I teach an advanced digital marketing and online influence class called “Blowing Up: How to Expand Your Online Influence”.
The deck below is part of this class. I’ll come back and fill in the text around the deck at a later time. I’m just trying to get it up for the farmers that attended.
Ridiculousness on MTV
Do you guys love Ridiculousness? I do. I love watching people bite it when they should have known better than to try it. But then it happened to me. In a presentation. Yeah, I bit it. Big time.
I did a talk before a group of directors for the Center and Institutes at ND. It didn’t go as well as I hoped but there were a couple of factors that I didn’t foresee.
First, I didn’t plan well on the time. I thought I had more and I hate rushing through a presentation.
Secondly, I focused on social media but I took it from a personal branding perspective and not from a Center / Institute perspective. That
So if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t go into the nuances of Social Media and talk more about Communication Plan and show an example. A good example is the Stanford Persuasive Lab.
Here’s how you start:
1. Make sure that you are have the Facebook connection on all your communications. This is a lesson from retailers, their Facebook page is mentioned everywhere on their communication vehicles – their website, their advertising, their brochures, their flyers, their email newsletters, their direct mail pieces, etc… DO NOT just say “Find us on Facebook”. That’s the easy thing to do but it will get the least amount of click-throughs. What you need to say is “Be the first to know about our events and giveaways by liking us on Facebook” or “Get a discount by Liking us on Facebook”.
NOTE: Once you get 25 likes, you can have your own Facebook URL like facebook.com/notredame Go to facebook.com/username – you must be an admin of the page to get a URL.
2. Offer an incentive of some kind to get Facebook Fans. They are giving up their personal information to you by liking your page so what are you going to do to them? Do you “like” many pages yourself? Why do you like pages? Usually because you are interested in what they have to say? But you have to remember there are a lot of people asking for their attention. Offering an incentive helps. If you don’t have an incentive, then offer them something you do have. Maybe it’s information. People can learn about events and news earlier than other people if the “like” your page.
3. Communicate like a person. There is nothing worse than “liking” a page and seeing it just push press releases and news items into my Facebook lifestream. It’s a good way to get your page hidden or unliked. But if you talk like a person, which is how everyone else talks on Facebook, then I might keep you around.
4. Ask questions, encourage feedback. Asking questions is a great way to communicate. First, if someone sees a question then their brain is going to answer it. Don’t you think that’s true? Even if you said “no”, you still answered my question. And just because people aren’t talking to you or answering your questions, doesn’t mean they aren’t reading it. Very few people comment online, even though they read what you are saying. Continue reading
First, I started with a sub story. Now I can’t really repeat it here and it’s one of my favorites so you have to hear it in person but let’s just say it’s a very memorable story about submarines (I rode one for a few years in the Navy) and poop.
But the big part of the presentation was about story.
When marketing fails, what do you blame?
It’s easy to blame the strategy, the tactic, the media buy, the target audience, the competition, the five Ps with the C’s and ABCs or any other letters you feel.
But we all know the real reason.
The Boss.
South Bend Rock Star Social Media People
First off, I had a blast at Social Media Day that was thrown by Pinnacle of Indiana. Michelle Hillaert rocks and you should follow her. So does LaSalle Grill for letting us take over the Club LaSalle. Very classy place. BTW, if you go in and you give them the code word, “Irish”. They will give you half price appetizers for the entire month of July. Pretty sweet.
And if you head over to Pinnacle of Indiana or call them at 74.235.8100 and say “Irish” they will give you an hour’s worth of IT consulting or social media consulting. That’s pretty sweet as well.
I would also like to thank everyone on the panel:
I learned from them than I did at many panels I’ve attended on social media. They were an eclectic bunch but all smart and very social people.
As I mentioned in my talk, it’s hard to get up and talk in front of a bunch of social media people. They know what they are doing so what can they learn from me. Probably not much but I tried to hit on a topic that I run into all the time, selling social media as a legitimate form of marketing. It’s worth my time and their ROI on me to do it.
So how do you sell social media?
First, don’t try and force or say something silly like everyone else is doing it. That may work but if things don’t start jumping right away or you don’t have 586,958 friends in the first week, they may change their tune. Continue reading
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