I walked into an electronics store the other day and happened to pass the television department.

The 70 inch televisions with high definition flat screens were displaying videos so compelling that for a minute or two I just stood there watching images so sharp and mesmerizing that I just stopped and watched.

The vibrant colors and high contrast were almost hypnotic.

It was only ten years ago and a flat screen TV half that size was $20,000.

Now everyone has at least a 42 inch plasma or LCD screen and that is in the smallest room in the house!

The Visual Sharing Addiction

Reality television, lifestyle and cooking shows have taken food to new levels of visual and visceral appeal and taking photos of food and sharing them on Facebook or Instagram seems to becoming a standard activity these days.

Generation X and Y would rather watch a video or an infographic in small snack size bites of information than read a paragraph of text.

Several key factors seem to be driving this visual sharing revolution.

• Broadband access whether it is fixed or wireless (images and videos no longer take hours to upload)
• Social network platforms - that make it easy to upload images and videos in seconds
• Smart phones with cameras (high definition is now the norm)
• Apps that make it easy to shoot and share (Instagram)

This increasingly visual generation is creating opportunities for creative people to engage with friends, colleagues and customers using images and videos.

Pinterest has over the last 6 months, become the social network with buzz, which provides a visual platform that offers the ecosystem to experiment, play and trial images as a means of engagement and even selling.

It is even being used to drive people to landing pages to capture information and buy.

How do you use Pinterest to Market your Business?

Here are 64 marketing tips and tactics that you can apply to your Pinterest account to get you started and refine your strategies.

Source: Maria Peagler: Social Media Online Classes

So How About You?

How are you using Pinterest? Have you even heard of it before? Are you finding it driving traffic?

Is it working for you? What has surprised you about Pinterest?

I look forward to hearing your stories..

More Reading

• 30 Resources, Tips and Tricks for Marketing Your Business on Pinterest
• Why Business Should take an Interest in Pinterest
• Pinterest Drives more Traffic than LinkedIn and Google Plus
• 7 Ways to Use Pinterest to Promote your Business – Plus Infographic
• What is Pinterest and How Can You Use it for Marketing your Business?
• 6 Social Media Networks to Watch in 2012 – Plus Infographics
• Social Media Sharing Trends in 2011- Infographic
• 7 Top Trends in Social Media

Coca Cola, which is one of the worlds most recognized brands has recently announced that its marketing strategy is moving from “creative excellence” to “content excellence“.

This is due to the the realization that on a social web people can create more dynamic stories about a business and brand than they can ever hope to achieve on their own.

Coca Cola is making sure that it is embracing this changing paradigm in marketing and creating content that is liquid and contagious and let the global crowd create the dynamic stories about a brand.

This is the crowd sourcing of marketing.

This is what makes social media marketing so effective, it taps into the leverage of the conversations of billions of people that communicate and share daily on the global web.

These conversations are about content and this takes me to three stories.

Story One: Books and the Power of Imagination

I was only nine but I had just discovered the attraction and magic of books.

After learning to read I started to find the allure of the printed page compelling and contagious. I started borrowing books from the school library about pirates and tropical adventures and other stories that took me to far away places as my imagination took flight.

The book bug had bitten me so hard that reading two to three books a week wasn’t unusual and the school librarian must have thought that I was stalking her. This healthy obsession with stories and books had me reading under the bed covers at night with my bed site lamp hidden under the blankets after the obligatory nights out curfew so that my parents thought I was still asleep!

The power of stories and their power to engage my imagination had me enthralled.

Story Two: News and the Man on the Moon

It was such a big news event that school finished early and we were able to go home and watch the man land on the moon.

Television was still black and white and I remember watching the shaky images from the moon arriving on the TV screen as Neil Armstrong announced “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind“

Watching man step onto the moon is a memory I will never forget.

The power of media to distribute powerful news stories was evident on that day July 20, 1969.

Story Three: Discovering Information on the World Wide Web

It was in 1995 and I remember connecting up the modem and logging onto the internet for the first time. Alta vista was a crude but still useful search engine that allowed you to find information from the web that has since seen the death of printed encyclopedias and the rise of wikipedia.

I remember thinking that my visits to the library would not be so frequent anymore and hunting for information would be quicker and much more convenient.

Information, data and content could now be found and consumed from the other side of the world via the internet and personal computer.

Content: Stories, News and Information

Stories, news and information are eagerly sought by everyone and these can all be published online. This is content, any media that can be published on the web.

Social media marketing requires content that is compelling and contagious. It requires content that begs to be shared. It requires content that is so liquid that people want to share it online and offline.

Social media marketing without these types of content is like man without a soul or a king without clothes.

Content is the Hub and Heart of Social Media.

Note: To view the presentation below click on the image.

This presentation that I gave as a keynote at the BE-Wizard conference in Italy recently, looks at the key building blocks for creating and marketing you content.

This presentation includes.

• What is content marketing?
• What are the types of content you should be creating.
• Why Multimedia is important in your content marketing plans.
• What the benefits are of content.
• What are the 10 commandments of content marketing
• What great content should be.
• What content shouldn’t be
• The power of images, photos, video and infographics
• Why search and content are linked and synergistic.
• What are the 8 challenges of content marketing?
• How do you come up with the inspiration and ideas for creating content?
• What are the ultimate types of content?
• What is addictive content?
• How do you structure and optimize your content for the social web?
• How do you promote and market your content, so it spreads and is shared?
• How do you measure success?
• Some case studies of the global superstars of content.

