But, I digress. My tangent is distracting us all for the point of today’s rant.

Pointless, cheezy, salesy, uninvited emails via facebook.

I recently received this from someone in one of my groups:

When Britains Got Talent start Susan Boyle took the stage in front of the three judges, it was all the audience could do to stop themselves from laughing. In front of them stood a 47 year old woman with an unpolished appearance who was certain to humiliate herself in front of millions. Then she did something extraordinary. She sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from the West End musical Les Misérables so beautifully that she received a standing ovation and is the talk of the UK. Her audition which has since been put on Youtube has received tens of millions of views.

So what business lessons can Susan teach us?

1) Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Susan was written off before she’d sung a note. But not everything is always as it seems, sometimes it’s worth giving people and services a chance before writing them off. They may just surprise you.

2) A book is always judged by its cover.

The audience’s reaction to Susan was hardly surprising. Were we all being cynical? Well yes, but that’s human nature. Even though your product or service may be outstanding, people tend to make quick judgements. Is your website, packaging or marketing conveying the right message?

3) Be extraordinary

Susan isn’t a huge hit because she sang the best version of” I Dreamed A Dream”, there are better versions around if you care to look. She’s a huge hit because people were not expecting her to be so good. The fact that she exceeded everybody’s expectations made her performance extraordinary and something that people want to talk about. Is your company creating things worth talking about?

Finally a big congratulations to Susan who will continue to chase her dream. Something we should all be doing.

DO YOU SEE HOW LONG THIS IS?

And it’s not even from a friend. I don’t know who any of these people are. This some yodle esposing yodle-um for (who’s exactly?) benefit. I don’t get it.

1. FACEBOOK IS NOT A BLOG

your blog is a blog. posting a link to your blog is cool. I can read it if I want. It doesn’t clutter up my facebook page. that’s cool.

2. FACEBOOK IS FOR FRIENDS

I have friends that ask me questions about my business on facebook. I answer them.  That’s it. if it’s more than one paragraph I call them or email them offline. Every business owner I know and respect handles this the same way, so you might want to also.

3. FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS SEND SPAM

And you shouldn’t either.

R

1. Look for your contemporaries

I get asked nearly every day “why would I want to use twitter?” which is kind of silly, because no one person can tell someone they’ve just met what social media tool will appropriately connect them to their consumer. I don’t know you – I don’t know what you sell and I don’t know how you sell it. I don’t know the things that will kill you online: like being lazy, or having terrible customer service (when your csr hangs up on them you can bet they’ll twitter you about it), or having a terrible product. These are all things my clients and I talk about, and find the best course of action. Of course you probably want to see what your competition, kindred companies, and clients are doing – so a tool like Tracking Twitter makes that very doable. I am sure I’ll be using it to watch brands grow in their strategy, and see what their results are once these profiles have been active long enough to gain measureable results.

2. Learn what works

@Jetblue (the twitter handle for Jet Blue Airlines) just rocks. The airline presence is fantastic and in addition to giving you a headsup on specials, they give you great travel tips that will make your trip easier (security tips) and less boring (answers to questions about what movies are playing). If you do any kind of travel service then you should learn from them. Really.

3. Get comfortable with your persona

The 2nd most common question I get about using twitter (and any social media really) is “what should i say?” my answer is typically “what should you say?”. It comes back to the who are you/what do you do conversation I mentioned earlier. For tech companies and b2b firms there is often a tendency to be authoritative, to provide information (which typically means to be as boring as you can possibly imagine). Burger King has an icon – the king – and that’s who is doing their twitter-ness (check out @burgerking). He’s hilarious, and totally in sync with their current branding. On the tech side check out @delloutlet and any of the other dell twitter-feeds – it’s estimated that dell’s done over 1 million in business via their twitter handles in 2008… take that those of you who tell me twitter is a total waste of time!

The biggest and most important thing I can tell you is to think – think about what your goal is on social media, what you want to accomplish, and who should be working toward this goal – then you will have the direction to make “what should i say” a simple question with an easy answer. ’cause that’s what it should be.

@rebekah_king

It doesn’t matter what it is; a newsletter, postcard, fun picture or a sample of your work, sending anything out to your address book on a semi-regular basis is good for business. Let’s be clear: I am NOT advocating sending out a digest of boring crap that you think is important. I am NOT cheering for the rights of the cheezy sales guy sending me a 3-page long “regular priced 199 but for you it’s 99 (if you order in the next 10 minutes)”. I am ABSOLUTELY NOT endorsing the emailing of a daily quote that will be the first thing I curse at every morning….

