Techno//Marketer - Matt Dickman on Digital Marketing and Social Technology

Want better digital strategy, ban seven dirty words

If you love strategic planning as much as I do then I am sure that one of your biggest pet peeves is when people jump to tactics straight away in a planning meeting. Despite your most desperate attempts to steer things back on course, and define what the overall strategy looks like, you die a little when someone blurts out "Let's set up a YouTube channel and Tweet about it!".

How do you get around this? Here is what I have started doing in my initial planning sessions and it seems to be working well so far. I've banned what I consider the seven dirty words of digital strategy. They are:

1. Twitter
   
2. Facebook
   
3. YouTube
   
4. MySpace
   
5. LinkedIn
   
6. Flickr
   
7. Ning
   

Why are they so bad? Because it allows people to jump to a tactic without thinking about brand essence, audience, voice, etc. It also takes attention away from a more integrated digital approach (email, loyalty programs, SEM, etc.). The pure hype behind these seven words has turned mass media and corporate boardrooms on their heads trying to figure out how to best leverage them.

So, the next time you walk into a planning meeting, lay out your list of dirty words and create a penalty for anyone who mentions them. You'll be surprised how quickly your discussions turn to audience, engagement and how fast you come up with more creative, innovative solutions. Once you have that, you can see talk about these platforms if, and when, they are determined to be the right tools to be most effective in reaching your audience.

Oh, there are more dirty words like Friendfeed and Delicious, even more general terms like blog and wiki, but removing those seven from your planning vocabulary will help you reach a new strategic mindset and come up with better solutions for your clients.

What are your seven dirty words? Let me know how this works for you!

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Technorati Tags: LinkedIn, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, strategy, trends, Twitter, YouTube, seven dirty words

Maximizing ROI: content as commerce

In my career working in the digital marketing space, I have worked on hundreds of projects for clients in practically any industry you can think of. In that time, I have had the pleasure of working on a number of e-commerce sites that provided me a fantastic perspective on designing with conversion in mind.

One of my key takeaways in doing business online is that no matter how you execute (basic website, social media engagement, search engine marketing, etc.) and no matter what industry you are in, you MUST treat your content as commerce.

I cannot tell you how many meetings I had been in where people say, "We are not an e-commerce site, how can we measure ROI?". That's a bad point of view to have and this post will hopefully work to change your mind.

So, what do I mean by content as commerce? There are a couple of steps in this process. First, you have to do the little things right from the start. Usability is, as in e-commerce, a key to making sure that users can find what they are looking for quickly.

Second, map out your site and weight content that is a priority, then compare it to your actual traffic. See a difference? Here is a good model that I have used before to help with this mapping. This is from a guest post that I did for Drew McLellan back in 2007.

	Draw a map of your current site. You can use Visio, Word, pen and paper or anything else you have at your disposal. Just treat each page/object/action as a block and show them in their hierarchy.
	Now, create a copy of the map and color code each page so that is aligns with your business goals. For this example we'll say red is a top tier page that generates revenue, orange is a second tier support page, yellow is a third tier information page and blue is non-essential.
	Now, create a copy of the color-coded map and roughly scale each section as it relates to your page view metrics so that pages with more views are larger and less views are smaller. Try to keep them in proportion. This is where people go on your site compared with your business goals. In our example, we need to create tactics that shift more views to the red blocks and less to the blue. (Note: you could also scale based on time spent on each page or other key metric)

Third, we need to assign values to content in order to get some more concrete numbers. For example, you could assign a value of $5/5 points when a consumer downloads a PDF or $25 when they sign up for your email newsletter or $30 when they become a fan on Facebook. The more you roll these numbers up across all of the channels you participate in the better. This is obviously behind the scenes, so you can try it in your own time.

Action Name	Value	#	Total
Download White Paper	$15.00	750	$11,250.00
Became a Fan on Facebook	$25.00	2,500	$62,500.00

How do you get those numbers? You can obviously make them up, but this has more impact when the numbers are real and when they have executive buy-in. Another way is to use some old school comparisons like impressions or cost-per-acquisition. Ideally you can get to a place where you start to see the metrics take shape and the more that shape is printed in dollars, the more successful you will be. (You wouldn't spend time and money promoting something useless would you?)

