How To Blog For Fun & Profit!

SMO: What is Social Media Optimization?

T. L. Pakii Pierce — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 01:22:45 -0400

Lee Odden over via Ed Kohler of the Technology Evangelist writes about Social Media Optimization. How does business leverage the opportunity to connect with people using consumer generated media tools?

I’ve distilled Lee’s tips into a easy to use and remember format for my readers here:

1. Get In.
Go where where your market is and investigate the Long Tail for related niches for your products and services. Get your brand is fair percentage of minds hare.

2. Fit In.
Create community around your brand for your percentage of minds hare to pay dividends. Go interactive and create conversations and networks around your brand. Participation is mandatory or someone else will start the conversation that you should have had to begin with. Meet your community where they are and find out what they want and deliver it. Fit in with the new expectations and habits of social networking.

3. Make Friends.
Do actually engage your market through community. Create interactive contests, polls, user feedback loops whatever allows your community to choose, create and contribute to the improvement of your brand. Allow them to submit home grown videos, photos, naming contests and any other unique and interesting experiences that will reinforce your brand and a great experience. This leads to trust. When you’ve been authenticated and validated by your community that can rightly influence the message of your market about your products and services. You'll find yourself in a cooperative position where consumer involvement becomes a vital contribution to your success and word-of-mouth marketing is lifting your business profile in a positive manner that helps you acquire new business.

Check out Lee’s comments by clicking the link below:

SMO: What is Social Media Optimization?: Technology Evangelist.

To read the Lee Odden's comments in full, visit him at the Online Marketing Blog: New Rules for Social Media Optimization.

Performance Marketing Learns a New Dance by MediaPost

T. L. Pakii Pierce — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 01:22:03 -0400

From MediaPost:

In the emerging context of pull media, it will be even more important for marketers to maintain an intimate connection with consumers. Relevancy and personalization are requirements in online marketing.
JupiterResearch projects that growth in online direct marketing will shift from list rentals to sponsorship and co-registration programs that work to target offers contextually. “It’s not about making the consumer believe in the brand, but communicating that the brand believes in the consumer by connecting to them with relevance and responsibility,” says Greco.
As everything goes granular, niche, and interactive, we will all learn to love the data. “The guys who get their arms around the databases are going to win,” says Fitzpatrick. “If you don’t learn how to embrace technology now, find another job.”

As new media channels continue to contribute to the fragmentation of the mass market into millions of niche markets, marketing pro’s are finding themselves in lurch of sorts. The growing influence of consumer voice and choice has accelerated the need for marketing pros to work to figure out how to manage traditionally accepted online and off line marketing tactics with that of new online consumer behavior and social markets and the technologies that make social markets possible and powerful. This new consumer behavior is that of social markets. Consumers don’t blindly trust corporate advertising any longer, they trust the voice of the people and the stories they tell about the products and services they use.

It just isn’t the marketing message any longer. The markets are the message as well. It is what is being said about business that becomes the period or full stop to messages business are putting out. The biggest online imperative for any marketer and entrepreneur is the talk it up with your consumers and prospects NOW. You must open a new media channel of communication and engage your markets as you work out new marketing approaches and related ROI.

The Long Tail has opened vast channels of interest and purchasing that is both narrow and deeper than the mainstream, broad mass market interests. The Long Tail is also where social markets are fiercely active and consumers continue to leverage new media tools to communicate, create, distribute and buy content and merchandise through decision making that is deeply influenced by the consumers themselves. Said another way, The Long Tail affords consumers the means and access to opportunities to create buzz about what they like most and share it with others who in turn act on those recommendations. Consumers now have the tools to personalize their information streams and target the content, products and services that allow them to dig deeper into highly niched and special interest content. This creates a much more rewarding buying experience for consumers and those businesses that provide buying experiences that cooperate with these new consumer behavior patterns are being richly rewarded for it.

Consumers want to be able to integrate choice, creativity and contribution into their buying experiences. They want interactivity and unique and individual experience as well. They want to customize, socialize and validate their choices. Can your enterprise integrate any of these characteristics into your customer experience with your business?

How does old school traditional marketing transition from push marketing where mainstream media channels controlled the message to new media channels such as consumer created blog content, podcasts and video where consumers are controlling the message and altering the marketing and advertising message of big business in the process? It’s won’t be easy for businesses who aren’t willing to adapt and change.

The marketing challenge is in the economics of balancing old marketing methods with the economics of reaching into the Long Tail of ecommerce and into new and emerging markets that aren’t as visible, are vigorously consumer controlled through opinion, contribution, filtering and personalization and are becoming very profitable and stable sources of income and opportunity.

This is an insightful article about the challenge of marketing for Web 2.0. Read more by clicking the link below:

MediaPost Publications - Getting In The Front Door -.

JupiterResearch Adds Research Service Dedicated to Social Marketing

T. L. Pakii Pierce — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 23:59:24 -0400

JupiterResearch gears up to deliver social marketing tactics and help businesses leverage new and interactive social media tools and methods.

