Now it’s 2010, and social media is embedded in the daily functions of our lives. Businesses check their media feeds while they have their first cup of coffee. News stories are now being broken on Twitter before a reporter can reach the scene. People are meeting in person through social media connections (Tweetups and Facebook events). Let’s not forget that people are also constantly connected to the internet through their cellphones, computer or laptop.
If social media is still just a silly trend in your mind, you’re probably behind the curve. My marketing professor told me, “In the business world, only the fastest survive.” He’s absolutely right. If you can’t stay current, then you’ll become obsolete.

Swim Fast or Die

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!

I came upon such a holy grail recently that I couldn’t help but sharing. “The Art of SEO” by Eric Enge and bunch of other people. As passionate as I am about SEO, I usually approach anything that has to do with the topic with reluctancy, because lets face it, most people tell you the same crap so called SEO experts have been spewing since 1994 (the good ole days of Infoseek). Here is the crap I am talking about, the question of question that just gets under my skin, and usually asked about a brand new website… “Is the website Search Engine Optimized?”. Maybe someone forgot the definition of optimization, but correct me if I am wrong, and I very well may be, how can you optimize something you haven’t had the chance to test and tweak? The question should rather be, “have you chocked enough self important keywords into the website’s meta keyword and title tag? and doused the content full of sentences that don’t make any sense because we had to get the keywords in there?”. Not to mention the fact that SEO is no longer just an on-site affair. Please don’t get me started, back to the book.

Armed with the reviews of the smart and good intentioned folks on amazon, I embarked on my bathroom reading journey of this book. The authors did an incredible job outlining a lot of theories missed by most other examiners of the SEO topic. The book gives you more ammunition to fight with than Rambo-in- the-middle-of-the-jungle-with-his-never-ending-supply-of-bullets-and-sharp-pointy-objects-carved-from-his-knife. Moreover, they point out one very crucial thing many SEO firms fail to tell you, Every SEO campaign is almost as different as a finger print. Different brands, different goals, uneven playing field… GO figure. The thing that strikes me is that this book was actually written in 2009, but seems to be more current than some of my other SEO readings which make me think that Eric, Stephen, Rand and Jessie (I assume we are on a first name basis, even though I don’t know them) are what you call forward thinkers. I love forward thinkers.

To sum it up, your company needs to be relevant in organic search…It’s not a luxury, it’s a must. To push you in the right direction, go get this book. Nope, I am not getting paid for this post (not saying I don’t want to), so don’t get any ideas.

When I say “me” or “I”? I mean  Dwamian Mcleish .

Follow me on twitter at twitter.com/dwamianm.

Follow corner6labs at twitter.com/corner6labs

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.

If yes, then call us. If not, then you are just probably finding ways to keep your job and we recommend you to read the 6 tips below and then tell us how they worked for you.

