Where are you?… what are you doing?… twitter made it popular, and if that didn’t make our current online sociali-sphere (made that up) a stalker’s heaven, location-based social networking just up the ante.

Almost every smart phone out today has some sort of Geo location capability. Whether it’s through an integrated GPS (real GPS) or estimating your location based on your nearest cell tower (Fake GPS), “They” know where you are at all times. Clever business guys took advantage of this fact, threw in a map and created the phenomenon of location-based social networking. It is estimated that by 2013, three of the major location-based social networking players will account for over 3.3 billion dollars in revenue! That’s a lot of cheddar. The fascinating thing is that analysts are speculating that this is just the beginning.

Imagine a world where businesses are fully tuned in to the where-a-bouts and geographic buying patterns of its consumers. Where brands can track and influence people in places where it was only possible to assume they would be. Have you seen “Minority Report”? No? good time to go watch it… Yes, that’s where I think it’s going. Companies will take the cookie cutter messages they threw up (I don’t mean vomit even though it’s close), on a billboard and make it feel more personal to you. I have been seeing more and more digital billboards on my daily commutes. Just imagine… you’re going down the street, you look up, and the billboard in front of you says, “Hey [insert name here], wanna party like it’s 1999?…Prince tickets on sale now”. Click, buy, done… I just bought Prince tickets. Join me.

Location-based social networking means more than just informing stalkers of your where-a-bouts, or a new tool that wives and girlfriends can add to their “check up” repertoire. For businesses it will create a whole new dimension of selling, less wasted money on making an ass out of you and…well, themselves.

Want to check out a good list of location-based social networks? Click Here. corner6Labs doesn’t actually officially endorse any of them…although Travis, our VP of Sales, seems to be a 4-Square junkie. Word of advice…don’t try to steal his “Mayor-ship” he is very possessive of them and rather competitive.

Happy Stalking!

BTW, are you going to the June 18th “Nothing But Net” event put on by the Magnus Media Group? We are! Send us a quick note on twitter to let us know you will be there. We will even say hi and buy you a big Junkie drink!

1. Find a large enough group of people to talk to. Marketers are always looking for new segments to penetrate with their products and blogs are a great channel to communicate with them.  For example, if you sell executive suites to small businesses, you will probably want to target prospects based on geography and perhaps service firms. That will give you a large group of people to talk to but this group will probably be composed of several smaller groups with similar interest, so don’t stop there.
2. Learn what is unique about each smaller group. Within that larger segment you should create a variety of content that speaks to what is unique to each one do those smaller groups. Following the example above, it could be interesting to create content that talks about the importance of first impressions, the role of branding in finding new clients, the most successful stock investments strategies or the latest high-end entertainment events in the area.
3. Share with them and build trust. We all know that people like free samples, gifts, give away, free content, free research, extras or free trials. Use those to start building your brand and relationship with them.  Once you have built that trust and created that first impression, it is really hard to lose it – unless you really screw it. When blogging for sales you must honestly want to share knowledge and tips without expecting something back immediately, you must have patience.
4. Be patient and keep sharing. This is key as the game has changed for marketers and sales people, if you go aggressively for the sale without really knowing where the prospect is in the purchasing process, you will create a lot of enemies that could have been clients down the road. More than 95% of your blog’s visitors will not be ready to buy so you must be softer and broader with your message to appeal to a larger group that is most likely looking to simply educate themselves. However, make sure to make it easy for those that are shopping to contact you or purchase online.
5. Embrace your visitors and their networks. As people comment on your posts, bookmark them, share them on social networks and subscribe to your blog, make a task for you to develop each one of those relationships and ideally try to take them offline if appropriate. Don’t try to sell them until they are ready and ask more about your product or services. Developing those relationships will also help you reach a much larger audience than you can reach yourself.
6. Keep improving your sources. The content that you put in your blog is the fuel that will get your lead generation machine going, so make sure to create an editorial calendar and follow it religiously. If you have trouble coming up with your own thoughts or ideas, you can comment on research reports, studies, do book reviews, interview other experts, etc. Don’t ever run out of gas.

Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

I was going to use the question above to title this post, but then I realized that I was making the precise mistake that I am going to blog about – Making your titles/headlines/subject lines or your entire content too specific. The consequence is that you lose the vast majority of your audience that may not be ready to buy your product or services now, but may be be in the future. Being too specific in your pitch may be damaging your opportunities to build a stronger sales pipeline in the long run. This is what Chet Holmes talks about on chapter 4 – “Becoming a Brilliant Strategist, How to Get Up to Nine Times More Impact from Every Move You Make” – of his Amazon and New York Times best-selling book “The Ultimate Sales Machine”. He calls is “Education-Based Marketing”.

I have to say that I agree with his recommendation only to some extent. Conceptually it makes a lot of sense, however what happens when everyone else (your competitors) have also learned this? and they are changing their marketing messages too, from being very tactical or street-level to more strategic in order to build brand awareness, recognition, trust and thought leadership? I get bombarded all the time with webinars, white papers, podcasts, blog posts and videos with strategic marketing content. How to achieve better Marketing ROI with web analytics? How to incorporate Social Media into the overall marketing strategy? How to drive more leads? So, what I do with them is delete them right away because I have seen them all already.

If you noticed, the media I made a reference to, from which I get most, if not all my content, is online. Why is this important? Because sales and marketing happens on and off-line as we all know and the strategies should be coordinated but different. Being more strategic on your messaging, like Chet Holmes recommends, makes a lot of sense via traditional media and on sales activities such as cold calling, trade shows, conferences or networking. I want to emphasize that I strongly agree with such strategy when dealing offline, however, when you are online the game is different. The economics and the rules are different so you can implement a long-tail strategy to reach each segment with the right message at the right time.

I want to conclude with 6 suggestions to increase your sales performance using education-based marketing and online media (but make sure to compliment it with offline media)

1. Create targeted education-based messages. Identify the market segments or industries that you want to target and create a content strategy for them. But you can’t stop there, you have to create different messages based on where in the purchasing process the prospect may be: not considering, thus a more strategic message; researching, thus a more tactical message; or ready to purchase, an offer based message.
2. Use and integrate different online channels. Prospects may use different channels at different stages in the purchasing cycle, so you need to be present on all of them with the appropriate message. For example those that are researching may start (probably will) on Google so you want to make sure that your optimized (blog, website, social media sites) for the keywords used at this stage in the process with content that is more educational on why you are better than your competitor. In addition, you also want to have a separate web and content optimization strategy for those that not considering by using a more strategic message and for those that are ready to pull the trigger using for example email marketing to your house list with strong offers to those that have shown interest in your product or services.
3. Implement adequate supporting technology. You need to have the appropriate technology given your reality, otherwise all the work that you do on the front end to drive traffic to your website, blog, social media sites and any others may be lost. Assess what kind of volume you expect to get given your investment in online marketing communications, and what resources you can dedicate to monitor and turn that traffic into sales opportunities. Then, do a through research because there are hundreds of software as a service (SaaS) providers that can help you. But make sure to adopt one or a combination of several.
4. Develop and Nurture online relationships. Once you identify the leads, make sure to categorize them based on their time to purchase. That will give you more insight into how nurture them, what type of content to share with them and with what frequency. Engage with them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Nings and on the Blogs.
5. Drive online interactions to offline relationships as soon as possible. It is my opinion that all these online tools; web 2.0, social media, or whatever you want to call them, will never replace face to face interaction. However they can be a great bridge to get you a face-to-face interaction and very effective tools to help you maintain and develop those relationships.
6. Analyze and refine. Establish clear goals and objectives for your plan from the beginning. As you probably know, what does not get measured, does not get improved. Utilize the technology in place and frequently challenge the process and results you’re getting to find ways to improve them.

Any thoughts or comments? Go ahead tell us what you think.

Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

Search Engine Optimization has been a cat & mouse game since its inception, marketer and web masters spent their time figuring out how to game search engine algorithms to only find out that these sites kept evolving and coming up with new criteria. The beauty of this game has been that it has evolved in the direction of making results more and more like what you would find on an offline search for a product or service. The difference though is that looking for an accountant offline could take you days or weeks to find a good one. You would probably look for one on the yellow pages, then ask your friends if they knew one, then interview several, than ask for references, to end up probably working with one that worked with someone you trust.  However, online you can do this in a matter of minutes or seconds. Product or service searches on Google (using their filters, social search features and Google buzz) or searches on Facebook (which can also be filtered for friends) will, if not already, complete the entire search and selection process.

