Don’t Make Me Like You

Posted on July 12, 2011May 5, 2015 by MD

Image by striatic via Flickr

Facebook is a large part of many marketing campaigns which truly is no surprise. People who are on Facebook are engaged and like to interact with friends, family and even brands. However, while as a marketer I understand the marketing tactics involved such as using the Like as a gatekeeper, as a user I truly detest it. A feeling I am not alone in.

I don’t want everything linked to my Facebook account. No, I don’t want to tell my friends. No, I don’t want you sending me status updates and posting on my wall. I use Facebook how I want to use it. Stop trying to force me to use it your way.

A Like is only as valuable as the person behind it. If you make me Like you to enter your contest or view your conference agenda, I can just as easily unlike you and even block you once I’ve gotten the information I want. What value is there in that? When you force a Like, it’s like having your mother tell you you can’t go play with your friends until your chores are done. You didn’t like it as a kid and you certainly don’t like it now.

Now, I’m not saying don’t lock content behind a Like, just give me more value for the transaction and quit forcing it. If I want to connect with you, I will be happy to do it but on my terms.

The same goes for Twitter, Google+ (once brands become more prominent), or one of the other smaller social sites or sites that just don’t exist yet. Anytime you try to force your customer’s to behave how you want them to, you’re potentially losing that customer. Unfortunately for you, you won’t know how valuable they were or weren’t until they’re gone.

Is Social Media Hurting Your Marketing Efforts?

Posted on April 27, 2011May 5, 2015 by MD

Just like a shiny new toy, social media marketing is the hot new thing. But as I wrote about in Is Social Media Right for Your Business?, it isn’t for everyone and can actually do more harm than good.

Last month I received this email:

The email is nice and clean and with a direct call to action; get involved with their social media profiles. Imagine my surprise when I clicked through and found this:

Their Facebook page at least has some current content, but not much and huge timeline gaps where nothing is posted.

What’s the big deal, right? If you don’t have anything to post, it’s better to not post anything, right?

I disagree. Social media is not a part time thing. If you’re not truly interacting and providing new and relevant content you’re either forgotten or seen as noise and ignored.

Looking at that twitter page, what incentive do I have to follow you? And if I did out of loyalty to the brand, I will quickly forget to look for anything from you because you’re not committed to it and actively interacting. Now, if you finally do get your act together and start getting involved, I’m probably not going to notice because I’ve already forgotten about you.

Talk about a lost opportunity huh?

Anti-Networking

Posted on June 6, 2010May 5, 2015 by MD

: Image by ExecGifts via Flickr

Recently I went to a tweetup and caught up with some friends as well as met a lot of new people. As is often the case at tweetups, you have two distinct groups. I think of one as the friendlies, and the other as the card exchangers. Both are about networking, but their approach is completely different.

As you might expect card exchangers are more interested in themselves and giving as many people their business cards as possible. They’re more interested in what they want to tell you than you. They chat people up just long enough to find out your name, maybe what you do, before they launch into their spiel, possibly hand you their card and move on to their next victim.

Friendlies are also interested in meeting many new people and catching up with friends, however, the biggest difference is while they’re interested in what you might be able to do for them and them for you, their biggest interest is the person in front of them. They’ll do their fair share of talking, but they also do a lot of listening and question asking.

Now, it’s been a few days… guess who stands out in your memory? Who are you most likely to do business with?

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What Opportunities are You Overlooking?

Posted on April 13, 2010May 5, 2015 by MD

Twitter is often cited as a great new marketing tool that truly brings one-to-one marketing to the forefront.

But truly, what good is this tool if you don’t really use it?

A few months ago I was looking into getting a new cellular phone, and as there were so many fantastic new options, I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to get. Knowing what a fantastic resource Twitter can be, I asked my network what phones they had and what they liked or disliked about them. As I already have two iPods, my only requirement was no iPhones.

As expected, I got lots of terrific feedback from a wide variety of people. But guess who I didn’t hear a word from? A single person in the mobile industry.

This would have been a great opportunity for Palm and Sprint to jump into the conversation if not to put their two cents in, than to thank their customers who were speaking so highly of their products. Or for T-Mobile to jump in to keep me as a customer, or Verizon to try and steal me away as I was no longer under contract.

