Aug
11

5 Features You Need in an Ideal Marketing Metrics Tool

This post originally appeared on the oneforty blog. It’s being reposted here as part of my blogging portfolio.

Let’s face it: you probably have not found the perfect tool to measure all your online marketing activities. True, you may have found one that was ‘just good enough’ but still doesn’t give you exactly what you need.

Truth be told, in the grand scheme of things, social media and internet marketing is generally still new. With that comes developing metrics tools that do not quite fit our exact needs yet.

The great part about being in an awesome city like Boston is that we all know we’re in it together to figure out the best ways to use social media, optimize internet marketing campaigns, hone in on our funnel, and optimize conversion rates. We all want the same thing. We all work together to help get the results we need.

A few months ago, I was searching for that ‘perfect’ metrics tool, so I went to oneforty’s Managing and Measuring Social Media LinkedIn group to find an awesome group of people suggesting many tools. After an exhaustive search through, I decided write an article on my website about the Pros and Cons of Social Media Metrics Tools to give members my honest feedback on each tool I tested.

Through the process, I tested about 20 different tools, and found a few that actually fit the bill. While I did settle for a few ideal ones, none were perfect – even when combined.

As a marketer myself, I’ve identified the five critical metrics an ideal solution should have to help you become better at your job.

  • Middle of the funnel statistics: Sure, Google Analytics can show you what referral traffic brought people to your site and your checkout system can tell you how much revenue you received – but what about in between those activities? What steps did these people take between visiting an outside link, to getting on your website, to purchasing? Did they visit the blog? Did they watch a demo video? Did they engage in a chat with a support representative? If you can figure out which activities people perform most that convert to sales, then you can optimize that funnel to get even more conversions.
  • Customizable charts and reports: If you are a visual marketer like me and/or need to report marketing metrics to your boss or your advisory board, you need an easy way to compile specific bits of data. If a tool gives you the ability to create custom reports with specific data points, great! On top of that, if they can provide you with bar, pie, and graph charts (among others) to depict this data visually, even better! The easier you can present this data to others, the better your work looks.
  • Percent changes amongst data points: Want to know how many people came to your site and purchased between April and May? Even better, wouldn’t it be great to know the increase or decrease in this traffic month to month? This can help you determine what you did right and wrong and how to optimize each channel with specific content and sales drivers.
  • Dashboard activity: Wouldn’t it be great to log onto your metric tool to see a customized page of all the data you need to know up front? Some tools I currently use do this (Raven SEO Tools for example) but not for every aspect of my marketing program. It’d be great to choose the top 4-5 KPIs (key performance indicators) they need to know at a given time and be presented with that data as soon as they log in. That would make my day SO much easier, and probably yours as well.
  • Ability to visually see conversion rates across mediums: You may have multiple tools in place that can track social media traffic conversions, email campaign metrics, and press-related data. What if there was one single tool that showed traffic, conversions, and percentage change across all these channels at any given time period? To me, this would be the absolute most critical piece of data to know. That way, not only can I better understand the overall performance of our marketing activities, but so can everyone else in a visually pleasing way.

Of course, this list can go on and can be altered depending on the industry you’re in, marketing challenges you face, and marketing programs you are running. This serves as a guideline for some of the most important aspects of a metrics tool you should look for before settling for the one that seems to be ‘good enough’.

If you have other major KPIs you are tracking and metrics features you need to correlate with them, please leave your feedback below to add to this list.

Just like in Boston, if we can all help each other figure out the main things we need to track as marketers, hopefully the ideal solution will appear sooner than expected to satisfy our needs and help us all become better at our jobs.

Jul
11

Paying it Forward: An Old Fisherman Exemplifies What Marketers Should Know

fishermanDo you ever counter certain types of people in life that give you a new perspective on something – whether it be a lifestyle, attitude, opinion, etc.? Yesterday, I had a very unique encounter with an older man who appeared homeless and fishing on one of the Charles River docks in Boston.

It was about 5pm and I had only sat down by the dock to enjoy the evening sunlight on the river for about ten minutes when this man walked up to me. Naturally, when a stranger walks up to me I tend to tense up, not knowing their intentions. However, this man was looking for something very unique.