What I am always encouraging of is the sharing of your brand and your personality in a way that betters the lives of those around you. If you are a online video company send me one of your coolest videos (if you have cool videos… if you don’t then just make one that’s funny) every month. If you’re a celeb photographer send me something no one else has seen yet. Are you getting the drift yet?

The trick to a great newsletter/eblast/marketing thing is

1. Be consistent with your personality.

If you are funny then your email should be funny. If you are overly stuffy then your email should be funny. If you are boring your email should be funny. If you are nerdy (like me) then it wouldn’t hurt to share something that will make everyone else feel a little more smart than they did before (I share my tech love of the month). Just don’t over-educate people – keep this short and entertaining!

2. Give the audience something that matters to them.

I know you want to sell your widget. Or talk about how cool you are. Restrain yourself. Think for a minute about who your ideal client is – a CFO? CEO? Small Biz Owner? IT guy? What really matters EVERY DAY for this ideal client of yours and what could you give them that would help this? Is it a coupon to the mac store, or the inside scoop on a new product (that has nothing to do with your products, but is consistent with your brand as “smart techie person”). Maybe your contacts would like to know about an upcoming charity event, or a community day at the park. Giving value doesn’t necessarily mean giving a discount on your product – but giving value always means make your readers day better than it was before your email.

3. NOT trying to “trick” anyone into something

If you are giving a coupon away, just give it away – don’t make people fill out a survey or give you their email addy – you already had it to send them the email with this amazing coupon!!!!! I know some sales coaches that tell you a 3 sentence “sales tip” at the top of their newsletter, and then go into 3 pages about how super-fantastic-incredible their coaching services are. I even know a girl that sends out “quotes of the day”… every single day… and I love her sweet heart, but it’s an automatic service that she doesn’t send every day – she pushes a button once and then forgets about it… while I get ANOTHER email in my inbox that I don’t HAVE TO read… it’s rather tragic.

So if you can take these 3 tips to heart I think you’ll shortly be a part of this wonderful newsletter family I find myself in – welcome to a world where people are happy to hear from you and ask to be on your mailing list.

R

*Author’s Note*

Please don’t think I hate email. I love love LOVE email. I just greatly dislike junk email. I also really really REALLY like saying hi and keeping in touch with colleagues. I just greatly dislike junk email. Notice a pattern?

It’s worth noting also that eMarketer found a correlation with shorter email subject lines and an increase in the read rate – take away from this that your subject line can be more important than the content. What good is fantastic content if your audience never reads it because the subject line is so NOT interesting?

Cheers,

Rebekah

Walking the Show Floor

In addition to checking out the competition, walking the floor is a great practice for a multitude of reasons. Booth Setup. No matter how many years or how much money you spent in developing the perfect booth,  times change. Cruising the aisles is a great way to stay current. What booths are the busiest? How does the layout encourage people to hang out in the booth? What colors and styles are showing up more and more? Many people forget to also look for what doesn’t work. It never hurts to keep an eye out for the items in a booth setup (or in the way the staffers are interacting with patrons) looking for where people get bored and walk away. You don’t do that, ok? Learning from others both positively & negatively is the way to go.

Meet your Neighbors. You never know what new product/brand will be the next overnight success, just because you do or don’t like it, doesn’t mean the whole world agrees with you. Meeting your neighbors (aka networking) can give you buddies for future shows, tips on new shows to attend, and even connections for growing your business. The newer your product or service is, the more proactive you should be in getting around and meeting the neighbors.

Before The Show

Many people totally miss the boat on this one. The organizers of your show have a myriad of resources you can take advantage of. I’ve never attended (or even heard of) a show that didn’t do press release distribution to the press pre-event. Many shows even have online tools that allow you to go through and search attendees and exhibitors to setup meetings and events. I’m a big fan of downloading the Exhibitor list in advance and highlight the ones I want to visit at the show (colleagues call it the disneyland map – my show floor map with booths I want to visit highlighted). More often shows are even putting together cocktail parties or other networking events, these can be fantastic opportunities to meet attendees, exhibitors, and members of the press – without the ’sales’ setting of the show floor. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO please for the love of all business hopes everywhere, PUT YOUR PRESS KIT IN THE PRESS ROOM. Some shows these days are going digital – so you don’t even have to print this stuff out. Should a press person happen to stop at your booth – GIVE THEM SAMPLES – treat them like the avenues to advantage that they are. I’ve seen soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many exhibitors completely blow it here. If keeping your samples at your booth just in case someone wants to place an order is more important to you than 20,000 people reading about your product – your business is in MUCH MORE trouble than a couple of orders can cure.

