As a committed user I have come to rely on Twitter for news, updates, connections, information, and to follow the fortunes and activities of companies, brands and people. It’s often the first web site I visit each morning, and the last of the day. Using Tweetie on the iPhone makes Twitter easily accessible when I’m on the move.

So could I, and millions of others like me, live without it now?  The short answer is no. It got me thinking “what would I pay to keep using it”?

The value that Twitter adds to my professional and personal life is well worth paying for. By way of example, I have had more success resolving Optus phone and wireless issues by using their Twitter account than by phoning their call centre. Professionally I have connected with some smart people who are supportive and willing to provide real business opportunities.

I would also prefer to pay for an ad-free Twitter. My threshold is about A$25 p.a. Assuming that this was an option, how much would you pay? Answer the poll below and also let me know your thoughts on paying for Twitter.

1. Set up a survey/poll on your web site. If you don’t have a web site (and why not??) then send it via email. Offer a prize/incentive to people who respond. Ask questions of your customers or prospects that extract useful information to be used in your next marketing strategy or campaign.
2. Make a special offer to your top 5 or 10 customers. It could be as simple as making them aware of a special price you have, or an incentive to make their next purchase sooner rather than later.
3. Select a person to use your product/service for a short period (say one week or month) and ask them to write a blog diary of their thoughts and experiences. Promote this to your target audience on your web site, advertising, social media, etc. and encourage others to comment on the diary. Analyse the comments to look for useful material to use in future marketing plans.
   
4. Run a sale with a difference; use a reverse auction (ideal for retailers). If you’re unfamiliar with reverse auctions read an explanation on the NineMSN site. There are established web sites such as Limbo and Low Bids that you can use to run the auction so it does not require you to invest in new technology.
5. Arrange a spectacular event or buy group discounted tickets to a show, invite your best (and maybe some of your worst) customers. Also include your staff if possible; use the event as a performance incentive.
6. Give your e-newsletter a complete makeover, with a new design and more customised content. If you don’t have an e-newsletter then start one (a good first step is to start collecting customer emails in a database that you can send bulk emails from).
7. Create an online treasure hunt for your customers (only if they’re adept at online interaction). Use social media tools to place clues and publish outcomes on your web site or blog.
8. For businesses that rely on last minute/impulse buying decisions, try using mobile phone messaging to entice your customers to make a purchase. Text them an offer and say they have been chosen to receive a special deal with their next purchase (e.g. a gift or discount).
9. Sponsor a local community event. provide a prize, give a speech, talk to the local paper. provide special offers in conjunction with the event. All with aim of getting publicity in your local area.
10. Set up a blog. If you’re not comfortable writing this, hire a professional to plan and execute this properly so you get maximum benefits of this tactic.

Of course there are many hundreds of ways to market your products or services. Most business owners intuitively know what works best for them. I’d love to hear your suggestions, especially additional ideas to make this a more valuable resource.

I hope this list sparks some new ideas for your business. You’ll note that I have included a wide range of activities that do not all fit neatly under the ‘marketing’ umbrella. Remember that everything you do to create a sale opportunity is marketing – so get out there and make a sale!!  Be sure to let me know if you do action an idea or two, and tell me how it goes.

As with all marketing tactics, a blogging plan should be developed within the overall marketing strategy, that dictates the online marketing plan and specifically a social media strategy.  Everything is integrated and a blog is an ideal platform to create content for use in other SM channels such as Twitter (tweet announcements of your latest post), Facebook (link a post to your Facebook Wall/photo album/etc.), or YouTube (support a post topic with a video). A blog also boosts SEM through an increased online presence.

Blogs require regular posts, usually daily or weekly. A blog post must focus on one topic and provide insights, opinions, links and other relevant material on that topic. The benefit of a blog is that it creates a dialogue with readers so the author of the blog can learn what people think about the topic. They are a simple and effective research tool to tap into the minds of people who care enough about your company/brand to respond to the post.

