1. FAST START It’s possible to launch a business page on Facebook, get a blog going and write a post,  and create a twitter account all in the matter of an hour or two. It isn’t very complicated to get started. You may not have the know how to customize everything with fancy graphics and link all the profiles together to create an integrated presence, but you should not let that hold you back. You can begin engaging now, and put yourself in the game.
2. LOW COST You can get started with social media and blogging for very little or no money. This alone makes it much different than just about every other available marketing method. The investment is your time and your patience. To ensure that your time is not wasted, you must learn how to leverage social media properly for your business, and then devote  more time to it on an ongoing basis. Even if you choose to use a social media marketing company to assist you, it is still among the most cost-effective method of reaching your audience.
3. INSTANT INTERACTIVITY Both blogs and social media can give you nearly instant market feedback – good or bad. That provides you with the opportunity to quickly respond to questions, comments, complaints, etc. There is simply no other media platform that that kind of capability. We get all kinds of feedback through the comments on this blog, and people also leave reviews and other comments for us on Facebook and a number of other social media venues where we maintain a presence.
4. SEARCH ENGINE VISIBILITY Surveys indicate that 90% or more of people begin their purchasing process in search engines. Blogs and social media make it more likely that your prospects will find you online in search engines. As you “seed” your content across the social media landscape with blog posts, articles and comments, your company, practice, product or service starts getting found in searches! That’s the beginning of a great inbound marketing strategy.
5. INBOUND MARKETING This is when consumers find you. Outbound marketing is telemarketing, direct mail, email blasts, TV and print ads – all the things that buyers tend to block out more and more using modern tools like caller ID, TiVo, and spam blockers. Social media and blogs are essential inbound marketing tools for business.
6. CONTENT – NOT ADS Related to the last point about inbound marketing is the idea that the content you produce using a blog or social media is likely to be something that your prospect actually desires to consume, rather than ads they find distracting and that interrupt them.
7. FIRST MOVER ADVANTAGE For blogs and social media, there is definitely an advantage to moving first. If you don’t jump into the conversation, your competitors, competitor’s customers or your customers will (if they have not already) and then it can be an uphill battle to become influential in these online conversations. Start now, and claim the virtual conversation-ground for your biggest advantage.

Join the Facebook Page Now!

Enjoy!

Halloween

Cafe Halloween

Halloween

myHalloween

Halloween

Halloween Town

Halloween Pumpkins

Happy Halloween

Halloween in Blue

Join the Facebook Page Now!

Almost every medium and marketing platform has been tagged as “new” at one time. Newspaper ads, Radio, then TV spots, Billboards, Electronic signs, flyers, direct mail marketing, newsletters, hot air balloons, vehicle wraps, specialty items, trade shows, sponsorships, telemarketing…the list goes on. Online marketing entered the fray in a big way starting in the early 90′s.

Most marketers and advertisers have generally always sorted and rated the plethora of mediums by applying a “cost-per-thousand” or CPM to each. CPM is a commonly used bench marks in the advertising industry and is mathematically formulated to state an ad rate at the cost per 1,000 views, for either individual mediums or for entire marketing campaigns utilizing multiple mediums. You may have also heard this referred to as the cost of “impressions.”

It took some time to figure it out and lots of new terms were coined in the process, but CPM analysis was soon easily applied to most internet marketing methods. Banner advertising, pop-ups or pop-under ads, email or list marketing, search marketing, adwords, etc can all be measured for CPM, albeit in a little more detail – click through rates and other such stats now adds CPA or “cost-per-action” into the equation.

FACT: Try as you might, you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole! Also a fact: you can’t make decisions about new media if you’re measuring it with old media metrics!

The majority of marketers (including me) have been taught that CPM forms the building blocks for decision making. If you have a budget and know your CPM, then with just a little spreadsheet work you can develop an entire media plan. It’s the metric that most advertisers know, understand, and negotiate on.

