Keeping up with the need for generating fresh content on social media can be overwhelming.
“Medtronic Diabetes, which develops and sells diabetes management products, has been soliciting user-generated content since 2012. Their Share Your Story Facebook app has been so successful that it is driving a 2-to-1 return on investment (ROI) for their entire social media program.”
Click here to see 6 great ideas for allowing your fans to be a part of the process and increasing your ROI in the process.
Fascinating study about the power of allowing your customers the option to “do nothing”.
“For nearly seventy years scientists who study the persuasion process have consistently revealed a simple, yet remarkable truth; when it comes to effectively influencing others, small changes can make a big difference.”
It’s counter-intuitive on one level because wouldn’t giving people option to “do nothing” reduce the number of people who choose to do something?
But it makes perfect sense if you consider the impact of feeling in control when you are doing a complicated task. In our high pressure, hyper-choice society we often feel overwhelmed and “pushed” to make a decision. Choosing freely with no pressure or obligation can actually increase our willingness to follow through because we feel like since we made the choice to act, it must have been a logical choice. As a result, we are more likely to persist when things get rough.
Click here for the full article.
How does this apply to the offers you make in your marketing? Tell us your story in the comment section.
Or not. It’s entirely up to you.
While researching Hyper-Local Marketing, one of our team members shared this article with me from October of last year 2011 (forever ago in online marketing time).
The focus of the article was on geo-targeting mobile devices for advertisements. One statistic jumped off the screen at me that has application to upgrading your current website to be “mobile friendly”:
“By 2015, more people are expected to access the Internet through mobile devices than through the wired Internet.”
If this is true, and my experience and intuition confirm it, then 2014 is the year of the mobile friendly upgrade for every organization that wants to make the Internet a serious part of their business in 2015.
Can you really afford to deliver a bad experience to more than half of the people who come to your website in 2015?
Marketers make content distinctions based on how the media is paid for (or not paid for), but the author of the article makes an important point about what marketers should really focus on.
“To an audience, all media is earned because attention is not free.”
For the rest of this excellent article click here.
How are you using creativity in your marketing to earn the attention of your audience?
Social Media is FREE and EASY…NOT!
If someone tells you marketing isn’t hard, they are either trying to sell you something or they are ignorant. Like any other valuable skill, the art and science of getting the right message in front of the right people is hard.
It’s simple math. With only so much time in a day, your target audience can only pay attention to so many messages. Social Media opens up a new (and very popular) low-cost channel to get your message to the right people, but there are logical rules designed to screen out content people don’t want to see.
“Don’t sell to them. Instead entertain them, tell them a story, give them something to share, and help them along the way. When it comes time for them to purchase, your company will likely be top of mind. “
Learning about how FB uses Edgerank to keep messages OUT of people’s feed means you can also learn how to get messages IN peoples feeds. You can complain about how hard it is, or learn how to use the rules to your competitive advantage. This article is a good starting point.
Click here for the full article.
How are you engaging (and thereby increasing) your FB audience by entertaining them?
Live Mercury has been responding to the needs of our clients and creating solutions that allow them to get started on Social Media cost-effectively. It has been an interesting process as we “…figure out what an audience expects, and then be that thing…”
Tom Webster, a specialist in consumer behavior, shares these following words for content marketers trying to tackle a strategic problem.
“…the question of why people do or do not do anything (from buying your product to reading your content) is the central existential question upon which any communications or content strategy should be based.”
The full article has some great steps on a process to get content marketers to better understand their customers. It is important to know what questions to ask (and NOT ask) as you prepare your content strategy.
My friend, Laura Novakowski, recently wrote on 720thinking.com about how our subconscious beliefs may be driving us to take the same action over and over again, yet expect different, better results.
While she is undoubtedly correct, I have a different, supplementary take.
Are you wasting your best marketing asset by not giving your most satisfied customers the tools and motivation to share their enthusiasm online?
Check out this great article by Janessa Mangone. She points out that,
“Many retailers seem to neglect the importance of making it easy for customers to share.”
Read the whole article here.
How do you make it easy for your “brand advocates” to share?
The hard truth in marketing is that people don’t care about your product or service.
THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT THEMSELVES.
That’s not a complaint or a moral judgement. It’s reality.
“Let’s face it: Consumers don’t have any idea they are part of a ‘campaign’ when they’re interacting with your brand’s digital marketing creative.
They fluidly move between devices, channels, and screens and expect that their experience should be seamless, engaging, and fun. At every moment, any one person is taking in several bits of information and having to assess where they should pay attention. As a marketer, it becomes challenging to break through, make and impact, resonate, and inspire a customer to give you their attention.”
Click here for some examples of great marketing.
Good marketing embraces this truth and figures out how to let your target market see how your product or service will make their lives better. Great marketing accomplished this objective in a really entertaining way that leaves them wanting more.
Randy Milanovic over at Social Media Today makes a nice analogy between remodeling a house and rebuilding a website.
“If you’ve ever been through that process, then you already know it doesn’t happen with the speed you see on TV. Instead, it involves assessing what you have to work with, keeping an eye open for hidden technical challenges, refining design or structural elements, and working away at it until you have something you can live with, or in.”
For the rest of the story, click here.