American Marketing Association Social Media Toolkit

Social Media Toolkit
1
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Social Media: Get Started Here

do you need a social media sherpa?
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2 Social Media Deep Dive: Tools, Tactics and Ideas

tools and trends in marketing technology
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3 Policy + Hiring: The Social Enterprise at Work

social media policy and hiring for social media
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4 Social Media Strategy Guide

mapping the diagnostics of effective social media
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5 Appendix
mindmaps and more
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
dana@marketingsavant.com | twitter.com/danavan | www.marketingsavant.com
Dana VanDen Heuvel is a widely recognized expert on Thought Leadership

Marketing and Social Media. Dana is the founder and president of The Mar-
ketingSavant Group and previously held several leadership roles in Internet
marketing.
Dana has been a featured speaker at dozens of American Marketing Associa-

tion events and is a regular contributor to a variety of industry publications,
sharing his expertise on blogging, social media, Internet marketing and emerg-
ing marketing trends. Dana is the author of AMA’s Marketech ’08 and ‘09/10
Guide to Marketing Technology.
Recognized as one of the “50 People You Should Know” by the Green Bay
Chamber of Commerce, Dana serves on several advisory boards for nonprofits and community orga-
nizations in and around Wisconsin.
Dana is also an adjuct professor at St. Norbert College and teaches a course on social media and
thought leadership marketing.
toby@bloombergmarketing.com | twitter.com/tobydiva | divamarketingblog.com
Toby Bloomberg is passionate about working with people (not companies) to

create strategies that combine social media with traditional marketing drivers
(strategy, customer insights, segmentation, etc.) while maintaining the authentic-
ity of digital conversations. From 2004, when she chaired AMA’s first Hot Topic
workshop on social media/blogs, Toby has been speaking, teaching and consult-
ing about social media at national conferences and for organizations that range
from Fortune 500 to startups within the B2B, B2C and nonprofit worlds.
Toby not only talks about the social web but is actively involved in the conversa-
tion. Her blog Diva Marketing was named one of Forbes’ 20 Best Marketing &
Social Media Blogs By Women. Her media credits include being profiled in books
on social media: Naked Conversations, Now Is Gone, Twitterville and The Digital
Handshake. She has been quoted in publications such as INC magazine, BusinessWeek, Wall Street
Journal and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Entrepreneur.com, MSNBC and the Atlanta Business Chroni-
cle.
In addition, she was an adjunct professor at Goizueta School of Business at Emory University where
she taught an innovative course on management consulting.
Toby is a Yankee from Boston living in Hot’lanta with her YouTube rock star Westie pup - Max. Con-
tinue the conversation with her at divamarketingblog.com and on Twitter @tobydiva.
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1
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2
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Social Media Deep Dive: Tools, Tactics and Ideas

3
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Policy + Hiring: The Social Enterprise at Work

4
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Social Media Strategy Guide

5
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Appendix
mindmaps and more
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Do You Need a Social Media Sherpa?
An Executive Briefing on Succeeding with
Social Media
by Dana VanDen Heuvel of MarketingSavant
An Executive Briefing on Succeeding with Social Media

A Game You Must Play. A Battle You Must Win
Social media has quickly gone from a “nice to have” component of your go‐to‐market
strategy to a “must have” weapon in the fight for share of voice, share of mind and
ultimately, share of market. The power of social media as a great creator of market
dialogue and connector of peers, prospects and pundits has reached a critical mass and
there’s no turning back. The current questions that you’re asking about social media
don’t have answers like “if” and “maybe” but rather come in tones “when” and “how do
I” and “then what?”

As recently as this July, Microsoft has announced its alliance with Yahoo to provide
search results, thus changing the search game forever. Not only in the sense of the
overall competitive and Internet power landscape, but in ways that will shape how
consumers find things on the Internet and how they determine what matters to them
through their window on the Internet world. Why is this relevant? For example, some
recent client searches on Bing consistently placed slightly higher value on social media
sites than Google. In fact, blogs and social media websites that once simply dotted the
landscape have become the perennial scenery along the information superhighway.
Within the foreseeable future, brands seeking relevance in search results will need to
have secured a relevant position in the social media outposts that are most relevant to
their tribe.

Meet Them in Their Medium
One of the most profound marketing diagrams that I have ever seen is the following
illustration from the Marketing Leadership Council.

The MarketingSavant™ Group | 888.989.7771 | www.marketingsavant.com | info@marketingsavant.com

The aforementioned diagram shows the vast proliferation of marketing channels in just
a few short decades compared to the otherwise slow advancement of marketing up to
about 1980. Since then, we as marketers and business leaders have been charged with
adapting to a world where our customers have a seemingly infinite choice of channels
with which to communicate and further depths of tools within those channels that they
can employ at their whim. Our job as marketers is to simply “meet them in their
medium” and find the most relevant channels, tools and communication style to match
to ensure that we remain relevant to our tribe.

If Marketing Moves Fast, Social Media Moves Faster
If pictures are worth 1000 words, what are images that include 1000 logos and 1000
words in the picture worth? As a test, look at the following diagram. How many of the
logos within the various channels of social media can you recognize and accurately
describe what the social media service actually does and how it could benefit your
organization?

Source: www.theconversationprism.com


That was fun, wasn’t it! While it’s certainly not imperative
that you know each and every social media tool and what
they do, that’s simply not necessary, the prior illustration is
actually a old version of that particular diagram meant to
show just how nuanced, complex and full of opportunity
and promise the world of social media is. In keeping with
the pace of social media, a newer updated version of that same diagram is available at
www.theconversationprism.com, but it’s so complex that it’s actually difficult to fit into
this whitepaper while still making the text on the graphic legible enough to read!

Show Me the ROI First

Many of you will recall, or have heard about the scene in the movie Jerry Maguire where
and exchange between Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Junior unfolds as Cruise is
pitching Gooding on using him as his agent as all while Cruise is about to be ushered out
of his current firm to venture out on his own. Before Gooding signs with Cruise, he asks
him, quite emphatically and repeatedly, to “show him the money.” Many of us feel like
that with social media – show me the money!

Well, the money is there in social media. In fact, a recent Wetpaint and Altimeter Group
study confirms that deep engagement with consumers through social media channels
correlates to better financial performance.

The ENGAGEMENTdb study (www.engagementdb.com) showed significant positive
financial results for the companies who measured as having the greatest breadth and
depth of social media engagement. These "Social Media Mavens" on average grew
company revenues by 18 percent over the last 12 months, while the least engaged
companies saw revenues sink 6 percent on average over the same time period.

The ENGAGEMENTdb study reviewed more than 10 discrete social media channels,
including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums for each of the 100
most valuable brands as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand The top 10
ENGAGEMENTdb brands with their scores are:

1. Starbucks (127) 6. Thomson Reuters (101)
2. Dell (123) 7. Nike (100)
3. eBay (115) 8. Amazon (88)
4. Google (105) 9. SAP (86)
5. Microsoft (103) 10. Tie ‐ Yahoo!/Intel (85)

If you’re looking for good examples of how brands are embracing social media, look at
those in the list above.


Streaming Social Media into Your Marketing Mix

The most important thing for
marketers to focus on with social
media is how it will fit within their
existing marketing and
promotional mix and within their
overall go‐to‐market strategy. In
fact, we’re fond of saying that
social media strategy is a bit of a
red herring because to be truly
strategic about social media is to
consider it holistically as part of
an integrated approach to
marketing and business
development.

At this point, marketers generally
start looking around for best
practices, for a kit or a set of
templates or some examples that
point the way. We want turn‐key
strategies that plug and play with
built‐in shortcuts. The trouble is,
there little of any of that to be
found in social media.

The bottom line, at least today, is
that there are few best practices
(current practices, yes, but best
practices…we’re getting there)
There is no kit of parts in social
media. There are some examples
of what works. There are
examples of what didn’t work.
The answer is, to many social
media questions, “well, it depends.”

It depends on your goals, your line of business, the resources you have, the corporate
culture you live, your IT/Marketing relationships, the regulatory issues surrounding your
industry and a whole host of other factors. Like any marketing, where we’re dealing
with irrational humans and emotional beings, there's much more that’s fluid than that’s
concrete.


Now is a good time to begin asking some questions about how social media will fit into
your marketing mix. These are just some of the questions that you should ask at this
point.

Why is social media of interest to us?
Do we believe social media will have an impact? If so, in what way?
What assumptions do we have about social media? What about our executives?
Who do we want to reach and why?
Is our industry ahead of the curve, behind it, or in the middle?
How do we as a company feel about opening up the dialogue with our customers?
What are our measures for success? (qualitative and quantitative)
How much time and money are we expecting to dedicate to this?
What practices do we see from our peers/competitors that we’d like to emulate?

Rules of the Road for DIY Social Media

The “social media dead pool” is chock full
of great examples of what not to do! It’s
littered with examples of social media
initiatives that were completely
unencumbered by the strategic process.
Thus, they both fizzled and disappeared,
doing little in the way or good, or harm.
Or, they went down in a blaze of glory,
ultimately damaging their brands in the
process and leaving a scar on both the
company and the name of social media.

If you ask any social media “purist”, you’ll
likely encounter sentiments that, in one way or another, points to the feeling that social
media was not made for marketing. However, in the real world, we know that any
chance we have to reach human beings to influence their decision for corporate gain
will be found and leveraged with haste. Nevertheless, social media has its own rules that
even the strongest brands (especially the strongest brands!) must abide by.

First and foremost, authenticity and genuine sentiments are revered while fakery is
reviled and swiftly punished by way of blogger outrage or other forms of widespread
Internet and social media badmouthing.


Today’s consumer has a highly tuned sense for nonsense, fraud and deceit. Any
attempt at less being less than 100% honest and above board in social media is met with
scrutiny.

Consumers have come to expect access to brands (after years of so‐called voice mail
and jail and phone tree climbing) and want honest and open conversations. They
further have expectations that if a brand is engaged in social media that it abides by
those principles.

A great example of what not to do comes from Wal‐Mart with their ‘Wal‐Marting
Across America’ episode. This was a less‐than authentic blog featuring a couple’s
journey across America in an RV, encountering many Wal‐Marts along the way.
The blog was quickly exposed and the ensuing fallout damaged the Wal‐Mart
brand.

Another misconception that markets hold is that social media is simply a new outlet for
your conventional advertising messages. In fact, Twitter is full of just this kind of
messaging every day. (On Twitter, spam messages are called “Twam”) There’s no
quicker way to be scorned in social media than by offering the same one‐way ad
messages in social media channels. You will be immediately lumped into the ‘noise’
category and you will be promptly and permanently ignored.

Finally, social media is a content game. The two questions that all brands should ask are
“how am I being useful in the social media channels that I’m participating in” and “what
kind of valuable content can I create and share to offer something to my audience that
will really engage them?” Consumers have no tolerance or patience for self‐serving,
useless and stale content. Many social media programs have, are and will continue to
fail for this very reason.

It’s because of the “content imperative”, as we like to call it, that we can’t recommend
strongly enough that you create a social media editorial calendar well in advance of
launching your social media program. If this editorial calendar sounds like something
that’s only for “other organizations” and not for us, then perhaps social media is for
“other organizations” as well. We rarely see successful social media programs that don’t
have some form of editorial calendar or editorial system or process in place .


Your Blueprint for Social Media Success: 10 Key Steps

1. Strategic education
Knowing what you don’t know about social media is a great first place to start. From
there, there are myriad conferences, books, webinars and all manner of educational
vehicles that one can leverage to learn everything you and your team need to know in
order to move forward and make sound decisions about your social media strategy and
tactical plan. I advocate that brands find their “Delta connection” – understand the
“gap” that you’re trying to fill between your current marketing strategy and the “new
marketing” of the world of social media.

The goal of this step is to understand what’s out there, what’s possible and to give you
some fodder for formulating your social media vision.

2. Define your business objectives and risk profile
Once you have a sense of the possible, the probable
and are starting to get your arms around the doable,
it’s time to formulate your goals and business
objectives for social media. Here are few questions to
consider:
a) Do you want to use social media for listening
or for outreach?
b) How will you leverage your brand assets to
maximize presence in the social media
environment?
c) Do you want to use social media to get input
on your product development?
d) What are our measures for success?
(qualitative and quantitative)

Insofar as your risk profile is concerned, many companies have employed the 3‐R test
for entering social media. They look at their Risk profile, Resources required and
Rewards expected to determine how well positioned they are to leverage social media.
Here are a few questions to consider as you assess the risk:
a) How do we as a company feel about opening up the dialogue with our
customers?
b) What do we perceive as the biggest obstacles to our adoption of social media
practices?
c) What if people say negative things about our company?
d) What if one of our employees shares something proprietary or just stupid or
embarrassing about our company?

The goal of this step is to outline what you expect from social media and to determine
your tolerance for the potential risks that go along with social media.


3. Understand your customers (the conversation)
Internally, we go back and forth on whether or not this should be first, but you need to
understand social media and “get to know yourself” by setting a vision, goals and
objectives before you turn outward and look to your customers and external
stakeholders.

While social media is all about conversation, it’s also about people and content. Just as
you would not go to an in person meeting with a prospect or to a networking meeting to
connect with other professionals without a clear sense of who you are and what value
you add to the world, you wouldn’t enter social media without the same level of
personal understanding.

That said, this is the point where you engage in online social media listening through RSS
feeds, blog searches and Twitter searches to determine how involved your potential
audience is and where they’re hanging out. Ask these questions about your customers:
a) What are our customers doing online? Is social media relevant to them?
b) Who do we want to reach and why?
c) What do we want from them and what do we want them to do?
d) What are we giving back (value) that has nothing to do with our product/service?
e) What data do we want/need to gather during our efforts?

By this point, you want to have a clear understanding of what your customers and
prospects are doing with social media and begin to formulate some idea of how your
brand’s entrance into the space is valuable and useful to them.

Use this “Internet Use Stages” diagram to profile your customers and community members.


4. Understand the competitive and industry environment
Competitive analysis, while important, should not be the determining factor on what
you do with social media. There is much me‐tooism going on out there, and it’s
understandably difficult to watch your competition get a leg up on social media while
you’re on the sidelines. However, if you’re going to trump them, you need to
understand what everyone is going, and then craft a strategy on how you’ll do better.

Once you understand the social media scene in your competitive space, your most
important task is to craft a strategy that puts you out in front of them.

5. Anticipate corporate culture shift/shock
This stage is a reality check for most organizations. Understanding how your team, your
sales force, your distributors and other stakeholders will react to social media is an
important step in making your social media strategy a reality. For some companies, this
is a non‐issue. However, for many, especially larger, more conservative organizations,
this is something to be studied and thoroughly understood.
a) Do our employees engage in social media in their personal lives? What level of
familiarity can/should we expect?
b) Does our internal audience understand the business potential of social media, or
are they skeptical?
c) What are the biggest fears/hesitations that we have as a company about using
social media?
d) How detailed do we need to be about our communication policies?
e) Are we empowering our employees to respond at the point of need, regardless
of their role? Is there a “chain of command”?

The change process map on the following page illustrates some of the pitfalls and
highlights of taking the organizations down any new path, including getting involved
in social media.


6. Assess your resources and capabilities
The astute marketer will work on forging strong relationships with IT, legal, HR and the
other stakeholders that can be impacted by a brand’s involvement in social media.
Getting all of these people in a room to discuss your progress so far, the goals that
you’ve put forth, the customer potential and the rationale that you’ve developed for
why the company needs to pursue social media will give you a clear view of what you
have to work with and what work you still need to do to get the organization aligned
behind the social media program. There are a few questions to ask at this point:

a) How much time and money are we expecting to dedicate to this?
b) Can we afford to keep part of our allocated $ budget flexible to respond to
evolving needs?
c) If we’re successful with social media, can we scale our interactions to continue to
meet higher expectations? How?
d) Are we flexible enough within roles/responsibilities to shift them as needed to
accommodate what we learn from social media?

Getting everyone in your organization aligned on the goals, objectives, outcomes and
roadblocks and working toward them as a team is the milestone for this phase.


7. Immerse your marketing team in social media
The organizations with the best track record for implementing social media, Internet
marketing, CRM or anything new are those that immerse their teams in the practice and
application of new things to ensure that they have the skills and mental horsepower to
see the program through. Getting your team to experiment, attend webinars, read and
otherwise get a full grasp on the world of social media will help your program move at
light‐speed instead of at a snail’s pace as everyone plays catch‐up.

Getting your team excited about social media by encouraging and enabling their
participation is a sure way to speed up the success of your social media efforts.

8. Formulate the strategy and tactical plan
You’ve laid the foundation for putting together a comprehensive social media strategy.
Your strategy should be a plan to utilize your resources, capabilities, and learned social
media skills to manifest the goals, objectives and customer value proposition that
you’ve articulated in the previous steps.

Your strategy needs to have a narrow focus, initially, to ensure that you’re “doing the
doable” and doing social media well before branching out into too many social media
channels at one time and doing them all half‐baked. Create a platform, such as a blog,
on which to launch your strategy and pursue a vetting process with each new technique
and tool such that everything supports your initial strategy and builds on what you’ve
already launched.

Your strategy should cover your social media launch, or pilot program, all the way
through your first 9‐12 months of activity to give you an idea of what’s possible and
what’s involved.

9. Prioritize the plan and execute with vigor
A well crafted strategy with a tactical plan that’s executed like you mean it, regardless of
how “good” the overall strategy is to begin with, is going to set you apart from your
competitors in rapid fashion, bring quick and meaningful feedback into your program
and attract the following in social media that you’re seeking.

Commitment to disciplined follow through (blogging daily, tweeting regularly, posting
frequently, creating meaningful content, engaging in meaningful dialogue) will bring
your strategy to life and establish momentum that’s hard to overcome by even your
best competitors.

Your success is also determined by the resources you put toward your social media
tactical plan. Don’t skimp on this. You can worry about putting things on autopilot later.
For now, ensure that you’re manning the battle stations and are ready for anything!

The prioritization exercise will help you decide what to do first (next actions) when
launching your social media tactical plan and putting energy into the execution will
ensure a “no excuses” rollout.

10. Measure, report review and revise
Measuring social media performance, on both quantitative and qualitative scales, is an
essential activity. However, clear thinking about Return on Investment (ROI) is today’s
greatest challenge and thus greatest
opportunity for social media
marketers. In spite the current
pressures on marketing departments
to justify their expenditures and
deliver ROI, and alarming number of
companies have committed to social
media efforts without first establishing parameters for defining social media success,
clear‐cut metrics and accountability measures.

Social media measurement comes with its own set of challenges, which is part of the
reason for the current situation. Classic measures of reach and frequency of the old
media world will no longer suffice and the nascent measurement concepts like
“engagement” are not universally understood and differ from agency to agency and
brand to brand. Nevertheless, establishing baselines before entering social media and
then iterating on the metrics as you move forward is a sure way to gauge success, even
if you can’t fit your social media metrics into a tidy spreadsheet on day one.

Metrics vary, but many companies have measured social and digital media success by
adapting their metrics to the Reach, Acquisition, Conversion and Retention (RACR)
model popularized by a number of Internet marketers over the past several years.


Social Media Sherpa Diagnostic – Do I Need a Social Media Guide or
Consultant?

The beautiful irony of the social media space is that as soon as someone dons the
“expert” cap, it’s as though they’ve put on a digital “dunce hat” and they’re soon
ridiculed by the social media insecure and viewed with scrutiny by any commercial
concern. In any other industry, expert status is a great achievement.

The bottom line is this: thinking in terms of tools or platforms is the wrong viewpoint as
their use is only limited by your creativity. A literacy of all communications platforms is
necessary, as then and only then do they fade into the background of your thought
processes and allow you to develop groundbreaking solutions.

In spite of the ease which an organization can pick up a social media tune and begin to
play, just because you an hum a few bars with aplomb doesn’t mean that you have a
social media strategy and that a good social media coach won’t be of value. On the
contrary, the more facile you are with marketing and technology, the more effective you
will be with a social media guide to help you focus and strategize to ensure that you’ll
get some quick wins and long‐term impact. Do you need to hire a social media Sherpa,
guide, or expert? Ask yourself these questions to help determine your needs:

1. How did I arrive at social media and why am I asking about it at all?
Are your competitors already in social media? Are you trying to get ahead of the curve,
build a personal brand, establish a community or reclaim your online reputation? Do
you want to build buzz about your brand or maybe show the Gen‐Y crowd that you’re
with it?


While these are all wonderful goals, now is the time to reflect on your overarching
marketing goals and how social media fits. Ask yourself “can I achieve all of these on my
own?” Do I have the tools, time, know‐how, stamina, foresight and insight to make
these goals a reality through social media? If there’s a hint of no, consult someone.

2. Who are we trying to reach and why?
Are you targeting a new audience, tapping into your industry veterans, or trying to
move a market up the technology ladder? Do you know where to find your targets
online and how to interact with them when and where you find them? If not, it might
be time to seek the assistance of someone who’s done it.

3. Are you comfortable with the technology, the ambiguity and the fast pace of social
media?
If you’re a can‐do person with no fear, then by all means, go for it! If you’re a great
strategist but lack the technology skills of if you’re unsure about whether or not your IT
personnel will understand your need to un‐block the social media sites that you can’t
see from your corporate computer, perhaps it’s time to call in someone who’s run this
race before.

4. Am I informed about social media?
The very first step in the social media strategy that we advocate is to get educated.
There are myriad conferences, webinars, books, whitepapers and blogs with which to
get acquainted with every nuance of the social media space. Regardless of whether you
hire someone, this is the best investment you’ll ever make in social media!

5. Do I have the time to do this all myself?
You probably already have some idea of “what” you should be doing, but may lack the
in‐house resources to get the ball rolling or to sustain the effort. A word of caution here
– we never recommend the wholesale outsourcing of social media. Social media must
be something that the company is involved in, not that they vend out. If you’re looking
for someone to Tweet for your, reconsider your social media motivations before
proceeding.


Finding Your Ideal Social Media Sherpa

If you’ve reached the end of the diagnostic
questions that you’ve decided to reach out
for some help, it’s now time to sort out who
the real “social media Sherpa’s” are.
They’re actually pretty easy to find.
Consider these questions & criteria:

1. Tell me about the best outreach you’ve
done lately. What did you do?
Ask about specifics, what have they done?
Not every firm has a great deal of
experience, but some is necessary. What
strategies did they use? What were their results? If they haven’t been in the trenches of
a project sometime in the last 12 months, you should ask them why. Yes, this industry
moves that fast.

2. Tell me about a campaign that didn’t go so well. What did you learn?
Social media is in its nascent stages now. A firm with social media failures is likely to be a
better organization because understand the issues and should show willingness to share
missteps and the learning that came about.

3. How do you feel about Twitter?
If they tell you that you should be on it and that they can handle it for you, they may not
be a fit. If they have a process for determining if Twitter is right for the client, you’re on
the right path!

4. Do I/we need a (blog/Facebook page/podcast/viral videos)?
Look for more questions than answers on this one. A good social media Sherpa is there
to guide you to the ideal solution for you, not push you into something you can’t
sustain. Expect to be asked questions like “Who is your audience? What is your goal?
Why social media and why now? ”

5. What outcomes can we expect?
A good social media Sherpa will work with you to set realistic expectations. Not
everything will work for you, but a good Sherpa should be willing to help find the most
resonant, effective strategies. If you are guaranteed a high number of Twitter followers
or Facebook friends; if they tell you, unequivocally, that they can deliver astronomical
traffic or conversions, then be skeptical.


6. What is your pricing structure?
Social media Sherpa’s will typically work on a “per project” or hourly basis, unless you’re
seeking a retained resource or partner for the long term.

7. What can we do now to get started?
The best social media programs typically involve parallel paths of research and strategy
combined with immediate action. Look for some published resources from the Sherpa
that you can glean the basics from along with their initial assistance to get you off the
ground while they help you build your overall social media strategy.

Moving Forward

The social and digital media world moves rapidly, to say the least. New tools, new ideas,
new strategies and a digital media landscape that’s constantly in a state of flux makes
things interesting and challenging for even the most astute marketer to keep up with.
Certainly many brands have gone it alone up the social media mountain, but it can be a
lonely journey. The storied successes that you read about in this guide and see
mentioned every day in the media are brands which have, by and large, chosen to seek
out a social media guide to lead them on their journey. Our aim in this guide is to share
you some perspective on what you can and should do now to boost your social media
efforts while sharing some perspective on when to engage and what to look for in a
social media marketing guide.

A little knowledge is a powerful thing! Once you’ve armed yourself with the tools and
the help you need to succeed on your social media journey, rest assured that the
journey will be a successful, profitable and exciting one!


Dana VanDen Heuvel
Dana is the founder and chief consultant at The MarketingSavant Group.
His specialties include social media strategy development, instruction and
training, marketing strategy development and facilitated brainstorming
and thought leadership marketing strategy development.

An award‐winning blogger himself, Dana has engaged over 2000 marketers since 2004
on the subject of social media marketing through his courses, American Marketing
Association training events, direct consultations and through his blogs at
www.danavan.net, www.marketingsavant.com and reaches many more through
articles, podcasts, webinars and whitepapers like this one.

The MarketingSavant Group
MarketingSavant is a consulting‐led B2B marketing firm specializing in helping our
clients attain thought leadership in the markets they serve.

We help our clients create their own whitespace in a field of competition enabling your
success through content and go‐to‐market strategy that motivates your prospects and
drives business.

We’re not an ad agency. In fact, we’re a consulting shop with passionate leader who
loves the intersection of content, marketing, technology and helping the insurgent
marketer win the business.

How Companies Use MarketingSavant

Entrepreneurs and startups use us to plan their attack and put together a go to
market strategy that accelerates their growth.
Small and medium size firms use us to help them stand out from the pack in a
crowded local or regional marketplace.
Large companies use us to help them focus the expertise, resources and budget on
creating and channeling their expertise and intellectual capital into thought
leadership campaigns that win business.

You can learn more about MarketingSavant, our social media and thought leadership
marketing services and our process and point of view at www.marketingsavant.com.

Copyright © 2009 The MarketingSavant Group. All rights reserved.

