Steve Jay's Digital Marketing Blog

Really Simple Syndication explained really simply

Found this on Ian Delaney's Twopointouch Blog, which might be useful for the uninitiated...

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Chinwag PR Unspun

I attended the Chinwag PR Unspun event in London on Thursday, but haven't been able to blog about it as I've been in Wales filming some more podcasts. The event was exploring how the PR industry was adapting now that social media was going mainstream. On the panel  was Neville Hobson - VP, of Crayon, Mark Rogers - Founder and CEO of Market Sentinel, Jacqui White - Online Communications Director, Edelman, and Stephanie Bonnet - Digital Media Champion from Burson-Marsteller.

The event had moments of sparkyness particularly from Neville & Mark, with lots of conversation about Twitter & Second Life, my key take-outs were;

• Global brands -  you need to remember that not all blogs are in English and beware Technorati which does have an English speaking skew

• Used correctly organisations can get more bang for their bucks in terms of reach & engagement from social media than traditional media

• Be aware of your brands weaknesses as well as strengths. I guess understand clearly what your brands weak spots are and mitigate them through this media. Or at least have a strategy ready when all hell breaks loose

• The reign of celebrity endorsement is over. consumers want to see real people who look like them advocating products.We are entering a new era of honest

• The humble press release will no-longer be a static document confined to a file on the day it was released. But a 'live' piece of content that is portable and editable.

Good to see so many people from the PR community and all at very different levels of comfort and understanding. From a client perspective I would make one observation/plea of the PR community. Social Media is about communication not technology. Therefore it's your job as PR professionals to understand this space and pass on your advice to your clients. Whether this is a passing phenomenon or not......I suspect not by the way.

Quote of the night, which resonated with me as I did the exact same thing!,  was I believe from Mark who said, "I read the Cluetrain Manefesto and I believed it". I think I should get some T-Shirts made.

Flickr Photo's can be found here. Looking forward to the next event.

Call out the instigator, coz there's something in the air

Jeremiah Owyang has posted a video interview with the fantastic Charlene Li, Forresters Social Media guru.

The interview with Jennifer Jones from Podtech touches on some of the issues from my previous post.

Charlene describes a near future where social media will be 'like air', i.e. all pervasive. Websites that do not have aspects of social media will seem dated and flat.

Good to see & hear Charlene rather than just reading the words. Enjoy.

Why should marketers embrace social media as a media channel?

Mitch Joel from Twist Image & the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast put out a post here about how Digital Marketers are getting their heads around social media, and there are several thoughts here I would like to expand on from a client side point of view.

The biggest challenge I faced when walking the two hundred and fifty online marketers through my Six Pixels of Separation presentation was how to build community and content around a working model that is strictly focused on conversion.

I know how you must have felt. It's a tough conversation justifying additional marketing spend for activity that is not as accountable (yet) as Pay-Per-Click. Online marketing has fought hard to earn it's reputation as a 'cost effective' acquisition channel, and for some companies that can become a drug that's hard to kick.

I see parallels between social media and TV Brand advertising. The effects of TV Brand Advertising is difficult to measure accurately, but there is an over-riding belief that it's is the right thing to do for the following reasons;

• It's gives the advertiser reach to a broad audience
• It can communicate quickly who you are and what your values are
• It casts a positive 'halo' effect over direct response channels that improves response rates

Social Media can also provide these three things, but the real opportunity is in what else it can add on top, namely;

• Cost Effectiveness - It doesn't cost a million pounds to enter a conversation online. It could. But it doesn't have to
• Accountability - tracking tools and analytics will continue to improve in this space giving Marketers an unprecedented amount of useful data
• ....and most importantly communication with social media is a conversation, therefore by it's very nature it's two way. This is the real opportunity

Marketers are increasingly understanding both what conversations that are relevant to them, and how they should take part in a credible way. The 'dad on the dance floor' gaffs of brands who got it wrong should become fewer and fewer.

