Making a break through all the clutter and noise
Online marketing today and tomorrow
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Overview
• Part 1: Clutter and noise. Understanding the landscape
• Part 2: Cutting through. Content & Community
• Part 3: Organizational challenges
• Part 4: What’s next? Emerging trends
• Part 5: The consultant is in
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Hi, my name is Peter, I’ll be your tour guide
• Working in the digital space since 1997
• Designer turned strategist turned consultant
• Started one of the world’s first professional agencies focussed on social media
– The Blog Studio
• Lead the community practice at Sequentia Environics
– HP, Yahoo!, Globe & Mail
• Worked on digital strategy and design for a number of non profits
– Unicef, SiG@MaRS
• @flashlight
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Who’s here?
• Let’s get a sense of the room
– Are you responsible for communications in your organization?
– Do you have a Facebook account?
– Do you have a Twitter account?
– Do you know HTML?
– Have you placed an using Google’s AdWords?
– Do you know how to use a FTP client?
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Part 1: Clutter and noise. Understanding the landscape
• From static to social to mobile
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Let’s start with a quick landscape scan
• Yahoo just turned 15
• Google is 12
• Facebook opened to the public less than 4 years ago
• Twitter launched less than 4 years ago
• Does this make anyone else here feel old?
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What’s changed?
• Originally, the web was a place to get information.
• Today, it’s increasingly a place to interact with people.
• We’re talking about the social web
– (not just social media)
• It’s about the change in what we use the web for
– Gathering information to socializing
• People are spending more time online but are doing new things
– Not the same old, same old
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The Static Web – Place
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The Two Way Web – Purpose
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The Social Web – People
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Back in olden times (like 2000)
• Build it and they will come
• It was easy:
– Hire your cousin’s neighbour’s kid, pay him $250, and you’re done
• It was the era of brochure-ware
– Simply reuse your existing content
– Everything was static
• The web was 1 way
• It was all about place
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Along come the blogs and online banking
• Blogs are really significant for a couple of reasons
– Democratize the web
• Easy
• Free
– Easy formation of community around subject matter
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• RELATIONSHIPS
• Online banking made it ok to enter private data into a website
– Trained multiple generations of users on using web forms
– Was a huge factor in moving people online
– Purpose
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Birth of Web2.0
• Let’s call this the two-way web
• From consumption to creation
• Created a number of irreversible shifts
• Birth of the social web
– Community
– Thin relationships
» Dunbar’s number
– Thick relationships
– Social recommendations
– User generated content
– Purpose
• Dramatically changed SEO
– Much greater focus on content, much less on HTML structure
– Social
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Volume kaboom
• The thing to note here is that Web2.0 spawned the creation of BILLIONS of websites
• BILLIONS(!!!)
• Largest single output in human history
• Conversely, the number of sites that an individual visits has plummeted
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Along comes mobile
• Like it wasn’t confusing enough before, right?
• Mobile changes everything
– Different experience
– Different design and messaging needs
– New opportunities
– Location aware
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It’s awesome, but it’s noisy
• This explosion of creativity and connectivity is pretty amazing
– There are LOTS of social costs, that we haven’t yet begun to understand
• some good
• some downright gloomy
– remember focus? I used to be able to OH LOOK! Shiny!
• Changing surfing habits, plus changing expectations, plus emerging technologies =
– need for new ways to think about digital marketing
– need for new skills, with an emphasis on softer human to group interaction
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Part 2: Cutting through. Content & Community
• We’re going to talk for a bit about content, community, and how to navigate the external and internal challenges of of this much more complex ecosystem.
• First, a couple of definitions:
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Community
A group of people who share common interests or values.
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Hub and Spoke
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Hub and spoke, take two
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Hunting vs Farming
• Farming = creating an appropriate environment for things to grow
– They come to you
– “If you build it, they will come”
• Hunting = going out into the wilds to bring down game
– You go to them
– eg advertising
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Law of content attraction
• The law of content attraction states:
– if properly distributed and built for sharing, content that is designed for a specific user group will attract that user group around it
• Deeply powerful, and kind of hard to grasp ‘till you see it in action
– Swagger Wagon
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql-N3F1FhW4
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2323
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http://www.youtube.com/user/Sienna
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Content
• Content is the currency of all communication.
• Without content, you’d have _____________
• So, obviously this is important.