Answers To The Questions You Didn’t Ask
Reprinted From the Age of Conversation 2
By Toby Bloomberg – Diva Marketing
When was the last time you talked, listened, laughed

and learned with .. not From .. but With your customers or clients? Marketing teaches us
the more we know about our target audience the better we can service them.
"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the
product or service fits him and sells itself." - Peter Drucker.
When Peter Drucker wrote that statement, over fifty years ago, formal market research
was how most marketers obtained insights about their customers. Marketers asked the
questions and customers gave their opinions. Marketers listened and learned.
Flash into the 21st century … technology has changed global communication and that
influenced business communications. An internet playground developed that toppled the
walls of culture and geographical distance. Conversations exploded.
Social media people-to-people talk often includes discussions about experiences with
specific brands. In unfiltered, non-directed discussions on blogs, in communities, on
review sites, in videos and through photos the good, bad and ugly are now in full Google
view for all. An informal consumer review network is being created that often influences,
not only brand perception, but purchase decisions.
For the first time, our customers are providing answers to questions that were never
asked in formal research studies. We now have additional, valuable insights that can
supplement traditional research. However, some marketers dismiss this online chat as
irrelevant. Others listen in frozen fascination. A few companies are doing something
radical that marketers never had the opportunity to do before: talking with their
customers in their worlds.
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, is active on Twitter - a micro blogging community. His
advice to CEOs who want to bring social media to their companies - “I think if the CEO
Age of Conversation Book 2
Diva Marketing www.divamarketingblog.com @tobydiva http://twitter.com/tobydiva

starts using Twitter on his/her own and is actually passionate about it, then that passion
will eventually rub off on the rest of the organization.”
Dell is also changing its business model by engaging with its customers. According to
Richard Binhammer, “Social media helps us: learn from conversations with customers
every day. That has influenced internal processes as we have identified issues sooner
than we might otherwise have, learned to respond faster and generally listen and be in
touch.”
Understanding your customer and knowing what she wants is like finding the holy grail of
marketing. Adopting your business model to include engaging with your customers can
help make that happen.
The Age of Conversation 2 book brought together nearly 300 of the world’s leading marketers,
writers, thinkers and creative innovators for a global collaboration where the impact of digital
conversations was explored.
Age of Conversation Book 2
Diva Marketing www.divamarketingblog.com @tobydiva http://twitter.com/tobydiva

Technology Is Recreating Business Intimacies
Reprinted from Age of Conversation
By Toby Bloomberg Marketing, Diva Marketing

www.divamarketingblog.com
CCustomers from India, Canada, New Zealand

and Europe. Technology swings open the doors to a global marketplace. Our
cyberspace offices and storefronts keep the lights on 24/7/365 allowing us to
conduct business with a mere click and an internet connection. Life is good. Or is
it?
In their rush to enter this new environment companies often sacrificed personal
connections with their customers and other stakeholders. Understanding the
individual needs of a growing and often geographically dispersed customer based
is not an easy or inexpensive undertaking.
Attempting to service and engage customers, some organizations turned to non

traditional solutions including: out sourced online service “chat reps” who often
had limited understanding of the business’s culture; interactive websites that
flashed messages that were pretty but of little value; and email tactics where
questions were gobbled up by cyberspace gremlins who of course never
responded back.
Misunderstanding and brand devaluation were frequently outcomes of non

relationship service. Customers wanted high touch along with convenience of
immediate access to information. Even businesses with only a local focus were
being challenged with how to stay connected to their clients.
About this time a strange dichotomy began to occur in the world of virtual
business. The technology, that fostered impersonalization, was being used to
create “corner grocery store relationships.” Through funny little websites called
blogs companies began to engage with their customers in people-to-people
conversations. Those conversations occurred not with the marketing, PR, tech
Age of Conversation 1
Bloomberg Marketing www.bloombergmarketing.com Diva Marketing www.divamarketing.com
770 496.1711 Toby@bloombergmarketing.com
support “departments” but with people within those departments who shared
common interests and passions. The exchange was richer, deeper and more
satisfying relationships for both customer and company.
When we get to know people more than product information is usually

exchanged. That’s exactly what happened online. Stories about personal interest
from wine to family vacation were “blogged.” Photos were shared. Relationships
that were as intimate and important as those created by neighborhood green
grocers were being formed.
Through social media marketing initiatives: blogs, podcasts, vlogs, mash-up

communities, social book marking and photo sharing organizations were
rediscovering that the corner grocery store relation was attainable in an online
environment and more important than ever before to foster and maintain.
“It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business,” said Michael Corleone to his
brother. However, the son of the Godfather was wrong. Dead wrong. Business is
personal. Technology is fueling the emotional engagement that leads to long-term
customer interactions.
Reprinted from The Age of Conversation, a book that brings together over 100 of the world's leading
marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators in a ground-breaking and unusual publication.
Age of Conversation 2
Bloomberg Marketing www.bloombergmarketing.com Diva Marketing www.divamarketing.com
770 496.1711 Toby@bloombergmarketing.com
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1
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Social Media Deep Dive: Tools, Tactics

and Ideas
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Appendix
mindmaps and more
Powered by
02 white paper
Hn
plia ERE
ce
Two Sides of Consumer-Generated Media:

OES
C oGm
Listening and
i s k , aTnI TdLE
G o v e r n a n c eC, HRAPER
Participating
Companies can’t watch the action from the sidelines; they need to
get in the game for themselves.
S
ocial media is providing mar- customer needs and to build business rela- sages, microblogs, podcasts, vlogs (video
keters with an array of tools tionships both on a local and global basis. blogs), social networking communities and
and opportunities that offer Those strategies become more chal- traditional blogs. By leveraging these new
an unusual entrée into under- lenging, however, as the landscape grows technologies, people exchange ideas and
standing the good, bad and more complex. New media strategies pres- information, and discover common experi-
ugly of how customers use and perceive ent a means of closing the communication ences that transcend cultural differences.
brands, your company and even your gap brought on by time and distance. Listening and participating in ongoing
employees. In today’s world, it is increas- Valuable global relations are being created conversations enables organizations to
ingly critical to understand your specific through tools that range from text mes- develop a stronger emotional engage-
p PERFORM: The Marketing 2.0 Authority

www.revenuetoday.com/perform/XXXXX
ment with customers, prospects and media, therefore, becomes one more have an impact on how an organization
other stakeholders. source of information that should be conducts business and, in turn, can set
scrutinized to mitigate the risk in making internal cultural changes in motion:
Listening business decisions. • From a C-suite perceptive, the challenge
These “virtual back fence” conversations, Although monitoring social media is becomes how to integrate this new type
commonly called consumer-generated gaining acceptance as a complementary of information to support customer-
media or content (CGM/CGC), are found piece of marketing research strategy, mar- focused business decisions.
in the comments of blogs, bulletin boards, keters should keep in mind that there is a • From an operational perspective, the
social networking communities and prod- difference between data mined from CGM challenge becomes how to develop
uct reviews. The unfiltered, raw voices of and the information derived from formal internal processes that will quickly pass
peer-to-peer discussions are frequently surveys or focus groups. Control of the the right information to the people with
rich in passion and emotion, thereby offer- sample is one varying element. CGM seems authority to take action.
ing a window into a world that previously to have more in common with ethnogra- • From a marketing perspective, the
eluded traditional marketing research phy than it does with a quantitative study. challenge becomes how to leverage
methodologies. The information mined from consumer- the information to develop a better
Since these virtual chats are Internet- generated media ranges from product customer experience that supports the
based, they can be tracked, measured review sites – where customers candidly brand identity.
and analyzed. Consumer-generated offer their opinions and often vote on the • From an R&D perspective, the challenge
best product within a category – to posi- becomes how to use this type of cus-
tive and negative customer service experi- tomer insight to create new products
ences and trends. A significant benefit of and services that tie back to the brand.
keeping a watchful eye on new media
conversations is the ability to tap in to infor- Participating
mation in real time. The opportunity for Consumer-generated media is Web-based
rapid response in a crisis situation can be a and can easily and quickly be passed along
powerful outcome of consistent listening. to friends and relatives. However, it is not
Trend analysis is gaining acceptance as unusual for a comment from a blog post
a valuable tool for understanding CGM and or discussion points in a social media net-
dealing with “extreme” content contributed working community to find their way from
by specific individuals. At least one major the blogosphere to mainstream media. The
automobile manufacturer, for example, Internet has made speed and expositional
began mining data at a high level to mea- networking the new customer capital.
sure consumer attitudes toward specific Through sites such as LinkedIn or Face-
models. This led to a more granular analysis book, networking has expanded to include
of features and attributes, which then was friends of friends of friends. Conversations
used to provide insights for product design can spread around the world in seconds,
and development. influencing sales and the hard-won good
Although the customer purchase deci- will of the brand.
sion is complex, and social media is but What may appear at first glance to be an
one influencing factor, information gleaned innocuous customer service complaint may
from listening to digital conversations can find its way to a front page story in the New
by Toby Bloomberg, Bloomberg Marketing/Diva Marketing

Toby Bloomberg, president of Atlanta-based Bloomberg Marketing, has a passion for the Internet.
Her background includes more than 15 years of traditional and new media marketing experience, and
in the spring of 2004, Toby launched the Diva Marketing Blog, www.divamarketingblog.com. She is a
national speaker and facilitator of social media and traditional marketing topics for organizations like
the American Marketing Association, the Olympic Organizing Committee, PRSA and 3M. She serves on
the board of the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association and conducts a class on management con-
sulting for Goizueta School of Business at Emory University.
www.revenuetoday.com/perform p
02 white paper
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York Times or Wall Street Journal once What?!” In keeping with the writing style of The truth is that companies could never
OES
it spreads around the Internet and social media, he explained the company’s fully control the way customers talked
C oGm
becomes an online cause célèbre. In fact, point of view in a personal voice using about their products and services before
it’s not uncommon anymore for a reporter casual language. His efforts produced a either. Those conversations have always
, aTnI TdLE
to base a story on a blog post. Frequently, significant number of positive posts from occurred in one-on-one chats or in small
the article appears both in the hard copy other bloggers, which in turn provided group discussions. Prior to the Internet,
R i sT kER
and online editions of the media outlet, support for Johnson & Johnson’s posi- informal customer word-of-mouth might
thus extending the firestorm’s reach and tion. Although negative comments were have been slower to impact the brand and
G o v e r n a n cCeH, AP
awareness still further. As more people allowed on the J&J corporate blog, they more difficult to track, but it’s certainly not
copy and paste the media link into emails, actually served to reinforce the perception a new concept. It’s just taken on a new
blogs and product reviews, the buzz con- that the company was open and transpar- dimension in the online space.
tinues to build. ent about the situation, thus garnering It would be naïve not to acknowledge
Johnson & Johnson provides an inter- even more respect for the organization. the inherent vulnerability that comes from
esting example of corporate participation The blog achieved what no other crisis allowing unfiltered conversations to take
in the new media conversation. In the communication strategy could: It allowed place in the public forum of a blog. Will
summer of 2007, J&J leveraged its blog, Johnson & Johnson to tell its story the the brand be compromised? Will negative
JNJ BTW, to address a crisis situation that way it wanted to, in its own voice, without comments impact sales? Will the blogger
was rapidly escalating in both mainstream mainstream media clouding the message represent the company fairly? Can the
media and among bloggers. The company with its own interpretations. people writing for a corporate blog hold
sued the American Red Cross for what it honest discussions without compromising
considered to be inappropriate and ille- a competitive advantage?
gal use of the “Red Cross trademark,” as A corporate social media strat- As Johnson & Johnson learned, people
explained in this public statement: egy can support various market- are talking about your products, services
“After more than a century of strong ing functions and tactics and and employees anyway – whether you’re
cooperation in the use of the Red Cross deliver benefits including the part of the dialogue or not. So the ques-
trademark, with both organizations following: tion becomes: Where would you prefer
respecting the legal boundaries for each that those conversations be held – on a
others’ unique legal rights, we were very • A forum for telling your stories competitor’s blog or on YouTube? Creat-
disappointed to find that the American your way ing a corporate blog or a YouTube channel
Red Cross [ARC] started a campaign to • Ability to determine when, provides an opportunity to participate and
license the trademark to several busi- where and how your stories are listen in on the discussion on your own
nesses for commercial purposes on all published turf. By allowing constructive criticism on
types of products being sold in many • Encouragement for online your company blog and responding to it
different retail and other commercial out- brand champions to tell your head-on, you may discourage a negative
lets. These products include baby mitts, stories for you post elsewhere.
nail clippers, combs, toothbrushes and • Enhanced relationships with cus- In summary, a successful social media
humidifiers. This action is in direct violation tomers, prospects and strategy is one that involves two elements:
of a Federal statute protecting the mark stakeholders listening and participating. Step one is
as well as in violation of our longstanding • A sense of community created to develop a continuous, action-focused
trademark rights. around the brand listening strategy that tracks your custom-
For the past several months, Johnson • More and better feedback from ers’ conversations. Step two is to engage
& Johnson has attempted to resolve this customers and stakeholders your customers with simple and genuine
issue through cooperation and discus- “people talk.”
sion with the ARC, and recently offered The bottom line is that people want
mediation, to no avail. The Company to do business with people they know
was left with no choice but to seek pro- and like, and consumer-generated media
tection of our trademark rights through For some organizations, this type of strongly influences the way your brand is
the courts.” unstructured, conversational dialogue with perceived and how purchase decisions are
Although Johnson & Johnson did use the public might be an intriguing concept, made. Whether through Facebook, You-
traditional public relations tactics to air its but it is a risk they are unwilling to consider. Tube, blogs or another new media entity,
side of the story, Vice President Ray Jordan Some fear that the application of a social your company forfeits a critical competitive
elaborated further on the J&J corporate media strategy results in the loss of control advantage if it is not an active participate
blog in a post entitled, “You’re Doing of their carefully crafted brand message. in the conversation. n
p PERFORM: The Marketing 2.0 Authority

marketech
revised
and updated

i forward
forward
The MarkeTech Guide to Marketing Technology and Social Media Market-
ing is an updated and upgraded version based on the successful e-book
originally written for the American Marketing Association in 2008.
Marketing used to be simpler. Fewer technologies, fewer channels, less di-

rect consumer influence and frankly, lower risk – all of which made our jobs
easier. That said, I personally can’t think of a time that marketing has been
more fun. Our jobs have been transformed by technology
To say that much has changed in 18 months is a bit of an understatement.

For example, Twitter was on the scene but was far from being a marketing
opportunity. In fact, as of Q4 2008,
HubSpot estimated that 70% of all
Twitter users signed up in 2008 , in
spite of Twitter’s founding back in
March of 2006.
The effectiveness of the tools that

we’ve used for decades has been
called into question on the past few
years. It’s interesting to note that
consumer time spent watching vid-
eo on the “best screen available”
continues to rise quarter-to-quarter
while their usage and consumption
of CGM (consumer generated me-
dia) content represents almost 20%
of their time (surely there’s some
Marketech www.marketingsavant.com
ii forward
overlap there!) but grabs a paltry 3% of the average marketing budget .
Marketing technology goes well beyond and before the advent of social media. Surely, some of the
tools we discuss in this e-book are social media tools. However, and more importantly, they are the
state-of-the art vehicles that today’s marketers need to understand to grow their bottom line and
keep pace with the ever-advancing customer base and marketplace.
10 Questions Marketers Want Answered About Digital & Social Media

You’re not alone if you have more questions than answers when
it comes to approaching social media marketing and market-
ing technology. Michael A. Stelzner, author of the, “Social Me-
dia Marketing Industry Report” , conducted a survey of 900
people regarding social media marketing. They received 700
open-ended responses and summarized the major questions
marketing professionals wanted answered. I’ve included these
questions because they so closely reflect the same questions
that I’ve been receiving month after month while conducting
the AMA’s two-day “TechnoMarketing” training course on marketing technology & social media.
They include:
1. What are the best practices and tactics to use?
2. How do I measure the effectiveness of social media?
3. Where do I start?
4. How do I manage the social balance?
5. What are the best sites and tools out there?
6. How do I make the most of my available time?
7. How do I find and focus my efforts on my target audience?
8. H
ow do I convert my social media marketing efforts into tangible results?
9. How do I cohesively tie different social media efforts together?
10. Does social media marketing work, and if so, how effective is it?
One in three marketers surveyed indicated that identifying best practices, measuring results and
knowing where to begin were their top questions with social media. The MarkeTech guide aims to
address many of these top-of-mind questions in the following pages.
1. “State of the Twittersphere,” HubSpot. Q4 2008. http://cdnqa.hubteam.com/State_of_the_Twittersphere_by_HubSpot_Q4-2008.pdf

2. “A2/M2 Three Screen Report,” Nielsen/Netratings. Q1 2009.
3. “Media Trends: Time Spent on The Internet Continues to Grow,” Forrester Research. May 2009.
4. “Interactive Advertising Forecast (U.S.),” Forrester Research. April 2009.
5. “Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses,” Michael A. Stelzner. March 2009.
Tools and Trends in Marketing Technology

iii table of contents
table of contents
Social Media Mining, Buzz Monitoring, Customer Listening ......1
Twitter, Microblogging & The Statusphere......7
Blogging.....12
Facebook.....17
LinkedIn.....25
Social Networking Environments.....30
Video Sharing.....34
Email.....38
Automated email (autoresponders).....42
Social Media Optimization.....44
Widgets and Gadgets.....49
Photo, Slideshow and Media Sharing Environments.....51
Honorable Mentions in Marketing Technology.....53
Appendix I: Marketing Technology Resources .....58

Glossary.....69
Sources, References and Citations.....79
1 social media mining, buzz monitoring, customer listening
chapter 1
Social Media Mining, Buzz Monitoring, Customer Listening
This guide is about what leading marketers are doing with marketing technology in 2010. There are op-
portunities abound for the savvy marketer, but none is more important than listening to the customer by
tuning into their frequency in newsgroups, blogs, podcasts, and social media sites. In fact, as the market-
ing mix moved from a ‘monologue’ model to one of dialogue and conversation, success with marketing
technology will be predicated on a successful buzz monitoring and customer listening strategy.
What Is Social Media?

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information
among humans. It most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and
social interaction, as well as the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.
Social networking, on the other hand is nothing new. Hu-

mans are all about everyday social interaction; social me-
dia offer ways to exchange information through the use of
a few clicks or uploads.
What Is Buzz Monitoring?

Marketers are known for talking, not listening. Sure, we lis-
tened, but if advertising history is telling of anything it tells
us that marketers love to produce “stuff” that they hope
consumers will like. Social media listening and buzz moni-
toring flips that mind-set; it’s a phrase used in online pub-
lic relations and social media marketing to track relevant
conversations on the Internet. It provides great opportunity

to learn at a grassroots level what people really think about your

brand, products or services in the statusphere, the collection of all
the online conversation in social networking areas such as Facebook,
Twitter and others. By monitoring the online conversation happening
in blogs, forums, social networks and other social media channels,
Buzz monitoring can businesses can bring the voices of their customers directly into their
be accomplished by marketing departments and cut down on the need for expensive
market research tools such as focus groups and phone surveys. In
paying for the
fairness to the market and marketing researchers worldwide, social
service through a media listening will never fully replace a scientifically developed
major provider of panel, customer advisory board or survey that gives us statistically
online conversation significant and valid data on which to base our marketing decisions.
monitor methodol-
ogy, or can be done Why Social Media Monitoring for 2009?
in house through a While there are a good number of large organizations engaging a
variety of free professional firm to understand the marketing conversation about
services that are their business, products or services, there are countless other com-
panies – from small business to Fortune 1000 enterprises – that have
available to all
yet to learn what the buzz is about. People are talking through blogs,
marketers. social networks like Facebook and Twitter, wikis, etc. Knowing what
they’re saying is crucial because their discussions influence consum-
er attitudes and behaviors and show up prominently in search re-
turns, all of which affect your business. It’s a huge change because
businesses no longer own their own brand. For a growing number of
companies, hiring a full-time social media marketer is the way they
ensure they interact sufficiently with their customers via Facebook,
Twitter and other online sources. Dell, for example, has more than 40
full-time employees charged solely with social media marketing on
behalf of the brand. Wells Fargo has had a vice president of social
media since 2005.
Buzz monitoring can be accomplished by paying for the service

through a major provider of online conversation monitor methodol-
ogy, or can be done in house through a variety of free services that
are available to all marketers.
It All Starts With Social Media Monitoring

In order to fully engage in a customer community, develop a wid-
get, or produce a worthwhile video that goes viral; you need to be in
touch with the buzz about your business. Consumers want to talk to
consumers. They don’t trust marketers; they trust each other. Social
media is a linkable, findable conversation medium and your cus-
tomers are talking about you, right now, and you likely don’t know
what they’re saying (Yet!).
1. “Coining the Statusphere: The Social Web’s Next Big Thing,” Brian Solis. March 2009. http://briansolis.tumblr.com/post/85090914/coining-the-statusphere-
the-social-webs-next-big
Social media or buzz monitoring can be done professionally. Firms like Radian6, Vocus, ScoutLabs, Cym-
fony and dozens of other companies have sprung up to go beyond the blogs. They’re monitoring and
tracking ALL mediums used by social media-enabled consumers. It’s more than just listening; it’s about
applying benchmarks, heuristics and intelligence around social media, not just one-dimensional DIY
tools.
How Do Marketers Find Out Who’s Talking and What Do They Measure?
There are different parts of the conversation - enterprise, mainstream media, and consumer generated
content. Unless you’re monitoring the buzz, you won’t know what’s there. In every social media moni-
toring program, there are a few fairly obvious things that every marketer should track. If you need more
reasons to track social media, think of the new product ideas, keyword research for SEO, warnings of
possible scandals and customer reactions that you’ll be able to amass.

In addition, there are three key metrics involved in what is referred to as “Online Reputation Manage-
ment”:
1. Share of voice. This is a measurement of how much and to what degree people are talking
about you.
2. Tone of voice, a.k.a. “Sentiment analysis.” This is a measurement of whether the conversation
is largely positive or negative. If the sentiment is positive, reward those who speak well of you.
If the tone is largely negative, you need to take action to get to the root of the problem IF one
really exists. If it’s based in misinformation, you’ll need to engage the critics and correct their
misunderstanding.
3. Trends over time. It’s important to monitor the above metrics over time to see the effects of
your advertising, marketing and public relations efforts.
Best Practices for Monitoring the Conversation

Getting started monitoring the online conversation can be pretty straightforward, but there are a few
guidelines that can help you get a jump start.
1. Look for evangelists and help the spread the good word
2. Engage with ‘middle ground’ consumers to influence them.
3. Look for “incidental detractors” and engage with them to fix problems.
4. Seek out and minimize “determined detractors” - the people who just can’t seem to be happy.

Monitoring Steps
1. Conversation discovery – Use brand monitor-

ing services, keyword watch lists and alerts
or, at a minimum, at least doing persistent
searches?
2. Conversation aggregation – How are you
gathering your data? Options include Google
Reader or MyYahoo.
3. Conversation escalation – The decision to
move from passive to active participation in
online conversations.
4. Conversation participation – Determining
how to participate. It could be via emails,
comments, posts, tweets, etc. OR you can
participate more indirectly through social
bookmarks, tagging, etc.
5. Conversation tracking – There are many op-
tions, from customer relationship manage-
ment software to review of email strings.
What’s Next for Social Media

Listening/Buzz Monitoring?
There is a move from the belief that markets
are conversations to a scenario in which online
conversations are becoming markets – or, at a
minimum, that there’s a market for monitoring
conversations. A whole class of technologies is
emerging to help companies track the conver-
sations exploding online. More and more com-
panies are embracing social media monitoring.
A reported entitled “Social Media Monitoring
and Analysis: Generating Consumer Insights
From Online Conversation” produced by the
Aberdeen Group, determined that 52 percent
of companies currently had a social media
monitoring and analysis solution in place and
another 33 percent either had budget planned
for these solutions within the next 12 months, or
were interested in the technologies and were
evaluating providers. In addition, survey respon-
dents indicated that social media monitoring

and analysis can benefit a greater than expected number of corpo-

rate functions, from customer care to public relations and legal.
What to Monitor Buzz Monitoring Tools

•Blogs •Google or Yahoo Alerts
•Newsgroups •Google Blog/Web Search
What to Track? •Social networks •Google Reader
Company name •Podcasts •Google Trends or Trendrr
•Q&A venues (i.e., Yahoo An- •Twitter
Products/Brands
swers) •YackTrack
Executives •Search engine results •Social Mention
Key Customers •Wikipedia •FriendFeed search
Patents •Technorati
Press releases •Serph
Competitors •SocialMention
Stocks •FeedRinse
•BlogPulse
Services
•Backtype
•BoardReader
•Summize
(search.twitter.com)
•Filtrbox.com
•Flickr (photos)
•YouTube (videos)
•Facebook Lexicon
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Marketech
7 Twitter, Microblogging & The Statusphere
chapter 2
Twitter, Microblogging & The Statusphere
Microblogging is a Web service that allows the subscriber to broadcast short messages to other
subscribers of the service. The appeal of microblogging is both its immediacy and its portability.
Posts are brief – typically 140 to 200 characters – and can be written and received by a variety
of devices including cell phones. Although most microblog broadcasts are posted as text, some
services allow video or audio posts.
Microblogging is slowly moving into the mainstream. In the United States, President Barack Obama
microblogged from the campaign trail using Twitter, one of the most popular microblogging ser-
vices. Traditional media organizations, including The New York Times, have begun to send headlines
and links in microblog posts.
Microblogging is
Growing. Fast.
A survey from Nielsen showed that
between February 2008 to February
2009, Twitter grew at a whopping
1,382 percent growth rate. In Feb-
ruary 2008, it had 7.038 million users
in comparison to the 65.7 million on
Facebook at the same time. Twit-
ter, which counts the 35-to-49-year-
old age range as its biggest demo-
graphic) has a huge advantage in
that it is easy to use via a mobile
phone (whether through mobile
Web or text messages). In January
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-comparing-the-first-three-years-of-growth-2009-4

2009, 735,000 unique visitors accessed Twitter through their mobile

phones. The average unique visitor went to Twitter 14 times during
the month and spent an average of seven minutes on the site.
And since people are on their computers or their cell phones mul-
tiple times a day with Twitter, it’s an ideal tool for selling something
online.
Another microblog innovator is Buzzable, which attempts to cre-

ate in-social networks on a microblog platform. In other words, by
creating small networks of highly targeted individuals, you can
distribute time-sensitive materials and collaborate in a community
without having to create an entire social network.
What Marketers are Doing With It

Marketing savvy companies are using Twitter in a multitude of
ways, primarily to establish contact between its staff and custom-
ers, giving the company an aura of being human and approach-
able. Dell Computer, on the other hand, has several customer ser-
vice people who find complaints about the company’s products
and address them at the earliest possible opportunity. They also
offer more general technical advice.
Case in point: Zappos.com

Online shoe and clothing retailer, Zappos.com, CEO Tony Hsieh
regularly uses Twitter to update on anything from work travels to
what he is eating to company news. All Zappos employees are
allowed to join Twitter and/or write for the company blogs. The
company also sues Twitter to engage with customers and provide Microblogging
personalities for the people working at Zappos. Twitter is an excel-
lent tool to show a personality and have fun. Twitter has enabled
Tools
this and other companies to put a personal face on an imperson- ► Microblogging Tools
al entity: the corporation. To date, Hsieh has used his account to ► Twitter
share details about what he’s up to, provide behind-the-scenes ► Neighbr
info about what it’s like to work at Zappos, launch a Twitter con- ► Buzzable
test asking people to help them rewrite their confirmation emails, ► Shout ‘Em
incubate an idea for polling customers on Twitter and explain why ► Ning
he’s using Twitter. Collectively, these efforts are putting a human
► Pownce
face on the company and engage customers more deeply.
► Plurk
► you are
Case in point: Dell
► Identi.ca
Twitter is especially suited to promoting online contests. It can also
be used as an additional sales channel; Dell’s Twitter account Del- ► Jaiku
lOutlet has generated about $500,000 in sales by offering special ► Kwippy
discounts to Twitter users.
Marketech
Case in point: Ben and Jerry’s

Ben and Jerry’s turned to microblogging to further its engage-
ment with loyal consumers. The company wanted a social media
program that would align with the Ben & Jerry’s mission of “Peace,
A social media Love and Ice Cream,” fit its culture and met its “key performance
campaign by Ben indicators” of relationships strengthened and built. They partnered
with a social media marketer to create a peace sign mosaic to
& Jerry’s yielded which users could contribute pictures and text with their own vi-
a 42-fold increase sion of world peace in celebration of the new “Imagine Whirled
in time spent en- Peace” ice cream. The campaign is available at www.benjerry.
gaged with the com/imagine.
Website, strength-
The results: The campaign yielded a 42-fold increase in time spent
ened existing rela- engaged on the site. The campaign also strengthened relation-
tionships and in- ships with loyalists and introduced younger audiences.
troduced younger
audiences.

Best Practices
Here are a few basic steps to help you get the
most out of using a microblog without getting Ping.fm
yourself in too deeply, or overwhelming others:
1. Consider your audience. If you’re speaking to Ping.fm is a free social networking
friends, it’s OK to share personal details. But if and microblogging Web service that
your feed is open to the public, make sure it’s
enables users to post to multiple so-
something of value to them.
2. Post regularly but don’t go overboard. Blog- cial networks simultaneously. Making
gers often feel the need to update their blogs an update on Ping.fm pushes the up-
regularly, and the same rings true for microb- date to a number of different social
logging. Web sites at once, so users can avoid
3. Don’t include personal details in an open
logging into multiple accounts to
broadcast. If your feed is public and you have
a lot of followers you don’t know well, leave send the same message to different
out specific details about where you are and groups and contacts on the Internet.
what you’re doing. It’s a huge time-saver, making it par-
4. Turn off phone alerts for feeds that don’t feed ticularly appealing to social media
you. If you get too many text messages from
and online marketing professionals.
Twitter feeds that aren’t relevant to you, you
can stop getting text alerts from that person
or completely remove the person from your Ping.fm groups services into three cat-
friend list. egories – status updates, blogs and
microblogs – and updates can be
Leverage Microblogging to Help sent to each group separately. Users
Your Business These Ways: can configure their Ping.fm account
1. M onitor your industry and competitors. South- to aggregate content to services like
west Airlines, for example, has used micro- WordPress.com, Facebook, LinkedIn,
blogging to keep an eye on long lines at its
Twitter and many more.
airport gates so it can respond to and help
passengers.
2.Track conversations about companies and
their brands.
3. Grow sales. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, for example, may occasionally give away shoes
through Twitter, building loyalty to the brand that will result in additional sales in the future.
Dell has used Twitter to broadcast closeout sales on product lines.
4. Enhance customer service. Microblogging posts can be directed to the general audience
from a user; to a particular user but read by the general audience; or to a user via a direct
message. An employee can follow these posts and address a customer’s request in any of
them quickly, directly and personally.
5. Expand communication with stakeholders. Distribute short messages to direct readers via
URLs to your Web site, blog or other Web sources where you can offer more information
about the company or relevant issues.
Marketech
Twitter Do’s and Don’ts

Do’s
• Do create a Twitter profile that helps people verify
your legitimacy
• Do let consumers know who they are talking to (a real
person, not a bot)
• Do protect consumer information
• Do provide customer care and feedback
• Do include your social media affiliations on your cor-
porate Web site
• Do empower your Twitter representative to make a
difference
• Do see what other businesses are doing on Twitter
• Do use Twitter search engines for keyword searches around brands, products and topics of inter-
est.
• Do follow Twitterers with similar interest to establish a brand presence with conversation
• Do use Twitter to start a conversation – ask your followers to come up with new ideas or ask what
they’re doing now
• Do learn about customer needs – what other things are customers interested in?
• Do advertise an event or promotion
• Do ask questions and get feedback from your followers
• Do engage consumers in co-creation and get constructive insights for future company develop-
ments or publications
• Do follow the Blogger Code of Ethics (be transparent in your reason to Tweet, Respect other Twit-
terers, think before you direct message, make sure your message directly relates to those you are
reaching out to, provide value to your followers).
Don’ts
• Don’t use Twitter to push ads or brand messaging.
• Don’t just Tweet but also follow others to join in or start a conversation.
• Don’t use Twitter to tell your everyday tasks; make sure your Tweets are valuable.
•Don’t Tweet anything about clients, co-workers or others that you would not want them to see.
Where Is Microblogging Going?

While Shout ‘Em and Buzzable haven’t hit Twitter’s strides, they and thousands of other microblogs
are appearing on the Internet everyday. Eventually, it’s anticipated that the microblogging world will
become so cluttered that segmentation will be required to specific niches and targeted industries.