Keys to succeeding with content-driven sites:

• Create a clear interface for your users
  
• Rank content in the order it is valuable to the business, weigh that with the value to the consumer (these should ideally be aligned)
  
• Visualize your traffic to see where it is going and shift it to the content you value
  
• Adapt over time. You can A/B test content, tease it with advertising or promote it in email to see what works. This makes the rest of your marketing better as well.
  
• Assign values for specific actions and track it over time.
  

What are your thoughts? What would you add to this list?

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Technorati Tags: marketing, measurement, strategy, trends, Usability

Text to newsstand

I was flipping through the Economist the other day (because it exhausts me to try to actually read the whole thing) while I was on the plane and came across this insert in the magazine. I found it quite interesting and wanted to get your take.

 

The point of the service is to send a text message to receive alerts when the print publication is hitting newsstands. It's an interesting idea in the promotion of print with digital platforms. Obviously the content strategy is to release at the stands first and then online to keep print subs up.

What do you think of this? Would you sign up? Would you want this service for other printed materials? There are a number of magazines that I read but don't subscribe to for which this is an interesting idea.

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Technorati Tags: advertising, marketing, Matt Dickman, mobile, SMS, Techno//Marketer, technology, trends

Launched: Papa John's Road Trip augmented reality

Launched is a series that highlights practitioners who are using social media in consumer and B2B campaigns. The goal is to cut out the theory and rhetoric and focus on real world examples of social media in action.

This example is for a Papa John's campaign created by Fleishman-Hillard (my employer) and includes physical events, social media hooks and includes a cool augmented reality example. The campaign is in support of Papa John's 25th anniversary and ties into the Road Trip program. This post looks at the augmented reality application and tie to the broader campaign.

Here is a quick video overview of the technology:

[Feed readers please click through to the post to see the video.]

Marketing takeaways:

• Good use of technology to tie physical customer interactions back to virtual elements and then through to transaction
  
• Measurement through unique coupon codes in the augmented reality environment
  

If you have a suggestion for a future episode of Launched, drop me an email.

For my complete library of my videos for marketers, click here.

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Technorati Tags: FleishmanHillard, PapaJohns, marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, technology, trends, video, virtual worlds, web2.0, Augmented Reality

The cohesion of conversations; brands taking a #(pound)ing

The hashtag (aka the pound sign, #) is a ubiquitous part of social networking at this point. The purpose of the hashtag is to be able to track and lump a strong of asynchronous messages together for later review and analysis.

For example, a group of people coordinate and use the same keyword at the end of every tweet. You probably saw this at SXSW this year when people were ending their messages with #sxsw. You can use third party sites to aggregate those messages into a single string that is ordered by date to see how events unfold.

However, the hashtag is also being used to track the community's brand engagement. Situations like #motrinmoms, #dominos and #amazonfail now have a public timeline that will remain in place forever. The massive volume of similarly tagged content will make it very easy for anyone to find what happened and see how the company responded across search engines and social platforms.

An argument that people have used to avoid engagement in this space is that it's a relatively small sampling of people who engage in these networks. Regarding the Motrin Moms controversy, an Advertising Age article quoted a Lightspeed research study that stated 90% of women had not seen the Motrin ad that spawned the backlash online. Of the 10% who did, 8% said it negatively impacted their brand impression. While that is a small number, you cannot underestimate the power of small, passionate groups of people who use turbocharged platforms to connect with and influence other like minded people. Wildfires can start with a single match, right?

Internal listening is paramount

I can partially understand when companies have some hesitation in listening to the broad community and engaging. It's time consuming and you have to have a corporate culture to make it work. However, I do not understand companies that do not listen in the social space for employee engagement issues, brand perception problems and platform breakdowns. These types of issues are having an impact on Dominos and Amazon right now.

#dominos: This one is picking up steam now. For more info on what happened, go here.

#amazonfail: This ramped up a couple of days ago when a "glitch" in the Amazon system starting delisting GLBT titles. People responded to the "glitch" with the hashtag #glitchmyass. It seems to be trending down at the moment.

[Update] Here is page one of the Google search result for Dominos as of 10:30am on April 15, 2009. Notice entry #3 from YouTube, the top news story as well as the next three stories after the new results.

The bottom line is that these companies should have been listening and engaging all along, should have been prepared earlier with real, honest, personal responses and taken proactive steps to make things right with their community. Waiting a day to respond is WAY too long, waiting hours may even be too long.