I found out afterwards that he spoke only Russian so he could not communicate with me. This man walked up to me, handing me two plastic cups and making a water-scooping motion to me with his hands. After a second, I understood he wanted me to fill these cups with river water for him because he could not bend down to do so himself. He nodded to me and went back to his fishing area. I watched and saw him take out some bread rolls, break them up into smaller pieces, and soak them in the cup of water. I then realized he was using this wet bread as bait for his fishing pole.

Not even five minutes after he first approached me, he came back over. In his hand were three candies. He was giving me candy in return for assisting him with getting water. All he could communicate to me was “Russian candy”. Sure enough, when I looked at them, the wrapper had Russian wording on it. I thanked him, he nodded, and went back to his area.

At that point I thought to myself, “Wow, just by me doing something so seemingly minuscule for this man, he was courteous enough to pay it forward by giving me a treat.”

This made me think.

You never know what others need in life, and how much a small act like filling up water means to them. I started to think about how this relates to marketing and customer service. During our busy everyday lives, we do and receive small acts of kindness, not really thinking twice about it. Other times, we are treated rudely and/or ignored – many times by bad customer representatives. On multiple occasions, I’ve experienced this with both a bank and cable company (not naming names – it’s beyond the point).

However, what if more encounters with businesses, clients, partners, etc. were as genuine as my prior encounter? What if everyone paid it forward? Small acts of appreciation can mean the world to someone.

Some business example of paying it forward are:

  • Sending a personal thank-you email or even a gift card to a valued customer that has either been a good reference, blogged favorably about you, or has stayed loyal through ups and downs in the company’s lifetime. While they may just be great customers because they truly enjoy your product or service, it never hurts to show them it matters to you.
  • Creating a special product feature that a specific customer requests. While it may gain you little to no revenue, if it is a fairly simple and quick feature to roll out, it will mean a lot to that customer. It (1.) Shows you truly care about the needs of your customers and (2.) Demonstrates that you take in customer feedback. If a business went out of their way to do this for me and the feature simplified my daily life, I would probably be a forever-loyal customer.
  • Giving a valued customer some press exposure. I first was impressed by the idea of doing this when talking with a friend who spoke to a reporter regarding an awesome customer’s business. My friend was speaking to them not for the intent to get his business exposure, but to highlight a customer. Since the customer was running a small business, this press exposure was huge for them. I’ve since spoken to many other people who do the same thing and I have done it myself as well.
You get the point. There are so many ways you can be a truly genuine marketer, sales person, customer service representative, etc. Just by taking a step back, recognizing what is simple and meaningful in life, and acting on it can go miles towards making others happy, rewarding them, and being a genuine business person and business.
Now it’s your turn. What are some ways you can pay it forward in your everyday life? Are there any instances where you’ve already done so or others have done this for you? Please share!

May
12

6 Ways To Improve Your Company’s Social Media Marketing

Using social media marketing can be a very good way to develop true and strong relationships with others online. Using it to develop formal and often very important informal relationships can be very beneficial to your business. Here are some points that you and others in your company should consider so that you stay at the top.

  • Minimize junk. Are you falling into the trap of putting every little detail about your life online? It is important that you keep focused on why you are involved in a certain group or medium. Remember that each of your posts needs to be important. Unless you are Brad Pitt and there is a mountain of followers drooling on your every word, make sure that you and others in your company are relevant.
  • Keep it consistent. As with every element of your company’s operations it is important that you keep standards of communication. Setting rules regarding tone and appropriateness for all of those in your company is of utmost importance. This may take some of the fun out of it, but one mistake could spread and be very damaging for your business. Perhaps you should consider those working for you have both their own personal and professional profiles.
  • Management. Some amount of randomness may be beneficial to creating and keeping interest, but using certain software programs to manage, schedule and assess the effectiveness of your company’s posting will be greatly beneficial to understanding your SEO efforts. Perhaps there are better times and better ways that your team can be collaborating (working together), and only analysis of your efforts will allow you to see this. There are several premium and free-ware options available.
  • Encourage participation. Having the technical means and the content to stir debate amongst your followers and readers is extremely important. Making sure that you have your networks set up correctly so that you have specific areas for participants to engage in, and you can moderate, are of the utmost importance. The two skills of being a good content developer, and intangible asset, and having the technical know-how, are extremely important.
  • Ahead of the curve. Learning from others in your industry can be very beneficial, however, it is those who are ahead of the curve, and dare to do something different, that often reap most of the rewards. You will need to use your imagination and creativity if you are to stand out. Respect the intelligence of your readers and understand that they are already getting used to many of the same tricks to get their attention floating around out there.
  • Keeping it real. This must be one of the all-time important factors of any company’s activities. Remember, people are not stupid, and as soon as they even get a hint that your company is not being real, they will drop you in a flash. Just because you are not communicating face to face, don’t think that they cannot read between the lines. Let them know where you stand from the beginning unless you and your people are extremely experienced in true guerrilla marketing.