12 Blogging
chapter 3
Blogging
A blog (a contraction of the term Weblog) is a type

of Web site, usually maintained by an individual
with regular entries of commentary, description of
events or other material such as graphics or video.
Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chrono-
logical order. The word “blog” can also be used as
a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a
blog.
The ability for readers to leave comments in an in-

teractive format is an important part of many blogs.
Most blogs are primarily textual, although some fo-
cus on art (an artlog), photographs (photoblog),
sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3
blog) and audio (podcasting).
A blogosphere is the collective community of all

blogs. Since all blogs are on the Internet by defini-
tion, they may be seen as interconnected and so-
cially networked. Discussions “in the Blogosphere”
have been used by the media as a gauge of pub-
lic opinion on various issues. But as the Blogosphere
grows in size and influence, the lines between what
is a blog and what is a mainstream media site be-
come less clear. Larger blogs are taking on more
characteristics of mainstream sites and mainstream
Marketech
13 Blogging
sites are incorporating styles and formats from the Blogosphere.

In fact, 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs.
Blog Basics
Blogs have been around since the late 1980s or early 1990s, but
the official terms Weblog, blog and blogging didn’t surface until It has been
1997 and gained popularity a few years later. Blogs are often estimated that by
the foundation of corporate social media and customer com- 2013, 128.2 million
munity programs. Currently, 27.9 million U.S. Internet users have people--almost
a blog they update at least once a month, and they represent
60% of all users--
14 percent of the Internet population. By 2013, 37.6 million us-
ers will update their blogs at least monthly, according to emar- will read a blog
keter.com. at least once a
month.
Even more important than the number of bloggers, though, is
the number of blog readers. eMarketer estimates that in 2009,
96.6 million U.S. Internet users will read a blog at least once a
month. By 2013, 128.2 million people, or 58 percent of all users,
will do the same. While blogs in the beginning were used for
one-way expression, they’ve evolved into two-way conversa-
tions. This interactive format presents new opportunities for mar-
keters to influence – and monitor – conversations that might be
relevant to their businesses. Only 16 percent
of Fortune 500
The bottom line is that blogging is a global phenomenon. Blog- companies have a
gers have been posting for an average of three years and are public blog,
collectively creating close to 1 million posts every day.
which means
tremendous
Who’s Using It opportunity for
There is tremendous room for opportunity on blogs not only in
the small business market, but also in the Fortune 500 segment.
these companies
Only 16 percent of these companies surveyed have a publicly to engage their
facing blog, according to a new study by Nora Ganim Barns, audiencece
Ph.D., chancellor professor of marketing at UMass Dartmouth through blogs.
and Eric Mattson, CEO and Financial Insite. Eighty-one (16 per-
cent) of the primary corporations listed on the 2008 Fortune 500
list have a public-facing corporate blog with a post in the past
12 months.
These early adopters include three of the top five corporations

(Wal-Mart, Chevron and General Motors). Blogging differed by
industry type, with computer software, peripherals and office
equipment companies having the most blogs (eight). Compa-
nies in this category include Xerox, Dell, Microsoft, Oracle and
EMC. The telecommunications industry represented by compa-

14 Blogging
nies like Verizon, Sprint and Virgin Media had five

of the blogs studied. Food-related companies like
McDonald’s, Tyson, Whole Foods, General Mills and
Safeway also had five blogs.
11 Reasons
Why Blogging Matters Of those using it, their uses and appeal vary widely.
For example:
1. It brings ideas out to the public. • Wal-Mart has a checkout blog geared to the con-
2. It provides a forum for communi- sumer and discussing the latest in gadgets, green,
cating. gaming, etc.
3. It showcases new ideas. • Coca-Cola’s conversations has a single author
4. It presents different perspectives. blogging about the history of the company.
• Southwest Airlines has multiple authors writing
5. It allows for disintermediation tradi-
about corporate culture, developments, services
tional media (if something written
and offers, and is very clear about its call to ac-
about you was wrong, set the re-
tion – access to exclusive Southwest offers.
cord straight).
6. It allows people to find you through
search and search engines love
blogs. The Blogging Bottom Line
7. It empowers people to respond. According to Technorati: State of the Blogosphere
8. It allows for communication with 2008 report, The majority of bloggers we surveyed
currently have advertising on their blogs. Among
very niche segments.
those with advertising, the mean annual invest-
9. It allows you to spark conversation.
ment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The
10. It encourages collaboration with
mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in rev-
community to solve problems.
enue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors
11. It helps to create your brand and per month. Note: median investment and revenue
get your message out. (which is listed below) is significantly lower. They are
also earning CPMs on par with large publishers.
Bloggers are sophisticated in using self serve tools

for search, display, and affiliate advertising, and
are increasingly turning to ad and blog networks.
Many bloggers without advertising may consider it
Why when their blogs grow – the inability to set up adver-
Marketers blog tising will not be a factor.
• stablish authority
E
• Converse with customer base
• Search related benefits
Tips for Creating An Effective Blog
• Instant feedback, reciprocity and •C
reate an authentic blog personality. Don’t
commitment formulate your posts – let your real voice shine
• Easy syndication with RSS through. Its casual, conversational, anything-goes
nature makes it both so appealing to blog writ-
ers and readers - and so potentially dangerous to
business.
Marketech
15 Blogging
• G o into your blog writing with the intent of writing to

Blog search inform, not to sell.
• Set clear objectives for your blog management. Why
engine does your organization want to blog? Evaluate the
Technorati has: benefits and assess the risks before leaping in.
• Look at other industry blogs to see how they are en-
• indexed 133 million blog gaging their readers and see what response they’re
receiving.
records indexed since
• Comment on other blogs to leave a footprint back to
2002
your own. Quality on-topic and knowledgeable com-
• tracked blogs in 81 lan-
ments will engage readers to inquire more about the
guages since June 2008 writer.
• determined bloggers col- • Be consistent. In the beginning, try to post at least
lectively create 1 million three times a week.
posts per day • Keep it simple. Don’t get caught up in the length of
• learned that company your posts. The key is to make them interesting and
information or gossip and valuable.
everyday retail experi- • Allow comments. You can moderate them, but com-
ences are fodder for the ments create the viral effect by allowing readers to
majority of bloggers interact with you. Monitoring is crucial.
• Use a succinct and appealing headline. This is what
draws your reader in.
• Ask for some action in your post.
• Provide unique content that makes your blog a desti-
nation for the user.
Top • Link your blog to other reputable sources of informa-
bloggers, tion. Blog links can also help in increasing the page
ranks of the blog.
according to • Use newsletters to promote engagement.
Cisonblog, are:
• ReadWriteWeb
• Mashable
• Seth Godin’s Blog
• Scobleizer
• How to Change the World
• ChrisBrogan.com
• Micro Persuasion
• Successful Blog
• Marketing Pilgrim
• Logic + Emotion

16 Blogging
What’s Next for Blogging

Today, blogs are everywhere and they have changed the way publishing works. What used to be
about a cluster of a minority around a single tool now refers to hundreds of millions of people us-
ing a warehouse of tools so that they can behave online the way they do in real life. Collectively,
we’ve entered the “Age of Normalization in the Blogosphere,” according to Shel Israel, social me-
dia writer and speaker, co-author of Naked Conversations. The process which content is created
will continue to evolve. This past year included the introduction of countless “microblogs” such as
Twitter, long blogging and video blogging prompting the creation of microcommunities. Video is
anticipated to become increasingly important to convey complex messages that are often lost
in text.
Marketech
17 Facebook
chapter 4
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking Web site; users
can join networks organized by city, workplace,
school and region to connect and interact with
other people. People can also add friends and
send them messages. The Web site’s name refers
to the paper facebooks depicting members of a
campus community that some colleges and prep
schools give to incoming students, faculty and
staff as a way to get to know each other on cam-
pus. In fact, Facebook originated with college
students at Harvard University.
Today, Facebook has catapulted into the lead of

social networking sites. As of Jan. 4, 2009, Face-
book had more than 42 million users in the U.S.
alone. The biggest surprise is that Facebook’s
35-54-year-old demographic segment has contin-
ued to grow the fastest and even accelerated to
a 276.4% growth rate over the past six months. It’s
definitely not your college student’s Facebook anymore!
According to Facebook, it has more than 200 million active users and more than 100 million of those
log on to Facebook at least once each day, and two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of col-
lege age. Not surprisingly, people who use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50 percent
more active on Facebook than non-mobile users. About 30 million active users currently access
Facebook through their mobile devices.

18 Facebook
Facebook Success Stories
Business-to-consumer: Spe-
cialty Color Services.
This photo retail business de- Best Practices for
cided to use Facebook to
promote their business and Marketing in Facebook
to showcase how much they
Based on the experiences of organizations marketing in
care about their work and
the photography industry.
Facebook and conversations with small- and medium-size
They wanted to show how business owners, several best practices for using Face-
much they adored their pas- book have been identified, including:
sionate, enthusiastic and loy-
•A ssign a specific person to create and manage your
al customers in the process.
company’s Facebook Page. It’s important to post new
They used Facebook to get
their message out: Photo- information, photos and videos regularly to keep it fresh.
graph your love. They spread • Respond to messages and questions left on your Page’s
the word about a contest discussion board and “Wall” within 24 hours.
built around that theme. • Post all of your events, videos and relevant photos to
Participants were encour- Facebook. Consistent activity and active sharing are
aged to upload photos rep-
critical to Facebook success.
resenting their interpretation
• Don’t fall victim to the mentality: “If I build it, they will
of Photography your love to
the Specialty Color Services come.” Develop a strategy to attract fans, which may
Facebook page. In the pro- involve both paid and unpaid approaches.
cess, they would “Become • Promote your Facebook Page outside of Facebook to
a Fan” on Facebook and via attract more fans. This can be as simple as adding a
word-of-mouse, encourage line to your current marketing or PR materials, such as
others to do the same.
“Find us on Facebook.” Be sure to review Facebook’s
guidelines for external promotion. Facebook also offers
When the contest ended in
January 2009, Specialty Col- a “Share” button you can add to your Web site to make
or Services had received al- it easier for your content to be shared on Facebook.
most 2,000 entries, boosting
business and re-creating the
community feel that owners
Gabe Cano and Glen Hodges said they missed from their days running a smaller photo business.
They also posted videos on Facebook (such as one in which Gabe talked about the store’s Valen-
tine’s Day services). Since he began doing the videos, Gabe said that when people call the store
and recognize his voice, they want to talk. He finds this to be an “amazing level” to achieve with a
customer he may never have met.
Now, they have a forum for customers to come and share their love, and to establish relationships
with customers beyond the retail transaction. The store said they are able to add to their level of
authenticity, something they can’t get from a Web site or e-mail campaign. In the end, Gabe and
Glen are photofinishers and do tell their customers it’s critical to print their pictures and store them
Marketech
19 Facebook
and catalog them. “And when you build that trust with them through Facebook, they’ll be more
willing to do that,” he said.
Business-to-consumer: IntenCity Global. Bryce Gruber, the owner of this marketing and public re-
lations firm in New York, used Facebook to draw more than 300 people to an opening party for a
clothing store that expected would only attract 150 to 200 people. She said the people who learned
about the party through Facebook bought several thousand dollars in merchandise. Her approach
is to post information and reminders about her events regularly, and to upload plenty of party pic-
tures afterward. Each day, she gets 20 to 30 messages on her wall and keeps that going with quick
replies. The effort means she shows up often in her Facebook friends’ news feeds, where people are
notified of their friend’s activities on Facebook.

20 Facebook
How Nonprofits Can Benefit from Facebook

Nonprofits can probably benefit most from the use of Face-
book, versus their for-profit peers, in that they don’t have to
make a financial expenditure to reap its benefits. Instead,
using Facebook for nonprofits requires personnel resources.
20 Ways to market Here are a few innovative ways nonprofits can benefit from
in Facebook having a presence on Facebook
1. Profile Page 1. Raise funds for the organization’s fund-raising campaign

2. Find and communicate with potential supporters and
2. Groups create a sense of community
3. Pages 3. Stir and broaden support for important social issues
4. Empower members to engage in their own actions
4. Events 5. Organize, promote and manage events
5. Notes and Photos 6. Promote the organization’s blog, latest news, meetings
and other Web content
6. Messages 7. Raise public awareness and money for advocacy efforts
7. Marketplace 8. Find and recruit volunteers – the abundance of young
professionals on Facebook make it an ideal place to at-
8. Share/Posted Items tract volunteers
9. Networks 9. Create a single branded page of your organization’s
work
10. Mini Feed and
10. Stay in touch with core audiences on an ongoing ba-
News Feed sis – flexibility to have open, closed or secret groups as
11. Social Ads needed
12. Contests
Tips for Effective Facebook Marketing
13. Polls Facebook offers a number of features that can be used to
14. Facebook Platform market products and services, as well as a business’ Web site.
For example, Facebook Ads offer the ability to target a niche
Ad Networks
market based on age, gender, interests, location and more.
15. Sponsored
Facebook Groups If you’d like to begin without making a financial expenditure,
here are a few ways to tap Facebook’s grassroots marketing
16. Profile Box potential:
17. Mini Feed
•C
reate a profile. This is your presence and expressed the
18. News Feed passion you have for your brand. It’s a crucial page and
19. Invitations the most frequently browsed page of your online presence.
Share the story of your product or service, how you started,
20. Email Notifications how you’ve grown/evolved, where you’re headed, etc.,
here.
Marketech
21 Facebook
•P romote events. Post your marketing events, training pro-

grams or even company news here to your customers,
partners and world at large.
• Send messages. You can send them to a more captive
Organizations have group (those who are in your network) or out of your net-
tapped Facebook work as well.
Fan Pages, Groups • Conduct polls. You can conduct market research on your
target market using this offering. One of the greatest ad-
and social ads.
vantages is that you’ll likely receive a large number of re-
With Facebook’s sponses in just hours.
array of options for • Join pertinent groups. Use the site’s group feature to net-
businesses to con- work with your target audience.
nect with custom- • Create a group for your business. Groups are the oldest
and simplest way to build community around your brand
ers, it is quickly mov-
or company on Facebook. This will serve as a central place
ing from a “nice to for people to congregate and participate in conversations
have” to a “must around your brand. You can post photos, discussion topics,
have” element in videos and links as well as easily send news and updates to
your business your group members as often as you like. Groups are also
one of the simplest ways to do viral marketing on Face-
outreach strategy. book. An alternative is to create a page for your business;
these are similar to groups but are more customizable and
get more prominent “real estate.”
• Assign a specific person to create and manage your com-
pany’s Facebook page to ensure it features new informa-
tion, photos and videos. Consistent activity and active
sharing are critical to Facebook success.
• Create a marketing strategy for Facebook so you attract
fans; this may involve both paid and unpaid approaches.
• Promote your Facebook page outside Faebook - ad it to
your marketing materials, Web site, etc.
• Establish a Facebook badge. Facebook describes its badge
feature as a “customizable way to share your Facebook in-
formation on other Web sites.” Creating your own Badge
will link Facebook friends to your company’s Web site.

22 Facebook
What about Facebook Advertising?

With the ability to reach into a rich and interactive base of 250,000,000 people on Facebook, it can
be a marketer’s dream or a marketer’s nightmare, depending on your approach.
Successful advertising campaigns on Facebook are dependent on a few factors. Target, for one,
has had much success with their Facebook campaigns. Certainly, as a large consumer brand with
broad appeal and the budgets that they can allocate for testing make Target a challenging act to
follow for most marketers. However, there are scores of marketers with far more obscure products
and target markets who are finding success with Facebook advertising ranging from agricultural
chemical manufacturers to welding to appliance companies
Facebook advertising is a very new field, with new strategies, tactics and ideas that have never
been used before. No one has figured it all out yet, but unlike channels like Google AdWords, the
competition is less, and the potential rewards are much larger than many other more traditional
methods.
When looking at the Facebook campaign AKQA ran for Target, AKQA did exactly what you are
supposed to do when running an social media marketing campaign. Here are some of the lessons
learned from that campaign.
Adjust the message for your audience and use unique targeting tools
Rather than just talking to their audience, they made their campaign more about party planning.
“Our attitude had to be that we were taking advantage of an environment that already exists; we
aren’t there so much to tell a story, but to put on a party, giving the students a platform for social
interaction,” says Mauro Cavalletti, AKQA’s creative director.
Marketech
23 Facebook
Target and AKQA monitored Facebook to track the conversation

One of the key differences between advertising or engaging in Facebook and any other type
of “non social-network advertising” is that you have to engage, or be social, so to speak, to
track how your ads are performing and to stay engaged with the audience for the duration of
the campaign. This goes double if the landing page or call to action for the ad is a Facebook
group or fan page where people are expected to comment or post.

The ads need to speak the language of your audience
The ads, the landing page, and everything about a Facebook campaign need to be highly
relevant for the audience, which almost goes without saying, but they also need to speak the
language that the audience speaks – right down to the keywords in the ads.
Marketers are getting great results with Facebook

In Target’s case, they were able to effectively measure the ROI of their Facebook efforts. By
September 31, the sponsored page had 7,176 members, 409 photos, 483 posts and hosted 37
discussion groups. Many of the posts provided positive feedback on Target stores, members
informed other members where good deals were, which Target store had short coffee lines,
and bargain shoppers praised the “dollar bins”.
All that having been said, Facebook campaigns are not for everyone. Wal-Mart has had their
share of failures with Facebook, Wal-Mart’s failure was due, in large part, to their decision
to restrict comments and feedback on its Facebook page to “Wall Posts” instead of having
a discussion board like
Target did. Their reluc- http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/14/facebook-surpasses-175-million-users-continuing-to-grow-by-600k-usersday/
tance to truly engage

in the social aspect of
social media advertis-
ing was the beginning
of their undoing.

24 Facebook
What’s Next for Facebook?

Facebook is an evolving animal; in early 2009, it underwent several changes in the form of its de-
sign format (which people either loved or hated), its terms-of-service agreement (which generated
controversy), the departure of Gideon Yu, its chief financial officer, its cash flow situation (in April
2009, its CFO indicated Facebook doesn’t need additional financing and is not short on money).
Perhaps the most controversial of all the changes is the opening of part of Facebook’s code to the
public in April 2009 (Facebook Open Stream API); third-party developers can now build Facebook
applications that will allow users to post status updates, share pics and links and interact with most
elements of the site without visiting Facebook.com. This is sure to impact the traffic levels and the
resulting potential touchpoints for businesses advertising on Facebook.
Not surprisingly, Facebook’s future is largely in the hands of its users – literally, those who use mobile
devices. The number of Facebook’s users who access it via their mobile device every day is four
million – and growing. With the increased use of superphones, mobile and wired Web are going to
become tighter than ever.
Looking forward, Facebook is open to a much broader inflow of ad dollars given that it is designed
for both casual users and professionals.
Marketech
25 LinkedIn
chapter 5
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site founded in December

2002 and launched in May 2003 mainly used for professional networking. As
of May 2009, it had more than 39 million registered users spanning 170 indus-
tries. The site began as a resume-sharing site with networking functionality.
Although it has been around for several years, its site traffic grew 153 percent
in 2008 and 319 percent since 2007.
In today’s economic climate, it’s no wonder LinkedIn is thriving. Overall traffic

has more than doubled to 6.9 million users in February 2009 from 3.3 million a
year earlier. LinkedIn continues to be the destination for people who want to
connect for business ONLY. Other social networks typically have professional
and personal components.
LinkedIn Success Stories

Business-to-business – Davis & Kelthau, s.c. In fall 2008, this Milwaukee law firm
joined LinkedIn at the urging of the firm’s director of marketing and business
development. Among the attorneys who took her advice was a partner who
was skeptical at first. But, he later told that, in response to two of his emails
asking clients to connect, not only did they accept his invitation, but also con-
tacted him saying, “I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you about…” and
two new matters landed on his plate with very little effort on his part.
Business-to-consumer. Employers are increasingly relying on LinkedIn to recruit
and vet their potential hires. Drew Patterson, vice president of marketing for
Kayak.com, used the site to find two of the five employees he hired last year,
paying $195 to list his job posts for 60 days.

26 LinkedIn
LinkedIn Features
•A t the root of LinkedIn is the intent to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact de-
tails of people they know and trust in business. The people in the list are called Connections.
This list can be used in a number of ways:
o A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of
each of their connections (termed second degree connections) and also the connec-
tions of second degree connections (termed third degree connections). This can be used
to gain an introduction to someone you wish to know through a mutual, trusted contact.
o It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by
someone in one’s contact network.
o Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
o Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing
contacts can introduce them.
• The feature LinkedIn Answers allows users to pose questions for the community to answer.
• The searchable LinkedIn Groups feature allows users to establish new business relationships by
joining alumni, industry or professional or other relevant groups.
• Make or obtain recommendations of people with whom you are connected. These online
testimonials – a key component of your LinkedIn profile – not only enhance your profile’s
completion percentage, but also give people researching you a reference point for how
professional and credible you and your business are.
Top Tips for Effective LinkedIn Marketing

LinkedIn is the biggest business networking community online. If you’re not using it, you’re miss-
ing out on exposure and networking opportunities for yourself and your business. See the “Build
Your Best Profile” sidebar on the next page for more tips.
Marketech
27 LinkedIn
Ways to Use LinkedIn to Promote

Yourself and/or Your Business
•C ustomize your URL. Your profile information
may be indexed by search engines. LinkedIn
How Nonprofits
profiles rank pretty highly with Google. Instead Can Benefit from LinkedIn
of using the default URL, consider customizing
yours with your company’s name. If you’re a • F und-raising and partnerships go
small business that’s not well known, consider hand in hand with networking. Ev-
using a great keyword. eryone knows you begin by asking
• Include a photo. A picture aids recall when the people you know for support,
you’ve met face-to-face and people with pic-
then ask the people they know,
tures are far more likely to be contacted.
then the people they know, and so
• Ensure your entry doesn’t contain misspellings
on. That is the premise of how Linke-
or other errors.
dIn works. It also presents a new way
• Use “Status Visibility,” LinkedIn’s internal version
of Twitter to keep your connections current on to find like-minded organizations for
what’s important to you today. Based on what possible partnerships.
you’re doing, they can reach out to help you.
• L inkedIn is also a likely place to kick-
• Use the summary to show you are qualified to
start a donation drive with your own
do what you want to do; use the “experience”
network and beyond. Its demo-
area to support the summary.
• Tap the “Specialties” area for keywords asso- graphic is a wealthier one, with ex-
ciated with the people you want to attract. ecutives from some of the Fortune
These are bait and you want LinkedIn members 500 as members and more than
searching for these keywords to find you. 1,500 C-level business owners.
• Go ahead and give your profile greater visibil-
• S tart a group. Most nonprofits don’t
ity. Use your customized LinkedIn URL as a sig-
nature when you leave comments in business have anything formalized unless
or industry-specific blogs. they’re part of a larger organiza-
• Optimize labels. Add your Web site, blog and tion, so a DIY LinkedIn group can let
other relevant URLs to your profile. LinkedIn al- your past and future supporters stay
lows up to three. in touch.
•Use the headline to define yourself. Use words
• Forum for discussion. If you have a
that clearly define you and your business in
question, pose it via your LinkedIn
the field directly below your name; these will
group. Not only will this let you pose
help others easily find you.
a question to your network, but also
• Promote your blog. LinkedIn allows you to sync
your blog posts with your LinkedIn profile. to the entire LinkedIn community.
• Use the e-mail signature. LinkedIn offers you the
•A
ccess. If your nonprofit depends
option of creating a custom e-mail signature in
on involvement from younger age
Outlook, Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunder-
groups, you’re better off reaching
bird with a short version of your LinkedIn profile
them through a networking site than
traditional media

28 LinkedIn
and a link to your complete profile.

• Add an image to your profile that will add to your credibility
and professionalism.
• Make or obtain recommendations regarding your business
peers, vendors, associates and others with whom you do
Build Your Best Profile business. Don’t make the mistake of being careless with
them; view them as a portfolio and use them to support the
Join LinkedIn and complete
themes of your portfolio. Don’t hesitate to ask the recom-
the overview information
mender to highlight a specific aspect of your work on which
Complete employment to comment.
and education history • Join groups related to your industry and participate in the
discussions – starting discussions responding to questions
Add a profile summary and sharing resources and tips that might be valuable to
our network even if they don’t generate direct business for
Select an industry and you.
add your specialties • Take advantage of LinkedIn Answers. These discussion fo-
rums can be included with the profile and add significant
Add your website(s)
value because they allow people to see your expertise and
Create Public Profile URL professionalism in context.
Determine your
Public Profile URL
Set your Contact Settings
Upload your Contacts

from your email client
Make introductions to
connect via LinkedIn
Collect at least 3
recommendations from
your “network” What’s Next For LinkedIn
Perhaps the most notable factor about LinkedIn is its explo-
Regularly monitor the Q&A sive growth among individuals seeking professional network-
section for questions you are ing and business productivity. It’s also tailored its offerings to
able to answer users who want special features by offering premium plans to
those who want more options for staying in touch profession-
Ask questions that can ally. LinkedIn already has 35 million members since February
help you do your job. 2009 and that number is expected to grow making it in-line
with many of the top social networking sites on the Web. De-
velopers are working hard to implement new features like the
LinkedIn Polls along with a set of other applications since they
launched their new applications platform back in fall 2008.
Marketech
29 LinkedIn
a baker’s dozen smart ways to use LinkedIn Adapted from Guy Kawasaki
1. Increase your visibility. 6. Increase the relevancy of your job

By adding connections, you increase the search.
likelihood that people will see your profile first Use LinkedIn’s advanced search to find peo-
when they’re searching for someone to hire ple with educational and work experience
or do business with. In addition to appearing like yours to see where they work.
at the top of search results.
7. Make your interview go smoother.
2. Improve your connectability. You can use LinkedIn to find the people that
Most new users put only their current compa- you’re meeting.
ny in their profile. By doing so, they severely
limit their ability to connect with people. You 8. Gauge the health of a company.
should fill out your profile like it’s an executive Perform an advanced search for company
bio, so include past companies, education, name and uncheck the “Current Companies
affiliations, and activities. You can also in- Only” box. This will enable you to scrutinize
clude a link to your profile as part of an email the rate of turnover and whether key people
signature. are abandoning ship.
3. Improve your Google PageRank. 9. Gauge the health of an industry.

LinkedIn allows you to make your profile infor- If you’re thinking of investing or working in
mation available for search engines to index. a sector, use LinkedIn to find people who
Since LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high worked for competitors—or even better,
PageRank in Google, this is a good way to companies who failed.
influence what people see when they search
for you. To do this, create a public profile and 10. Track startups.
select “Full View.” Also, instead of using the You can see people in your network who
default URL, customize your public profile’s are initiating new startups by doing an ad-
URL to be your actual name. vanced search for a range of keywords such
as “stealth” or “new startup.”
4. Enhance your search engine results.
In addition to your name, you can also pro- 11. Ask for advice.
mote your blog or website to search engines LinkedIn Answers aims to enable this online.
like Google and Yahoo! Your LinkedIn profile The product allows you to broadcast your
allows you to publicize websites. There are a business-related questions to both your net-
few pre-selected categories like “My Web- work and the greater LinkedIn network.
site,” “My Company,” etc.To make this work,
be sure your public profile setting is set to “Full 12. Integrate into a new job.
View.” When people start a new job, ordinarily their
roots aren’t that deep in the new company.
5. Perform blind, “reverse,” and company However, with Linkedin, new employees can
reference checks. study fellow employees’ profiles and there-
LinkedIn’s reference check tool to input a fore help them get to know more people
company name and the years the person faster in a new company.
worked at the company to search for refer-
ences. Your search will find the people who
13. Scope out the competition, custom-
worked at the company during the same ers, partners, etc.
time period. Since references provided by a This seems like it’s a no-brainer, but you can
candidate will generally be glowing, this is a use LinkedIn to scope out the competition’s
good way to get more balanced data. team as well as the team of customers and
partners.

30 Social Networking Environments
chapter 6
Social Networking Environments
It’s hard to turn around without hearing a reference to one

social network or another – Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube…
But they are by far not the only ones on the Web. In fact, an
article in USA Today in May 2008 estimated there would be
nearly 250,000 sites calling themselves social networks within a
year, compared to the about 850 recorded in May 2008.
While there may not be THAT many social networks on the

Internet, one fact that’s indisputable is that the number of
users is growing, and they’re gravitating toward several key
sites. According to comScore, social networking users grew at
25 percent from June 2007 to June 2008 and the number in-
creased from 0.46 to 0.58 billion. According to Hitwise, here’s
how they rank with regard to market share:
•m yspace.com is continuing as social networking market

leader with 72 percent of market share,;
• Facebook.com has 16.91% of market share.
• MyYear.com is in third position with market share of 1.54
percent.
• Tagged is in fourth position with 1.08 percent.
• Bebo is in fifth position in social networking sites with 1.05
percent market share.
Marketech
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/12/hitwise-facebook-steals-more-us-market-share-from-myspace-in-january/
Niche Social Networking Environments.

There are niches in social networking, just as there are niches in business. These have exploded,
springing up to cater to people’s interests, backgrounds, professions and age groups. For many
bloggers, niche sites offer more targeted links and a much smaller base of competition. Accord-
ing to a eMarketer, of the millions spent to advertise on social networks. 8.2 percent went to niche
sites in 2008 went to niche sites, up from 7 percent in 2006.ASmallWorld.net, for example, has be-
come a destination for companies that make luxury goods and want to reach people who can
afford them. These niche sites are as diverse as people’s interests, from Dogster for people who
are passionate about their dogs and their computers, to TeeBeeDee.com for people over 40, to
Active Rain for real estate agents and mortgage professionals.
Examples include:
• Fuzzster, a social networking site for your cats, dogs or other fuzzy pets.
• NurseLinkUp, geared to nurses.
• MOG, which targets music lovers.
• Iliketotallyloveit for shopping aficionados.
• Mixx, which prides itself on being “you link to the Web content that really matters.”
• Small Business Brief; provides valuable exposure and legitimacy. When members post
entrepreneur-related articles, a photo and link to their profi
Of course, niche sites exist in all areas, such as sports, technology, business, entertainment, art
and design and social causes as well.

