Warren Knight

Are brands doing the right thing when they join Twitter and get involved?

It’s a tough question to answer. One person’s “right way” is another person’s “wrong way.” An example I am fond of repeating is that of a company that is on Twitter but only using it to tweet out their corporate press releases. The knee-jerk reaction is, “this is a terrible use of Twitter!”, but what if said company engaged with their industry analysts and journalist and let them know that this Twitter feed was set-up specifically for them, so that they did not clutter email inboxes or inundate voice mailboxes with pleas for a return phone call? Seems like a very smart use of Twitter (if it works and catches on).

Never forget that Twitter is a spam-free zone.

In fact, one of the most amazing facets of Social Media is how spam free it is. Think about it: you only following those you have chosen or accepted to follow. If they are in any way, shape or form, abusing that connection, all you have to do is unfollow them (or not follow them in the first place). These platforms (Twitter, Facebook, whatever) are self-created in terms of the content flow. So, when a brand hops on Twitter and starts tweeting out contest promotions or discount codes, you can simply ignore them. The true mettle of their success (or as I like to call it, Digital Darwinism) will happen in short order. Brands that claim they are not seeing any reasonable sense of ROI from being a part of Twitter (or any online social network for that matter) are missing one major point: they don’t decide if what they’re doing is successful… the community does (or those who are following).

Traditional marketing may not make it in these new channels and platforms.

If people love these contest promotions and discount codes (traditional marketing messages and offers), the brands will know. People will follow, they will retweet and they will talk (a lot) about what is going on. The sad truth is that most brands think that what they are doing is enough (some semblance or responding and pumping the feed with offers), when in reality they haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. Like anything else, all of these new channels and platforms are hard work. They are not quick fixes and stuff just doesn’t happen overnight (only on the rare occasion). If a brand’s sole intent is to be on Twitter because they think it will be a quick, cheap and easy way to pawn off marketing and communications messages, they’re going to be in for a brutally blunt reality check in a very fast way.

A good chunk of brands suck at Twitter (or think it doesn’t work) because they’re trying to pump boring one-way messages into a channel that celebrates human and real connections and conversations.

www.warrenknight.co.uk thanks www.twistimage.com

Here are the people that I recommend you follow in the SCRM space, they are all far smarter than I am!

Esteban Kolsky

You know it’s rare that someone just astounds me with their ideas, concepts, and understanding of something; it happens but no often.  I’ve had the opportunity to meet with and chat with Esteban on numerous occasions and I always learn something new from this man.  He is one of the few people in the space (in any space for that matter) that actually break things down from strategy concepts into actual process, meaning he actually talks about and presents ideas for how SCRM fits into an organization what a company needs to do to make it successful.  Esteban provides detailed analysis of the space and usually has some great visuals to accompany his posts which clearly demonstrate his ideas and line of thinking.  I’m such a fan of Esteban’s work that I asked him to help me out on my SCRM presentation, and boy am I glad I did.  If you have any interest in SCRM then Esteban is definitely one cat that you want to make sure you follow.  Esteban writes on CRM intelligence and strategy and you can also find him on twitter.

Paul Greenberg

If you think of the movie the God Father then most people would consider Paul to be the mob boss of SCRM (ya, I said it).  I haven’t spoken with Paul on the phone yet but that’s changing soon.  One of the popular definitions of SCRM actually came from Paul and it’s referred to quite often when speaking about SCRM.  I’m actually in the middle of reading Paul’s relatively new 650 page book on SCRM and so far it’s fantastic.  He has a great writing style that actually makes SCRM interesting and easy to understand.  Paul is great at really breaking down concepts and explaining the “why” and the “how” behind SCRM; he also understand the E2.0 space which makes his posts and ideas that much more valuable.  Paul doesn’t blog as often as some of the other SCRM folks out there but hey when you have a 650 page book out that’s understandable.  Paul authors a popular blog over at Zdnet called Social CRM: The Conversation and also runs the 56 group.   You can find Paul on twitter as well.  Oh and don’t say anything bad about the Yankees or this man will come after you, and we all know what happens when the God Father comes after you…

Brian Vellmure

Brian is one heck of a smart guy and a fellow traveler.  As with Esteban, Brian writes a lot of really great stuff on strategy and concepts and also has some great visuals to explain his ideas.  Brian not only covers concepts and ideas but actually talks about requirements from the company in order to make SCRM a success.  I really wish Brian would write more often because he has a world of wisdom to share.  Just check out his site and scroll through some of his recent posts and you will exactly what I mean.  I’ve learned a lot from Brian and look forward to keep doing so.  Brian is also on twitter so make sure to say hello.