1. Don’t Spend Your Entire Marketing Budget. Costs saving initiatives have been more popular than ever before. If you can manage to not spend your entire marketing budget you will be rewarded. Showing savings is always a good thing these days, and who cares if you hurt your lead generation volume and quality or stall your brand building efforts. What is more important though is to get a tap on your back from your boss for finishing the year strong. Nobody will hunt you down if you don’t continue your efforts to capitalize on the upturn of the economy we will see in 2010, right?
2. Keep Reducing Headcounts. Everyone had been letting people go and most have successfully managed to survive this economic crisis based on these decisions. These types of initiatives are effective and opportune to let go of low performing employees. You can always hire top performers later in the year; although you may not have enough budget. Remember you saved so much money by not spending your entire marketing budget that your boss will probably decide that you could do a great job with a smaller budget in 2010.
3. New Market Segments are Not Worthwhile. Although, trends such as the high broadband Internet penetration, the surge of web 2.0 tools and the social media boom are making it easier and easier to reach out to smaller segments in very cost effective manners, many people would argue that is not enough. Segments based on race, language, gender, age or sexual preferences are not big enough yet to allocate enough resources. No one cares that one of every five young adults today (ages 18 – 34) are Hispanic, which are ONLY about 50 million people. And nobody believes in Forrester estimates that Hispanic disposable income as a group will grow to $1.4 trillion by 2013 from $951 billion in 2008.
4. Search Engine Optimization is Overrated. People justify SEO investment with arguments such as that more than 1 billion people worldwide, ages 15 years and older are Internet users or that more than 74% of the US population uses the Internet. Also that organic search drives 75%+ of all search traffic. What value does all that have? How many people really use the Internet to purchase or influence product purchases? Not many really, the penetration of ecommerce, on product categories such as computer electronics and media (books, music and videos) is ONLY 25%. There are still lots of people that you can reach out to without using the Internet, so why bother reaching out to these demographics, right?
5. Email Marketing is From the Past. Email marketing started in the mid and late 1990’s, which is a long time ago in Internet history. It boomed in the early part of this decade, but as of a couple of years ago many argue it is being replaced by social media marketing and other new media channels. Companies used to BLAST emails because it was easy and cheap, but CAN-SPAM laws, anti-spam software and other tools are allowing people to hide from email marketing messages. Let’s look at some stats again to support this argument. Email open rates are above 30% in many industries and click rates get up to 6% or higher. So if you are a small or medium size business and you have an opted-in list of prospects and customers of let’s say 10,000 emails, you are directly reaching ONLY 3,000 people and building strong relationship via your content or offers with ONLY 600 people… EVERY TIME YOU SEND EMAIL CAMPAIGNS.
6. Social Media is a Fad, Let Your Competitors Go There First. Much has been said about the reach of social media, the engagement capabilities it adds to the mix, that is taking Word-of-Mouth marketing to the next level and that is incredibly more cost effective than other tools. But, it is so new that many marketers feel threatened or not knowledgeable enough to jump into it, so they are waiting for others in the industry to lead the path to figure out how to use it. Let your competitors work with “social media” marketing firms and create some success first before you join. Why take any risks? We still need to survive 2010, right?

We like to share ideas, thoughts, best practices or whatever we feel like writing about in lists of 6. But, you can add to it…so, If you are going to take one risk, make it sharing your thought and believes with others. Feel free to comment, tweet, share or do whatever you want to do with this.

Jose Guerra
Principal

I am not your dad , your step dad or your boss in trying to tell you how to run your business. In fact, all I can do is talk to the wind and ask the question “why is your brand such a big secret?”. If I were you I would be looking at what is wrong and why this very crappy economy is kicking your a$$ more than some or your competitors. The main excuse, “well the big guns have mad cash they can throw at experiments with new age marketing, social media and other alternate forms of brand communication”, we don’t. You know what, you are right. Why would you update the way you have been approaching your consumers when what you have been doing is working so well. BTW, how were those quarterly numbers? I say bull$hit. Social media came about with you in mind. If you are dropping a suitcase full of cash into it and wondering how and when you are going to see the returns, then you are not only approaching it with the wrong attitude…but you are probably doing it wrong. Keep it up and I predict that you will be taking an eviction notice off your door in six month or less.  Who am I to be this honest? If you are concerned then I have done my job.

We keep saying the catch phrase “Social Media Marketing”, but I anticipate it will get worn out and annoying as the phrase “Web 2.0″…plus I think a lot of companies quiver at the word “social”. I am on a campaign to rename social media marketing to XY-Media Marketing or XY-Marketing (some variation of that. It’s not trademarked..so grab it while you can). XY Media is about brand adaptation and brand employment. It’s finding creative ways of mixing the old (X-Media) with the new (Y-Media), to reach the demographic that influences consumerism. Companies must learn to adapt in a climate that demands that they be more in e-touch with their consumers. These days, you just cant get away with winging it because you will suffer.

I see some old executive around his desk puffing up, fist to his desk saying “We are old school”. You know what? Old school does matter, when you are selling newspapers or 1961 Model-A Fords, but these days, you better get current and quick. I take that back, you can’t even sell newspapers or Model-A Fords anymore without being current.

Companies keep asking the obvious question “How do you measure ROI from this new media endeavour?”. Frankly I am sick of that question but I understand their concern. Just because it is a valid concern doesn’t make it a less annoying question. Let me ask you this, how did you measure the ROI of that $10,000 billboard you bought last month? Marketing has a lot to do with tactics and execution, so if you didn’t plan on a way to get metrics for your campaigns then once again, you are doing it wrong.