Other Social Networking

Listen to the conversation
- a self-guided tour
As part of our social-media

Environments
www.google.com/alerts MySpace – MySpace is a social networking site
strategy, let’s presume all
businesses need a way to with an interactive, user-submitted network of
www.keotag.com
listen to their audience, friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, pho-
their customers, their part-
ners, and their detractors. www.technorati.com tos, music and videos. It was a pioneer in the
Let’s begin with the tools social networking world, offering people an
we use to listen to the www.summize.com
online community where they could com-
conversation. Start with
Google Alerts and sub-
municate with people around the world and
scribe to keywords perti- share photos, music and videos.
nent to your brand. You’ll http://crazyegg.com
social media
get daily emails telling you

Xanga – Xanga is a community of online dia-
when your keywords show
up on the Web. ries and journals; it’s best described as a social
blogging Web site like Blogger or LiveJournal.
It originated as a site for sharing books and
music reviews. Today, it’s a cross between a
Social Bookmarking social network and a blog host, allowing users
Social bookmarking is an http://delicious.com/ to maintain a list of friends and join blog rings.
excellent way to share
the collective intelligence www.digg.com
Hi5 – Hi5 is a social networking site that targets
of the Internet. This is near
the top because you may www.reddit.com a general audience. It became a very popu-
want to “bookmark” some lar site when it went through a huge growth
of these other sites using www.diigo.com spurt in 2007, with much of that popularity
del.icio.us.
coming from Central America. While it’s often
found in the top 10 most visited Web sites in
the world, it often fails to make the top 50 in
the United States
RSS Feed Aggregators
Sign up for Bloglines, a free Famiva – Famiva is a family social networking
http://www.bloglines.
Web-based RSS reader
that will allow you to fol-
com and family tree building tool. Basically, you
low numerous blogs and can add family members and friends to your
news sites. Add the feed tree and then email anyone in your tree who
from www.danavan.net
to get started, then look Google.com/reader is not yet a member.
for the RSS button on your
favorite news sites to sub- Orkut – Orkut is a social networking site run by
scribe to more feeds.
Google and named for its creator, a Google
employee. Like most social networking sites,
it was created to help users meet new friends
and maintain existing relationships. It’s the
Wikipedia
most visited Web site in Brazil and India; a
Do you know what’s been
written about your brand large percentage of its users are high school
(or your competitors) on and college students in India.
Wikipedia? If you’re not www.wikipedia.org
in Wikipedia, write a mock
version of your own Wiki-
pedia entry.
Marketech
Sourced from: www.ethority.net
What’s Next for Social Networking Environments

If there’s one message that rings loudly and clearly when it comes to social networking, it’s this:
Social networks are here to stay. What is anticipated to change is its existence as a distinct prod-
uct category HOW they will exist that will change as we move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0.
According to “Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 to 2013,” a report issued earlier
this year by Forrester Research, large companies are expected to spend $4.6 billion by 2013 on
Web 2.0 technologies, with social networking, mashups and Real Simple Syndication capturing
the biggest share. It’s part of a trend that, over the next decade, will morph into Web users look-
ing not just for Web pages that contain the information they want, but also for Web services that
provide constant updates on items that appeal to their individual interests and needs. We’ll be
moving toward a platform that interconnects people, organizations, services, products, Web
sites and more. It is anticipated to include features that move us toward making existing applica-
tions more interconnected and cooperative:
• A browser that instantly shows you the content you’ll find most interesting
• Search engines that return fewer, better results – every time
• Access to contacts’ current details all the time

34 Video Sharing
chapter 7
Video Sharing
While it’s often YouTube [www.youtube.com] that gets the majority of attention in the online
video space, there is so much more to video that drives its efficacy for marketers. Take, for
example, the once small high-end blender company, Blendtec. A 186-employee company in
Orem, Utah, that built brand awareness with its “Will it Blend?” [www.willitblend.com] series.
Millions of online viewers have watched Chief Executive Tom Dickson blend up dizzying array
objects from lumber to the iPhone. For Blendtec, it was not really a question of “Will It Blend?”
but “Does It Sell?” The answer is: Yes. According to George Wright, Director of Marketing for
Blendtec, consumer sales have increased five-fold since the videos went up on YouTube and
Revver [www.revver.com].
Why Video Matters to Marketers

Well, for starters, you just can’t beat the price! Even large brand marketers like Nike are produc-
ing quick, offbeat videos that cost little to produce and return millions of views and thousands
of website visitors each month. Secondly, in one UK study online video consumption has nearly
doubled in the past year with an ever-growing appetite for online video content. Viral video is
simply another way to reach an ever fragmenting group of consumers who have led to a more
Marketech
35 Video Sharing
than 100-fold increase in the number of videos viewed on YouTube since the end of 2005. More
to the point, videos are powerful tangible artifacts that are showing up increasingly in Google’s
blended search results.
Who’s Using Online Video?

Hundreds of small companies, ad agencies, large brands and Fortune 500’s. Even Ophah Winfrey
now has her own YouTube channel [http://www.youtube.com/user/OPRAH] which she says “will
bring unique perspectives to this ever-expanding international online community.” Brands like Nike,
Warner Bros., MTV2, Dimension Films, Blendtec, Intuit, Nestle and dozens of others have created
online videos or embraced their users creating them for marketing gain.
What’s the Best Way to Use Video Sharing & Viral Video?
Viral success is never assured with video, but by following some proven tactics and creating videos
that users will want to share with their friends and colleagues you can be successful, even if you
don’t get millions of views on YouTube. The key is to make sure that your video has a real/authentic
feel and a relevant message. This, and avoiding the typical marketing or sales pitch video will help
you build trust and credibility which will serve you as you roll out future videos.
When you’re ready to deploy your marketing

strategy that spreads your video across many
digital and social media outposts of the web,
so it can more easily be shared, start with put-
ting the video into the video sharing site of your
choice (see list of popular sites later in this sec-
tion) and the post onto your own website or
blog. Make sure it’s easily “shareable”, meaning
it can be easily emailed or posted to different
social media sites (video sites like YouTube in-
clude this feature). And make it “search friend-
ly” (good headline, metatags, etc) to make it
easier for the search engines to find your video.
What’s the Quickest Path to Success with Online Video?

Virility of online video is hard to predict, but not impossible. Here’s a collection of tips from market-
ers who have achieved success in the online video space:
1. Focus on something fun or funny. Don’t force your point; it has to be worth watching.
2. Tie branding closely to product attributes. Yes, drive awareness, but for the right reasons.
3. If you’re trying to sell something, demonstrate the product. Show your product performing or
resolving a problem.
4. It has to be “real”. Consumers have little patients for hyperbole or smoke and mirrors.
5.Get to the point. Videos should be less than 2 minutes.
6. Tap into celebrities. Bonus if they have a cult following that matches your brand.
7. Create a viral launch. Videos can’t stand alone; seed them on blogs, the media and your
network at launch.

36 Video Sharing
Popular Video Hosting Web sites

YouTube - This popular video sharing Web site allows users
to upload, view and share video clips. Google recognized
its value in November 2006, purchasing it and operating it
as a subsidiary of Google.
Most of the content on YouTube is uploaded by individuals,

although some media corporations use the site as well. It’s
a powerful tool, as evidenced by the Susan Boyle’s “Brit-
ain’s Got Talent” snippet of video posted on YouTube that
was subsequently viewed by more than 13 million YouTube
viewers within a few weeks. www.youtube.com
Viddler - This video site allows users to upload, enhance and

share their video from their browser. It was noted for the in-
troduction of online commenting and tag annotations in
online video, as well as on-the-fly video recording. Viddler
gained popularity in 2007 when popular video bloggers
such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Sarah Austin and Justine Ezarik
began using Viddler’s technology to publish their shows.
Viddler is one of the most popular sites for business videos,
following YouTube, because its terms of service are favor-
able to businesses. www.viddler.com
Revver - This video sharing Web site hosts user-generated

content. It attaches advertising to user-submitted video clips
and shares ad revenue 50/50 with the creators (40/40/20 if
the video is hosted by a third party). www.revver.com
Vimeo - This video-centric social network site supports em-

bedding, sharing, video storage and allows user-comment-
ing on each video page. It’s gained a reputation as ca-
tering to a high end, artistic crowd because of its higher
bitrate, resolution and relative HD support. Vimeo launched
support for high definition video in October 2007, further es-
tablishing itself as a leading video hosting platform. One
caveat is that Vimeo is designed primarily for non-commer-
cial uses. www.vimeo.com
Scanscout.com - ScanScout is the market-leading in-

stream video advertising network. The company partners
with major advertisers and publishers to maximize video ad-
vertising opportunities. ScanScout creates a new significant
revenue stream for publishers, helping them to extract the
Marketech
37 Video Sharing
most value out of their video content and monetize it in a

user-friendly manner. For advertisers, ScanScout provides
the ability to target, optimize and deliver ad messages to
the right content and audience, maximizing user engage-
ment.
ScanScout is one of the largest online video networks on

the web, serving hundreds of millions of ad impressions ev-
ery month. The company is headquartered in Boston with
offices in New York and Los Angeles. www.scanscout.com
blinkx.com - blinx is the world’s largest and most advanced

video search engine. blinkx has built a reputation as the
Remote Control for the Video Web. Now, with an index of
over 35 million hours of searchable video and more than
450 media partnerships, including national broadcasters,
commercial media giants, and private video libraries, it
has cemented its position as the premier destination for
online TV. Today, blinkx is the world’s largest single index of
rich media content on the Web, delivering more content
from a broader range of sources than either Google or
Yahoo! www.blinx.com
Ustream – While not a video hosting site per se, Ustream is a popular website for stream live
video to
Twitvid – This tool is living proof that video has become integrated into just about everything
we do. Twitvid allows you to post video with just a Twitter account and a mobile phone. If your
phone connects to the Internet and can record video, you can likely use Twitvid to get short
videos onto the Internet quickly. Of course, you can use Twitvid via traditional means by up-
loading videos from a computer, but the power is in the mobile aspect of the site. www.twitvid.
com
What’s Next in Internet Video?

Video has been a fairly easy trend to track. As people become more mobile, so does video. As
viewers expect more content from TV to specialty shows to web-only webisodes, video content
producers have obliged and viewers have responded by devoting an increasing amount of
time, attention and bandwidth to online video.
For creators of business video, there’s an extraordinary opportunity to take whitepapers, how-
to guides, blog posts and all manner of content to the video screen to engage consumers in
a more engaging and relevant manner. The laggards who fall behind on this trend will find
themselves passed over by prospects and customers looking for more interesting and engaging
content that holds their interest.

38 Email
chapter 8
Email
Life before e-mail (electronic mail) is a distant memory. E-mail (any method of creating, trans-
mitting or storing primarily text-based human communications with digital communication sys-
tems) is an integral part of many of our daily lives.
Email Campaign Stories - Who is Using It and How

Case in point: Trek Bikes for business-to-consumer email marketing - Trek Bikes is the largest
U.S. manufacturer of bicycles and related products. It has used email marketing to propel new
product releases, to notify customers of new Trek bikes available at local retailers, to drive traffic
to the Trek Web site, and to communicate with Trek dealers.
It collected an extensive list of email addresses during the 2005 and 2006 Tour De France races
and Web site contents. When it was time for one of its largest product releases in June 2007,
Trek tapped email marketing in conjunction with print and paid search campaigns to success-
fully communicate its new offering. It did this through some very purposeful and strategic email
marketing efforts including:
• Linking sent emails to an online version
• Balancing text and images
• Allowing plenty of space to surround the image and text block
• Including important messaging above the fold
• Including a call to action with a promise
• Always including its physical address and a clear unsubscribe link
It also employed a double opt-in email acceptance process to ensure its delivery list was clean
and the users were truly interested in receiving mailings.
An example of success? Trek used email marketing for the product release of its all-new Ma-
done bike, devoting much of the campaign to email marketing. Customers printed out the mail
Marketech
39 Email
featuring the bike and brought it to their local stores. The campaign generated:
• 50 percent clicked to open rate
• 36 percent open rate (the industry average for the retail sector is 13.9 percent)
• 18 percent click-thru rate (the industry average is a 3.7 percent click-thru rate)
How Nonprofits Can Profit From E-mail Marketing

Email is a very effective and low-cost tool nonprofits can use to communicate with members,
donors and the community at large. It can be used to:
• Launch a membership drive
• Solicit donations
• Sell tickets to fund-raising events
• Communicate what’s new to volunteers, members and others to keep them engaged
• Conduct surveys/gather feedback from volunteers, members and others
20 Ways To build an email list

1. Create a face-to-face sign-up sheet
2. Put a sign-up form on your Web site home page
3. Allow people to forward your communications to others via a “forward this newsletter to
others” option on your email communication
4. Paid search
5. Search engine optimization
6. Link to your sign-up on your email signature line
7. Link to your online donation or event registration
8. Include it in your shopping cart mechanism
9. Promote your Web site sign-up on brochures and other sales collateral
10. Send direct mail highlighting the online discussion
11. Put the newsletter subscription URL on the footer of catalogs or printed newsletters; offer
incentives or discounts via e-mail only
12. Ask for business cards with e-mails on them at trade show booths
13. Feature the newsletter subscription URL on print ads
14. Promote sign up via messaging on hold and voice mail
15. Offer opt-in incentives - white papers, discounts or access to special reports
16. Pay for search engine services and promote your email on the landing page
17. Hand out sign-up forms at speaking engagements and seminars
18. Make changing an address very easy; ideally, simple enough for subscribers to update
on their own
19. Require email when people register for events
20. Sponsor a contest or drawing to encourage people to sign up

40 Email
E-mail Statistics Indicate Flurry of Emails

According to Pew Internet and American Life Project data from March 2007, 91 percent of U.S.
Internet users have gone online and sent or read email. The same source suggests that 56 per-
cent do this as part of a typical day. As of April 2008, the most popular e-mail Web sites based
on U.S. Internet usage and in descending order of popularity) were:
• mail.yahoo.com
• mail.live.com (Windows Live Hotmail)
• gmail.com
• mail.aol.com
Hitwise notes that while Gmail’s

users are fewer in number, they
tend to be younger and richer
than Yahoo’s and Hotmail’s.
A study conducted by the Rad-

icati Group in August 2008 es-
timated 210 billion emails were
sent each day.
E-mail is both a marketing tool

and a challenge:
•4 4 percent of email re-
cipients made at least
one purchase last year
based on a promo-
tional email
• People who buy products marketed through email spend 138 percent more than peo-
ple who do not receive email offers
• If marketers optimized their emails for image blocking, ROI would increase nine per-
cent
• 17 percent of Americans create a new email address every six months
• 30 percent of subscribers change email addresses annually
• 84 percent of people ages 18 to 34 use an email preview pan
Tips for Effective Email Marketing

What’s very insightful is that people no longer perceive “spam” as just unsolicited email. In-
stead, they’re assigning the word spam to all email they don’t want.
That poses additional challenges for an email marketing program. Here are a few tips for in-
creasing the likelihood your email message will be received and read:
• Make it easy to subscribe - an even book in your store, a simple form on your Web site that
gives people access to discounts or promotions if they provide their e-mails.
•Keep it confidential. Assure your customers you will never sell their information.
Marketech
41 Email
•D on’t waste the subject line. Instead, use eye-catching head-

lines.
• Avoid abbreviations, slag and hyperbole.
• Minimize imagery. Too many graphics makes an email slower
to load.
• Label the imagery you have so people see what they are
missing if they don’t download it.
• Include a visible call to action above the fold.
• Use a tone similar to what you’d use n a face-to-face meet-
ing with prospects: direct and professional.
Don’t forget ... • Clearly state the purpose and value to subscribers.
• Personalize the message whenever possible.
When building your email • Give the reader a clear way to contact you.
marketing campaign, • Get in their address books by reminding them to add you to
don’t forget to include their whitelists.
a call to action, provide • Nix attachments. Some people will not open emails with at-
easy-to-find contact tachments because of virus fears.
information and add • Avoid purchased lists of emails.
links to your company’s • Make it easy to unsubscribe to your messages.
Twitter account or other • Make your emails mobile-friendly - “click here to read on your
microblogging sites. mobile phone” is becoming more commonplace.
• Use “from” to your advantage; emails from a CEO to a fellow
executive tend to resonate. Ensure your “from” line is from
someone who matters.
• Keep messages short and sweet.
• Respect the audience’s time - do not send messages too
frequently.
• Offer something unique to the email audience.
• Add a link to your company’s Twitter account to all mass
email communications and even to event invitations and
email newsletters.
• Link to a form landing page from your company Twitter ac-
count.
• Post links from your email newsletter articles on Twitter.
• Ensure all email newsletter article authors have their Twitter
account listed on the email.

42 Autoresponders
chapter 9
Automated email (autoresponders)
An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. They
can be very simple or quite complex. Autoresponders are often used as e-mail marketing tools
to immediate provide information to prospective customers and then follow up with them at
preset intervals.
Examples:
• I Received Your Email
• Off Email; Call If Urgent
• I’m Out of the Office, Returning on “X” Date
• Thank You For Registering
The greatest appeal of autoresponders may lie in the ability to automated some of the email
responses that people who email you demand. Autoresponders can be a relatively inexpensive
means of responding to incoming emails as soon as they’re received. They can be as simple
as an email program that sends information about a product or service via standardized mes-
sages or can send an unlimited number of follow-up messages sent at predetermined intervals.
How Marketers Are Using Automated E-mail

Here are just a few ways you can use autoresponder programs to do more than automatically
answer your e-mail:
• Publish a newsletter. Some autoresponders will manage subscriptions and follow up with
interested prospects.
• Conduct simple polls.
• Send welcome letters to new members of your program or answer emails about frequently
asked questions about a service or product.
• Deliver an email course that shares the benefits of your product/service.
• Deliver training courses.
• Write reviews and put each review in an autoresponder.
Marketech
43 Autoresponders
• Distribute your articles.

• Distribute advertising. It can send information about
rates to prospects’ e-mail addresses and even fol-
low up. It can also send notification of any special
deals.
• Distribute an e-mail course.
• Create mailing lists. Notify subscribers when you’ve
written new articles.
• Offer a trial subscription of your product. You can
capture their email addresses when you offer a
free trial from your Web site, then follow up.
• Link to hidden pages.
• Post a request form for visitors to be notified of spe-
cial offers or discounts in the future.
Tips for Effective Automated E-mail

The most basic reason to use an automated e-mail is to follow up with cus-
tomers who have taken the time to reach out to you. Consider using it to
tout store hours, current specials, etc.
Tips for making the most of your automated e-mail include:

• Choose and main message to share with customers and Repeat your
main message over and over and over again. It may feel like overkill to
you, but people just don’t read things as carefully as you’d think. They
may read the first message, but miss the second and third.
• Write the message to write about your reader and not you - use “your”
and “we” instead of “me.”
• Write to emphasize benefits, not features. Answer the “what’s in it for
me?” question your readers will inevitably ask when they receive and
read your autoresponse message.
• Personalize your emails to include your prospect’s first name or full name
in your autoresponder message.
• Keep messages short and sweet and keep the beginning and end very
strong and on-point, as your skimmers may look at only these lines - if
any.
• Use a variety of fonts, images and pictures sparingly. The old adage
holds true - just because you have the tools doesn’t mean you should
use all of them.
• Include a signature line that contains all your contact information.

44 Social Media Optimization
chapter 10
Social Media Optimization
The Social Media Optimization (SMO) concept is a simple one, according to blogger Rohit
Bhargava.
Implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in
social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently
included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.
While it’s easy to get caught up in the tools that comprise the social media optimization kit, a
more coherent and effective approach is to start with your company’s target audience and
determine what kind of relationship your company wants to build with them, mainly based on
where they’re getting information from in your industry (dictates what tools to use), how they
engage with that information and with each other, and ultimately, what they are ready for.
Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social
media, online communities and community Web sites. Moreover, it’s also about the merging of
traditional media, search engine marketing and social media marketing.
The tools and methods can include

RSS feeds, social news buttons, blog-
ging and incorporating community
functionalities like images and videos.
Social media optimization is similar to
search engine marketing but is differ-
ent in the respect that the focus is on
driving traffic from sources other than
search engines. SMO is an integral part
of an online reputation management
(ORM) or search engine reputation
management (SERM) strategy for or-
Marketech
ganizations or individuals who care about their online presence. And it should co-exist with search
engine optimization as a way to get content seen by a wider audience.
Examples of Sites for SMO (courtesy of SearchEngineGuide.com):

Here is a very short list of some of the most popular sites for social media optimization:
•D igg: Digg is a user-driven content site where members can vote, bury
and comment on stories submitted by other members. Getting onto
Digg’s front page often results in thousands of visitors flocking to your
site and can have lasting ranking effects.
Digg Tip: The same story can only be submitted once, so craft your
titles carefully. Also, don’t forget to embed the “Digg This” button on
your site so users can easily submit content for you.
• Del.icio.us: Del.icio.us is a Yahoo-owned social bookmarking site. Del.
icio.us allows members to publicly save bookmarks using tags. Don’t
be afraid to tag your own content.
Del.icio.us Tip: All links are nofollow so you’re not getting link love, but
you may get click thrus and direct traffic when users find your del.icio.
us bookmarks through the search engine’s index.
• YouTube: Well-known video upload site. Acquired by Google, so look
for YouTube videos to start appearing in Google’s index.
YouTube Tip: The five sites that bring the most traffic to YouTube re-
ceive a link back from the site. This probably won’t help with your
Google rankings, but it may help your rankings in the other engines.
• Newsvine: Another social news site where members can submit news
stories, comment on other popular stories and create connections
with regular users.
Newsvine Tip: Your Newsvine user name becomes your own subdo-
main, so make sure to use keywords in your profile.
• StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon acts as a discovery/recommendation
engine and match users with Web sites, videos, images, etc. based
on their interests that they may have been previously unaware of.
Other social media sites to consider using are Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace,
Reddit, Spurl, Blinklist, Shadows, Simply, Yahoo Answers, Ning, 43 Things
and Frappr.
How Should Marketers Use SMO

There are some generally accepted practices for social media optimization that roll up into a set of
10 guidelines derived from the initial SMO guidelines posited by Rohit Bhargava, Cameron Olthuis
and Jeremiah Owyang. Marketers following these are assured at least a modest degree of success
with their social media optimization efforts.

Top 10 Guidelines:
1. Increase your linkability - This is the first and most
important priority for websites. To optimize a site
for social media, we need to increase the linkabil-
ity of the content. Adding a blog is a great step,
but there are more ways such as adding “ShareThis”
buttons and simply creating content that readers
will be inclined to link to.
2. M
ake tagging and bookmarking easy for readers -
Adding content features like quick buttons to “share
this” or “add to del.icio.us” are one way to make the
process of bookmarking and tagging pages easier.
3. R
eward inbound links – Internet marketers know
that inbound links are paramount to rising in search
results and overall rankings. Often called “track-
backs” in blogs, displaying the inbound links as a
means of offering credit to linkers is a best practice
in further encouraging this positive behavior. En-
courage them by providing provide clear rewards.
4. M
ake your content portable and syndicate it - Un-
like much of SEO, SMO is not just about making up-
dating site. When you have content that can be
portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files),
submitting them to relevant sites will help your con-
tent travel further, and ultimately drive links back to
your site.
5. E
ncourage mashups and content co-creation – It
pays to be more open about letting others use your
content (within reason). YouTube’s idea of provid-
ing code to cut and paste so you can imbed videos
from their site has fueled their growth. Syndicating
your content through RSS also makes it easy for oth-
ers to create mashups and widgets that can drive
traffic or augment your content.
6. B
e a useful resource – SMO is about being useful,
whether that’s content or though simple bookmark-
ing and link sharing, adding value to and for users
will put you miles ahead of your competitors. As this
sharing this adds up, it will become more and more
relevant in search engine results.
Marketech
7. R
eward helpful and valuable users - Sometimes a quick email or direct message note
in Twitter telling them you appreciate the link, the re-tweet or the quotations can go
a long way.
8. P
articipate - Join the conversation - Social Media is a two way street. The best ways
to “social media optimize” your firm and your content are to be involved and con-
versing with the community that you serve. While participating you are creating
valuable awareness and prolonging your buzz. Participating helps your message
spread further and faster.
9. K
now how to SMO for your audience – Again, like the Obama Everywhere strategy,
you have to know where your tribe is and optimize for their consumption and sharing
habits. If they using Stumble Upon, then do that. If they’re part of the “Digg Nation”,
then offer than.
10. C
reate great content – There’s just no substitute for great content. Whether search
or social media optimization are part of your plan, or both, content wins the day
most of the time. There are certain types of content that just naturally spread so-
cially. Work with your audience, your web stats and your social media listening pro-
gram to determine what type of content can work for you and create more of it.
Who’s Using SMO

Barack Obama is an excellent case in point for so-
cial media optimization. He needed to reach col-
lege students, African Americans, women, blue-col-
lar workers and independent workers. He went full
force into video sharing networks, uploading more
than 1,000 videos to his Youtube channel and had
more than 19 million views and 133,000 subscribers.
He put photos on Flickr and moved other users to
upload their own Obama-inspired photos. He had a
Linkedin profile with Q&A groups. When you search
for Obama now, his profiles show up all over. And the result: he won the female, African
American, young, blue collar and independent vote. He lived the mantra for social
media optimization by using various tools for being social, starting a conversation, be-
ing transparent and remembering the end user.

Examples of SMO and Their Results

While in its early stages, Universal Pictures plans to integrate Twitter
into media ads that will promote two separate movies scheduled
for release this summer. The tweets will appear in the banner simi-
lar to a ticker feed.
Most major news organizations and content websites have SMO

as an integral component of their websites.
What’s Next for SMO

Marketers now understand that Internet marketing and social me-
dia is about meeting people in their medium. Referring back to
the Obama example, his team knew that they would not reach
the entire population by putting up a blog and a Facebook page.
Thus, the spread their efforts across 15 separate social networks
and hundreds of other websites, using social media optimization
to give everyone they touched an opportunity to link, share and
contribute to the cause. The future of SMO is a fairly simple story
to tell in that it will soon be as widespread and common place
and common practice as search engine optimization (SEO).
Marketech
chapter 11
Widgets and Gadgets
According to MarketingSherpa: “Widgets are small applications used to meet computer users’
specific needs by providing quick access to Internet sites; desktop utilities, such as to-do lists,
calendars, clocks, weather, games, entertainment; and tools, such as system resource monitors
or application launchers. Most widgets look like a tiny window on the user’s desktop or Web
page. You might also see widgets referred to as gadgets, badges, capsules, gizmos, minis,
modules, plug-ins or snippets.”
Widgets (or Gadgets, as Google calls them) are stand-alone min-applications usually tied to a
larger data source, such as a widget that showcases updated quotes on your favorite stocks.
Widgets were made popular by their availability on Apple computers and the widget creating
company, Konfabulator, later purchased by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Widgets.
Why Use Widgets in Marketing?

Widgets work at the intersection of an acute
need for specific information and an accessible
source of valuable data. Marketers are already
jumping on the widget bandwagon, but their
ease of creation and perceived high value from
consumers make then uniquely positioned to de-
liver positive ROI in 2008. Widgets are becoming
ubiquitous, with nearly 30% penetration in 2007,
their poised for rapid growth. Widgets can be
developed for Facebook, Google homepage,
My Yahoo!, computer desktops and for place-
ment on blogs and websites.

50 Email
Two Ways That Widgets Work For Marketers (via Marketingsherpa):

•M erchants can deliver offers via images, multimedia and coupons so viewers can click through
to the product page and complete the transaction.
• Publishers can stream content to build brand and advertising dollars or increase paid sub-
scriptions.

Widgets Seem So New, Who’s Already Using Them?
In spite of their newness, they hold great possibility for almost any company who has bits of
data to share with its customers and wants access to their Yahoo or Google homepages or their
computer desktop. UPS offers a widget to customers to track shipments right from the desktop
and also provides an integrated RSS reader to keep up on important news. Sunflower Market,
used a desktop widget shaped like a potted plant to send coupons and relevant information
to consumers who downloaded it for their first store in Indianapolis. The widget helped exceed
opening-month sales expectations by 18%.
How to Succeed with Widgets:

There are a few basics to leveraging widgets in your 2008 marketing plans. Widgets are not, nor
should be complicated or too sophisticated. Their value lies in their simplicity and their ability to
deliver and acute, highly relevant service of piece of information (think UPS shipment tracking
or the Motley Fool stock tracker widget). Keep these things in mind:
1. Type of Widget - Deciding what type of web widget to build is important; not all types of
widgets will work on all platforms. For marketing ends, you want the content of your widget
to be as “viral” as possible. You’ll also most likely want to build your widget in Flash, as it’s
the most accessible technology.
2. Widget Functionality - You can build a widget to support almost any feature you can imag-
ine. Stock trackers, feed readers, games, weather, rate quotes, etc. Make sure that the
content of your widget is of the utmost value to your customers and prospects to ensure
pass-along and sustained interest and usage.
3. Widget Seeding & Marketing – Offer it on your home page, seed it in widget galleries, build
it for multiple platforms (Yahoo Widget Engine, Facebook, desktop) and cross-promote the
widget in your existing channels.
Marketech
51 Photo, Slideshow and Media Sharing
chapter 12
Photo, Slideshow and Media Sharing Environments
Photosharing on a broad basis is the publishing or transfer of a user’s digital photos online,
enabling the user to share them with others (whether publicly or privately). This functionality
is provided through both Web sites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of
images. The term can also be loosely applied to the use of online photo galleries set up and
managed by individual users. Their appeal is in their free or low cost means of sharing photos
and ease of incorporation into personal blogs and Web sites.
Why Media Sharing Matters to Marketers:

Sharing photos isn’t the only type of static (non-video) visual media that’s proving successful
and useful for marketers. Sharing documents such as PDFs and PowerPoint files through docu-
ment sharing sites like docstoc.com, scribd.com, Slideshare, box.net and others has become a
way of driving traffic, reaching new prospects and adding a new range or portability to docu-
ments, like large PowerPoint files, that can sometimes be clumsy to share with an audience let
alone use as content fodder for search engines.
Tools for Sharing Photos, Slides and other Media

There is a maze of tools for sharing media and content but the
following are the ones that are most often used for documents,
photos and slideshows.

