Guest post by Sol Baker

In this article you’ll learn how to…
Study the birth of trends and early adopters
Crowdsource pertinent data
Create cultural events while marketing

These days marketing is simultaneously easier and harder. It’s easier in the sense that there are a wide variety of new online tools that can equip the wayward marketer with an arsenal of powerfully efficient information gathering techniques. It’s harder in the sense that people are aware of the presence of marketing and are somewhat jaded by it. This makes marketing campaigns less effective and puts added pressures on marketing teams to come up with innovative, cutting edge strategies. But regardless of what product or service you are promoting, be it custom pens or carpet cleaning, there are ways you can market and, more importantly, gather information crucial to marketing, without being seen as infringing on peoples’ privacy. Here are three methods for doing so:

Hunting For Cool

‘Cool hunting’ isn’t new or revolutionary at this point. Youth marketing firms have been embedding researchers into niche communities for years, gleaning trends and data and using this information to create customized marketing campaigns for their clients. With the widespread growth of the Internet, ‘cool hunting’ can now be accelerated in a way that previous generations of marketers would have salivated over. Using social media, message boards, and place-based messaging out in the field, trends can be caught as they’re born and the early adopters of these trends can be more quickly profiled and monitored.

Cool hunting, of course, traditionally takes place out on the streets, where marketers can enmesh themselves into vibrant sub-cultures. Usually this is not done to push a product, but rather to absorb information about a niche group that would normally be difficult to acquire. Street marketing now has the added benefit of a different kind of social network, seen in location-based sites like Foursquare. The newer augmented reality apps on many smartphones also allow for marketers to view a tremendous amount of information without ever having to speak to anyone. The new age of cool hunting has just begun.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is also a powerful technique that has accelerated due to the growth of the Internet as a popular medium. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and countless others can be used to gauge how people view a particular product or service. This information can then be shaped by marketing teams in order to craft advertisements and viral campaigns that either addresses the public’s reaction or tries to steer it in a different direction.

Crowdsourcing has grown out of the sheer popularity of the Internet as a place where people fervently share their opinions. From comment threads underneath YouTube videos to blogs to Twitter lists and Quora Q&A’s, point of views are not hard to come by online.

But how does a marketer make sense of all those different opinions?

Short of an expensive data mining operation, all this information may not add up to a singular picture of consumer attitudes. The responsibility of the marketer is look for specific messages and points of entry. There are going to be positives and negatives on most any subject. Nary a business, company name, product or service out there has a completely perfect reputation. Negative opinions must be considered just as much as the positive, if not more. Negative opinions can become the backbone of a future marketing campaign that can distill its impact. But you’ve got to know what those opinions are first.

Creating cultural events

One of the best ways to market your business is to sponsor fun, exciting events for people to attend. Concerts, conventions, parties are good examples. Not only will these events create environments in which you can observe peoples’ likes and dislikes, they will allow you to brand your company in a certain way, creating a trigger of positive imagery that people associate with you.

A great example of this is multimedia parties that partner several companies for the purpose of creating viral word of mouth. For example, a car company may want to market a certain model to a younger demographic. What better way to do this than to showcase the car at a party where this demographic would be enjoying itself. The marketing company behind this may be able to accomplish to things with such an event: one) they will be able to essentially create their own laboratory for studying the fashion, product and behavior trends of this demographic, and two) they will be creating a new branded identity for the car–a fun-friendly, exciting new image that could gain momentum through word of mouth advertising.

Marketing has, in many ways, become more tricky, even though many would agree that there are more powerful tools for effectively waging successful campaigns. The advent of online technology in marketing has made it more effective and more complex. Using crowdsourcing, cool hunting, and events that promote cultural immersion and positive branding are ways to market without being seen as ‘marketing’.

About the author

Sol Baker is a marketing analyst and freelance writer who has worked as a consultant for multiple Fortune 500 companies.

Guest post by Dave Mathews

Since startups and small businesses have limited financial budget, their reliance on a well thought-out marketing plan is a rarity. But the point that a marketing plan makes or breaks a business cannot be emphasized enough.

It has been reported by Forrester Research in their research that from all over the world, more than $200 billion were spent online in 2011 by the Americans alone, with an estimation of the total jacking up to $327 billion in 2016. This proves Bill Gates statement that, “the Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”

It is a reported practice by some of the companies that they stress on sales before actually coming up with, or implementing, a marketing plan. This usually turns disadvantageous because, understandably, a potential client will be hesitant to buy a product/service he is not familiar with.