A blog about a company or a brand would be aimed at existing and potential customers. It can describe interesting features of the company/brand, behind-the-scenes information, anecdotal stories supplied by customers, or  news about upcoming launches or updates. In fact anything that gives the public something more than they would normally find on a company web site or an advertisement. Often they are quite conversational in tone and not ‘hard sell’; from this point of view it can serve as key element in customer relationship management.

Writing a blog requires copywriting skills. It should not be left to a junior staff member – or the CEO/CMO who has grand visions of his/her own writing skills. Think of it as if you were publishing a magazine and employ professionals to handle the briefing, writing, editing and publication of the blog.The research is starting to indicate how much blogging is helping SMEs to market themselves. A 2009 study of 1500 clients by HubSpot revealed some startling statistics; read about the results here.

I found a delightful example of a small town cookie company that was literally saved by a blog. Do you know of any company/brand blogs that are achieving success in some way? Or is there a blog that is not performing too well? Please share your experiences and examples here.

Below I have begun thinking about an approach to this issue by identifying the numerous reasons, or strategic rationales, why a company would want to be connected to it’s customers, prospects and the wider community.

1. Listen

Various social media channels allow companies to set up “camp” online and listen to what people are saying about them. It may be a Facebook fan page, a blog, a specialist forum site, a YouTube channel, or a Twitter account. There are numerous listening posts and some of these should be a foundation of a social media strategy.

2. Converse

Actually saying something of value to the community of friends/fans/followers/etc. is the next tangible step a company can take when they’re “being social”. This can take many forms and requires qualified and intelligent company representatives to be responsible for online publishing (this seems obvious but its amazing how poor some company/brand communicators are).
3. React

One of the biggest areas of opportunity to constructively use social media is when a crisis or negative issue arises. The banks, telcos, airlines and other major service-based organisations are the prime suspects in this matter. How a company responds to the issue via public social networks is often as critical to the outcome as the actual compensation or redress they offer the aggrieved customer.

4. Crowd-sourcing

An increasingly popular form of “being social” is to reach out to the community via social networks to invite ideas and feedback about a specific topic. It might be to come up with a new product name, or a home-made advertising campaign, or to conduct a test marketing program. There are many opportunities to use social networks to reach out to the community with the promise of rewards and publicity for those who “win” or have their entry broadcast to a wider audience.

5. Integrate

An essential element of a successfully social media strategy is how well your conduct in social media networks aligns your company or brand with all other customer communications. It’s potentially disastrous to act online as a highly “social” organisation if this does not match up with behaviours in other areas such as customer service, product availability, price competitiveness, green and philanthropic credentials, etc.

Can you nominate other strategies or tactics that a company can be put into action using social media? What other ways can a company “be social” online?

Looking at all parts of a company identifies the many ways to better manage the Internet as a vital cog in your business. Some of the tools that may be relevant to use in your company are:

• Micro-sites focused on a single idea/product/service
• E-commerce to facilitate online sales
• MSN, Skype or Twitter
• Facebook, LinkedIn or Plaxo
• E-newsletters
• Company Wiki
• Mobile-optimised web site (WAP)
• Online polls and surveys
• Blogs and forums

For any business thinking of expanding their Internet presence, it pays to think about how all of your business needs to access and share information online. My advice to clients is to step back, take a ’1000 feet’ view of how, why and where your company can take advantage of the Net and then draw up a cohesive plan to harness the power of online communications.

How is the Internet changing your company’s business practices? Can you add to my list above, or share a good example from your own experience? Post your comments and experiences below.

Why isn’t the much-loved Walkman the player we all use to access the plethora of digital entertainment?

First, a recent history of Sony.

• Thirty-one years ago, in 1979, Sony launched the Walkman. It revolutionised music listening habits “by allowing people to carry music with them” (quote from Wikipedia that has the full Walkman story).

• Twenty-one years ago Sony purchased Columbia Pictures in September 1989 (renamed Sony Pictures Entertainment in 1991). The movie franchises they inherited include The Karate Kid, Spider-Man, Stuart Little, Men in Black, plus numerous TV programs.

• Nineteen years ago in 1991 Sony Music Entertainment was formed after they purchased CBS Records, giving them ownership of music by Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Pearl Jam…the list of major acts goes on and on. Read full list).

