”
• Anything that ends with “…solutions”.
• Words like Committeed, Facilitating or Making.

Here’s my tagline:

A good idea is a good idea NOW!™

What do you think?

Many of us start the day with the best of intentions but by dinner time, are not entirely satisfied with our accomplishments. It’s hard to stay focused with emails, phone calls, text msgs, IM, SKYPE, Twitter and FB updates constantly interrupting us. Not to mention blog posts!

The time management courses that I took while in the corporate world always focused on making a TO DO list. I tried this one particular Monday and ended up moving the list to Tuesday. This was easy to do using the Day-Timer binder – just click open, remove the list, flip the page and insert the list. I did the same thing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. By Friday, I felt bad that I did not accomplish most of what I had intended to accomplish.  Knowing that this was a best practice, followed by the masses, I kept at it. By the end of the month, I realize that this doesn’t work for me so I did what I always used to do – successfully I might add!

1. Focus on the stuff that will get me promoted.
2. Then, focus on the stuff that would get me fired if I didn’t do it.
3. Ignore the rest until it fell into either 1 or 2 above.

This is fine if you are in a position where you can be promoted or fired. But what if you’re running a consulting service that helps companies develop a marketing, sales or web strategy? Or any other entrepreneurial venture where you are the boss and thus determine where you actually spend your time? I have found that the primary focus seems to be on keeping the business going NOT on thinking about the future.  What are YOU focusing on?  With proper time management, you can find time to keep the business going while you work on filling the sales funnel.

I recently read a Harvard Business Review blog post that I think will do the trick. It is called “An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day” and suggests three steps that one can easily do. The first step, plan your day, and last step, review your day is obvious. What is unique is the author’s suggestion to refocus every hour. Review what you accomplished (or didn’t accomplish) and recommit every hour. As an entrepreneur, I find this to be a great tool. Now, when clients call and say “what have you personally done to grow my business”, I can quickly respond with specifics!

TimeLeft is a free utility that will help you by quietly counting down and popping up a message every hour. My message is “What have you accomplished this past hour?” Of course I lose 5 seconds reading that

Have you found an effective time management system? Please share via text or video.