Research, Thunking•
on March 5th, 2010•
Those who study human communication habits say that 60% of our communication with each other is body language (hand movement, facial expressions, posture etc.) so other than using video chat tools, essentially, Social Media is missing 60% of the message in text and audio tools. Video enables this to some degree, but unless you’re in a two-way video chat/conference you’re only communicating one-way.
As is our nature, we compensate to some degree in text-based tools by the use of “emoticons“, changing font sizes and using perhaps bold or italics. which helps to a degree.
It’s also still a leading source of communicating in Social Media channels. Video still has issues such as connections, poor images, incompatible systems/camera’s, bandwidth hogging and sound delays. All of which is to say, we’re still missing something.
We’ve kind of hit a plateau with Social Media I think (more on that later) and we’ve adopted these tools. But where does it go from here?
Will text-based social tools still stay dominant? If video starts to take over eventually, how will we deal with the critical aspect of linking to reference each others work?
(Author: Giles Crouch)
Best Practices•
on February 4th, 2009•
Carpenters, plumbers, electricians…they all have specific tools for the work they do. Before beginning their work, they asses the situation and the site. Then they select the right tools for the job at hand. It’s no different when looking to engage in Social Media for a company.
When we say “tools” in social media terms, we are talking about the technology applications that will enable good engagement, whether you’re building your own community or engaging in other communities. Take for example discussions about the practicality of Twitter as a “tool” for companies to use, or blogging.
Our approach for social media engagement is always based on 3 Core Principles (Promise, Tools and Bargain) and so tools are important in terms of being the right one to facilitate the promise and enable the audience your engaging with to complete the bargain.
In some cases it is a single tool, such as a blog, which will suffice. In other cases it may be a combination of tools like a microblog, video and blog. The key is to not try and use all the tools out there. In the rush to expand a presence into social media, a fatal mistake can occur when trying to adopt all the tools you can, with little sense of their value or the manner in which communities use them.
(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner – Twitter: Webconomist)
Best Practices•
on August 11th, 2008•
Tired of decreasing response rates to your email marketing efforts? Maybe you’re just noise like everyone else. Try leveraging a corporate blog by integrating your blog strategy with email marketing and you may find a whole new level of results. Here’s our experience:
We all receive a lot of emails in the run of a day. Next time you’re planning an email marketing campaign, think of how you use your email. Look at your own “inbox” and look to see how many marketing emails you subscribe to, and how many you open and read. I suspect the truth might disappoint you somewhat. Your customers think in a similar way.
So here’s a different approach. Continue the email marketing, but change the message and turn email marketing into a conversation spark. Print ads are a great example; the best ads say the least, yet spark a desire in us to buy, to investigate further or in other words – take action. Email marketing tactics can be leveraged with the same principle. The key here is understanding that email marketing is now just like a banner ad on a website, and its “interruptive” since people are online to “do” something, the Web is not passive like television – this is largely why banner ads don’t deliver good results.
Send your email, but use the principles of a print ad to create an action – the action being to drive them to the blog, not the usual Landing Page. Engage them in a conversation. Part of the reason email marketing messages fail is that as soon as you get such an email your first thought is “I’m being sold something.” So you filter them. You just know the email is going to send you to a Landing Page that’s going to pitch you a product – and you’re busy right now thank-you. It fails right out the gate for 98% of your target!
Using email to drive a prospect to a blog infers that there’s something “more” on the blog, since blogs are considered to be 2-way, the “sell” takes on a different tone. If you invite dialog on your blog, perhaps the prospect will say something there? That’s engagement, and you might also learn about a customer need, and be able to sell them more or handle an objection. So many companies send out emails today, it’s boring. Years ago businesses found high return rates over 8% from email marketing. Today email marketing is lucky to work like regular direct mail and deliver 1-3% responses.
We’re not saying stop the “direct sell” emails, but mix it up, engage the prospect. From the blog, you can drive them to relevant product pages. If they’re satisfied with the engagement in the blog, we’ve found they are 30% more likely to buy or give buying indicators. Your sales cycle is reduced, your leads are warmer and…you increase revenues! Blogs can be a powerful sales tool.