• There’s things you can do with your content to help it break through the noise
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Content: Optimize for online
• Copywriting
• Sharing
• Search
• Repurpose and rework
• Multiple versions
– tone
– length
– media
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Content: Distribute
• Traditional content fortress
• Organic distribution
– Seeding via your fans and readers
• reciprocity
– Optimize for sharing
• Hunting
– Paid search
• Google and Yahoo
– Seeding
• difference is the relationship you have with the community
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Content: Make it useful and remarkable
• Useful content is inherently social
– if it solves a need, likelihood of sharing increases
• reciprocity
– “need” can be a bunch of different things
• how to
• education
• entertainment
• Rule of thirds
• Relate to Purpose
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Content: Actionable
• Figure out what actions you’d like the user to take
– spread a message
– take an action
– volunteer
• Make completing that action effortless
– include the next step right in the content
• Make every piece of content a stand-alone item
– don’t assume readers will see your call to action in the sidebar
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Content: Make is a sequence
• This could be the most important thing I tell you today
– Think about an action you’d like an audience member to take, ie make a donation
– Break down the steps
• awareness
• info seeking
• seeing results
• make donation
• evangelize
– (Recognize that not everyone will follow all these steps in this order)
– Now: create content for each step, and include a strong call to action to move to the next step
– Always include a call to jump right to the end of the chain, for those who are ready
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Content: Diagnostic
• If you’ve got a good content sequence in place, you can get a lot of intelligence about your audience by looking at what they interact with, what they share, and what actions they take
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Content: Analysis
• Inherent in all of this is the ability to track content and activity
– Google Analytics
– Search
– Social media monitoring
• A lot of this is not easy or intuitive
– good news: lots and lots of good content available online
• YouTube
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Content: Optimize for community
• Definition
– A group of people who share common interests or values.
• It’s interesting to take a moment to think about how the internet has changed how communities form. No longer limited by
– Geography
– Demographics
– Race
• This is a monumental shift
– Tapscott: Growing up Digital
– Shirky: Here Comes Everybody
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Content: Why community?
• Why community?
– Activation
• Communities get things done
– Mobilize the right community and whoa
– Distribution
• It’s where we, the people, spend our time
– Discoverability
• It’s where we turn for recommendations and information
– Innovation
• Unlimited resources
• Unconstrained imagination
– beginner’s mind
• Communities are the new black
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Content: Community creation
• Farming
• You can use content to coalesce a community
• There is a defined practice for how to coalesce communities. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to talk about this at the end.
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Content: Getting in to existing communities
• Hunting
• There are already communities that are either directly or tangentially related to what you do
– Look for them on
• Ning
• Possibly the most effective way for you to spread a message or create action is by tapping into these existing groups. But how?
– Direct seeding
• Create content specific to that group
– Sounds daunting, but doesn’t need to be a big undertaking
» simple as a tweet or wall post
• Advertise
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Content: Getting in to existing communities
• Encourage sharing
– ask your fans (who may already be members of these related communities) to introduce and share your content
– make sure you have the right sharing options baked in to your content
• if the community you’d like to reach is on Facebook, make sure it’s easy to “like”
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Content: Getting in to existing communities
• WARNING: every community has a unique culture and set of rules
– Before you wade in and start posting must know and understand the etiquette
– Community manager is your best starting place
– Requires empathy and patience, but can pay off in a really big way
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The Obligatory Facebook Slide
• Should my organization be on Facebook?
– Almost certainly
• What should we expect to get out of it?
– Depends entirely on what you’re prepared to put into it.
• We’ve got a fan page, now what?
– Short answer: built community
– Longer answer:
• post compelling content
• Create (and use) an editorial calendar
• Politely invite everyone in your network
• Distribute content that is valuable to your target audience around the web and link back to your FB page
• Use FB ads to deliver targeted invitations
• Etc
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Bottom line
• You’ve got to stop thinking about your website as being where your content and digital activity will take place
• If you build it, they may come, but only if you reach out first and offer a compelling reason for them to do so
– Doesn’t mean design and usability aren’t important
• if anything, it’s the opposite
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Part 3: Organizational challenges
• Ok, so this content and community stuff is cool, but how on EARTH am I going to get this done?
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Help! I need somebody.
• Help!
• Not just anybody
• You know I need someone
• Help!
