Multichannel Magic

The first email I received this morning started out with:

“Why would someone who knows about Internet marketing offer a gift card that expires on Black Friday instead of Cyber Monday?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” was my first thought, followed by, “it doesn’t sound too smart.” Then I read the next sentence:

“You should know better.”

That’s when I realized that he was asking me why I offered a gift card to my community that expired on Black Friday.

It started out innocently enough. I appreciate the people who make this blogging and social media thing worth the time and effort. My planned post was an excerpt from “Social Media 4 Direct Marketers.” Just before posting it, I decided to add this: [click to continue…]

Stories about viral messages creating unprecedented demand make great reading. Don’t be fooled by the hype. You are more likely to win the lottery than create a profitable idea virus. Inflated expectations reduce your credibility and increase your risk.

Setting realistic goals, objectives, and expectations is the best thing you can do for your initiative.

The low barrier to social media entry is misleading. Most of the platforms and tools are free or the costs are nominal. This leads some to think that it doesn’t require many resources. Nothing could be further from the truth. It requires an extensive amount of time to achieve results. Assigning the project to an already overworked marketing manager limits your potential at best and destroys it at worst.

There is an ongoing debate about whether social media is accountable for return on investment. The answer is simple: if it doesn’t add value for your customers and company, then you don’t need to participate. It may not drive direct sales, but it may improve lifetime value or customer lifespan. Your initial goal is to determine if social media is a viable channel for your business. [click to continue…]

You have three seconds to answer this question:

“Who is your best customer?”

One second…

Two seconds…

Three seconds…

Time is up.

Do you have a name? Yes, I’m asking you to identify your best customer by name without looking it up. If you know your best customer by name, then you are probably taking good care of your business.

But, if you don’t… [click to continue…]

Here are a few of my favorite things from this week:

Best assessment of Geek-Think:

From Tom Martin’s “R We LinkedIn?”

“Far too often I feel that technology makers and marketers can get caught up on our own love of the geek. We forget though that society, at least the face-to-face kind lives under certain social norms.”

It’s a good reminder to remember that online behavior is judged by offline standards. In other words, “Play nice, folks.”

New Twitter Tool from Google:

Follow Finder

This makes the favorite list because it shows that Google is committed to indexing Twitter (at least for today. Tomorrow it may change.) The indexing gives marketers an opportunity to increase their natural search rankings by tweeting relevant content with good keywords.

There are better tools available at this writing, but who knows? Google might decide to become the Twitter follow finder leader. Stranger things have happened.

Editorial Calendar Excuses Be Gone!

WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin

DING, DING, DING! We have a winner! This is my favorite new tool for my blog. It may hold the the spot for months to come.

Everyone who publishes a blog knows how important it is to have an editorial calendar. But, seriously, who has the time? By the time you detail the information you need in a calendar, review it, and update it when needed, you could have written half a dozen posts.

If you’ve been using that excuse to keep from creating an editorial calendar, you should know that it won’t work any more. The WordPress Editorial Calendar allows you to plan your posts, quickly edit them on the fly, and view your activity a month at a time. If you decide to change the day for a post, just grab it and move to the new date. And, if you are technically inclined, you can tweak the default settings. It makes planning and executing easy. Personally, I need all the easy I can find. Don’t you?

Have a blessed weekend. Here’s a friendly reminder to disconnect from the tech and personally connect with the people who really matter.