What about You?

How do you use content for your marketing? What works for you? Are you creating dynamic stories?

What are some of your successes with content that you have experienced and maybe surprised you.

I look forward to hearing your stories

More Reading

• 10 Reasons Why “Liquid” Content Should be Included in Your Social Media Marketing
• What are 10 Addictive Types of Content?
• How to Increase Your Blog Traffic by 55% with One Button
• 5 Motivations for Sharing Content
• 20 Ideas for Social Media Content that Engages
• Is it Better to Share on Google+, Facebook or Twitter
• 9 Questions to Ask your Customers When Creating Content

Image by Auntie P

I suppose I would describe myself as a product of the digital age. One of my first jobs was working for one of the companies that pioneered the corporate sales of personal computers in 1985 that sold the first IBM personal computer.

In the late 1980’s I remember installing and using my brand new mobile and chatting to my grandfather (who was brought up in an age of milk being delivered by horse and cart).

Ten years later I remember firing up my PC and connecting to the internet with a very slow modem and hooked into the web using one of the first search engines “Alta Vista”

It was about another decade later that I registered on Facebook for the first time and connected to people I had gone through college with, some looking considerably grayer and others with a lot less hair.

These technologies are now intersecting with high impact in an increasingly digital economy.

The Age of Disruption

These are the technologies and events that are disrupting our world.

Nassim Taleb in his book “Fooled by Randomness” gave the title to these events, “Black Swan Events” .

The black swan was a mythological creature that was not thought to exist but this bird was in fact discovered in the 1600’s by the Dutch when they landed in Western Australia.

What are Black Swan Events?

Three attributes define Black Swan events.

• They are unexpected
• They have major impact
• In hindsight it was predictable

Examples of Black Swan events include: Einstein’s theory of relativity, the invention of penicillin and the September 11 attacks.

Black Swan Digital Events

In the digital world four major events (technologies) are disrupting business and how we communicate.

1. The invention of the personal computer
2. The Internet and world wide web
3. Social networks
4. Internet connected smart phone

The intersection of these technologies is creating a tidal wave of change that threatens “business as usual“

The question an entrepreneur or a CEO has to ask is “What are these challenges and how can we innovate and adapt to take advantage of these events?“

The Challenges of the Digital Economy

To win in a digital world there are many challenges to overcome.

Challenge One: Humans Change Slowly

We have a fast changing world but the challenge is that humans are slow to change and our thinking and habits are still trapped in traditional habitual thinking and customs. A lot of senior managers are still acting as if we are still living in an industrial and traditional mass media economy.

The pace of change is accelerating.

To reach 50 million users

• Radio took 38 years
• TV took 13 years
• Internet took 4 years
• iPod took 3 years

Facebook added over 200 million users in less than 12 months!

The pace of this change is creating fear for executives that were not educated or familiar in this new digital economy

Challenge Two: We Think Local not Global

You competitor is no longer in your local district, city or country. International couriers and modern logistics enable products to be flown around the world in 24 hours. Online stores in the UK, USA or Europe are now your competitors.

The opportunities to expand your market to the world is now possible with the new online media which includes social networks, online banner ads and search engine optimization.

Challenge Three: It is Disruptive

Who would have thought 10 years ago that Kodak would be in bankruptcy and Apple would turn the music industry, the publishing industry and the phone market on their heads

Challenge Four: It is a Noisy and Crowded Web

In a digital universe of 500 million plus websites, 150 million blogs and 200 billion display ads every 90 days, the challenge for any business is to cut through all the clutter and noise.

In just one day we create

• 1.5 billion pieces of content
• Tweet 200 million times
• Post 2 million new videos online

So how do we change our thinking, adapt, be found online and play to win in a digital and increasingly global economy?

The Foundation: Build your Online Digital Assets

We need to establish and optimize our online assets.

What are Digital Assets?

Any online web properties that you have your name and brand on.

• Website
• Blog
• Online Store
• Social Networks
• Mobile apps

In the past having a website was considered enough but the game has changed!

You need to be everywhere and on a variety of digital platforms and social networks.

Websites in the past were static and considered to be optional. In 2012 they are mandatory and need to be an integral part of a business and constantly updated and interactive.

A small business can look big on the web.

Digital Asset One: Website

They are your online digital front door and reception that you own and control, more people visit your digital property than your physical reception or office.
So invest appropriately and treat it as important as your physical assets.
Building an online digital asset is not a zero sum game, the sooner you start and optimise the further ahead of the competition you will be as you continue to create content that brings people back to your website and Google pushes you further up the rankings.
Websites should not be set and forget – it is an active environment that requires constant and persistent updating. It informs and educates while you sleep. This is something that a salesperson cannot do.

There are 2 main types of websites

1. Business content website
2. E-Commerce website

So how do you design and develop a winning website?

1. Business Website

How do you go from a “Basic and Boring” online web presence to a “Stunning and Special” online brand?

It starts with a great design and that is not just how it looks!