52 Photo, Slideshow and Media Sharing
• S lideShare is the world’s largest

presentation-sharing commu-
nity, allowing people to publicly
or privately share Word docu-
ments or PowerPoint presenta-
tion. In the process, individuals
and organizations share their
ideas, connect with others and
generate leads for their busi-
nesses. Visit SlideShare at www.
slideshare.net.
•P
hotobucket is a media sharing and hosting site that allows users to store thousands of
photos and hours ov video to share with friends and family. Users can link their images and
videos to their blog, social networking sites, etc., use the site as repository for photos needed
for listings on eBay or Craigslist and easily print quality images from their albums. Visit Photo-
bucket at www.photobucket.com.
•P
iczo technology allows users the ability to create comprehensive personal Web sites that
don’t require html code or programming know-how. Its Web sites look professional, feature
a home page and other Web site contents such as photos, text, guestbooks, chat boxes,
music and more. Piczo caters to teens who want to express themselves and build personal
communities in a safe online environment. It’s purported to be easy to use and very flexible
for members who want to design their sites and spotlight their creativity. Visit Piczo at www.
piczo.com.
• F lickr is an image and video hosting Web site, Web services suit and online community plat-
form. Not only is it a popular Web site for users who want to share personal photographs,
but also a widely used service by bloggers who use it as a photo repository. As of November
2008, it claimed to host three billion images. Visit Flickr at www.flickr.com.
• S mugMug is a photo sharing site that has come into favor with several commercial organiza-
tions interested in sharing photos on the web as some sites like Flickr have kicked off organi-
zations sharing images explicitely for commercial purposes (in spite of the many commercial
images still on Flickr). SmugMug is an ad-free environment that has gotten national acclaim
for its business-friendly photo sharing & hosting environment, which includes an account
with unlimited storage. You can find SmugMug at www.smugmug.com.
What’s Next for Media Sharing?

It’s easy to see that companies will want to share nearly any type of media that they create in
an online environment. Look for the continued merger of content and document types as ho-
listic “content packages” (similar to the Slidecast that you create on SlideShare by uploading
audio along with your presentation).
Marketech
53 Honorable Mentions in Marketing Technology
chapter 13
Honorable Mentions in Marketing Technology
As we illustrated in the Marketech ’08 Marketing Technology Guide, there’s no shortage of

marketing technology for marketers to pursue in their future marketing plans. For 2009 and be.
In fact, there are many more technologies that we can discuss, but as much as we would like
to believe that the long tail of marketing technology will lead to riches, there is only so much
budget and bandwidth available to the modern marketer and we all need to focus our limited
resources on those tactics and techniques which are likely to net us the greatest gain.
All that said, there are a series of remaining marketing technologies which may be just the ticket
for certain marketers trying to reach specific demographics, but which fall outside the realm of
‘mainstream’ for the purpose of most of you reading this document. If you’re the type that’s
looking for ever more ideas to reach your increasingly attention starved customer base, read
on. What we’d like to leave you with are a host of definitions and a few ideas on what’s next in
marketing technology.

iPhone and Mobile Phone Applications

While iPhones and mobile PDA’s and smart phones are
are not an “honorable mention” in daily life, nearly all
of use reading this guide have some form of mobile
phone, many of them with Internet access, it is still new
territory for most marketers. However, in the past year,
we have seen numerous successes with marketing in the
application space for iPhones, BlackBerry’s and other
similar devices.
Something else to bear in mind is that the user base for apps is growing by leaps and bounds. In
their latest quarter, Apple sold 5 million iPhones and 3 million iPod Touches. This means that the
potential market for an app grew by more than 20% in only 3 months!
One last thing to note is that while iPhones are “all the rage”, they’re not the only game in town.
In fact, Blackberry outsells the iPhone every day. When considering mobile applications for mar-
keting, consider development for multiple platforms or at least developing the application for
the platform that the majority of the addressable base of customers will use.
Internet Protocol Television (IPTV)

IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is a system where a digi-
tal television service is delivered by using Internet Proto-
col over a network infrastructure, which may include de-
livery by a broadband connection. A general definition
of IPTV is television content that, instead of being deliv-
ered through traditional broadcast and cable formats, is
received by the viewer through the technologies used for
computer networks.
For residential users, IPTV is often provided in conjunction

with Video on Demand and may be bundled with Inter-
net services such as Web access and VoIP. The commer-
cial bundling of IPTV, VoIP and Internet access is referred
to as “Triple Play” service (adding mobility is called “Qua-
druple Play”). IPTV is typically supplied by a service provider using a closed network infrastruc-
ture. This closed network approach is in competition with the delivery of TV content over the
public Internet, called Internet Television. In businesses, IPTV may be used to deliver television
content over corporate LANs.
Certainly IPTV has arrived, as has movie delivery over IP. However, the promise of ‘more inter-
active television’ remains elusive.
Marketech
In Game Marketing/Advertising (IGA)

In-game advertising (IGA) refers to the use of computer
and video games as a medium in which to deliver adver-
tising. 2005 spending on in-game advertising was USD$56
million, and this figure is estimated to grow to $1.8 billion
by 2010 according to Massive Incorporated, although
Yankee Group gives a lower estimate at $732 million. In-
game advertising is seen by some in the games industry
as offering a new revenue stream, allowing developers to
offset growing development costs and to take more risks
in game play.
When consumers think of the technology advances that

they have witnessed in the past decade, it’s hard to ar-
gue that video games, game consoles and online games
have come a long way. The advances for marketers,
however, have yet to arrive. Major universities have ap-
plied time and resources to developing models for de-
termining the most effective in-game marketing models,
but at the end of the day, the results amount to little more
than understanding the most effective virtual billboard
placement for novice vs. advanced players. The appli-
cation for mainstream marketers here is still quite limited.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile Marketing is meant to describe marketing on or
with a mobile device, such as a mobile phone. Market-
ing on a mobile phone has become increasingly popu-
lar ever since the rise of SMS (Short Message Service) in
the early 2000s in Europe and some parts of Asia when
businesses started to collect mobile phone numbers and
send off wanted (or unwanted) content.
The major problem that mobile marketing faces is one

of acceptance. 75% of adults surveyed have no interest
in receiving marketing messages on the mobile phones.
Mobile marketing is almost always combined with anoth-
er promotion or integrated marketing vehicle, such as an
in-store contest, television or radio ad, pass along viral
MMS video or something that requires an SMS message
interaction to engage in the marketing message. Mobile
marketing or marketing with SMS is popular, and is poised
for growth in 2008, but it has not yet reached critical mass
in the US where mobile is the ‘killer marketing app’ for

reaching all but a teenage demographic. Look for more

about mobile marketing in the resources section.
Virtual Worlds, Second Life, Avatars

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its
residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown
explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents
from around the globe. You’ll also be surrounded by the
Creations of your fellow Residents. Because Residents re-
tain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell
and trade with other Residents. The Marketplace current-
ly supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions.
This commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade,
the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars
at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges.
In this case, the fiction has predicted a major new par-

adigm where interactive marketing is concerned. Busi-
nesses and individuals are looking towards Second Life
as a new medium to grab attention and promote their
products and themselves. Wells Fargo Bank, Sun Micro-
systems, Coca-Cola, and Toyota have all started build-
ing stuff and doing stuff in Second Life as a method for
marketing themselves online. In August, Susanne Vega
became the first musician to perform a ”live” concert in
SL space, through her avatar.
Podcasting
A podcast is a digital media file, or a related collection of
such files, which is distributed over the Internet using syn-
dication feeds for playback on portable media players
and personal computers. The term, like “radio”, can refer
either to the content itself or to the method by which it is
syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting. The host
or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
Though podcasters’ web sites may also offer direct

download or streaming of their content, a podcast is dis-
tinguished from other digital media formats by its ability
to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded auto-
matically when new content is added, using an aggre-
gator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats
such as RSS or Atom.
Marketech
While podcasting is a high profile marketing technology, it is very much like blogs, and the met-
aphors of blogging, mixed with the metaphors from radio apply to the medium. Look for more
from this medium as we reach ubiquity with mobile phones that thoroughly integrate music and
data storage into them, and as radio stations around the country, still stuck in a 1960’s model,
get with the program and start offering more of their content in podcast mode.
Mashups
In technology, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source
into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to
add location information to real-estate data from Craigslist, thereby creating a new and dis-
tinct web service that was not originally provided by either source.
Mashup originally referred to the practice in pop music (notably hip-hop) of producing a new
song by mixing two or more existing pieces.
A mashup isn’t so much something that a marketer would produce as much as your fans and
customers would product on your behalf. The key to allowing your customers to create mash-
ups on your behalf is to open up data such as a directory or something similar of worthwhile
information that can be combine with something else to create a valuable web based tool (like
a widget)

58 Appendix I: Resources
appendix I
ADDITIONAL MARKETING TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
WEBSITES, LINKS, BOOKS, BLOGS AND EVERYTHING ELSE
The purpose of this section of the guide is to give you a wealth of resources that can
further the learning process on any of the technologies that we’ve discussed herein and
help you put your marketing technology plans into action
General Resources, Publications and Websites for Marketing

Technology Information
American Marketing Association >> www.marketingpower.com
eMarketing and Commerce >> http://www.emarketingandcommerce.com/
MarketingSherpa >> www.marketingsherpa.com
ClickZ >> www.clickz.com
MarketingProfs >> www.marketingprofs.com
Marketing Charts >> www.marketingvox.com
Marketing Vox >> www.marketingvox.com
TechCrunch >> www.techcrunch.com
BLOGS & BUSINESS BLOGGING

SixApart: Guide to Business Blogging >> http://www.movabletype.com/SixApartGuideto-
BusinessBlogging.pdf
Ogilvy PR: Welcome to Blogosphere: An Executive Blogger’s Guide >>

http://www.ogilvypr.com/pdf/bloggers-guide.pdf
Cerado: The Business Blogging Field Guide >>

http://www.cerado.com/download/CeradoBusinessBloggingFieldGuide.pdf
ProBlogger: A - Z of Professional Blogging Tools >>

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/06/27/a-z-of-professional-blogging
Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki >> http://www.socialtext.net/bizblogs/index.cgi
iMedia Connection: 10 blogging tips from 10 bloggers >>

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/17490.asp
Marketech
BLOG PLATFORMS (THERE ARE HUNDREDS, THESE ARE THE MOST POPULAR)
Blog software comparision chart from USC >>
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm
Blogger >> http://www.blogger.com

TypePad >> http://www.typepad.com
WordPress >> http://www.wordpress.org and http://www.wordpress.com
MovableType >> http://www.movabletype.com
Squarespace >> http://www.squarespace.com/
Awareness (formerly iupload) >> http://www.awarenessnetworks.com
BUZZ MONITORING
Marketing Pilgrim: Buzz Monitoring: 26 Free Tools You Must Have >>
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/26-free-tools-for-buzz-monitoring.html
Small Business SEM: SES Session Recap: Buzz Monitoring >>

http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/ses-session-recap-buzz-monitoring/872/
How to put the B in Buzz Monitoring >>

http://www.wiliam.com.au/wiliam-blog/buzz-monitoring
Search Engine Roundtable: Buzz Monitoring >>

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014609.html
Web Strategy: Companies that Measure Social Media, Influence, and Brand >>
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2006/11/25/companies-that-measure-social-media-
influence-brand/
Center Networks: Firestorm 2.0 - Using Social Media Services to Track The California Fires >>
http://www.centernetworks.com/california-fires-social-media
Media Guerrilla: More on Social Media Monitoring >>

http://www.mguerilla.com/media_guerrilla/2006/07/more_on_social_.html
EVENTS & CONFERENCES

Technology For Marketing & Advertising 2008 >> http://www.t-f-m.co.uk/page.cfm/link=151
New Marketing Summit >>

http://pages.newmarketingsummit.com/WebSite/Index.aspx?C=70000047&S=50000081

IN GAME MARKETING/ADVERTISING (IGA)

Wikipedia: Definition >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-game_advertising
Engage Advertising >> http://www.engageadvertising.com/
Massive Incorporated >> http://www.massiveincorporated.com/
iMedia Connection: In-Game Advertising Dos and Don’ts >>

cnet: In-game ads work, study says >>

http://www.news.com/In-game-ads-work,-study-says/2100-1043_3-5887880.html
IPTV
ArsTechnica: An introduction to IPTV >> http://arstechnica.com/guides/other/iptv.ars
DailyIPTV >> http://www.dailyiptv.com/
Wikipedia: IPTV definition >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV
MASHUPS
iMedia Connection: Marketing Mashup Tools >>
Web 2.0 Mashup ecosystem >>

http://www.ipods-and-onlinevideo-reviews.com/web_2_0_news_page_11.htm
MOBILE MARKETING
Wikipedia: Mobile marketing definition >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Marketing
Mobile Marketing Association >> http://www.mmaglobal.com/
Retail Wire: Overall receptiveness to mobile marketing >>

http://www.retailwire.com/SmartReply/Images/Cht_Tip7-1.gif
NOC: Mobile marketing in the U.S. vs. Europe >>

http://newsweaver.co.uk/noc/e_article000554240.cfm?x=b11,0,w
Mobivity >> http://www.mobilemarketing.net/
Marketech
Cellit Mobile Marketing >> http://www.cellitmarketing.com/
PODCASTING
Wikipedia: Podcast definition >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting
Business Podcast Marketing Case Study Proves Results >>

http://ezinearticles.com/?Business-Podcast-Marketing-Case-Study-Proves-Results&id=69230
MarketingSherpa’s Practical Podcasting Guide for Marketers >>

https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=29679
Podcast Design: Step-by-Step to a Plan >> http://podcastingscout.com/
RSS – REALLY SIMPLY SYNDICATION

Definition of: Wikipedia >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
NYTimes RSS Feed page >> http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/
Stephan Spencer: RSS and SEO: Implications for Search Marketers >>
http://www.stephanspencer.com/archives/2005/03/02/rss-and-seo-implications-for-search-
marketers/
MarketingStudies.net: Do Marketers Really Need RSS? >>

http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/do_marketers_really_need_rss.php
MarketingSherpa: MarketingSherpa’s RSS Help Page >>

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=27189
iMedia Connection: Start Using RSS Today! >>

ClickZ: 10 Ways for E-Marketers to Use RSS >>

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623776
RSS Service Vendors

Pheedo: RSS Advertising >> http://www.pheedo.com
FeedBurner (Google) RSS Analytics >> www.feedburner.com
About.com: Top 10 Windows RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators >>
http://email.about.com/od/rssreaderswin/tp/top_rss_windows.htm

RSS Compendium - RSS Readers - Web-Based >>

http://allrss.com/rssreaderswebbased.html
SEARCH & UNIVERSAL SEARCH

Search Engine Land: Google 2.0: Google Universal Search >>
http://searchengineland.com/070516-143312.php
Search Engine Watch: What Does Universal Search Mean for SEM? >>
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3625951
HP Blog: Universal Search and Ask3D – What Blended Search Models Mean to Marketers >>
http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/webexperience/archive/2007/09/14/4426.html
Online Marketing Blog: Small Business Guide to Optimizing Universal Search >>
http://www.toprankblog.com/2007/10/optimizing-universal-search/
SOCIAL MEDIA OPTIMIZATION

Search Engine Watch: Social Media Optimization: It’s Like SEO, For Social Sites >>
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060829-150053
eBizMBA: 30 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites | October 2007 >>

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social30.html
Rohit Bhargava: 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO) >>

http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/5_rules_of_soci.html
Search Engine Guide: The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Optimization >>
http://www.searchengineguide.com/lisa-barone/the-beginners-guide-to-social.php
GrayWolf’s SEO Blog: The Dark Side of Social Media Optimization >>
http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/the-dark-side-of-social-media-organization/
Social Media Optimization - SMO – SMOmashup >> http://www.smomashup.com/
Pronet Advertising: Introduction to Social Media Optimization >>

http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/introduction-to-social-media-optimization.html
Social Bookmark Creator >> http://www.toprankblog.com/tools/social-bookmarks/
Marketech
Social Media Optimization Blog >> http://social-media-optimization.com/
SOCIAL NETWORKING
TechCrunch: Details Revealed: Google OpenSocial To Launch Thursday >>
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/details-revealed-google-opensocial-to-be-com-
mon-apis-for-building-social-apps/
Mark Granovetter: The Strength of Weak Ties >>

www.si.umich.edu/~rfrost/courses/SI110/readings/In_Out_and_Beyond/Granovetter.pdf
Cnet: Five reasons social networking doesn’t work >>

http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-6240543-1.html
CNNMoney: The Missing Link >>

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/12/01/8394967/index.
htm
Social Customer Manifesto: Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Social Networks >>
http://www.socialcustomer.com/2007/01/why_you_shouldn.html
JasonKolb.com: Cisco’s Social Networking for Business >>

http://www.jasonkolb.com/weblog/2007/03/ciscos_social_n.html
Information Today: Online Social Networking for Business: An Interview with Konstantin Guer-
icke, Marketing VP, LinkedIn >>
http://www.infotoday.com/online/nov04/bardon.shtml
Wikipedia.org: List of social networking websites >>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
Rev2.org: 33 Places to Hangout in the Social Networking Era >>

http://www.rev2.org/2006/07/11/33-places-to-hangout-in-the-social-networking-era/
Top Ten Reviews: Social Networking Sites >>

http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/
Neighborhood America: Enterprise Social Networks >>

http://www.neighborhoodamerica.com/
SOCIAL SHOPPING
The New York Times: Like Shopping? Social Networking? Try Social Shopping >>
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/11/technology/11ecom.html?_
r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

TRENDS
IBM: IBM Consumer Survey Shows Decline of TV as Primary Media Device >>
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22206.wss
TV & Online Video Convergence
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/54425.html
VIDEO
Blendtec interview on Forrester Groundswell: willitblend.com: Speaking through YouTube >>
http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2007/07/willitblendcom-.html
Blendtec “Will it Blend” viral video site >> http://www.willitblend.com/
YouTube >> www.youtube.com
MarketingProfs (Stephan Spencer): How to Market on YouTube >>

http://www.marketingprofs.com/7/how-to-market-on-youtube-some-examples-spencer.asp
MarketingSherpa: Video + Humor + Viral = Lead-Gen Success for Data Backup Firm >>
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=29883
USA Today: Marketers are into YouTube >>

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-04-17-youtube-marketers_x.htm?POE=TECISVA
8 tips to make your YouTube video go viral >>

http://www.webinknow.com/2007/08/8-tips-to-make-.html
MarketingCharts: Google Video Sites Capture Lion’s Share of Viewers, Videos Viewed in July
>> http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/google-video-sites-capture-lions-share-of-
viewers-videos-viewed-in-july-1617/
Contentinople (CMP Media): List of video sharing sites >>

http://www.contentinople.com/proddir/dir_list.asp?dir_id=7
Light Reading: List of 45 video sharing websites >>

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=112147
Marketech
Complete list of video sharing websites from Light Reading. Enter video site name into a
search engine to locate the current URL
5min Grouper Scenemaker

Addicting Clips Helpful Video Sclipo
Aggrega iFilm Sharkle
AniBoom JibJab Soapbox
ApnaTube Jumpcut Stashspace
Atom Films Kwego Stupid Videos
Blinkx Liberated Films Sumo.tv
Blip.tv LiveDigital Super Deluxe
Bolt LiveVideo SuTree
Break.com Lulu.tv TeacherTube
Brightcove ManiaTV Treemo
Buzznet Mediabum Twango
Castpost Meevee Uncut Video
Clesh MeraVideo uVouch
Clickcaster Metacafe UVU
Clipshack Middio Veoh
College Humor Motionbox Viddler
Cozmo.tv Multiply.com Video Webtown
Current.tv MyHeavy VideoJug
Cuts MySpace VidiLife
Dailymotion MyVideo Vidipedia
Dave.tv OneWorldTV Vidmax
DivX Stage6 Ourmedia ViewDo
Dovetail.tv Panjea Vimeo
DropShots.com Pawky vMix
eSnips Phanfare Vodpod
Expert Village Photobucket vSocial
Eyespot Podcast Spot VuMe
Famster Podshow Yahoo Video
Flixya Pooxi Youare.tv
Free IQ Porkolt.com YourKindaTV
Funny or Die PureVideo YouTube
GodTube Putfile ZippyVideos
GoFish Revver
Google Video Rooftop Comedy Source: LightReading.com

VIRTUAL EVENTS
BtoB Magazine: Virtual events’ success grows >>
http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071008/FREE/71008034/
Biznology: Virtual Events Return Real Value >>

http://www.mikemoran.com/biznology/archives/2007/09/virtual_events.html
Virtual Event Best Practices with Unisfair >>

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2007/09/virtual-event-b.html
A Virtual Events Snapshot: (All data provided by Unisfair)

• Average live duration: 1.5 days
• Average archived days: 90
• Average registration: 3,102
• Average attendance: 1,587
• Show Up Rate: 52%
• Sponsor/Exhibitor Booths: 15
• Leads Generated per Sponsor: 348
• Conference Sessions: 5 per day
• Average attendee time at event: 2 hours 31 minutes
• Average Locations Visited: 16
• Average Attendee Interactions:13
• Average Downloads per attendee: 5
• U.S. Attendees: 58%
• International Attendees: 42%
VIRTUAL WORLD (SECOND LIFE) MARKETING

Naturlasearchblog: Brave New Future of SEO & SEM? Marketing thru Second Life >> http://
www.naturalsearchblog.com/archives/2006/10/24/brave-new-future-of-seo-sem-marketing-
thru-second-life/
Webpronews: The Marketing Potential of Second Life >>

http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2006/06/26/the-marketing-potential-of-second-life
Second Life: Marketing Section >> http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Marketing
openPR: First customer satisfaction survey in Second Life >>

http://openpr.com/pdf/17221/First-customer-satisfaction-survey-in-Second-Life-insufficient-
customer-care-and-opportunities-for-interaction-between-Second-Life-users-and-comp-
anies-identified-as-the-main-weakness.pdf
Marketech
Second Life Grid: How Organizations Use The Platform >> http://secondlifegrid.net/how
WEB 2.0
All things Web 2.0 directory >> http://www.allthingsweb2.com
PEW Internet: Riding the Waves of Web 2.0 >>

http://static.scribd.com/docs/aoi8swiquwc99.swf?INITIAL_VIEW=width
Web 3.0
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.
showArticleHomePage&art_aid=57532
http://www.personalizemedia.com/index.php/2006/08/27/virtual-worlds-web-30-and-por-
table-profiles/
http://civicminded.corante.com/archives/2006/08/second_life_targets_existing_b.php
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/eric_schmidt_defines_web_30.php
http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/business/12web.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/23/business/web.php
WIDGETS
UPS Widget >> http://www.widget.ups.com/widget/en-gb/index.html
MarketingSherpa: Special Report: Marketing With Widgets - Usage Data, Tactics & Test
Results >> http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30137
Widget Best Practices: Clearspring >>

http://www.clearspring.com/docs/tech/widget-dev/best-practices
TechCrunch: Desktop Widgets 101 >>

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/29/desktop-widgets-101/

Sexy Widget: Reviews and analysis of widgets, toolbars, and distributed businesses of all
flavors. >> http://www.sexywidget.com/
Makeuseof.com: 6 Cool FREE Widget Platforms for your PC >>

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/widgets-and-widget-platforms/
Popular Widget Platforms & Providers:

• Yahoo Widget Engine
• Facebook
• Google Gadgets
• Clearspring
• Widgetbox
• Musestorm
• Snipperoo
• MySpace
WORD-OF-MOUTH MARKETING
WOMMA >> www.womma.org
MarketingCharts: Word-of-Mouth Marketing Spending to Top $1 Billion in 2007 >>

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/word-of-mouth-marketing-spending-to-top-
1-billion-in-2007-2424/
Marketech
69 Glossary
glossary
Before you pack your marketing bags and embark on a journey into the world of social me-
dia, you’ll need to know the language. Listed below are some basic conversation starters,
partially excerpted from OneUpWeb’s recent Pocket Guide to Social Media. For the purpose
of consistency and timeliness, most other definitions herein are sourced from Wikipedia [www.
wikipedia.org] or Webopedia [www.webopedia.com].
Advocacy
Creating a movement of net-fluencers to influence conversation, actions or motives in support of
one’s objective.
Aggregation
Gathering and remixing content from blogs and other Web sites that provide RSS feeds; typically
displayed in an aggregator like Bloglines or Google Reader, or directly on your desktop using soft-
ware (often also called a reader). Beneficial for breaking news.
Alerts
Search engines, like Google, allow you to specify words, phrases or tags that you want checked
periodically, with results of those searches returned to you by email.
Archive
May refer to topics from an online discussion that has been closed by saved for later reference. On
blogs, archives are collections of earlier items usually organized by week or month. You may still be
able to comment on archived items.
Authenticity
The sense that something or someone is “real.” Blogs enable people to publish content, and en-
gage in conversations that show their interests and values, and so help them develop an authentic
voice online.
Avatars
Graphical images used in virtual worlds to represent people. Users can create Avatar visual person-
alities selecting a gender, body type, clothing, behaviors and name.
Back Channel Communications

Private emails or other messages sent by the facilitator or between individuals during conferencing.
Blogosphere
Used to describe the totality of blogs on the Internet, and the conversations taking place within
that sphere.

70 Glossary
Blogs
Shortened from the original term “Weblogs,” these self-published web sites containing dated ma-
terial, are usually written in a journal format. Content such as text, pictures, video and/or audio
have URLs plus other ways of identifying them by keywords (tags). This allows visitors to pull items to
their desktop through subscriptions or aggregators without having to visit the actual web site. Blogs
often have links to other relevant online content, plus invite feedback through “posts” which are
comments from readers.
Blogroll
A list of sites displayed in the sidebar of a blog showing who the blogger reads regularly.
Bookmarking
Saving the address of a Web site or item of content, either in your browser or on a social bookmark-
ing site such as Delicious. By adding tags, others can also find your research and the social book-
marking site becomes an enormous public library.
Browser
The tool used to view Web sites and access all the content online.
Bulletin Boards
The early vehicles for online collaboration where users connected with a central computer to post
and read email-like messages.
Buzz Monitoring
Buzz monitoring is a phrase used in Online Public Relations and social media marketing to track
relevant conversations on the Internet.
Bulletin Boards
The early vehicles for online collaboration where users connected with a central computer to post
and read email-like messages.
Categories
Pre-specified ways to organize content -- for example, a set of keywords that you can use but not
add to when posting on a site.
Champions
In order to get conversations started in an online community, you need a group of enthusiasts will-
ing and confident to get things moving by posting messages, responding and helping others.
Chat
Real time interaction on a web site, with a number of people adding comments via text entries.
Marketech
71 Glossary
Comments
Adding feedback comments under blog posts and other content.
Community Building
The process of recruiting potential community or network participants, helping them to find shared
interests and goals, and using technology to develop useful conversations
Conferencing (online)
Happens in a Web forum and is the conversations of those involved, organized around topics,
threads and a theme or subject .
Consumer-generated media (CGM)

First-person commentary posted or shared across a host of expression venues, including message
boards, forums, rating and review sites, groups, social networking sites, blogs, video-sharing sites, etc.
Content
Text, pictures, video and any other meaningful material that is on the Internet.
Content Management System

Software suites offering the ability to create static Web pages, document stores, blogs, wikis and
other tools.
Conversation
Commenting or contributing to forums is the currency of social networking, which puts the “social”
in this form of media.
Cookie
Information (i.e., URLs, Web addresses) created by a Web server and stored on a user’s computer.
This information lets Web sites the user visits keep a history of a user’s browsing patterns and prefer-
ences.
Copyright
Sharing through social media is enhanced by attaching a Creative Commons license specifying,
for example, that content may be re-used with attribution, provided that a similar license is then at-
tached by the new author. .
Crowdsourcing
This refers to harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of those outside an organization who are prepared
to volunteer their time contributing content and solving problems.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organizationa nd licensing system tha toffers creators the ability
to findtune their copyright, spelling out the ways in which others may use their works.