Some things to think about:

• Listening is more important than ever
  
• Active listening can pick up issues before they become crises
  
• Community building is key (in advance of an issue)
  
• Events are being linked together by consumers for all to see
  
• The content of those interactions will live on forever
  
• The content also appears in search
  
• A few, passionate individuals can dramatically hurt or help a brand in its interactions online
  

Do you go back through hashtags to see conversations over time? Have you come across them in search results?

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Technorati Tags: listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, measurement, reputation, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, trends, hashtags

Great technology is transparent

Do you remember what the web looked like in 1995? Do you remember the pain it took to dial up and wait for the page to load? Do you remember early email systems like Pine? If you do, you know what highly visible technology feels like. You basically had to write code to make some of the things work and the experience was clunky and hard to manage.

Contrast your experience in 1995 to today. Your network is likely always on, surfing happens in seconds and your mail is a natural extension of your body (well, almost). You don't think about the technology behind Twitter, you just use it. You don't think about the hosting infrastructure behind Facebook, it's just there for you.

If you look at the Web2.0 movement and the development of social technologies, it's all about making the technology disappear. The less we think about our interactions the better the experience.

Ways to spot unnecessary technology:

• If your site was designed by a developer, chances are this is abundant
  
• If you have to think about options before you click, you need to simplify
  
• If you have to do any type of calculation in your head, you need to clarify
  
• If your site is 100% in Flash, you're probably dead on mobile platforms
  

What other ways can you spot unnecessary technology?

Take a look at the experience you create for your customers. Look at it across platforms (mobile, web, applications, widget, etc.) and ask yourself if you have to think about the technology. If you do notice it, you need to look at alternatives to improve. Can you make the process shorter, more simple or just generally more enjoyable?

How would you rate the experience with technology at the following sites? Does the technology get out of your way or do you have to think about it?

• Amazon.com
  
• Apple.com
  
• Moo.com
  
• GetSatisfaction.com
  
• Twitter.com
  
• MySpace.com
  
• Facebook.com
  
• Your local newspaper site
  
• Your website
  

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Technorati Tags: marketing, Matt Dickman, trends, web2.0, Experience , Usability

Visualizing the growth of Facebook around the world

Today at some point, Facebook passed the 200 million user mark. If you've been keeping up with my Face of Facebook global updates you know the details of this growth. If not, what are you waiting for?

As part of the momentous occasion, Facebook released a very cool heat map of the site's global growth from zero users through today. Below are the major milestones. Note the early US and european growth and how quickly it's moving throughout APAC, India, South America and parts of Africa.

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Technorati Tags:
Facebook, marketing, Matt Dickman, social networks, Techno//Marketer, trends

First//Look: Augmented reality

What do you get when you take a webcam, a piece of paper and some cool 3D animation? You get augmented reality (AR). This is relatively new though it's been experimented with for a couple of years at least. In short, AR is the combination of objects in the real world being combined with virtual objects using a webcam and some programming.

Sounds pretty cool eh? You have to see it to know what I'm talking about.

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

Examples you can try yourself right now:

• Toyota iQ
  
• Volvo Ocean Race
  
• GE Smart Grid
  

Potential uses:

• The symbols that it uses can be printed on anything; paper, t-shirts, ads, etc.
  
• Any time you want to make a physical connection with virtual objects
  
• Allows interaction and engagement with printed pieces
  
• People are working on using mobile device cameras to do this while you're on the go
  
• It's just plain cool. Give it a try!
  

BMW looks at using AR to diagnose issues and help mechanics be more efficient

Turn the real world into a huge video game

Really bring Second Life into first life

This is pretty cutting edge, so not every company is going to be comfortable with it. The hardware barrier is pretty low (webcam) so this can hit a mass audience. It's great for presenting things when in conceptual mode (architecture, cars, etc.) as well as adding interactivity to existing items.

My advice is try one of the models above and think about the possibilities in your business. The hardest part may be to stop thinking of them.

[Hat tip to the Fleishman-Hillard digital team in St. Louis for putting this back on my radar screen.]

For my complete library of my videos for marketers, click here.

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To help you stay on top of what is happening in digital marketing and social media subscribe to the Techno//Marketer podcast on iTunes. Stay informed and get access to new videos first.

 If you use another podcatcher you can grab my podcast RSS feed here.