Steve Jobs when interviewed by “Wired”magazine in 1997, said that “intuitive and usable design goes much deeper than how it looks, it is how it works! - you really need to to “Grok” it, this means to intuitively understand and to empathise with your users and your target audience.

A great website should have these attributes.

• Integrated to your companies systems and backend databse systems such as your CRM or email database.
• Designed and developed for search engines
• Calls to action to capture those important leads
• Socialised – built for sharing and subscribing to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+
• Have 2 way communication. Create an interactive blog as part of your website – It needs to move from static to interactive and allow comments and feedback. Provide a platform for engagement.
• Write and develop content that is addictive, liquid and linked
• Publish high impact images and multimedia that brings your viewers back and compels them to share with their friends and colleagues

2. E-Commerce Website
Online retail and e-Commerce is growing fast all around the world. It is challenging the traditional bricks and mortar stores.
Consideration must be given to making it easy for customers to buy your products at your physical store, your online store and other ecommerce distribution outlets such as Ebay. It is about Omni commerce, having your products everywhere. It is about making it easy for your customers to buy no matter where they are and no matter what digital device they are using, whether that is a mobile phone tablet or laptop

What are the key elements for a successful online store?

• Build it on a robust technology platform that you can easily update and control yourself. (CMS or Content management Systems, allow you to change your website without having to be a programmer)
• Intuitive design it so you don’t make people think
• Make it easy for people to check out – each page you make customers click through to you lose 15%.
• Create Trust – credibility through awards and obvious security features
• Offer a choice of widely accepted payment methods
• Provide discounts and incentives
• Personalize it – eg Amazon. Registering as a guest using Facebook connect allows your visit to personalized
• Make it social – allow reviews and sharing

Digital Asset Two: Social Networks

As we mentioned earlier having just a website is not enough in a digital economy. You need to have your brand and digital assets in as many places as time and resources allows.

Secure your brand on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn. If you are a professional services company then you must also be on LinkedIn and Slideshare as a minimum.

Design and brand these networks to ensure that they are congruent with your brand image on your website and blogs.

So are you Done?

You have created a great website, built an online store, optimized your websites for mobile platforms, secured and branded your social networks.

They look great! So sit back and wait for customers and prospects to find you and the money to roll in?

You are not done…Your work has only begun!

You need to be “found” and attract traffic so you can convert those leads and sell your products and services.

What are the steps to success with marketing your digital assets?

Step One: Create a Digital Marketing Strategy.

This starts with a strategic approach not just tactics. A top level strategy includes the following steps .

• Create a clear vision
• Know who your audience is
• Know what your goals are
• Create tactics to achieve those goals
• Persist and be patient

Another important part of this strategy is the creating liquid and linked content that is published everywhere and in a variety of media formats such as articles, images and videos that communicates and resonates with your target audience and market.

We all consume information differently so provide content in a variety of multimedia formats that communicates to as many people as possible. It is about spreading your brand and being found everywhere. – be ubiquitous!

After creating your strategy and starting to build your content library you then need to commence your multi-channel marketing.

Step Two: Take Multiple Channel Action

If you really weant to make your digital marketing strategy accelerate and be truly successful, then it is essential to market on multiple digital marketing platforms.

Channel One: Search

Business often does not give enough priority to being found by search engines. Here are some top level facts that display the importance of optimizing for search

Some Facts

• Up to 90% of purchasing decisions start with an online search
• Organic online clicks account for 75% of all clicks to websites
• 25% of all clicks are paid eg. Google Adwords.

How important is it to be at the top of Google’s search results?

• Ranking first on Google gets over 40% of all clicks
• Ranking second receives just over 11% - coming second has distinct disadvantage as you only obtain ¼ of all clicks compared to first ranking.
• 90% of all clicks occur on first page of search results

So if you are not on page one you will only receive a fraction of the remaining 10%.

2 Keys for Optimizing your Websites for Search Engines

There are two core activities to optimize your website.

1. Onsite SEO – Designing and developing your website so that Google’s crawlers can find the keywords and phrases that people will use to find you. This requires key words in the titles, descriptions, words and phrases that are included when you build, code and update your website
2. Off site SEO – Core activities here is “Link building” - this is where you get other websites to link to your website. The more important the website that links to you the greater value Google places on your website and pushes your site up the rankings.

Some Resources

10 Facts Reveal the Importance of ranking High in Google

Channel Two: Email Marketing

Don’t forget amongst the shiny toy syndrome of social media marketing the power and control of email marketing. Building and using an email database for communicating with your customers is a tool that you own and control.

Building an email database is an asset that is powerful and targeted.

Its importance is often underrated by marketing managers and business owners.

Tips

• Make it easy - Just ask for a name and email
• Provide incentives for prospects to opt-in to your email list - Eg A free ebook

Channel Three: Paid Online Marketing

Building a highly ranked website that Google can find takes time, patience and persistence. So paid online marketing can accelerate the process.

Provide a catalyst to your organic marketing and SEO activities that enables you to fast track your digital brand. It can be targeted and increasingly localized.

Examples of this type of marketing

• Google Adwords
• Facebook Ads
• Banner ads on websites where your customers hang out

These can create instant results. So if you are needing to fast track your brands online presence, obtain a marketing budget for paid digital advertising and accelerate the velocity of your marketing!