It is important to not get overwhelmed with the potential and possibilities of any campaign. Some people believe in an online social Karma. Take on your company’s online activities like any other element of your business, step by step, and seek professional advice, after all it is your financial future.

 

 

Feb
10

10 Phrases You Should NOT Use to Describe Your Company

Last week, I had the opportunity to travel to New York City for a trade show where my company was exhibiting. Many of these companies were fairly established (aka not a startup) and this may explain why they were still using these outdated terms to describe themselves.

While walking through the exhibiting hall during breaks, I saw many booths that advertised what they did using “empty” terms. After seeing some of these, they made me think of other brand slogans, product descriptions and advertisements I’ve seen in the past.

cliche business terms

For the sake of everyone, make your USP better understood by avoiding these terms:

1. Integrated solutions

2. Innovative capabilities

3. A leading provider of…

4. Seamless integration

5. Next generation

6. Integrated approach

7. World-class

8. Dynamic environment

9. Entrepreneurial

10. High-performance

This is not to serve as a degrading post towards companies that do use these terms, just an observation that they are very over-used, over-hyped words that just don’t resonate with customers. Instead of using acceptable industry terms, why not describe yourselves using terms your customers use and understand?

Lets try to re-work the above 10 terms into customer-centric phrases:

1. … combined to give you…

2. New ways to…

3. Top

4. Simple process

5. New

6. Combined to…

7. High quality/performance

8. Exciting place

9. Thought-leader, forward thinking

10. Providing the best…

By simply turning around the seemingly complex phrases you’re using into digestible, customer-centric terms can do wonders to your business. Instead of glazed eyes rolling over your company slogan, why not have it instantly click and resonate in their minds?

What terms have you heard over and over that still don’t explain to you what a company does? How would you rework the 10 phrases? Add them below as an addendum.

Jan
07

10 Ways to Become a Better Marketer in 2011

It’s that time of year again when we’re all evaluating what our new years resolution will be this year, and wonderirng how long it will last this time. However, there is one resolution that should never fail to work: become better at your job. Social networks come and go, ‘best practices’ succeed and fail, and your company is constantly changing. What if there were some sure-fire ways to keep a resolution to always get better at your job, no matter what is going on around you?

Follow these ten tips to learn how to become a better online marketer in 2011:

1. Read. Determine which bloggers and experts in your industry you’d like to learn from. Chances are, they have a blog. Pick 2-5 expert bloggers and subscribe to them. Take time out of your day, even if it’s a half hour, to read what they have to say. By reading their posts, you’ll learn new perspectives and techniques. I take time to read Dharmesh Shah’s blog, Darren Rowe’s ProBlogger blog, and Chris Brogan’s blog. From all the other blogs I subscribe to, these provide the most value.

2. Use analytics to your advantage. With so many free analytics tools available today, from Google Analytics to Facebook Insights and free trials to many other tools, use them to your advantage. The more metrics-driven you are as a marketer, the greater the decisions you make will be. Metrics don’t lie, so if you are seeing a trend, act on it. If you need to make a case in your favor, use metrics to prove your point.

3. Use your valuable contacts. Each of your contacts, whether in your company or industry, has something to offer. Schedule a half hour coffee meetup, lunch meeting, or plan to attend an event where your contacts will be to talk with them. Find out what marketing projects they’re working on, what has led them to success and failure, and what some of their own marketing theories are. This will help you learn a wide array of marketing views which will allow you to create a customized marketing approach to your company using a variety of their ideas.

4. Keep an open mind. Never discount an idea until you can prove it won’t be beneficial. Many people become close-minded and stop innovating when they find a comfort zone in a company. Don’t fall victim to this. Instead, always keep an open mind. Whether you’re reading a blog post, attending a webinar, speaking with someone at an event or brainstorming yourself, consider every idea as valid. By not closing out an idea ‘just because’ will not help you grow as a marketer. Instead, explore new ways to market your business.