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Technorati Tags: advertising, marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, technology, trends, video, virtual worlds, web2.0, Augmented Reality

The Face of Facebook Global Report - Q1 2009

Welcome to my Q1 2009 Global Trend report for Facebook. I prepare this quarterly look at Facebook to help you visualize patterns in the community and have a realistic view of the population free from marketing hyperbole.

As always, I use the data that Facebook provides directly from their advertising management system. Actual numbers may be larger, but we're marketers and these are the people who can be marketed to. Each country's data includes all age ranges. The data compares the populations at the end of Q4 2008 to the same population's numbers at the end of Q1 2009.

Key Takeaways:

• Large gains in western Europe and the Pacific Rim
• In total Facebook has 183,771,740 worldwide users as of the end of Q1 2009
• The U.S. only makes up 1/3 of the total Facebook population
• The Philippines and Indonesia has massive gains of over 160% from Q4
• The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ecuador, Macedonia and Oman all had greater than 100% gains from Q4
• Nearly 40% of the population of Iceland is on Facebook
• 30% of the total population of Canada, Denmark and Norway are on Facebook
• The U.S. (14.4), Italy (2.91), UK (2.85), France (2.47), Turkey (2.18), Spain (1.67), Indonesia (1.46), Argentina (1.15), Colombia (1.10) and Australia (1.08) had gains of over 1 million users in Q1 2009

Top 25 Countries by total users

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): US, UK, Canada, Turkey, France, Italy, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Spain, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Hong Kong, Norway, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, India, Greece, Finland, South Africa, Indonesia, Israel

[Click image for larger version]

Top 25 countries by highest % of total population on Facebook

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Canada, UK, Chile, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Finland, USA, Switzerland, New Zealand, Bahamas, Malta, Puerto Rico, Cyprus, Turkey, Italy, Israel, France, Ireland

[Click image for larger version]
*Note: This chart uses the total population of each country (not the online population)

Top 25 largest Q1 percentage gains

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): Philippines, Indonesia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ecuador, Macedonia, Oman, Portugal, Romania, Brazil, Taiwan, Lithuania, Austria, Bulgaria, Paraguay, Kenya, Ghana, Hungary, Netherlands, China, Russia, Spain, Tunisia, Thailand, Vietnam

[Click image for larger version]

Top 25 largest total population gains

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): US, Italy, UK, France, Turkey, Spain, Indonesia, Argentina, Colombia, Australia, Venezuela, Germany, Mexico, Canada, Philippines, India, South Africa, Belgium, Egypt, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Malaysia, Singapore, Chile

[Click image for larger version]

Raw country population data for Q1 2009

Country	Q1 2009	Q4 2008
Argentina	3,406,520	2,254,200
Australia	5,412,300	4,327,920
Austria	462,540	258,780
Bahrain	66,340	50,660
Bangladesh	284,660	198,780
Belgium	2,150,920	1,666,340
Bolivia	251,820	184,920
Bosnia	288,880	198,660
Brazil	392,840	209,100
Bulgaria	244,480	136,980
Canada	11,552,120	10,851,420
Chile	4,441,640	4,152,060
China	375,200	220,620
Colombia	4,743,920	3,636,320
Costa Rica	116,140	73,100
Croatia	598,320	491,240
Cyprus	134,260	109,420
Czech Republic	433,700	176,660
Denmark	2,060,440	1,778,440
Dominican Republic	163,060	115,680
Ecuador	201,320	130,860
Egypt	1,270,520	821,760
El Salvador	90,580	67,360
Finland	1,032,140	920,960
France	9,072,360	6,595,300
Germany	1,970,740	1,255,480
Ghana	93,160	53,880
Greece	1,348,920	1,000,320
Guatemala	127,880	93,960
Honduras	72,780	54,180
Hong Kong	1,706,780	1,456,740
Hungary	154,840	90,260
Iceland	148,380	120,520
India	1,602,860	1,072,080
Indonesia	2,358,400	898,360
Ireland	594,640	401,280
Israel	1,028,140	895,520
Italy	8,499,940	5,582,980
Jamaica	91,960	64,780
Japan	314,700	213,420
Jordan	317,800	266,700
Kenya	227,160	130,920
Kuwait	142,620	105,160
Lebanon	441,380	414,240
Lithuania	75,280	41,800
Luxembourg	94,780	87,400
Macedonia	140,000	78,180
Malaysia	1,183,860	851,240
Maldives	41,320	33,880
Malta	65,040	45,820
Mauritius	81,280	57,060
Mexico	2,141,500	1,439,580
Morocco	487,000	369,660
Netherlands	602,280	351,540
New Zealand	738,620	534,320
Nicaragua	43,920	29,560
Nigeria	331,240	212,780
Norway	1,795,040	1,455,080
Oman	35,600	24,240
Pakistan	546,360	376,800
Palestine	89,320	69,660
Panama	279,180	236,200
Paraguay	33,960	19,200
Peru	455,700	295,620
Phiilippines	1,030,340	390,700
Poland	300,880	194,960
Portugal	168,900	84,760
Puerto Rico	636,660	541,640
Qatar	98,020	67,840
Romania	108,460	56,300
Russia	203,180	122,780
Saudi Arabia	448,240	325,860
Serbia	753,720	557,480
Singapore	1,038,620	740,220
Slovakia	290,560	138,120
Slovenia	271,440	184,120
South Africa	1,406,120	920,860
South Korea	161,100	113,940
Spain	4,266,660	2,591,640
Sri Lanka	210,820	154,780
Sweden	2,043,980	1,697,100
Switzerland	1,382,540	1,122,900
Taiwan	205,060	112,840
Thailand	273,780	168,840
The Bahamas	54,300	43,900
Trinidad and Tabago	177,980	136,080
Tunisia	392,220	239,600
Turkey	10,105,380	7,924,640
UAE	593,560	485,540
UK	17,781,800	14,922,560
Ukraine	65,440	41,400
Uraguay	292,360	198,160
USA	56,462,020	42,017,280
Venezuela	2,732,860	1,872,840
Vietnam	63,360	39,120