Channel Four: Mobile Platforms

I don’t know about you, but if you walk the street, ride a bus or a train have a look at what people are doing. They are checking their smart phone or tablet. People commuting to work or watching TV at home are browsing on the mobile devices, checking their Facebook or even buying products from Ebay or an online store.

The growth of the social networks over the last few years has been matched by the mobile internet with smart phones sales approaching nearly 500 million units in 2011. The synergy that these 2 fast tracking trends provide is changing how we work and play.

So what are some mobile statistics worth noting?

• The smart phone sales were up over 63% in 2011 from 2010 (488.5 million)
• 5.9 billion people now use mobile phones globally
• Over 500,000 apps have been developed in the past 3 years and downloaded more than 10.9 Billion times
• 77% use mobile phones for search
• Social networking accounted for 50% of all page views on mobile phones in 2011
• Facebook mobile users quadrupled in 2 years from 50 million to 200 million
• There are 200 million mobile video playbacks from YouTube every day
• There are 1.2 billion internet connected smart phones
• In the US, 50% of the population with a phone now has an internet connected smart phone
• The upside for mobile commerce and smart phone growth is enormous as all mobile phones will eventually become internet connected. On current numbers that means that 4.7 billion smart phones are yet to be sold and connected!

So how do you plan for this increasingly mobile web?

• Accept the fact that the world is going “Mobile”
• Build a mobile optimized website
• Build mobile apps that make it easy to buy from a mobile device from your online store

Is your business ready for the mobile web?

Channel Five: Social Media Marketing

This is the biggest change to the web since the invention of the search engine.
It is democratizing marketing. It is putting marketing power in the hands of business people that has never occurred in the history of business marketing.

What are the Key Benefits of Social Media?

• It amplifies your content
• Makes you stand out from the crowd
• It puts your business networking on steroids
• Accelerates the spread of your brand through “Global word of mouth“
• It can position your company as a thought leader in its industry
• Your business can self publish
• Creates trust
• Improves search engine rankings

So what social networks should you market on?

The short answer. Where your audience is, whether that is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or Slideshare or other social networks such as Pinterest or Instagram.

8 Keys to Success with Social Media Marketing

1. Treat your social networks as an extension of your websites
2. Build your networks - big numbers matter!
3. Optimise social networks for search
4. Engage with your audience
5. Publish multimedia content regularly
6. Create content for your audience that educates, informs, entertains and inspires
7. Share and subscribe buttons everywhere
8. Drive traffic to your website and “call to action” landing pages

Social media marketing is not a silver bullet but integrated with your traditional marketing it can accelerate the reach and velocity of your marketing.

It crowd sources and empowers your tribe and social network followers to create more conversations and stories about your brand than you could ever achieve.

Step Three: Monitor, Measure and Rinse and Repeat

One of the benefits of digital marketing is that it is infinitely measureable. This enables you to monitor and measure your results.

Examples of what you can measure:

• Increases in traffic to your website
• Hits to your landing or conversion page (lead form)
• Improvements in traffic due to search engine optimization
• How many hits are coming from mobile

This ability to measure your digital assets performance allows you to determine what works and what doesn’t and repeat more of what is working and stop what isn’t.

Takeaways for Winning in a Digital Economy

• Build, optimize and maintain your online assets
• Market your online assets relentlessly, everywhere
• Don’t ignore the growth of mobile
• Optimize for search engines
• Don’t underestimate the value of email
• Create Multimedia “Liquid” content
• Publish and promote your content on social networks

What About You?

So is your business and brand making the most of the new digital economy? How many digital assets do you own?

Is the content on your website and blog so compelling and contagious so that people want to share it with friends and colleagues.

Are you making it easy for Google to find you or have you forgotten to optimize your website, digital assets and social networks for search engines?

Is email marketing in your mix or have you left it on the shelf ?

Are you taking advantage of the leverage of social media to break through the clutter and noise of 500 million websites and 200 billion display ads.

Look forward to hearing your stories.

More Reading

• Why Design Matters
• 5 Lessons from Coca Cola’s New Content Marketing Strategy
• 10 Reasons Why “Liquid” Content Should be Included in Your Social Media Marketing
• What are 10 Addictive Types of Content?
• How to Increase Your Blog Traffic by 55% with One Button
• 5 Motivations for Sharing Content
• 20 Ideas for Social Media Content that Engages
• Is it Better to Share on Google+, Facebook or Twitter
• 9 Questions to Ask your Customers When Creating Content

Image by DrChino

Facebook provides a wide ranging and encompassing online social network ecosystem that allows you to share music, photos and information that can be seen by your friends in their timeline and ticker.

Its impact is also starting to be seen as influencing consumer decisions as people notice online comments by friends on Facebook and make purchases based on this sharing.

Facebook’s role in the socialization of the online buying process continues to expand as it entrenches its presence as the social network of choice globally for over 800 million users. In fact it is is predicted that Facebook will hit the 1 billion user mark by August.

Some of the power of Facebook in the online shopping environment is in its ability for people to share what products they like to their friends and also highlight their buying decisions

Why Use Facebook for Registering on your Online Store?

Facebook is even recommended as the preferred login for people to use when they visit an online store when they register. This is due to the fact that up to 75% of all online transactions that are launched but not completed, fail because users abandon their online shopping carts, according to Monetate.

