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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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

• Facebook

– 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

• Google

• Facebook

• Twitter

• 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

– peter.flaschner@sequentiaenvironics.com mailto:peter.flaschner@sequentiaenvironics.com

– http://peterflaschner.com

– http:// http://sequentiaenvironics.com sequentiaenvironics.com

• Slides will be on http://slideshare.net/flashlight

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