So, the questions are: How do you optimize your web presence? How do you embrace word of mouth and user generated content around your brand? How do you grow a network built on trust and reputation? In a few words, and you can watch the presentation below to get more details, the answer is three-fold.

First, you want to establish an editorial calendar because it will help you increase content quantity, quality and your will get more subscribers. Do simple math, more content + better quality = better search engine ranking. Add a little of smart marketing and you will get more readership and that will drive more subscribers (or potential customers)

Second, become a publishing warehouse as it will help you get your target audience in the format and timing that they prefer the most. Take the topic for the day, week, month, whatever your reality is and put in your “content development process” to create blog posts, articles, presentations, tweets, white papers, questions, videos, podcasts, etc. or whatever your target audience respond best.

Third, leverage personal branding to distribute content to networks built on trust and reputation. As stated on a previous blog employees can become a great channel to distribute your content.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

Employees and their families are online and using social media related sites more than ever before (I assume I don’t need to give a stat on this to make the point) and they like to share personal and professional content with their networks. The beauty is that these networks are built on trust, reputation, friendship and real business relationships. Therefore, they listen to what each other has to say making it a great word of mouth channel for a brand. However, many companies are still concerned that access to social media sites while at work could be a source of loss in productivity…well, let me say that the next outlook version integrates with Facebook and other social media tools and most of them have mobile devices. So, I would say that corporate mind-set will have to change much like it did 15 years ago when email came up. Next are six simple ways to start embracing employee social media activities to boost your marketing target reach while retaining employees.

1. Set expectations and boundaries: Define how social media can help align employees with your business and marketing goals and what the objectives are for social media. Then be specific on what the expectations, implications and limitations are for employees. Clearly and frequently communicate this to them to make sure they are aware and accountable for their actions, but don’t force them into social media and make sure that they don’t feel that they have to do it.
2. Educate them: Create a program to coach them on the benefits and limitations of each tool for social and professional purposes.  Show them examples of what to do and what not to do. Do it frequently and embrace knowledge sharing amongst themselves. Encourage employees to try it and find their own social media style.
3. Invite them to participate: Share with them all your news, campaigns, events, promotions, offers, etc. and ask them to share them with their networks. But don’t stop there, make them part of it by asking them to provide content and help in the creation of these initiatives
4. Use incentives: Contest are great, I recommend setting up daily, weekly or monthly contest to rewards those that participate the most or help reach the goals of the initiative at hand.
5. Give them feedback: This is key, no one knows how they are doing and how they can improve if they don’t get any feedback. Give them metrics, comments, ideas and feedback in general on how they are helping the company. They need to know the consequences and implications (positive and negative) of their actions to improve them, correct them or embrace them.
6. Embrace their ideas: Social media is all about user-generated content and participation, so companies must incorporate employees ideas into their programs. Employees are the ones closer to the customers and prospects and understand better than anyone else what make prospects and customer click or engage. Create the appropriate mechanisms to incorporate their social media ideas.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

The new website is geared towards answering the question of who are are and the powers we yield, as well as a full on endeavor on the SEO front.

Check it out and let us know what you think. And if you feel like stopping by for a little bubbly, let us know and we will save you some.

6 divided by 2 ways to start the fixing process.

I don’t know how it happened, but last night I was watching CSPAN while the president and CEO of Toyota defended the Toyota brand in front of congress. While I was emphatically un-impressed by some of the representatives of congress and their professionalism towards the matter, I must say that I felt quite the opposite of Akio Tayoda, president and CEO of Toyota. IMO, he was very poised and professional while addressing what I thought were disrespectful and despicable “I am running for re-election” questioning from some member of the congressional panel. As a “marketer” who so often deals with PR issues our clients face, it begs the question of how do companies get themselves out of a PR mess.

The way I look at it, your brand is like being married…as a guy, sometimes you are just going to forget a birthday or a valentines day, unless you are one of “those guys”. There are times when you may have to work your way back off the couch.