The company also added that 40 percent of consumers prefer social logins with most people (60%) preferring Facebook.

The other advantages for using Facebook to simplify registration are the gathering of additional data such as

• Birthdays
• Gender
• Interests

These can be used to personalize the site for the user when the user who registers with Facebook returns.

How Social Sharing Influences Consumer Behavior

A recent study by Sociable Labs which included 1088 online shoppers revealed that social sharing is as helpful as Google search in shopping.

The major takeaways from the study are:

1. Social Sharing is a Vital Activity for Discovering What to Buy

62% of online shoppershave read product related comments from their friends on Facebook.

2. Social Sharing Causes Consumers to Act

75% of shoppers who read social sharing comments have clicked on the product link in their friends’ Facebook posts, taking them to the product page on a retailer’s website.

53% of the shoppers who have clicked through to the retailer’s site have made a purchase.

3. Positive Social Sharing Creates a Virtuous Cycle of Sharing and Purchasing

81% of consumers who purchase products they learn about through social sharing are valuable social sharers themselves, thus creating a cycle of sharing and buying.

4. “Social Proofing” – Increases Confidence in Buying

Social proofing, which is the activity of showing friends activities on a website is a powerful motivator for buying. The study showed that 32% of visitors are more likely to stay and shop on a site that shows activities of shoppers who have purchased there, even when those shoppers are not their friends. When the shared activities include the shopping behavior of the visitor’s friends, that number nearly doubles to 62%. With respect to purchase, 57% of shoppers are more likely to purchase on a site that shows their friends who have purchased on that site.

5.  Match the Motivations of Sharers to Share with the Motivations of Shoppers to Act

When comparing sharer and shopper motivations, a key takeaway from the study is to encourage sharers to include the reasons they bought the product, as this is the strongest motivator for shoppers to act.

Social Impact of Facebook for Consumers

Source: Sociable Labs

Study Conclusions:

The Social Impact Study from Sociable Labs, confirms that consumers are highly influenced by their friends.

Low friction Social sharing is a major source of product discovery for a significant percentage of consumers. If you haven’t already incorporated social sharing applications into your ecommerce experience, it is recommended that you do.

To drive significantly higher-velocity sharing, you should consider leveraging Facebook’s Timeline Apps initiative.

More Reading

• Do Shared Links Last Longer on Twitter or Facebook
• What 3 Content Types Drive the Most Interaction on Facebook
• How to Increase Your Blog Traffic by 55% with One Button
• 5 Motivations for Sharing Content
• 20 Ideas for Social Media Content that Engages
• Is it Better to Share on Google, Facebook or Twitter?
• 9 Questions to Ask your Customers When Creating Content

Social media is democratizing marketing and is enabling the aspirational brands to challenge major brands for global mind and market share.

The gap between how companies market with media and how customers consume media is significant. In some industries, especially technology, up to 90% of buying decisions start with an online search. Despite this, the marketing budget for digital media as a share of overall advertising spend is only 8%.

The CEO in most organisations has been raised on a diet of mass media and traditional marketing. Their paradigm in the past has often been to stick with the known because it was safe.

The CEO and the Socially Engaged Enterprise

Slowly but surely the “C-Suite” generation is realizing that digital media is where their audience hangs out and social media is much more than just having a Facebook page.

They are starting to wake up to the fact that a well planned and resourced social media marketingt strategy can lead to closer engagement with customers that is changing customer service and how the business sells and markets its brand.

To be a socially engaged business is no longer an option, it is essential, just like the website was initially perceived in the 1990’s.

A study by PulsePoint Group in conjunction with “The Economist” Intelligence Unit titled “The Economics of the Socially Engaged Enterprise” has revealed that the socially engaged companies have a 400% greater impact.

The study also outlined the steps that are essential to becoming a socially engaged business.

Step One: Plan It

There are two phases to this step.

1. Get Executives Sold and Comitted

This requires getting the C-suite on board so that the time, money and resources can be allocated to ensure that is done properly. The CEO and the executives will need to be convinced that there will be a return on investment to be a socially engaged enterprise before committing the budget required.

This was hard in the past as there was no case studies or leading examples of businesses reaping a reward from investing in the selection, design and development of the platforms and tools needed to start listening online to feedback from customers and prospects and then acting on it.

2. Develop a Strategy

Developing a strategy that is clear on its goals and audience is the next phase. It includes weaving the strategy into the existing marketing plans so that they are synergistic and relevant.

Step Two: Build It

Essentially there are four phases to step two.

1. Select your SWAT Team

This could be internal or a mix of internal and external staff that are passionate and skilled about teaching, training and evangelizing employees on an ongoing basis. This team will also need to choose the technologies required to achieve the strategic goals. In most enterprises the Marketing and Communications departments are seen as responsible for the project for becoming socially engaged.

2. Create a Social Media Command and Listening Center

Obtaining real time information that provides feedback from your customers on Facebook and Twitter and other social networks will assist you with determining if your products and services are resonating with your market. Essentially negative feedback means remove or change and positive means do more of the same thing that elicited that response!

3. Integrate Social Engagement into every Department

Listening and then acting on what you are hearing is vital right across the organisation including sales, customer service and product development. A socially engaged company will make rapid changes to its products and customer service approach as feedback and comments that are monitored on the command center are received, taken on board and then acted on.