But this can be avoided by taking advantage of mediums that allow for a business to create its online presence. A startup can spread its word to a targeted audience by using social media, and resultantly creating a reliable and strong clientage and customer relationship. This article aims to get you acquainted with ways you can market your startup online.

The first step to creating a successful marketing strategy is to have a logo that gives your startup or small business a distinctively idiosyncratic edge.  A logo of your business is like a receptionist. It is be the first thing about your business that potential customers see, and as they say, first impression is the last impression. So put up your best face!

Social media is being increasingly used by businesses because of the advantages it carries and adopting   a few smart social media marketing strategies will have your business on its way to success.

LinkedIn has consistently proved itself as a network of professionals that helps in gaining business leads for your startup and expanding your professional circle. Read more.

Twitter has proved itself as a force to reckon with as far as allowing businesses to market themselves is concerned. (Learn how)

PInterest is, albeit new, but has seen success in the statistical count of people joining it. It allows businesses to share pictures of their products and services. (Learn how)

Create a blog to share useful content related to your business with the readers. This helps in diverting traffic on your website, besides acting as a marketing tool for your startup. Here’s how you can set up a blog on WordPress, but make sure it is then listed in web directories like the one of Google (learn how) because millions of people search blogs through them.

Initiate a video blog because it is reported by comScore that users watch approximately 186 videos a month, testifying for their success in reaching millions of viewers across the globe. Amongst the mediums used for video blogging, Youtube has seen tremendous success and playbacks reaching as much as 700 billion in 2011.

Co-market your business with other businesses that share their products/services with you. This is a great way for startups to save money that would otherwise be spent on implementing solo marketing plans.

Build credibility by joining Step by Step and writing on topics that relate to your target market.  Whether it is a retail outlet in London or a business providing services in Montreal, the titles can be endless to get your name in the list of experts.

A marketing plan should have all the ingredients to morph your business from a startup into a success story, and applying all of these techniques for online marketing is sure to give your business the push it needs towards the road of triumph.

About the author

This post is contributed by Dave Mathews, looking after PR activities of Stepbystep.com. Public Relations and Social Media Marketing are Dave’s areas of expertise.

As web marketers enter into the new year, it’s important we take time to consider what’s right around the corner. Whether you’re a part-time blogger or a salaried employee of an internet marketing agency, so long as your income is connected to technology you’re always going to need to be staying one step ahead. 2012 is set to become a memorable year for online marketers and entrepreneurs, so don’t allow yourself to get behind on the next big things in web marketing. In summary, expect the following to unfold sometime later this year:

Personal App Revolution

First came Siri available on the iPhone. Soon, everyone with a smartphone will have a personal assistant app. These services will partially render traditional SEO obsolete – and at the very least force a rewriting of the rules regarding the value of page rankings.

News Will Get the Clicks

With the advent of voice activated searches underway, pay-per-click is slowly going to subside into oblivion. The dwindling sources of PPC revenue will come almost entirely from news seekers and others attempting to retrieve recent information immediately, making constant updating a top priority.

Infographics Will Spread the Word

Infographics are a relatively new Internet-based media phenomenon in which highly detailed information is delivered by-way of an equally detailed graphic. They’re perfect for being linked to, sent via mobile text, and ultimately for online entities to market themselves.

QR Couponing

Now that the majority of mobile users in the U.S. use smartphones, which include barcode scanners, expect QR codes to finally take off as a legitimate form of online advertising. QR couponing will particularly become effective, further breaking down the wall that separates online advertising from its real world products and sales.

Flash Abandonment

In late 2011, Adobe announced they were halting development of their mobile version of Flash. Expect more and more online entities to depart from the platform altogether. This is for the simple fact that Flash is unsuitable for smartphones and even more unsuitable for tablets.

Before you sit down and start planning your 2012 online marketing strategy, it’s critical that you do your best to see what’s around the corner first. It’ll save you time spent playing catch up, as well as provide you with “first wave” time that others in your field won’t have the luxury of possessing. Be one of the first to act on the upcoming internet marketing trends of this year and expect to be rewarded because of it.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

Guest post by Mihaela Lica Butler

In developing your communications methods and network, there’s no doubt you’ve been faced with the dilemma, “To what extent do we try and automate the process?” As technology progresses, the fine line between human mechanics and digital automation sometimes becomes blurred. And then a great chasm between them presents itself – your message lost to overdone mechanization.