Post Event

Call the people you said you were going to call. Send thank you notes to the folks that let you borrow their ladder during setup, or shared their power hookup with you. Email the visitors you collected cards for. Send a note to your connection at the show. Debrief your show team about how the event went and what you want to do about it next year – write it down, put it on the calendar, and get it done…. before you get back to the office if possible. You spent all this time and money getting ready for the show, you ought to be just as diligent when wrapping it up.

Hopefully some of these tips make it through to the folks I see at every show complaining about how slow it is (while one row over is hopping – because their staff isn’t so busy complaining they can’t pay attention to the visitors), and some of the folks I see that are almost-famous can get that edge they were looking for. Trade Shows are a valuable part of the marketing plan for 95% of the business world, it just takes the right show with the right setup for all the elements of success to fall into place.

Cheers,

Rebekah King

You can also follow them on Twitter (465 friends at time of writing this blog) and become a fan of their new I Wear Read 4U campaign on facebook… Let’s see how it does over the next few months.

More than six out of 10 US high school and college students surveyed “never” or “hardly ever” read marketing e-mails, according to an October 2008 survey by eROI. The majority of respondents said companies were not effectively speaking to them personally through e-mail.

And look at this little graph – text messaging is often the preferred communication method!

I’ve done quite a bit of marketing to High School & College students for my clients via Facebook and MySpace and have fantastic successes by keeping our messaging in the tone and manner that the students use. We don’t say “Would you like to join our fan page” we say “Hey there, we’ve just setup the fan page so we can do giveaways and stuff, here’s the link if you’re interested”. Fortunately for us, MySpace & Facebook both have SMS alerts for users, so part of our great response is undoubtedly do to our recipients being able to reply via their mobile phones.

But are you ready to embark on the world of SMS messaging? For some it’s a hard question to answer. First timers rarely have a database of cellphone numbers in their back pocket, so list purchasing is often your first recourse – and that can get expensive. What would you do with it anyway?

One bar we know of sends a SMS message (aka Text) to their subscribers with the daily special, and that could be broadened to a message containing what teams are playing on their tv’s that night, or what band is playing on that night. Ever noticed a commercial on the TV saying “just text PIZZA to 23434″? That’s how American Idol handles much of their voting process.

As with any marketing tool there’s a myriad of ways to employ both SMS and Email Messaging, what you must always ask yourself is “What does my audience want to hear?” and “What will inspire my audience to take action?”. A message saying Our new Phone system is the best solution for VOIP is much less likely to do you any good compared to Win a free sfsd phone, the same one that saved XYZ company $300 last month, just text MINE to 23453″. When you can get out of your head (stop thinking about what do I want to say), and you get into the mindset of what your audience wants to hear – the results come immediately after.

Ted McConnell, manager of interactive marketing and innovation at P.& G., said, “I really don’t want to buy any more banner ads in Facebook.” His remarks were offered as his personal reflections, not the official position of his employer, and were available on the Web in a podcast of the talk

I read about half of this article before I went on a mission: searching to see if I’ve somehow missed a trend shift (rip van winkle style sleeping for a 100 years?) and facebook became a dead medium. Thankfully after scanning through over 2000 articles on my google reader archives I find no such horrid news… So I return to my original thought – it’s P&G’s marketing approach that is ineffective, not Facebook itself.

Let me just tell you I am biased – I run a business based on consulting marketing firms on how to integrate social media platforms like Facebook into their traditional marketing programs. I do this not because I’m some social media devotee, I do it because I’m 1/2 creative and 1/2 geek – firmly believing technology should be used to make life EASIER, not as the life-sucking fad-track that it is when you don’t use the tool well. It’s simple – hand my grandmother the quilter a hammer and she’s not going to get much done – hand her a needle and thread and you’ll have a new blanket in short order. (I know – I’ve seen her produce 3 of them in the last 3 months)

So back to the point – P&G clearly hasn’t harnessed the power of the social media network.

