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 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!

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.

If you’re a financial advisor, you’re probably feeling overwhelmed because you’re wondering when the bad news is going to stop.  The media is not helping. There is unprecedented market volatility! Declining consumer confidence, declining property values and declining share prices.  This can really take a toll on you and your ability to think rationally and logically – which is more important than ever right now!

The recommended actions below will help you weather the storm and reposition you for future success.

Connect with your clients – do it now and do it often. Communicate with them in a way that makes sense for you and for them. They probably need a lot more hand-holding now than you do! Think about it from your client’s perspective. What would you want your financial advisor to do? Can you keep them informed and updated with the facts on what’s happening out there? Reassure them and ensure they have all the facts – in the absence of information, it is human nature to assume the worst. You can phone, send emails, newsletters, create podcasts, videos or even host receptions. Connect and reduce the potential for client volatility.

I would recommend that you personally contact your clients. It can be overwhelming so break it down and call or meet your clients in rotation. The more personal time you get with clients, either face time or over the phone, the better. It’s bad enough when the portfolio is not growing but when it is down double digits, clients get understandably irate. The reality is that if the market is down, say 35%, and your client’s portfolio is down 15-20%, it is considerably less than the market. When your client is made aware of this, they will value you even more! This is a client retention (and acquisition) strategy. Other financial advisors may not be contacting their clients because making the call is painful. It can be downright scary but it needs to be done so just do it! You will be happy that you did and your clients will certainly appreciate it. They may even tell others how good their financial advisor is!

Get out! This is not the time to stay in the office and avoid contact with clients and people in general. Like the politicians during election time, you have to get out, meet the people, understand the issues and give them the confidence that you know what you’re doing and are the best person for the job. Join a service organization, volunteer your time and experience to help others and connect with as many new people as you can.

Cut Costs. Identify what is a nice to have versus a need to have. A little saving here and there can add up over time. Are you picking up coffee on the way to work? Why not fill a thermos at home? While you’re at, make yourself some lunch and pocket the savings?  Skip the bottled water – tap water is perfectly fine and much more environmentally friendly. Have a movie night at home and save on the parking, movie tickets and snacks. You can watch pay per view, borrow a DVD from your library, rent one or even download a movie to save on gas as well. Try to renegotiate your rent and other ongoing expenses like your phone, cellular and internet services.  Don’t cut back on anything that reflects on you or your brand like voicemail, client amenities or office cleaning and maintenance.

Look in a Mirror. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, look at the opportunities and threats and develop a strategy to take advantage of the situation you’re in. What has worked in the past and what hasn’t worked as well as you had expected? Should you run your practice differently? Alter your marketing? Redefine your “ideal client”? Do you have the skills that you need for continued success?

Network with your peers. You can always learn from your peers. That’s why you are (or should be) members of your local financial planning association.  Hear about best practices and innovative ideas that other financial advisors might be doing during these tough times. Bounce ideas off of them. Even getting together to discuss the market drop helps you stay on your game. Organize a meetup.

Seek help. Your wholesalers call on many successful advisors and they are a gold mine for information. Vendors, lawyers, accountants, mortgage brokers, and other service professionals in different industries will have an ‘outsiders’ perspective on your business. Ask them for some constructive criticism, learn what other professionals are doing, and brainstorm ideas on what you can do to differentiate and grow during this tight economy.

Invest in yourself. Financial advisors are so busy managing clients, working with their broker/dealers, wholesalers and vendors and staying compliant that they do not have time for self-development. You probably have more time now than ever – use this time wisely so that when things pick up, you are able to grow your business by leaps and bounds. Learn about new technologies, read those inspiring or motivating books that you’ve always said you wanted to do if you had more time.  Attend conferences and seminars that will help you in your personal or professional life.  Engage the services of a consultant that can help you assess your practice, create the strategies to do things more efficiently and effectively, and see opportunities that you might not see because you’re too close to your business.

Keep marketing. During tough times, the first thing that businesses seem to do is cut their marketing budgets. This is the best time to raise your profile and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Provide information and your expertise (compliant with FINRA and the SEC of course) to local newspapers, radio and TV stations. Offer to speak at a community event. Write a press release with your own tips for coping. Add your comments to blogs (like this one).  Create accounts at social networking sites like LinkedIn and include who you are and what you do so that others can get to know you.

Leverage your relationship with wholesalers. Your wholesalers are your one stop resource for market commentary and are often more than willing and able to speak on the state of the market. Their presentation has been created for you, and is probably already approved by FINRA, so there is no need to reinvent the where.  Use that content in your marketing but be sure to seek approval from your firm first.

Take care of yourself. As my friend Rita Cheng, CFP, a financial advisor in Maryland USA says:

“People are counting on you to stay strong and healthy. You have to keep up your energy level, get adequate rest, exercise and proper nutrition. If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of your family and your clients.”

These are tough times for all of us. The market is down, consumer confidence is low and people aren’t spending. Businesses are not sure when things are going to improve and they are scaling back on their own purchases. On top of that, there are a gazillion web pages out there and it is even more difficult to be noticed.

photo credit: Shiny Things

Bloggeries.com, an Ottawa-based company that provides directory information, ratings, links, resources, and top rated blogs, is running a contest right now that is really creative. The prize for the winning entrant is a blue 8GB Apple iPod Nano. All you have to do is write a blog and substitute the word bloggeries instead of blog post in your blog post…err…I mean in your bloggeries. After you’ve posted it, either Twitter or Plurk bloggeries.com with the URL of your blog post to enter the contest.

Why I like this contest

1. It probably created a ton of traffic to his site. I follow the person that goes by the name bloggeries on Twitter and Plurk but have never visited his website…until now. In fact I’ve gone back several times to learn more about his services.
2. There is a story behind this. He originally won the iPod in a contest but got dinged $66 for COD which really sucks. Sharing this tale of woe engages the reader and one cannot help feeling bad for the guy. He makes an emotional connection.
3. Instead of ranting about UPS, he simply suggests that he will be using FedEx (because it may not have been UPS that decided that freight was not included). He gets kudos for taking the high road.
4. No link back to bloggeries.com is required. Every decently ranked website that uses the word bloggeries will provide further brand exposure back to bloggeries.com. If the blogger actually links back to the site, bloggeries.com will benefit from this one-way link. He gains trust and respect from bloggers that are sick and tired of sneaky, snaky linkfarms.
5. The contest only runs from Oct 9th – 16th. This creates a sense of urgency for the blogger and more importantly, a huge SPIKE in the use of the keyword bloggeries. Imagine if it made it to the top 10 list in Google Trends as a result of people searching for bloggeries? He gains his equivalent of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame.
6. This contest brings out the community aspect of blogging, albeit for the selfish motive of winning an iPod.
7. Instead of whining about the economy, he is actually doing something to increase awareness of their service in a creative way.

Do you think this is creative? Have you entered the contest?