Drawing similarities between the online & offline world, like the example above, can help more traditional marketeers see through the hype and identify the opportunities.

By the end of 2007 I hope there are some great examples for us to talk about.

The Rise & Rise of Twitter

The blogoshpere seems to have been electric with talk of Twitter over the last two months.

The service, best described as a microblogging tool, has it's fair share of devoted fans & loathers. I'm somewhere in the middle at the moment but I can appreciate it's addictive nature.

What I find astounding is the pace that Twitter has developed since January. The Technorati graph below shows the exponential rise in the number of times that Twitter has been searched.

Posts that contain Twitter per day for the last 180 days.

In just six weeks interest as gone off the scale & thousands have signed-up. A business model has been developed on the platform where people are being paid to 'tweat' about products (which turned out to be an April Fool!) & Firefox extensions and add-ons have been devised, build & downloaded. All in a matter of weeks.

I cannot think of another example where so much evolution has taken place in a short period of time. I  use the word evolution rather than progress as Twitter is still defining itself as users figure out what to use it for.

Twitter must claim some sort of prize for the ground that it's been covered in such a short space of time. What must it be like working at Twitter right now? There must be a Harvard Business Review case study in the making.

At this rate they will be acquired by Google by Mayday.

Digital Marketing & traditional Marketing - How do I get the best of both worlds?

How do I organise my marketing department in the wake of the digital revolution?

This question is increasingly being asked in the client side world. Over the last eight years I have seen the online marketing evolve, or snowball, through the following stages;

The handful of pseudo techno geeks playing at building websites in the corner of the office

The ‘smart’ high-flyers of the organisation who joined the pseudo techno geeks to try out some ‘new business models’ with a newly acquired bucketful of cash

The bruised and battered eCommerce people who emerged from the dot.com boom licking their wounds, but still believed that what they were doing was valid and vital to the future of the organisation they were working for

The digital specialists who grew from the eCommerce people and began to demonstrate results in their medium through the application of common sense, analytics and the sheer accountability that’s built into the channel

The Digital Marketers who budgets are approaching parity to offline channels and who are driving up to 70% of the new business in some bricks & clicks business

 

In most industries the growth and importance of Digital Marketing is not up for question. The change is no longer something ethereal that will happen ‘in a few years’, it’s here. Right now.

Why then does it feel that traditional businesses are not tackling this issues head on? To me there are some things that are fundamentally broken, that are preventing businesses from evolving further, and they are ;
 

• The Digital Marketers, despite their successes, are still metaphorically sitting in the corner of the office.
• People  working in offline roles understand the shift, but don’t seem to be interested in learning new skills and making the transition
• Senior management have gaps in their knowledge about strategic opportunities online and there is no program in place to help them bridge the gap
• In many cases front-line staff know less about their online proposition than the customer they’re talking to.

 How do companies get past this? What is it we have to do to get out of this trough an up the other side? 

I love new media. I love the fact that we are so excited about the opportunities open to us at the moment. We are genuinely in the middle of a revolution, and it’s very cool. But we have to realise that to some extent we are in an echo chamber. Soon we will have to work out how we bring our offline colleagues into the conversation.

This is not a issue pertaining only to clients. I think that many traditional agencies are suffering from the same problem, how do they in corporate their digital offshoot seamlessly in to the rest of the company? In a way that comes across as integrated to the client?

Interestingly I was talking to the Strategy Director of my online media agency, and he felt there is an inverse corollary here to some issues experienced by Digital Agencies. i.e. they often lack some of the skills of traditional agencies particularly around media planning, client management & the ability to demonstrate skill in aspects of offline business and how it complements digital.

I really feel that the businesses that will win in this area are the ones who learn how to cement these two worlds together. So that the combined skills in both areas become the ‘normal’ way of doing business, and not exclusive to the geeks sitting in the corner.

Do I have my early adopter glasses on, or should I wait for everyone to catch up? This is a massive issue and I would appreciate your thoughts?

En Garde

I love this, a great piece of creative from Club Internet, a French broadband & phone company.