72 Glossary
Deconstructives
Systematically working back from a specific issue to identify influencers through viral mapping.
Domain Name
A method of identifying computer addresses. For example, a “.com” extension means the account
is a business-related, and “.gov” is government related.
Email lists
Important networking tools offering the ability to “starburst” a message from a central postbox to
any number of subscribers and for them to respond.
Embedding
The act of inserting video or photo to a Web site or email.
Facilitator
Someone who helps people in an online group or forum manage their conversations.
Feeds
The means by which you can read, view or listen to items from blogs, podcasts and other RSS-
enabled sites without visiting the site, by subscribing to a directory or aggregator such as iTunes or
Bloglines.
Flash
Animation software used to develop interactive graphics for We sites as well as desktop presenta-
tions and games.
Folksonomy
A term for the collaborative, but unstructured, way in which information is categorized on the web.
Instead of using one, centralized form of classification, users are encouraged to assign freely cho-
sen keywords (called tags) to pieces of information or data.
Forums
Discussion areas on Web sites where people can post messages or comment on existing messages.
Friends
On social networking sites, contacts whose profile you link to in your profile, thereby creating your
network.
Groups
Collections of individuals with some sense of unity through their activities, interests or values.
Marketech
73 Glossary
Hashtag
Similar to regular tags, these are keywords associated and assigned to an item of content with a
hash mark (#) attached to the front of the word.
Hyperlink
Text, images or graphics that, when clicked with a mouse, will connect the user to a new Web site
or Web page.
Instant Messaging (IM)

Chatting with another person using an IM tool like AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Live Messenger
or Yahoo Messenger. The tools allow you to indicate whether or not you are available to chat and
can be a good alternative to emails for a rapid exchange.
Link Baiting
The process by which web sites, blogs, etc. encourage links from other sites to improve popularity
and raise positions on search engines. The enticement may include content, online tools, free down-
loads, or anything else that another site owner might find worthy of a link.
Listening
In the blogsphere, the art of skimming feeds to see what topics are popular and setting up searches
that monitor when an organization is mentioned.
Listserve
A list of email addresses of people with common interests. Software enables people who belong to
a list to send messages to the group without typing a series of addresses.
Lurkers
People who read but don’t contribute or add comments to forums.
Mashups
An online service or software tool that skilled “techies” develop by combining two or more tools to
create an entirely new service.
Meme
A unit of cultural information such as a popular tune, catch-phrases, beliefs or fashions that can vi-
rally propagate from one mind to another. Online, it may be shared among bloggers or participants
of social sites as a game, activity or quiz (e.g., name 50 favorite authors, the 100 worst songs, 10
favorite movies).
Microblogging
A form of blogging through which the entries/posts are limited to a certain number of characters or
words, i.e., Twitter.

74 Glossary
Mobile Marketing
Mobile Marketing is meant to describe marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a mobile
phone. Marketing on a mobile phone has become increasingly popular ever since the rise of SMS
(Short Message Service) in the early 2000s in Europe and some parts of Asia when businesses started
to collect mobile phone numbers and send off wanted (or unwanted) content.
Narrowcasting
A term used in opposition to “broadcasting” to describe a podcast’s ability to reach a narrowly
focused, highly interested audience.
Networks
Structures defined by nodes and the connections between them. In social networks, the nodes are
people and the connections are the relationships they have. Networking is the process by which
you develop and strengthen those relationships.
Newsgroups
Internet “site” centered around a specific topic or course. Some newsreader software can “thread’
discussion so there can be various topics centered around a central theme.
Newsreader
Web site or desktop tool that acts as an aggregator, gathering content from blogs and similar sites
using RSS feeds so you can read the content in one place instead of having to visit different sites.
Open-source software
Refers to any computer software whose source code is available under a license that permits users
to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form.
It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner.”
Peer-to-Peer
Direct interaction between two people in a network.
Permalink
The address (URL) of an item of content, for example a blog post, rather than the address of a Web
page with lots of different items.
Photosharing
Uploading your images to a Web site like Flickr. You can add tags and offer people the opportunity
to comment or even re-use your photos if you add an appropriate copyright license.
Ping
An acronym standing for “packet Internet grouper” or “packed Internet gopher,” this is an auto-
matic notification sent when a blog has been updated. It also describes the automatic communi-
cation between networked computers/servers.
Marketech
75 Glossary
Podcast
A digital broadcast made available on the internet. Currently the majority of these broadcasts are
audio files sent to directories through XML feeds and RSS – or Really Simple Syndication – formatted
XML files. The word “podcast” is derived from “pod” as in Apple’s iPod, the popular portable audio
player, and “cast” from “broadcast,” meaning “to transmit for general or public use.”
Podcatcher
A term for programs used to automatically subscribe to and download podcasts; also called an ag-
gregator. Podcatchers typically seek out new podcast episodes or items as soon as the program is
opened.
Post
Item on a blog or forum.
Profiles
Information that users provide about themselves when signing up for a social networking site. This
may include personal and business interests, a photo, a “blurb,” and tags to help people search for
like-minded people.
Remixing
Social media offers the possibility of taking different items of content, identified by tags and pub-
lished through feeds, and combining them in different ways.
RSS
Standing for Really Simple Syndication, RSS is the XML format that allows you to subscribe to content
on blogs, podcasts and other social media, and have it delivered to you through a feed.
Search engine optimization (SEO)

Is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a Web site from search engines via
“natural” (or “organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.
Shockwave
A three dimensional (3D) animation technology/format.
Sharing
Offering other people the use of text, images, video, bookmarks or other content by adding tags
and applying copyright licenses that encourage use of content.
Smartmob
When users get together for an activity or event as a result of an online connection or network.

76 Glossary
SOA - Service oriented architecture

In computing, SOA provides methods for systems development and integration where systems
package functionality as interoperable services. An SOA infrastructure allows different applications
to exchange data with one another.
Social bookmarking
The collaborative equivalent of storing favorites or bookmarks within a web browser. Social book-
marking services such as del.icio.us or Furl allow people to store their favorite web sites online and
share them with others who have similar interests.
Social media
The term used to describe the tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share
content online. These include blogs, wikis, podcasts, and the sites dedicated to share information,
stories, photos, audio and video files, and bookmarks.
Social media optimization

Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media,
online communities and community web sites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding
a “Digg This” button, blogging and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr
photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is a form of search engine
marketing.
Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where
word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in so-
cial bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs
achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogsphere and special blog
search engines such as Technorati.
Social networking
Sites developed to help people discover new friends or colleagues with shared interests, relat-
ed skills, or a common geographic location. Leading examples include Friendster, LinkedIn and
MySpace.
Streaming Media
Video or audio that is intended to be listened to online but not stored permanently.
Tagging
A way of categorizing online content using keywords that describe what can be found at a web
site, bookmark, photo or blog post.
Threads
Strands of conversation.
Marketech
77 Glossary
Trackback
A facility for other bloggers to leave a calling card automatically, instead of commenting. Blogger
A may write on blog A about an item on blogger B’s site, and through the trackback facility leave a
link on B’s site back to A. The collection of comments and trackbacks on a site facilitates conversa-
tions.
Transparency
Enhances searching, sharing, self-publish and commenting across networks, makes it easier to find
out what’s going on in any situation where there is online activity.
Troll
A hurtful, but possibly valuable, person who, for whatever reason, is both obsessed by and constant-
ly annoyed with and deeply offended by everything you write on a blog. One may not be able to
stop the commenting of trolls on your blog, but you can’t ban them from commenting on other sites
and pointing back to the blog.
Tweet
A microblog post on the Twitter social network site.
URL
Unique Resource Locator is the technical term for a Web address.
User generated content

Text, photos and other material produced by people who previously just consumed content.
Web 2.0
A term that describes blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other Internet-based services that em-
phasize collaboration and sharing, rather than less interactive publishing (Web 1.0).
Video Podcast
A podcast with enclosures containing video files rather than audio ones. Unlike audio podcasts
which may only contain MP3 files, various file types can be used when podcasting video.
Viral marketing
The planned promotion of a product, brand or service through a process of interesting actual or
potential customers to pass along marketing information to friends, family, and colleagues. This
word-of-mouth advertising is usually accomplished by a creative use of social media and other non-
traditional marketing channels.
Viral Video
The term viral video refers to video clip content which gains widespread popularity through the
process of Internet sharing, typically through email or IM messages, blogs and other media sharing
websites. Viral videos are often humorous in nature and may range from televised comedy sketches
to unintentionally released amateur video clips.

78 Glossary
Virtual worlds
Sites such as Second Life, where individuals can create profiles and representations of themselves
(avatars) to interact with others in an imaginary world. Marketers have taken up real estate on
Second Life in an attempt to extend their brand to potential new customers.
Web 2.0
A term coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other
Internet-based services that emphasize collaboration and sharing. It is associated with the idea of
the Internet as a platform.
Whiteboards
Online are the equivalent of glossy surfaces where one can write with an appropriate marker and
wipe off later. They enable someone to write on a Web page and are used in collaboration online.
Widgets
Stand-alone applications that can be embedded in other applications like a Web site or a desktop
or viewed on a PDA.
Wiki
An online, collaborative work space for multiple users of a web page – or set of pages –that can be
edited collaboratively. The best known example is wikipedia, an encyclopedia created by thou-
sands of contributors across the world. Once people have appropriate permissions – set by the wiki
owner – they can create pages and/or add to and alter existing pages
XML
Extensible Markup Language. A system for organizing and tagging elements of a document so the
document can be transmitted and interpreted between applications and organizations.
YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing web site where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube
was created in mid-February 2005 and uses Adobe Flash technology to display a wide variety of
video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as
videoblogging and short original videos. In November 2006, Google Inc. acquired YouTube.
Source: OneUpWeb,Wikipedia, Webopedia, Air Force Emerging Technology Division and the Amer-
ican Marketing Association.
Marketech
79 Sources, References & Citations
sources, references & citations

Intro
Social Media Marketing Industry Report; How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Busi-
nesses, March 2009, by Michael A. Stelzner
Chapter 1
Social Media: Listening is the New Marketing, Practical ecommerce for Online Merchants, Feb. 18,
2009, www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/976-social-media-listening-is-the-new-marketing
Forrester report says it’s time to take social media marketing seriously, Fierce Content Management,
April 8, 2009, http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/new-forrester-report-says-time-take-
social-media-marketing-seriously/2009-04-08
brandweek.com article – Do You Need A Social Media Marketer?, April 4, 2009, http://www.brand-
week.com/bw/content_display/news-and features/digital/e3ie2a94edbc5b0a7c1150d6cbf4741ded
e?pn=1
Marketingpilgrim.com – 8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools, 2008, www.marketingpilgrim.

com/2008/12/social-media-monitoring-tools.html
Mike-Manual.com/blog on How to Create A Social Media Monitoring Strategy, July 17, 2008, http://
www.mike-manuel.com/blog/2008/07/17/how-to-create-a-social-media-monitoring-strategy/
Radian6, radian6.com/cms/home
www.vocus.com/content/social-media.asp
News.cnet.com – Nielsen: Twitter’s growing really, really, really, really fast, March 19, 2009, http://
news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10200161-36.html
Tracking the Buzz: Tools to Monitor your Brand Effectively, SocialMediaTrader*, March 17, 2008, http://
socialmediatrader.com/tracking-the-buzz-tools-to-monitor-your-brand-effectively/
Use of social media monitoring growing; direct can reap benefits, too, BtoB, March 31, 2008, http://
www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080331/FREE/399769714/1146/FREE#seenit
What is Scout Labs? Scoutlabs.com/features/
Social Media Monitoring Grudge Match: Radian6 vs. Scout Labs, April 13, 2009, http://www.socialme-
diaexplorer.com/2009/04/13/social-media-monitoring-grudge-match-radian6-vs-scout-labs/
Chapter 2
What is microblogging?, http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid40_
gci1265620,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1808077,00.html
Twitter Growing Twice As Fast As Facebook, April 1, 2009, http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/04/

twitter-google-growth/
Marketech
Your Guide to Micro-Blogging and Twitter, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/05/your-guide-to-

micro-blogging-and-twitter135.html
Five Ways to Leverage Microblogging, Aug. 28, 2008, by Blake Cahill, http://www.emarketin-
gandcommerce.com/story/five-ways-leverage-microblogging
MarketingProfs.com article, Microconnecting With Your Customers Via Microblogging, Sept. 23,
2008, http://www.twine.com/item/11hksjn7k-5k/microconnecting-with-your-customers-via-microb-
logging-q-a-with-connie-reece-marketingprofs-articles
360 degree Digital Influence, Ogilvy Public Relations WorldWide, The Creation of Twitter Best Prac-
tices: Round 1, http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2008/08/
The Bivings report, A Blog by The Bivings Group, Zappos.com: A Twitter Case Study, May 6, 2008,
http://www.bivingsreport.com/2008/zapposcom-a-twitter-case-study/
World is all a-twitter over micro-blogging success story, Belfast Telegraph, Feb. 3, 2009, UK, www.
belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Zappos: Microblogging with Twitter, http://sarahlokitis.com/2009/03/23/zappos-microblogging-with-

twitter/
Twitter Best Practices, April 16, 2009, http://strategicsocialmedia.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/239/
Ping.fm/
Use Ping.fm to Reach All Your Online Profiles at Once, March 31, 2009, http://webworkerdaily.
com/2009/03/31/use-pingfm-to-reach-all-your-online-profiles-at-once/
Chart of The Day: Twitter’s Early Growth Dwarfed By YouTube’s, http://www.businessinsider.com/

chart-of-the-day-comparing-the-first-three-years-of-growth-2009-4
Chapter 3
Wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
Nevillehobson.com/2008/09/28/the-evolution-of-blogging/, Sept. 28, 2008
Microblogging Communities, The Merging of Microblogs and Social networks, CMS Wire, Dec. 3,
2008, http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-media/microblogging-communities-the-merging-of-
microblogs-and-social-networks-003621.php
Blogging Has Come A Long Way, Baby, eMarketer, emarketer.com, April 22, 2009, http://www.
emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007027
Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-

blogosphere//
Fierce Content Management (fiercecontentmanagement.com) featured The Fortune 500 and

Blogging: Slow and steady and farther along than expected, http://www.fiercecontentmanage-
ment.com/story/only-16-percent-fortune-500-companies-have-public-facing-blogs/2009-04-22
Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, April 17, 2009, http://www.socialtext.net/bizblogs/index.cgi

Fortune 500 Corporate Blog Adoption Slow and Steady According to Society for New Communica-
tions Research Chair Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson of Financial Insite, Society for New
Communications Research, April 22, 2009, http://www.newcommreview.com/?p=1412
Web content management continues its upward trajectory, Fierce Content Management, fierce-
contentmanagement.com, March 23, 2009, http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/web-
content-management-continues-its-upward-trajectory/2009-03-23
10 Best Fortune 500 Blogs by www.rsspieces.com/10-best-fortune-500-blogs, March 30, 2008
ProBlogger.net, “Nine Signs of an Effective Blog Post”, July 10, 2008, http://www.problogger.net/ar-
chives/2008/07/10/nine-signs-of-an-effective-blog-post/
15 Reasons Why Blogging Matters More than Ever, March 14, 2008, http://www.twistimage.com/
blog/archives/15-reasons-why-blogging-matters-more-than-ever/
Istrategylabs.com, 2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report: 276% Growth in 35-54-year-
old Users by Peter Corbett, Jan. 5, 2009, http://www.istrategylabs.com/2009-facebook-demograph-
ics-and-statistics-report-276-growth-in-35-54-year-old-users/
WebMarketing Therapy, Social Media Marketing Boosts Business and “Cool Factor” for These WMT
Positive Role Models, April 16, 2009, http://www.webmarketingtherapy.com/blog/social-media-mar-
keting-boosts-business-and-cool-factor-for-these-wmt-positive-role-models/
Facebook Marketing Success Stories for Businesses, Buzz Marketing for Technology, Innovative Ideas
for B2B Technology Marketers, Dec. 19, 2007, http://buzzmarketingfortech.blogspot.com/2007/12/
facebook-marketing-success-stories-for.html
Facebook Marketing Success: The Target Store Example, blogs.praized.com, posted Oct. 15, 2007,
http://blogs.praized.com/seb/facebook/facebook-marketing-success-the-target-store-example/
The Importance of Blogs In The Relationship Economy, onthemarkwriting.com, Feb. 17, 2008, http://
onthemarkwriting.com/2008/02/17/the-importance-of-blogs-in-the-relationship-economy/
CisionBlog Top 100 Social Media & Internet Marketing Bloggers, Jan. 22, 2009, http://blog.us.cision.
com/2009/01/top-100-social-media-internet-marketing-bloggers/
Chapter 4
Wild Apricot Blog: Ten Innovative Ways Nonprofits Can Use Facebook, Nov. 16, 2007, www.wildapri-
cot.com/blogs
Tips for Effective Marketing with Facebook, Micleeblog.com, April 13, 2009, http://www.micleeblog.
com/2009/04/13/social-networking/tips-for-effective-marketing-with-facebook/
Facebooks for Nonprofits, www.slideshare.net/Griner/facebook-for-nonprofits-presentation
How non-profits are using social networking to raise money and awareness, by Wailin Wong, April 30,
2008, archives of the Chicago Tribune, archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/apr/30/
Attorneys are getting LinkedIn to clients online, Sept. 22, 2008, http://www.wislawjournal.com/article.
cfm/2008/09/22/Attorneys-are-getting-LinkedIn-to-clients-online
Marketech
Inside CRM, The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer
Base, Dec. 9, 2007, http://www.insidecrm.com/features/facebook-marketing-toolbox-012308/
The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer Base, Jan. 23,
2008, http://www.insidecrm.com/features/facebook-marketing-toolbox-012308/
Biz Networking on Facebook Could Soon Supersede LinkedIn, Aug. 30, 2008, http://mashable.
com/2008/08/30/b2b-ad-networking/
Gigaom, Why Facebook’s Future is Mobile, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009, http://gigaom.com/2009/02/10/
why-facebooks-future-is-mobile/
http://social-media-optimization.com/2007/10/a-failed-facebook-marketing-campaign/
http://imarketu.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/facebook-advertising-success-if-done-right/
http://www.purposeinc.com/pwp/2009/03/04/facebook-advertising
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/
Chapter 5
Talance, Nonprofits Can Be Linked In, Nov. 20, 2007, talance.com/blog
CNN Money.com, Recession lifts social networking site LinkedIn, March 24, 2009
Biznik.com, LinkedIn Marketing – How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Your Business, Feb. 17, 2009, http://
biznik.com/articles/linkedin-marketing-how-to-use-linkedin-to-promote-your-business
Linked In Social Networking Success Story, part 2, Feb. 13, 2009, http://www.linktoprosper.com/
blog/2009/02/linked-in-social-networking-success-story-part-2/
Step 4: LinkedIn Marketing – 6 Reasons to Use LinkedIn to Market Your Business, by Zeke Camusio,
http://www.startupnation.com/series/132/9338/linkedin-marketing-6-reasons.htm
http://www.linktoprosper.com/blog/2009/03/the-history-and-future-of-linkedin/
Chapter 6
Internet Service Deals, 50 Fastest Growing Niche Social Media Sites and Networks. www.internetser-
vicedeals.com/blog, posted June 26, 2008
Social Networks: Facebook Takes Over Top Spot, Twitter Climbs, Compete, written Feb. 9, 2009,
http://blog.compete.com/2009/02/09/facebook-myspace-twitter-social-network/
Traffic & Market Share – Social Networking Sites, Sausage Factory Seminars
http://www.sausagefactoryseminars.com/blog/2009/02/09/traffic-market-share-social-networking-
sites/
Growth Trends of Social Networking Sites in 2007-2008, Lyons International, http://www.lyonsinterna-

tional.com/2009/04/17/growth-trends-of-social-networking-sites-in-2007-08/

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2008-05-11-social-networking_N.htm
http://socialmedia.globalthoughtz.com/social-network-market-share-myspace-down/
http://blog.compete.com/2009/02/09/facebook-myspace-twitter-social-network/
Niche social networks will continue to be hot in 2008, Jan. 7, 2008, http://social-media-optimization.
com/2008/01/niche-social-networks-will-continue-to-be-hot-in-2008/
ActiveRain.com, webnewsforus.com/blog, June 26, 2006, http://webnewsforus.com/blog/activerain-

com/51
Famiva.com
What is Xanga, http://webtrends.about.com/od/pro5/fr/what-is-xanga.htm
What is Hi5?, http://webtrends.about.com/od/profiles/fr/what-is-hi5.htm
Phone & Social Networks: What’s Ahead for Tech’s Survivors in ‘09?
Social Networking Disappears, http://cws.internet.com/article/4240-.htm
Web 3.0 – the personalized web experience for your customers,Oct. 8, 2008,
http://searchcio.techtarget.com.au/articles/27270-Web-3-the-personalised-web-experience-for-
your-customers
The future web2.0 social experience, web design from scratch,

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/future-social-web-experience.php
Social Blogging - What is Xanga?, webtrends.about.com/od/socialnetworking/p/xanga_profile.htm,

About.com Web Trends,
Chapter 7
Talent trumps all for YouTube sensation Susan Boyle, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-
susan-boyle17-2009apr17,0,2767635.story
Viddler, http://cwanswers.com/8921/viddler
Vimeo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimeo
About ScanScout, http://www.scanscout.com/about_us_our_vision.html
blinkx, http://www.blinkx.com/about
Chapter 8
Email and webmail statistics, April 2009, www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statistics.
htm
15 Email Statistics That Are Shaping The Future, Oct. 22, 2008, www.convinceandconvert.com
How to: 13 Tips for Effective Email Marketing, March 26, 2008, www.marketingvox.com/how-to-effec-
tive-email-marketing
Marketech
Email marketing for Nonprofits, May 13, 2008, www.marketingprofs.com,
29 Ways to Build Your House List, danavan.net/publications/2004/02/29_ways_to_buil.html February

2004
Gmail’s Users Fewer, but Younger and Richer, Than Yahoo’s and Hotmail’s, http://www.market-
ingcharts.com/topics/demographics/gmails-users-fewer-but-younger-and-richer-than-yahoos-hot-
mails-366/
10 B2B Email Marketing Best Practices, March 17, 2008, B2Bemailmarketing.com/2008/03/10-b2b-

email-ma.html,
10 Tips for Using Twitter and Email Marketing for B2B, Dec. 21, 2008, http://anythinggoesmarketing.
blogspot.com/2008/12/10-tips-for-using-twitter-and-email.html
Chapter 9
http://www.piczoinc.com/about.html
http://www.slideshare.net/
http://photobucket.com/faq?catID=29&catSelected=f&topicID=317
15 Creative and Profitable Ways to Use Autoresponders, http://www.imnewswatch.com/ar-

chives/2007/11/15_creative_and.html?visitFrom=1
First Time Using Autoresponders?, Sept 23, 2007, http://www.internetmarketingtips4u.com/index.

php/list-building-strategies/15-autoresponders/25-using-an-autoresponder-for-the-first-time
5 Ways to Turn Customer Inquiries Into Sales, June 18, 2006, http://www.effective-internet-marketing.
net/email/email-automatic-responders.html
Chapter 10
http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/5_rules_of_soci.html
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2006/08/13/rules-of-social-media-optimization/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_optimization
http://indigitalmarketing.com/2008/01/21/a-social-media-optimization-strategy-the-participation-
ladder/
http://social-media-optimization.com/2008/03/top-10-social-bookmarking-sites/
http://www.masternewmedia.org/the-social-media-optimization-manifesto-key-social-marketing-
principles-to-increase-the/

85
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Appendix
mindmaps and more
Powered by
Hiring for Social Media Positions
Hiring For Social Media Positions

It’s no secret that many brands are embracing
social media. From international heavyweights
like Ford and Coca-Cola to local ice cream
shops, everyone is trying to figure out “how to
get social media done.” In several client
meetings recently, the discussion has turned to
the subject of staffing up for social media and
to then training those staff to ensure that they
do “the right things right” in the social media
space and flawlessly perform the role of “brand
steward”. There are a few questions you should
ask as you’re considering the social media
staffing issue.
Should I hire or outsource?

I’m biased here, but I’ll tell you from experience that the most successful social media work that
I’ve seen involves social media personnel inside of an organization. Yes, you need to have some
who gets your company, culture and (deeply) understands the market(s) you serve and the
industry you’re in. A true steward of the brand (a phrase I use daily to describe those who work
in the social media space on behalf of their company) should be embedded in the company.
(caveat: A contract social media person can be embedded as well…but they need to really “get
you” in order to work out). If you want some more ammo for this discussion, check out Beth
Harte’s 25 Signs You’ve Got a Strong SM Consultant or Agency.
What role should I absolutely hire for?

If you’re really serious about social & digital media, one of the most popular roles that brands
hire first is that of “community manager”. Basically, the community manager is the brand
steward within the community of customers, prospects and partners that you serve.
What qualifications should they have?

I could write a laundry list of which qualifications one should have to do social media for your
brand, but at the end of the day, there are a few non-negotiable things that I’m stuck on.
• Community managers should be advocates, ambassadors and stewards of the brand in

one – This is a delicate balance, but they are first, and foremost, representatives of the
company but they must understand and communicate well with the community they
serve.
• Community managers must be able to communicate in writing, video, audio, 140
characters and in any other mode that’s social media ready – A good sense for good
copy, proper etiquette & tact and a generally approachable nature are essential.
• Believes in the core “social media ethic” which is to always ask “how can my company be
Page1
useful, relevant and helpful to the community we serve?” – A sharing, caring & “ready to
educate” mentality is the hallmark of a good social media community manager.
The MarketingSavant™ Group | 888.989.7771 | www.marketingsavant.com | dana@marketingsavant.com

Hiring for Social Media Positions
• Loves what they do and loves people! – Great community managers love people, love
helping out and love technology and communication. They will be as adept behind a
Twitter handle as they will be out at a trade show catching video from community
members.
What if I can’t hire anyone?

That’s a great question, and you have a couple of options. First, you can “do” social media in less
than 20 minutes a day if you have a defined process. That way there’s no capital investment,
only your time (which can be worth quite a lot, so choose your channels wisely). You can also
hire in help. While I don’t advocate that brands “outsource social media” wholesale, a growing
number of businesses are embracing social media by hiring part-time employees or contract
social media folks to operate Twitter, Facebook and similar sites on their behalf. Some
companies, like Garrett Popcorn, have hired people to tweet for them. In their case, they hired
Alecia Dantico, a doctoral student in communications. If you’re going to go it alone, then your
readiness comes into question. Here are a few questions to ask, compliments of David Armano,
that I feel you should take pretty seriously:
1. Do you have a passionate and dedicated team who will obsess over your efforts?
2. Are you trying to provide value or “quick hits”?
3. Are you willing to engage your customers/consumers?
4. Are you willing to empower your employees/agencies to represent you?
5. Are you willing to risk failure?
At the end of the day, I believe that organizations that take social media seriously will either
dedicate staff, or a portion of their time to the discipline, or hire in professionals to help out with
social media. I’ve advised a number of brands to hire community managers and interns to help
out with the process with great success.
Page2

Social Media Job Descriptions
We’re often asked to chime on the job descriptions for candidates that will have
purview over an organization’s social media efforts. Below is a collection of the things
that we’ve found that are useful to consider.
1) A person who blogs or understands blogging and participates in social networks

and online communities, has an understanding of web TV, podcasting, wikis and
social bookmarking sites, and can translate that knowledge in to
recommendations for the Company. The experienced individual should
understand the importance of ongoing monitoring and response speed in social
networks.
2) A person who is comfortable teaching social media to others. (Some internal
evangelizing will be required.)
3) A person who enjoys engaging in conversations, both on-line and off.
4) An excellent writer.
5) An independent thinker and task master.
6) An insistence on honesty, transparency and integrity.
7) A quick thinker and witty conversationalist/writer.
8) The ideal candidate should have a LinkedIn profile, a Twitter account, a Facebook
page, and should have his or her own blog already.
9) The candidate would be expected to create a private Content Calendar so that
s/he has material to talk about based on the Company’s announcement
schedules. Of course, s/he can blog about lighter topics along the way. The
candidate should have the authority to conduct written or video interviews w/
execs and/or the occasional guest blog post. S/he should have companywide
authority to track down anyone at any level to get answers that have been
posted outside the Company.
10) The candidate should be focused on content creation, but s/he will also work w/
the PR Team and PR Agency to develop overall communications strategies and
rapid response plans.
11) Recommended reading: on Twitter, the candidate should start following
@Comcast_cares, @RichardatDell, @Zappos, @JetBlue, and @Southwest. The
candidate should also subscribe via RSS to PR and marketing-oriented blogs
found in the AdAge Power150.

The following is a social media manager job description that has been widely cited as
one of the best:
We’re fortunate to now be in a position to hire a social media manager. I am the primary
decision-maker. While our Sr. VP for Human Resources, will certainly be posting the
official position in various and sundry places around the on- and off-line world,
consider this the job announcement.
WHAT WE NEED
1. An experienced (2-5 years) social media marketer. Someone who blogs or

understands blogging and participates in social networks and online
communities, has an understanding of web TV, podcasting, wikis and social
bookmarking sites, and can translate that knowledge in to recommendations for
clients.
2. Someone with a more than rudimentary understanding of search engine
optimization.
3. A person who is comfortable teaching social media to others.
4. A person who enjoys engaging in conversations, both on-line and off.
5. An excellent writer.
6. An independent thinker and task master with the appropriate organizational
skills to be a good one.
7. Someone with an insistence on honesty, transparency and integrity.
8. A person I can put in front of a client. (i.e. – You speak and present well, aren’t a
slob and don’t smell bad.)
WHAT WE WANT
1. Someone with community management experience. And not just a blog with
comments, but forums, message boards or small social networks.
2. A person with web-TV and/or podcasting experience.
3. Someone with an impressive social media profile in one or several of the popular
social networks or social bookmarking/news sites.
4. A salesperson who can help us grow our social media clientele.
5. Someone who can navigate their way around HTML and PHP code … or at least
do so without screwing something up.
WHAT I GET OUT OF THIS
1. An easier, more social method of finding someone to hire.