• In the personal/home gaming industry, Sony launched the portable game machine PlayStation fifteen years ago in December 1994 (Japan) and September 1995 (North America).

By the late 90′s Sony had the world’s leading portable music player, games player, music publishing, movie and television production studios. The Walkman was even the generic name for a portable music player.

The first mass-produced MP3 player sold in the USA in 1998, then the Apple iPod and iTunes launched in 2001. Fast forward to today and the iPod is the generic device name for accessing music, games and video content, and iTunes is the number one online destination for buying music, music videos, podcasts, movies, television shows , games – and now books!

How did Sony NOT realise that the future was a digital MP3/games device linked to a Sony-owned online distribution channel?  Did Sony really dismiss the iPod as a fad that could never usurp the Walkman’s market dominance (and overcome Sony’s famous brand loyalty)?

As a marketer with many years experience creating advertising campaigns for global consumer electronics brands like Compaq and Philips, I would love to hear your thoughts about Sony.
- Did they make a monumental error of judgment when iPod/iTunes came along?
- Why didn’t their legendary brand loyalty overcome these threats?
- Sony has abdicated their technology ‘crown’ to Apple – what do you like/dislike about Apple’s emergence as the new ‘king’ of consumer technology brands?

Back before the Internet became such a powerful and ubiquitous medium, this approach generally meant that your TVC/print ad/outdoor poster/point-of-sale creative all used the same core visual and copy line. This made sense so potential customers received a consistent brand message.

However, “integrated marketing” now means so much more than simply consistency in your creative execution. There is integrated media that aims to reach an audience across numerous channels, at different times and using a wide range of creative techniques. And there are integrated sales techniques that tracks the audience through the sales cycle, from initial enquiry to after-sales service.

In the past 10 years or so, the term has taken on further meaning: synergistic marketing tactics across digital channels and all other media. Even this has evolved from the early days of designing complementary banner ads and offline ads, to more focus on cohesive ‘messages’ rather than the visual creative elements.

I am interested to document and blog about successful (and even unsuccessful) “integrated marketing” campaigns. Would love to hear from anyone who can share their experiences. Pls submit your Comments below and I hope to get a few good examples to write about in a future blog post.

This email fails to meet some basic tenets of email best practice for a number of reasons.

1. Out-dated Customer Email List

I actually don’t have an active account with this bank (or any account for that matter). An account was opened by me online many years ago, however no money was deposited into it and since I have not had any correspondence from them in years I assumed it was closed due to being inactive. They missed an opportunity to ask if I wanted to reactivate the account, maybe with an offer of a brilliant interest rate.

2. Subject Line Blooper

One of the most important elements of successful permission-based email marketing is the Subject line wording. This email says “Message from ___” and that is completely the wrong approach because it doesn’t indicate this message contains any relevant or useful information for me. At least they would have done better to personalise it, such as “Hi Tim, here is an important message from ___.”

3. Cannot View Online

Most HTML email readers will display the images and text, however it is essential to offer readers the option to ‘View Online’. Here the link leads to a web page with an error message that says
“Information Notice – Sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. ERR432970″. Now that is seriously unacceptable.

4. Missing Unsubscribe Link

A legal requirement in Australia is for all commercial emails to contain a one-click unsubscribe function. There is no “Unsubscribe” link here. Interestingly, this email was distributed by Vision 6, a company that says on it’s web site that “Each email you send has an unsubscribe link that allows recipients to remove themselves from your list [www.vision6.com.au/spam_compliance.html]. The email copy actually says “This is an automated email and you can not respond to this email address”. They also use a ‘From’ email address of “Please_do_not_reply@”. What a non-customer friendly attitude for a bank to have, especially in an email!

5. No Signatory

Organisations should always include a signature at the bottom of their emails, as it’s the best way to indicate this message is from a person representing the sender, not just a faceless company. It should include name and title details, as well the company’s physical and web address. A link to the company web site, and even to other product/service information, is a great way to measure clicks too.