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This *is* rocket science
• Research
• Content development
• Content distribution
• Community management
• Analysis
• We’re talking about developing a whole new skill set
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You don’t need to do it all
• Forget what I said earlier: THIS is the most important thing I’m going to tell you today
• It’s not that you don’t need to do all of this, it’s that YOU don’t need to be one to do it all
• You need support
– We’ll talk about a couple of tips for getting your board to buy in in a moment
• The best news: your fans can do a lot of this
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Create your core of digital volunteers
• This group will
– help you determine what your audience wants/needs to know
– help you figure out what parallel or tangential communities exist
– help you figure out where your target audience spends their time online
– contribute specific content ideas
– (if you allow them and give them the tools) create appropriate content for you
– distribute your content
– notify you of opportunities
– form the seed of an active, vital community of your own
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Recruiting your core digital volunteers
• This takes some up-front work, but you’ll reap the benefits for years and years
• Step 1: ask people to join your new group. Give it a cool name
– Use your existing email lists, website, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, personal networks, etc to find people who are already passionate about your organization
– The name is actually quite important. You want the members to feel special (‘cause they are)
• Step 2: conduct a digital habits survey
– use surveymonkey.com or equivalent to find out where these folks spend their time online, and how they want to communicate
• Step 3: create a private place for group members to interact
– base this on the feedback from your survey
– can be a private forum, blog, or Google group.
– KISS
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Recruiting your core digital volunteers
• Step 4: setup a series of phone calls or face to face meetings
– Facilitate a conversation between the group members
• Hire a facilitator for a few hours if you need help. This is a critical step.
– Ask questions
– Spur conversation
• One of the secondary goals of these phone/face to face meetings is to create connections between the members
• Step 5: communicate with the group on a regular basis
– email is usually the preferred method
– keep it simple, but on a regular schedule
– this group will forgive a lot, but will disband if you leave them alone
• Step 6: ask them to distribute your content
– especially in existing communities, your content will have more resonance and acceptance if it comes from a 3rd party
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Getting your board to buy in
• This is usually the tricky part
• The good news:
– This distributed content/community model is beginning to get some traction in boardrooms.
– Hard to open the newspaper and NOT see something about Facebook or mobile
• The bad news:
– This stuff is complex. It takes time and a lot of attention to get the whole picture
– You’re unlikely to get buy-in from board members who don’t participate online
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Getting your board to buy in
• The tricks:
– The following are taken from the Sequentia Enivronics “Getting Corporate Buy-In for Social Media” white paper. Email me if you want a copy
– Show the discussion that is already happening about your organization or cause
• Google search volume for critical keywords or phrases
• Twitter discussion around key topics or brands
• Show which bloggers, Twitterers and other participants are already contributing to the industry or brand conversation
– Show how others in your field are already active in content and community
– Bootstrap it
• Co-op with another organization
• Ask for forgiveness, not permission
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Getting your board to buy in
• The tricks, con’t
– Make it personal
• Start with these questions: “In the last 1 to 2 months, either privately or professionally, in order to research a product or service, or to answer a question, how many people in this room have:
– gone to the printed phone directory (Yellow Pages)?
– answered a direct mail advertisement?
– referred to mainstream media (newspapers, magazines, radio or TV)?
– used Google or another search engine?
– tapped a network of friends and colleagues online, via email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, and then received a link to a web- site that you visited?”
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Part 4: What comes next?
• Head spinning yet? Well get used to it. This isn’t slowing down.
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What’s next: Mobile
• Mobile is the next frontier.
• It is huge.
– HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE.
• Factors
– always-on broadband wireless
– powerful handsets
– evolving interfaces
– location aware
• We’re getting a glimpse of what the next 5 years will look like with the iPad, the new Android tablet, etc.
– it’s weird and wonderful, and doesn’t look anything like the last 5 years
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What’s next: recommendation vs search
• Search is going to get a lot smarter
– integrate real recommendations from your real friends
• making your content shareable and “likeable” is critical
– We’re seeing this now, with Google and others integrating social conversations directly in search results
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What’s next: smarter filters + community
• We’ll get better info management systems
– smart agents that predict what we want to see next
• Communities will get stronger
– Number of sites visited will decrease
• Smart filters that bring the web to us, plus strong community hangouts means the number of sites visited will decrease
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The final takeaway
• If you get nothing else from this session, I hope this will be useful:
– In the old days (like 6 months ago), digital communications was about Place
– Today, and going forward, it’s about People + Place + Purpose
• Keep an eye on People + Place + Purpose, and you’re halfway there
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Part 5: the consultant is in
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Thanks!
• I hope this has been helpful.
• Please, feel free to reach out via
– http://twitter.com/flashlight
– [email protected] mailto:[email protected]
– http://peterflaschner.com
– http:// http://sequentiaenvironics.com sequentiaenvironics.com
• Slides will be on http://slideshare.net/flashlight
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