Tutorial – Social Media Advertising

Posted on 2-18-10 in Tutorials

This tutorial is based off a presentation given by David Rathburn on Online Social Media Promotion.
The #1 thing to remember when working online is, “Content is King”

The Evolution of Advertising

Mankind has always strived to improve the quality of life. That was the cause of specialization. If one person can focus on one task and making the process easier, that person can then trade their service with others so that in the end they all have everything they needs.

Businesses began to be formed and this allowed people to become very skilled at their tasks. Once someone had a product or service to offer they had to let others know about it. It started with word of mouth.

Mass Advertising

Businesses began using new mediums with newspapers, radio, and television as they were invented. With newspapers, the only way they could choose to who saw the ad was which newspaper or city they advertised in. With Radio and TV they could specialize a little more by selecting which programs or times the ads ran with. Sometimes this limited their ability to select the locations in which the ad showed. Mass Advertising is just throwing the information out there with little interaction with the customer if any.

Interactive Advertising

Now with the Internet, businesses can connect with the customers. Blogs and social media sites allow customers to express their feelings. When a customer writes about a product or service, they interact and share it with their friends and family. It also allows businesses to respond in a personal manner and other customers are able to see the interactions.

Social Media Sites for Businesses

There is a conversation about almost any business out there.

Positive Ex: Moleskin notebooks – They have thousands of people blogging/tweeting about them = free advertising.

Businesses are losing control of their advertising

Businesses are afraid because they are used to the control. In todays’ World it is important to realize you can’t control the conversations, you can only join them.
Negative Ex: Belkin – Hired people to write fake positive reviews on Amazon and other sites that sold their products. You can imagine what this did to their image when the word got out.
People will give you the reviews you deserve and they will find out if you try to change the reviews. To improve the reviews businesses should improve their products and customer service.

Positive Ex: TechCrunch – When his internet with Comcast went down, he had a tough time getting them to get it fixed. Then he blogged about it and within 20 min he got a call from an executive at comcast to see what they can do for him – because of their Comcast cares initiative on Twitter.

Positive Ex: Kodak – Someone blogged that they didn’t know if Kodak still existed now that film is almost obsolet. Kodak replied how they involved with the community and showed they are relevant and pay attention to the customer.

Positive Ex: IdeaStrom – from Dell – Allows for consumers or anyone with ideas or thoughts on what dell should do to improve computers. They are listening and have implemented about 400 ideas so far. Originally, Dell’s corporate policy was don’t comment on blogs, now they are active.

Instead of building focus groups and conducting surveys, have blogs and then people will feel more involved

People like to feel part of the process. People who are passionate about a product or company are going to go out and talk about it. How to make it better, what they liked, what they didn’t like, etc… This is a valuable asset that businesses should utilize.

Positive Ex: David Rathburn asked on Twitter which book he should read next. The writer of one of the books replied and said to read his book, so David did.

Advertisers

95/5 rule

When using Social sites/blogs to promote your business, 95% of the content you are creating should be about your business and 5% should be personal. If you are using them for you personally, 95% personal and then 5% business. This leads us to the next topic.

Interruption vs Permission

The mass advertising spoke of earlier generally falls under the Ineruption Category. In many cases people have accustomed to interruptive ads and either find ways to automatically block them or they subconsciously ignore them. On the other hand, if they give their permission or seek after information they are more receptive.
Positive Ex: Google gained popularity by people bringing others one at a time, not by huge superbowl ads.

Google	vs	Facebook
Permission		Interruption
People come to search		People come to visit friends, play games, etc…

People are more likely to use info they receive from people they trust

If a friend recommends a new restaraunt to you, chances are you would be more likely to visit it than if you saw a TV ad for it. Get people to advocate and promote your business. They will bring their friends with them.

Positive Ex: Whopper Sacrifice – A BurgerKing ad campaign on Facebook where if users dropped 10 friends they got a free whopper.
This campain was successful because

It was entertaining
It provided value – a free whopper
It was honest – there was no doubt that it was from BK or that it was advertising
It was tailored to the medium

Advice – Go local and use resources

Try the resources that are avaliable to you. If you can use it to increase productivity or grow your business use it.

Forsquare - iPhone app – allows to you “check in” where you are. You can also have it update your twitter/facebook accounts as to where you are. You receive badges for going certain places so many times and the person who goes to a particular place the most gets to be the “mayor” of that place.

Q&A – David Rathburn

Question:	Which Social Media site do you use the most?
Answer:	I use Twitter the most.
Question:	What do you see as the future of advertising firms?
Answer:	There is defiantly a place for ad firms. They will just find new mediums to advertise with.
Question:	Which is better WordPress or Blogger?
Answer:	For a business I would use WordPress over Blogger. WordPress has more capabilities with plugins, ability to host on your own server etc…
Question:	What are your top three iPhone apps?
Answer:	Remember the milk – Nike Plus – Appbox pro.