Posted on August 3rd, 2009 by Carolyn | 2 Comments »
Just as I am constantly educating others, I’m also building up my own education. The truth is, no one is an expert right now. Twitter is evolving too fast and everyone is trying to unlock its hidden potential.
Here are a few tried and true ideas for how you can maximize reader value through Twitter:
• Contests: encourage viral marketing through free giveaways. For example, everyone who hashtags your company name or product gains an entry into a giveaway for a freebie. Just make sure your giveaway is enticing enough to motivate tweets.
• Coupons: share company discounts and promotional codes through Twitter “coupons”
• Customer service: respond to customers instantaneously through encouraging them to tweet their requests. Remember, this can work against you if you don’t respond quickly, so be sure to have a strong infrastructure in place before going down this route.
• Ask for feedback: thinking about launching a new service? Want to know what customers think about existing products? Ask a question and monitor the responses.
• Poach business: find out who is dissatisfied with current competitors by searching tweets, and get in touch with them via direct messages.
• Send out urgent alerts: was your business interrupted by unforeseen circumstances? Alert your clients through Twitter to let them know what happened and what you are doing to solve the crisis.
• Attract vendors: keep Twitter updated on where you are heading on a business trip and you just may get some sweet discounts on hotels and transportation. Let Twitter know when you are on the hunt for a specific service and just see how many vendors send in a bid.
• Fill job openings: post a need for an employee. Pocket the money you would have spent on job boards.
As more users tap into the wealth of knowledge sharing that Twitter offers, I’m sure we’ll discover newer and better ways to use this platform. Have ideas? Share here.
Posted on July 31st, 2009 by Carolyn | 1 Comment »
Xerox is struggling to remove its identity as a copier company. Kleenex wants to be more than facial tissue. Over time, as brands grow and evolve, they sometimes suffer as a result of branding themselves too well. The world is changing rapidly, and it’s hard to know where business will take you down the road. Businesses that avoid attaching themselves to a product and instead focus on a customer need position themselves strongly to retain their brand and not constrain their growth.
The key is to connect to the real customer benefit. What do you provide your customers with? While the mechanism to do so may change with technology, the actual customer need will never go away. Customers will always have to communicate, or sneeze, or eat or play or travel or whatever need you serve. Define your brands in terms of the value you bring to your customer base, not in terms of the product or service you provide.
Posted on July 27th, 2009 by Carolyn | 2 Comments »
Some of my best leads in business come from places I never would have guessed. They seek me out because nobody else is paying attention to them. How much more effective would your business be if you focused on the low hanging fruit instead of the big fish? Help your smaller clients grow and prosper, and let your business grow with theirs. Think about the segments of the market that nobody is talking to, and develop marketing materials with them in mind. Establish that loyalty early on, and you just may get a customer for life.
Posted on July 20th, 2009 by Carolyn | 4 Comments »
As a child, I played a lot of sports. I swam, played tennis, danced, and played softball. One of my good friends focused her efforts on tennis. She then went on to play professionally, after gaining a degree in psychology. While I had a broad range of experiences in sports and can speak intelligently on any one of them based on my experience, I will never be a go-to expert in the field. My friend, however, speaks to rising tennis stars around the country and helps them develop the mental stamina required to succeed on the tennis court.
There are a million “experts” on any given industry. Anyone can claim expertise, so the key is to establish your company or personal brand as the narrow vertical expert. Target a small niche with a dedicated following, and focus your expertise. Learn everything you can, and incorporate your unique, specialized experiences to set yourself apart from the rest.
As someone who has worked in a variety of industries, from banking to not-for-profits to wholesale distribution, I position myself to my clients as an expert in blogging as a means of social influence marketing. I discuss the commonalities that occur across all industries and the need for businesses to connect with the key influencers in their field through writing and creating targeted blogs. I’ve had the unique experience to apply this skill to many different types of businesses first-hand (not just to consult on it), so I tailor my communications to reflect this experience. Humans (and I’m speaking in generalities here) have a tendency to follow, so the goal is to tap into the key influencers with maximum visibility. I’ve seen it, I’ve used it, and I have focused my efforts in this field for the majority of my career. I don’t dabble outside of blogging as a means of social influence marketing without somehow tying my experience back into it. I am constantly working to develop and refine my expertise.
Consider the experiences you’ve had. Think about the knowledge you’ve gained. Whether or not it’s traditional, your experiences are unique and you have an expertise in something. Harness it, and market it to the people who matter. Make yourself vertically famous; don’t stretch your expertise so widely that you dilute your knowledge. Pick one narrow topic and make yourself the expert.