Consumer Generated Content as Vital Sales Channel

T. L. Pakii Pierce — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 23:15:34 -0400

Great article today from Advertising Age but first…

How often have you clicked away from a product purchasing decision only because of the fact that you could not find a review of the product or service? I know I have done it more often than not.

Consumer reviews have become a vital part of my purchasing decisions and are more and more an instinctive part of the purchasing process. As online shoppers we expect to the have access to product reviews and we expect the opportunities to submit our reviews as well.

Just another part of the interactive, participatory open web that is characteristic of Web 2.0 and new media technologies for online publishing such as blogs, RSS, and podcasting distributed audio and video.

Customer feedback is a powerfully trusted voice that is highly influential on merchant sales. A Jupiter Research survey of online shoppers revealed that 48% of online shoppers it critical that retailers post reviews. This means of course that “one of two people are going to leave your web site if you don’t have ratings and reviews,” says Brett Hurt, founder of Bazaarvoice.

Here are a few thought provoking quotes from the article Advertising Age - Consumer-Written Product Reviews Increase in Importance:

“…a signal that reviews themselves have become a major sales and marketing tool. Their mere presence on an e-commerce web site is among the most important factors in turning a visitor into a buyer.”
“A report from Jupiter Research, for instance, issued a call for retailers to "use consumer-created content throughout the full circle of customer interaction," citing research that 48% of online shoppers find it critical that retailers post reviews. That report also found that the number of online shoppers who found reviews the most important feature in a site doubled from 2005 to 2006. “
“Product reviews written by real people are perhaps the most under appreciated slice of the consumer-generated-media universe, the explosion of which has captivated the advertising and media worlds. But as marketers fixate on getting their virals on YouTube and making friends on MySpace, these relatively unsexy product write-ups have quietly become the most common form of consumer content -- Forrester puts it as the most-used form of peer-generated content -- not to mention the one with the most direct impact on purchase decisions.”

Consumer reviews are not new, yet the socialization of content on the web as living, persistent, trusted and by the people for people has created a new value chain for online merchants to factor into their marketing strategies going forward.

Consumer review enabled ecommerce is now being considered a primary activity for merchants large as small as research and bottom line revenues bear witness to the increase or decrease in ecommerce fortunes based on providing consumers access to product reviews.

This drives home the point of openness, authenticity and consumer control. Word of mouth is powerful. As consumers we want to read it and write it and we’re will to make that point clearly through our purchasing power. What is just as important and perhaps exciting is the application of RSS technologies to literally channel reviews for increase web traffic generation and increase revenues.

Question for you: Got Reviews?

Read the full article: Advertising Age - Consumer-Written Product Reviews Increase in Importance.

Create Blog Content with Microsoft Live Writer

T. L. Pakii Pierce — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 21:53:50 -0400

Microsoft releases a free and beta version of a new blog writing tool called Microsoft Live Writer. As with most graphical user interface blog writer tools, this one also let's you create blog content in WYSIWYG fashion. Of course, that is the Microsoft way for web content development anyway. Not a bad thing depending on how hardcore of a coder you are or the level of control you need for tweaking content on the back end your client tool or server.

Installation

Installing Live Writer is a simple process. Just download the Microsoft msi file and double-click to launch the installer (pictured at right). After the installation is complete you will prompted to configure Live Writer to create blog content for Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces or you can configure it for your custom blog setup. Currently, Live Writer supports the RSD, Metaweblog, and Movable Type API's. I haven't had a chance to test compatibility and usability across different blog software platforms yet.

Features

I just got back from a long deserved week long vacation in Jamaica. My wife's place of birth. I spent all of July on the road and traveling doing IT engagements which prevented me from posting here since I began publishing content here again a few months back.

No Problem, Mon!

My mention of my vacation to Jamaica provides a segue for mentioning the Map Publishing feature of Live Writer. It's like a smaller version of Google Maps for your blog. You can do a high level map like the one I've inserted at left or your can drive down to more details is that is suitable.

Wow factor his is pretty low for me but it is one of the things that may not be as cool because it won't be used that much but becomes really cool when you want to share a location or directions with our readers in a very visual way within your blog content. The Interface is pretty clean and simple to use. Standard formatting bar and menu's are located across the top of the interface with quick access to features located in a Sidebar to the right. The interface looks, feels and functions like the standard MS Office family of products so if you familiar with MS Office, you will right at home getting up and running with this blog content creation tool.

Overall...

Eh...it's okay. Being that it is beta, it seems to work well but which much left for the developer community to pick up on an implement such as support for Tagging, insertion of audio and video into blog posts, and photo sharing support for sites like Flikr. Definitely not a bad start for a free tool that is highly Microsoft-centric.

Found via... MS Blog Tool Goes Into Beta - ComputerWorld Blogs.

Further Reading

Windows Live Writer - The Good, The Bad, The Surprising

Introducing Windows Live Writer - Digg.com