Any communicator simply has to automate aspects of their marketing and outreach efforts, but the balance between personal resource and marketing machinery has to be maintained. You have already experienced this, the first time an incensed reporter for the New York  Times flamed you or an account exec, the last time a client’s message was tossed aside offhand.

The infographic below from HubSpot, may re-acquaint you with a balance any company should employ.

New leads, the two way conversation in the new digital age, straight out selling, it’s crucial to know when and where, how much, you can employ mechanized marketing techniques and tools. As we said, you already know this. For more information about “messaging” and the new marketing method, you may also want to read this post on integrated marketing, or consulting the publications at ELOQUA on mechanize marketing strategies.

About the author
Mihaela Lica Butler is an experienced PR professional, senior partner and founder of Pamil Visions PR. She writes about the latest in the PR field at Everything PR and is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters, Al Jazeera and others). She also occasionally writes for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. To stay in touch with her latest work, follow heron Twitter.

When introducing potential customers to a product or service, PR professionals know they need to focus on benefits. Features are there to create some sort of gain for those who purchase whatever a company or individual is selling. Ideally, when a new product or service is launched, those behind it think in terms of benefits, be it real ones or just apparent ones – making people feel cool when they need to is just as much of a benefit as helping them grow their business.

We do consider benefits, and those clearly stated, to be a way to help sell more, increase brand awareness and get all the recognition a company deserves. Simply put, benefits return benefits – monetary gain, image boosts, new opportunities. Therefore, to become successful, you need to help your customers become successful. 

A happy customer  makes for a good review and a few recommendations. A successful customer, recognized as such by the industry or the entire world, that makes for a successful company, plenty of reviews and plenty more buying customers.

A big success that is directly linked to your product or service is quite the stroke of luck, the gold mine every company and their PR team dreams of. But it’s not really something you can focus on, is it? You cannot just review your customers and think about who has the biggest chances of becoming successful. So what can you do?

First of all, make sure you think in terms of success when you launch something – product or service. A useful product that helps reduce costs and saves time means more of a client’s resources invested in making themselves a hit. More so if your product is instrumental to their success.

It happens – a piece of software helps create another one that becomes world renown. This 14 year old that took a startup to stardom is not a unique case.

The second thing you need to consider is that you must be able to identify success related to your products. You have to keep an eye on your customers and their achievements and determine which were given a helping hand by your product and services. Taking their spotlight is not your best move, but pointing out you got them there is a great tactic. The caveat is that you must be tactful about it and not try to make it all about you. In the end, it is really about that customer that was smart enough to turn your product or service into something awesome!

Success stories are convincing. The fame associated with someone quickly becoming known to the world can be easily turned into future benefits, simply because we all like to think we could be a great success, if only we had the right tools and the right state of mind. Potential buyers need to know you’ll help them solve their problems, but they also love to know you could change their lives in certain circumstances, help them achieve everything they wanted.

The truth is, with the right product or service, targeting the right customers, you actually can! The right technology can help a struggling business get ahead of their competition and make it big. The right advice can help another position themselves better, identify opportunities and run a profitable business. The right equipment can certainly make the differece at times!

Success is something every business should desire for their customers. It leads to the provider’s own success. It is not so much a dream to catch naive potential buyers with, it’s a desireable possibility we all hope for and work towards.

Now, over to you – what products or services helped you succeed? Who are those brilliant people that showed you the way to your dream? Who did you help achieve greatness? Let’s talk!

Guest post by Nick Deyong

In today’s world, everything happens at breakneck speed and, to offer a clumsy version of an often-used expression, “we’re too busy gazing off in to the distance to notice what’s right in front of us”. Or something to that effect.

The same can be said when considering the practice of marketing; amidst all the promotion to the wider world it is easy to overlook a key stakeholder group – internal colleagues and suppliers. A curious occurrence, when it is clear that without employees operations would grind to a halt.

Not just that, but without enthusiastic staff who are fully behind the task at hand, know exactly what their role is and how important they are to the business, all the clever marketing in the world would ultimately prove futile. You see, employees are a company’s greatest ambassadors – treat them well and they will pass on this positivity to future customers and staff in a way that is wholly more honest and authentic than any advertising campaign.

Then there’s other highly desirable by-products of a happy and focused workforce – better recruitment and retention, greater productivity, increased profits. All these are a CEO’s dream and can easily be achieved through moulding the manpower’s mindset.

