Sep 30, 2014 | Communication, Marketing
www.hughmcleod.com
Many put forward the notion of “Engagement” as the objective of Social Media and web based activity, it crops up with the regularity of a hot dog seller at a big football game.
However, I have yet to see a definition of “engagement” that I am comfortable with. Sticking it in Google is no help, 374 million responses, most, probably predictably, about the lead in to marriage from rings to places to blow the house deposit on a reception.
Wether you are setting out to “engage” a potential customer on social media, have employees contribute some of their ideas and brainpower to the enterprise, or just having a casual conversation with someone, if “engagement” is what you are seeking, it will only evolve after one or more of several other things are in line:
- What you have to say is interesting to the other party.
- The other party or audience has a need or desire for information you can deliver
- There is something your audience wants from you
- There is a specific problem you can solve.
- There is the opportunity and desire for a two way flow of conversation
- You have met “the one”. This has nothing to do with this blog and its contents, but good luck to you.
“Engagement” has many meanings, and I suspect most would define it in the context of what they are seeking. For me, as a marketing professional, it means there is mutual value in some activity, from a simple conversation, to someone reading and commenting on this blog, to a collaborative effort with a colleague, to adding value to one of my clients. Whatever “engagement” means you, it is certain that there is a lot of other stuff to do first to build the foundations that make the interaction worthwhile, and offer the chance of becoming an “engagement”.
Engagement is an outcome, not a strategy, and successful strategies are always about doing something that matters, that makes a difference.
Sep 24, 2014 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
Marketing is all about stories, the journey taken that the reader can identify with in some way. Blog posts are just short stories, by another name, and by following the rules of stories, can be more interesting, engaging, and ultimately, deliver a commercial result.
So how do you tell as story?
I have 4 kids, adults now, but as kids I read stories to them, regularly. This is not the same as making up a story as you go, and for a good storyteller, perhaps a cop-out, but the stories of others were usually more engaging than my top of the mind make-ups.
As they got a bit older, it became clear that each preferred a different type of story, and they seemed to fall into a small number of themes, always around a common “backbone” of a hero undertaking some sort of quest, confronting dangers and failure, then finding the only escape route, which was about to close, then revelling in the redemption.
The storylines around the backbone were:
- Rags to riches stories, these were favored by my boys. The protagonist drags himself from the streets to the heights, overcoming the disadvantages of injury, lack of education, or being abandoned in some way, and ends up giving back.
- The travelogue, the journey from A to B via the rest of the alphabet, with adventures and barriers at each letter.
- Tragedy, the hero saves someone from a fatal flaw of their personality or circumstances, and the difficult situations that flaw creates.
- The quest, which travels with the protagonist seeking a solution to an insoluble problem
- Beating the Demon, who keeps on coming back, and usually saving the damsel in the process.
- And finally, comedy. Funny but often sad things that happened, centred around peoples lives, shortcomings, and loves. I found that stories that were able to deliver a message with splashes of humour were always the ones that the kids remembered the best.
A great story, well told will be remembered, whereas a recitation of facts passes from memory quicker than an iceblock on a hot summers day.
Sep 15, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Small business
Cold emails are usually no more welcome that a cold phone call. However, For small businesses, the emergence of email marketing has transformed the opportunities they have to communicate, but so many fail to do some pretty simple things before embarking on a campaigns, so screw it up, and often give it away as ineffective.
Email marketing has become subject of some very good automation software, integrated in highly sophisticated platforms like Salesforce, and the Adobe marketing cloud, but for SME’s without the financial and management resources to make the investments these require successful, there are still very good low cost packages, like Mailchimp, which at the basic level is free, Aweber, and others at about $30/month.
However, the key to success is not the software, it is how you use it, so some simple market tactics to use.
- Find a connection to the recipient. You have a much better chance of not just getting the email opened, but also read, if you can establish some meaningful connection with the recipient. A common former employer, people you know, interests you share, or some project type you may be working on. This takes some time and research, but the investment pays off. LinkedIn is a wonderful tool for uncovering these connections.
- Nail the email subject line. If you fail to do this, the email will not be opened and read. We are all too busy to open emails that do not immediately touch some chord. The challenges is to do this in a very few words that communicate the value the email will deliver, and why it was sent to you. The subject line is in effect the headline of your story, so make it compelling to the potential reader, or they just become at best, a passing browser.
- Keep the email short, simple, and with a clear call to action. The recipient must understand easily what the message is all about without having to interpret blocks of text. Remember that many of them will be opened on mobile devices, making the clarity even more important. At the end of reading it, which should be a very short time, there must be no doubt about what you want them to do with the information.
- Be respectful. If the recipient gives their time to read, and hopefully respond, that gift needs to be respected, and even if they do not immediately respond, following up too quickly, or too aggressively will rarely be appreciated. You are asking them for something, be respectful of their time and expertise, and the simple fact that it is you doing the asking, not them. Disrespect is about the quickest way to turn off somebody from responding I can think of short of being rude.
