Techno//Marketer

Don't forget the rest of the digital puzzle

With all of the buzz around social media it's easy to overlook the rest of the digital marketing puzzle. Yes, it's fun to talk about Twitter and Facebook and the other new bright shiny objects, but they're just one component of a balanced online marketing strategy.

Take a look at the following chart from e-Marketer that shows how US adults prefer to have companies communicate with them. Note that email is still almost twice as requested as web sites.

That being said, social media has the opportunity to help drive business, create valuable content and serve as a landing point for various customer segments. Content is the foundation of any quality experience online, just ask anyone who's run a website.

Email - Social media (from Twitter to blogs) is centered around constant content updates. It's also a rule that very few people actually participate by commenting or adding content. Most people participate by reading and clicking (which is just as valuable in my opinion). Email is a perfect way, however, to summarize the best, most relevant conversations that are taking place.

Search - Search engines absolutely love social media content. It's categorized, updated frequently and is full of metadata. Results from blogs and other social media outlets are showing up in search result pages alongside corporate websites and official releases. The more relevant, popular, trusted sources will rise to the top...many times they'll be blogs.

Advertising - Sites like Facebook are full of user data that is being leveraged by marketers to create timely, relevant, targeted ads. Facebook made poor decisions early on with their Beacon program, but smart marketers are using the targeting to eliminate waste and only pay for the qualified clicks.

With social media as one component of digital marketing mix, keep thinking about how it can integrate with other tactics. How can you use the content generated in emails, ads, mobile messaging, search targeting, etc.? How can you extend it offline into physical items for marketing. Look at examples like Moo.com that allow you to create social artifacts that lead people back to your space online.

Social media is not an island,
it's a high-power engine on the larger marketing ship.

Social media isn't the end-all-be-all, but it offers marketers unparalleled opportunity to participate in relevant ways. It also provides a launchpad for other marketing tactics. Social media is not an island, it's a high-power engine on the larger marketing ship.

Technorati Tags:
digital, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, Techno//Marketer

The influence of digital

As a rule, I only talk about my work and my company when I know it will add value to what you do. That's certainly the case today as Fleishman-Hillard (my company) and Harris Interactive release our Digital Influence Index Study. This study was conducted in Europe (using the UK, France and Germany as the initial round of countries), but you can see trends emerge that I think are global in nature.

(You can download the key findings, the whitepaper and the FAQ for the study.)

The study looks to really dig in to the role that the internet plays in the lives of consumers. It answers the following questions:

• Influence: What is the influence of the internet compared to other media?
• Behavior: What online behaviors are consumers adopting?
• Impact on decisions: What is the impact of the internet on specific consumer decisions?
• Attitudes: What are consumer attitudes towards the internet?
• Geography: What are the differences by country?

The actual Digital Influence Index number shown below in the pie charts is compiled like this:

The chart to the right compares the influence of different forms of media on decision making. As you can see the internet is more influential in each country than any other type of media. It's nearly twice as influential as TV and eight times more influential than traditional print media. Interestingly, consumers spend a marginal amount more time on TV than the Internet, but it's not effecting their decisions proportionally.

The study found that consumer behavior falls into one of five categories. They are research, commerce, communication, mobility and publishing. While you can read more detail in the full report, some highlights are:

• 80% of online consumers use the net to comparison shop
  
• 3 out of 4 use the net to manage bank accounts
  
• 30% post a comment to an online newsgroup or website during a typical week
  

Here is how these behaviors relate adoption levels and influence

Though the study found the internet influential, it showed that there are still trust issues that have to be overcome for it to continue to grow. Trust of information from other users, trust of government information and information provided by companies were all relatively low. Trust in commerce was a little better and trust of the security of communications channels was pretty high as well.

Key Findings:

• Across all three countries addressed by the study, the Internet has roughly double the influence of the second strongest medium — television — and roughly eight times the influence of traditional print media. This indicates a need and an opportunity for companies to reprioritise their communications to address the media shift in consumer influence.
  
• Consumers use the Internet in different ways to make different decisions. For example, consumers are more likely to seek opinions of others through social media and product-rating sites when it comes to making decisions that involve choices that have a great deal of personal impact (e.g., healthcare options or major electronics purchases), but use company-controlled sources when making transactional decisions on commoditised items like utilities or airline tickets.
  