4. Create a Publishing Plan and Schedule for your Content

You will need to plan your blog posts, Facebook updates, YouTube videos and other updates to your social network outposts that will be relevant for your audience, goals and brand message.

Step Three: Drive It

This is going to take time and commit to spend the next 12 months making sure that the team is acting on the strategy plan. This will involve three phases

1. Keep the Technology Up to Date

Social media is a fast moving and ever evolving technology, ensuring that the technology platforms are up to date and are providing the right tools to be efficient is vital. Upgrades to your blog, Facebook, analytics and measurement technologies will bee needed to ensure that you are not left behind as new tools and tactics emerge.

2. Learn from Your Mistakes and Celebrate your Wins

You will make mistakes as the socially engaged enterprise is still a new and and emerging marketing displine. Make adjustments quickly and move on. Celebrate wins with the team regularly to reinforce a success culture.

3. Assess Regularly

As with all proper business practice, develop a weekly management process that ensures that assessment of progress is made and the appropriate adjustments implemented. This will ensure long term success.

More Reading

• 5 Ways To Improve Your Facebook Page Engagement with Fans
• Is This the Holy Grail of Facebook Marketing?
• How To Take Your Company Facebook Page From Zero To 40,000 Fans
• 50 Fascinating Facebook facts and Figures
• The 10 Best Facebook Marketing Campaigns
• How To Advertise On Facebook In Ten Minutes For Less Than $10 A Day In 10 Simple Steps

Image by garageolimpo

I switched on the Television last night very briefly and I can now see why Facebook is so popular!

There was nothing to watch.

Now I don’t have cable or Satellite TV, so that was maybe part of the problem,  but there is a method in my madness of not subscribing to pay TV…it minimizes the temptation to sit in front of the “idiot box” and so allows me more time for reading, learning and blogging.

Has Self Expression become the New Entertainment?

As I searched Facebook for these images I was reminded of the quote by Arianna Huffington,

“self expression has  become the new form of entertainment” and that the popularity of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is evidence of this phenomenon.

A large part of this self expression is visual and the popularity of photos and images that are shared in their millions every day is evidence of the compelling power of well crafted high definition images and beautiful photos.

The New Facebook Timeline for Pages

This redesign is recognition of the increasing role that images are playing on the “visual social web” and you only have to witness the growth of Pinterest and Instagram to see this playing out.

Everyone has a camera in their pocket or bag these days as smart phones now have them as a standard feature. Add to this the ease of posting those photos to Facebook or Twitter with a few clicks and the web is awash with images from Bondi to Bulgaria.

The new Facebook timeline for pages has provided a bigger canvas for business and organisations to exhibit the essence of their brand.

I hope some of these images below may inspire you to consider what you publish as your cover image for your new Facebook page.

Which are your favourites?

What cover images have you discovered that you found compelling?

1. Red Bull

2. Skittles

3. Monster Energy

4. Nike Football

5. BlackBerry

6.  Top Gear

7. National Geographic

8. Intel

9. Sprite

10. Ferrari

11. Gucci

12. Louis Vuitton

13. Mountain Dew

14. Animal Planet

15. Baskin Robbins

16. MAC Cosmetics

17. Sony

18. Lonely Planet

19. Turkish Airlines

20. Star Gazing

More Reading

• Do Shared Links Last Longer on Twitter or Facebook
• What 3 Content Types Drive the Most Interaction on Facebook
• How to Increase Your Blog Traffic by 55% with One Button
• 5 Motivations for Sharing Content
• 20 Ideas for Social Media Content that Engages
• Is it Better to Share on Google, Facebook or Twitter?
• 9 Questions to Ask your Customers When Creating Content

Last year Facebook changed the design and user interface for the Facebook personal profiles. They introduced key features such as the new timeline and a large area at the top for a photo or image in a banner format.

These changes were an indication of what was to come for the Facebook brand and business “Pages”.

Facebook announced that the new design for “pages”was indeed a reality and all businesses will need to adapt their Facebook “Page” to the new design and functionality by March 31. So with April now here, every Facebook page is now live with that “Timeline” design whether you like it or not.

So what are the key changes and what are some of the implications for marketers and business?

1. New Design

The new design and user interface provides a much bigger area for displaying a compelling image that can highlight the business brand. The format will now be two columns that will reflect the evolving story of the brand over time.

This image area now measures 850 by 315, so you will need to create images that work with that space.

Their terms of use for these images do not permit you to include prices or promotional information, contact info, calls to action or references to any Facebook features such as “Like” or “Share”

2. Private Messaging

Businesses will now be able to communicate with private messages with their fans and users. What this means that previously public conversations with users can now be done in private if required.

This will allow a more intimate engagement with customers and prospects. This feature can be turned off if required.

3. No Default Landing Page

In the current design which will be superseded at the end of the month you were able to set a default landing page. This allowed the administrator of the page to control what page appeared as your default Facebook landing page. This means that practice of “Fan gating” pages to garner more organic “likes” will not be able to be done any more by driving people to that custom tab.

4. Only 4 Tabs are Visible

All tabs were visible with the old design on the left hand side of the Facebook page previously you were able to put your custom tabs. The implications of this is that you will need to choose wisely which tabs you want to place here.