5. Take some time to evaluate your marketing tactics. Think back on what marketing campaigns and activities you’ve done in the past month. What worked? What didn’t work? What would you like to see done in the next month? With this, build upon your successes, learn from the failures and create new ways to improve your efforts.

6. Maintain your own personal brand. I’m guilty of ignoring some of my personal brand by using the excuse of being too busy at work to take time to write for this blog. I’ve realized that it’s always important to maintain your personal brand even though you’re busy building up the brand of your company. Whether it’s writing a weekly blog post, following up with people on Twitter, building out your connections on LinkedIn or making an appearance at a monthly event, do it. Your personal brand is something that can never be taken away from you and can make you more valuable at your job.

7. Pay attention to industry leading companies. Determine which companies are leading the industry and practicing cutting edge marketing and technological methods. Is there a company that’s doing an outstanding community management job? Follow them on social media and see what tactics they use and who they engage with. Do you admire a company for always staying innovative, using the latest technologies? Follow their blog, attend the events they do and do a weekly news scan to keep on top of what they are doing. This will give you a good sense of their work ethic and ways of finding ideas.

8. Never forget original marketing theories. Theories like “the customer is always right’, “test, test, test”, and the like are always important. Just because there are new theories and technologies to use doesn’t mean old ways don’t work anymore. Instead, the new ways, for the most part, build upon the old ideas. You also need to consider your target market. While there are iPads, Twitter and text messaging mediums, your target audience may prefer the traditional radio advertising method to learn about companies, products and services. While it’s great to know about a new technology and theory, take into consideration how your target marketing would respond. If you think they’re in their comfort zone with the traditional ways you contact them, stay that way. Eventually they will migrate to the new ways, and you can either nudge them that way or go there with them.

9. Always be a step ahead of the competition. Set up alerts, subscribe to their blogs, follow them on social media and go to the events they go to. It may even help to create a spreadsheet to track what major announcements they are making and any sneak peak insights you may have about what they are going to do. That way, you can either pre-empt what a competitor is going to do, follow along with it, or simply be aware of it. Never get caught blindsided by your competition or a surprise new competitor.

10. Keep it real. No matter the technology, medium, or method, always be real with your customers. This aligns well with point #8 as it means to never forget the voice of your company and keep it the same throughout all types of communications. If you’re company is known as a bubbly, conversational company on TV ads, magazine ads and through in-person meetings, keep that same tone and attitude while interacting with customers on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. It’s also important to always be honest and upfront with a customer. The last thing I want a company telling me is that they will be more than happy to give me a month free trial because I was unhappy and then boost up my fee every consecutive month. That won’t make me happy. If I was used to them being very accommodating, I’d be even more taken aback by this approach. Just keep it real.

I could go on and on with ways to become a better marketer, as I’m learning them every day, but I know your time is valuable and I’m sure you have some ideas of your own to share. Please leave your resolution to become a better marketer this year in the comments section!

10.

Dec
14

Your Market is Your Best Friend- Clients as Quality Controls

In any industry, the most underrated asset is usually staring you in the face- Your clients. That’s not more management science mouthwash, it’s an established fact, as anyone with real customer service experience can tell you. Your clients in IT support are your early warning system, your built in feedback mechanism, and above all your quality controls. Clients are better placed than anyone to be aware of what’s happening in your territory, and they’re the best information base in the world.

Customizing your client relationships

If you’re an expert in your field, you’ll already know the story about dealing with people having limited knowledge in your area. They don’t know your problems. That, ironically, is the basis of one of the major assets clients can provide. They can’t speak your language too well, but they can tell you what’s bothering them and give you their perspectives. They do know their own problems very well, and that’s what you need to know.

The key to client relationships is customer expectations.

If you meet or exceed customer expectations, you’re a saint. If you don’t, or if they don’t understand what you’ve done, you’re the bad guy. There’s the key to good client relationships, right there. It’s also the key to not getting phone calls from your boss asking you what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

The trick is simple, and effective:

• Get more information about what the client needs. This will inevitably produce more useful information, and extend the logic of the work that needs doing, so you don’t do a fix and find you’ve actually not solved the real problems.

• Get familiar with the client’s objectives, particularly the business objectives. Your work is central to the client’s business. The more you know about the issues, the more effective your solutions will be from the client’s perspective.

