#40 The Future of Marketing is...Social.

Audiences today do not want to be talked at. They want to be engaged in conversation. Social media gives us the power to do this, allowing us to define and control our brand. There is a shift from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities. Here are a few tips to take advantage of social media.

• Facebook. To help spread the word about a new campaign, why not ask employees to change their Facebook status to announce your latest campaign? If you have 20,000 employees, most likely 10,000 of them have Facebook. With the average person having 100 friends, your announcement could receive over 1 million impressions for free. Ask employees to include their LinkedIn Profiles – now you have 2 million impressions for free


• YouTube. Create a YouTube channel dedicated to teaching people more about your industry. This channel would feature a series of short, focused videos that educate your audience on related topics that help position you as an industry expert. The videos could highlight benefits and features of your products.


• Twitter. To help build and establish your company as an industry expert, top executives should create Twitter accounts to help position your company’s executives as thought leaders in the industry. Tweets should be business-related topics that talk about industry trends and forecasts. Zappos CEO has 1.6 million followers and is following almost 400K people. A total of 430 Zappos Employees have Twitter accounts. This presence helps Zappos engage and participate in conversations about their company.


• Flickr. Flickr is a great way to help promote events that your company sponsors. Photos can be optimized to show up in search results and increase brand awareness. Using Flickr to increase branding opportunities for KeyBank’s sponsorship of a 10K race, the Key “Bank to Bay” gallery has alone received 6,000 views following the event.

W6M: People visit social media sites every day, why not join them in what they are already doing?

#32 Talk and listen to your customers

From the past to the future, Best Buy CMO Barry Judge tells the story of how Best Buy's Marketing Capability talks (and listens) to its customers.

W6M: Digital is going to play a big role, but I am all about comprehensive campaigns. Some highlights from this video include:

• Talk with your clients, not to them
• Create an experience in stores, show them what they can do with your products
• Transparency builds trust
• Encourage employees to talk about their jobs

#20 Social Media Map

Social media are the means for any person to: publish digital creative content; provide and obtain real-time feedback via on-line discussions, commentary, and evaluations; and incorporate changes or corrections to the original content.

W6M: A number of my posts talk about social media (YouTube, Facebook, Blogs, etc.). When I found this Social Media Map created by Overdrive Interactive, I thought I would include it for reference.

• When you create a viral video, the first site you think about uploading your video to is YouTube. But there are a dozen more Top Tier sites that you shoud also submit your video to.
• When you optimizing your site, people typically focus on Yahoo, Google and MSN. There are again a dozen more Top Tier sites that you should also try to get listed on. Your competition may be duking it out on Google, which would allow you to take over ask.com or dogpile.com.
• When you think Social Media, you want to create videos, get ranked on the search engines, blog, wiki and podcast. Try to take advantage of these and figure out what works best for you.

My advice would be to not focus on a single area or site, but get listed on as many possible.

#7 The 2008 Presidential Election Goes Viral

The election has come and gone. The results are in and Obama crushed the web. From the Obama Sneaker to the Obama Girl he was every where. One of the founders of Facebook teamed up with Obama to help spread the word online. I am guessing that like me, about 100 of your Facebook friends posted this on their profile status:

W6M is the 1,357,978th person to donate their status to get out the vote for Barack Obama today. Donate yours: causes.com/election.

Whoever was in charge of online for McCain, was a little less successful. I did not see one McCain comment on anyone's Facebook page. However, I did see some great SNL skits and a few great photoshopped images of Palin.

W6M: Try to take advantage of all mediums. Print and TV advertising is great mass marketing, but niche marketing on Facebook, YouTube, blogs and other areas is a great opportunity to reach a highly targeted audience.

If there are any politicians reading this, feel free to steal this idea. Start A Blog. People don't really know what you do all day and what types of decisions you have to make. Tell me what decisions you are making and why. Even you have to make a decision on my behalf just tell me you voted this way because and I will vote for you the next time. Politics has too many smoke and mirrors, how about some transparency and honesty?

#4 My Top 5 iPhone Applications

I made a list of my Top 5 iPhone Applications. If you go on YouTube you can search for iPhone Applications and there are a ton of videos out there about other applications available, the above video takes a closer look at one of my Top 5 iPhone Applications.

• Urbanspoon - tells you what cool restaurants are available around town


• Facebook - lets you access your account on your phone. I have the Myspace application also, but I am not a big fan. Most of my friends seem to be switching over to Facebook.


• Sportacular - let's you get up to the minute scores on most major sports. This is a must have for sports fans.


• Marketing Profs - this application is a great source for marketing info. It's bascially cliff notes for marketing profesionals on popular articles, case studies and seminars.


• Shazam - Next time you are listening to the radio and want to know the name and artist that is currently playing, Shazam can tell you want the name of the song and let you download it from iTunes.

If anyone has suggestions on other cool applications, let me know.

W6M: iPhone and PDAs are becoming the norm. Marketers should attempt to take advantage of these and other new marketing mediums when they can. Do you have any clients that could benefit or take advantage of marketing on the iPhone?