The photos tab is not able to be moved or changed but you can control which of the other 3 tabs you want to feature including icon images.

5. Featuring Content

You can now “pin” content that you want to appear at the top of the “Timeline”. This will allow you to feature content such as blog posts, images or calls to action in this prominent position.

This is indicated by the the yellow “marker” at the top right.

So what do you think about the new changes?

How will you adapt your Facebook page to the new design and functions?

More Reading

• Do Shared Links Last Longer on Twitter or Facebook
• What 3 Content Types Drive the Most Interaction on Facebook
• How to Increase Your Blog Traffic by 55% with One Button
• 5 Motivations for Sharing Content
• 20 Ideas for Social Media Content that Engages
• Is it Better to Share on Google, Facebook or Twitter?
• 9 Questions to Ask your Customers When Creating Content

Image by sherifer22

Coca Cola has been part of popular culture for over 100 years and has been called a “Vision Brand“.

Its marketing and communication is purposeful and connects with its audience in a way that makes it stand out from its competitors.

Its mission is not about selling products but to create significant positive change in the world that makes the world a better place.

Coca Cola’s mission statement

• To refresh the world
• To inspire moments of optimism and happiness
• To create value and make a difference

This permeates their marketing and brand postioning

Moving to Content Excellence

Recently they have realised that their marketing strategy that has worked well for them for decades needed to evolve and as such they are moving from “Creative Excellence” to “Content Excellence“

Creative excellence has always been at the heart of Coca Cola’s advertising and they have decided that content is now the key to marketing in the 21st century on a social web.

Content for Coca Cola is now the “Matter” and “Substance” of “Brand Engagement”

The 30 Second TV Ad is no Longer King

Coca Cola has also come to the conclusion that the world has moved on from the 30 second TV ad. So has the the Old Spice brand and many other businesses who are embracing social media as part of their marketing strategy.

We need to move towards a genuine consumer collaboration model that builds buzz and adopts a more iterative approach to content creation.

Learning how to fuel the conversations, act and interact has never been more important.

Consumers ideas, creativity and conversations have been set free with the evolution of social networks, learning to leverage and wrangle those conversations to increase your brand visibility is now a vital part of your marketing.

So what can we learn from Coca Cola’s new marketing strategy?

How have they moved from “Creative Excellence” to “”Content Excellence”

Insight #1: Create Liquid Content

The purpose of content excellence is to create “Ideas” so contagious that they cannot be controlled this is what is called “liquid content”.

On a social web people can easily share ideas, videos and photos on social networks such Facebook.

So create content that begs to be shared whether that be an image, a video or an article.

Insight #2: Ensure your Content is Linked

The next part of the equation is to ensure that these ideas create content that is innately relevant to

• The business objectives of your company
• The brand
• Your customer interests

This is “Linked” content…. Content that is relevant and connected to the companies goals and brand.

Ensure that the content communicates your message that is congruent with your mission and values.

Insight #3: Create Conversations

Coca Cola has realised that the consumer creates more stories and ideas than they do so the goal is provoke conversations and then “Act” and “React” to those conversations 365 days of the year.

The new “Distribution Technologies” of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook provide greater connectivity and consumer empowerment than ever before.

Don’t just publish but interact with your audience and tribe.

Insight #4. Move onto Dynamic Story Telling

On traditional media in the past, story telling was static and a one way street. Television and newspapers shouted at you with no means of interaction.

Coca Cola has come the realisation that to grow their business on the social web they need to move on from “One Way Story Telling” to “Dynamic Story Telling“

This means you need to allow the story to evolve as you interact and converse with your customers. You need to converse with your customers in many media formats and social networks.

Storytelling has moved on from static and synchronous to multifaceted, engaged and spreadable.

Insight #5: Be Brave and Creative with Your Content Creation

Part of the new Coca Cola content strategy is applying a 70/20/10 Investment principle to creating “Liquid content“.

• 70% of your content should be low risk. It pays the rent and is your bread and butter marketing (should be easy to do and only consumes 50% of your time)
• 20% of your content creation should innovate off what works.
• 10% of your content marketing is high risk ideas that will be tomorrows 70% or 20%…. be prepared to fail

This provides a blueprint regarding moving on from just developing white papers, to trying some content that is more visual, courageous and engaging in web world that has embraced multimedia and interactive content.

What About You?

Do you create conversations with your marketing? How many people are talking about your stories on Facebook?

Is your content liquid, linked and multi-faceted?

More Reading

• 10 Reasons Why “Liquid” Content Should be Included in Your Social Media Marketing
• What are 10 Addictive Types of Content?
• How to Increase Your Blog Traffic by 55% with One Button
• 5 Motivations for Sharing Content
• 20 Ideas for Social Media Content that Engages
• Is it Better to Share on Google, Facebook or Twitter+
• 9 Questions to Ask your Customers When Creating Content

Image by KB35

I had the privilege of speaking at the BE-Wizard Web Conference in Italy a few weeks ago and present four keynotes on topics including social media marketing strategies,the top trends in social media and content marketing.

After attending the conference over the 2 days at the sea side holiday resort city of Rimini, I decided to grab the opportunity to take a vacation break and explore the sights, history and gastronomic delights of Italy.

