A Few Social Media Marketing Trends I Noticed During My Hiatus

June 19, 2009 in Uncategorized | by Allan Woodstrom | Leave a comment

Time for blogging, social networking and contributing to online conversations has been hard to manage recently with major events going on in my life. I wanted to give a quick check-in of a few trends I am watching.

  • The Twitter Explosion. Three years ago, new media marketers predicted mobile marketing would be the future and here we have it. The growth chart has hit the proverbial exponential upswing and if your not on Twitter it’s time to figure it out. Basically, people can broadcast what they are doing from their mobile phone. And for businesses, they can do it too. It’s nice.
  • MySpace is officially past it’s prime. Just this week, comScore came out with numbers that indicated that Facebook was bigger than MySpace.  I’m afraid, not even Borat can save this one.
  • Social media marketing is becoming more and more integrated with customer service departments. Check out what Zappos.com is doing on Twitter.
  • For my healthcare followers, the all important mom of the household decided to check out Facebook and abruptly decided it was more for their kids.
  • Done with SEO, most companies have moved to more advanced marketing tactics like developing useful applications for mobile phones.
  • Crowd sourcing using web technologies has and will continue to drive business decisions at innovative companies.

Please feel free to let me know if you think I missed some important social media marketing trends.

Is your organization ready for social media?

April 9, 2009 in Internet, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Media, Online Marketing, Social Networking, social media marketing | by Allan Woodstrom | 1 comment

If you work in marketing or communications, you probably have little doubt that your organization should start utilizing social media, but are you ready?

From my experience, C-level executives often worry about what could go wrong. They worry people will say bad things and even worse that no one will do anything about it. The reality is that if you have company, people are already out there talking you. And if you don’t know about what they are saying, chances are you are already doing nothing about it.

I put together a series of questions that might help you decide whether your department or organization is ready to join the conversation on social media.

  • Do you have a marketing or communications department?
  • Does your marketing or communications department produce news articles, press releases, videos, photos and/or events?
  • Do you know who your target audience?
  • Is your target audience on social media platforms?
  • Do you have key messages?
  • Can your social media administrator answer common questions posed on social media?
  • Do you have the ability to call on experts within your business to help with complex questions and situations?
  • Does someone in your department have experience utilizing social media platforms?
  • Have you contacted a lawyer or your legal department to see if there are any subject areas or statements you might want to avoid?

If you answered yes to all these questions, chances are you organization is ready. If not, your problems may be bigger than deciding if your organization is ready for social media.

Why are Marketers so obsessed with Twitter?

March 31, 2009 in Internet, Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Networking, social media marketing | by Allan Woodstrom | Leave a comment

“Twitter asks ‘What are you doing?’ You can tell Twitter what you are doing on twitter.com or you can text from your cell phone.” says one person who doesn’t understand twitter trying to explain it another person who knows less about it. This conversation is usually followed by a “Hills” like awkward silence and a few shrugs of the shoulders.

I’ll be the first to admit I was absolutely lost the first couple of days I started using Twitter. I didn’t follow anyone I cared about, none of my friends were on it and I didn’t understand what to say or what to do

Looking back, as much as I hate to admit it, it wasn’t until a weird owl named “Mr. Tweet” gave me a few suggestions of who I should follow before I began to find some interesting people on Twitter. From there I was able to branch out, finding a few more people who were conversing with the people I was newly following.

Before I knew it I had a nice little network of people to follow and talk to. Most of them weren’t too weird. For the most part they were interested in some of the same things I was: Minnesota, healthcare marketing, the internet, celebrities and sports.

So why are marketers so obsessed with Twitter?

Because they care what you are doing and thinking, especially as it relates to products and services they have to offer.

A quick search and you can find that there are people actually interested in everything from Anoop Dogg on American Idol to polar ice caps. Marketers find this invaluable because they can have real conversations with people thinking about products and services they have to offer.

Take for example this scenario layed out by Peter Hershberg in Advertising Age:

“A young woman in Chapel Hill, N.C., wakes up sweating. Her air conditioner has died. She knows she wants a new one, but she wants one that will be energy-efficient, easy to install on her own, reliable and not too expensive.

She hops online and types, “I need a new A/C today; I have $250 to spend — help!” into Twitter, which in turn feeds automatically into her Facebook status. She immediately begins to receive replies in both channels from friends with advice on retail outlets, air-conditioner brands and how to stay cool with no A/C. She also sees an @ reply on Twitter from a national big-box retailer letting her know its Chapel Hill location has new air conditioners in stock, as well as a link to the section of its website that shows air conditioners for under $250.”

This is a great example of how social media can be used be marketers. Consumers don’t even need to walk into a store to be helped. All they have to do is say what they are thinking about something and someone should be there to help them. Zappos.com has over 430 employees actively mining Twitter and it is part of their customer services. Do you?

Follow me at twitter.com/allanwoodstrom.

Generation Y: Technology Gurus or Smart Asses

March 24, 2009 in Business, Internet, Technology | by Allan Woodstrom | 3 comments

It has been said that most of Generation-Y thinks they know everything about computers and technology. And although I don’t work in a technology role, I am often called upon by different colleagues to help them solve a computer problem. In most cases, I either know how to solve the problem, or I am able to trouble shoot my way to a solution.

In a way these situations make me feel pretty good. But I had to ask myself today, is my generation full of technology gurus? Or are we smart asses who think we know everything about technology because we know how to do a couple of cool things on a PC?

To answer my own questions, let’s first look at my technological background (which I would imagine is pretty similar to most college graduates my age):

  • 19 years experience working with computers and software applications
  • 8 years experience managing web-based applications
  • 12 years experience working with Microsoft Office
  • 7 years experience managing my own personal web site
  • 100’s of hours experience managing my reputation online (yes, Facebook counts)

But are we as special as we think we are? My answer would be no, not really. And while others might consider parts of my job very technical (web sites and graphic design), I do not. Each generation coming after us will have at least the same technical understand of computers and software as we do. It comes with growing up and being educated in the era that we did. It is our responsibility to understand technologies and bring them to the workforce. It will help our country improve efficiency.

I had a basketball coach once say that if he were able to find a younger player who could do what I could do, as good as I could do it, that he would go with the younger player because he had a greater upside.

But is this true in business? No. You can’t possibly learn everything about business without experience beyond technology.

We should be weary of believing our upside is so strong that we should be allowed to check Facebook four times a day. We have a lot to learn and gain in experience in terms how to manage relations and how to work with a diverse team with varying size egos.

I hope that Generation-Y professionals learn to embrace their computer skills with some humility. (And yes, we are all very talented.) But we must not forget that before long we will be asking our even younger professional colleagues for help with new technologies.