Brand pages won’t make anyone uncomfortable about privacy issues. But one has to have a compelling reason to seek out these pages. The P.& G. spokeswoman pointed me to its “2X Ultra Tide” page. Here one finds an 11-month-old campaign, “American’s Favorite Stains,” where members can post their “favorite places to enjoy stain-making moments!” When I checked last week, it displayed a grand total of just 18 submissions, including two from P.& G., two from someone at The Onion and one-word posts like “Tidealicious!”

Stagnant pages don’t produce results

Back in April of 2008 Facebook released the Facebook Pages Insider’s Guide, outlining the key strategies of successful marketing on the site. The top 3 strategies were:

1) Regularly adding engaging and useful content
2) Letting fans participate in the conversation
3) Expanding their distribution with Facebook Ads

Now the NYT article author says the P&G’s Tide campaign content had not been updated in 11 months.. but if you look at the page it’s been only 6 months. Either way, does that sound like “Regularly adding engaging and useful content” to you?

P&G aren’t the only offenders here, just scroll through some of your favorite brand facebook pages and I’m sure you will find more and more examplse – if they’re even online yet. Using Social Media as an effective marketing tool requires a change in way we evaluate a campaign. Unlike a television or direct mail campaign, these “identities” on facebook stick around… forever. This is both a negative and a positive – on the positive side you have sticking power.. but on the negative side you have sticking power even if the campaign isn’t effective.

So what if you created a page for your brand and created your very own brand “identity” online? Not just a TIDE page, but the Tide page that’s run by Susan – the Tide Mom – who goes through everything the average tide mom goes through – shares her tips tricks and “war stories”, uploads videos of related topics, takes pictures of kids messy-ness (maybe creates a submit the nasties stain photo contest?)… Wouldn’t that sort of identity be one that mom’s would connect to, be engaged with, and then participate in?? Better yet, you could create individual identities for your unique buyer profiles

In his remarks to the club, Mr. McConnell said, “All brands want consumers to be their ‘friends.’ Oh, boy, do they!” But speaking for himself, he said he had reservations about the very premise. “I don’t want to be best friends with a brand,” he said. “It’s just stuff.”

So stop making it just about the stuff… make it about the people and you’ll see results. After all, Social Media is all about being SOCIAL – and that requires human participation and interaction. It’s not merely a formula, it’s a community.

I know many business that are struggling right now. I know many industries that are challenged by this economy, by the market, by the time of year. Yet I also know some businesses that are thriving, even in more “impacted” industries.

What’s the secret? The heading on this article may have given it away, but yes – visibility is key. But what’s that mean? What’s visibility anyway?

Visibility is being seen some people think this is being seen anywhere, but for the folks that don’t have 10 million to spend on a dozen billboards, visibility should be focused on the groups and environments in which your clients and prospects thrive.

Being visible is as easy as showing up to the networking events in your area, it’s as easy as asking your best clients what associations they participate in, and then asking them if you can come along. Visibility is a complete LinkedIN profile, or a website with your correct contact information on it.

Sometimes people give me a hard time when I talk about visibility. They say things like “I don’t have the time for a boring association meeting” or “I don’t have the money for a $45 lunch” … but if your clients have enough money to hire you, don’t you think they might have enough for a $45 lunch?

This is why my #1 recommendation your business new year’s resolution is to SHOW UP at least once a week in 2009. Check your local chamber, go to meetingsandmixers.com visit rbn or bni chapters… just GET OUT THERE!

I’m standing before project management consultants, sales compensation consultants, HR practice consultants… and not the new guys that became consultants 10 minutes after they received the pink slip from xxyczz company – these guys (and gals) have been consultants for 20, 30 even 40 years. How do you relate their world to the world of Myspace and vlogging and twitter?

By getting back to the basics – the rules may have changed, but the game remains the same. We still ask the standard who, what, when, where, how questions of ourselves and our clients. Consistency and repetition are still the cornerstones of any good marketing program. Google analytics has taken the place of our excel spreadsheet, and url’s and backlinks have become our affiliate programs. The questions of branding still drive our planning and strategy. Without knowing clearly who you are, who you want to reach (specifically) and where you can find said audience, it makes no difference whether you’re working online or offline. Without focus, none of these strategies hold water.