Building in your own quality controls

The client needs a specific result, and you need to know how to obtain that result. The client doesn’t know how to get that result, but you can get that information quite easily.

You’ll naturally make a lot of contacts on the job in IT services, and you can select the more observant, better informed people in the client’s workplace as your best contacts:

• The secretary will probably know more about the manager’s IT needs than the manager.

• The accountancy department will be fully up to speed on whacko software and database problems.

• The floor manager will be able to tell you everything that’s gone wrong with the data entry for years.

• The core business workers know everything in any workplace. If you’re client’s a retailer, talk to the cashiers, their supervisor and whoever does the inventory, and you’ll get all the information you could ever need.

The net outcome will be that your work will always be high quality. The client will be very happy, and probably ask for you to do the servicing in future. And it’s all because you used your most reliable asset- Your clients.

Sep
20

Never Underestimate the Power of Word of Mouth Marketing with Performable 2.0

performable logo

Did you know that every day, 98% of the people who visit your website make a near-instantaneous decision NOT to do business with you? If you’re experiencing high website bounce rates, low conversion rates, and raised eyebrows about your business idea, you may be a part of this statistic.

Performable, based in Amesbury, Mass has found a platform to help companies discover and overcome this barrier. Performable is a do-it-yourself tool to help any company improve their website and convert online visitors into customers easily. With Performable, you can test your message, improve website design, optimize landing pages, conduct A/B testing and more.

We had the chance to chat with Justin Rachwalski, the director of Performable’s marketing, to find out how users are interacting with their tools and how they are reaching prospective customers themselves.

If you are on the marketing team at your company, you are probably faced with the task of finding new sales opportunities, connecting and engaging with new customers and developing ways to streamline marketing activities. With Performable’s integrated tool, you can find this all out in one spot.

The tool allows you to dig deeper into each channel where customer interactions are occurring. For example, if you are using Twitter as a marketing channel, you can now discover customers who are connected with you on Twitter and start a conversation with them.

With Performable, marketers are also discovering ways to find out how customers are using their site. You can delve into each user’s activity, including pages visited, time of website visit, where they are located, and how many times they have been to your site. As a marketing professional myself, this is crucial information to know since I am involved with inbound marketing at my own job.

If you have been on Twitter for any amount of time and are into marketing and entrepreneurship, you have probably heard

david cancel

of David Cancel. Cancel is the CEO and founder of Performable. He is also a serial entrepreneur with a twelve-year record of building successful companies. One thing Cancel believes in is customer relations and feedback. This is emulated in Performable’s every day activities that allows them to improve their service.

Rachwalski told us, “We provide exceptional customer support in which we gather customer feedback on the problems they face. In addition we love to meet face to face with our customers as well as survey them.” Recently, they have worked with some of the best online marketers to learn what problems they face today and work with them to find solutions to those problems. “All of that has gone into the new Performable 2.0 which is launching soon.” Rachwalski explained.

Performable 2.0 is the brainchild of all the research and development the team has done with top marketers. This enhanced platform will help you understand more about your best customers and ways to acquire more customers like them.

Performable 2.0 will allow marketers to find new sales opportunities, contact points, interactions across social channels, reviews of marketing plans every day (aka milestones), view how people are engaging with your marketing campaigns, and find which ads are working for which pages and market segments. Essentially, Performable 2.0 makes it easy to discover, engage and optimize; this is a marketer’s dream!

While Performable helps other companies succeed in their marketing efforts, we wanted to dig deeper into how Performable itself is marketing to customers and engaging with them.

Rachwalski told us, “Our top priority is providing an amazing user experience with unrivaled customer service. This naturally results in a large amount of word-of-mouth organic marketing. This has been our most successful channel by far.” You will find that many companies today with new and brilliant products are relying almost 100% on word-of-mouth since it is so powerful on the social web.

“We supplement that with a wide range of marketing including PPC, SEO, Display, affiliate/partner programs, social media (Blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), and community building. Finally our CEO is very active in the startup space.” Rachawalski found that each concurrent marketing channel helped tie the loop back to their word-of-mouth marketing quite well.

If you are following David Cancel on Twitter, you are probably familiar with his immense knowledge base and influence. If you are not following him, do so and you will see why he is such a successful entrepreneur, especially with this particular venture. Personally, I first found out about Performable by stumbling upon Cancel’s Twitter page and following him. I started to read a few blogs that discussed their work and became very interested in what they had coming next.