• While consumers see the clear benefits of the Internet on their lives, they continue to have concerns about Internet safety and the trustworthiness of some of the information they find online. In the UK, for example, 66 percent of online consumers state that the Internet helps them make better decisions, but just 28 percent trust the information on the Internet provided by companies.
  

I think this quote from Dave Senay (our CEO) addresses the key point from my perspective:

"The research shows that the Internet stands out as the most important medium in the lives of European consumers today, but there's a mismatch between the impact of the digital channel across a wide range of consumer behaviours and decisions and the proportion of resources organisations generally are allocating to it relative to other media.

Insights provided by this study will help communicators be more strategic in their marketing mix. At the same time, we need to be mindful about the concerns expressed about safety and trust, which underscores the need for digital engagement with consumers based on open and honest representation."

So what should companies and marketers do with this knowledge?

• Given the influence of the Internet, audit your current marketing spend and see how it aligns with reality and the influence of the medium
  
• Make sure information that is provided is done so in a transparent, honest manner with full representation
  
• SEM/SEO are crucial as search drives the way people find information
  
• Join the conversation online, support the community and engage in a transparent manner
  
• Keep an eye on mobile trends and poll consumers to gauge demand for such an offering
  

So, what do you think about the information? This is based in Europe, but do you see correlations with the US? You can download the entire white paper here, which includes all of the information above with more charts and graphs.

Technorati Tags:
branding, marketing, Matt Dickman, mobile, PR, search, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer, technology, Fleishman-Hillard

On widgets and micro interactions

Next Monday I will be on a panel discussion at first Widget Web Expo to be held in the US. The panel is full of brilliant thinkers including David Armano (who is moderating), David Malouf (an Interaction Designer for Motorola), InternetGeekGirl herself Steph Agresta, Steve Rubel (SVP at Edelman Digital) and Ian Schafer (CEO of Deep Focus). The panel is centered around a passion of mine, micro interactions.

        

Micro interactions with brands are very powerful tools for marketers to engage with users where they live online. What I mean is that widgets and other micromedia are location agnostic. You can take an experience like a widget (or a service like Twitter) and put it on your phone, blog, website, desktop, etc. You move them as you like and engage with them in the way you want.

Widgets are portable, brand gateways

Widgets can live on websites and blogs and look like containers for third party information like these:

Services like iGoogle and MyYahoo are made entirely of widgets. You select what you want on the page, move them around and remove them when they stop adding value.

If you run OSX or Vista you can have widgets on your desktop that do any number of tasks.

Most importantly, these widgets enable you as a marketer to allow your customer to have a window into your brand. Are you taking advantage of that? Widgets can stream live video, include maps, offer exclusives and really add value.

So what is a widget to you? Do you have a model that is stuck in your mind or do you think broadly about widgets? Considering that you can have an entire website or transact commerce inside a widget there is no real limit to what you can do.

Technorati Tags:
branding, marketing, Matt Dickman, micromedia, PR, social media, Techno//Marketer, technology, Twitter, widgets, Widget Web Expo

Owning your digital identity

Do you own your corporate domain name? It sounds kind of silly in 2008 doesn't it?

Let's go a level deeper. Do you own your personal .com name (i.e. www.mattdickman.com)?

That may be a bit more of a stretch for some of you, but it's crucial from a personal branding perspective. Just ask Shel Israel who did not have www.shelisrael.com purchased and someone else put up a site devoted to poking fun at him.

Other heavyweights like Robert Scoble (www.robertscoble.com) don't own their domain names either. Re-acquiring a domain name from a cybersquatter has some legal precedent, but it can rack of legal fees or large one-time purchase amounts.

Do you own your Twitter, YouTube and Flickr usernames?

However, let me ask you this. Do you own your personal/corporate Twitter username? How about your YouTube username? How about your Flickr username? If you don't, it's probably a good idea that you do (they're mostly free anyway). I lost out personally on my YouTube name because I used my nickname instead. You may not acquire them all, but you can sure try. These usernames do come up with search result pages adding to the importance of owning your identity.

The risk to your reputation that you run when somebody does register your username is potentially huge. There is no legislation (which I am aware of) that addresses these micro level identity-squatters. It could get to a point where people/companies have to pay for their usernames ala the late 1990's domain name deals.

