Letting a 16 year old do your online marketing

Letting a 16 year old do your online marketing

 

As companies feel more pressure to enhance their online presence, marketing teams feel stretched thinner and thinner. The 'new media' paradigms of Web 2.0 and social media, demand more attention and of course - more time. Where can this come from? What needs to give in the marketing priorities? Who needs new focus?

Welcome your boss's nephew - a precocious, grinning 16 year old. To the maturing business world, the challenges of Web 2.0 seem insurmountable on the one hand and are perceived as a waste of valuable manpower on the hand. So why not leave your online marketing strategy to a 16 year old.

There is no doubt that today's generation of adolescents can slip behind a computer like a glove. They can surf faster than their parents, look up information in clever ways, and get onto sites you wouldn't expect. Yet should this precociousness dictate your online marketing strategy.

Just past the year 2000, the corporate attitude to websites began to change. Whereas the new website phenomena seemed like a cute fad whose businss value was unrecognized, company directors demanded of their manager to 'have a website'. This directive in turn was dumped on the secretary, to 'put something together'. Little strategy was put into motion.

- No consideration of measuring site traffic was considered
- No mechanism for gaining subscribers or sign-ins was enabled.
- Contact information was buried
- Product information was non-descript

Yet the directive was fulfilled and a website existed.

Today's WikiPedia, Facebook, YouTube and most of all Twitter are gaining the same fascination by a corporate directors. The old ring of that simple directive can be heard.

They demand of their managers
- to 'have a place on Wikipedia'
- to 'get on Facebook'
- to 'put something on YouTube'
- to 'use that Twitter thing'

Who can the experienced marketing managers turn to?
- Excel spreadsheet specialists?
- Experienced trade show organizers?
- Brilliant marketing writers?

How about a 16 year old.
Teenagers today know how to take video clips of their friends and have it on YouTube the same day. They know how to build friend following on Facebook of hundreds, updating other kids hundreds of miles away about what they did over the weekend. Kids know how to follow Miley Cyrus on Twitter and retweet links to new videos.

It can be said that the new marketer has 'Learned Everything you need to Know in High School.'

Despite this proven skill set, and access to online Internet tools, this adroitness does not equal marketing.

The same rules and approaches of Marketing 101 apply in the world of Web 2.0. Concepts like the lead funnel, measuring indexes, planning next steps, and analyzing data for making clear marketing decisions are still the rule and not the exception.

Sure today's 16 year olds are good at getting something on YouTube faster, but what value is this piece of media. What kind of traffic will it drive? Does it include an action item? Will it be attracting the 'right' traffic?

Yes the boss's nephew can Tweet and Retweet on Twitter, showing the latest Brittny Spears video, but can he put together a Twitter strategy? How will he build a solid set of followers? Has he vetted the followers for your business area? How does he interact with customers on Twitter or has he just been pushed into the Twitter arena to tweet up like a robot, saying a bunch of canned statements that have been created.

A 16 year old's competence in the Web 2.0 world can be very useful, but should not be solely relied upon. If you have 15 videos to add to YouTube, give them to a 16 year old, write the copy to go along with them, set the keywords that you need to 'tag' the videos with, and then let the 16 year old upload these and fill in the information in record time.

For Twitter, once you have built up a strong following of at least a 1000 followers, you can have the 16 year old set up pre-written scheduled Tweets in HootSuite. These Tweets should be carefully crafted to have keywords, hashtags, and most importantly links to your site. Your 16 year old go through the grind of scheduling this list of Tweets like a radio station schedules music for the day, carefully giving exposure to the same Tweets in the morning and the evening so that your followers in both Europe and North America can see them.

Don't under estimate the abilities of our 16 year olds. But don't throw all your online marketing strategy onto their shoulders.

Getting Serious about Twitter

Getting Serious about Twitter

 

So your CEO told you that he wants to 'see the company on Twitter.' What's the next step? What to do? How can this fit into the overwhelming marketing schedule?

To the uninitiated, Twitter sounds like a black hole of marketing bandwidth, sucking up every last drop of time, and forcing you into doing tons of overtime on a global salary. The next steps might look like
- signing up for Twitter and getting the closest username to your company name
- Tweeting a bit for a couple of days, until it feels useless

Then the effort is abandoned, until the CEO comes back with folded arms, asking 'Well, are we on Twitter?'

At this point, this can mean trying to connive a fellow marketer to step into the saddle and start moving your Twitter. An effort equally lost after just a few days.

Twitter does not have to be as much of a time drain as feared if executed properly.

The main elements that are required for moving forward with Twitter are 1) focus and 2) commitment.