#1 . Gain empathy

Like many [insert number here] step programs, the first and foremost step is to gain the empathy of your audience by recognizing that you are aware of the problem at hand. What this does is establish an emotional connection with your audience that helps you to gain their attention for what you have to say next. Usually, depending on the audience, people want to know that you care about their feelings and “admitting guilt” is a way of saying “I don’t want to bullshit you.” However, don’t be all negative, highlight the good of your brand without being obnoxious.

#2. Road map to regaining trust

Now that people know you are aware of the problem, the next step is to patch things up. This can be done by establishing a road map to making things better. “Over the next [insert realistic period here], we will address your concerns by [insert steps here].” This establishes a clear goal for your audience on which to measure your performance. People consciously and subconsciously love to compare so playing to that tendency will be in your benefit. The pressure here comes with hitting those goals and this leads me to my last point…

#3. Be transparent with your actions

Fixing the issues you are having in a black box may fix the issue, but it will not fix your audience’s perception. With this in mind, if you become transparent with the steps you are taking to fix the issues, then your audience will see that you are committed to regaining their trust which will in turn play on their empathy.

Of course, in PR there are many steps to helping a brand in mayday, and each solution may have its own approach. Can anyone say Tiger Woods?

Don’t just read… contribute. What’s your take on the matter?

If you are like us, you constantly check your web stats, email metrics and other Key Performance Indicator data to help figure out how your online efforts are being received. Hopefully I don’t have to stress the importance of being borderline obsessed with doing this. In fact, if I have to stress that, then you and I really need to have a little sit down. Metrics is the Grand Puba of learning. You may not be aware of it, but your brain auto-magically collects and analyze you life’s metrics in order to help you develop and even more primitively, to survive. In short, data is your friend. If you don’t know what is or isn’t working, then chances are you are fishing with dynamite, and while one could argue that it is a good approach to catching a lot of fish…and thus a terrible analogy, I would argue that all you create is a mangled mess.

Like many companies in our current economy, we are being super aggressive with our online branding efforts, so we have three maybe even four different types of campaigns running at all the times.  How do we keep track of them all? and better yet, how do we know which ones to keep running.

So you waited, now here is the sweet, sweet nugget. Drumroll…

KEEP A MARKETING JOURNAL AND RECORD EVERYTHING.

You laugh?! This may sound strange, but one of the first things we did at corner6labs was to keep a marketing journal. This seems like a no-brainer to us, but we have yet to say, “We keep a marketing journal” to someone and the don’t look at us as if we just punched a baby. Keeping a marketing journal helps us narrow down the answer to that elusive question…what the hell happened on Nov 6th. Looking over your blog traffic, your email metrics, your website metrics, will do you no good if you don’t know what you did to earn those numbers.

The other side of having all-that-metrics  is knowing what to actually do with it…but as I said, one thing for you today, so that answer may lie in a phone call.

As a marketer, I have been waiting for analysis of search engine effectiveness to include measures for user relevance and the power of the communications to establish connections.  I am encouraged because that finally seems to be happening. According to Dwamian Mcleish and Jose Guerra, SEO is passé; the new term should be Content Search Optimization (CSO). Communications specialists like me should be cheered because the system has finally begun to catch up with what we always knew.

Graphic designers have similar concerns to those of content providers.  They believe that attractive, easily navigated sites will increase the power of the organization’s web presence. Unfortunately, the traditional measures by search engines do not include many metrics for these factors.  In fact, only recently have search engines begun to read flash so designers were cautioned not to use those impressive graphics.

Similarly, search engine rankings required that content developers integrate as many key words as possible in the copy but also keep it short. This is not useful to the reader however, because target audiences expect messages to respond to their need.  Packing search terms into the text does not add value for the reader.  It was just another way of gaming the system to increase visibility of the website on the Internet.

The goal of the search engine is to provide highly relevant, easily accessible information to the consumer. Consumers will benefit as organizations begin to realize that the easy measures are not enough anymore.   As the website owner, attracting visitors through high page ranks is about helping them find you but it is also about delivering value once they are there.  Overall, you increase your rankings if you build that trust over time.  At the Branding SIG for the DFW AMA on February 2nd, Dwamian said that the search engines are beginning to develop measures that incorporate content relevance into the rankings.  It cannot happen too soon.