Does anything surprise you on this? Anything else you would like to know?

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Technorati Tags: advertising, Facebook, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer

When everything becomes social, what is "social media"?

What do you think of when I say the term "social media"? Do visions of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, blogs and wikis dance through your head? If you do, I think you're selling yourself short. VERY short.

Social media is a fad. All media will be social.

For the past year, I have included a slide in my presentation decks that says "Social media is a fad. All media will be social". We're already seeing instances of this in mainstream media. Just look at the Facebook/CNN partnership for the inauguration. It nearly crippled business networks around the world as people chatted with their Facebook friends while watching broadcast TV online.

This is an experience that has been taking place through divergent platforms for more than a decade (IM + TV), but is now becoming integrated into a single user experience. Just open Twitter during prime time TV and see what dominates the conversation. It's people talking together around a common topic enabled by whatever show is on.

Current showed us another example of the integration of TV with social technology as it flowed in real-time messages from Twitter during broadcast. This is a clunky solution for now until cable platforms integrate these services into the broadcast or they focus more on online delivery of content.

In-person events are even taking advantage of social technology to make the event even more engaging. Speakers (including myself) take questions on Twitter and engage people beyond the four walls of the room. Live streaming of video allows a global audience to participate in a local event.

Social technology is allowing radio broadcasts to expand their conversations as people engage online while listening or even while not listening. Smart stations are engaging with their audiences through multiple platforms. Each morning I listen to the BBC's Radio 1 on my drive to work. The Chris Moyles Show uses multiple platforms including Twitter, Facebook, email and SMS to engage the audience in real time. The hosts are savvy and the technology is simple and fast.

Mobile device experiences will become increasingly more social. You're seeing the start of this now with applications like Loopt and FourSquare, but you will see social interactions around news content via iPhone apps or any other platform that brings people together.

Does news become more relevant when discussed with my peer group? Absolutely. Once of the main problems with most social content is that the group of people commenting/creating are not relevant to my interests (see YouTube comments for example). If I can select who I have conversations with on certain topics, it's very valuable to me. I'm not saying we should censor people, but the technology allows for added relevance that we should be taking advantage of.

Even outdoor ads have started to become vaguely social. Mini Cooper took the lead on this a few years ago by using RFID technology to display custom messages to their customers as they drove by.

So, instead of taking a narrow, short-term view of "social media", we need to step back, look at all media and see what the social technology potential is and look at how to take advantage of that to deliver more relevant experiences.

How does this notion that all media will become social change your view of media? Is TV/radio dying? What about magazines? Do these have to be digital to be social?

Let's hear what you have to say!

Note: If you're interested in having me speak to your group or organization, check out my speaking page to get in touch with me.

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Technorati Tags: advertising, Community, conversations, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, strategy, Techno//Marketer, trends