Let me wrap this up because now I am starting to rant. There may be no real purpose of this post other than to clear my head on a Monday morning, so there you have it. My thoughts exactly. Put in your two cents here or on our facebook fan page @ www.cornersix.com/facebook

Peace.

The New York times published an article titled “Share the Moment and Spread the Wealth” where they talk about the importance of sharing content by leveraging influencers in social media platforms and how Internet sharing companies like AddThis and ShareThis have been growing lately. It concludes that this trend may cause friction on the Internet Industry as “search engine optimizer” firms like Google compete with these “social media optimizer” firms. And posts a question to discuss if and/or how people will share smaller bits of content. Also, I read an article in the last edition of Fast Company, titled “How much are you worth to Facebook?”, which talks about embracing  content sharing by giving incentives to people to share content, all this supported by technology like Lotame that helps you target influencers based on behavioral data.

I think that both articles are approaching it the wrong way and I don’t agree with their position for moral reasons. Human beings have personal relationships and professional relationships that many times overlap with each other, but there is alway one governing relationship when it comes to trust.  If the solution to monetize social media is by muddling the waters and introducing money to relationships based on trust and friendship, I think we are evolving against core values of a healthy society. But, who am I to say that?. However,  I think if that were to be the future or next evolution of social media and online social behavior we would face a world with closer and smaller networks built on trust and friendship, which will co-exist with in larger social networks. The tools exist today, Facebook has some if you want to tightly manage your social networks. The need exist today, it is just not massive yet. The question is then, what are we marketers going to do as we face tighter and tighter communities that find ways to protect themselves from marketing messages and advertising? I think the solutions must come from firms truly living their brands and their identity, where employees, customers, partners, suppliers, and other industry related groups pass the word, share the content.

The key is that the content must fit within their social activities – not easy for certain companies. I think that the ability to constantly produce content innovation that is  tied to brand values and that is real will help firms find and retain loyal customers/clients.

There were speakers from several powerhouse companies such as Mike Volpe from Hubspot (one of my favorites by the way), Wade Burgess from LinkedIn, Erik Johnson from Saber Holding’s Cubeless Networks, and Will Pinnell from Handango. The field was rounded off by highly respected social media marketing  gurus such as Laura Fitton who is the author of “Twitter For Dummies” and Paul Dunay, Author of “Facebook Marketing for Dummies”.

The speakers gave general advice on how to approach social media as a company, except for the LinkedIn guy, who was mainly raging about how awesome LinkedIn was (I guess I can’t blame him, it -  is -  awesome). There was also a panel discussion where the speakers got to answer questions from he audience.

So what?… well, I highly recommend you look one of these conferences up and check it out ASAP, because if you are just entering the social media marketing scene, then you will attain great insight young grasshopper. Or, if you want to hear us wax poetic on our knowledge around the transformation of corporate social media involvement, and why it’s relevant and important? then drop us a line.

Now let’s have a discussion shall we?…Shoot me an email, or just drop a comment on how do you see social media transforming the landscape of product and service consumption, now, and in the future?

I have been to a few fitness “bootcamps” but none quite like this. It would be good enough for some people to go get a work out, or maybe even a tip here and there about their nutrition. Expect more than that when you go to the combine. Brad and Troy administers a holistic approach to your workout. They start with a word of the day, today’s word was “Change”. “Change only comes to those who want it”, said Troy, “Change your attitude, change your image, change your lifestyle”…words that stared you deep in the eyes. Troy goes into a 300-esk speech that lacked only the words “This is Sparta!”…and thus the workout commenced.

In the middle of what was a pretty rigorous workout, where I was seconds away from calling “Earl”, Troy preached self affirmation techniques that not only made the workout feel easier, it also built focus on each movement to produce a goal. They atmosphere harbored a sense of unity amongst the participants, and even though I was huffing and puffing, at the end of it all, I still felt pretty darn refreshed.

If you are the in Dallas / Fort worth / Cedar Hill / Arlington / Grand Prairie / Duncanville, area, check them out. You will be glad you did.