Once you have acquired the usernames you will need to decide how, if at all, you use the account. While I don't like the fact that accounts may sit empty in the short-term, it is advisable that you secure your ID as soon as possible.

What are you waiting for? Go get your identity!

[Update: It looks like Shel Holtz and I are on the same page today. Check out his post on the same topic with FriendFeed.]

Technorati Tags:
branding, communications, PR, social media, social networks, strategy, Techno//Marketer, identity, reputation management

The scalability of language and conversations

There is a game that every American kid plays in school at one point in time called telephone (also known as Chinese whispers). The idea is that all of the kids line up in a single-file line and then the person on one end of the line whispers a sentence to the person next to them like "Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple, pass it on". What always happens though, is as the message is passed along it evolves and changes until the last person has something like "Apples are oh so good for you". (The game only works until the age when kids know what the experiment is and then they start intentionally changing it.)

Now, imagine you were playing the same game in a room where nobody spoke the same language. One of the biggest challenges for most marketers, journalists, advertisers and PR practitioners who leverage the Web to operate in the global economy is the scalability of language. This is something that I think about often as I blog, record videos and audio and I work day-to-day on global campaigns for major brands.

Machine translation is nearly useless. What I mean by machine translation is the use of automatic translation scripts (like Google Translate or Systran). This is almost 100% useless unless you only need a vague idea of what is being talked about. There is no substitute for localized translation by a native speaker.

The normal tactic for most marketers, when dealing with language, is to create multiple versions of content all translated into the local dialect under a global umbrella. This works well for written content (outside of having multiple copies of content), but you end up with divergent conversations even though the ideas overlap and each would benefit from the other's experience.

The limitations of video
One area that I feel the effects of more often than not is the limitation of video. When I create a video in English, I am almost entirely locked in to only reach English speakers. It doesn't do much good to Spanish speakers or German speakers, because so much of the value is in the spoken word.

At the same time, video is a superior tool to bridge distance and make people feel like they are together. It's also great for education purposes. So, how can we bridge the scalability of language as marketers, content creators and human beings?

The challenge of conversations
Another big challenge happens when organic customer conversations cross languages. Right now there is no real good way to combine conversations from language silos. Imagine the perspective we could have if people from around the world could have cross-language conversations. That would certainly be powerful.

Most social networks are separated as well where each language is kept separate from each other. Bi-lingual users have a very hard time crossing back and forth. The experience is certainly not fluid. Word of mouth suffers the same limitations.

Over the next couple of days I am going to feature a few of the ways that language is slowly and methodically starting to scale with content.

In the meantime, how do you deal with language? Do you ignore it for now or is it something that is always at the back of your mind? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Technorati Tags:
Google, marketing, Matt Dickman, PR, social media, Techno//Marketer, conversations, language, social networks

Video from Startup Camp

Thanks to the multi-talented Neil Vineberg and his stealth video abilities (it's a long story) here is a set of videos from our panel discussion this past Sunday at Moscone South. Kudos again to my fellow panelists CK, Jyri Engestrom and Adam Metz.

Brand

Messaging and Positioning

Social Media

[Feed readers click through to the post for the video.]

Technorati Tags:
branding, communications, marketing, Matt Dickman, PR, social media, Startup Camp, Sun Microsystems, Techno//Marketer, video

Redefining reach; the new marketing equation

While I was at StartupCamp this past Sunday here in San Francisco a few of the future founders came up to me asking my advice on how they should approach PR/advertising.

Many of their questions (as small pre-startups) echo the same quandary that major marketers are facing. What is the right way to get the message out in a measurable, cost effective manner. In larger companies it really seems that they value the medium (seeing a spot run in primetime, an article in a major newspaper) more than the benefits that come out of them.

One of the ways that I tried to help guide them and explain why social media is so powerful is the following scenario. Look at these two equations and let me know which one has the most benefit to you:

1. Message 1,000,000 to possibly reach 100

2. Personally reach 100 who influence 1,000 who influence 10,000 who influence 1,000,000

They are two very disparate scenarios, but that is social media in a nutshell. You're not wasting millions of untraceable impressions on TV, radio and print buys. You're forming real relationships with people that spread their version of your message along the chain.