Here’s the problem: when you use an old media metric (CPM) to measure new media, you can’t measure it properly. As a result, you miss out on amazing opportunities! It’s the same reason why you don’t use a slide rule to measure the sky.

FACT: Social media requires new rules for determining its value to the company or professional who is engaging an audience with it! Social networks are simply an evolution of something that has happened for thousands of years – people forming groups of likeminded people, getting together to discuss things, making recommendations, complaining, etc. The internet has made it possible to bring those conversations together with much larger groups, mind-boggling reach and amazing immediacy.

“Okay then” you say, “how do I determine what social media platforms or new media tools to use? What gives me the best return on investment (ROI)?” I can tell you that there are four key engagements that I recommend when getting started. In no particular order, they are Facebook Pages, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogging. There ways to measure the effectiveness of these once you have started engaging, but you won’t be able to calculate ROI before you begin. Do NOT let that scare you away! Many decisions are made without calculating ROI.

What’s the ROI of the paint on your walls? What’s the ROI on the landscaping you did in your yard? What’s the ROI of your executive assistant, your massage therapist or your children? Nobody thinks about ROI with these things right? But for some reason, because the word “media” is attached to “social media” we need to measure its ROI first before we do anything? In business or otherwise, the idea that everything has to come back to a measurable ROI is simply ludicrous.

As I said earlier, don’t think that not determining some precise ROI before you engage in social media precludes you from measuring your social media efforts once you’ve started. You should, and there are lots of ways to do it. You will be measuring metrics that most often cannot be expressed in the language of CPM, and you will need to stay the course and effectively engage for a reasonable amount of time before measurement is meaningful.

Ultimately, success in social media comes down to your ongoing commitment, having something to say that will interest your audience, and ultimately…getting over your fear of jumping in! Those with the least amount of fear are those who will be doing it first, and they will be the ones who succeed.

Join the Facebook Page Now!

Many marketers get nervous around social networks and other new media because participation and engagement with consumers via the social web often can’t be directly tied to a specific outcome or a CPM.  Some of the small business owners and professionals that I talk to have the same concerns.

My consistent response is that new media is not simply a new advertising medium to push your message with – it is an opportunity to genuinely engage your prospects and customers in a 2-way dialogue, to provide value and then reap the rewards of that effort over the course of time. It involves thinking in completely new ways, because the game has completely changed!

I just a read a post from Seth Godin (author of Tribes, Purple Cow and others) that nails this idea. He frames it in terms of “building platforms vs renting eyeballs,” and makes a strong argument that the work and potential costs involved in creating your own platform is far superior to attempting to leverage the platforms of others. I encourage you to read the entire post – Seth is always so insightful.

New Media changes the game, but it doesn’t change your business goals. That’s why it’s so important to assess where you are in terms of a web 2.0 world. Who your customers and prospects are, where they are, and how they behave are still important questions to ask. The new challenges involve finding creative means to engage them in this new connected landscape. Social networks and other new media tools can help you do that, you just need to first determine how to best utilize them  for your particular business. Think outside the box.

Join the Facebook Page Now!

Join the Facebook Page Now!

Here’s a little tour of a custom Facebook Business Page that I put together for a real estate guy:

Join the Facebook Page Now!

I was reading a blog post from Guy Kawasaki earlier today called 14 Practical Ways to Use Evernote. I’d never heard about “evernote” so I checked it out at www.evernote.com and I encourage you to do the same.  What a cool way to organize notes and a bunch of other odds and ends! I’ve only briefly explored the app so far, but I can already see how it’s going to help me out.

from Grant Criddle • Interactive Marketing Now!

Twitter usage continues to grow at an incredible rate, and it’s influence is becoming pervasive. It was reported at mtv.com yesterday that an amazing 1.3 million tweets referenced the 2009 VMA’s during the live show broadcast! Wow. For those who think it’s all just a flash in the pan, think again. Twitter isn’t going anywhere. I think that the company is still trying to figure out exactly how they can make money with the service, but The Wall Street Journal blog page just posted a story that makes a case for a 2.7 billion dollar valuation!