The main marketing take away I received from my chat with Rachwalski was to “never underestimate the power of word of mouth marketing.” Then, when it comes down to adding other paid forms of marketing, “it is important to focus on all stages of the customer life-cycle.” In other words you want to look at the “first click”, supporting clicks, as well as the “last click” when it comes to your funnel.”

Performable is definitely a company to keep your eye on and try out for your own company if you can. Performable 2.0 is not currently available yet but will be in a few weeks! Stay tuned for more details.

To keep up to date with their new developments, make sure to check out their site, read their blog, become a fan onFacebook and follow them on Twitter.

I originally wrote this post for BostInnovation as my weekly new marketing article.

Sep
15

New Co-Creation Concept Drives Business Model for Blank Label

Guys, lets face it – you don’t like to shop. When it comes time to buying a new outfit for an interview, wedding, or night out on the town, you are forced to choose from the same old available shirts on the store rack.

What if [I] changed up this scenario for a minute? Imagine sitting on your couch and browsing through a website to customize the shirt you are looking for and having it delivered right to you.

blank label

Imagine no more; a company called Blank Label has solved this age-long shopping dilemma for men. Blank Label is an online clothing store just for men’s dress shirts, allowing men to customize a shirt to their liking.

Danny Wong, co-founder of Blank Label, took the time to explain this concept to us. “We are providers of co-created men’s dress shirts and have a dress shirt design application that empowers men to design their next favorite dress shirts online. We’re pushing the concept of co-creation – making consumers their own designers and bridging the gap between consumer and manufacturer.”

Blank Label’s goal is to “change the way men shop by empowering them to become their own designers,” Wong told [me]. He first became excited about co-creation when he realized that it would empower consumers to become their own designers. This allows customers to tell Blank Label what they want and how they want it; Blank Label is the platform for them to do this.

The response to their business model has been outstanding. While I am certainly not in their target market, it is evident that they have the perfect outlets to reach their key customers. Wong reported that during their six months of being in business, they have revenues in the six figures with no advertising spending whatsoever.

It seems that advertising wasn’t needed since they were getting so much press coverage. Blank Label has been featured in top publications including Fast Company, BusinessWeek, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Forbes and more.

Customers rave left and right about the idea that they can create their own custom shirt, and are impressed that a clothing company really cares about them and their needs. Wong told [me], “Since co-creation gives them full say in the final product they are purchasing, they get super excited and feel a sense of loyalty to us as a business and to their product which they designed themselves.”

While many do rave, others are still scratching their heads about this idea. “Some find co-creation something hard to grasp at first because it’s so different from the conventional way of purchasing goods” he explained.

Blank Label is not alone in the push to drive consumer goods to co-creation. Companies including Chocri, a custom chocolate company, Gemvara, whom I wrote about a few weeks ago, MixMyGranola, a custom granola company, and GemKitty, a co-created jewelry provider, are making strides in this industry as well.

While many companies may be subservient and just want themselves to succeed, Wong’s desire is for more companies to understand co-creation to satisfy consumer needs. As I am a huge proponent of satisfying customer needs and providing an excellent customer experience, I was largely interested in this.

Wong hopes that Blank Label will emerge as a hub for everything co-created since they are supporting other co-creation companies as well. Wong told [me] that he likes to share with his customers and community what other co-creation entrepreneurs are doing in order to push the concept along. Many are realizing that customers are hungry for more personalized products that are made specifically for them.

“In fact, while other companies were calling themselves mass-customization businesses, we rejected that old-world term and re-created it as co-creation because for one, it was a snappier term, two, it wasn’t an oxymoron, and three, it was new and interesting to consumers.”

Wong considers themselves, as humbly as possible, market leaders in the co-creation movement. They were one of the first, and still one of the few, who understand customer needs when it comes to clothing. They truly get their consumers and now many consumers understand them.

Although I will never be buying from Blank Label, I would definitely suggest this to any guy looking for that perfect dress shirt. They will certainly be in good hands with a team that understands their needs and seeks to help them fulfill them.

To find out more about Blank Label, visit their website, check out their blog, become a fan on Facebook and follow them onTwitter. You will see on their social sites that they are making huge strides and connecting with many customers via social sharing.