It seems pretty clear right? But this is a huge mental leap for most marketing organizations. The new model is about building relationships that grow and spread to new relationships. Here is a graphical representation of this shift. Advertising will have diminishing returns over time as social connections will deliver more and more value.

There is a huge value paradigm shift that has to happen here. The traditional scenario is very front weighted with value, but it is constantly in a state of decline as time goes on. You pay for the creation of the ad and the media buy and then sit back and pray.

With the social media option, you invest up front, but your spending has to scale as your message spreads to new audiences over time. The value you get takes longer to build and catch up with the advertising model, but it will eventually exceed it. That's a hard thing to budget, but it's important to note.

How do you help people make this jump? It's possible, but it takes time and dedication. What are your thoughts on the equations?

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, PR, strategy, Techno//Marketer, advertising, social media, influence, reach

Blogging from Sun's Startup Camp

I'll be speaking on a panel at Sun Microsystems' Startup Camp 5 at Moscone South today. They're expecting 500-600 attendees to this free event. I'll be updating this post throughout the day, so check back throughout the day.

We follow up Sun CEO, and blogger, Jonathan Schwartz. The panel is titled "Notes From Mission Control: Rules For A Successful Media Launch" and my fellow panelists are S. Neil Vineberg, Jyri Engestrom (co-founder of Jaiku), Christina (CK) Kerley and Adam Metz (theMIX). It's going to be a great time. Stay tuned.

There is a great vibe here and sense of community.

Keynote: Jonathan Schwartz (Sun's CEO):
I was really impressed with how casual Jonathan was and how passionately he talked about Sun's involvement in the startup community. After his initial remarks he was joined on stage by Om Malik of GigaOm. Om pressed Jonathan on a number of issues, none more inappropriate than his question about how Schwartz felt about having to lay off 2,500 people recently. Schwartz handled himself very well, spoke directly to the question and came across as somebody who really cares about his people.

My Panel:
I won't say a whole lot about the panel. Mashable had a really good recap thanks to Kristen Nicole. I was pretty mad that I missed Kristen and Pete after the panel as I had to duck below the event for an interview. I'll catch them on my next swing through the Bay area.

The Unconference:
This was my first true unconference and I liked what I saw. If you aren't familiar with it either, a portion of the event is planned on the spot by the attendees. People post sessions they want to host and then people show up. I sat in on a great discussion on Twitter and information overload (that's a subject for a future post).

I spent a little time with serial entrepreneur and overall great guy Yobie Benjamin. He's working on a world-changing startup right now and I was really amazed by his passion and energy around it. If you're a super developer and looking for a challenge you should reach out to him ASAP.

I was also able to spend a lot of quality time with CK and Neil Vineberg who, I must say, are two of the most kind, hard working, organized and brilliant people I know. Neil invited me to this event and took the time to show me some of the magnificent sights of SF. CK, as you probably know, is such a giving, helping jewel of a person. She made sure Neil showed me the right things and helped me to refine the points I made on the panel. It was a great experience because of them.

Technorati Tags:
branding, Matt Dickman, PR, Startup Camp, Sun Microsystems, Techno//Marketer, Jaiku

Do you trust trust research?

I have seen posts and Twitter messages about the newly release trust research that Forrester's Josh Bernoff posted about earlier today. I have a great deal of respect for Josh, I just have some questions. In the hopes of getting answers to some of my questions about the survey I am going to post them here and ping the people at Forrester to engage and answer some of the common ones that have come up.

Here is the chart in question:

Questions

• What are the demographics of the survey respondents? Marketers are going to take this research at face value without knowing if this research might scale from generation to generation.
  
• Does the category "known expert" include or exclude bloggers? For example, if you're 18 and looking for product reviews of technology chances are good that Engadget and Gizmodo are very high on the list.
  
• With the 30% trust of bloggers, is that for unknown bloggers who may come up in a random search or it is generalized to all bloggers? Does that differ from an unknown opinion site vs. a known opinion site?
  
• As the tail quickly falls from short to long for the majority of product categories, mass media coverage drops out of the picture. Does this take into account long tail, niche categories or are you talking about things like refrigerators and vacuums vs. left handed Cuban cigars or organic dog biscuits?
  
• Finally, I found this information through Twitter and blogs. Do I need to wait until somebody I knows calls me or I see it on TV to trust it?
  