So, how can an organisation instil such an attitude in its workforce? Firstly, there’s education – ensure that every employee knows what the business’s objectives are and how they can help to achieve them. Too often, staff simply clock-in, do their bit (and nothing more) and clock-out without ever having an idea of the bigger picture. Staff working in silos without consideration of what is happening around them or beyond their office door is potentially very harmful to a company as it breeds inefficiency, selfishness and a lack of co-operation amongst colleagues.

Secondly, there are incentives. If a rallying call to arms doesn’t motivate, then maybe a chance to win a luxury cruise will? Material, yes, but also highly effective as many a company will testify. But it shouldn’t just be all about sales – if someone’s contributed towards some form of success, whatever it may be, then even something as small as a gift voucher through the post can spur an employee on for months to come.

On a grander scale, motivation and incentive programmes can inspire staff; whether through once-in-a-lifetime experiences for teams or individual reward packages for high achievers. Even with such beneficial enterprises, however, there are pitfalls to look out for, namely, that staff forgets why the incentive is there in the first place – to achieve within their role. Instead, employees can become so pre-occupied with ‘winning’ the next prize that it’s to the detriment of other colleagues and morale begins to suffer – thus having the reverse effect of what was initially intended.

About the author
Nick Deyong is the managing director of NDL Group, a prize promotion agency that delivers incentive and motivation schemes for customers and employees, as well as events, partnerships and digital services. Nick set up NDL Group in 1997 with the goal of creating a great place to work that provides solutions to clients based on expert delivery and service.

This year’s edition of The Business Growth Summit, an online event bringing together leading experts to share their strategies on how to grow a business, leverage opportunities, and increase profits starts today and will continue until September 23rd. What the summit actually offers is free, on demand access to videos by well known experts in the social media, marketing, PR and business development fields to help small businesses promote themselves more effectively and sell more.

Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki, Dan Schawbel, Amy Cosper, Carrie Wilkerson are only a few of the people you must learn from through the Business Growth Summit. If you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, work-from-home professional or thinking of making a career switch to become either one, you should register for this online event and start watching the 5 to 20 minute videos the best and brightest of today’s business minds have to offer.

Yours truly, on behalf of the Mirror Communications agency, is also part of The Business Growth Summit. The video I have contributed is titles “How to Get More Business from the Social Media Clutter” and will help you decide what’s worthwhile and efficient from the huge social media world, what will help your business achieve better results.

After attending this business online event, please share your experience, your questions or your feedback either here, in the comment section, on Twitter, Facebook or via email.

Wish you all a great week and enjoy the summit!

Social media comes with the endless debate about numbers, which matter and which don’t. It does not matter how many people follow/friend you or subscribe to your feed, it does not matter how many visit your site, what matters is what they do. Who cares you have 30,000 followers if only 2 ever retweeted your stuff? Numbers can be bought, they hold no value.

You’ve heard all this before. But apart from the obvious, in-your-face truth - 5000 followers that RT you constantly and answer your questions, ask for your help, turn into leads and buy your products are certainly more valuable than 10,000 passive ones – when did these statements become about envy? When did the sour grapes replace thorough analysis and measurement?

Let’s face it people, to some extent, numbers do matter. If  you’re Vodafone Romania, have millions of subscribers and in a year and a half of Twitter presence (with a social media dedicated team, albeit small) you only have 3000 followers, that’s an almost OK result of sorts, but not something a senior marketer should brag about!

If you are happy with the about 1000 followers you as an individual or company have, with the few hundred likes on Facebook and the few dozens of circle inclusions on Google+ (hey, it’s new, ok?), that’s fine! But don’t go boosting a better than though attitude to those who think a 5,000 limitation is too low!

If you’ve been in the online communities for a while, you might have an idea who Chris Brogan is. I absolutely admire him and what he does and he always amazes me with his social skills and apparent ability not to sleep at all. He’s got a problem with both Facebook and Google+ because they have a not surprisingly similar limit of 5000 contacts per account. He fixed it on Facebook with a page, which as he pointed out, might seem a bit impersonal, and he is looking for a Google+ solution. Although he has quite an impressive following on any networks he sets up shop on, no one occasionally interacting with him would ever dare say he only cares about the numbers and not the value and the relationships.

So imagine my surprise when I noticed some comments stating it’s good numbers are limited, people will finally focus on value!!! Are you for real?