Prem Kumar Aparanji

Better known as the Scorp From Hell (ya, intimidating isn’t it?) Prem is chalk full of great SCRM information.  I’ve had numerous interactions with Prem on twitter and on my site when I talk about SCRM.  Prem is the SCRM evangelist for Cognizant.  My big complaint of Prem is that he definitely doesn’t write enough.  He’s great to have a conversation with online and shares some great information on his twitter account (which is where I learn a lot from), but I know he has some really solid ideas and concepts that I wish he would put down into more solid grounded articles.  When Prem does write though he cranks out some kick ass SCRM content complete with analysis, visuals, and solid ideas.  If you want to learn more about SCRM make sure to strike up a chat with this man on twitter and have your pen and paper ready to take some notes.

Brent Leary

I’ve been following Brent’s blog for a little while now and while Brent is one of the SCRM leaders he also talks about the social media space in general as well which makes for some interesting reading.  Brent runs his own SCRM consultancy and is on the advisory board of the Social Customer blog.  Brent is really good at getting down to the nitty gritty of SCRM and his understanding of the social media space makes him take a unique perspective to SCRM.  Brent does everything in depth vendor analysis to interview to SCRM strategy concepts and ideas.  This man does it all and that is one of the reasons why he made it on my list of top SCRM guys.  I actually haven’t spoken with Brent (yet) but we’ve had several online conversations.  Brent is also on twitter so say hello to him.

I’m hoping to do a second part in this series to highlight some other great SCRM folks, if you think there is someone that I should take a look at or chat with please let me know.  All of the folks mentioned above I have been following for a while now and have had some sort of interaction with all of them.  Hope you find this list of SCRM allstars valuable!

www.warrenknight.co.uk thanks www.jmorganmarketing.com

There’s a common misconception in marketing that strategy always emanates from the top down. That companies need to go through rigorous planning processes to determine the appropriate marketing mix, brand strategy, and communications tone.

The largest of companies may have no choice. But if they’re willing to offer some autonomy to their divisions, they would benefit greatly from taking a cue from nimbler companies’ approaches to the “strategy question.” Often, that approach has been: do performance marketing, focus on growing the top and bottom lines, and strategize in your spare time.

Sound cavalier? But what if it works? I’ve worked with companies who’ve not strategized much at all, who have gone out and successfully and directly acquired tons of customers using paid search, and who have mopped the floor with their more deliberate, deep-thinking competitors. Nimble and connected, in this assessment, often beat excessive, self-congratulatory positioning exercises, and subjective viewpoints of what the market will probably want to buy from you (also known as “research”).

To be sure, these nimble companies usually started with a favorable combination of unique product lines, dynamic founders, out-there brand identities, and a willingness to innovate and listen to customers. It isn’t like they had no strategy. But they probably never sat back, took a year’s worth of deep breaths, and tried to come up with a “whole strategy.” Always, the priority was growing the customer list, studying and perfecting the performance channel, and yes, bolting the strategy on the back end while counting the profits each month. In short, they were usually doing, while their competitors were thinking.

In the end, what is strategy? Isn’t it “strategy” in online retail to let customer demand trends for different products shape your planning for next year’s product mix? In software, isn’t it the norm – after you’ve got your basic positioning figured out – to let customers request features and provide feedback on your beta? “Ship early and often” is the hacker’s credo. That scares a lot of folks, to this day.

What makes so many companies reluctant to try that approach? I’m not sure I know. Maybe, if your “go-to market strategy” is taking a little too long to ferment, you should just, well, go to market.

Let’s say you have this semi-functional Google AdWords account lying around. And let’s say you focus mainly on simply making that channel perform better.

This is the promise of the performance marketing world. A not atypical profile of a company tinkering with paid search might have the following business metrics for Year 3: cost per acquisition, $18; new customer acquisition volume, 20,000. It so happens that this is the year that the paid search channel was just reaching the break-even CPA (define) of $18, and just reaching a point where optimization was making it a seriously attractive channel for the company. Two years later, in Year 5, the CPA had reached a very healthy $13, and new customer acquisition volume had hit 125,000. By reaching key tipping points in multiple aspects of the complex digital advertising auction, the channel’s performance basically exploded sixfold over two years. Not even counting the invaluable library of learnings that now spur this channel forward to new heights, the acquisition of all these customers takes the business to a new level in several ways.