Feel free to add your own questions to this list. What is your take on the research? Does this jive with your feelings of trust? Do you trust it?

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, Forrester, trust

Do you communicate at the speed of Google? Why you must

Communication is happening at a faster pace than ever before, but many companies are not adapting their communication strategies/processes to keep up.

Search engines are indexing content within minutes, micromedia outlets like Twitter are delivering messages real time and blogging allows mass communication to happen with very few barriers. Rumors and leaks will never go away, but companies now have the tools to be the first to provide key, relevant information.

The 15 minute Google rule.

Almost without exception within 15 minutes of posting to this blog I receive a Google alert email that there was a new post matching one of my keywords. (Seriously, if you haven't done this yet, do yourself a favor and click here to set them up.) I have "Matt Dickman", "Techno//Marketer", "technomarketer" and "Fleishman-Hillard" alerts set up as well as alerts for competitors and clients. I often get Google alerts for items before they show up in my RSS reader or are floated to me in email.

[Update: I posted this entry at 9:43pm and I received my Google alert email that it was indexed at 10:02pm. See screenshot below.]

This is invaluable information to have and it illustrates the point that I am trying to make. Companies who have typically thought that they could control the news and release it when and to whom they saw fit are at the end of the line.

Mergers and acquisitions, executive departures, layoffs and regulatory approvals are just a few of the topics that employees, shareholders and the general public are hearing about in near real time. It takes just one blog post, a Twitter message (the example that comes to mind was the Yahoo layoffs that were broadcast on Twitter as they happened) or an email that sneaks past the firewall and the story is broken. Google's search spiders are constantly scouring servers looking for new information and once found (or told) they broadcast it to the world.

Danger Will Robinson
There is danger for companies in communicating in real time. Facts still need to be vetted and rumors that are unfounded can hurt a company's reputation. However, the tools are in place to allow faster, transparent communication to all of the stakeholders so that they don't find out from a Google Alert. Companies should be using these tools to become more connected with their audiences and be the first voice on any issue that impacts their people or their business.

How might this play out?
Here are a couple of ways that I can see companies adopting new technologies to communicate more quickly and more accurately in the future (and some are already doing this today):

• Sales force empowered by micromedia. Go beyond names like Twitter and Jaiku to the core technology behind those services. Imagine a company that has a private version of Twitter to communicate in real time with their sales force. Price changes roll out in seconds, questions are answered quickly and customer service follow up is prompt.
  
• Internal communications blog. Some companies are using internal-only blogs, but more will definitely start. This is a great way to create a two-way dialog and communicate information and changes quickly and transparently. Once information is in the open, everybody feels like they're on the same page.
  
• Targeted blogs. Companies will start creating blogs that are focused on key audiences (investors, customers, employees) and communicate to each in a more open and rapid manner.
  
• Email is still key. Many executives and employees will be more easily reached via emails that fit into their existing workflow. Companies will need to adapt their processes to use this as a key delivery vehicle for internal communication.
  

Need to adapt the communications process
How many times have you read a press release or seen a story that you heard about weeks ago? I would venture that happens a lot and a big reason is the outmoded model most companies use to create, refine and release information. Let's look at two models, first the old model and second the new model.

Do you want to communicate information to your audience or do you want Google to do it?

The old model: In the old model (which is still the predominant model) news is written in the form of a release. It goes from agency to client with some back and forth for refinement. Then it gets refined to a final version. This version goes through legal review and some type of corporate communications review. If there are changes, it goes back and loops through the process again. The final version gets scheduled for release, the wire service queues it up and on the agreed upon date/time it drops.

The new model: In the new model, communications are an open book. Issues are addressed in real time, communicated quickly with thoroughly written copy, supported with video/audio and open to feedback/discussion. The good and bad are handled in the same way. Everyone stays on the same page and nobody feels like they're the last to know or that they've been blindsided.

This won't work for highly regulated companies, but it could work for a majority of the rest. Companies have to get over the command and control mentality to communications. Don't get me wrong, there is still strategy to messaging and communications need to be thought out, but it needs to happen more rapidly, more flexibly and less forcibly.

What do you think? Can this work? Have you seen examples of companies using new technology to communicate more quickly with the right messages? Let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, technology, PR, communications, strategy