2. Someone to tackle the world with.
WHAT YOU GET OUT OF THIS
1. A good-paying job with a visionary marketing agency working with national

clients.
2. A competitive benefits package including medical and dental insurance, disability
and retirement.
3. Staff blogging privileges on Social Media Explorer and Doe-Anderson’s blog.
4. Sole responsibility for accounts to build your resume and reputation.
5. The chance to live in a pretty damn fine town, some call it Possibility City, with a
burgeoning pool of social media and tech talent.
6. A pretty swell boss.
HERE’S HOW YOU GET THE JOB
1. Don’t send me resumes. Connect with me. I’m easy to find.

2. Give me an elevator pitch on why you are the person we’ve described.
3. Send me (via whatever electronic method you deem most efficient) a short list of
what you’ve done and where I can find evidence of it. Or have a full profile on
LinkedIn. It’s easier that way.
4. If your profiles are hard to link to you on social media sites, tell me which are
yours and what you’re hiding.
5. Understand this will be a competitive search and I’m hiring one person. Be
outstanding.
The only other disclaimer I’ll throw in there is that if you have issues working in the
[your industry] category, you’re not going to like this job. That won’t be the only
category you’ll work in, though. Experience in travel, banking, medical, non-profits or
B2B environments is a plus. Social media community influence in those categories is a
super bonus. If you can talk circles around lawyers, you’re already at the top of the
stack.

Creating The Social Enterprise
From social media networks to blogs, widgets, tweets and hot mobile apps marketers
are faced with more choices than we ever could have imagined. It seems every day
brings a new shiny toy to try and to confuse. Add a few traditional tactics such as PR,
email, advertising, research and search and the marketer’s job becomes overwhelming.
Overlay that with an internal structure where functions are silo-ed by departments and
you have a frightening disjointed marketing program.
As our understanding of how our customers, the media, prospective employees, current
employees and share holders use the social web it becomes evident that social media
does not live only in the world of marketing. Public relations, customer service,
operations and human resources are exploring ways to incorporate online digital
conversational tools.
Comcast is using Twitter as a customer service channel while the while the business-to-
business company Indium has tapped its engineers and scientists to created twelve
niche topic blogs. Small businesses like Atlanta restaurant Pizzeria Vent are on Twitter
building relations with neighborhood patrons through special offers and conversations.
Isipho, a small nonprofit that’s mission is to improve the lives of the children in Nzinga,
South Africa, has raised its awareness and brought in funding through its Facebook page,
blog and tweets.
However, the digital conversational exchanges our customers and stakeholders have
created a set of expectations that they bring with them when interacting with the
enterprise at-large .. online or offline. Is service better on the Twitter channel than in
your call center? Does a blog or Facebook post provide more relevant information than
your website or brochures? Do your enterprise bloggers or twitters understand the
needs of your customers better than your traditional sales force? Is the HR specialist
bringing in more qualified candidates through LinkedIn than ads or recruiters?
Toby Bloomberg www.divamarktingblog.com @tobydiva 1

Every time a customer or client interacts with your employees on your social media
assets it creates not only a new experience for the company but one that can be viewed
by hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of people. Keep in mind that the secondary
audience also experiences your brand and expectations of how they will be treated.
One of the benefits that social media brings to the enterprise is a .. we can not wait any
longer .. critical need to ensure cross functional communication systems is in place. A
process should be developed to capture the learnings and information occurring from
each social media touch point. Ideally, that information should be analyzed and placed
in a common, let’s call it digital repository. In addition, critical information should be
directed to employees who can quickly provided a response and begin a solution
process.
“Un-soloing” an organization, whether it is a Fortune 100 enterprise with global

divisions or a small business with three employees with distinct responsibilities, takes
time and team work. Following is a first step to align internal stakeholders and help
them understand the social media landscape. The P-I-E-C-E conversation is a process
developed to build a foundation for The Social Enterprise; it also sets the stage for
creating an integrated marketing plan.
PIECE Conversation: Prepare-Invite-Encourage-Confirm-Engage
Step 1: Prepare: educational component. as it relates to social media: competitive

analysis, customer activity, industry trends
Step 2: Invite people who perceive they have a stake: C-suite, marketing, legal,
technology, customer service
Step 4: Encourage people to talk openly
Step 5: Confirm and prioritize issues (including objectives/goals)
Step 6: Engage next steps create a Red Flag Memo
Toby Bloomberg www.divamarktingblog.com @tobydiva 2

Integrating Social Media Into The DNA Of Your Brand
For brand management social media can be a balancing act. As customers come to expect the opportunity
to interact with (hopefully!) the people who are behind brands marketers are finding the need to address
new aspects of brand development. The first step in this new game is for marketers to understand how
social media can change the perceptions of a brand and impact the value of a brand. Successfully
balancing social media inputs (from customers and other stakeholders) while maintaining brand values
can be a precarious under taking.
Brand marketers are charged with one over riding responsibility: to be good stewards of the brand. What
that means specifically will of course, vary from organization to organization and from department to
department. However at the minimum it includes: developing the brand promise and values,
logo/graphics protector, ensuring the voice of the customer is reflected, consistent cross channel
messaging.
When social media is introduced into the DNA of brand development there are two points of view that
must be taken into consideration: organization/employees and customers.
 Organization: how will social media be used to reinforce the brand and tell its story?
 Customer: how will your customers use social media to tell their stories about your brand?
Although the enterprise can not control the how, what, where or when customers will interact in the
multiple opportunities that present themselves in the social web, the challenge of managing brand
perception is not a new one. Customers have always done just what they wanted to do when it came to
how, what, where or when they discussed our brands. With the onset of the Internet, the difference now
is our customers’ voices are louder and more likely to find others who agree and look towards each other
for confirmation and information. The influence that those groups, or individuals, have can directly impact
purchase behavior of many more people than conversations did even five years ago.
Although social media may be shaking up some marketing departments, the social web does bring brand
managers new, exciting opportunities to get to know their customers better: from listening to the
customer raw voices without filters to platforms (that are consistent with the brand’s promise) where you
can help customers engage with peers and with the people who are the heart of the brand.
An interesting example of how one company did just that is Cumberland Farms, a Massachusetts-based
convenience store chain. Cumberland Farms developed a Facebook fan page for customers to talk about
just one of its products … Chill Zone. The company knew that they had a segment that was passionate
about this frozen drink. Creating an online space offered a way to build community for over 80,000 of
those loyal customers. Fans not interacted with each other but the people behind the brand took an
active role in posting comments and responses. http://www.facebook.com/chillzone
Successful social media ccommunication is built on authentic interactions where people “just talk to each
other” instead of passing on pre-crafted tag lines. Opening the enterprise door to allow employees that
level of “being your self” in the very public social media world can be disconcerting especially if your job is
to “protect the brand.” Two important questions for brand management to explore Before including
social media into the brand’s DNA:
 What does it mean to “protect the brand” in the social web?

 How can you be a steward of your brand while maintaining your authenticity?
To help incorporate social media into the DNA of your brand what follows is a thought process model to
get you started.
Toby Bloomberg, Diva Marketing www.divamarketingblog.com @tobydiva 1

10 Suggestions To Integrate Social Media Into The DNA Of Your Brand
1. Determine what sets your brand apart from the rest. How is it special and unique to your target
marketing?
Our brand is the only ________ that ___________.
2. Especially in the social media world brand values become important in building content direction.
In 3 words what is the essence of your brand? Or if you want to get social .. describe your brand value in
140 characters.
3. People use social media networks, platforms, tools different making identifying your audience critical.
Who do you want to talk with or who is your target audience?
4. Determining what you want to accomplish will guide your decision in what you consider to be success.
This in turn will lead to your metrics. What are your objectives and goals? How will you know if you
succeed?
5. Determining resource allocation: people, time and money will impact which tools, or tactics, you
choose to use Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Flickr, Video, etc. What are tactics will you use? How will these
tools reinforce brand value?
6. The more you can integrate social media tactics into your marketing initiatives the more benefits you'll
derive. Identify current programs where social media can support the brand and build relationships with
customers (and other stakeholders).
7. Have you developed guidelines that can be used to give your social media content developers (bloggers,
Tweeters, Vloggers, photographers, etc.) direction?
8. Have you ensured that all of the people who will be developing content understand the brand promise
and values?
9. Are you listening to who, what, where and how your customers and stakeholders (media, analysts, job
seekers, stock holders, etc.) are saying about your brand, company, sector?
10. How are you incorporating the lessons learned and information gained from social media to support
your brand value?
Toby Bloomberg, Diva Marketing www.divamarketingblog.com @tobydiva 2

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Appendix
mindmaps and more
Powered by
Social Media Planning
Strategy Map Worksheet
Your Name:
Your Organization:
Use this form to help you think through your organization’s social media marketing strategy.
1. Objective
a. What do you want to accomplish with social media?
 Research and Learning

 Lead generation
 E-commerce sales
 Store traffic
 Increase Brand or Issue Awareness
 Reputation management
 Get your fans to talk about you (word of mouth)
 Content Generation and Issues Awareness
 Increased Relevant Visitor Traffic and Page Rankings
 Take Action (sign petition, send email, leave comment, etc)
 Other:
b. Now, restate your objectives so that they are “SMART” – specific, measurable, attainable,
realistic, and time-based.
c. Describe how your social media objective supports or links to a goal in your organization’s
communications plan.
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Portions dapted from: WeAreMedia: Nonprofit and Social Media Starter Kit
2. Target Audience
a. Who must you reach with your social media efforts to meet your objective? Why this
target group?
b. Is this a target group identified in your organization’s communications plan?
c. What do they know or believe about your organization or issue? What will resonate with
them?
d. What key points do you want to make with your audience?
e. What social media tools are they currently using? If they congregate in certain online
locales, what are they talking about in relation to your brand/goals/issues/competitors?
Describe based on direct observation, primary research, or secondary research.
f. What additional research do you need to do to learn about your target audience’s online
social behavior or understanding/perceptions about your organization or issues?
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3. Integration
a. How will your social media strategy support and enhance your marketing & Internet
strategy?
Strategy Component How Does Social Strategy Support

Email
Web Site
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Advertising
Others:
b. How will you support/connect your offline marketing efforts with social media?
4. Culture Change
a. How will you get your organization to embrace your social media strategy?
b. Can you think of any internal champions to drive it forward?
c. How will you address any fears or concerns?
d. What is the rate of change your organization can tolerate?

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5. Capacity
a. Who will implement your organization’s social media strategy?
b. Can you allocate a minimum of five hours per week to your strategy?
c. Do you need any outside expertise to help implement your strategy?
d. Will your content updates depend on any other resource or person?

(Do they know your intentions?)
6. Tools and Tactics
a. What tactics and tools best support your objectives and match your targeted audience?
b. Now, take a second look at what you are planning. What tactics and tools do you have the
capacity to implement?
c . Are you prepared to allow additional time for researching new social media tools or changing
tools?
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7. Measurement
a. What hard data points or metrics will you use to track your objectives? How often will
you track? Do you have the systems and tools set up to track efficiently?
Measurable Objective Before During After
b. What questions will you ask to generate insights?
c. What qualitative data will you take into consideration to generate insights or help you
improve what your social media strategy?
8. Experiment
a. What small piece can you implement first as a pilot?
b. Aside from the metrics described above, how will you track the implementation so you can
learn from it?
c. Use the following table for analysis after you implement. Don’t focus so much on numbers
but rather on insights.
Before After
Test 1: What did you plan to do? What did you What actually happened?
think would be the result?
How could your results have been improved?
What did your audience think?
What will you do differently in the next iteration?

Page5

Social Media Strategy Questions
Social media is simple, but not easy. I think that’s the best way to explain it. To that end, one of
the best ways to drill down on what the best strategy is for your organization is to ask the right
questions. It’s that simple!
In the absence of decades of best practices that are well known, universally understood and
(hopefully) applied across industries, we have a set of questions that can help anyone, in any
industry, get to the core of what their social media strategy should be and how they should
proceed in making the most of social media.
It’s not about whether or not you should be on Facebook or have a YouTube channel - it all
depends on the “answers to the questions”. If you ask me whether or not you should be on
Twitter or whether you should be blogging or producing a podcast, it’s tough to say. However,
I’m confident that by going through a process, asking the right questions and being confident in
the outcomes, you’ll be on the right path to creating a best in class social media strategy.
The other thing to know about social media is that it’s changing. Fast. Just as someone once said
about sports records, “today’s records are tomorrow’s averages”, you need to stay tuned to the
changes afoot in social media because today’s breakthroughs are either going to be, at best,
tomorrow’s best practices or at worst, lessons of what not to do.
All that having been said, let’s look at some questions:
Setting Your Goals and Expectations for Social Media

 How to we plan to measure the success of our social media efforts? (Qualitative and
quantitative metrics)
 Who do you want to reach and why?
 What other benefits can you derive, such as creating a community with suppliers, vendors,
and partners?
 What do we expect people to do with the social media tools that we roll out?
 What are we prepared to share with our audience in social media that doesn’t directly
benefit the bottom line?
 What are our data do gathering objectives? (email, address, downloads only)
 Are we ok with not seeing an immediate and direct return on are social media investment?
 What are our short term and long term investment expectations?
Industry Impact & Feasibility

 How are social media impacting our industry’s customers and other stakeholders?
 Where are our competitors in social media? (conduct a competitive social media inventory
analysis)
 What is the technology usage profile of our typical customer? How well/much do they use
our website, email newsletter, etc?
 Do we believe social media will have an impact on our customers? In what way(s)? Why?
 Why is social media of interest to us?
 Is our industry ahead of the curve, behind it, or in the middle?
 Is discussion about our brand and our industry positive, negative, or neutral? Are we being
talked about at all?
 Have we learned anything about our company or industry from listening to social media?
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Assessing Our Corporate Social Media Readiness

 What is our company’s tolerance for risk (e.g., initiating new or untested marketing tactics,
launching bold corporate initiatives, etc.)?
 How does our company normally react to negative commentary from the media, customers,
competitors and other stakeholders?
 How uncomfortable would our company be advertising in a publication or on a web site that
often contained editorial content critical of our company or industry yet whose readers very
closely matched our target audience?
 Please rank your knowledge of social media in general – i.e., how familiar are you with
various forms of social media and how they are used?
 How do you feel as a company about engaging in a public dialogue with your customers?
 What do you perceive as the biggest obstacles to our adoption of social media practices?
 What approaches can we take that are evolutions of our current practices (vs. complete
overhauls)?
 Who on our staff is most enthusiastic and passionate about talking to customers?
 Who on our staff is most enthusiastic and passionate about social media?
 Can we first use social media to improve how we communicate internally, cross
departmentally?
Determining Resources Needed for a Social Media Effort

 How much time and money are we expecting to dedicate to social media?
 What are we willing to spend for technology, development and social media tools?
 What level of human resources are we willing to dedicate to our social media plan?
 Who are the point people, and what are their roles? Who are the “faces” of the organization
online, and where?
 Can we afford to keep part of our allocated $ budget flexible to respond to evolving needs?
 If we’re successful with social media, can we scale our interactions to continue to meet
higher expectations? How?
 Are we flexible enough within roles/responsibilities to shift them as needed to
accommodate what we learn from social media?
Social Media Specific Education and Training

 Are our employees using social networks in their personal lives?
 What level of familiarity can/should we expect from our employees and what gaps do we
need to fill with training?
 Does our internal audience understand the business potential of social media?
 What are the biggest fears/hesitations that we have as a company about using social media?
 Are we empowering our employees to respond at the point of need, regardless of their
role? Is there a “chain of command”?
 How are we going to structure the flow of information so that necessary learnings get back
to the right people?
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Participating and Engaging in Social Media

 What is our “unique voice” and “point of view” that we want to take to the social media
conversation?
 What practices do we see from our peers/competitors that we’d like to emulate?
 What do we see from them that we’d like to avoid at all costs?
 What unique voice can we contribute to the conversation in the industry?
 What is it that we want to convey to our community through our participation in social
media?
 Are we going to encourage community generated content?
 Do we plan to heavily moderate or edit community contributed content or let it stand &
play out?
 How are we ensuring that we’re providing a two-way channel for dialogue?
Social Media Policy & Crisis Communication Planning

 What direction or advice should you offer about people’s conduct on personal pages after
(and, sometimes, during) business hours?
 What is our policy for handling social media feedback?
 What is our policy for our employee engagement in social media? Are we covered by our
ethics, computer usage, code of conduct of HR policies or do we need a specific social media
policy?
 How will we respond to negative feedback/criticism when we discover it?
 Are we ready to empower our team to resolve customer issues in social media channels?
 How detailed do we need to be with our communication policies?
 Who is to speak “officially” about your organization, and about which topics?
 Who are the people who can promptly grant permission to discuss new products and
industry trends, and what can you share?
 What’s the process for responding to legitimate (and illegitimate) online criticisms of your
company or its products? What can you do to prevent (or survive) a Twitterstorm or any
social media crisis?
 How can people “authentically engage in the conversation” as individuals without speaking
for the company?
Following-up On Our Social Media Strategy Implementation

 What social sites are working for us, based on the objectives we’ve stated?
 Which social sites and channels are easy to interact in and responsive to our message and
which ones do we have to “force”?
 What has emerged from our social media interaction and conversations that we hadn’t
anticipated?
 What are we doing with the information we learn?
 How are we distributing it internally and acting on it?
 What new metrics should we be tracking based on what we’ve learned?
 Were our original assumptions about social media correct? If not, what do we need to
adjust as a result?
 What have we learned from our customers and competitors that we didn’t know before?
 What’s next?
Remember, none of us has all of the answers, all of us are smarter than any of us and our job
here is not to deliver all of the right answers on social media but rather to ensure that we’re
asking the right questions.
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Appendix
mindmaps and more
Powered by
Social Media Listening
Blog Implementation
Blogging for Thought Leaders
Social Networking Map
Twitter for Business
Social Media and Digital Marketing

Mind Maps
Green Bay, WI 54301

888.989.7771
dana@marketingsavant.com
www.marketingsavant.com
MarketingSavant MindMap – Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Process www.marketingsavant.com – 888.989.7771
MarketingSavant MindMap – Create a Social Media Monitoring Strategy & Toolkit www.marketingsavant.com – 888.989.7771
MarketingSavant MindMap – Inside the Thought Leadership Blogging Process www.marketingsavant.com – 888.989.7771
MarketingSavant MindMap – Twitter for Business www.marketingsavant.com – 888.989.7771
MarketingSavant MindMap – Weblog Implementation Roadmap www.marketingsavant.com – 888.989.7771
MarketingSavant MindMap – Social Networking Contact Map www.marketingsavant.com – 888.989.7771
MarketingSavant MindMap – Thought Leadership Marketing www.marketingsavant.com – 888.989.7771
Social Media 101
Digital Marketing 101
The Lowdown on LinkedIn
Blogging to Build Your Business
Facebook
Search Engine Optimization
Social Media and Digital Marketing

Tip-sheets
Green Bay, WI 54301

888.989.7771
How to grow your business through digital and social media marketing
Social Media 101

What is Social Media?
No doubt you’ve heard plenty about social media by this point, but many business owners are Social Media Tools
challenged with how to make it relevant for their business. According to Wikipedia, Social media Free blogs:
are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among Blogger - www.blogger.com
human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommu- Word Press - http://wordpress.com/
nications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This Technorati
interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspec- Blog search engine technorati.com
tives and "building" of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and
experiences. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer- Free Micro Blogging sites:
generated media (CGM). Twitter - twitter.com/
Social Media Platforms
Plurk - www.plurk.com
Essential Steps to Social Media Success
Source: Universal McCann Wave 3 Report
RSS Readers
1. Establish Clear Business Objectives and Metrics Social media mar- impact search engine positioning. Google Reader - www.google.com/reader
keting should not be an executive pet project. As a marketer responsible for a
social media initiative, you should never move off the starting mark without 7. Engage Your Audience Whether you’re launching your own social media Photo Sharing
clear and measurable business goals. application or engaging in others, the key to building influence in your com- Flickr - www.flickr.com
munity is getting involved.
2. Marketing Communications Moves from Monologue to Connected Video Sharing
Dialogue When customers control content, marketers inevitably lose some 8. Engage Your Employees Social media programs are a valuable opportu- YouTube - www.youtube.com
control of the message. But that doesn’t diminish the capability of good mar- nity to build cross functional teams in your organization.
keters to communicate effectively with their markets—in fact it can create a Social Bookmarking
9. Engage Your Customers Nothing filters up good ideas and new content
significant competitive advantage. Delicious - www.delicious.com
like talking directly to customers. Interview a few of your customers or part-
ners and ask for their take on the issues. Jaiku - www.jaiku.com
3. Clarify Your Positioning For all the novelty of social media, successful
execution invariably hinges on an age-old fundamental—a clear and con-
10. Be Honest and Up Front Whether you’re launching your own social me-
sistent position across all business touch points.
dia site or just participating in discussions around the Web, be conspicuously How much time &
4. Identify the Influencers The first meaningful step of engagement is to honest and straightforward about who you are and who you represent.
identify where the conversations are taking place that are relevant to your
money will this take?
11. Define Metrics According to Business Objectives Get involved in de- Most businesses can implement a social
market community, and who is shaping those conversations.
fining what business outcomes are relevant for your social media program, media strategy for very little money; how-
5. Listen Before You Launch In any conversation, a smart communicator and look for ways to measure progress toward the goal. Chances are, the data ever, the best strategies that generate
spends time listening to the dialog before they engage. is available. leads and revenue are launched in con-
junction with professional help and can
6. Integrate Your Social Media with SEO One of the most powerful ca- 12. Fail Quickly. Fail Cheaply If you are launching your first social media cost a few hundred to several thousand
pabilities of social media, especially blogging, is the ability to dramatically program, focus on an initiative with minimal investment in time and money. dollars. Moreover, social media takes time
and personal involvement that are unprec-
edented in the world of mass media.
www.marketingsavant.com 888.989.7771 info@marketingsavant.com
Social Media 101
What is it? What is it good for?
social media - a self-guided tour

Listen to the conversation
888.989.7771 info@marketingsavant.com
Blog  Free to low-cost As part of our social-media strategy,
www.google.com/alerts
A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web  User comments are free feedback on services, let’s presume all businesses need a
MarketingSavant site, usually maintained by an individual with regular prices way to listen to their audience, their
www.keotag.com
Social Media Marketing entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other  Creates searchable archive for search engines customers, their partners, and their
Social media consulting and coaching by an material such as graphics or video.  Acceptable to discuss topics or ideas that are detractors. Let’s begin with the tools
www.technorati.com
award-winning blogger. not yet fully developed we use to listen to the conversation.
Start with Google Alerts and subscribe
Award-winning blogger and internet market- Message Boards/Chat Rooms/Forums  Educational information www.summize.com
ing expert, Dana VanDen Heuvel, provides to keywords pertinent to your brand.
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online dis-  Ability to increase traffic through repeat
social media education and consulting to You’ll get daily emails telling you when
corporations, non-profits and educational in- cussion site. It is the modern equivalent of a traditional visitors your keywords show up on the Web. http://crazyegg.com
stitutions. bulletin board. From a technological standpoint, forums  Organization gains more creditability
Our training and content consulting services
or boards are web applications managing user-gener-  Builds relationship with visitors Social Bookmarking
are the product of more than five years ated content.
Social bookmarking is an excellent http://delicious.com/
years of intensive study, training, writing and  VERY simple to use
Micro Blogging (Twitter) way to share the collective intelligence
practice in the area of social and new media.
MarketingSavant can save you months of Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that M ultiple ways to send updates: text mes- of the Internet. This is near the top www.digg.com
learning and prepare you to enter the global allows users to send brief text updates (140 characters saging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or because you may want to “bookmark”
the Web. www.reddit.com
online conversation with a strategy, and voice or fewer) or micromedia (photos or audio clips) and some of these other sites using del.
that stands out from your competitors. Our  Computer not needed to send an update, can
publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a icio.us. www.diigo.com
training and custom consulting services ad-
dress these key business priorities: restricted group. These messages can be submitted by use a mobile phone
1. Understanding social media’s growing im-
a variety of means, including text messaging, instant RSS Feed Aggregators
portance in the changing media landscape; messaging, email, MP3 or the Web. Micro-blogs provide Sign up for Bloglines, a free Web-based
2. Tools and tactics for tracking online conver- short commentary on a person-to-person level or to http://www.bloglines.
RSS reader that will allow you to follow
sations; share news about a company's products and services. com
numerous blogs and news sites. Add
3. Turning online feedback into actionable in-
formation; Photo Sharing (Flickr)  Free or low-cost the feed from www.danavan.net to get
4. Overcoming internal obstacles to social me- Photo sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's  Easy to use and share photos started, then look for the RSS button on
dia initiatives; digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share  Great tagging and organizing system your favorite news sites to subscribe to Google.com/reader
5. Selecting tools and metrics to match busi- more feeds.
ness objectives; and them with others (whether publicly or privately). This  Can be incorporated into personal blogs and
functionality is provided through both Web sites and Web sites
6. Building and sustaining effective online
communities. applications that facilitate the upload and display of  Easy to buy prints and other photo specialty Subscribe to Blogs of Interest
images. The term can also be loosely applied to the use items Reading blogs through RSS readers is
Services begin with the strategic education google.com/blogsearch
phase and proceed through strategy and of online photo galleries that are setup and managed  Good backup for paper and digital photos how blogs were meant to be read. Use
implementation. by individual users, including photo blogs. Google Blogsearch and other resources
to find blogs you like using keywords www.blogpulse.com
Contact us: Podcasts  Communicate with large numbers of people
from your hobbies, company or indus-
A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files via the Internet try. Subscribe using your new Bloglines www.technorati.com
www.marketingsavant.com/newsletter
888-989-7771 which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated  Incorporates video, audio, music and effects RSS reader account.
dana@marketingsavant.com download, through Web feeds, to portable media  Syndicated via RSS feed or archived on the
Connect with us: players and personal computers. Though the same Web Wikipedia
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ content may also be made available by direct download  Listeners can download podcasts to their mo- Do you know what’s been written about
danavandenheuvel or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from other bile players or listen to at their computers your brand (or your competitors) on
Twitter: www.twitter.com/danavan digital-media formats by its ability to be syndicated,  Production is fairly inexpensive with the right Wikipedia? If you’re not in Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org
Blog: www.marketingsavant.com
subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when equipment write a mock version of your own
Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/danavan
new content is added. Wikipedia entry.
What exactly is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site founded in De- Finding a Job with LinkedIn
Adapted from Guy Kawasaki and Liz Ryan
cember 2002 and launched in May 2003 mainly used for professional
1. Get the word out.Tell your network that you’re looking
networking. As of February 2009, it had more than 35 million regis- for a new position because a job search these days
tered users, spanning 170 industries. requires the “law of big numbers.”
Building your best profile 2. GetLinkedInrecommendationsfromyourcolleagues.