The expanding number of of businesses finding ways to leverage the social platform also remains a key driver of the relentless growth, and with that comes some confusion about how to effectively use Twitter for business. There are some highly effective Twitter tactics for businesses of all sizes and shapes, but pushing your products or services is not one of them. I suggest that its a good idea to remember what Twitter really began as: a social networking platform. There’s a lot of power in those basics. Here’s a couple of things to keep in mind as you explore ways to utilize Twitter for your business.

BUILD AND EXPAND YOUR NETWORK – FORM RELATIONSHIPS

This may seem obvious to you, but think about it in terms of business. Everyone would agree that business cannot exist without people. Every single one of us has a personal network that consists of friends, family, work colleagues, professional contacts, customers or clients, etc., and our network grows when we meet new people and form some sort of relationship with them. Twitter makes it possible for you to seek out people with similar business or personal interests, add them to your network, and form relationships with them. The lifeblood of every business can be found in the people who make the business run, and in those who buy from the business. It’s always about people and their networks. Smart business people engage those networks rather than attempt to manipulate them.

MEET AND GIVE VALUE TO INDIVIDUALS WHO ALSO WANT TO GIVE VALUE

Wouldn’t you say that this a fundamental practice of good business?  I guess we’re talking about “good karma” or maybe the “Law of Attraction” that has been talked about so much lately. The idea that if you’re always sending out good stuff, that you always get much more in return. Twitter is a community of people who are investing their time and energy to meet you, and to develop a relationship with you.  Just like in any networking group (and yes, Twitter is networking), people will want to know you and do business with you if they perceive value. Frankly speaking, direct selling and marketing messages are rarely seen as value. Good manners, engaged communication and going the extra step to help others – those things get picked up on. I don’t know about you, but I find this type of community refreshing.

As I mentioned earlier, there are some really excellent applications for Twitter in business. Check out some of the resources and tips at Mashable, which is one of my favorite online resources. Twitter themselves also published a business guide not so long ago which is actually quite good! Check it out.

Have fun tweeting and if you’d like, follow me at http://twitter.com/GrantCriddle

Join the Facebook Page Now!

I just finished up participating in another wonderful Gartner CRM Summit, this year in Phoenix. I spent most of my conversations with clients talking about how social media fits into the broader CRM strategy. What interested me was that I would talk to them about having a broad strategy for social media, but often they would come back with, “that’s all fine but what about Facebook, or Twitter?”. In other words, they heard strategy, but they wanted to talk tactics.

I pointed out that two years ago, if we were having this conversation, we would be talking about Second Life. Last year, we would be talking about MySpace. Next year? Possible XBox Live. The space is in flux and these sites come and go. Too much time worrying about one particular site is going to fail to set you up long term for this inevitable change.

Firms need to think about the fact that the ecosystem (to use an overworked phrase) that they are part of, along with their customers, is growing, and the rules and the power are shifting. What they need to do is think about how they are going to play in that customer ecosystem. That requires a strategy…long term and able to handle a changing marketplace. It will require software tools. It will require written policies. But mostly, it will require creativity and a desire to experiment and learn. Once that is in place, certainly firms will tactically address sites like Facebook and Twitter. But those tactical approaches should be driven by the larger strategy.

Join the Facebook Page Now!

Craigslist is one of the best known online classified sites, and it is a highly effective way to promote a product or service locally. Most people simply post text ads. What many don’t know is that it isn’t really all that difficult to create very nice image based ads that include graphics, photographs or both!

I’ll talk about the many ways that Craigslist marketing can benefit local businesses in a future post, but as you might imagine, the click through rate on image based ads is much better than text based ads.

I have created a simple step by step tutorial that shows you how to create your own image based Craigslist ads. It is split into 2 parts, be sure to watch part 1 first!

Creating Craigslist Ads with Graphics (Part 2 of 2)

Creating Craigslist ads with Graphics (part 1 of 2)