[I'm] quite impressed with what Blank Label has accomplished during its first six months in business and look forward to seeing what the next six months will bring.

Does co-creation interest you? Would you buy from them or have you already?

Note: This post was originally written by me for BostInnovation last week.

Sep
08

20 Effective Way to Increase Your Online Influence

Remember what it was like the first day of high school? You nervously walk to the bus stop, wondering who else is going to be there. Once on the bus, you cautiously look around at all the new faces, seeing if you know any and looking at others you don’t. During your first period class, you looked around to find some friends you knew, but most you didn’t know. It probably took weeks if not months to build up a good group of friends and influence within the school ecosystem.

Much like you built up your reputation in school, creating an online presence is just as valuable, if not more. Creating an online influence for yourself can help you gain valuable connections, teach others (and learn from them too), develop power of persuasion, and become regarded as a thought leader.

If you are in the marketing industry, you may idolize people like Chris Brogan and David Meerman Scott for their high influence, visibility and knowledge. I, like many of you, have sat down wondering how to become like them.

Here are 20 key tips to follow to build your online influence:

1. Don’t talk about your service or product. Instead, talk about customer problems and needs and develop meaningful content around those.

2. Be transparent. You will become more credible and trustworthy if you are honest online.

3. Follow great people.

4. Online to offline. Make connections online and continue the relationships offline at events or meet ups.

5. Start conversations with others. If someone shares your article on social media, writes about your product, criticizes you, or asks you a question, answer. That is key to building relationships.

6. Be early in the news cycle so you share information that people are looking for and haven’t seen anywhere else. If you are able to write about or share breaking news, people will come to you more for industry leading breakthroughs.

7. Share good content consistently. When people come to expect you to share and post content regularly, and it is good content, they will keep coming back to you.

8. Let your passion shine. The more devotion and passion you show in your work, the more others will see it and believe it. This will bring them into your content and will entice them to engage with you.

9. Talk about others. If you can praise others, discuss great companies, review an outstanding product/service, etc. people will recognize that, appreciate it, and perhaps return the favor.

10. Repeat your tweets. I will always remember what Guy Kawasaki said about retweets: It is a good practice to RT an article about four times over the course of a day for it to get noticed and shared.

11. Understand your audience and build content around that. If you are a lawn mowing manufacturer and know your audience is interested in lawn care, write about that.

12. Don’t try to be all things to everyone. Instead, master one niche. It is best to focus in on one particular topic (for me it is internet marketing) and share your expertise. Don’t try to write about five different topics; people will get confused about what you stand for if you do this.

13. Be active on other people’s communities. If you want to be seen and noticed, you have to go find other people, not hope that they will come to you. If your audience hangs out on a niche social network site, get involved there and in turn they may come into your community if you build effective relationships on their site first.

14. Listen, then engage. If there is a breaking news story in your industry, a massive online attack on your brand, or a common theme to your listeners’ questions/comments, understand them and then engage.

15. Network with other influencers. Once you have become influential in some degree, begin speaking with others that are already there.

16. Share your ideas. Long gone are the days where we secretly held in every trade secret. Today, it is best to share your knowledge and help everyone around you grow and improve. If you help your industry as a whole improve, then you are in turn helping yourself and your business.

17. Make friends. The more you can enhance a friendship online (and continue it offline) the better you will fare online. If you appear to just be networking for the sake of getting fans and retweets, people will quickly pick up on that and be turned off. However, if you are genuine and building friendships, people will like you and want to talk to you.

18. Give more than you get. The more you can share news and expertise, the better. If you can help your audience, they will appreciate that and that appreciation can go miles towards building your online influence.

19. Use social media to compliment existing message channels. Just because social media is hot now doesn’t mean you should abandon your traditional ways of reaching others. If you are used to interacting with your audience via forums, email, podcasts and events, keep doing those. You can use social media to continue those relationship and gain new ones.

20. Make something worth talking about. David Meerman Scott calls this a ‘worldwide rave.’ If you can create novel, interesting content, others will talk about it and share. If you are simply reposting content that others already put out, you won’t attract many viewers.

What are some ways that you have built your online influence? Have you implemented any of the above 20 methods? If so, which worked best/worst for your or your company?