The trip has also been an educational and invigorating exercise in blogging while travelling and keeping up the discipline of maintaining and monitoring my social networks while on the move by train and motel.

Most of the trains in Italy have power, so the challenge of ensuring having enough electrical juice to keep the batteries of the iPhone, the laptop and the iPad powered up has been largely successful. (I would recommend though taking a power board to charge multiple devices at one time)

The 3 Essential Mobile Devices for the Travelling Blogger

On landing in Rome, some time was taken to ensure I had a local SIM which provides cost effective broadband mobile access that allows mobile blogging, communication and the ability to maintain the social networks.

1. The Laptop

The laptop is of course the main mobile blogging station and has the tools for putting the blog posts together. This includes my “can’t do without” software tool for screen shots and image management “Snagit”, that is vital for including those images that are essential on an increasingly visual web.

2. The iPhone

The iPhone has been good for posting Instagram photos to Twitter and Facebook, checking my Facebook timeline and viewing Hootsuite for Tweets and direct messages. It is also my Internet tethering device that provides my Keeping in touch via email is a breeze as the Italian mobile broadband is quite fast and very accessible even in out of the way alleyways and the five awesome and picturesque headlands that are in the “Italian Riviera” called the Cinque Terre. Some tunnels even provided internet access!

3. The iPad

This the is the consummate tourist guide and tool you can’t do with out once you have used it. It provides you with the Google GPS map function that ensures you can find your way in places like Florence. It is also great to find restaurants and cafes with the “TripAdivisor” app. It also is the perfect research device for finding about the local area and highlights. The local information center is now not required. Travelling while working is becoming easier and more convenient and the mobile connected devices are freeing us from being bound to a desk or even your own country.

The Latest Mobile Web Facts and Figures

The growth of the social networks over the last few years has been matched by the mobile internet with smart phones sales approaching nearly 500 million units in 2011. The synergy that these 2 fast tracking trends provide is changing how we work and play.

So what are some facts, figures and statistics worth noting?

• The smartphone sales were up over 63% in 2011 from 2010 (488.5 million)
• 5.9 billion people now use mobile phones globally
• Over 300,000 apps have been developed in the past 3 years and downloaded more than 10.9 Billion times
• 77% use mobile phones for search
• Social networking accounted for 50% of all page views on mobile phones in 2011
• Facebook mobile users quadrupled in 2 years from 50 million to 200 million
• There are 200 million mobile video playbacks from YouTube every day
• There are 1.2 billion internet connected smartphones

The upside for mobile commerce and smart phone growth is enormous, as nearly all mobile phones will eventually become internet connected. On current numbers that means that 4.7 billion smart phones are yet to be sold and broadband enabled!

Is your business ready for the mobile web? Does your online store have a mobile app. Is your website able to be viewed on a smart phone?

Amazon is reporting close to 10% of all sales as being from Mobile devices so starting to plan for the increasingly mobile web is something that should not be ignored.

More Reading

• 15 Reasons to use your Apple iPhone
• How 3 Mobile Gadgets are Transforming our Lives
• Social Media and Mobile the Perfect Addiction
• Why You Should Be Optimizing Your Blog and Website For Mobile
• Is Mobile Social Media Making Women Geeks?
• 7 Top Trends in Social Media

Image by theOOBE

Do you wonder why your productivity has dropped over the past 2 - 3 years?

There is a time sink and it’s not television!

Those of us who are connected to the internet and that is 2 billion of us, have been distracted by social multi-media publishing machines that are pumping out staggering amounts of content with enticing high definition images and videos!

You cannot escape their allure as they tempt you to log in when you are out and about with either with your laptop, iPad or smart phone.

These enticing, tempting distractions are robbing us of time that should be spent doing productive work like washing your car, cleaning the house or doing your tax… and I know how much you all enjoy those activities!

20 Social Media Statistics

These figures reveal the huge black hole that our time disappears into when we visit Facebook, Twitter or YouTube or other social media sites.

1. One in every nine people on Earth is on Facebook ( This number is calculated by dividing the planets 6.94 billion people by Facebook’s 750 million users)
2. People spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
3. Each Facebook user spends on average 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the site
4. More than 250 million people access Facebook through their mobile devices
5. More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook
6. 30 billion pieces of content is shared on Facebook each month
7. 300,000 users helped translate Facebook into 70 languages
8. People on Facebook install 20 million “Apps” every day
9. YouTube has 490 million unique users who visit every month (as of February 2011)
10. YouTube generates 92 billion page views per month (These YouTube stats don’t include videos viewed on phones and embedded in websites)
11. Users on YouTube spend a total of 2.9 billion hours per month (326,294 years)
12. Wikipedia hosts 17 million articles
13. Wikipedia authors total over 91,000 contributors
14. People upload 3,000 images to Flickr (the photo sharing social media site) every minute
15. Flickr hosts over 5 billion images
16. 190 million average Tweets per day occur on Twitter (May 2011)
17. Twitter is handling 1.6 billion queries per day
18. Twitter is adding nearly 500,000 users a day
19. Google+ has more than 25 million user
20. Google+ was the fastest social network to reach 10 million users at 16 days (Twitter took 780 days and Facebook 852 days)

the-growth-of-social-media

Source: Search Engine Journal

What statistic amazed you the most?

Image by inju