6. More Paper and Postage Costs

Further to these indiscretions, this email’s core message is quite bizarre. This bank is actually telling me that an account statement will now be mailed “at least every six months” (or “every six months” as it also confusingly states). This policy change is at odds with most major service organisations that now offer their customers the choice of receiving their statement or invoice by email or post. So why in 2009 is this bank: a) not offering a choice to receive statements in the post, by email, and/or view online, and b) now sending them by post that will increase their administration costs and effort???

All in all it seems very wrong to me. I’m sure they have a highly rational explanation for this new policy. One positive I can say is that the email was sent on a Tuesday, as research has shown that Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days to send out broadcast emails in terms of response rates (pity this email didn’t include some trackable links though).

I’d be interested in your thoughts and to hear about any other strange or ridiculous emails from large service organisations that you have received.

Today, customers demand more in-depth information about a company to help them make better business decisions. Instead of relying on advertising or PR, they’re turning to social networks, blogs, independent media sites, colleagues and even to the companies themselves.

Online social media networking is providing B2B marketers with the means to publish useful and relevant content about themselves on sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. It’s not just consumer brands that are benefiting, as many professionals use these sites to keep in touch with their peers and industry thought leaders.

A Sample B2B Marketing Idea

Many people ask me how can a B2B marketer employ social media to complement their other marketing activities. I thought I’d share a sample idea to demonstrate how an integrated media approach can work.

• Send existing customers a personal invitation to attend a regular seminar your company runs at a good quality CBD hotel. Obtain a mailing list of prospects and send them an invite too. Run an advertisement in your trade media inviting people to attend. Promote the seminars in your e-newsletter, web site, via sales reps and in all other marketing materials (brochure, flyer, poster, etc.).
• Select guest speakers who are leaders in your industry, to talk about news, trends, events, etc. that are of interest to your audience. A person from your company must also speak , to help establish a ‘personality’ for your company and to promote your products and services. This could be a senior executive from here or overseas, or one of the R&D folk who can ‘see’ the future.

Social Media Strategy

Set up a company Twitter account to specifically support the seminars.

• Invite all customers/prospects/partners/etc. to ‘Follow’ you
• Promote upcoming seminars; venue, time, speakers
• Get feedback on topics that people would like covered in future seminars
• Post links to bios of speakers
• During each seminar, get an employee to post live comments about the points a speaker is making
• Questions for speakers can be asked by Followers, so they can be asked of the speaker and answered in a reply post
• Take photos at the seminar, upload directly to Twitpic
• Post comments about industry issues, news, links to relevant articles, etc.

A company YouTube channel will extend the audience ‘reach’ of the seminar series.

• Video of each speaker can be posted (maybe edited highlights) that registered users can view (BTW those registered users are new business prospects if they’re not already a client)
• Subscribers to your YT channel receive an email when new videos are posted
• A history of seminar presentations is stored and accessible for easy future reference
• A YT channel helps your SEM as it increases your company’s online presence

A Company Blog

The topics covered in the seminars can be expanded upon in a company blog.

• Ask speakers to write a guest post to complement their speech
• Use the blog to get people commenting on the issues being discussed, and shift the discussion to linked topics
• Subscribers to your blog may become new business prospects

Public and Media Relations

The seminar series offers many PR/MR opportunities.

• Invite key journalists to attend
• Arrange press briefings after each seminar
• Send press announcements about new products and services to journalists and link them back to the seminar content on Twitter, YouTube, etc.
• Arrange for a regular article to be written for a suitable newspaper or magazine, that is leveraged off the content from the last seminar

Conclusion

Basing a marketing strategy around seminars can achieve two primary goals:

1. The face-to-face time with customers and prospects enables you differentiate yourself, to assist your customers improve their business, and to create sales opportunities that would otherwise not be possible through traditional sales and marketing tactics.
2. Seminars create customised content that can be republished across many online and offline media, including your website, brochure and e-newsletter, plus online networks such as Twitter and YouTube.

The sample plan described above is a basic approach to demonstrate how social media can be integrated into B2B marketing plans. The most critical take-out is that a company can create it’s own content for online publishing.  After all, content is king.

Do you know any good working examples of B2B marketing and social media? If so I’d love to hear from you; pls post a comment below.