Sep
07

David Meerman Scott Speaks on New Rules of Marketing and Branding

david meerman scott

The initial rules of marketing and advertising were to interrupt people in order to sell them a product or service, costing businesses millions of dollars from their budgets each year. The rules of marketing and advertising have changed dramatically. Now, buyers are finding the answers to their problems online via blogs, social media, websites and forums.

This week, [I] had the chance to interview David Meerman Scott, a leader at the forefront of Internet marketing and PR, about how he is assisting and creating this shift. He also dives into creating new marketing campaigns for startups in the Boston area, and let’s [me] in on his Grateful Dead fascination.

As you may know, Scott currently resides around Boston, but is known worldwide for his ideas that are scripted in his two books, The New Rules of Marketing and PR and World Wide Rave.

New Rules is currently published in 24 different languages, and for good reason. Not only does Scott speak throughout the United States on new marketing, but all over the world. Scott also spent a majority of his 25-year marketing career overseas. He was the Asia Marketing Director for Knight-Ridder and afterwards was based for almost ten years in Tokyo and then Hong Kong.

No boundaries or borders have or will stop Scott from carrying out his passion and message. His twenty-five dedicated years to the marketing industry illustrates this.

Out of all the places in the world, Scott has now settled in Boston. I couldn’t help but ask why he chose to reside here of all places. He told me, “While Madison Avenue in NYC is the center of offline marketing, Boston is the center of new (web based) marketing with all the plugged in people and companies located here in the Boston area. When you attend local events such as tweetups, you’re not just meeting the top people in Boston, you’re meeting some of the most influential new marketers in the world.”

Rightly so, as Boston has been named as the world’s marketing and social media hub, and just yesterday we announced that Boston is still on top as the #1 Global Innovation Economy.

Since most are already familiar with Scott’s widely documented and agreed upon marketing theories, [I] decided to instead ask him how to create a successful marketing campaign for a start up company around the Boston area based on successful and failed campaigns that he has seen.

“[The] main thing is to NOT focus on your company’s products and services. (Nobody cares about your products except for you and others in your company),” Scott told us. This is why it is highly advised to never self-promote your brand on social media or blogs because no one wants to read about you; they want to read about their problems and how they can be solved.

“Most of the implementation challenges people tell me about involve the shift from marketing products and services to the much more effective approach of focusing on a buyer persona and creating information that helps solve problems for buyers,” continued Scott. I learned of this exact concept while in college, as I was assigned to read his book New Rules of Marketing and PR for one of my courses. This was one of the most resonating points from his book at the time.

“A secondary challenge is to get marketers away from a reliance on offline marketing techniques and [get] started with online initiatives.” Companies that have used traditional advertising and marketing find it very difficult to let go of offline activities and switch to a more uncontrollable online marketing strategy.

To alleviate some of their concerns, Scott has created a Marketing Strategy Template which you can access here. This is a simple two-page plan to help companies, “shift out of the comfort zone of preaching about products and services and advertising features and benefits.”

Parallel with corporate online marketing is Scott’s strong belief in personal branding. You will see his personal brand laid out very well on his website, blog, and Twitter page. Scott took the time to explain the difference between corporate and personal branding from his perspective.

“Well, all marketing comes down to people working with people. So all branding, at itsessence, is personal branding. Companies like Toyota and BP get in trouble because they develop these big corporate brands but when you look closely in a time of crisis, it falls apart because nobody knows or can engage with the people.” We saw this all too well during BP’s crisis management efforts that failed miserably for awhile.

Before [I] ended [my] interview with Scott, [I] had to ask about his passion for the Grateful Dead since he and Brian Halligan of Hubspot wrote their new book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.”

Aside from being an avid fan, Scott found himself, “amazed that the band could attract such a huge following. When I really thought about it, I realized it was because of their marketing. So did my friend Brian Halligan who is CEO of HubSpot. So we decided to write a book about it.”

While Scott is a local resident to Boston, he is making his own worldwide rave for new marketing concepts. I, and probably many of you as well, have emulated many of his strategies both personally and at our jobs to learn the new ways of marketing and PR.

To keep up to date with David Meerman Scott, I highly recommend checking out his website, reading his blog, attending some of his speaking engagements, and following him on Twitter. You will be surprised how much you will learn from him very quickly.

Note about Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: “In this spirit, Brian and I are donating 25 percent of the royalties from our book to the Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to support further study of the Grateful Dead.”

I originally wrote this article for BostInnovation under the New Marketing Column, as I am their New Marketing writer.

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