Think of the world of possibilities available if you just go out and acquire 100,000 new customers (at break-even or better) without entirely thinking it through. You have a fertile source of input into your product development. An army of offline word-of-mouth advocates. A more reliable channel for repeat sales. A testing ground for your e-mail promotions and seasonal offers. People who will provide written testimonials for your Web site. If you have customers with an international organization, then you also have friends you can have coffee with if you happen to be on a business trip in Argentina.

Think about it. If you’re still stuck in planning meetings, there are no new customers. No need to figure out what type of e-mail to send them. No Argentina. No coffee date. I guess you can always log into Second Life and hope the barista is cute.

www.warrenknight.co.uk thanks By Andrew Goodman, ClickZ.com

Speaking at Marketing Week’s Social Media for Brand Building event yesterday, Sony head of corporate communications Nick Sharples said the company sees Twitter as a viable sales platform as well as a tool to amplify PR activity.

Speakers from brands including Diageo and MyDeco at the event agreed that social media delivers results but insisted it must always be used alongside more traditional channels.

Sharples said, “The marketing budget is now skewed to wards integrated campaigns and includes PR and social media at the inception of a marketing campaign. Even if we decide to run a big above-the-line campaign or focus on TV, we’ll apply social media amplification.”

Sony launched a campaign for a special edition of its Cyber-shot camera range last year and used social media to extend PR coverage over nine months, resulting in over £12.5m in revenue.

Interior website My deco, which is boosting its social media activity ahead of its full launch (nma 25 February 2010) said a brand being able to harness social relationships online was the holy grail.

Nicole Vanderbilt, CEO of My deco, said, “If you can find a way to harness what family and friends are saying to each other, it’s really powerful.”

www.warrenknight.co.uk thanks www.nma.co.uk

My recent article on using the 80-20 rule discussed how to use manual link building as a key component of your SEO efforts. Today’s column will take that discussion a step further.

You must go through a process of identifying targets at the start of direct request link building. The old fashioned way of doing this was backlinking your competitors. This is easily done using tools such as Linkscape or Majestic SEO. Either of these tools allow you to see details about which sites links to your competitors (or other industry Web sites that are potentially authoritative).

However, backlinking competitors isn’t the only way to do this. We’ll use a site related to chiropractic medicine as an example. Mining lists from industry association Web sites or finding lists of all the schools in the U.S. offering chiropractic programs are good tactics here. The best approach is to use a combination of methods to generate thousands (or tens of thousands) of potential targets.

Prioritizing the Targets

If you have used a tool to backlink a site, you now need to come up with a way to prioritize the output of the tool. If you’ve used Linkscape to backlink http://www.mit.edu, and you have exported the results into a spreadsheet, your initial output may look something like this:

This report was obtained by using Linkscape to produce an “Advanced Link Report,” and then filtering out the links from the same domain (from somewhere on mit.edu back to some other part of mit.edu). The eighth column in the output is “URL mozRank Passed” and the output is sorted in descending order on this column. This is one measurement of the value of the link.

It’s interesting to see that the first link listed passes URL mozRank of .00135 and the 50th link in the list passes URL mozRank of only .00001 (135 times less)! So with little effort you have one step of your prioritization work done.

Let’s go a bit deeper. Links aren’t just about the juice passed by the URL. Links also provide trust value to the site receiving the link. For that reason, I like to take this output and slice it two other ways:

1. Domain mozTrust, in descending order.
2. URL mozTrust, in descending order.

This provides two other slices at the data, and can you help you pick out high value link targets that may not have high URL mozRank Passed values, but still are important targets for your site.

Next Steps

Ultimately, you want to go through exercises like this for many different backlink reports, as well as use other means to generate high value link targets. Once you have all this data in hand, decide on some cutoff points. Links that meet one or more criteria can get included in a direct request link building effort (e.g. perhaps you include all links whose mozRank Passed score is .00001 or higher).

Then you can begin the process of figuring out who to contact and how to contact them. We generally use Web savvy college students or work at home parents, who are relatively inexpensive, to do this research. The key to success with this approach is the prioritization. Because you’re using manual labor to do work, you want to make sure you focus it the best way possible. While it may not be expensive labor, the time lost in building your link profile is costly if they focus on the wrong things.

www.warrenknight.co.uk thanks By Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com