A strong recommendation from your manager high-
• Join LinkedIn and complete the over- • Upload your Contacts from your email
lights your strengths and shows that you were a valued
view information client employee.
• Complete employment and educa- • Make introductions to connect via
tion history LinkedIn 3. Findoutwherepeoplewithyourbackgroundsare
• Add a profile summary • Collect at least 3 recommendations working. Find companies that employ people like you
by doing an advanced search for people in your area who
• Select an industry and add your spe- from your “network”
have your skills.
cialties • Give and you shall receive!
• Add your website(s) • Regularly monitor the Q&A section 4. Findoutwherepeopleatacompanycamefrom.
• Create Public Profile URL for questions you are able to answer LinkedIn “Company Profiles” show the career path of
• Determine your Public Profile URL • Ask questions that can help you do people before they began work there.
• Set your Contact Settings your job. 5. Findoutwherepeoplefromacompanygonext.Linke-
dIn’s “Company Profiles” also tell you where people go
Top Ten LinkedIn Profile Errors Source: Christopher Rollyson, www.rollyson.net/
after leaving the company.
6. Checkifacompanyisstillhiring.Companypageson
1. Misspellings or nonstandard names prevent people from finding you. have side businesses and activities.
LinkedIn include a section called “New Hires” that lists
2. Being faceless; a picture aids recall when you've met people face-to-face, 6. Being careless with Recommendations. View them as a portfolio and use people who have recently joined the company.
and people with pictures far more likely to be contacted. them to support the themes of your profile, so "set the table" when you 7. Gettothehiringmanager.LinkedIn’sjobsearchengine
ask for one. Ask the recommender what aspect of your work you would like allows you to search for any kind of job you want. How-
3. Not using "Status Visibility," LinkedIn's internal version of Twitter, to keep
him/her to comment on. ever, when you view the results, pay close attention to the
your connections current on what's important to you today; based on what
you're doing, they can reach out to help you. Better yet, connect to ping.fm 7. Missing the gold mine of LinkedIn Answers. These discussion forums can ones that you’re no more than two degrees away from.
and use Twitter to update LinkedIn. be included with the Profile and add significant value because they enable 8. Get to the right HR person.The best case is getting to
people to see your expertise and professionalism in context. the hiring manager via someone who knows him or her
4. Not using the summary to show how you are qualified to do what you want
to do; use the "experience" to support the summary. 8. Few LinkedIn members participate in the Forums. 9. Findoutthesecretjobrequirements.Joblistingsrarely
spell out entirely or exactly what a hiring manager is
5. Not leveraging the "Specialties" area for keywords that are associated with 9. Lack of strategy or purpose; the most effective profiles have an organiz- seeking. Find a connection at the company who can get
the people you want to attract; these are bait, and you want LinkedIn mem- ing principle that supports a goal, which is the spine, and everything else the inside scoop on what really matters for the job.
bers searching for these keywords to find you. branches off from it.
10. Find startups to join.MaybethisrecessionisGodtell-
6. Being afraid to list multiple activities as "Positions" under "Experience." Al- 10.Omitting personal interests. Boomers were taught that "work" was sepa- ing you it’s time to try a startup.
though members have to make sure that concurrent activities could not be rate from "home." No longer, so include your passions under "Additional 11. Buildyournetworkbeforeyouneedit.Asalasttip,
construed as conflicts, employers increasingly understand that employees Information" to enable people to connect with you that way, too. no matter how the economy or your career is doing, hav-
ing a strong network is a good form of job security.
A Baker’s Dozen Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn Adapted from Guy Kawasaki
www.marketingsavant.com Most people use LinkedIn to “get to someone” in order to make a sale, form a partnership, or get a job. It works well for this because it is an online
network of more than 35 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 170 industries. However, it is a tool that is under-
MarketingSavant: Social Media utilized, so here is a list of ways to increase the value of LinkedIn.
Social Networking consulting,
1. Increase your visibility. 6. Increase the relevancy of your job search.
coaching and training by an award-
winning blogger and experienced By adding connections, you increase the likelihood that people will see Use LinkedIn’s advanced search to find people with educational and work
online networker. your profile first when they’re searching for someone to hire or do busi- experience like yours to see where they work.
ness with. In addition to appearing at the top of search results.
Social Media marketing expert, 7. Make your interview go smoother.
Dana VanDen Heuvel, provides 2. Improve your connectability. You can use LinkedIn to find the people that you’re meeting.
social networking consulting to Most new users put only their current company in their profile. By doing
professionals corporations, non- 8. Gauge the health of a company.
so, they severely limit their ability to connect with people. You should Perform an advanced search for company name and uncheck the “Cur-
profits and educational institu-
tions. MarketingSavant will con-
fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, rent Companies Only” box. This will enable you to scrutinize the rate of
sult with you or your business on education, affiliations, and activities. You can also include a link to your turnover and whether key people are abandoning ship.
how it should blog, what to put on profile as part of an email signature.
your LinkedIn or Facebook profiles, 9. Gauge the health of an industry.
what other tools to use and how to 3. Improve your Google PageRank. If you’re thinking of investing or working in a sector, use LinkedIn to find
best join the conversation in social LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search people who worked for competitors—or even better, companies who
media. engines to index. Since LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high PageRank failed.
in Google, this is a good way to influence what people see when they
Contact us: search for you. To do this, create a public profile and select “Full View.” 10. Track startups.
www.marketingsavant.com Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public profile’s URL You can see people in your network who are initiating new startups by
888-989-7771 to be your actual name. doing an advanced search for a range of keywords such as “stealth” or
dana@marketingsavant.com “new startup.”
4. Enhance your search engine results.
Connect with us: 11. Ask for advice.
In addition to your name, you can also promote your blog or website to
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin. LinkedIn Answers , aims to enable this online. The product allows you to
com/in/danavandenheuvel search engines like Google and Yahoo! Your LinkedIn profile allows you
broadcast your business-related questions to both your network and the
to publicize websites. There are a few pre-selected categories like “My
Twitter: www.twitter.com/dana- greater LinkedIn network.
van Website,” “My Company,” etc.To make this work, be sure your public pro-
Blog: www.marketingsavant.com
file setting is set to “Full View.” 12. Integrate into a new job.
When people start a new job, ordinarily their roots aren’t that deep in the
Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/ 5. Perform blind, “reverse,” and company reference checks.
danavan new company. However, with Linkedin, new employees can study fellow
LinkedIn’s reference check tool to input a company name and the years employees’ profiles and therefore help them get to know more people
the person worked at the company to search for references. Your search faster in a new company.
Join our email newsletter:
www.marketingsavant.com/ will find the people who worked at the company during the same time
newsletter period. Since references provided by a candidate will generally be glow- 13. Scope out the competition, customers, partners, etc.
ing, this is a good way to get more balanced data. This seems like it’s a no-brainer, but you can use LinkedIn to scope out
the competition’s team as well as the team of customers and partners.
Facebook: Not just for college students
What exactly is Facebook? http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/14/facebook-surpasses-175-million-users-continuing-to-grow-by-600k-usersday/
Facebook is a free-access social networking website that is operated and privately

owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school,
and region to connect and interact with other people.
Is Facebook Relevant for Business?

Facebook recognizes that engaging with businesses and buying things are a part of ev-
eryday life. With that in mind, it has created a system where ads are more relevant and
actually enhance, instead of interrupt, the user experience. This is achieved, in part,
through a feature called the “News Feed,” which enables peer recommendations and
activity to be subtly branded and spread from one person to all of his or her friends, to
all of their friends, and so on.
Dozens of organizations have also tapped Facebook Fan Pages, Groups and social ads.
With Facebook’s array of options for businesses to connect with customers, it is quickly
Best Practices for Marketing in Facebook
moving from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’ element in your business outreach strat- Based on our experience and the experiences of organizations marketing in Facebook
egy. like Dell and conversations with small- and medium-size business owners, we’ve identified several
best practices for using Facebook, such as:
• Assign a specific person to create and manage your company’s Facebook Page. It’s important to post
How Big is Facebook? new information, photos and videos regularly to keep it fresh.
• Facebook has 175,000,000 active users as of 2/14/09 • Respond to messages and questions left on your Page’s discussion board and “Wall” within 24
hours.
• Facebook grows by well over 600,000 users per day
• Post all of your events, videos and relevant photos to Facebook. Consistent activity and active shar-
• If Facebook were a country, it would now be the 6th most populous in the world. ing are critical to Facebook success.
• Don’t fall victim to the mentality: “If I build it, they will come.” It’s important to develop a strategy
• 45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.
to attract fans, which may involve both paid and unpaid approaches.
• The fastest growing segment in the US: Women over 55, up 175.3% in the last 120 • Promote your Facebook Page outside of Facebook to attract more fans. This can be as simple as add-
days. ing a line to your current marketing or PR materials, such as “Find us on Facebook to learn more.” Be
sure to review Facebook’s guidelines for external promotion. Facebook also offers a “Share” button
• Facebook growing faster with women than men in almost every age group. that you can add to your Web site to make it easier for your content to be shared on Facebook.
• Don’t think of Facebook as a marketing channel to push company messages. Think of it as a com-
munity where you can participate and add genuine value.
Facebook: Not just for college students
24 Ways to Market You, Kavarna, the coffee house on Broadway, has built a substantial follow-
ing in Facebook and uses the platform to dialogue with fans and alert
888.989.7771 info@marketingsavant.com Your Company or Your regulars about new events and musical acts.
Cause in Facebook
local Facebook Example

MarketingSavant
Source:www.insidefacebook.com
Social Networking
Facebook offers many ways to get the word out and bring
Social Networking consulting,
coaching and training by an
the people in. Here’s how to get started.
award-winning blogger and expe-
I. Tools for Guerilla Marketers
rienced online networker.
1. Profile Page
Social Media marketing expert, 2. Groups
Dana VanDen Heuvel, provides 3. Pages
social networking consulting to 4. Events
professionals corporations, non-
5. Notes and Photos
profits and educational institu-
tions. MarketingSavant will con- 6. Messages
sult with you or your business on 7. Marketplace
how it should blog, what to put 8. Share / Posted Items
on your LinkedIn or Facebook pro- 9. Networks
files, what other tools to use and
10. Mini Feed and News Feed
how to best join the conversation
in social media.
II. Tools for Advertisers
Contact us: 11. Social Ads
www.marketingsavant.com 12. Integrated Opportunities
888-989-7771
13. Beacon The Top Five Things
14. Polls You Need to Do in Facebook
Connect with us: 15. Facebook Platform Ad Networks
1. Use a current profile picture: A clear, well-lit picture of you will
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin. 16. Facebook Platform Application Sponsorships help you to put your best foot forward.
com/in/danavandenheuvel 17. Sponsored Facebook Groups
Twitter: www.twitter.com/dana-
2. Invite Your Actual Friends (and Family): It's true the 'weak ties'
van
are often the most valuable. It pays to stay connected!
III. Tools for Application Developers
Blog: www.marketingsavant.com 3. Don't just add random friends: Trust me, it's not all about the
18. Profile Box friend count.
Friendfeed: http://friendfeed. 19. Mini Feed
com/danavan 4. Keep your status current: Use a service like ping.fm to update
20. News Feed
Twitter and LinkedIn while you're at it.
Join our email newsletter: 21. Invitations
22. Facebook Notifications 5. Make sure to use the privacy settings : Facebook allows you to
www.marketingsavant.com/
control who sees what. Put limitations on who is, and who is not,
newsletter 23. Email Notifications able to view different parts of your profile.
24. Application Directory
How blogs can help to build your business
What is a Blog?
A blog is simply a website. A blog can be private, as in most How big is blogging?
cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used The numbers vary but all agree that blogs
are here to stay:
internally to enhance the communication and culture in a
◆ Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
corporation or externally for marketing, branding or pub- ◆ Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million
lic relations purposes are called corporate blogs. ◆ 9 4.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of
Internet users)
◆ 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US
Rules of the Road for Blogging: Questions to Ask About Blogging: ◆ 77% of active Internet users read blogs
Blog Rule #1: Strategic blog management begins with setting 1) W
ho in our community do we most want to engage in reading
clear objectives. In other words, why does your organization want and commenting on a blog? Are they online?
to blog?
2) W
hat kind of community conversation do we most want to have
or is most needed in our community e.g., theme, tone, style? The making
Blog Rule #2: Business blogs are not necessary or appropriate for
every organization. Evaluate the benefits and assess the risks before 3) W
hat kind of information or ideas would our community most of a successful blog
leaping into the blogosphere. likely coalesce around and engage in thinking about and talking ◆ Authentic voice is essential
about online? ◆ Transparency
Blog Rule #3: Savvy business owners and executives must learn ◆ Write to inform, not to sell
4) W
hat are we already actively learning about that we could also
how to strategically and successfully manage the blogosphere to- ◆ Full Disclosure
blog about that would expand the possibilities for connections
day—or risk potentially unpleasant and expensive consequences ◆ Content is king
and wider learning?
tomorrow. ◆ Creative writing is key
5) W
ho else do we know is blogging on our topic that we could con- ◆ Frequent updates attract following
Blog Rule #4: It’s the casual, conversational, anything-goes nature nect with and crosspost ideas, insights and information? ◆ Content-appropriateness can become issue
of the blog that makes it both so appealing to blog writers and read- 6) W
ho has time and interest in taking the lead for our blog? E.g., ◆ Monitoring is important
ers—and so potentially dangerous to business. reading, writing, recruiting authors, coordinating, etc. ◆ Linked to strategic objectives or goals
Blog Rule #5: An organization without an external blog program 7) W

ho could I/we recruit to initially read and respond with feed-
may risk losing position, market share, reputation, and sales to back to our blog as we get started?
techsavvy competitors who have already recognized—and tapped 8) I n what ways can we rethink what we do everyday to make blog-
into—the power of the blogosphere.
How much time/money
ging a thread in what we do rather than a sticky note (add on)?
does this take?
Blog Rule #6: The blog is an electronic communications power- 9) W
hat is our intention and purpose in hosting a blog conversation
Most businesses can implement a blog for very
house that is likely to have greater impact on business communica- in our community?
little money; however, the best blogs that gen-
tions and corporate reputations than e-mail, instant messaging, and 10) G iven your responses and provided you are ready to get started erate leads and revenue are launched in con-
traditional marketing-oriented websites combined. -- what will you title your blog? junction with professional help and can cost a
few hundred to several thousand dollars.
How blogs can help to build your business
Promoting your blog
MarketingSavant: Blogging Services ◆ L ook at other industry blogs; see how they are engaging their read- What about negativity?
Blog consulting and coaching by an award- ers. See what response they are receiving. In blogging, you need to Take the Good with the Bad. It is
winning blogger
◆W
here possible, participate and become a welcome part of those likely that negative comments will be made about your
Award-winning blogger and internet market-
ing expert, Dana VanDen Heuvel, provides busi- conversations. company or its products at some point. This could occur
ness blog consulting to corporations, non-prof- on that company’s blog or on another. It is important to
its and education. MarketingSavant will consult ◆ C omments – Use other blogs to leave a footprint back to your own
with your business on how it should blog, what
address these dissenting opinions tactfully. Don’t sup-
blog. Quality on-topic and knowledgeable comments will engage
tools to use and how to best join what is com- press negative comments. Rather, use the blog to en-
monly known as “the blogosphere”. readers to enquire more on the writer.
gage detractors in conversation and determine if there
Blog consulting services include: ◆ If a post on another blog inspires you to a particularly long com- is an opportunity to improve your product.
 Blog setup, training and coaching to ensure ment, feel free to post a related piece on your own blog, citing the
that your blogging efforts are successful and
profitable.
blog that inspired your post. Customers will appreciate the openness and willingness
 Helping your company understand its target
◆ Build a “blogroll” linking to other bloggers in your industry to listen, especially those within the blogosphere.
audience and what information should and
should not be included on your company
blog. ◆ T rackbacks - Linking to other blogs gives you a trackback on many
 On-call to answer any of your blogging in their comments.
questions. What is RSS? How do I attract
the attention of A-list bloggers? How do I ◆ Blog directories – Use them, get your blog listed in the right places
control comment spam?
 Show you ways to increase readership, at- ◆ Use traditional printed media – letter heads, business cards, etc
tract the attention of journalists, improve Tools to Use
search engine traffic and get your message ◆ Import the RSS Feed into your social network profiles such as Face- Blogging Tools:
across to your audience.
book Linking and feeds from primary site
◆ www.wordpress.com
Contact us: ◆ www.sixapart.com
www.marketingsavant.com ◆ Using newsletters, promote engagement from newsletters
888-989-7771 ◆ www.blogger.com
dana@marketingsavant.com ◆ O ffer articles to other blogs, your articles would feature a link back
Connect with us:
to your own blog Blog Monitoring:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-
vandenheuvel ◆ Blog as yourself separately and link this to your work blog. Sign up for an RSS reader account at www.google.
Twitter: www.twitter.com/danavan com/reader
Blog: www.marketingsavant.com ◆ S end personal emails to any notable commenter to thank them and
Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/danavan ◆ Google Alerts: www.google.com/alerts
engage them further to bring them back.
◆ Twitter: www.summize.com
www.marketingsavant.com/newsletter ◆ Mention your blog in E-mail footers and signatures ◆ Technorati Blog Search: www.technorati.com
Search Engine Marketing

The Purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of designing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked highly Search Engine Dos
when a person uses a search engine to find related content. ◆ H ave quality text content (150 words a the bare
minimum, 250+ is better)
The handout will give you what you need to know about ◆ Have quality links to support placement
the fundamentals of SEO and provide tactics to improve you ◆ U se tools to identify best metatags for each
website’s ranking in the listings of natural (unpaid) search marketable page of the web site.
results returned by the many popular search engines. ◆ U nique Meta Title, Description and Keywords for
all marketable web site pages.
Source: Bruce Clay -www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm]
◆ H ave anchor text links that support your title
tags.
Google is at the center of the search universe ◆ H ave your programmer use H1, H2, H3 … tags
appropriately
Although many search engines are available, Google dominates the industry landscape with a ◆ H ave a Site Map or at least a link from each
63 percent share of all searches as of January 2009. Given the Google-centric nature of search page to every other page of the site
today, this handout focuses primarily on techniques for optimizing a website for Google.
Source: UWEBC Search Engine Don’ts

Monitoring Search Engine Marketing Success ◆ Frame a site
◆ Be part of a link farm
For most businesses, it’s as simple as “is our website making the phone ring?” However, there are a number of elements that you
◆ Don’t over “stuff” your keywords in your text
should track to ensure that your website and thus your search engine marketing strategy are effective. ◆ D on’t over populate your Metas (title, descrip-
◆ Page Views (by Hour, Day, Week, Month and Year) tion, keywords, etc.)
◆ Unique Visitors (by Hour, Day, Week, Month and Year) ◆ D on’t use hidden or slightly off color text to fool
the search engines.
◆ Traffic Origination How Much Time and Money ◆ D on’t search engine market more than 1 URL to
◆ Keywords Used by Search Engine
◆ Frequented Pages
Does This Take? your web site.
Search engine marketing, optimization and ad- ◆ D on’t provide more than 100 links on any one
◆ Visitor Information (Including Web Browser, page.
vertising can take a great deal of time and a fair
Operating System, Country and Language) ◆ D on’t create a web site that replaces text with
amount of money (campaigns start in the hun-
◆ Traffic by Time of Day dreds, search professionals can cost a few to several FLASH imagery.
◆ Navigation Paths thousand) and large organizations spend millions ◆ D on’t use a splash entry page – but if you
◆ Defined Events (Orders, Registrations, Password Changes, on the search engine marketing budgets. Neverthe- ABSOLUTELY MUST and can’t live without one,
Your Custom Event) less, search engine marketing delivers an accept- don’t create it without using additional text on
able rate of return in most companies. the splash page for the search engines to use to
index the page.
Search Engine Marketing
Best Practices for Search Engine Marketing The Beginner's Checklist for SEO
www.marketingsavant.com It all comes down to descriptions & keywords Adapted from www.seomoz.com
Descriptions (Maximum limit 255 characters) Research
MarketingSavant: SEO Services When you search for a website in a search engines, a list of web page titles will appear with Many people believe this is the most important step in the SEO process.
Internet marketing consulting and coaching No skipping!
by an award-winning blogger and experienced
descriptions following them. The description gives searchers an idea of what your page is
marketer about. Having keywords in your description is critical; some search engines will only use a • Write down your goal
site’s title and description in its ranking criteria. • Brainstorm - What words might people use to look for your company
Internet marketing veteran, Dana VanDen Heu- • Use Google Adwords and learn how to use the “keyword tool” to research
vel, provides internet marketing assistance to
corporations, non-profits and educational insti- Sites will be ranked higher if the keywords appear in the description. your chosen keywords
tutions. MarketingSavant will consult with your • Form a brief sentence using as many keywords as possible. For example: • Using what you learned, record what you believe to be the best keywords
business on how it should market itself on the
“Manufacturer of keyword, keyword, keyword…” • Analyze the current Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for your keywords
internet, what tools to use and how to make • Create a list of your competition
the most of the internet for your business. “Specializing in keyword, keyword, keyword…”
• Use Yahoo Site Explorer to find the sources of your competitor's links
Contact us: • DO NOT use your company name, phone number or founding date in the description.
www.marketingsavant.com • Avoid using slogans, catch phrases and persuasive adjectives. Onsite
888-989-7771 • Character counts include spaces & punctuation. Keep descriptions under 255 characters.
dana@marketingsavant.com • Sign up and verify with Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Live
• To keep track of character counts, type descriptions in Microsoft Word. (Go to to Tools > Search Webmaster Center
Connect with us: Word Count. “Characters (with spaces)” is the accurate count.) • Let Google Analytics run for two weeks before doing any SEO
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-
• Evaluate the visual design of your site
vandenheuvel Keywords (Maximum limit 30 keywords per page)
Twitter: www.twitter.com/danavan • Check compatibility between browsers
Blog: www.marketingsavant.com Keywords tell search engines about the content of your page. Search engines will look at • Optimize all of the SEO related tags - Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/danavan the keywords listed in your Meta Tags and compare them to the text found on the page. - Keyword in title tag (unique for each page, include keywords), keyword
If a keyword is not found in the text of your page, it is unlikely you will be found for that in text, optimize URL architecture, include keywords in alt tags and in file-
www.marketingsavant.com/newsletter keyword. While most major search engines no longer use keywords in their ranking criteria, names for images, Decide if you need a meta description
they are still used by us to place your website in appropriate categories within directories. • Add company address and phone number
• Look at the text on your web pages. Good keywords appear in the text of a site. Start with
Offsite
Free Search Engine Marketing Tools the words your site contains when you develop your keyword list.
• Keywords can be “key phrases” as well. If using a phrase as a keyword (like “internet • Add your business and website to the major search engine's local listings:
http://www.marketleap.com -Yahoo Local, Google Local, Live Local, CitySearch, Yelp
marketing”), 3 or less words per phrase is preferred.
http://toolbar.google.com • Add your website to industry specific directories
• DO NOT repeat a word more than 8 times! For example, a company that sells 20 types
http://tools.seobook.com/ • Try to get the links your competition already has gotten
of “oils” can list the keywords as “oils, motor, lubricating, marine...” A search engine can • Get more links - A good place to start is to use the Juicy Link Finder. You
http://www.webconfs.com/ then combine the words “marine” and “oils” to make the phrase “marine oils.” should also consider your local chamber of commerce, local networking
http://www.google.com/webmasters/ • Do not include competitor’s names and products in your list. General terms are acceptable groups, and local complimentary businesses.
(soda), but avoid registered product names (Pepsi) unless your company is authorized to • Decide if utilizing social media sites is advantageous
http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.
htm use such terms. Proper names may be included, though capitalization is not necessary. • Create and submit sitemaps.
• List the keywords in order of importance. Many search engines only read through a • Optimize your site from Google's side - Use Google’s Webmaster Tools.
http://www.selfseo.com/
limited number of words on your pages.
https://adwords.google.com/select/ • Search engines do treat singular and plural forms of a word as separate instances. You Track and Improve
KeywordToolExternal may list both forms, but remember to not repeat a word more than 8 times! • Track progress
http://www.google.com/analytics • You may list commonly misspelled product or company names in your keywords list. For • Create and maintain a spreadsheet of your rankings
• Continue to make changes, build links, and record your results
http://www.the-escape.co.uk/tools/ example, “Klein” can be misspelled as “Klien” or “Kline.”
Digital Marketing 101

What do we mean by Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing goes beyond the Internet. Digital Marketing is the practice of promoting products and services using digital distribution channels to reach consumers in a
timely, relevant, personal and cost-effective manner.
Whilst digital marketing does include many of the techniques and practices contained within the category of Internet Marketing, it extends beyond this by including other
channels with which to reach people that do not require the use of The Internet. The field of digital marketing includes a whole host of elements such as mobile phones, sms/
mms, display / banner ads and digital outdoor advertising.
The digital marketing universe is made up of dozens of possible marketing tools.

Digital marketing 101
Why Companies Like Yours Use Digital & Internet Marketing
888.989.7771 info@marketingsavant.com For most organizations, a variety of factors make digital a different sort of media challenge for brands:
MarketingSavant
Digital Marketing 1) Media fragmentation has splintered audiences and dramati- 6) “User generated content” and “citizen journalism” have driven
cally increased the complexity of effectively reaching most audi- a massive shift in how we receive information about products
Social media consulting and coaching by
an award-winning blogger. ences. and services, and what sorts of info we trust.
Award-winning blogger and internet
marketing expert, Dana VanDen Heuvel, 2) The two-way nature of IP-based media (Internet, Mobile, etc.) 7) Increasingly, people prefer grass roots sources of information
provides social media education and con-
sulting to corporations, non-profits and
necessitate that brands stop think as broadcasters and adopt a and recommendations to the so-called professional sources of
educational institutions. more collaborative and consultative approach to brand develop- mainstream media outlets.
Our training and content consulting servic- ment.
es are the product of more than five years 8) From a practical standpoint, many brands are seeing dimin-
years of intensive study, training, writing
and practice in the area of social and new
3) Practically everyone is using digital media. 194 million US ishing effectiveness from traditional “analog” media.
media. MarketingSavant can save you consumers are using the
months of learning and prepare you to
Internet. Most of these
consumers are spending Stage Example Questions
enter the global online conversation with
a strategy, and voice that stands out from
your competitors.
Our training and custom consulting servic-
large amounts of their ◆ What is the digital usage profile of our customers?
es address these key business priorities: time with digital media. ◆ What is the most productive digital segmentation approach?
1. Understanding social media’s growing
◆ What is the state of the discussion about the brand in digital media?
importance in the changing media land- 4) Digital media are play- Key Learnings ◆ What are the digital marketing goals of key stakeholders in the organization?
scape;
2. Tools and tactics for tracking online con-
ing an increasingly large ◆ How effective are current digital marketing efforts, if any?
versations; role in all purchase deci- ◆ In what sort of digital activities are key competitors engaged?
3. Turning online feedback into actionable ◆ What are category digital "best practices"
information; sions.
4. Overcoming internal obstacles to social ◆ What overall brand objectives is it reasonable to expect digital to impact?
media initiatives; 5) Certain target audiences Objectives
5. Selecting tools and metrics to match
◆ What will be the priority brand business objectives for digital marketing in the next year?
business objectives; and are becoming increasingly ◆ What digital tools and approaches align with the agreed to objectives?
6. Building and sustaining effective online
communities.
difficult to reach WITHOUT Strategies ◆ Are there strategies that can address more than one objective?
Services begin with the strategic education
digital. For example, Men ◆ Taken as a whole, do the draft strategies address ALL of the objectives outlined in the process?
phase and proceed through strategy and 18-24 now spend so much ◆ Taking into consideration the strategies outlined in the previous stage, what are the reasonable
implementation.
time gaming, online, and tactics that can help deliver against those strategies?
Contact us:
with their mobile phones ◆ What planning costs can we assume with each tactic?
888-989-7771 that it is increasingly dif- ◆ What is the expected result of the tactic in measurable, accountable terms?
Tactics
ficult to effectively deliver ◆ What is the level of certainty that a particular tactic will work?
◆ What is the Return/Cost ration of each tactic, taking into account its likelihood of success?
Join our email newsletter: against this target without
www.marketingsavant.com/ ◆ B ased upon this analysis, what are the recommended tactics, results and contingencies that
newsletter digital vehicles. make sense for this planning cycle?

American Marketing Association Social Media Toolkit

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Social Media Toolkit

Social Media: Get Started Here

2 Social Media Deep Dive: Tools, Tactics and Ideas

3 Policy + Hiring: The Social Enterprise at Work

4 Social Media Strategy Guide

dana@marketingsavant.com | twitter.com/danavan | www.marketingsavant.com

Dana VanDen Heuvel is a widely recognized expert on Thought Leadership

Dana has been a featured speaker at dozens of American Marketing Associa-

toby@bloombergmarketing.com | twitter.com/tobydiva | divamarketingblog.com

Toby Bloomberg is passionate about working with people (not companies) to

Social Media Toolkit

Social Media: Get Started Here

Social Media Deep Dive: Tools, Tactics and Ideas

Policy + Hiring: The Social Enterprise at Work

Social Media Strategy Guide

Use this “Internet Use Stages” diagram to profile your customers and community members.

When was the last time you talked, listened, laughed

Age of Conversation Book 2

Diva Marketing www.divamarketingblog.com @tobydiva http://twitter.com/tobydiva

Age of Conversation Book 2

Diva Marketing www.divamarketingblog.com @tobydiva http://twitter.com/tobydiva

By Toby Bloomberg Marketing, Diva Marketing

CCustomers from India, Canada, New Zealand

Attempting to service and engage customers, some organizations turned to non

Misunderstanding and brand devaluation were frequently outcomes of non

When we get to know people more than product information is usually

Through social media marketing initiatives: blogs, podcasts, vlogs, mash-up

Social Media Toolkit

Social Media: Get Started Here

Social Media Deep Dive: Tools, Tactics

Policy + Hiring: The Social Enterprise at Work

Social Media Strategy Guide

Two Sides of Consumer-Generated Media:

p PERFORM: The Marketing 2.0 Authority

by Toby Bloomberg, Bloomberg Marketing/Diva Marketing

p PERFORM: The Marketing 2.0 Authority

tools and trends in marketing technology

Marketing used to be simpler. Fewer technologies, fewer channels, less di-

To say that much has changed in 18 months is a bit of an understatement.

The effectiveness of the tools that

overlap there!) but grabs a paltry 3% of the average marketing budget .

10 Questions Marketers Want Answered About Digital & Social Media

1. “State of the Twittersphere,” HubSpot. Q4 2008. http://cdnqa.hubteam.com/State_of_the_Twittersphere_by_HubSpot_Q4-2008.pdf

Tools and Trends in Marketing Technology

Appendix I: Marketing Technology Resources .....58

What Is Social Media?

Social networking, on the other hand is nothing new. Hu-

What Is Buzz Monitoring?

Tools and Trends in Marketing Technology

to learn at a grassroots level what people really think about your

Buzz monitoring can be accomplished by paying for the service

It All Starts With Social Media Monitoring

Tools and Trends in Marketing Technology

Best Practices for Monitoring the Conversation

1. Conversation discovery – Use brand monitor-

What’s Next for Social Media

Tools and Trends in Marketing Technology

and analysis can benefit a greater than expected number of corpo-

What to Monitor Buzz Monitoring Tools

Tools and Trends in Marketing Technology

2009, 735,000 unique visitors accessed Twitter through their mobile

Another microblog innovator is Buzzable, which attempts to cre-

What Marketers are Doing With It

Case in point: Zappos.com

p PERFORM: The Marketing 2.0 Authority

p PERFORM: The Marketing 2.0 Authority

1. Conversation discovery – Use brand monitor-

• G o into your blog writing with the intent of writing to

•P romote events. Post your marketing events, training pro-

•m yspace.com is continuing as social networking market