The harsh reality is every marketer out there, every PR person or social media guru or however you want to call someone handling social media for a company wants the big numbers. I wouldn’t mind having 1 million likes on my company’s Facebook page or on that of my travel site! I don’t invest much time in any of them because I care more about client work, but I would love it! Maybe I am just looking for attention, or maybe I am smart enough to know that big numbers are not without value. Sure, it takes a larger team to interact with people and create valuable relationships with them, but having more connections does not turn you into CNN’s twitter stream that just posts news and speaks to no one!

Moreover, people use social media for different reasons. Some just want fresh content, news and events and are not there for the interaction. If you tell them the people or companies they keep an eye on are bad at social media and do a bad job with what they post, what do you think you’re saying about the their followers who find their social messages useful? Aren’t you alienating them?

In social media measurement, a lot of numbers matter. It matters how many people want to see what you have to say, it matters how many think what you say is worth sharing with others, it matters how many buy what you’re selling. Some numbers matter more than others, in certain circumstances. Beyond that, it’s all relative. And like it or not, some people have enough capital when it comes to their online brand to just show up, act like a diva and still get millions to love their every word! That’s just life and it should not turn into sour grapes. It should turn into inspiration, lessons and better strategy for the rest of us!

When trying to sell a product or service, the hardest part is to convince your potential customers they need it, want it or can actually use it to make their life better. A lot of effort goes into marketing and PR, engaging people, outlining the benefits, making sure what you’re selling pops up exactly when and where they would be happy to see it.

Let’s say this part of the process went really great and the customer is convinced. They would then go to your website, fill out the order form… and you might think there is no way in hell to lose that paying customer right now!

Then again you would be wrong. All it takes is a Pay now button that does not work!

Sure, there might be some potential buyers so taken with your product or service, that they would go through the trouble of sending you an email, waiting for you to fix your stupid tech problem and then spend some more time on the same form before getting what they wanted. The truth is most of your customers will put the email writing time to good use and buy from the first competitor offering something similar.

End of story! You’ve just lost a customer for the lamest reason ever

I am happy to announce that the guide to twitter that you’ve heard about in the past couple of months on my Twitter stream or on Faebook is out! The Social Media Newbie’s Guide to Twitter for Businesses ebook, a simple guide to get businesses and individuals with a business focus started on Twitter, has just been launched!

The reason for deciding to focus on such an ebook was that while Twitter kept growing and more and more businesses created accounts and started blasting out 140 character messages, the result-free efforts were astonishing. Many people still fail to understand Twitter and their presence is more of a reflex, the adoption of a cool trend, than a thought out, carefully planned business strategy.

While I was pondering over the actual need of such a business guide, I noticed that a few articles debating Twitter-related themes became extremely popular, showing a genuine interest in quality information on getting the best out of the microblogging platform. So I powered my writing mode and completed this project, accepting the challenge of publishing my first business ebook

This guide for Twitter business users is based on my own experience running a dozen twitter accounts, with all the hassle, mistakes and wonderful events that marked my passage through the Twitterverse, on others’ kind tips or examples, on patterns I’ve noticed, on things I (and others) have loved and hated in how Twitter users act.

Who should read this ebook:

• businesses that decide to integrate social media in their overall communication efforts, preferably before they actually start;
• employees tasked with tapping into Twitter and promoting their activity and the company employing them
• consultants, coaches and trainers that want to establish themselves as experts in their field and get new clients through Twitter;
• all of the above who already have a Twitter account, yet are not performing as expected
• new Twitter users in general who want to make the best out of their social media experience, build a valuable community and actually reach their online goals.

How to get the ebook

I wanted to make getting the The Social Media Newbie’s Guide to Twitter for Businesses ebook as simple and transparent as possible, so you are now faced with two possibilities to obtain it, one free, one paid. Please feel free to choose the method that best suits your interests and real needs:

If you’re interested in fresh marketing and PR advice, helping you grow your business and improve your overall communication, in the latest PR services and training discounts from the Mirror Communications PR and Marketing agency, then sign up for our newsletter and get the Twitter guide for free!

If all you want is the ebook and have no interest in PR articles and news or require no PR and marketing consulting, then just buy the Twitter for Businesses guide today (14.99 USD)!

Before you decide, have a taste of my writing style and the contents of the guide by checking  out the sample chapter of the ebook here.

Regardless of how you choose to get The Social Media Newbie’s Guide to Twitter for Businesses ebook, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on it. I’m also more than happy to answer any questions you might have!

Enjoy!

P.S.  Before you part, I need to share with you the fact that this ebook is now available thanks to the help and advice of Alex Cristache of QBKL Media and Blogsessive who worked his magic on the exquisite design of this ebook.