- Never be desperate. Desperation is not a pretty sight, and will sway most people away from responding. Desperate people have little to offer back to a time poor person with the power to say yea or nay to you.
- Never, never, never promise something you cannot deliver.
As a final catch all for email marketing success, it is essential that you have a list. This is one case where bigger is actually better, the more accurately segmented and targeted the better, and the greater the level of active “opt-in” by those on the list the better.
Like all marketing activities, the better you are at it, the more targeted to the message recipients interests, problems, and situation the activity, the better your results will be. See the email you are about to send as if it was you that had just received it, and be a harsh judge.
Sep 9, 2014 | Change, Communication, Social Media
Man has always found ways to communicate, Social media is not new, it is just the tools we are using today are upgrades of those we used yesterday.
Alex Bell patented the telephone in 1876, after many inventors had played with the physics of electro magnetism and its applications to voice transmission. By the 1890’s farmers were using the barbed wire fences that were strung the length and breadth of the US to communicate. Phones in those days generated their own power by means of a crank and batteries, all you needed to do was hook up to wire, give the mail order telephonic device a crank, and bingo, a phone.
Downside was that someone had to be on the line at the other end waiting, and there was no direct dialling, so everyone was on at the same time, the ubiquitous party line, where privacy was a victim.
Sound familiar?
(Reliability was also an issue, everything from rain to the neighbours randy bull causing problems with the wire)
Point is, all this fancy new technology is no more than a new solution to an old problem: how to communicate effectively with those to whom we have something to say, from the mundane and trivial to really life altering messages.
Small businesses need to remember this simple truth, as they are bombarded with “opportunities” to expand their reach via social media. The only useful contacts are those with whom you have something in common, and with whom you can collaborate to generate value for you both. Those sorts of “friends” are invaluable, and do not just “happen”, it takes time and effort to find them and build relationships individually. Just getting a “like” on facebook is as useful as Harold Holts flippers, particularly as the organic reach of facebook is now down around 5% as Facebook seek to financially leverage their membership base.
Fancy some barbed wire?
Sep 2, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Governance, retail
Last night Media Watch on the ABC did a piece on the “news report” done on one of the 6.30 current affairs programs on a commercial station. The “report” was a 15 minute advertising free expose on the sourcing of the fresh produce the retailer sells.
It was a prime example of so called “Native advertising”.
Native advertising is just a term dreamt up by marketers, aided and abetted by commercially desperate media owners to make excuses for polluting the so-called news with favorable commentary. In this case, the channel concerned had a share of the retailers very substantial advertising dollars way in excess of their audience market share, and the “report” was nothing less than a glowing tribute to the quality and freshness of the produce.
Smells like advertising to me.
The “news” already seems to have been so polluted by the populist lowest common denominator “cat up a tree” stories that seem to dominate alongside sensationalist claims about today’s brand of extremist, that why would a puff piece on how fresh a retailers produce is make a difference?
Simple answer, because it is nonsense.
The retailer concerned does do a good job, works hard to deliver produce as fresh as they can given the constraints of their mass market model, competitive pressures and profitability objectives, but to put as much lipstick on the pig as the report did is really going too far.
You can watch Media Watch’s (the segment starts at 8.45) commentary for a while on the ABC’s iView, but if you are still confused about the line between advertising and journalism, and the chance of our institutions and enterprises being held accountable by the media, have a look at this satirical video by John Oliver that presses the point.
We are pretty savvy consumers of media these days, question is, are we savvy enough?
Sep 1, 2014 | Communication, Marketing, Sales
Think of the average presentation you sit through.
If I can summarise: Boring, potentially useful information quickly forgotten.
Am I right?
Now think of the best presentation you have ever sat through.
You remember not just the occasion, and the presenter, and probably those with you, but also the information.
What is the difference between these two presentations?
Chances are the first was a wooden recitation of facts that were also on a powerpoint showing behind the speakers head, even worse, the speaker was reading the slides.
Chances are the best was a three dimensional “performance” by the speaker, there were moments of quiet, of passion, of visual conjuring from the verbal, of a simple point made that tied the whole thing together in a take-away message. The presence of props was limited to a very few photos, drawings or physical props that emphasised the point being made, the presentation was dominated by the physical presence of the person on stage.
The speaker brought emotion to the presentation, a physicality and personal engagement with the message being delivered far more than is possible with just the words.
Years ago before my first major public presentation, it was to an industry conference with an expected attendance of about 1500, (the “Foodweek” conference about 1988) I undertook a training session with a presentation coach. I do not remember much of that training, although it was well used on the day I was told, despite the almost terminal case of nerves, but I do remember the trainer saying again and again:
“it is not a presentation, it is a performance”.
That statement is as true today as it was then, perhaps more so because we are awash in messages, and increasingly those messages are visual, recognising we are a visual animal, so to be remembered, the bar is now set very high.
There are plenty of coaches out there, this session by Doug Stevenson is probably as good as it gets. My thanks to Mitch Joel for bringing it to my attention.