Focus
Taking strides to 'get onto Twitter' and make progress means being focused. This means being focused about the goals (acquiring a targetted follower base), staying on course for tweeting about your niche, and maintaining regular exposure in the Twitter stream.

One of the hardest concepts in 'staying focused' is idea of getting started in Twitter mainly by retweeting other people's information - primarily not even about your company or product. How does that work?

When you start in Twitter everything is set to zero, so the main focus initially is building the follower base. By simply tweeting continuously, you are 'Tweeting to an empty house.' No followers. No one hears your tweets.

They say you need to be marketing other people nine times more then you're marketing yourself. Still by being focused on the subjects that are Retweeted, that these topics remain 'in the same ecosystem' as your company, then you are attracting the right kind of people that will also be interested in Tweets about company and product. This is the path of building trust and credibility, and ultimately - a following.

Commitment
If I had a dollar for everyone that started Twitter and quit within a week, well....
The partner to focus is commitment. This doesn't mean abandoning all other marketing projects and sitting at Twitter all day. You can limit your main Twitter time to one morning a week. At this time, when using a Twitter client like HootSuite, you can schedule a set of repeating Tweets for mornings and evenings. YOu can collect relevant Tweets about your subject using tools like SocialOOmph that will pipe you emails about Tweets using designated keywords.

Results
Success and results on Twitter don't come overnight and not even in a week. However, if you persevere and stay on target your Twitter reputation will grow, and within a few months you will start to see the results that the CEO asked about.

How to pick a Twitter username

How to pick a Twitter username

 

Setting a 'username' in Twitter requires taking into consideration a number of issues.

First how are you recognized?
In Twitter, most of the time your followers will see you flying by in the Twitter stream they are following. That means they will see:
- your Avatar image
- your name
- your Tweet post

So bearing this in mind, in considering your username, you can be creative and select something that will COMPLEMENT your Avatar image, rather than repeat it.

For instance your company logo can be in your branded colors and serve as your Avatar, and a descriptive word can be your username.

Second, what impression do you make
The next line of engagement on Twitter is followers visiting your full Twitter page.
There your page is very identifiable and fully branded
- use a custom background image featuring product imagery, useful link information, and at a glance product info
- Fill in the bio section of your profile, using prime keywords
- show your URL

So rather than just picking your company name as your Twitter 'handle', pick a popular keyword for your market to conquer that area. For instance, if a computer manufacturer chose a Twitter name like fastcomputer, rather than Compaq, it could further their brand perception.

Hello! Can you hear me?

Hello! Can you hear me?

 

More and more people and entrepreneurs are getting into social media as a marketing venue. I am reminded of a few year ago (and even today) where everybody said, 'I need a website.'

As then, not many people knew what to do with their website. They built or paid a lot of money for someone to build it, and then it sat there. The sprightly innovators didn't know how to update the website with timely information, and didn't want to toss more money into their pricey investment. They got frustrated that they didn't see their website in Google. They didn't understand what people would look for in search that was relevant to their web's main content.

So the lonely little website sat out there in cyberspace screaming for someone to notice. Maybe in an email signature some friends would find the little site.

Then the frustration, consternation, anger and blame would descend. 'What did I waste all that money on a website? Nobody ever comes to the site! I don't get any customers!'

Now I see the same happening with Social Media for business. New ventures are jumping into Twitter, like getting behind the wheel of a car without a license. From day 1, they are Tweeting away about new offers, specials and website updates, even when they only have less than 20 followers (half of which are spammers or porn).

I hate to say it, but nobody is listening.

Social Media, like websites and webmarketing is a new dimension of marketing. Once marketing was linear, where you put an ad in a magazine, billboard, radio, or TV and people saw it. Even hanging a sign on a telephone pole for a garage sale was more certain than having a website that had not been web optimized or marketed.

Effective use of social media for marketing requires strategy, homework and a lot of cultivation.

Starting a blog

Starting a blog

 

As a marketeer, I can advise, urge, plead, and suggest to keep a blog along with other communication channels. However, when it comes to following my advice, I am just as reluctant. I suppose I've thought about maintaining a blog for several years. In my head, the blog has been updated regularly, and my insights have been developed and recorded.

Now I am really applying myself. An article that inspired me from a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, was about Dave Balter from Bzzagent (www.bzzagent.com) . His take on the corporate blog was about transparency - warts and all - right out there for everyone to see. If someone says something bad about him, then rather than ignore it, he shares it. "Hey you know what he said about me, hmmm, maybe he's got something."

The most insightful remark he made was about what to write. "But my view on blogging is if the writer is getting the chills - hovering over the mouse and thinking, 'Should I really send this?' - then it is probably going to be a good post."

So here it goes.