Plenty of opportunities presented themselves all the way from the store level to the mobile brand to the cellular carrier, but not a single person took advantage of them. Needless to say after three days of conversations on Twitter, I made my choice which I’m happy with.

Recently I was surprised to actually have a company do on Twitter exactly what too few companies take the time to do.

The Toronto Rock saw my tweet regarding a specific product of theirs I thought I was out of luck on and responded with a direct link to it on their website.

(Well, at least the closest thing to it as the specific item I was lamenting was a game worn jersey auctioned off for charity.)

The result? They made a sale.

It doesn’t matter how niche or mainstream your product is, plenty of opportunities exist if you’re genuinely willing to take the time to not only search them out, but respond to them individually in a way that shows you actually are paying attention and not just searching specific keywords regardless of context.

Think You Can Automate Your Marketing?

Posted on March 3, 2010May 5, 2015 by MD

With the growth of social media, many companies want to get involved, but don’t really want to divert resources to these untested areas. Often, companies set them up and forget about it, or they try to keep it active by passively automating it. After all, why should you pay for someone to manage your social media when you can automate it?

I need to point out that I don’t believe this Twitter page is associated with the Levi’s brand as they list their twitter account as Levisguy on their home page, however, it is associating itself with the Levi’s brand and regardless of its legitimacy, provides an effective example.

Analyzing Yahoo’s Know Your Mojo

Posted on August 14, 2009May 5, 2015 by MD

To promote their new homepage, Yahoo has released a fun little flash site that analyzes your public tweets and tells you what kind of tweeter you are. Whether or not it’s accurate it is up to debate, but it is some simple fun. You can check it out here.

While this has the potential to go viral, the bigger question remains….is it effective?

First up is the home page:

I think Yahoo did a good job with the landing page. It’s not overly cluttered with graphics or text and is very easy to figure out what to do. Plus it’s simple. You enter your user name and click the “Gimme Mojo”. They don’t require you to register, nor that you have a Yahoo account to use it. This is good because more people will play with it and tell their friends because there is a very low involvement factor.

I also like how they’ve incorporated the Yahoo purple, and have the Yahoo name twice, one in conjunction with advertising the new Yahoo home page. As a user, I appreciate how unobtrusive their logos are, however, the page is definitely designed so that your attention is immediately drawn to the center making it very easy to overlook Yahoo’s involvement completely.

Next we’ll look at the results page:

Again, we have the Yahoo purple and the same size & placement for the logos as on the home page. On the left, you get a cute description of your tweeting style. As you can see, I’m a Name Dropper. On the right side, Yahoo offers suggestions for websites you can add to their new home page that might suit your mojo style. Is this effective? I think it could be very hit or miss. If their suggestions really are a good fit for you, then there’s a good chance you’ll check out their new homepage. If not, you may be less likely. However, here, I know I am already slightly biased. I might be in the minority, but I don’t use MSN, Yahoo or Google as an all encompassing home page. I would be very interested ot hear what others think on this.

The Share Mojo button is nicely prominent, however, in my opinion, should have been larger than the try another username button. When you click on it, this is what you get:

Yahoo makes it very easy for people to share this on either Twitter or Facebook with the message short and to the point with a personalized bit.ly link. I especially like the bit.ly link. Not only are they tracking the traffic directly from it, they’re making it possible for others to go to the bit.ly site and see how much it’s been clicked on. (As of this post, it was currently at 15,117 Total Clicks, mostly from the U.S.) You can also see who’s tweeting about it using the link. Want to check out the stats? Click here or put http://bit.ly/knowmojo+ into your browser.

Finally, After you’ve received your result, Yahoo makes it easy to see what the other mojo types are, and what they mean. The only thing I don’t like about this page is it’s inaccessible directly. Most people won’t want to go back through it to figure out what their friend’s mojo results mean.

Overall, I think this is a fun promotion by Yahoo, but don’t expect it to last more than a few days. It definitely has the potential to go viral, but whether or not it will help their new home page is yet to be seen.

What do you think? Is Yahoo’s Know Your Mojo promotion effective for their new homepage?