Posted on July 17th, 2009 by Carolyn | No Comments »
Dave Carroll gets back at United Airlines after breaking his guitar and refusing to pay for the damage by posting his first in a series of three YouTube videos. This is a prime example of customers carrying on a conversation with or without you, and yet another reason why companies need to be leading the discussion. It also illustrates why you can’t use size and power to dominate your clientele anymore – because it will come back to haunt you. Currently, when you Google “United Airlines”, Carroll’s video appears as the third link, so this is something that will continue to erode at the airline’s brand for some time to come.
Posted on July 16th, 2009 by Carolyn | No Comments »
So rumor on the street is that Buick is trying to attract a younger, more affluent consumer base. Currently, the average age of Buick owners is over 70 years old. They are now going after the Lexus crowd by building smaller, sportier models. Here are a few things I would recommend:
• Allow for unique customization options. Create a feature that is so different from what your competitors offer that it grabs everyone’s attention. At the moment, Buicks are simply traditional vehicles with standard features. Stand out from the crowd.
• Go after a niche market segment. Why not target the wealthy suburban soccer mom, or the middle aged professional? Narrow the market so much that certain people can start to identify with this vehicle.
• Mock your current image and inject some humor into your ads. Right now, when I think of Buick I think old. Play off of this image by creating a parody and show a dramatic shift in the Buick of yesteryear compared to the Buick of today. This is not grandma’s Buick.
• Provide some Buicks to social influencers (bloggers, athletes, actors, even the student body president at a major college or the vice president at a huge company) and let them test drive them for a few months. Have them report on their findings and share them with their peer group.
• Make 70 year olds cool. In order to completely shift the mindset of what this car stands for, you have to do something drastic. Host a race with drivers over the age of 70. Create a cross country tour with a caravan of 70 drivers over the age of 70. Donate 70 cars to local heros over the age of 70.
It’s never too late to recreate an image. After all, Madonna did it.
Posted on July 10th, 2009 by Carolyn | No Comments »
Before I take on any new client, we always do a fair amount of background research. Typically, clients think they know what their underlying messages are. Sometimes, they are right. Often times, they are not, and typically through no fault of their own.
Companies often look at their message from their perspective instead of from the customers’ perspectives, and as a result make costly mistakes that take significant time to recover from.
Once your brand identity is set in place, it’s very difficult to change. It isn’t just the time and energy spent developing an incorrect identity; it’s also the time delay required to change it. So with every piece of internal and external communication, understand how it contributes to your brand. Is the tone consistent with that of your company? Does it visually match your identity? Is it being executed in a way that correlates to what your company stands for? Take the time to set a strong foundation and don’t think your brand will naturally develop.
Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Carolyn | 1 Comment »
I have a friend who refuses to be on Facebook. She balks at social media. She thinks it forces her to share too much information. I don’t get this, because you only share information you choose to share. Despite her lack of participation, she still wants to enjoy the benefits of social media. For example, this friend of mine was recently looking for a job. Where did she turn? LinkedIn. She then needed to find a temporary lease on a furnished apartment. Again, she asked a friend to post on Facebook.
More and more, I hear about these holdouts – the people who resist social media, and claim that this is merely a fad. Social media is here to stay, and the people who remove themselves from this aspect of human-to-human interaction are likely going to find themselves far behind the curve. It’s sort of like ignoring the internet when it first became popular. Imagine trying to keep up with the times while refusing to access Google or Yahoo!
This whole phenomenon has led me to think about the things that we adhere to simply because we start to identify with it. We become known for certain things and hang on to them for better or worse. In the end, isn’t it better to identify ourselves with calculated risk? To be a first mover and forge the path versus refrain from joining at all?
Whether for your personal brand or for your company brand, Brands That Think is a community dedicated to sharing our knowledge on how to let your personality shine. Your opinions are welcome. Your feedback is appreciated. And if you happen to bake a mean chocolate chip cookie, by all means send me an email.
Some of my best leads in business come from places I never would have guessed. They seek me out because nobody else is paying attention to them. How much more effective would your business be if you focused on the low hanging fruit instead of the big fish? Help your smaller clients grow and prosper, and let your business grow with theirs. Think about the segments of the market that nobody is talking to, and develop marketing materials with them in mind. Establish that loyalty early on, and you just may get a customer for life.
As a child, I played a lot of sports. I swam, played tennis, danced, and played softball. One of my good friends focused her efforts on tennis. She then went on to play professionally, after gaining a degree in psychology. While I had a broad range of experiences in sports and can speak intelligently on any one of them based on my experience, I will never be a go-to expert in the field. My friend, however, speaks to rising tennis stars around the country and helps them develop the mental stamina required to succeed on the tennis court.
